Miserable Diet

My life is so complex. And I'm feeling it right now.

The desire to eat intuitively.

The desire to binge and not feel.

It just feels so overwhelming. I don't want to treat IE like another diet. But in many ways it feels like just that. I have to find a way to see beyond that.

The overeating/binging is not good. It almost always occurs at night. It leaves me so uncomfortable that sleep is a mess. I toss and turn all night. Dreaming weird dreams. Waking off and on. Feeling physically awful in the morning. Taking Tylenol to soothe the "withdrawl".

It's not good.

I want (and need) to drop the diet mentality. That's what I need to let go of.

Because until I see IE as living and not dieting, I will forever be searching for the next binge.

Kill Me

Everything about this book is rocking my world. It literally has sapped the "fun", the "thrill of the sneak" out of eating when I'm not hungry. Hundreds of times a day, I am forcing myself to stay present with myself. To not give in and zone out. To live.

It's hard.

Very hard.

But oh the wonderful flavors when I am hungry! I am amazed at how food really tastes!

Last night was difficult. I had a great time with my older girls, shopping and just hanging out. We got home and all of them went their separate ways. This is prime time for me to eat. Happiness (well really ANY emotion) is a trigger for me to eat. I think I binge to numb the intensity of the feeling. I think in my head I don't think I deserve any of this. That any emotion in life is too...much.

Last night I forced myself to stay in the moment. To sit and feel the feelings. Accepting that there is a God who is bigger than any emotion I feel and that if I just go through the feeling, He is there.

I went through a gamut of emotions as I sat. Some which surprised me. Fear, anger, joy, sadness, love.

Guess what?

The emotions didn't kill me. I lived through them and even found moments that I could stay present with myself.

This is very much the beginning of the end of dieting for me.

I can feel with every part of my being that this is different. I feel almost as if I am waking up from a food-induced coma and finding that I am changed. Or maybe that I was here all along. Hidden beneath the layers of eating.

I am strong.

God is stronger.

A binge is no longer a binge when you take away it's power to control you.

It is a good beginning.

Snapshots

I had a hard time overeating last night. The "fun" has been sucked out of it.

In her book Women Food and God, Geneen talks about "bolting". How each time we binge it's a way to bolt from life. But not from this life, we are bolting because of the way we perceived life to be in the past. The way we dealt with things before. Because we bolt right here right now, we have no idea how this life will actually be. We are so stuck running from something we perceive, that we're missing the opportunity to live our lives.

She encouraged us to feel the feelings and to breathe in the moment. Remember the times, probably when you were little, when you just felt alive and happy with the world? When you just breathed in the moment and lived? That's what Geneen is encouraging us to do. To sit and soak in the moments.

Last night I did that. I did not realize how many times I wanted to flee the moment and bolt. It is hundreds and hundreds. Instead, I forced myself to stay present with myself. To breathe.

I opened the window on my vehicle and breathed in the air. I listened to the sound of my children laughing. I looked at the sky and just breathed. Over and over again, I forced myself to stay present in the moment.

This.

This is what I had been trying to find. It was here all along. These moments that stand out like snapshots in my memory. They're right here. Right now.

It's extremely hard work. It's hard to sit in the moment and resist the urge to bolt. Surprisingly, I was able to stay present more than I thought I could. And when I finally did let go and escape to food, it had lost it's appeal. I found that I wanted the peace of being back. 

The book is radical. It isn't a sugar-coated, sweet, you'll be fine book. It nails my thoughts and behaviors to the wall and is ripping a self-imposed scab right off my life.

It's time.

Bigness

Last night I started reading the book Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. I was only in the introduction when this little exchange between Geneen and a lady named Nell, hit me...

"but suddenly I realized that I am afraid to push the food away."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because...I realize I am not broken..and that you will be angry at me if you know."
"Who are you taking me to be? Anyone you know who was threatened by how gorgeous you are?"
"Hi mom." she says.
"She was depressed," Nell says, "And if I was just myself, that was too much for her. I needed to shut down the bigness-I needed to be as broken as she was-otherwise she'd reject me and that was unacceptable."

Whoa....what?!?!?

