Weighty Matters

I really enjoy cooking.  My mother was a terrific cook.  Did you see the movie Julie and Julia?  In the movie you get a glimpse of the cooking school started by Julia Child and her cookbook partners.  The year we lived in France when I was a kid, Mom took classes at that school for six weeks or so.  She was a great cook before and those courses really elevated her ability and expanded the kinds of dishes she’d make.

My Sicilian grandmother wasn’t flashy but she could put together good, tasty, solid meals.  I smile when I go to the supermarket and see the expensive “fresh” pastas in the refrigerator cases.  Every Sunday at Grandma’s house, we’d walk into the kitchen and see her homemade spaghetti drying on clean dishtowels.  She didn’t have a pasta maker either.  Gram mixed up her dough, rolled it out thin and sliced it with sharp knife.

Mom’s mom, my Nana, wasn’t flashy either, but the woman knew how to do a roast.  Dinner at her house was usually either roast beef or roast leg of lamb.  In the summer time she sometimes made a clam pie.

We had a lot of great, basic, popular family meals and I learned techniques and basics growing up.  I really enjoy putting together a good meal, particularly when I cook for friends.  I haven’t done it as much in the last year with the weight loss surgery and new food plan and all.  I’ve tried some new soups and still have to make a good tomato sauce every now and then.  I think I’ve mentioned before that I watch a lot of Food Network shows.  My theory is that since I only eat a little, I want to pack as much flavor as possible into the foods that I eat.

Several of my friends are real foodies, too.  We love to talk about food and things we’ve prepared.  We often bring in samples to work to share with each other.  I drew the name of one of these friends in the work Secret Santa and found a deal on the new cookbook by one of her personal favorites – Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa.  When she opened her present, we enjoyed going through the pages at some of the recipes.

One was for meatloaf from a restaurant on Long Island.  My friend’s from that area and she was delighted because she’s actually had that meatloaf at that restaurant.

I love a good meatloaf and have been known to make the one that I learned from my mother.  The one in this book was a little different but it sure looked tasty, plus they recommended a garlic sauce to go with it.  Garlic sauce?  Oh yum!

So, that’s what I made for dinner tonight.  I knew from the recipe that I needed to cut down the amounts, because it called for three pounds of ground meat.  Three pounds!  I made it with only two pounds and the resulting loaf was still massive.  I decided to cook and mash a rutabaga instead of making mashed potatoes.  (Lower carbs, lower calories).  I made the garlic sauce. The sauce didn’t thicken the way that it should have, but it gets high points for flavor.

Everything was delicious.  It wasn’t loaded with fat or carbs.  I enjoyed every single bite.

So how come I still feel like I was “bad”?  I don’t get it.  I cooked good food and didn’t overeat, but somehow feel like I didn’t follow my plan.

Somewhere in my brain there still lingers the old, diseased thinking that you can’t be on a diet and enjoy your food.  This is such complete, total bull crap that I’m rejecting it even while I think it.  It’s important for me to remember that good food is not the enemy.   Eating too much, eating without thinking, or eating compulsively are the culprits.  Good food, tastily prepared, consumed in moderation, is what healthy, “normal” eating is all about.

I’m probably going to mentally and emotionally struggle with this for a while longer.  Old habits, including old thinking habits, do not change overnight.  At least, for tonight, I’ve identified it as an issue on which to work.  I can’t fix what I don’t recognize and acknowledge.

I also have to decide what to do with all of the leftovers.  I think I’ll text my friend and let her know that, if she didn’t also make the recipe over the weekend, I can gift her with enough to feed her and her husband.  I can keep enough for another dinner for myself.  I bet that what remains will freeze.  There.  Doesn’t that all sound like good, healthy, rational thinking?

There’s progress to be made.

These are not technical, official, or medical terms.  I made them up just now, but they seemed right in light of my current pondering.  You might wonder what caused this topic.  Simple answer.  After many, many months of applications, planning approval, permits, construction and delays, a new gas station opened in town with a built-in Dunkin Donuts.

