Resolved!

My New Year's Resolution every year is this: Get my shit together. Usually, that has meant that I was going to find the "right" diet and start paying off my debt and clean up my home and live like a real adult. Anyone who has read this blog knows that I have not really succeeded in many of those areas.

I did take some important steps this year, in going into a debt management plan and really starting to tackle my spending and debt problems. I have made some missteps, which has meant that I have paid some money in overdraft fees and also fallen into the online shopping rabbit hole a few times, but I have regained my footing a bit. It's a learning process to shift from relying on credit cards and ignoring a mounting problem, and I definitely still get that itch from time to time to check out by doing some mindless shopping (full disclosure: I do have a list of things I "want" when my budget allows...I don't know that I will end up buying all of them, but they are sitting on a wishlist, waiting for me to have the money for them).

My home is still a cluttered mess. I thought of using the holiday season as a "motivator" to get it cleaned up, just in case anyone had an occasion to stop by for any reason. However, I have decided that the better option is just not to have people stop by. Looking around at all this stuff just still is completely overwhelming, and the thought of cleaning it up sends me into shutdown mode. My only two goals today are to do laundry and unload and reload the dishwasher, and even that seems like too much right now. And I have some major refrigerator de-cluttering to do that I cannot even fathom right now.

And that leaves that elusive search for the "right" diet. I absolutely believe with 99% of my being that this does not exist. Often, I believe it with 100% of my being, but there are times that ED tries to convince me that is not true. I have not binged in over a week now, but I have been eating, mostly cereal with milk and peanut butter with everything and tostada shells with cheese melted on them. And everything has tasted so good! I forgot how much I like cereal. I had stopped eating it because it triggered my "need" to weight it out precisely, but now I have just been pouring it in a bowl, adding some milk, and digging in. Peanut butter is another thing I have had to measure precisely in the past, but instead I have been slathering it on my toast and savoring it. I have not had anything fancy to eat in the last week, but I have enjoyed what I have eaten, and I have not numbed out with food. And one of my favorite things about TFID is that Caroline is realistic about the fact that sometimes eating is not going to be a completely mindful activity. I am living alone, and sitting down at the kitchen table to eat my meals in a quiet environment and concentrate only on what I am eating feels like a whole lot of bullshit to me. I usually eat sitting on the couch, often in front of the TV but sometimes also with my laptop on my lap. And I always thought that I couldn't be a mindful eater because eating at the kitchen table in silence made me feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin. But TFID has given me "permission" to go with my instinct that this is a load of crap, and I can eat in front of the TV and taste my food and enjoy eating and not feel like I have to get a meal over with because the silence is driving me crazy.

I also have not stepped on my home scale for the last week or so, although I was weighed in a medical environment last week. It still calls to me because I am so used to using it to measure my worth, but I am not answering that call. And I am thinking about tossing it in the dumpster today because, if that call continues, I am not 100% confident I won't eventually answer it. I do get weighed at medical appointments on a fairly regular basis (much less often than once per week but usually every month or two), so I am not losing the ability to know my weight. But if I ditch my scale, I am losing the ability (or maybe I should say surrendering the ability) to let my daily weight control me.

So is there room in my life for a New Year's Resolution, beyond the old standby? I have one goal in mind that I am not yet working on, and it is actually something I am sincerely excited about. And it's an idea I have gotten from some of the podcasts I have been listening to. There is a book called The Artist's Way that has been mentioned on podcasts I have been listening to over the past two weeks, and although I have not read the book, I have heard a lot about one of the practices suggested by the author, and that is a practice called Morning Pages. Morning Pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, written by hand, at the beginning of the day, designed to help to awaken your creativity. Brené Brown has a great quote that kind of helped lead me to this resolution: "Unused creativity is not benign. It lives within us until it's expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear." I don't think of myself as an artistic individual. I can knit, but not well. I can make jewelry, but it's not a passion of mine. I can do lettering, and I have nice handwriting, and I occasionally create something that I am proud of. But I don't have a creative passion. I have tried out a bunch of creative hobbies, but once I build my "stash" of supplies, I usually lose interest. The acquisition of these supplies? Definitely the shopping monster. The actual creative pursuit? Forgotten almost immediately.

However, I have always been told that I am a good writer. My grandfather was a good writer, and even as a child, I remember being told I took after him. My teachers generally graded my papers well. My papers in grad school are generally well-received. I have a good grasp of the written word, and sometimes I have something to say, and I can usually get my thoughts into written words without much of a problem. Does that mean I am going to write a novel someday? Maybe not. Does it mean that there will be a day that this blog will be more than an anonymous spot on the internet? Perhaps. Therefore, Morning Pages are my New Year's Resolution. And I don't necessarily mean every day...that feels too much like a compulsion. But I am going to dedicate time and space to write three pages on most days before I get my day started, and I am going to see what it is the stream of my consciousness has to say.

