Control Freak

I thought a lot about yesterday's post and the comment I made that breakfast and lunch were not a problem because those were the most controlled parts of my day. There is obviously a direct correlation between chaos in my life and the chaos in my eating, and it's something I really need to explore.

Just today someone said to me that I am very easy going and down-to-earth. I know I come off that way, but like my mother very astutely commented about me recently, "They just don't know all the turmoil that goes on below the surface." That's been my problem all my life -- suppressing my emotions, feelings and opinions. And here's the irony of it: I've done it to protect myself from the possible rejection, ridicule, and anger of others; but in doing that, I've caused so much damage by holding those emotions inside and not asserting myself.

The older I get, the more I realize how much of a control-freak and perfectionist I can be. I don't like chaos and drama; I don't like it when someone else holds the cards and causes problems in my life; and I often have to fight off that irrational thought "if it isn't done right, why bother doing it at all?" That comes into play a lot both in my work life and at home. Whether it's a task at the office or a housecleaning chore, it's very difficult for me to hand it off to someone else, dreading that it won't be done correctly and that I'll have to do it over or correct it later.

I think about all of this, because after ruminating over the first paragraph, my initial response was to figure out how to gain some control over the parts of my day that have become chaotic. I started thinking about how to do it "right" and how I could pre-plan and fix the situation. But then I realized, the REAL problem, the REAL solution I need to find, is how to learn to live with the chaos without falling apart! Because let's face it, no one can completely control every aspect of their lives, and chaos will always exist. How can I become more tolerant, more accepting of my lack of control over the universe? And how do I change my current coping mechanism, which is "treating" myself with food?

I made a step in the right direction today, at least as far as asserting myself. Rather than continuing to stew and steam over something that was making me crazy, I addressed the issue head-on with the person involved. I had a lot of anxiety doing this, but I knew I had to get it off my chest, even if the person got mad at me. And once again, I was pleasantly surprised that the person was very receptive and even complimented me and thanked me for all I do.

Now if I can tackle this control issue without being a control freak about it!

Been There, Done That

This past week Kirstie Alley has been the target, punching bag, object of ridicule, etc., because she came out on the Oprah show and admitted she regained the weight she very publicly lost. God bless her, I know what she's going through on several levels, although I consider myself lucky that I don't have paparazzi following me around calling me "fat a**." People are probably thinking it and muttering it to themselves behind my back, but at least it's not being yelled at me in airports or malls.

This came at an interesting time for me. I have another doctor's checkup this Friday, and I know it's not going to be fun. I haven't done well at all lately with the weight loss and exercise, and I totally expect to have gained when I step on the doctor's scale. I'm already trying to prepare myself for the fallout I'm going to get for it.

The sad thing is, when I get this way, even an upcoming doctor's appointment doesn't seem to give me the incentive to get myself into gear. "This way" includes major moodiness, prone to tears or anger, and a major lack of energy. Add a hectic schedule to the mix, and I'm reduced to getting the very basics done (work, basic housekeeping) and not being able to muster the motivation to attempt anything else. That means exercise for sure.

As far as eating, I do my best with breakfast and lunch to be a "normal" eater, as far as portion sizes and healthy food goes. It helps that it coincides with my most orderly and routine part of the day. After that, however, as my life goes chaotic, so does my eating. Definitely way too much night time snacking! I guess I should focus on that chaos=eating relationship and figure out how to combat that. Recognizing it is the first step. Doing something about it is the second. And sometimes that even goes well. At first. But then I lose motivation, the stressors of my life get the better of me, and I'm realizing more and more that I need help and support to keep it from collapsing once again.

I'm quickly coming to the realization that things really need to change in my life. It hasn't congealed into a formal plan, but I think within the next month or so, I have to come to some conclusions and make some real decisions. I'm sure Friday's appointment will contribute to that. And I have to realize that I can't do it all by myself. It's always been exceedingly hard for me to ask for help, but if I ever want to get some real progress in my life, it has to be done.

AWOL again!

