3 consistent actions to keep your recovery on track

Posted on January 19, 2015 by recovgirl

Last week I told you that small consistent actions are much more important for your recovery than big plans that may or may not come to fruition.  After a few weeks of downward spiraling, I realized that I had been so busy, I neglected my self care.  I thought the actions I had been taking were either so small, skipping them wouldn’t make much of a difference, or I had worked at them long enough that I didn’t need to keep focusing on them every day.  Well, one of the most brilliant and applicable quotes I heard last year puts it better than I ever could.

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“People often say motivation doesn’t last.  Neither does bathing, that’s why we recommend it daily.” –Zig Ziglar

In this case, I have found that motivation is interchangeable with recovery, self care, physical conditioning, and any other regular practice.  Now that I have been reminded of the importance of DAILY self care, here are 3 of the things that, have a huge impact on my emotional state and recovery when I remember prioritize doing them consistently.

1. Take a Break

When I’m in the sauce, work wise, I tend to push myself super hard to get to the next milestone, or accomplishment, or stopping point.  I end up “negotiating” with myself that I can take a break once a particular task is completed, but because I’ve put so much pressure on that task and also because I still don’t feel like I can permit myself to take a break after completing it (because time keeps speeding by) I never end up completing the task and the stopping point never comes.

When I am not up to my eyeballs in overwhelm, it is easier for me to see that I am more productive, more focused, more able to complete tasks when I give myself permission to take a break.  It could be as little as 5 or 10 minutes of walking around, taking a dance break for one or two songs, taking 20 minutes to watch something on the DVR, or doing something else I enjoy (I’ve been known to take a bake break… I do love baking).  Taking care of myself, by doing things like allowing myself to take a break when I need it, makes me feel more willing, more enthusiastic and more able to focus enough to complete the task when I get back to it.  Life is better when I remember that ‘time at my desk’ is NOT the same as ‘ time working / being productive’.

2. Feed Your Body

Another thing I do when I am under pressure, with too many tasks and not enough time, is not feed myself properly (by “properly” I don’t mean good/bad food choices, as defined by the American mainstream).  This is closely related to my previous point of just not allowing myself to get up from my desk, but in addition to the conflict between productivity and my inner rebel, this one also has physical ramifications.

Having abused my hunger signals for a significant portion of my life, I am still ‘new’ to recognizing and honoring them.  For example, two of my most usual, earliest, strongest signals are headaches and inability to focus.  In the past I never considered that these things might be connected to each other.  For one thing I figured I was fat enough to go without food for a good long time, but as it turns out, that’s not really how our bodies work.  Bodies need fuel.  Regularly.  Sure, we will eventually dip into our reserves, but a series of things has to happen first, including signals to refuel and, if that doesn’t happen, conservation mode of the fuel that is left.

Even though I now KNOW that not fueling my brain and my body properly makes it very difficult for me to get stuff done, I’ve become so accustomed to taking care of myself last, that when I get into stress/panic mode I default to prioritizing work over nourishment.  One of our current “favorite” marketing buzzword bingo phrases is “you can’t sell from an empty wagon.”  Life is better when I remember to nourish my body and make sure my wagon is fully stocked before I try to sell from it.

3. Connect / Get Support

This last one (for today) really snuck up on me the last time life started feeling darker again.  As you may know, if you’ve been following along for a while, I participated in an intensive outpatient program for eating disorders.  When I was in the program, we met for 3 hours of group therapy a day, anywhere from 1 to 3 times a week.  Since leaving the program, I’ve been going to after care with other former “patients” once a week for an hour.  After care had been getting pretty easy lately.  Everybody in the group seemed to be maintaining pretty well and sometimes we don’t talk about much more than what we’ve been up to the previous week.  While I enjoy going, and I still learn and grow in that group, I didn’t really feel like it was helping me much anymore.

Then my travel schedule got a little crazy and it just so happened that I was traveling, or after care was cancelled every single Wednesday (the day after care meets) for two months!  I didn’t really notice how much I was missing the weekly connection and the processing of minor things until things were totally out of control and I was looking back wondering what had gone so terribly wrong.

There was nothing I could do about the scheduling conflict, but I could have reached out to my friends from that group on other days.  The point of this story is that the regular meetings are PREVENTATIVE.  By the time I am aware that I NEED to go, I’m already way down the rabbit hole and it takes much more time and effort to get back to neutral.

