Weighty Matters

Yesterday I went to a Celebration of Life for my boss’s husband who recently passed away.  I’d just had my hair colored, cut and styled.  I slipped into a cute dress and did my makeup.  I felt really good and pretty when I looked into the mirror.  At the C of L, I saw several people that I don’t see all of the time so my weight loss was really noticeable.  It felt good to receive their compliments.

This morning I woke up, weighed myself and smiled at the number.  I’ve lost 91 pounds in shortly over five months.  First I was so happy, and then an evil little weed of a negative thought sprouted in my head.  It said to me, “Yeah, you’ve lost 91 pounds and that’s great, but now people are going to look at you and think, ’91 pounds and she’s still so fat?  Geezus, she was a pig.'”  Immediately, I relapsed into shame.

That is an ugly, horrible thing for me to have thought about myself.  I know this but right now I’m struggling to banish the shame.  It is  stinking thinking that achieves nothing positive or helpful.  If I let this weed take root and flourish, it will undermine my emotional recovery and that will jeopardize my physical recovery.   I have a long, long way to go on this journey and the amount of weight I lose is only going to grow.  It will not be healthy for me to foster an environment where the shame continues to grow and I start to hang my head.   I refuse to permit this, but even as I write my heart is beating faster and my stomach wants to curdle around my breakfast.

I came here to write a blog post as a proactive strike, to process the feelings instead of giving into the negativity.  I’m fighting back against the shame.  I do not deserve to feel bad about myself.  Yes, in the throes of my unchecked compulsive overeating/binge eating disorder, I grew to super obese and 386 pounds.  However, and this is the rallying point, I stopped myself and took action by having the weight loss surgery.  I will not let anything or anybody make me feel anything less than joy in what I’ve accomplished and the good that I am doing for myself.  The positive choices that I make every day create a fertile, rich environment on which I am growing a new, healthier, more active, amazing life.

Okay.  My heart rate is calming down somewhat and my stomach is relaxing.  If anyone wants to know why I write this blog, here’s one great reason.  It helps me work through these things and circumstances without using food.  Trust me.  In the past, an event like this would have shot me like a cannonball into overeating.

Today I choose to stick to my food plan.  I’m going to get into the shower, put on cute clothes that fit my improving body, and go out to spend time with friends.  I’m plucking out that weed and grinding it under my heel.  Shame can kiss my smaller ass.

Thanks for being here and listening to my temporary freak out.  🙂

Sometimes I just cruise along on my day to day journey and all of my food choices are simple and pretty matter-of-fact.  Then I hit a day like today when something makes me stop short, something that causes me to really marvel at the big and small changes in my life.

I had that kind of moment this morning when I was packing food to take to work.  I’m still focusing on protein and also need to plan my eating around multiple small meals.  First thing into the bag — a single cheese stick for the mid-morning snack.  I made French Onion soup a few nights ago, without the melted slab of cheese on top and still had about 3/4 of a cup of it waiting for me in the fridge at work. To go with that for the noon meal, I brought some leftover hummus and a few baby carrots.  I like to eat again around 3.  Strawberries are in season and they are absolutely gorgeous.  I sliced up two juicy organic berries into a container and added a few spoons of low fat French Vanilla yogurt.  Perfect.

I zipped up my lunch bag and that’s when the moment hit me.  My food plan was built around small servings of a variety of yummy foods that are fairly healthy for me.  This alone isn’t entirely new.  During the periods when I dieted relatively successfully, I’d pack similiar foods. Most of the time I resented the hell out of this being necessary.

Now I cheerfully consume a LOT less and make healthier choices.  With pleasure.

This is a huge difference from the days when I chowed down on a foot long sub with a side of chips, 12 ounce bottle of soda and some cookies for dessert.

I will freely admit that I’m not always cheerful.  Sometimes I still wistfully wish for some greasy entree with a side of fries, but most of the time, I’m quite happy with what I pack for lunch.  I don’t need food in the same way that I thought I did.  Eating right for this stage of my recovery satisfies me and the results sure are tasty too.

Throughout the day my mind kept returning to the differences between now and before.  I got distracted mid-day when friends arrived for the afternoon.  So distracted, in fact, that I never got back up to the office for that 3 p.m. snack.  This is not good.  I don’t normally feel hunger, except when I miss eating something every couple of hours.  By 5 p.m., I definitely had pangs, but thankfully my friends were hungry too so we stopped into the restaurant next door.

Fridays happen to be their “Big Ass Prime Rib” night.  I love prime rib and decided to order it, sticking with the slightly less big ass “Lady” portion of a 12 oz slab of meat.  Steamed veggies and a baked potato on the side.  Can I just tell you that it is a remarkable thing for me to look at what passes for a “normal” plate of food and know that it will provide three to four meals for me.  A couple of pieces cut from the meat, followed by a few forks of veggies and a couple of bites of potato and I was finished.  When everyone else was done, the waitress came to clear our plates.  She looked at mine and her face fell.  Clearly she was concerned that something had been horribly wrong with my meal.  I reassured her that every single bite was delicious and that I’d enjoy everything a few more times.  I left with most of the dinner packed in a to-go box.