And I am going to be kind to myself. And I am going to be kind to others. And I am going to remind others to be kind to themselves. After all, if we don't care for ourselves, who will? If we are not worthy of our own care, how can we be worthy of the care of others?

Podcasts

At some point in the not-so-distant past, I discovered podcasts. I didn't really "get" initially that they were free, so I had not checked them out, and then I heard about "Serial" and became pretty well obsessed with it. It helped that I had some decent periods of time in the car during which I could listen to whatever I was listening to at the time. I also, at this time, was still in my discovering-Brené-Brown period, so I listened to some podcasts on which she had been a guest. Although some of the interviews were pretty repetitive, listening to her speak about her shame and vulnerability research and the importance of empathy was really powerful for me.

I spent some time listening to "Stuff You Should Know" and "Stuff You Missed in History Class," which are both pretty awesome (I especially love SYMIHC), and then I must have joined Audible because I took up audiobooks as a way to pass time in the car. However, I started listening to the podcast "Food Psych" not that long ago, which is Christy Harrison's podcast. She is a registered dietitian and intuitive eating coach, and her podcasts are actually interviews/conversations with some people who have become really interesting to me recently. And this is the podcast that lead me to Caroline Dooner, which is the creator of the Fuck It Diet (herein known as TFID). Since finding TFID, I have been searching for Caroline's other guest stints on podcasts and have really enjoyed listening to her talk about her food history and how she healed her relationship with food because, more than anything else, this has given me some hope that such healing is possible for me as well.

Although I have mentioned more than once that the HAES movement doesn't quite sit well with me, I have to admit that I am become more interested in doing some more research into it. While I don't know that this is the size I will be forever (as there are still moments that I hope that my "set point" is lower than what I weigh right now) and don't necessarily think that it's 100% okay just to say that you can be fat and healthy (because, while it is true that you can be fat and healthy, there is also the chance that being fat can lead to health problems), I do find myself wanting to listen to what Linda Bacon has to say about body size and what is not currently understood well about the relationships we have with our bodies.

More to follow on that, I guess.

Anyway, I have say that things over the course of the last couple of days have felt a lot more peaceful to me than the days before them. I find myself thinking often about the letter from my body and the pledge to my body, and I don't find myself assigning morality to the food I am eating. I have thought about what was going to taste good. I have eaten a lot of cereal. I have considered several choices and chosen the one that looked most appetizing. I ate a salad today because I wanted to. And I have only heard some whisperings from ED. He is mostly leaving me alone.

And financially, this pay period has been my most successful since I entered the DMP. I am on track not to overdraft my account, and I have not had to reschedule any bills. I have about $45 in my checking account right now, but only $30 are earmarked for things happening before payday, so I have an itty-bitty cushion that I am going to use to buy baking ingredients to make some Christmas cookies. I feel a little bit of money peace as well.

I would never suggest that this is IT! I am CURED! I have BEAT THIS THING! I know that this is not a straight line process. My depression is still very much present and not very much under control. My anxiety still breaks through at times, although it's for reasons other than money or food issues. And I cannot sleep for crap, quite honestly. I still have self-defeating and self-deprecating thoughts on occasion (although I am trying to intercept them). But I also feel like my body had some good points in its letter, and I still feel like I mean what I said in my pledge. So I will take this good feeling for as long as it lasts...I hope it will last for a long time.

Letters

The first two days of TFID had as homework having your body write a letter to you and then writing a pledge to your body. My pledge to my body also took the form of a letter, and I brought them to therapy this week and shared them with my therapist. I hesitate to say this because I can't imagine that it will last, but for this moment, I feel some body peace that I have never felt. I can't promise that I am going to be the next Virgie Tovar, but I also don't feel like I hate my body in this moment, sitting here, typing out these words.

Without further ado, I present my letter from my body to me:

Dear Enough,

It's me...your body. I am sitting here on the couch, after a long, busy day at work. I know that you're trying not to concentrate on any one thing. The TV is on, the apartment is cluttered, the dishwasher is making a weird noise, and you kind of have to pee. That feeling that you kind of have to pee? That's me talking to you. You don't usually listen to that signal until the last minute, which leads to a mad dash to the bathroom. Necessary? Maybe not.

That's not the only thing I say when I talk to you, however. Sometimes, I want to let you know that I need some better care. This might manifest as heartburn or indigestion after a dinner of ice cream, arthritis pain in your knee because of a steady diet of Skittles and soda, or a headache because of a lack of sleep (or caffeine). I have other things I would like you to hear, as well, but I can't seem to get you to listen to me.