Obviously your mileage with these particular items might vary.  Maybe I’ll post some more generic actions next week.  The bottom line still remains that self care is incredibly important for your emotional wellbeing.  Listen to yourself.  Figure out what your body and soul are asking for and trust yourself to meet those needs.  And always start with love.

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Small actions beat big plans

Posted on January 11, 2015 by recovgirl

My last blog post went up just under 5 months ago and as I mentioned yesterday, those 5 months have been filled with some high-highs and some low-lows.  At the time of my last post I was at the apex of what I thought my next steps would be.  I had grandiose visions of leaving the full time corporate job that seemed to be crushing my soul and covering the bills through some get rich quick scheme with a really convincing sales letter.

When reality set in, I realized that it would take more than an idea and a heartful of enthusiasm to bridge the gap between secure employment and steady pay to self employment and changing the world.  The realization that I couldn’t just will the change into being (as crazy as that notion was to being with) crushed me and my short lived manic high came to a screeching halt.  To top it off, things were especially stressful and complicated at the aforementioned corporate job.  I was more desperate to leave and consequently felt more trapped than ever.

Everything stopped.  I stopped dreaming and scheming.  I stopped being mindful.  I stopped being grateful.  I stopped being hopeful and I stopped believing that things would ever really get better.  Sure, I had been doing really, REALLY well for a few weeks, but it felt like a lie I had been telling myself.  It didn’t seem real.

All the work I had done learning to trust and believe in myself was crumbling, but I couldn’t figure out how I had gone from feeling so great to feeling so bad.  After about 7 weeks of hardcore business travel, meetings, early mornings and late nights, I realized that I had been neglecting all of those little things.  When everything got too complicated, self care and small recovery actions were the first thing to get cut.

So it finally dawned on me.  A few very small, very deliberate actions had been helping me more than all the grand plans and all the hard fought efforts.  Next time I’ll tell you about some of those little things that have helped me get back out of that hole.  In the meantime, believe me when I tell you that small, consistent actions can be a big hero.

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I’m back

Posted on January 10, 2015 by recovgirl

It’s been several months since my last post.  I’ve had some high-highs and low-lows and I can’t wait to get you call caught up on all of them.  You know how the longer you let something go, the more difficult it is to get back into it?  Well, I just wanted to put up a quick post for today, to let you know that I’m still around and will be posting regularly again starting tomorrow.  This way I can’t keep kicking the can down the road until the awkwardness of returning is too overwhelming.

Hasta mañana, my friends.

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Transformation Time

Posted on August 23, 2014 by recovgirl

Several months ago, I told you this story about how difficult it is for butterflies to emerge from their cocoon.  It’s an inspirational story about the beauty and functionality that comes from our greatest struggles; how hard, but also how worthwhile transformation is.

I’m on the verge of my own transformation, but in order to become the butterfly I am meant to be, I first have to give up my fear of not being the caterpillar I am.  I wonder how caterpillars know when it’s time to make their cocoon.  I wonder if, like me, they feel this urgency to change.   I wonder if they know how hard it’s going to be, or if they are afraid of the change, or if they’ll survive the struggle and emerge through that tiny hole a magnificent butterfly.

I might be terrified and more than a little paralyzed by that fear, but I know that the consequences of staying the same will be worse than any change could possibly be.  Sooo, I’ll be making some major changes and hope you’ll join me on this new journey.

What’s that new path?  I’m glad you asked 😉

When I first started working on my issues with food and related feelings, I was introduced to a number of fairly simple concepts that, after enough repetition and reframing, really changed my life.  I wish I’d had access to these concepts before I hit the big 3-0 and even then, my healing was contingent on good health insurance and enough cash to cover the co-pays.  I don’t think that’s fair, so for starters, I will be focusing on these goals:

  1. Provide easy access to the lessons and tools that helped me in my recovery from disordered eating through ebooks, training courses, retreats and any other methods at my disposal
  2. Advocate for a change in how medical professionals and society perceive eating disorders, specifically binge eating disorder and compulsive overeating
  3. Live my purpose without fear and trust the universe/higher power to guide me on this path

There’s lots to do, before the magic begins, including some scary steps of shedding the obstacles currently holding me back, but lives will change for the better and I can hardly wait.  Are you with me?