(Brakes screeching)

Remember this post? And especially this? "Of this list, the two I struggle the most with are accepting that others will be uncomfortable and that it's ok for me to be comfortable, and having to say no. Both of these are the emotions/actions I shove under the food rug most often."

Oh. my. gosh.

"Nell" is ME.

Always worried that others will be uncomfortable if I allow myself to be comfortable. Afraid to just "be" because it will mean someone in my life feels "less than".

Forever the protector. Forever living out my role in a family I no longer live in. Never wanting my mom or my sister to hurt. Always seeking to make them "ok" , even if it means at the cost of my own sanity. 


One of my earliest memories of "stuffing" this feeling of bigness came after a high school volleyball practice. I was good. Really good. A sophomore in a new town with a competitive team. First in off the bench. I came home that night, psyched. The coach had me playing! I was telling my sister, feeling good. She wanted me to eat a bologna sandwich she'd made. I wasn't hungry. I was feeling...powerful. Strong. Alive. It upset her. SHE was the athlete. She kept asking me to eat. I saw the look in her eyes. The "you and me" . I needed to protect her feelings. She was feeling "less than". I could see it and I didn't want her to hurt. I ate the sandwich. My introduction into stuffing my bigness so that no one would hurt.

But what if?

What if I'm actually not broken after all?

What if I allow myself to be free of the self-imposed brokenness I live in? What if I just stop "shutting down the bigness" and live?

The thought alone feels terrifying.

And powerful.

Whoa.

Something to think on today.

Whoa.

I was right.

I'm eating at night to stay awake.

The first couple hours watching TV were fine. I wasn't hungry and was interested in the shows. I enjoyed it.

Then I started to get sleepy. And started dozing off. And became uncomfortable. Physically and mentally.

So I got a couple snacks, woke up, and watched TV again. Hmmmm.....going to have to work on this one and how I want to manage it. If I go to bed (I've done that), I become wide awake after dozing off for a minute or so. Bed really isn't an option. Maybe doing something different? Reading? Sewing? Crafting? I'm going to have to think on this. ;)

Secondly, new discovery again about myself. Yesterday I had a hard time in general waiting for hunger. I just sort of grazed through food all day. When it got to be evening, I considered waiting for hunger. My conversation in my head went something like this...

"I'm really not hungry, I should wait a bit to eat."

"The beauty of eating this way instead of dieting is that I can start over anytime."

"I could start over now."

"But I ate so much today I won't feel hunger again tonight so I'll just keep eating."

Whoa....what?!?!? 

What was that?!?!?

So a reason I haven't been following IE in the evening is because I know I'm not going to be hungry because I already ate so much?!?!?

Well.

Interesting.

Wouldn't it make more sense to follow it all day, knowing that without a doubt I will have hunger again?

Something to think about.

An Epiphany

I had a bit of an epiphany last night. It seems like a no-brainer now, but last night it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

I have figured out that my emotional eating in the evening has two parts. For so long I had thought I ate at night because I needed to relax. This past week I've really paid attention to my feelings while I detached myself from my eating.

What I found is that I eat first because I'm tired, and it's a way to wake myself up. And second because I don't want to say "no" in the bedroom to dh. Let me rephrase that. It's not that I don't want to say "no", it's because I desperately want to be allowed to say "no" without having him unload a ton of bricks of guilt on me. Because "no" is something I was never allowed as a child or in the first 10 years or so of our marriage, "no" is like a precious jewel to me. Very hard to come by and something I hold tightly too. I have my reasons. I can't explain them to him.

I want to be allowed to have control over this part of me without being made to feel "bad". When you have not had that, it affects you. Deeply. And the further into IE I get, the more I feel the need to set personal boundaries I have not set. I want to be ok, and I want him to be ok, with my "no's".

We're not there yet.

But.

Back to my epiphany.

Here's the thing. I am beginning to find the courage to say "no" when I mean "no". As I went to bed last night and he left, it occurred to me that the end result is the same whether I eat or not. He leaves and I feel the same amount of guilt. It occurred to me for the first time last night, that I can get to the same end result without eating.

The eating no longer serves any real purpose.