I love movement. I love when we go to yoga together and you listen and open your mind to the lessons that the teachers have to share. I love when you take walks, especially outside walks, but the treadmill can do in a pinch! I don't like running. I am not a big fan of weight training. I can take or leave the elliptical.

So let's talk food. I don't want food to be such a battleground for us. I don't want you to have to consider whether a food is good or bad before you give it to me. I don't want you to use food to punish yourself. I want you to realize that it is okay to eat these so-called "bad" foods in moderation and that you don't have to feel guilty about them. It's okay to eat a food just because you want it. But I would love it if you would also think about what I need to run the way I have to in order to support you in your day to day life. I need to be nourished, not punished. I need to eat the occasional vegetable and plenty of protein. I can eat gluten, and I can eat carbs, and I can eat meat, and I can eat sugar. I can do all that. You don't have to cut those things out. But I can't be expected to stay in good working order if you are feeding me either a straight diet of "junk" food or almost nothing at all. It's okay to have a treat. But I can't promise that I will be able to keep working for you if you don't help me out a little bit.

I know it feels impossible. I know that the idea of allowing food to let go of the hold it has over you feels like the most foreign idea in the world. I can feel you struggle...I can hear your thoughts, even when you don't quite get them into words. I can see that moment when you transition from enjoyment of a food to the frantic shoveling in of something you can't quite taste anymore. I feel such sadness for you in those times, but I feel some panic too. After all, if you don't take care of me, no one will. Audrey has said it...she can't want recovery for you more than you want it for yourself. In the same way, I can't want recovery for you more than you want it for yourself. I am here for you, but I can't promise to be there forever if we don't figure this out...together. Please start at least trying to pay attention to what I am telling you. It will take time, but if we work on this together, maybe the signals I send you will start to be noticed, and maybe you will be able to tell that I am hungry (and hungry for actual nutritious food), and when I am physically satisfied, maybe you will feel satisfied as well. What you have been doing has not been working. For the most part, you have come to realize that dieting truly is not the answer. The "right" diet is not out there, so you and I are going to have to work together to figure this out. I am committed to you...can you be committed to me too?

Love, Your Body

And my pledge to my body:

Dear Body,

I guess that it's time for me to admit that 25+ years of dieting has not worked. I am left feeling like a failure because I couldn't wrestle you into a size and shape that I liked. I have punished you for not conforming to my ideas of what you should look like. I have not nourished you physically or mentally. I have been mean to you and called you names. And you still have done a reasonable job of carrying me through life.

You have allowed me to do work that I love. You have allowed me to reach out and give hugs to those whom I care about. You have helped me save babies’ lives and comfort grieving parents and celebrate first birthdays and stand in front of groups of people and teach them about what I do. You have kept safe my brain and my heart, even when I have not given you reason to. You let me cry when I know I am safe, and even if my darkest times, you are with me.

Instead of seeing myself as apart from you, I am going to try my hardest to join with you and continue on this life's journey. I will not force you not to eat. I will not force you to run because I know you don't like it. I will keep you active because it makes you feel better and not because I have some elaborate goal to meet. I will let you eat Skittles when you want them, but I won't force you to finish eating them just because they are there. I will not make you eat kale because we don't like it. But I will let you have food that serves as better fuel for you than what I have been giving you lately. I will work with you and not against you. I will invest in you, and I ask that you continue investing in me. I know that you have been patient when perhaps I did not deserve your patience.

Thanks for sticking with me and believing I am worth it.

Love (and I mean that),

Enough

The Fuck It Diet Mini-Course - Day 1

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a Food Psych podcast, and the guest that day was Caroline Dooner. I had never heard of Caroline Dooner, but she was on the podcast talking about her "diet," the Fuck It Diet. I made a mental note to check it out because it sounded like a very body-positive concept full of things that I really need to learn about and embrace. I have to work on recovery...I am out of other options. As an aside, for anyone who has never listened to Food Psych, it is Christy Harrison's podcast, and she is a registered dietitian and health coach who has really embraced the Health At Every Size concept (I have written about how I am having trouble fully embracing HAES, but a lot of what Christy has to say, as well as what her guests have to say, has been very thought-provoking for me).

Anyway...

The Mini-Course involves ten days of emails with a "lesson" (of sorts) and then a homework assignment. There is also a private Facebook group in which participants can share what they have written and learned, should they so desire. I just received day nine's email today, which means tomorrow is my last day of the Mini-Course mailings, and I have done exactly zero of the lessons. HOWEVER, today I printed out all of the lessons and homework assignments thus far with plans for reading through them in order and starting to do the work. And then probably emailing them to my therapist so that we can talk about it.