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Body Shaming and how I finally reached my breaking point

Posted on July 26, 2014 by recovgirl

Back in October, I wrote a post about the stigma associated with being fat and my mission to try caring less about what other people think and more about what *I* think (link to that post here).  I’ve come a long way in that department, although some days are still more successful than others.  Over the last couple of weeks this topic has pushed its way back to the front of the line and it all started with a fat shaming post on Facebook.

One of my Facebook acquaintances posted the following status:

People of Walmart

If you can’t see the picture, she said that her retinas had been burned by something she saw at WalMart and later revealed that this “something” was “a VERY large 40-ish woman in daisy dukes and spaghetti strap tank, leaning over the jewelry counter.  It was just all out there for the world to see and it was scary.  I truly feel for people that suffer from obesity but they do not do themselves any favors by dressing like a teenager.”

This kind of thinking is obviously SUUUUPER problematic.  Does this woman at the jewelry counter owe it to society to only wear things that are deemed appropriate by anyone who might see her?  Is she obligated to hide herself from the world, so people like this acquaintance can shop at WalMart without having their aesthetics challenged?  What exactly was so “scary”?  Who in the SAM FUCK does she think she is to assume that this woman “suffers from obesity”?!?  And if she does suffer, did it ever occur to miss dressed-better-than-you that it might be because people like her are SO RUDE and actually believe only “good” (read: skinny) bodies are entitled to wear whatever the eff they want?  Has she maybe considered that this WalMart customer WAS doing herself a favor dressing like that, because it was HOT, or because she LIKED IT, or because she is comfortable with her body?  Maybe she was doing herself a favor by not giving a flying rats ass about what other people think she should be wearing and just putting on whatever made her the most comfortable!

What if we substitute fat for something else?  How about those people who stretch their ears with gauges?  It’s not something I would personally do and frankly it makes me cringe a little (doesn’t that hurt?), but that sure as shit does not give me the right to expect them not to wear those things in their ears in public.  And where do physical characteristics you can’t control fall in this requirement to not offend the people around you?  (I’m digging deep here guys, because I’d rather see people for what makes them beautiful, but I’m trying to make a point) So what about someone with vitiligo (the skin condition Michael Jackson is said to have had) or alopecia (makes you lose all your hair) or psoriasis (red scabby patches), or veterans who were disfigured at war, or that woman who’s face was destroyed by her friend’s monkey?  Are they allowed to go out in public, if you find their conditions hard to look at?

A few days later, I read this article (link here) about food-shaming in the form of street harassment.  It really struck a chord with me.  Why should *I* feel ashamed, because *YOU* don’t have your priorities in order?  Who died and made you king of my body?  But the bottom line is that as much as I try, I DO still feel like it’s ME.  Consequently, I end up giving my body less nourishment than I need to be able to focus for a 12 hour meeting.  Or I skip meals, because I don’t want to eat in front of others, who may or may not be eating, too.  After all, my skinny counterparts seem to be able to get through the day without a snack, or several; I should be able to dip into my fat reserves for the energy I need, right?

One of my favorite lines from the food-shaming story is: “Women need to eat. They do important jobs, they make useful things, they have interesting things to say, they have people relying on them and they cannot cope with all that on an empty stomach.”  I try to remind myself that what I eat is none of their business and what they think is none of mine.

I also try to remember what Geneen Roth said in the article: […] when someone comments on something you’re eating [or wearing], it’s not about you,” Roth said in an interview. “It’s about them and their craziness and their judgments — and usually [how they feel about] themselves.  If a woman feels that she has a right to eat what she wants to eat, that she’s really fine in herself, that it’s nobody else’s business what she looks like and eats — which it isn’t — then how that woman would react is to not have a reaction,” Roth said. “Or [she would] say ‘Oh, poor guy. There’s something wrong with you.'”

SO… I have adopted a new ABSOLUTELY NO TOLERANCE POLICY.  Henceforth, whenever I hear/see it, I’m going to call out body shaming and food shaming and hypocrisy and rudeness and entitlement and bias and all the mean things people say under the guise of concern.  It might not make me popular, but I’m pretty sure it’s the right thing to do.  I already had my first opportunity, when my very dear friend, who is loving and kind and sweet and generous and so well intentioned, tried to make a point by telling me that some woman was wearing something she shouldn’t have been (she had stunning features, but ruined everything with a revealing outfit), I challenged why she felt more qualified to decide what this woman should wear and why she thought her opinion should matter to this stranger who was clearly comfortable enough in her skin to wear whatever she wanted to wear (if you are reading this, thank you for giving me that opportunity.  You know I adore you and I appreciate that you are open to my perspective, whether you agree with it or not).