I have been absent again from the blog, and I give my apologies. Part of the reason was the time of year: as a church secretary, Holy Week and Easter are one of the busiest times of the year for me, and there were a couple weeks when I hardly had time to think straight, let alone blog. It's finally starting to slow down now that I've mailed my monthly newsletter (I'm the editor, type in all the copy, design all the pages, fold and label them, plus handle all the bulk mailing duties!) I can take a little breather. In fact, summer is really slow for me at work, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to the lighter schedule.

We also had some upheavals in my home routine. At the beginning of April, after debating over it for the past year, we made the decision to move my daughter from one gymnastics team which was 10 miles away, to another gym that is 40 miles away! In addition, we're bumping up from three days a week, at three hours a pop, to four days a week, with the Saturday class clocking in at four hours! It's meant a lot more running for me, although once we get settled in, I think some of the other parents and I will set up some turns at carpooling. It's already obvious it was the right decision to make; I know my daughter has learned more in the last three weeks than she learned in the last three months at her old gym. Her form is better, and she's definitely increasing her strength.

To add to all this "busyness," I've been dealing with some issues with a medication I take. I take a generic form of Ortho Tri-Cyclen, and last month my pharmacy switched the generics on me. Well, the last couple weeks have been rough. The PMS was rough with major moodiness. Then, when I was supposed to have my "visitor," it was nowhere to be found. And I'm usually as regular as clockwork. I was freaking out and even got a pregnancy test, which did turn out negative. A few days after that, a week after it was supposed to come, it arrived with a fury, with cramps from hell and moodiness that made me feel like a crazy woman. I was near tears three times that day!

It was weird that this "scare" happened right now, because I've been surrounded by a lot of babies recently, and I have to admit I've caught a little baby fever. Even my husband caught a bit of it from me. So we both were really doing some heavy thinking and talking during those days when I wasn't sure. Although in the midst of my hormonal breakdown I ranted to him, "If I had a baby right now on top of all this I'd jump in front of a truck!" So I don't know what will happen now.

To make matters worse, my daughter and I caught some kind of stomach bug, so while I stayed at home with her yesterday and tried to work from home, I was also making frequent and urgent trips to the bathroom.

Needless to say, add this all together, and I haven't been doing that great the last few weeks with my eating and exercising. But it hasn't been a total backslide. I will backtrack a little bit here and say that as of March 27 I had lost almost 20 pounds since January, and on April 8 I got weighed at a different doctor's appointment and was still at that weight. I can't even guess what it is right now, though, after these last two weeks of insanity. I didn't want to weigh myself and bum myself out more. However, my husband did mention yesterday morning that he could tell I've lost weight, so apparently I haven't undone all the work I've done. I have until May 8 until my next check-in with my doctor, so hopefully by then I can regroup and get myself together again.

The biggest bummer is that my exercise is almost nonexistent this month. It's not about using it to lose weight: I've got a 5K race in June and I really want to be able to do it without collapsing! That's me on the right in that picture over there from last year's race, with my friend Jen and my daughter standing in front of us. I've GOT to get myself back to walking regularly and at length, because I don't want to make an a** out of myself. It's just been so darn tough lately to find the time. There are days I'm up at 5:50 a.m., get daughter to school and be at work by 8; out at 3, make an early dinner for my daughter so we can leave by 4:15 to get to gymnastics; run errands during her practice, then get home at 8:45 p.m. and hope to be in bed by 9:30 so I can start it all over again the next day. The good news is, some of the other gym moms want to start walking together when the weather improves (it was snowing here today!), so maybe that will help.

I will do my best to stay more up-to-date here, but I've recently been bitten by another fever: Facebook! It's hard to stay away from it and I've tracked down a lot of friends from my college days, which is v.v. cool!

The last couple days I've been telling a few people about what I feel is helping me a lot in my current battle with my eating issues. I feel a little weird about doing this, for a couple reasons: number one, I'm rarely one to toot my own horn, number two, I'm one of those superstitious types who are afraid I'll jinx the whole thing and it won't work anymore.

Plus I'm not even that confident that it's working: is it really the placebo effect, or maybe just the arrival of spring? I have to realize, however, that no matter what it is, for whatever reason, it is working.

