The price of rain

My soul is tired.

I have done my best this year to keep it together, and keep it together I have.  But at a cost. It is a price I was willing to pay for my wife’s health and my children’s well being.  I would gladly pay it again.  I have no buyer’s remorse.

That price is my own well being.  Now that the crisis is over, I find myself falling. Failing. Tearing. My soul is tired, my head is heavy, and my heart is sad.  I am feeling the weight of my depression pushing down.

And so I eat.   

And I eat.

And I know it is counterproductive.

I know I will hate myself in the morning. Or in the next hour.  Or right now.

Last evening I overate just on this side of a binge.  I made conscious decisions to eat.  It wasn’t mindlessly done.  It was purposefully done.  And the right hand guy would ask “why?” and the left hand guy would say “who gives a fuck?”

And at that precise moment, for that half hour of carb induced inebriation, the right hand guy answered:

“No one.” 

Today, in the light of the day, I know I am not alone. But it often feels that way.

And right now I am not strong enough to keep it together.

Discoveries

It started with a memory.

I had been thinking about food and my odd relationship with it and I remembered a friend’s 30th birthday party. They had shish kabob gyro meat done up on the grill and all sorts of things to make Greek goodness.

And soon, as people were done eating, I got nervous.

You see, there was still meat on the buffet table. Delicious gryo meat! I couldn’t stand it. There was meat and no one was going to eat it. Presumably my friend would have put it in a container and kept it as leftovers, but she wasn’t doing it. She left it out there! And no one was eating it! The compulsion to eat it was overwhelming. I tried to be sneaky about it. I tried to hide the fact I was snacking long after everyone else had stopped eating. To this day I don’t know if anyone noticed, but the memory of that shame has not left me after 9 years. I ate about a 1/3 pound of meat that I wasn’t hungry for….simply because no one else was going to and I couldn’t stand it being there. Perhaps a third pound isn’t excessive, but the thoughts accompanying were.

Does this make a lick of goddam sense?

That memory lead to other thoughts. Roast beef, gravy and mashed potatoes. OMG. Whenever we have this, I pig out. And the thought in my head is “who knows when you’re gonna have this again? Better get it while you can.” Pig out city. Same thing with what my family calls goulash (most people would call it chili mac without the chili seasoning). I go ape shit for this stuff and eat bowl after bowl with the same thoughts “Better get it while you can.” Same with tuna & noodles. Same with chop suey. Same with popcorn. Same with macaroni and cheese (homemade with Velveeta, not that boxed stuff).

It’s insanity is what it is.

It is a compulsion from my unconscious mind. These foods are my comfort foods. They are the foods we had growing up. We had at least one of those dishes every week (well, not the roast beef, but since we raised steers it was often enough). I’m sure there some emotional attachment there that I’m going to have to explore someday. And all this brought to mind many other things. Mom couldn’t leave a gas station without a candy bar, and one for each of us boys. There was always an after school snack (sometimes healthy, sometimes not). There was nearly always a bedtime snack. Then there were the things that were scarce: Pop was only on hand if we were sick or having pizza. We didn’t have pizza very often. Chips were only served if we were having burgers and dogs. There is still a part of my mind that considers these things treats and rarely enjoyed despite the fact that I have them all the friggen’ time now.

“Better get it while you can.”

It has never been so clear to me that any health gain for me will not happen until I address this emotional attachment to food. Habits, fears of scarcities, attachments to childhood memories. These things I hadn’t figured on. Here I thought emotional eating meant only to eat as a way to deal with stress and hurt. It goes much deeper than that.

I am grateful for these discoveries.

A friend on Facebook posted a quote from Regina Brett in God Never Blinks:

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. At first that sounds harsh, but once you let go of what you wanted the past to be, you can start changing the present and create a better future.”

I don’t know what her book is about or what context this quote comes out of, but boy oh boy it is powerful. Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. Forgiveness of myself is giving up all hope that I won’t eat that gyro meat 9 years ago. It means giving up all hope that I’ll be able to restrain my compulsions of the past. It means giving up all hope that my mother will be a better example to the child within me when it comes to diet. It means to come to the final, inescapable conclusion that the past is set in stone. The hurts inflicted by myself and by others will not be erased and no hope in the world can change what has happened.