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Gratitude and realness

Posted on July 17, 2014 by recovgirl

In honor and appreciation of the magic I have felt this week, the fact that this blog, my tiny corner of the interwebs, reached FIFTY followers today (WHAT?!?!? So much gratitude!!!), and “#tbt aka throw back Thursday” I wanted to bring you some realness today.

This is me, in the pictures below, before I ever fathomed that I might not be perfect, or loved, or happy and free for the rest of my life. Spirited. Genuine. Bold. Filled with laughter. Free of body issues (at least half naked MOST of the time).

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I mourned for that girl a lot over the last two years. I mourned for the life that girl should have/could have had under different circumstances. I can’t go back and keep her from taking this little detour, but I can take my power back and put her back on track.

I am going to be 32 next week and this month I have felt more like that little girl than I have at any point over the last 29 years. I’ve met new experiences with wonder, beauty with gratitude, newness with curiosity, feelings with compassion and awareness. The world hasn’t changed around me, but my eyes have and I am LOVING IT!

I saw this quote on a friend’s Facebook:
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and decided to love MYself, too. But seriously, how could you not love this little girl? I promise to never forget again.

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Recovery is… gradually then suddenly

Posted on July 16, 2014 by recovgirl

This post is going to be short, because it’s already late and there are other things I’m *supposed* to be doing, before I go to bed, but I wanted to make sure to capture and share this feeling I’m having before I forget how spectacular it is.

There’s a quote (shocking, I know), it was taking too long to confirm the source, but I think it was Hemingway, regarding bankruptcy “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”  Makes sense, right?  You spend the money little by little, until suddenly it’s all gone.  That’s kind of how I feel about recovery today.

You see, if you’ve been following along for a while, you know I’ve been working on my shit for a while.  I’ve had plenty of lows, and I’ve had some amazing insights, but through all the ups and downs, I never felt that close to *good* that close to *happy* to *content* to *possibilities*.  I just worked.  Hard.  Tiny step by tiny step.  Back slide by back slide.  Day by day.  Gradually.

I’ve been feeling pretty great for several weeks now, but I have also been waiting, constantly looking over my shoulder, for the distortions and negative thoughts and feelings to take over again.  Until today.  Today I tackled a task that would normally send me into anxiety and avoidance and despair and I handled it.  Almost effortlessly.  I barely even got worked up about it before hand.  I was just OK with it.  Suddenly.

Gradually, then suddenly, I FELT the change, the reward for all of the hard work I have been putting in.  I recognized and acknowledged that this feeling that’s been creeping in was not a fluke, or a coincidence, I EARNED IT.  Recovery is possible.  Happiness is possible.  When you are ready for it, and not a day sooner.  Gradually, then suddenly, this became my new life.

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Forgiveness and other lessons from a year of recovery

Posted on June 28, 2014 by recovgirl

This week marked my one year anniversary of entering an Intensive Outpatient Program for eating disorders and meeting a few of the best people I know.  And, wow, what a difference a year makes.  I had started going to therapy 8ish months earlier, but it wasn’t until taking a 10 hour a week group dive into unique and shared issues with an amazing group of women, that I really started to recognize how toxic and debilitating my lifetime of anger and resentment had become.

I had a lot of questions, doubts and fears about letting go of that anger, that righteous indignation.  I had earned that anger.  I was entitled to it.  And more importantly, I felt that the people at whom my anger was directed did not deserve my forgiveness (click here for my thoughts on that from a year ago).  I recognized, logically, that I was hurting myself more than I was hurting them, but my heart and my feelings were NOT interested in reasonable.  To be totally honest, my whole identity was wrapped up in hurt/angry victim mode, so I’m not even sure I would have recognized myself without it.