Last year I started doing some self-hypnosis CDs, and at first they seemed to be working well. I downloaded them into my MP3 player and listened to them at night before I fell asleep, and I liked the positive messages and relaxation techniques in them. But then I fell into my depression and let it slide. While I still like those CDs, I must admit I've tried something new.

Anyone who gets e-mails from a certain book seller probably got inundated with the same e-mails I did about Paul McKenna's book "I Can Make You Thin." I had heard about the TV show of the same name that ran on a cable channel last year, but I never watched it. I'd heard of Paul before -- actually, I remember a number of his appearances on The Howard Stern Show, and he always seemed to be very effective there. So, having a gift card for the book seller, I clicked on the link and looked at the book and its reviews. Since the reviews were primarily positive and I wasn't paying anything out of my own pocket, I ordered the book and figured it couldn't hurt to try.

The book itself it basically a rehashing of the Intuitive Eating principles I've been trying to follow for the past few years. It was a nice repackaging of those "rules" and it was a nice, quick read. Kind of like a refresher course! I then downloaded the CD to my MP3 player and started listening to it at night.

While I'm still cautious about calling myself a success story, for now it seems to be helping me a lot. It happened by degrees over the last two months, but now, for the first time, the IE principles (eat when you're hungry, eat what you want, eat until you're satisfied) feel very second nature to me.

Here's a perfect example: this past Saturday night my husband was craving pizza from his favorite pizzeria. We went and ran into my mother, so we all went together. Mom and I ordered a medium pizza with green peppers and onions (my favorite!) and I dug in and enjoyed every bite. But after two pieces, I looked down at the remaining pizza and just knew that I was done. I was by no means full, but I reached this level of satisfaction I've been calling my "sweet spot." I didn't hear the old voices in my head, the ones that either make me feel deprived for stopping or else urging me on to eat it all.

The best news of all? Last post I was worried about the post-stress need to overeat, and I'm happy to say it never happened. I did have one evening of anxiety, which in the past would have driven me to dig into the boxes of Girl Scout cookies I have sitting in the dining room. Yet I never cracked open a single box.

Again, I don't know if I'm just on a "high" right now and in a few weeks this will all fall to pieces once the novelty has worn off. But for now it's working for me, and I'm going to continue to do it.

Hunger

This morning I read the newspaper and saw the Cathy comic strip (March 5, 2009, in case you're reading this later). In case you can't find it or see it, Cathy is on yet another diet -- this time the Cookie Diet -- and she's marking off the minutes since her breakfast cookies at 7:15 a.m., exclaiming happily that she's not hungry. Finally, at 9:22 a.m., she announces "I miss being hungry." In the next frame her friend/co-worker says, "Incredible how your mind is completely off of food..." while Cathy replies, "I hunger for hunger!"

Back in January when I was hitting bottom, I went to my therapist and explained to her about hitting this bottom when it comes to food and not sure what I could do about it. In one of those odd coincidences, she had just done some extra research on eating issues, and she asked me a question that really made me think. "Most people overeat as a substitute for something they're not getting in their lives. What are you really hungry for?"

My answer? Well, it wasn't a clear-cut answer, but what it boils down to is that food equals comfort to me. Food doesn't judge me, look down on me, or look for something in return. And this isn't an uncommon notion in our society -- just look at the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread." This isn't just about filling our stomachs; it's about spiritual sustenance, too. From our first days of life our parents answered our cries with the bottle, beginning that connection between food and comfort.

But, unfortunately, people like me take it one or two or a million steps further. Due to life circumstances and our reactions to them, food becomes our only comfort. Or the only one we trust not to let us down. And once those habits are in place, it's so hard to break those connections and look elsewhere for our support. That's why it's so much more than counting calories -- it's learning to change our behaviors, to find other methods and trust other people to comfort us.

Since trying to pull myself out of the abyss in January, I've had some bumps along the way, but I've been very conscious of them and they haven't lasted long. I don't do well with stress, and I've had some pretty stressful moments lately. The funny thing is, I'm getting better about sitting with my emotions and not eating during the stress. But once the worst is over and I'm coming down from it, that's when the urge to overeat becomes the most overwhelming.