It’s now about 10 p.m.  Prior to weight loss surgery, around this time I would dig into a sizeable bowl of premium (premium = higher fat content) ice cream.  Right now, I think I’m going to finish this blog post and dig out that container of yogurt and fresh strawberries that I didn’t eat earlier.  A couple of bites ought to put a really fine end on a good food day.

I’m always a little sad on Father’s Day and Mother’s Day because both of my parents are gone.   Dad died in 1983; Mom in 1998.  I still miss them everytime I think of them.  That said, I’m going out on my boat in a little while and I know that they’re smiling at the thought.  I’ve talked before about being a water baby.  I believe I have my folks to thank for my love of boating and the ocean.  I have very early memories of family fishing trips.  I think there are some photos somewhere of me on our family’s first boat when I was only a few months old.  Good times all of my life.

So why did I title this post “Daddy Issues”?  Well, even when you grow up with loving parents who you loved and respected in return, you can still have some issues.  In my case, when your father is a larger than life personality with an awesome success story who was revered by our community, it made me feel like I never quite measured up.

The bar set by Dad just in the course of building his life was pretty damned high.  Son of immigrant parents, he attended college (The first of his family to do so.) on academic and athletic scholarships.  Served in WWII and then attended a prestigious graduate school before going to medical school.  He excelled academically and became a great doctor.  He and his partner delivered at least half the babies in our area.  Then, when it was determined that our area needed to be able to provide radiation treatment for cancer, Dad went back to study and do a residency in that specialty and became the first Chief of Radiation Therapy.  In the meantime, he and Mom served on other organizations and foundations.  We grew up learning that service to others is important.

I was not a wonderful student.  I’d get As in the classes that I liked and was good at, Cs in the ones that didn’t grab my interest as much, and struggled sometimes to make a C or D in math.  (I firmly believe now that I have some sort of low level math processing glitch in my brain.  I still struggle.  Thank God for calculators.)  A C was not acceptable.  I remember him saying, “Cs are average.  You do not have an average brain.  Work harder.”

I won’t bore you with an entire life history in which there was considerably more good than bad, but I can tell you that by the time I was in college, I was screwing up pretty badly and set myself on a horrible circle of messing up and partying too much so my grades suffered which made me feel worse because I wasn’t living up to expectations and that just fed my already degrading self-esteem.  Dad and I had some big yelling matches over my lack of academic performance.  That man could bellow when angry.  I mostly cried.   It was awful and at the time, like a typical person that age, I outwardly blamed it on “My parents don’t understand me”, but inside I told myself I was worthless and a failure.

In hindsight, I wish that we had spoken heart to heart instead of fighting.  I think we both were responsible for the poor communication.  I was no more ready to listen or self-examine my behavior so I coped with attitude which pissed him off no doubt.  Despite my best efforts to trash my college career, I graduated — not with honors, but with a GPA above a C at least.   I also got a job before I even graduated.

The girl who messed around with her classes became an ultra-responsible, dependable employee.  Along the way, the rough patches Dad and I experienced began to smooth over and I found it easier to open up.   I don’t remember what prompted it, but one day we had an epiphany-level conversation.  I told Dad how sorry I was for being a disappoinment in school, that I never felt like he was proud of me and that I figured I was pretty much his only failure.

Hearing that and  knowing that I believed it nearly broke his big heart.  I will always remember the stricken expression on his face and the way he reached out to me.  “Not proud of you?  Honey, if you could hear the way I talk about you and how hard you work, you’d think you owned the damn radio station.”   In that moment, I realized that my perspective was skewed and he realized that while he was telling other people of his pride in me, he’d missed making sure that I knew.

After this heart to heart, the nicks, scrapes and damage in our relationship really began to heal.  Where there had always been love, there was also now more ease.  I wasn’t defensive and on guard; he wasn’t critical.  It made the good relationship even better.

Through it all — even the rocky times — Dad and Mom were my foundation.  They were my refuge and comfort.  Talk about people being the wind beneath my wings!  Dad in particular was my safety net.

Losing him when I was 25 was a horrible blow and it took a long, long time to recover.  Yes, I took refuge in eating, trying to anesthetize my pain and sorrow.

I look back on all this 29 years later and still wish that we’d had him with us for many more years than we did.  Along with that wistfulness, however, is gratitude that we at least had him for as long as we did.  There are lessons that I learned from him, either directly or by following his example, that remain with me today.  I am a better, stronger person because of those lessons.  Because of him.  I also know in my heart of hearts that he would still be very proud of me indeed.

So on this Father’s Day, I’m going to go out in my boat, think of Dad and Mom and smile over the good memories.   Sure we had our issues.  When all is said and done, however, I have never respected a man more than I do him and I am very, very proud to have been his daughter.

Thanks, Daddy.  Love you.