It has only been 12 months, probably the fastest 12 months EVER, but the Recovering Girl from a year ago could just as well be from a lifetime ago.  I feel like such a cliche writing this, especially considering how vehemently I insisted that all of this stuff wouldn’t couldn’t possibly work for me.  I still have plenty of healing ahead of me and I’m certain there will be times when I will feel like that victim again, but at this point it is as hard for me to imagine being in the state I was a year ago, as it was to imagine a year ago that I would be where I am now.  I can’t pinpoint exactly when it actually shifted for me, but I believe the following 3 concepts were most instrumental to my growth:

Feelings follow thoughts!

via | the things we say

When I was first introduced to this concept, I thought it was one of the most ridiculous and far fetched things I’d ever heard.  I love brain science and all, but this one was almost as hard to believe/accept as “diets don’t work.”  I thought trying to get myself to believe things I didn’t feel were true was like lying to myself.  It was fake.  Just like I thought claiming diets don’t work was just a cop-out, because I (and the other 95% of dieters) personally didn’t have the willpower.  Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

My moral compass is based on the things I feel in my heart to be right.  How would I be able to trust my direction, my beliefs, my feelings, if they could be changed by merely thinking something different?  I hated the idea that I could be so impressionable, gullible even, as to believe anything I think frequently enough.  Surely this is also how extremists beliefs come to be extreme.  But the radical revelation wasn’t that I could make myself believe beautiful (and scary) new things in the future, it was that all of my current beliefs about myself and my body had come from years of pushing this false line of thought.  Thoughts like:

  • I’m not good enough
  • I am not loved
  • I am stupid/lazy/ugly
  • I will never be able to live down, or be forgiven for my mistakes
  • Everything is always my fault
  • Anything less than perfection is not good enough
  • If I can’t to EVERYTHING I can’t do ANYTHING

My list of examples like this is a mile long.  I allowed those seeds to be planted in my mind and then I watered and fostered them and allowed them to grow strong, thick roots that would override any positive thought I might have had about myself.  It took a while, but I eventually accepted that I had nothing to lose in stopping these thoughts about myself, so when they crept into my mind, I would replace them with different, positive thoughts.  I still evaluate the negative thoughts sometimes, but I don’t unilaterally assume that they are true.  I don’t automatically believe them.  This takes time.  The thoughts don’t stop right away and you don’t start believing the new, positive thoughts overnight, but I sit here today, believing positive, kind, beautiful things about myself, that I never would have dared to even think before.  That can’t be a coincidence.

OPR (Other People’s Ridiculousness)

Abuse quote: Don't judge yourself by what others did to you. www.HealthyPlace.com

Some time ago, I wrote down this quote about codependency (unfortunately I didn’t think to write down the source):

“We cannot control how others behave or feel about us.  Others are not responsible for our feelings, nor are we responsible for theirs.”

I posted the quote at my desk, to try to remind myself to be authentic, instead of accommodating everyone around me, whether they liked it or not.  It wasn’t until just recently that I finally understood the implications of this.  Not being responsible for how others behave or feel means YOU CAN’T OWN THEIR SHIT.  It is their burden, not yours.  I used to do this a lot.  I would interpret comments, assume I knew the source or intent and of course know that it had to be my fault, or my responsibility to fix it.  Then, in my own mind, I would create a massive issue that WAS about me, but that didn’t actually exist.  The truth is that people act badly sometimes.  Sometimes they direct their bad attitudes towards you, misdirect their own feelings and insecurities, or maybe actually try to blame/accuse you, but the truth is that none of the effort or corrective action from you will be able to fix an issue that has nothing to do with you.  You have to understand that sometimes it is simply “other people’s ridiculousness.”  Changing yourself in response to an issue that is not about you will not provide resolution, certainly not in the long term.

Once you have identified OPR, you have an opportunity to be kind, patient and compassionate with them, you might even be able to support and guide them towards the actual source of the issue (as long as you make sure not to carry it for them), which brings me to my last item for today…

LOVE/COMPASSION/EMPATHY > EVERYTHING ELSE

I think the #1 thing that finally enabled me to forgive is EMPATHY (noun, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another).  There are obviously always exceptions, but *most* people don’t purposefully set out to hurt you.  There are lots of different reasons for this.  Sometimes they don’t know any better.  Maybe we think they SHOULD know better, but we don’t know what their experience has been.  We don’t know why they behave the way they do.  We don’t know their journey and their struggles.  We don’t know what sandpaper they did or didn’t have to shape them.  This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes, which came from a late 90s chain email bastardizing (read: making them funny) popular Zen quotes:

Before you criticize someone you should walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, when you criticize them, you are a mile away and you have their shoes.

