Am i willing to get well?

We hear a lot about wanting to recover and wanting is great, but i really believe that 'willing" is key.

Recovery isn't easy -- am i willing to do whatever it takes (to go to any lengths, as the 12 Steps say) to get well?

For much of my life, that answer was no. for years, I was absolutely NOT willing to eat anything that would make me gain weight. i was never willing to tell anyone else what i ate and certainly wasn't going to listen to anyone else's advice. Sorry every nutritionist who ever met me!

i wasn't willing to stop binging and purging, no matter that my ulcer begged me, my doctors begged me, my dentist begged me.

i wasn't willing to give up the scale or eat breakfast or give up diet soda.

so, how exactly was i supposed to recover? and what was stopping me?

My eating disorders -- compulsive eating, anorexia, bulimia -- anesthesized all my pain, anger, fear, hurt and sadness. How could i give up the only things that soothed and comforted me? starving was a balm, food was my best friend, lover and constant companion. throwing up felt like tossing out all my inner ugliness.

but considering the state of my health, mental and physical,  how could i not consider giving them up and
facing the underlying issues -- my fear, my anger, my sorrow, my hurt, my disappointments?

i'm walking that path now and what a relief,  i can face and be rid of the fears, the resentments and the pain. at the same time, i find i can eat, can live without a scale, can drink water instead of diet Coke. can live life without the constant obsession

but i have to be willing.

No More Food Obsession?!

Pancakes were always my go to binge food, and they were my very favorite food.  Because I thought they were a trigger and wouldn’t be able to eat them normally and moderately, I haven’t had a pancake in many years.

Yesterday, my boss ordered pancakes for lunch and asked if I wanted a bite. “Hmmm”, I thought. It would be interesting to test my theory that one bite would likely lead to endless rounds with Aunt Jemima.

I took a bite. It was pleasant, but – it was just a pancake. What a revelation.

I’ve had a lot of revelations about food lately, with the most important being that it’s not that interesting!!!!  My whole damn life I thought food was the end all be all. I believed that if I wouldn’t gain weight, I would spend all my time eating and all of it would be rich and fattening foods. For most of my life , I thought about food ALL the time. One time, I realized I hadn’t once thought about eating for 5 whole minutes, and it brought me to tears.

Lately, I’ve noticed that my food obsession is, well, not there. It’s has though it’s been removed from me.  It floors me. I don’t think about food and when I’m eating, a small portion suffices perfectly. When I’m done, I don’t think about food again until I’m actually hungry.  And “fattening” food holds no particular interest.

(did I just write that paragraph?)

For the longest time, I ate well but still found myself envying people who ate more quantities and less healthy food. I stayed away from foods that were too appealing – foods I would always want more and more of. One slice of pizza seemed never enough.

But now………it’s different. Sometimes the pizza looks good; sometimes it doesn’t. And when it looks good, I’ll take a couple of bites and……….well, I’m good.

I can not believe this freedom. 

Sleeping Pills

I’ve been an insomniac my whole life. I remember reading thru the night as a child (with, of course, frequent trips to the kitchen – using food to keep me company.)

It was a lifetime of sleepless nights, night after night, starting from early childhood. As an adult, I was alone in my apartment, up all night, binging and puking. Chronic insomnia played a huge role in my drinking (made me sleepy), binging (food “kept me company”), and drugging (with cocaine, I didn’t even need sleep.)

In my 30s, I discovered sleep aids – ambien, codeine, vicodin, xanax, whatever a doctor (any doctor) would give me.  And naturally, I abused them by taking too many or combining them with each other and alcohol.

While in rehab (which is clearly where I belonged!), doctors prescribed Trazodone, which they explained was an anti-depressant that didn’t really work, but it did have the side effect of making people sleepy. Doctors assured me it was fine and not addictive and not problematic.

I’ve been taking Trazodone for four years, every night, and I do sleep well. BUT I do feel pretty drowsy and woozy in the morning. In general, I don’t feel like my mind and memory are as sharp as they used to be, although I don’t know if that’s the Trazodone.

Now, my sponsor wants me to get off the meds. He thinks I use them as a crutch and it’s still “druggy”.

At first, I freaked out. “oh my God, don’t take sleep away from me. I couldn’t bear it.” I flashed back to every sleepless moment throughout my life.