I love Dunkin Donuts.  Won’t touch a Krispy Kreme product because I think they’re overly sweet to the point of gross, and I find that most supermarket doughnuts are flavorless, textureless fluff rings, but a Dunkin Doughnut makes my taste buds sit up and sing.

I am pleased and proud to say that the local DD has been open for at least three whole days and I’m yet to steer into the drive-through and cave into temptation.  This is harder temptation to resist than most people can imagine, but I’m soldiering through and have been successful so far.

It got me thinking about eating habits and associations.  Prior to this week, I only saw Dunkin Donuts on my way out of the Keys.  They have one in Key Largo and another in Florida City, both of which I have to pass when I go up the Keys.  There’s only one road, so temptation must be faced.  For years, I always stopped at the one in Florida City.  It made for a good bathroom break and a good place to get some hot tea for the road.  Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people who can order only the tea and leave.  I usually got their beverage plus two doughnuts deal and happily chomped down on those fried, sweet confections.  Yum.

When Starbucks opened in the same area, I switched allegiance.  Mind you, I didn’t stop buying a baked good with my tea, but at least I showed that I could break the doughnut addiction.  I’m well aware that my reasoning is faulty — junk carbs are junk carbs — but I’m going with it.

So, the habitual eating was still there.  I think if we look at the way that we eat, we probably find a lot of choices that are driven by force of habit rather than actual hunger.  If you go to the golden arches and usually order a #2 value meal, chances are you’ve programmed yourself to do that every time.  There are even some fine restaurants that have certain dishes that I love and I usually order one of them each time.

The habits can be anywhere.  If you’ve always slathered pancakes with butter and poured a river of maple syrup on top, it’s a challenge to cut out the butter and reduce the river to a stream.  How hard might it be to cut back on diet soda if that’s always been your drink of choice or switch from regular milk to skim in morning cereal?  I bet if I worked on this for an hour, I could find 100 food habits that I used to follow by rote.

Thankfully, it’s a lot different.  Weight loss surgery is definitely a game-changer.  Most of the time, I can go to Starbucks and depart with only the liquid beverage of my choice.  This is excellent progress.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t think about the old ways or that I don’t feel the habit attempting to reassert itself.  I sure wish that the surgery had also removed those impulses when it changed my actual stomach capacity.  It didn’t.  There isn’t a way to remove the impulses.  We can only learn to counter them when they rise up.  Vigilance remains important.  You’re probably tired of hearing me say that, but I need to keep reminding myself.

If I don’t, I’ll only set myself up to fail.  I have to pass that DD at least twice a day now.  Will I never drive in and have a doughnut?  I doubt I’ll win the battle every single time from here on out.  However, I can — MUST — resist most of the time.  In the grand scheme of my plans for long term success, my desire to stay on plan has to be stronger than the lure of the doughnut.

My week is slowing down a little, I think.  I did several errands this morning, but they were fun and now they’re done.  I’m taking a break before I go outside and put up some holiday lights.  Tonight’s the annual Holiday Lighted Boat Parade and it cruises right by my house.  So much fun to watch!  I always string lights around the porch to make my house a little festive.  I also got out my tree and can either set that up and decorate today or do it tomorrow.  Ho! Ho! Ho!

‘Tis definitely the season.  Like most holidays, there’s a lot of food and eating associated with the time of year.  I’m experiencing a mix of emotions over this component of the season.   A lot of joy and happiness, a pinch of resentment, a big chunk of determination, and a dusting of wistfulness.

Food should not be such a big issue, but it is.  It always is, so my resentment is two fold.  I resent that food has so much influence on my emotions at the holidays and, to be completely honest, I have some anticipatory resentment that I will not be able to eat everything I want in selection and in quantity.

I never claimed that an eating disorder was logical and reasonable.   It’s insidious, destructive, and a pain in the ass.  However, it is not all powerful unless I give it permission.