As many times as I’ve repeated that joke, I never actually used to consider the journey and experiences that led to the way a person behaves.  When I look back at my own life, there are LOTS of times when I wasn’t the best person I could have been.  I probably don’t even have to look much further than the last week or so.  Maybe I was reacting to something current, or maybe the origin of my behavior was based somewhere 20 years ago.  Maybe I knew what I was doing, or maybe I was on auto pilot and perpetuating old habits.  I’m not perfect, but I know what’s in my heart and I know how devastated I am when I feel like I have caused someone pain.  When I feel guilty about things I’ve said or done, I always wish I could explain myself.  All I really want is to be understood, to be cared for, to be loved for who I am, not for the accumulation of things I have done in good or bad faith.

I finally recognize that everybody has a story.  Everybody has reasons for the way they are.  It could be OPR (see above), or a cry for help, or emotional scars, or any other number of things we can’t know about.  The only way for me, and all of us, to live in an environment where I/we can be understood and accepted, is to give each other that benefit as well.  It might not always be my first reaction, yet, but when I am able to step back from a situation, I find that instead of taking it personally and/or getting angry, I am wishing them closure and healing.  I hope for them that they will someday have the ability to step back, identify the true issue and deal with it.  It has been, and continues to be, such a gift to me to replace the burden of resentment with the gift of love.

Forgiveness...

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When hunger stops being the enemy

Posted on June 23, 2014 by recovgirl

I am not a planner.  This may come as a shock to the few of you who know me in real life, because I plan *some* things to the point of obsession.  For example, social interactions, phone calls, meetings with strangers are particularly high up on that spectrum.  I’ll plan a conversation well in advance and review all the possible turns it could take.  What will I say if the response is x.  What will I say if the response is y.  Unsurprisingly, this rarely, if ever, works out the way I imagined, but at least I feel prepared.  Rehearsed even.

But when it comes to things that don’t affect anyone but me, I fly by the seat of my pants 99.99% of the time.  I don’t plan my outfits, which would be fine if I didn’t have to pack for a week of business meetings where I will need some combination of things that is not totally uncoordinated.  I don’t really plan vacations, which is probably why most of them end up being “staycations.”  And I definitely don’t plan meals.  Planning meals is such a big part of dieting, I always thought my inability (or maybe unwillingness) to do it was one of the main reasons I wasn’t successful in long-term weight loss.  Even though I’ve since learned that the reasons diets fail go far beyond my willpower or inability to plan, and frankly it’s more likely that I don’t like to plan meals because of the years of dieting, I still balk at the idea of planning the week’s food, diet or not.

Maybe you are thinking “being spontaneous is not such a bad thing,” but the problem is that decisions made in hunger are not usually that good.  By the time hunger has set in, it is usually too late to determine that there is no protein in the house, or that we have run out of 3 of the ingredients to make a 4 ingredient dish.  I also don’t make decisions that easily and so the dinner conversation between me and my husband always goes:

“What do you want for dinner?”

“I don’t know, what do YOU want for dinner?”

“I don’t care, I’ll make whatever you want, just make a damn decision.”

Nine times out of ten, this conversation does not lead to me making dinner, because by this time I’ve waited to the point of diminished mental capacity, so a pizza is ordered, or a drive thru is visited.  The food is then inhaled, probably on the drive home, without tasting or experiencing the food, and the only thing I feel “filled” with afterwards is a big ol’ dose of shame.

Do you ever notice when you are emotionally affected by hunger?  Even though I come from a long line of well documented psychoglycemia (emotional outbursts caused by low blood sugar… ok, it’s not a real word, but it should be, because it describes the condition perfectly), I never really believed in it.  I mean surely I should be able to burn some of my stored fat and turn it into enough energy to have a conversation, make a decision, or make dinner, right?  What makes it even harder to believe is that my hunger signal is not usually coming from my stomach; I am much more likely to lose focus or get a headache, than to hear a grumble, so I have always dismissed that it might be hunger.

When I first started treatment, I insisted that I was physically unable to feel hunger or fullness, making it impossible to “eat when hungry and stop when full.”  I realize now that ignoring my hunger is a “skill” I cultivated throughout many, MANY years of dieting and bingeing.  For years, I bounced around between completely ignoring my hunger signals, going as far as celebrating hunger, or eating so much I never had a chance to get hungry to begin with.  The hungrier I felt, the better it was, because the feeling of hunger meant that I had been able to abstain from food (my “addiction”) long enough to be affected physically.  It’s kind of like when you quit smoking and suddenly notice that you can breathe better.  It’s a milestone that pushes you to go another period of time without giving in.  But there’s the ‘rub’ as Shakespeare would say: our bodies are genetically programmed (yay evolution) to store even the most wholesome, fat-burning meal, at the threat of “famine.”  Hunger had a snowball’s chance in hell of having the intended effect.