I am truly surprised to realize this. Truly. I had thought that I continued to eat to cover feelings of anxiety. At this point in my journey it's no longer true. I'm not anxious until I walk up those stairs to go to bed. The eating I've been doing is not serving any purpose other than to battle fatigue.

So what if I stopped? What if I just allowed myself to doze off and on? What if I read or did some other activity? Because truthfully? Eating at night has served it's purpose and is no longer useful to me.

What a weird thought after years and years of covering up feelings.

I need to think about this one today.

Satisfaction and My Challenge

To all those diets that told me I don't know what I like, you are wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Shaking my fist at you!

I love whole milk. I love butter. I love real cheese. I love a delicious whole grain dark bread made at our local bakery. I like homemade foods better than anything store bought. I love grilled chicken. I love steak. I love in season fruits from the farmer's markets. I love fresh oranges full of juice. I like whole pineapple, but not canned. I love mangoes. I love honey on toast with butter.

And dieting made me think I was stupid. And needed guidance. That I didn't know what it meant to feel satisfied.

So I ate cardboard food, washed down with precious no calorie milk. I snacked on popcorn without flavor and cheese that would not melt. I bought pre-packaged, pre-set, pre-"foods" that consisted of nothing but a alarming list of things I cannot pronounce. All the while, being told, "eat this", "drink that", "do this", "don't do that".

What a waste of my life.

Seriously.

What a waste.

I KNOW WHAT I LIKE.

I knew all along.

Watch out world. This chick is done with your diet crap. I am eating my whole foods and I will enjoy them with absolute, unadulterated, satisfaction.

Because guess what?

Butter satisfies. Real milk does too. So does a slab of meat.

And because I'm satisfied, and because I enjoy my food, I stop eating. Each and every day I make decisions to stop eating.

The horror.

I'm undoing everything you said about me.

Oh little diet leaders, you were wrong. And I'm here to prove it to you.

*Challenge to me-when I am hungry, I will eat something utterly satisfying in front of dh. To be eaten at  a time when it is not mealtime. Unnerved? Yeah? You can do this girl. Every. Single. Day. 



 

Middle Ground

From Ordinary Abundance....

"I didn’t binge. Not even once. When you remove the restrictions, there is simply no need or desire for binging. It has occurred to me that binging is about breaking the rules. It’s an act of food anarchy. When you remove the rules and the punitive thoughts surrounding some foods, there is no need for rebellion or anarchy anymore.

Does this mean that we can just eat what we want, when we want until we fall over?

Actually, yes it does. If we wanted to. But Intuitive Eating is about caring enough about ourselves that we wouldn’t want to harm ourselves with food (anymore).

Weight is not the problem. It’s a symptom of the problem.

Food is not the problem. It’s a weapon we use to punish ourselves for having a problem in the first place."
 
This continues to be what I struggle most with. When your whole life is either DIET or BINGE, finding the middle ground is most complicated. ;)

Every day I continue to take notice of the times I don't eat. The times I walk by food without a second glance. The food that sits in my cupboards.

For me, it's a daily reminder that I DO NOT eat every thing in sight.

I eat what I want most. Not always, but most of the time. It's a constant reminder that I DO have strong preferences and that I know exactly what those preferences are. I am NOT some mindless slug, eating everything in my path. Put me in front of a buffet, and you will see. I KNOW WHAT I LIKE.

The diet industry has lied for so long to me that undoing the damage will take awhile. And every day I am out here beating the odds. I am standing on this island with the people who are breaking the mold. We are not giving in.

We will beat this beast.

One choice at a time. 

And Other Consequences

And of course the other issue with dh talking about WW last night was that I in turn spiraled out of control. To the point I was in pain eating.

See, the more I eat following Intuitive Eating, the less food I need to be satisfied. I know for a fact my stomach itself is holding less food. So any binge, hurts. Last night's hurt even more because I wasn't even remotely hungry.

Did I enjoy it? No.

Did it make me feel better? Honestly, this time no.

I did it as an F*ck you but I was the only one who got "hurt" by it.

Smooth.

AND YET....

I stopped. It ended. I came through stronger. :)