So, I’m doing my best to be vigilant and remember what’s most important about holiday eating.  Here is the rock bottom truth:  Holiday eating is not different than any other eating.  It’s not special or magical.  Food is food, whether dressed up for Christmas dinner or served any other of the 364 days in the year.  I don’t need to overeat or eat lots of crap to celebrate and enjoy a holiday.  In fact, I can celebrate even more if I succesfully eat on my plan and don’t overeat.  I don’t have to deprive myself completely.  There are certain treats that I honestly enjoy and that I can still have without pigging out.  That’s my plan for holiday eating.  Eat on my plan.  Allow myself the occasional treat.  Do not deprive, but don’t overeat.

Damned if I’m going to ruin my holidays by letting myself get out of control.  I have a lot to celebrate this year.

I’m pretty much convinced that my emotional state this week has been fueled or affected by hormonal fluctuations.  The food cravings, the susceptibility to stress, getting overwhelmed and weepy, plus a few significant physical twinges all add up to my conclusion.

Let me state for the record that if I end up having my period this week, I’m going to be royally pissed off.  Stupid, I know, to get pissed off about something I can’t control, but that’s the way I feel.  I’ve been perimenopausal for a couple of years.  I want the whole thing over.  I thought I was on my way to the final countdown last year when I went six months without a period.  Then last September it returned with a vengeance.  I then skipped four months, had it again a couple of months in a row and now I’m on month seven sans period.  I do not want to get it now and have to start the count back at one.

Enough of my bitching.  This post is about hope and dreams.  I stole the title from a Springsteen song.  If it sounds familiar and you aren’t particularly a Boss fan, you might have heard it in the promos for the World Series.  Anyway, a long time friend emailed me tonight that she had weight loss surgery last week.  She and I had talked about it a few months ago and I knew she was investigating the possibility, but we hadn’t spoken in several weeks and I didn’t know that she’d completed all of the pre-evaluations and actually had the procedure.  I called her and said, “I’m so proud of you for moving forward and a little mad that you didn’t tell me so that I could keep good thoughts for you on the day.”

Then, it not being about me, I listened while she caught me up on the details and how she’s doing.   I’ve known her since ’94 or ’95 and we’ve shared a lot about our eating diseases, OA experiences, weight loss/gain yo-yoing and the increasing problems excess weight causes, etc.  We speak the same language and understand each other.

Throughout the conversation, we kept talking about having hope and dreaming of our improved lives.   Experiencing hope and daring to dream are powerful acts.  They got me where I needed to be so that I could choose to have the surgery and rescue my life.  They’re what get me through and keep me moving.  I’m so proud of my friend and excited for her, too.  She’s already lost 46 pounds with the pre-op liquid diet and the week post-surgery.  She knows that she’s at the beginning of her journey, but she is already looking ahead and planning for her fabulous future.

When you’ve lived for years in dark despair, feeling your life and your body crumble under your own weight, feeling hope transforms your spirit.

Yeah, my week’s been crappy.  I’ve eaten shit today that slows my progress on my journey.   Slowed, but didn’t stop me.

There are lines in the Bruce song that I love.  Dreams will not be thwarted.  Faith will be rewarded.   No stressful situation, hormonal, emotional upheaval, momentary relapse into compulsive eating or unplanned food will thwart my dreams.  I’ve grown too strong these past nine or so months.  Each day is another step in my fabulous future.

I’m really happy for this friend and the one I spoke about the other week.  I know where they were emotionally and physically before their surgeries.  I know what’s happening for them, and me, now.  They’ve met me in the land of hope and dreams.

It’s Saturday night and I spent big chunks of my day preparing my boat, house and property for a storm that’s due to hit the Keys sometime tomorrow.  Right now, this “rain with a name” is still Tropical Storm Isaac.  There has been endless discussion, with a look at “official” National Hurricane Center updates every three hours, on whether it’s going to be Hurricane Isaac by the time it arrives near my island chain sometime tomorrow night.  The coverage has been relentless on wind fields, vapor loops, forecast tracks, and the dreaded cone.  For those of you who don’t live where hurricanes are always a real possibility, that cone shows where the center of the storm might go.  Down here with embrace black humor and call it the cone of death.