Day one's homework was to write a letter to myself from my body. I am not going to share all of what I am going to write here on the blog because I don't want to share information that Caroline spent time developing, but I do want to encourage you to check out The Fuck It Diet for yourself and consider enrolling if  you think it would be useful for you. I also would encourage you to check out Food Psych, especially the current season, which has a lot of people as guests who also embrace the HAES concept.

Malfunction. Need input.

One thing that I do a lot is "should" on myself. You know...I should eat more vegetables. I should take up running. I should go to yoga more often. It has been pointed out to me that this is not productive but can instead cause guilt and shame. Looking into what Dr. Google has to say about this, I found that "shoulding yourself" is a cognitive distortion that was first described by a psychologist named Clayton Barbeau. It basically often results in procrastination, as we try to "nag" ourselves into doing something. However, it can also take other forms (I should lose weight. I should stop spending so much money. I should vacuum my home. I should do the dishes. I should call the repairman about that broken appliance.), and it's more often the other forms that come to roost in my brain.

Something that I am really struggling with right now is maintaining basic, at-home, adult functionality. I do a passable job at work and school. I show up, I act like an adult, I interact with others, I get the job done, and I sometimes even excel. However, at home? I had my whirlwind cleaning frenzy before the repairmen came the other week. But things are starting to pile up again. I made a promise that I would stop unnecessary spending, and I have kind of done that, but I have let a few things slip through. I have not been eating to fuel my body, and as a result, I don't feel well. I am achy. My GI system is out of whack. I have headaches. I am tired.

There are also some things that I put off, knowing that I will feel "better" if I do them, but without that being enough drive to get me going. One of these things (more grossness...this one makes me feel like I am such a failure at adulthood) is showering as often as I "should." I know that a morning shower wakes me up and gives me an opportunity to feel fresh and clean throughout the day. I also know that, more often than not, although I set my alarm to give me plenty of time to fit this into my morning schedule, I often take a look in the mirror, tilt my head, decide I can get away for one more day without washing my hair, and spend that extra time on the Internet, mostly playing a variety of Facebook games. Another thing that always makes me feel better and more put-together is wearing make-up...and I have been averaging perhaps two days a week (and that number might actually be high) of doing that. But putting make-up on everyday takes all of five minutes. I "should" be able to fit that in. And on my days off...getting dressed in real clothes makes me more likely to spend the day relatively productively. Staying in my pajamas or staying in whatever workout clothes I wore to the gym that morning makes me more likely to while away the hours between wake up and bedtime sitting on the couch, surrounded by my time suck materials and wondering how long it has been since I got up to go to the bathroom. So those are three VERY CLEAR, VERY SIMPLE things that I could be doing to become less of an adult-ing dropout. But sometimes even those three things feel like impossible goals.

Hearkening back to the days of childhood, I am working on developing for myself a "chore chart." Daily goals will include showering, putting on make-up, wearing real clothes, eating three meals, drinking enough water, cleaning the dishes out of the sink, balancing my checkbook, and putting my clothes away. Non-daily goals will include physical activity (three times per week), vacuuming (weekly), paying my bills (weekly), grocery shopping (weekly), and cleaning outdated food out of the refrigerator (weekly). I have star stickers. I have a kids' reward chart for said stickers. I have an idea that maybe this visual representation of what some (very small) part of me wants to do as a path to rejoining society will help me end the endless loop of "I should" in my head and replace it with "I did." It shouldn't be that hard to turn the shower on and stand under the spray. But sometimes, to me, it's an impossible task and one that I put off for one more (and then one more after that and after that) day.

Turkey and sales and family, oh my!

And here it is, Black Friday, thought by some to be the busiest shopping day of the year (unless you have ever worked in retail, in which case you know that the busiest shopping day of the year is the Saturday before Christmas, unless that day is Christmas Eve, in which case it is the Saturday before that). And here it is, also, the day after Thanksgiving, a day filled with food and fun and family. It's like a one-two punch.

So if you have an eating disorder, Thanksgiving is a mine field dotted with triggers and good intentions. "Oh, look how good you look! You have lost so much weight!" (Yes, I have been starving myself. Thanks for noticing.) "Wow, you look so healthy!" (Yep, weight restoration worked, but now that you mentioned that, I think I will go back to restricting tomorrow.) "Why are you eating so little? Wow, you can sure pack it away! So now you're a vegetarian? Good for you!" Any comment can wake up the beast that we call ED. We might enter the dining room intent on enjoying our food and tasting everything we put in our mouths and stopping when we are full so that we don't have to hate ourselves later. But then the meal is over, and we aren't sure where the time went, and our plates are empty, and we are looking around to make sure we didn't eat everything, and that warm flush of shame makes its way up our chest and to our face, but it's easy to blame that on the wine.

