Weighty Matters

Every time I considered a blog topic today, a song suggested itself as the title.  This could as easily have wound up being called “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching”.  I’ll touch on why before I finish tonight  For now, let’s go with the title and topic that won out.  I thought about changing it to, “You Can’t Always Eat What You Want”.  This is true, but to continue with the song, if you try sometimes you just might find, you’ll eat what you need.

That’s something I need to remember every day.  Yes, I have a drastically reduced stomach that only holds small amounts.  However, it’s still only a useful, effective tool for me to use in the overall effort.  I still need to focus on a particular food plan and absolutely hit the mark with my daily food choices.  Every meal requires sticking to the plan and not eating whatever just because my brain tells me that’s what I want at the moment.   My weight loss is progressing at a terrific, rapid rate.  I do better the closer I stay on track.  Even if I only eat two-three ounces of food, I won’t be successful if those ounces I consume are made of sugar and starch instead of protein and veggies.  Some days I would love to make a lunch out of a small fast-food burger and fries.  I want weight loss more than I want that particular food, so I ignore what I want and eat what I need.

I’m not perfect.  I don’t ask perfection of myself.  There are times when I need to go ahead and enjoy that small piece of chocolate, the single onion ring, or the couple of small bites of dessert.  When I do, it is vital that I understand that I’m making a conscious, rational choice instead of operating from a place of compulsion.

Driving home from work, I couldn’t stop thinking about fried foods and chocolate ice cream.  I was tempted to stop into a store and pick up some, just for tonight.  I talked myself out of it, reminding myself that I have weight loss goals.  Tomorrow morning is my weekly “official” weigh-in and I want the number to be as low as it can be this week.  Anyway, I continued my one-on-one chat with myself until I got home.  Inside the house I greeted my enthusiastic, welcoming dogs and let them out into the yard.  I quickly changed into a swimsuit, grabbed my towel and nano and stepped into the pool to exercise.  (More on that later.)  By the time I was done, the dogs and I were all ready for dinner.  I heated up the gnudi in tomato sauce and mixed a little homemade Caesar dressing into some organic romaine and enjoyed a small, tasty, planned-it-this-morning, meal.  Yum!  A short time ago, I ate my also expected dessert — a small cup of no sugar added cherry Italian ice.

Tonight, instead of sitting in regret for giving into the temptation of compulsively veering off my chosen plan, I feel really great.  I had an honest food day and I exercised.  On all counts, I gave myself exactly what I needed.  Turns out that’s what I secretly, or not so secretly perhaps, want.

Now to the exercise.  The pool was the perfect temperature this afternoon and the weather was gorgeous with a brilliant blue sky, bright sunshine and a slight breath of breeze.  I love all of the songs on my nano but I’ve not yet organized them into separate playlists.  I might have a couple of up tempo rock songs and then a country ballad followed by a classic oldie and a couple of danceable pop tunes.

I adapt my movement to whatever song is playing.  If it’s slower in tempo I do squats, lunges, a number of different leg lifts, and some arm motions under water.  I jog in place to the faster tunes but frequently break into different dance styles — twisting, doing the pony, shimmying a little here and there.  Josh Turner’s “Why Don’t We Just Dance” came on and I attempted to line dance in the water.  About that time I openly laughed at myself.  If anyone else could have seen my overall routine, they surely would have wondered what the hell I was doing.

I’ve done true water aerobics classes.  I know they’re planned to deliver aerobic benefits while working different muscle groups.  If I want to maximize the benefits of my exercise time in the water, I should build playlists with lots of up tempo music selections in a row for the cardio work and then go into songs for concentrated arm, torso and leg work.

I’ll get around to that eventually.   Right now, the most important thing to me is that I keep moving for a minimum of 40 minutes.  When the music is fast, I step up my jogging pace.  When I’m working my muscles on the slower songs, I incorporate resistance from the water so my body really has to work.  It might not be pretty.  I might look silly as all get out, but I don’t care.  When the timer goes off, my body really feels like it exercised.  That’s what matters most right now.

My lesson from today is two fold… Get what I need and dance like nobody’s watching.   These are two excellent reminders to keep me on the road to success.

Generally, I don’t consider myself self-centered.  I’m not the kind of person who thinks that she should be the world’s priority.  Honestly, for most of my life I’ve had trouble asking for what I need and want.  Hell, much of the time it feels like I can’t define what I need and want.  I say “it feels like”, because if I’m being totally honest, I’ll admit that I realize that I am often uncomfortable believing I have a right to see my needs and wants met — even if I’m the only one doing the meeting.

I grew up with a sterling example of a woman who put other people ahead of herself.  My Mom was a caretaker, a nurturer, a people pleaser.  Loving, caring, compassionate, friendly — Mom wanted everyone to be comfortable, happy, content and satisfied.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s good to care about other people . . . except if you care about and for them more than you do for yourself.  Mom was the eldest of three girls born to a well-off couple.  I never knew my grandfather but everything I’ve heard says that he was a generous, caring, affable man.  I knew my Nana very well.  She was smart, opinionated, self-sufficient, generous and fairly rigid in her conduct and her beliefs about what constituted proper behavior.  Her opinions were quite clearly and sharply defined.

Somewhere, sometime, I believe in early childhood, Mom absorbed the lesson that it was not okay to be angry.  She had great difficulty expressing her anger, even if the emotional reaction was absolutely justified.  Let’s face it.  Sometimes people, even the ones we love, are going to do or say things that make us angry.   For whatever reason being angry or expressing anger wasn’t something that Mom could comfortably do.  Eventually, her anger and upset came out via her alcoholism.  I remember one Christmas time when I arrived home and knew immediately that she’d “fallen off the wagon” after a long, solid stretch of sobriety and abstinence.   “What the hell is wrong?” I wondered.