The bottom line is that I am finally ready to unwind some of these learned behaviors.  I am regaining trust in my body, and celebrating hunger, because it means after all these years of abusing the signals my body is still willing to communicate with me.  I am paying attention to how long certain foods last, before a clock could tell me I’ll be hungry.  I am teaching my body and mind that we are not always on the verge of another diet.  I am allowing myself to “splurge” on snack foods I like and making sure I always have access to them (this is a hard one for me, because buying the proper kinds of snacks is also a big part of diet culture and I have a history of eating ALL the snacks during a diet rebellion binge).  I am not worrying about what others might think about the fact that I, the fat person, always carry food, because, after all, it is none of my business what they think about me.  And most importantly, I am reminding myself that honoring my health and my body means feeding it, not making it fit into some arbitrary chart in a doctor’s office (on that subject, check out this NPR report on 10 Reasons Why BMI is Bogus).

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I wish I had given up sooner

Posted on June 12, 2014 by recovgirl

I’ve always subscribed to the “never give up” mentality.  The “fall down 6 times, get up 7 times” measure of success.  The “you don’t fail until you quit trying” prophecy.  But I’m at a point in my recovery that I think it’s time to try something new.

Winston Churchill is often quoted (or paraphrased) for having said “never never never give in (up).”  Of course it is not generally quoted in the original context (war), but as a famous person saying don’t ever give up.  Keep trying, and whatnot.  The actual quote is:

[…] never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

As a non-historian, and continuing to take the quote out of context, I think the most important part here is except to convictions of honour and good sense.  So basically, never give up, unless it’s the right thing to do.

never give up

You are probably thinking “ugh, wrap it up, Recovering Girl, where are you going with this?”  I’m giving up dieting.  I’m serious.  It’s been about a year since my last official diet and since starting my journey of recovery from disordered eating.  To be honest, it’s been a bit of an “everything goes” anti diet, but that’s not really the point today.  The difference between then and now is that I still always thought this was a temporary thing.  Once I was recovered and my Inner Rebel didn’t fight me so hard on the dieting, going full throttle in the opposite direction at the mere mention of a diet, I would finally be able to make one of these “lifestyle changes” (code for the “it’s not a diet”-diet) work for me.  Not this time.

I used to believe that diets work (news flash: they don’t).  I just thought I didn’t have the willpower to stick with one long enough to get to my goal weight, or to not gain the weight back right away.  But in the last year or so of recovery, I’ve learned to question my definition of “works.”  If I’ve been on dozens of diets in my life, but I’ve never not been fat, did they really **WORK**?  Better yet, when I step back and look at the times in my life, when I have gained the most weight, it has ALWAYS been diet-backlash, gaining more than I had recently lost.  So not only did the diets not lead to long-term weight loss, they actually had the opposite effect.

The kicker is, I didn’t recognize it at the time, but there was actually a short period in my life, after the first 15 years of dieting, when I didn’t worry about the number and I cooked food I enjoyed, ate when I felt like it, exercised for the fun of feeling strong and lost weight.  That lasted right up until the seamstress told me the fit on my wedding dress was almost perfect, I only needed to lose like 5 pounds (not that I was anywhere near what a doctor would recommend for my height, but for the sake of this dress in this size…).  I got married 3 months and +30 pounds later, desperately trying to lose those 5 pounds.

As I sit here, thinking about my body weight timeline (because I can tell you a weight for every year and milestone since age 10), I wish I had given up dieting much sooner.  I wish I had given up the self hatred and body shaming.  I wish I had given up caring what other people think of my body and focused on what makes me the most comfortable in my skin.  I wish I had given up on the myth that skinny and healthy are the same thing (at least half the people I know, or know of, who had surgical intervention for fatness are either sick, very sick or dead now).  NO MORE.

This is it.  This is the end of wishing.  My GOOD SENSE is telling me: never give up, EXCEPT!  Never give up EXCEPT when not giving up does more harm than good.  Never give up EXCEPT when giving up is a victory in and of itself.  Hear me, when I tell you, I. GIVE. UP. and I couldn’t be happier!

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