While none of us takes a storm lightly, we also tend to not let ourselves get whipped up into a frenzy of hysterical proportions.   The national news media manages to dial up the drama and this often causes great anxiety for my friends who start calling to see if I’m evacuating.   I’m not.   While there is no doubt that I’ll feel strong effects, this is not projected to strengthen past a Category One level storm.  Even if it reaches hurricane strength, if the center stays south and west of me, I’ll experience tropical storm force winds.   The county emergency management team did not order a resident evacuation.  In fact, they didn’t even order the tourists and visitors to leave.

I’m confident in my preparations.  I have excellent storm shutters on every door and window, which I spent significant time installing today.  I also secured my boat high on the lift and added extra lines, although I don’t expect a storm surge high enough to float it off of its perch.   I’ve moved most of my porch furniture inside and stowed away various outdoor objects in the shed.  The rest of the stuff I need to do will take about ten minutes, so I’ll have time tomorrow morning.

The standard guideline for provisions is three days of drinking water and three days of food.    These days, three days worth for me is a lot less food than in previous years.   I realized that if I lost power for three days, I could easily survive on cheese wedges that don’t need refrigeration, peanut butter, and protein shakes.  When I shopped, I also bought a few “boxes” of milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated, just for those protein shakes.  I also have some soups and canned stuff that I could heat in a pot on the grill if necessary.

Stocking my supplies was, indeed, far easier.  It made me think about my food behavior in similar situations in previous years.  Honestly, we haven’t faced a storm with this kind of surety that it would affect us in several years.  That didn’t stop me from thinking about how I would always experience anxiety over food, regardless of how well I’m planned and provisioned.  The mere thought of a remote chance that I wouldn’t have enough food, or enough food that I liked, always put me on edge.  I’d get in supplies and then usually run out again to buy more — just in case.   Once the storm event began and I was shut up in the house with Moe, the Brittany spaniel I had back when we had active storm seasons, I wanted to eat all of the time.   I don’t know why I did this, but eventually decided that the thought of being blocked from getting out to buy more food triggered anxiety.  There was a horrible irony in that I was so obsessed with having enough food in the house that I’d overeat — thus going through my provisions more quickly.

I also always had sweets in the house.  Along with water and food, officials suggest having prescription medications for three days.  In my case, chocolate, cookies and breakfast pastries were my medications.

This time, I purposely did not pick up chocolate or cookies when I hit the supermarket for supplies.  Even today when I realized I’d forgotten to get that milk, I left the store without loading up on sugar snacks.  I mentioned this to a good friend of mine and talked about having anxiety-coping foods.  She asked if I could buy a small amount to have around just in case.  I doubted my ability to limit myself to “just in case”.  I was determined to make it through.

Unfortunately, that determination eroded under a mounting anxiety.  As I went through the morning and early afternoon, I kept thinking and wondering how I’d deal if I really, really, really needed chocolate to help me cope when the storm was at its worst.    The anxiety fueled doubt in my ability to deal with the situation.

Would it be better to tough it out, no matter how anxious I got — or was I better off getting in that small supply and trusting myself to not gorge on it just because it was available?  I finally caved and got into the car for a quick trip to the cupcake bakery in town.  I bought two cupcakes — one a bacon maple and one in salted chocolate and caramel.  I vowed not to compulsively eat them both in a rush as soon as I got home.  These were going to be savored and they were going to serve as my security blanket if I found myself getting truly, authentically, anxious as the storm progressed.

So, earlier tonight I gradually consumed the bacon maple treat.   I can identify the motivation to falling prey to hunger, anger/anxiety, isolation and tiredness.  (No surprise that OA recommends H.A.L.T. as a tool — a reminder not to let ourselves get too hungre, angry, lonely, or tired.)  I had a number of things sneak up on me in a cumulative effort to destroy my serenity.

I wish I could say that the cupcake didn’t help, but it did.  However, it’s really important to note that I didn’t gobble it down like a hog.   I tasted and savored.  I ate small bites of it and spaced those bites over hours, not nanoseconds.  When I was finally finished with the last portion — six of six portions, by the way — I realized that my anxiety had eased and, oh is this a big “and”, I didn’t need to keep eating.  I didn’t find a reason to stroll back into the kitchen and start consuming the second cupcake.  It’s still in the box in the fridge.  That’s progress!