The present, however, can be changed. And that is more power than I've ever had before.

I have a lot of work to do.

Something positive, something negative

Image provided by FreeFoto.com

I am really struggling with this post.  I want to share a nascent change I've noticed in the last month.  I just don't know how to do it without giving a lot of backstory.  There's just so much to tell.  I'll try to keep it simple.


I recently shared about a financial situation that blindsided us.  Indeed, what I shared was rather negative.  And I can't stand here and tell you I faced that situation with complete happy optimism.  But I worked hard to keep a positive perspective.

Instead of thinking, "my god I have to put this on a cc and woe is me forever", I turned it to "thank god my credit limit is high enough that I can make this gap stop measure and get some breathing room before the next decision."  Instead of focusing on "there is nothing to be done, there is no help for us," I found myself open to the overtures of two CPAs who attend our church willing to sit down and go through our options.  And instead of thinking "I can't sit with them...then they'll know how ignorant I am when it comes to money," I thought "they are the experts; I can learn something here."


It wasn't easy, but I remained open to the chance that positive things could happen for us.  Indeed, I kept telling myself that positive things would happen to us even though I didn't always fully believe it.  Things turned out...ok.  None of the options available to us for absorbing this debt were any better than the cc.  Indeed, the current rate on this card is actually the lowest available to us, so the accountant friends gave it their blessing to keep it there until something else changes in our situation.

And now, on to the rest of the post....

Perhaps it is as simple as this: what you tell yourself to expect, that is what you find.  In everything. In your flaws, in your relationships, in your job, in your faith, in your finances.  Everything.  That is the power of Affirmations.  Whether that affirmation is positive or negative, it will have a profound effect on your responses to everything you encounter in life.

And that is the change I have found in myself.  I am floored how easily I calmed down after the initial shock.  I am shocked at how pervasive this new attitude is.  I do have a long way to go.  I have taken great strides in affirming myself as the great guy I knew I could be.  I have gone a long way to accepting that life will be painful, but positive opportunities will present themselves if I'm looking for them.

There is one place I still struggle with, though.  I hate my body.  I loathe it.  Right now my belly is so large and I feel so bloated.  I can't bend over to tie my shoes without holding my breath.  I struggle to get out of the sofa. I can feel the constraints of my clothing all day long.  I can accept my inner self so much easier than my physical self. I find myself thinking that maybe if I trick myself with faking positive affirmation thing as it concerns my body and it will respond even though deep down I hate it.  But it's not going to work.  As long as I affirm that I hate my physical self, my mental self will continue to abuse it and treat it as if were truly unworthy.

I love my fat self in as much as I have compassion for how I got this way--that I have used food to protect and soothe my emotions and that I am not a failure...but that is as far as I can get.  The flesh is much harder to love than the hurting person inside the flesh.

I have come a long way, my friends; but I have so much farther to go.  Thank you all for coming this far.

Bump at Lesson 3

I've been making my way, slowly, through Marianne Williamson's book, A course in weight loss (citation at the end of this post) after one of my favorite bloggers, Karen at Before & After suggested it to me.  I've only made it through 5 of the 21 lessons and I'm struggling a bit with it.

The author's main point seems to be that, until I resolve the very basic fears and issues I have with myself, no amount of dieting program or exercise will be successful in the long run.  I believe that, and the 21 lessons are a guide in helping me navigate down to the core of my negativity and building myself back up.

It is pretty powerful stuff.

I've gotten a fair bit of positive comments on my preceding post, Letters from a madman.  That was the result of working through lesson 2.  I was completely thrown by what my thin self had to say to my fat self,  AND vice versa.  I honestly had no idea how much I was holding in.  My wife took me to task for dropping the F-bomb not once, but twice.  But those letters convey exactly what my different perspectives I have of myself have to say.

Working through the book, however, it becomes clear that it was written with a strong focus on giving up to God my struggles and desire to control my habits.  Much like the AA program, I'm asked to believe in a higher power that can overcome my food addictions or compulsive eating because I certainly do not have the power to do it alone (or at all).  That's a problem.  Despite the fact that I am a 40 year old Mennonite man, baptized at 16, member of a congregation and, until recently, an appointed member of that congregation's leadership team...I have a very, very hard time with my faith.  I am a closet agnostic who wants to believe, wants to share with a body of believers, but, in the end, I know I cannot categorically say I know there is more.