I had another one of those moments last night. I was so stressed, so emotional, and I did my best to work through it. I realized the main feelings I was experiencing were fear and helplessness, and being able to pinpoint that seemed to reduce the severity of it, because I didn't let it build out of control into an anxiety attack. My fear is that today I will now want to turn to food to "make it all better." I suppose it's a good thing that I'm very conscious of it, but I can't help feeling a little like Cathy. Without the emotional hunger on auto-pilot, I'm feeling kind of lost and not sure what to do with myself.

I know, I need to now implement those alternative methods of comfort that I've read about in various books and magazines and have written down in lists as I go through this IE process. I listened to a relaxation CD last night, and today I will do my daily exercise. I'm also writing this, which was something I couldn't bring myself to do for the last six months. I also have a good book I'm reading right now, which gives me the escape I crave without filling my belly with candy or cookies. I just hope that after all of this I'm not sitting there like Cathy hungering for my hunger.

Out of the Ashes

“The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.”

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Six months. It seems both like a long time and hardly any time at all. Where was I all that time? Good question. Under the wet, heavy blanket of my depression, a blanket soaked with a good deal of stress, burn-out and mental exhaustion from a variety of issues going on in my life.

When I saw my general practitioner in January and he looked at the sorry state I was in, I tried to explain that I spent the majority of the past year fighting depression. His frank reply: "You've been battling depression most of your life, haven't you?" And I couldn't argue with that. I've had anxiety problems since I was 10, and suffered my first serious bout of depression around 14 or 15. It's been a lifetime of struggling.

I apologize to those friendly bloggers who left messages over the past six months. I left off here so positive, and I was nowhere near that mental state and couldn't collect myself enough to even explain. I wasn't only cut off from blogging, I was cut off from myself.

And in that process of cutting off, I ate. I must say, thank goodness, that it wasn't the compulsive, crazed binge eating I was doing at the end of my dieting days -- that was a scary time of hoarding binge foods, sneaking off to eat this "contraband" and mindlessly consuming it until I was often physically ill. I think the combination of the information I've learned from studying Intuitive Eating and the Wellbutrin I was taking kept me from that extreme.
Instead, it was just a "f#!*-it" attitude. I ate whatever I wanted and didn't think once about health or nutrition; it was all about comfort. I made lousy choices all day long. And exercise flew right out the window; other than housework and a little snow shoveling I was living a completely sedentary existence, escaping into TV, movies and reading books from the library.

I guess you could say my doctor's appointment was my wake-up call, my "hitting bottom." I finally realized the dark place I'd fallen into and knew I had to do something to pull myself out of it. I was in a sorry state and not just emotionally. My weight went up, and so did my blood pressure (it didn't help that I was fighting off a panic attack about the appointment before I even walked in the door, plus almost hitting a telephone pole on the icy roads getting to the office!). Fortunately it wasn't dangerously high -- yet -- and my other test results came back okay. My doctor wasn't mean, but he woke me up to the fact that I'm not getting any younger, and the time is quickly coming where my body won't be able to tolerate the excess weight, lousy diet and sedentary lifestyle without serious consequences.

So then I got home, cried, and tried to figure out what in the hell I was going to do with myself. The doctor brought up the idea of Lap-Band surgery, and I actually considered it for, oh, a day. But I realized once again that my problems have little to do with the size of my stomach -- it's about the beliefs in my head combined with my health issues, which include hypothyroidism and PCOS. I don't know if I'd put the depression in the mental or physical column -- it definitely runs in my family, but is that nature or nurture? The same thing goes with my body -- both sides of my family are made of up stocky, German and Eastern European ancestors. But is that genetics or the way our families ate and dealt with food? In any case, it adds up to the fact that I'm never going to have a body like a runway model. I don't think that's a negative belief, just a realistic one.

Putting all that aside, I looked at what were realistic goals and what I could tackle without making myself crazy(ier).