It’s also only fair to point out that I did a lot of physical labor today prepping for the storm.  Even with the lifting, shuttering, etc., I found time to check out my Zumba Dance program for the Wii.  I worked my way through the step tutorials and then did a few Beginner routines.  Even those were enough to work up a sweat for 40 minutes!

So, yes, I saw, I bought, I ate.  I did not, however, do so unconsciously and I didn’t binge on the food either.  Instead, I learned a lesson about myself and how I might eat as a result of stress and other situations.   I also learned that anxiety over food might come from the head, but it feels very, very real.  It’s a good thing that, while I felt more comfortable once I brought the cupcakes into the house, I really could control how they were eaten.  That control is progress!

I’m glued to the television every night watching the Olympic Games.  I love watching the athletes give their best efforts in their events.  Whether a 15 year old gymnast or 71 year old equestrian, the have devoted their lives to these pursuits.  Whether they win is almost secondary.  They all deserve to be applauded and honored for what they’ve given to even make it to the Games.

Tonight the women’s team competition in gymnastics is on.  Watching these teens flip, hurdle, jump and spin on the various apparatus gives me stomach-clenching stress.   This is particularly so on the balance beam.  Balance beam can give me nightmares.

I hated gym class/phys ed. in school.  Oh, it was okay in elementary grades when we went out and played dodgeball or kickball on our asphalt and pebble school yard.  In high school, gym period gave me mental hives.  First there were the awful one-piece knit uniforms we had to wear, before we even got down to the floor for 45 minutes of torture activity.  Climb a rope up a wall to the ceiling?  Yeah right.  Hop up on a balance beam no more than four inches wide?  Not on my best days.   I’m sorry to play the fat card, but demanding that an overweight girl try those things did not achieve anything positive.   Far from building self-esteem, pride in learning a skill, and the reinforcement of taking on a challenging activity, making me do those things did nothing but foster high anxiety and set the stage for humiliation.

The high school gym teachers weren’t known for soft encouragement.  Yelling at students and telling someone they could do it if they weren’t so fat does not fall under the heading of positive motivation.  It’s bad enough to be called names by other kids.  From teachers or other adults it can devastate.

There were a few years here and there when I actually liked some physical activity.  When I was in Middle School, I liked softball enough to play in our summer recreational league.  My ability to hit well and my strength often made up for my lack of speed on the bases.  I had a good arm, too.  I played catcher, third base and centerfield, depending on what the team needed.  One year our team won the league championship.   For my last two years of high school, I played on the field hockey team as the goalie and on the softball team.  These were fun activities in which I enjoyed the competition, felt like I contributed to the team effort, and for once didn’t feel like a terrestrial whale who wasn’t good for anything the least bit physical.

In college, thankfully, we only had to satisfy two p.e. credits in four years.  One credit came from any elective sport.  (I turned out to be a kick ass badminton player.)  The other credit was a required course where we had to either jog around the track or swim for most of the hour.  Unfortunately, that class also included a mandatory measurement of our body fat index.  Lining up with your classmates, both male and female, so a teacher could do the measurement with some sort of caliper gizmo is not any sane person’s idea of a good time.   One of the teachers in that class was, allegedly, a retired drill sergeant.  Popular opinion was split betwen whether he’d descended from the Marquis de Sade or had secretly served with the Fuhrer.

I remember once when we all had to do a one mile jog, he pretty much inferred that all of us ladies were potential hookers because of the jewelry we wore.  As an adult, I can pretty much assess him as a msyoginistic asshole. Amazing.

Looking back on those early years, I wonder if it would have made a difference in my life if gym teachers had sat down with me to devise a doable exercise plan that didn’t involve me terrified on a balance beam or burning my hands trying to haul my oversized ass up a rope.  If the authority figures at school had talked to me instead of yelling.  I honestly don’t know.  I do, however, feel like the campaigns urging kids to get out and play for an hour a day are pretty non-threatening and they fix the message in the attitude of fun rather than drudgery and hard work.