And I wonder if it is worth pursuing this book further if I am continually encouraged to place my trust in the Divine Mind.

Much of what I read in her book makes sense and has already made an impact.  I am aware, now, just how much self loathing I have created and carry (well, I know how much I've discovered...there may be more to come).  I am trying to accept myself and be comfortable with my size to the point where it is no longer a problem for me to solve, but a life I can choose. Or not choose.  I am convinced more than ever that before any meaningful change, I must learn that I am important enough for me to love unconditionally.  And this doubt in a higher power so early in the book is a stumbling block as I begin this journey.

The author invites the reader to take whatever notion of a higher power one can feel comfortable with. Right now the only power I feel comfortable in taking on is Love.  I know that is corny.  But there are so many people in my life who have shown me love even when I don't always recognize it.  The love of my wife, my parents and my children (and, occasionally, my brothers).  The love of my 20 warriors who journeyed with me when I lost 60 pounds in 08-09; and journeyed with me again when I put it all back on.  The love of the readers who come by my blog, strangers for the most part, but still willing to leave a message of encouragement or sympathy or empathy.  The love of my many friends IRL and elsewhere on the internets.

If I can learn to give myself that kind of power from myself to myself, I will get past lesson 3 and move on.

And, as promised, the bibliographic information:

Williamson, Marianne. A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2010. Print.

Counting my blessings

I've been hemming and hawing about whether or not to expound on my thoughts about Maura Kelly and her recent blog blow up.  If you haven't read it, you can here and a link to a solid, sound response (the best I've found yet)* can be found here.  But to sum it up, Kelly put her foot in her mouth when she said that she would find it disgusting to watch fat people be affectionate on TV, indeed that watching a fat person walk across the room is too much to bear in real life.  And it gets worse from there, partly because she seems to be in earnest that she's really writing to help the overweight.

I don't have a real need to vilify her.  Plenty of others on the interwebs have done enough of that.  Instead, the whole thing has gotten me rather reflective about my own situation.  I've been rather lucky that I have not experienced a lot of prejudice and nasty comments from strangers.  And those I get from friends and family are mild and only on occasion.  Some of the stories are downright funny if you ask me.  A few years back a patron of the branch library, where I work as the librarian and staff supervisor, called to complain about customer service.  I took the phone call, listened to the gentleman, then asked if he knew who on my staff had treated him so poorly.  He said: "It was that really fat guy."  I responded, "Well, sir, I'm the only male employee here so it must have been me.  What can I do to make the situation better?"  There was silence, then he said "Well, I guess we're even."  Then he hung up.

It isn't to say that I have escaped harsh words and judgmental looks from others.  Simply that it doesn't happen too often to me. This brouhaha around Kelly's post actually reminds me how lucky I've been to have such a fantastic network of friends and family.  I have a feeling that it has partly to do with the fact that I'm male.  Most of my female friends have many more horror stories than my male friends in this regard.  Or it could also be that I'm just clueless, which actually tends to go along with being male. 

Still, there is one thing that many well meaning people in my life do that cuts deeper than most.  If they see me snacking, they'll ask "are you sure you want to do that?"  My former pastor was notorious for this one.  It bothers me because a flat out insult can be processed and ignored rather quickly in my headspace (ok, I'm not that laid back, but in comparison...) but these statements carry a stench of "Father Knows Best" that really rubs the wrong way.  And I can guarantee that it will have the opposite effect.  It doesn't work when I shame myself, what is it about these people that they think they can shame me into a healthier lifestyle?  Many friends and family who say that to me say it only once.  But some just don't get a clue.

Where is all this leading? I have no freaking clue.  Like many in my situation, the emotions caught up in lifestyles destructive to healthy living are complex.  If I write next week, I would probably come up with a whole litany of slights and insults, judgments and injustice.  But right now, I'm feeling pretty good about myself so this is really all the bluster I can muster after following the train-wreck at Kelly's blog.

*Update: Josh Shahryar's response is fantastic in its rational counter arguments and analysis, Jen Lancaster's response is simply brilliant.