Dieting in the typical sense is out for me. I caught myself in the first couple weeks after the doctor's appointment falling into some dieting mentality (restricting too much, wanting to weigh myself obsessively, etc.) and quickly falling into an anxiety attack. I was lucky in a sense that I had an appointment with my therapist that day, and I was able to talk about the extremes in my thinking. This past year it's either not caring about anything (i.e. depression), or obsessing to the point of anxiety. And my question that day was, how do I find the balance in between these two points?

The biggest things were getting my blood pressure back to a healthier level, which tied directly into getting more physically active again. My doctor gave me a very basic walking program, and even though it seemed ridiculous to start off at 5 minutes a day for the first week, I realized that was my extreme, black or white thinking rearing its head. I looked at it in different, more positive ways: instead of being intimidated by a program that looked really hard and difficult, this was something that sounded very easy to do, and I'd be more apt to doing it because it would be over quickly! But more importantly, those 5 minutes a day would enable me to establish a habit. And it worked. I slowly crept up to 10 minutes a day, and now it's 15.

As fate would have it, a week after my appointment I once again became captain of my church's team for our local newspaper's fitness challenge, which wraps up with a 5K/10K walk and run in June. You keep track of your exercise and weight loss which are converted to points that are added in with your race result. In our case those points go towards a competition with other churches for a "Pastor's Cup" trophy. All of this benefits various charitable organizations in our area. This is my third year as captain of our team, and there is something to be said for having a chart to keep track of your exercise to keep you motivated to keep it up.

As for the food and eating? I'm doing my best with IE and its basic rules: eat when you're hungry, eat what you want, eat until you're satisfied. I am making an effort to make healthier choices, but only those foods that I really like. There have been some instances that I don't make the healthiest choice, or else there's nothing else available, but I took them in stride and didn't attach any bad feelings or guilt to them. I have had a couple instances of stress-eating, but they were limited and did not snowball into a feeding frenzy. I think it's because I was conscious of my actions, which cut down the intensity of my need for it.

Tomorrow I go back to the doctor to find out a) if I've lost any weight and b) if my blood pressure has gone down. While I've tried to stay away from the scale these past six weeks, I did take a peek this morning, just so I'd be prepared for tomorrow's appointment, and it appears I've lost somewhere between 10-15 pounds. I just hope the blood pressure has gone down, too.

I'm not getting too excited about the weight loss. My main focus right now is not about that. My main goal right now is taking care of myself, and that means physically and mentally. I can't go back to sacrificing my sanity for a smaller dress size, yet I can't sacrifice my health, either. So I'm doing my best to achieve balance -- balance in what I eat, balance in putting movement in my life, and balance in finding satisfying "me" time in the midst of working, housekeeping and being a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend.

My biggest concern right now is the fear of the return of that blanket of depression. Even though I'm feeling better now, how long until it once again takes over and takes all the joy out of life? I'll end with another quote from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra:

"Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within."

The Sticky Roll Incident

About two weeks ago I was having one of those days: the ones where nothing seems to be going right and you want to turn around and go back to bed, hoping you can start all over again and try to get it right the second time. It was also a very hectic day with longer hours at work, then chauffeuring my daughter to her orthodontist, grabbing a quick supper, then going to gymnastics (Mabel's hand is healed now and she's back to hand-springing and round-offing all over the place).



While I was waiting for the three hour (!!!) practice to end, occupying myself with book reading in my car, my cell phone rang and it was my hubby. He announced to me that since I had such a rough day he would have a surprise for me when I got home. By that point the day was almost over, and to be honest, the book reading had done wonders for my mood. Other than being tired from the long day, I actually didn't feel so bad anymore.



So I got home, and there on the kitchen island was an entire half sheet pan (11.5x16.5 inches) brimming with sticky nut rolls. Hubby was so proud of himself, and I must tell you, they looked and smelled fantastic. But to be honest, the very first thought in my head was, "Oh, no..." I did eat one; I had been planning to get some kind of snack on the way home from gymnastics (Mabel's always starving after her workout, and since on those days we eat supper around 4 p.m., by 8 I'm usually a little peckish, too), so I drove straight home, since I knew any surprise from hubby would more than likely be food-related. I guess I was hoping it would be some little individual treat made just for me, not a bevy big enough for a party.