And then, as a reward for getting through that day, you wake up the next day on Black Friday. Sales are EVERYWHERE. Maybe you will just LOOK. Check out the deals. There might be something that you "need." After all, Christmas is coming, and you have some gifts to buy. So you hit up one popular website, and there are deals galore. So you fill your shopping basket, mostly with things you don't really need. One of the things is a gift, but you have to spend $50 to get free shipping! So you fill the basket with a few more things to meet that goal...and just as you are about to hit "buy," you remember that you have made a promise not to shop. Cold turkey, remember? So you delete everything and close the web browser.

But then you think of something that you have been looking for, something that you could probably argue you need. And maybe the deal today will be worth making the purchase. There is a bit of wiggle room in the budget. The cable bill can be paid a couple of days late. So you make the purchase...a $200 item that will be here in two days. Amazon! Love it! Another great thing about Amazon...they have a "cancel" button. So nine minutes later, you are back on the website, cancelling that order because, although you do eventually need to make that purchase, it does not have to be today. And the deal is not really that great.

I wish I could say that all of my shopping endeavors went that well today. However, instead of spending $400 on stuff that I really didn't need to order today, I kept it to under $100, and I bought a couple of gifts, and I should still be able to pay my cable bill on time, so I guess that is a draw, even if it's not a win.

Anyway, that's a peek at the last two days of life as someone with an eating disorder and a compulsive spending disorder who is supposed to be avoiding all shopping (cold turkey!) and whose eating disorder has risen strong as a response to that plan. So the expectation is that I am working on changing my thoughts and behaviors and moving toward recovery. The reality is that I am back at home on my couch, hermit-ing the rest of the night away and wondering how I will make it through the rest of this festive season relatively intact. And wondering if this is something that I will talk about in therapy this week or if it might be time just to start "I'm fine"-ing everyone again.

Post-therapy thoughts...

I see my therapist once a week, and I often (always?) find myself with a LOT to think about when I leave her office. This week, she was fresh from a conference at an area eating disorders treatment facility and had some new resources to share with me, which the science and research nerd in me really enjoys. I think a part of me thinks that if I can learn enough about my eating disorder and related issues, I can wrestle it to the ground and kick the shit out of it and send it on its way.

However, right now, ED is going strong. One of my goals on my latest treatment plan is to be honest about my behaviors, and I mostly meant that to be with my therapist, but I think it's also probably important for me to honest with myself. I have been semi-restricting to restricting lately (my low days are in the 500 net calories range, with days ranging all the way up to 1200 calories net, and most of them hanging somewhere in the middle), so that was a big topic in therapy this week. I have referenced before in this blog that I know that ED is trying to kill me, so when the conversation turned to the fact that what I was doing is dangerous and could eventually lead to death, the first thought that came to my mind and right out of my mouth was, "I feel like it is worth the risk."

For what feels like my entire life, the goal has been to be skinny(er). In high school, I weighed about 80 pounds less than I do now, and I felt big and fat and conspicuous...but I can look back in photos and see I was not. When I was a child, I was taller than the other kids, and I had a lot of "baby fat" that my mom said I would lose once I hit puberty (I am still waiting for that "baby fat" to disappear.). I can't remember a time when I was not aware of being one of the bigger kids (even if the pictures I see of me as a child don't support that belief), and my entire adulthood has been one long battle with my weight.

A popular topic right now in the eating disorders community is the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement, which seeks to show people that it's not the size of their bodies that matter, that they can be larger and still be healthy. I can't wrap my head around HAES, however. I canNOT accept that the size of my body is "okay" and that I should not keep trying to change it. I understand, cognitively, that restrictive food behaviors lead to bingeing. I get that. I have lived it. And I have always said that I would never say to someone with anorexia, "Man, I wish I could do what you do." In fact, once, when in group, my therapist brought up this topic, and when asked if I was jealous of a then-member of the group who did restriction "better" than I did, I vehemently denied it. But as my desperation for a smaller body grows, and as my desire to have SOMETHING in my control increases, I do find myself wishing that I could do just that. HAES does not seem like an option for me. This body is NOT okay. I can't imagine ever accepting it as such.

I appreciate that there is someone out there who cares enough about me to want me to eat. And I am willing to make an attempt to "normalize" things a bit. But ED has me convinced that is not true, and I don't always  have the energy to ignore him right now.