Given my lifelong poor regard for exercise, I’m somewhat amazed that I’m embracing it more today.  I actually look forward to Zumba class and Tai Chi.  I remind myself to include activity in my weekend plans so that I’m doing something at least four days a week.   Several years ago, we had a Curves in town.  For awhile I went three times a week, really embracing the program.  I don’t want to join one of the two gyms in town, but if someone would reopen the Curves franchise, I’d sign back up in a heartbeat.

I would like to continue my momentum.  I know it takes months to truly change old habits and create new behaviors.  I can see myself pushing on with my efforts.  At the same time, I need to also take this day by day.  Today I Zumbaed.  Tomorrow when I wake up, I will commit to going to Tai Chi practice in the evening.  Everything is helping.  I can see and feel the improvement.   When I watch myself doing the Zumba routines to the up tempo music, I know that my form and steps aren’t perfect.  I don’t have them all down and there are some that I can’t yet do, but I keep moving.

The instructors have incredibly scuptled, defined bodies from teaching multiple classes a week.  Obviously, I look nothing like them. 🙂  At least not yet.  Today while keeping up with one of the faster songs, I glanced at the instructor to check my steps and had a great thought.  If I keep up this effort, a year from now I will look more like the instructors than I do myself — or least the myself that I am today who is in the early stages of physical recovery and half a year post-op.

I’m going to hold onto that thought and remember it, particularly when I hit a day when I don’t want to go exercise.  Regardless of which activity I do on any given day, I do my best to speak to myself in terms of encouragement and joy.  It’s all about acknowledging the effort and providing positive reinforcement.

I’m not a kid to be pushed around anymore.  This isn’t gym class.

I used to always feel like everyone around me constantly watched me and what I ate.  Even if they didn’t say anything, I was positive that they were assessing the portion size and selection and silently passing judgment.   It didn’t matter if I ordered a “normal” entree in a restaurant or served myself a perfectly acceptable moderate portion, I was sure that other people were always thinking that I should be eating far less or something different.

I’m sure that not everyone around me engaged in this behavior, but I know that some at least did.  Just one example was a little something that happened decades ago.  A family member offered me a piece of homemade pie at the end of a nice meal.  I accepted, asking for a smaller slice than the wedges she cut for everyone else at the table.  She served me, but before I ate any I got up to get a cup of tea from the kitchen.  While I was in the other room I heard her say, “I can’t believe Mary’s going to eat that pie!”

It sucked to have so much attention focused on what I ate.  Even now the idea of it frequently makes me extremely uncomfortable.  Now, however, I know that people aren’t judging a large volume of food on my plate because large volume no longer exists in my life.  Still, I can’t help wondering if those who know I’ve had weight loss surgery check out what I choose to eat.

Maybe they are.  Maybe they aren’t.   If they are, it’s probably more out of curiosity than negative judgment.  I’m sure people want to know what constitutes a “normal” portion for me now.  Obviously, I have no control over what other people think or do, but I need to work on my internal reactions.

When I was a kid, I learned to sneak eat when nobody was watching and to hide food, like bags of candy, in my room.  Deceptive eating is not healthy.  It’s a behavior that is fueled by negativity and that in turn feeds the negativity and makes it stronger.   It makes me resentful.  Somewhere along the line I absorbed the judgment that said some foods are “bad” and others are “good”.   Yes, some food choices are healthier than others and I honestly want to cultivate healthier eating habits in the kinds of food I eat as well as the portion size.

That doesn’t mean that I need to live the rest of my life without tasting chocolate cheesecake or fried onion rings.   However, I accept and am willing to eat them sparingly.  I need to make this okay within myself.  It’s bad enough if I feel other people judge my food.  When I do so, it’s even worse.

So,  I’m working toward being absolutely okay with my food choices in social situations as well as private.  I need to learn to shut down the thought that everyone around me is watching my food and adopt an attitude that if they are, that’s their problem.  Carry on, folks.  Nothing to see here.  I need to give myself the emotional and physical freedom to support my own food choices.  It’s only food after all.