Later I tried to explain to him that I'm learning and actually accepting the fact that food, especially treats like those rolls, cannot really comfort and give me "happiness." I appreciated the thought and effort he put into it, but the food itself is irrelevant, and I can no longer give it that power anymore. Hubby listened and nodded and said, "You're right, you're right..."

I also tried to tell him that making enough for a small army isn't a great idea; I didn't say it to him, but I equated it in my mind to giving a recovering alcoholic a case or keg of beer. He also listened to this and said he would make an effort to give most of the pan of rolls away. Within the next couple days we did just that: I gave some to my pastor and my mom, and he gave some to his parents, too. We even wound up throwing a couple away when they got too old. Out of that enormous pan, I wound up eating two of the rolls, which I considered a major accomplishment.

In fact, in recent weeks I've discovered that I'm doing much, much better with foods that in the past I would consider major binge trigger foods. There is a Mennonite-run bakery and store in our county that makes the best orange iced rolls, and normally when I buy the round pan of them I scarf them all down within 48 hours, and usually feeling sick to my stomach from the fat and sugar overload. About six weeks ago I bought a pan, and they tasted great as usual, but I didn't feel the drive or compulsion to eat them all. In fact, I wound up throwing two of the rolls away when they got stale! That was a completely new experience for me.

This healthier relationship with food has been pretty far-reaching: I can take two pieces of candy out of a full box full and walk away satisfied, whereas in the past I would not be able to pull myself away and the box would be emptied in an evening. This past Saturday my mom went to the local farmer's market and showed up at my house with some Amish-made snickerdoodle cookies. Last summer she got these for me, too, and I remember going wild over them and eating a whole pack of them in a day. This time she gave me four cookies, and I still have two in the plastic container where I'm storing them. We have an ice cream place near our house that's only open from May-October. Last summer we seemed to be there every other day and I always got something, usually a big sundae loaded with tons of goodies. While my daughter still goes fairly regularly, I couldn't tell you the last time I actually got any. The ice cream's still as good, but for some reason I never seem to be in the mood for it at the times she wants to go.

A couple nights ago during Mabel's gymnastics I went to the mega-mart to stock up on essentials: contact saline, deodorant, etc. These trips used to be the big hunt for binge foods, which I would then chow down on in the car until the end of practice, and the rest would be hidden away for secret binge eating later. Two nights ago I walked through the bakery and not a single thing appealed to me. I bought my daughter some cinnamon bagels (she hates raisins and it's really hard finding cinnamon bagels without them!), and the only food-related item I got for myself was seltzer water! I did have a passing thought of, "Hmmm, what treats can I find for myself?" but it was quickly answered with a shrug of indifference and the reply that I don't really need to or want to.

Here's the thing: I'm still eating cookies and ice cream and candy; I'm not telling myself I shouldn't eat them or that I should reduce the portions. Instead I find myself enjoying the amount I do eat, when I'm in the mood for it, and then I'm quite content. I'm not feeling deprived just eating one cookie or skipping a treat entirely, and I'm not obsessing over the remaining candy, cookies, etc., that are still in the house. Sometimes I actually even forget about them! And you know what? It's such a RELIEF not to feel that way. I feel like I've had some kind of demon exorcised from my body and mind. And I'm suspecting that just maybe, this is what "normal" eating is all about.

I'm not saying I have been the "perfect" normal eater. I have had a couple days here and there where I have the munchies and the drive to overeat. But I've noticed that these incidents were times when I felt tired and run-down by too much running around or not enough sleep. So I've been trying to get more sleep and more down time to help combat this. It's great to me to be able to start putting these things together -- for years it always seemed to be such a mystery why I was so preoccupied and needed eating. To be able to pinpoint these things is wonderful to me. And hopefully, I can avoid any more binge eating episodes of weeks and months that lead to more and more weight gain and its accompanying depression.