We found out the following day.  Dad had previously decided to retire and he and Mom had plans to spend their winters at the vacation home in the Florida Keys.   That morning, Dad shared the totally surprising news that he was being considered for a position on the governor’s cabinet.  It would have meant needing an apartment/condo in the state capital, lots of work, travel, stress, time from home, etc.  It also would have meant that his plans to retire would be on hold indefinitely.  My brother and I looked at each other across the table.  I knew that this was exactly what had upset Mom but, true to form, she was unable to express the upset constructively through communication.  In her defense, Dad was pretty caught up in the honor of being considered and the challenge.  She might have tried to bring it up to him before and he might have discounted her objections.  I don’t know, but something happened and she communicated her upset by drinking.

That’s a longer story than I meant to tell, but when the words take me somewhere I go with their direction.   It’s part of the process as I pick my way through things.  🙂

Anyway, like I said a couple of paragraphs ago, it’s good to care about and for other people, as long as you can do so without detriment to yourself.  Just like we all know people who believe the world revolves around them, we all also know others who subvert their own well-being in service to those people.  I’ve been one of those people who’ve ignored my needs while I was busy trying to satisfy or serve the needs of other people.  It isn’t healthy.  In fact, it can be downright destructive.

I learned in OA a long time ago that in order to recover, our commitment has to be strong.  In fact, we need to be willing to go to any lengths to recover.  For me, having weight loss surgery is an example of being willing to go to any lengths to recover and live a healthy life.

Right now, it is absolutely okay for me to be self-centered.  That also is part of going to any lengths.  I have to commit to my food plan and be sure to have access to the food I need when I need it — regardless of whether my timing is aligned with that of other people.   It means limiting myself to a splash of wine instead of filling my glass or taking more when I’ve finished the splash.  I’m being vigilant about my behavior to guard against transferring my addiction.  Sometimes it means that, no matter how much someone else might want be to do something, if I need to do something else because it’s better for my recovery, then that’s what I choose to do.  The other people will either understand and support me or not.  If they don’t, that’s their problem.

Good self-care demands that we put our needs first.   No, it doesn’t mean that we callously ignore the family, friends and co-workers that also need us.  We don’t need to be obnoxious.   It simply validates that it’s okay and necessary to make ourselves the priority.   In the long run, not only will this make me better, but it will also help me eventually be better for those around me.  It takes me back to the airplane analogy that I’ve mentioned before.  When traveling next to someone who might need our assistance, we have to put the mask over our own face first.

Learning how to, and then becoming comfortable with, defining and verbalizing my needs is a process.  I’m making progress.    Acknowledging the progress makes the journey easier while I’m in transit.  With each successful attempt, I’m building a new foundation.

I’ve written more than 100 posts on this blog.  With the exception of a handful of people, I’ve never met most of you who come here to read what I write.  I know you only through other blog communities and the one that we’re creating right here.  Yet, I come here and share things that often make me cringe inside to even think about; events, feelings and actions that have embarassed or upset me, caused me pain, or weighed me down with shame.   I hid a lot of these innermost thoughts for years, not even telling them to my family — the people who love me the most.  When I first went to OA back in 1992 and for the years that I frequented the program’s rooms I learned to share with others who were also battling eating disorders.  Nobody else.

Thinking over the last few months during which  I’ve pretty much shared more stuff about my obesity, eating habits, worst times and recovery, I’m trying to figure out why it feels safe to do so.  In OA, we have the protection of anonymity and the knowledge that those in the rooms do not judge what is experienced and shared by others.  There is no anonymity on the Internet, particularly when you write a blog under your own name, as I’m doing.

I don’t know why I felt like this would be a safe place, although I know that my inspiration came from Lucy March’s A Year and Change blog that sparked the creation of the Bettyverse community.  God knows, Lucy let it allll hang out on her blog and emotional magic happened.  I thought about starting this blog a few weeks before I actually sat down to figure out WordPress, and while I was preparing, Krissie Stuart, Lucy/Lani, and Jenny Crusie started Reinventing Fabulous, a blog that is fertile ground for more openness and sharing about happiness, pain and personal growth, with lots of Try It Fridays, all about us and WTFs for good measure.  The response from readers helped reinforce my thought that blogging about my journey after weight loss surgery would be a good thing to do.

It has been — in spades and sparkly rainbows.  There’s a saying in OA that we’re only as sick as our secrets.  By opening up the blog window and airing out the things that I’ve done, felt or experienced shame over, I’ve grown healthier.  I feel stronger and know that I have resolved some issues and am in the process of resolving others.  I truly feel like I can come here, share anything, and not fear that I’ll be judged.  Honestly, if anybody is secretly judging me, you’re being nice enough to keep the judgments to yourself which keeps this space light and free.

Keeping secrets is hard work and drains our energy.   It runs in parallel to the old habit I had of sneak eating.  One of my friends from childhood told me once that I baffled my parents.  They couldn’t figure out how I continued to be heavy and even put on weight when I didn’t overeat at meals.  They didn’t realize that I achieved incredible levels of creativity in my methods of sneak eating.   For much of my life, I did most of my overeating in private and, when around other people, carried stress around as I worried about getting the food I needed and consuming it without anyone else seeing.

I don’t do that anymore.  It’s another secret that’s been banished  so it cannot make me sick.

With each passing day, I grow more confident that my weight loss success will last long term.  Will I still be blogging about it two, three, five, ten years from now?  I don’t know, but I’m going to keep going on as long as I need to.  I’ve come far in the last five months, but there’s still a long way to go and I’m counting on the therapeutic power of openness to help my healing continue.

Thanks for being part of the process.