My sponsor was insistent, and I began to see his point. Wouldn’t it be great to be free of a medication that makes me drowsy and woozy and perhaps forgetful and dumb? AND, what if I stepped up and, like a grown-up, took some other measures, like cutting down on my very high caffeine consumption? Exercise? Herbal remedies?

For the last two nights, I’ve cut my dosage in half and slept fewer hours, but I slept! I’m so encouraged.

I’m interested in other people’s experience with sleep and lack thereof. Anyone have an experience to share?

IDENTIFY WITHOUT THE SCALE

i haven't weighed myself since last Thursday which, in my world, is quite the record. it's amazing how that's effected this (apparently rather small) life of mine and me.

it's particularly amazing in the face of everything else happening in the real world - planes crashing, political upheaval in the Middle East, my best friend putting his frightened and confused mom into a nursing home. I'm having trouble paying my rent.

but for me, i just want my scale back.

Eating disorders do strange things. i don't feel "right" because i don't know my weight. i'm not quite sure what or how much to eat -- in truth, what should be as natural as breathing is convoluted and artificial.

 i rely on a number on a small digital device to tell me if my body and i are ok. 

Changing my Relationship with Food

my relationship with food has been, uh, dysfunctional to say the least.  for most of my life, it was my everything -- mother, lover, sister, friend. If there was food, i wanted it -- no matter what time it was, what it was or if i was even hungry.

i see that's changed, with a lot of work. i've learned that food does nothing for me but nourish me. i'm delighted if it tastes nice, but that's about it.

in some ways, i mourn a more loving relationship. some folks love food and eat a normal amount and get great pleasure from eating, but that doesn't work for me.

for me, food is and has to be practical. i need to find pleasure in other things -- friends, leisure, intellectual challenge, nature......

Many people don't understand my relationship with food. it doesn't excite me. if you take me out to a fancy restaurant, i like being waited on and the prettiness, but i'm not into the food in particular. 

fabulous food doesn't rock my world. i do like it to taste good, but that's about it.

is, i wonder, my relationship still dysfunctional?

The Pain behind Compulsive Eating

i've written before about my disagreements with Mrs. Obama's War on Childhood Obesity. Children don't need war; they need many other things but not war.

Yes, it's great to get sedentary kids to move and to teach them about fruits and veggies and grilling BUT that avoids the root of the problem -- the pain behind compulsive eating. In my experience, if the average kid isn't encouraged to get off the couch and eats more fried food than broiled, he may well end up with a certain amount of extra weight but obesity, that's another (mental health) issue entirely.

i grew up with heavy food -- pancakes and waffles for breakfast, big sandwiches for lunch, meat and pasta for dinner. but my parents and my brother and sister weren't overweight. they ate as much as they needed to nourish themselves  and then went about their lives. my mom played the piano, my dad gardened, my sister was cheerleader and my brother, quite the intellectual.

me, i ate. those are my memories. and when things felt stressful -- my parents hated each other, i had no friends, i only thought about food....i ate more.

it was the emptiness i fed. there weren't enough pancakes (always my #1 binge food) in the world to fill up my loneliness. 

the key seems to be in helping us learn how to truly feed our empty souls, because the answer definetely is not in Aunt Jemima. nor, i think is it truly in outdoor activities in broccoli.

OBESITY AND ME

i'm fascinated by obesity and compulsive eating. Why not, it's my story

although i spent years as an anorexic and bulimic, it's obesity and compulsive eating that feel like "home" to me. that's what i am -- a compulsive eater, hwo sometimes masqueraded as anorexic

food was my world. sophomore year of college, i gained 70 pounds in six months. i couldn't sleep, i couldn't breathe, i wouldn't do anything but eat. yet, for all the pain -- emotional and physical, i kept eating. and eating. eating.......

when i was obese, i was miserable -- emotionally demoralized and physically uncomfortable most of the time.

emotional pain -- the terror that i couldn't, wouldn't stop eating, the shame that i'd grown 12 sizes in six months, the certainty that i'd never be anything to anyone.

physically, i hurt. my thighs chafed daily, my bra strap left deep angry marks on my still narrow shoulders, my belly rolls folded and folded, making it uncomfortable to sit.

and still, i ate.

in the years i was starving, all i thought about was food. i made long, endless lists of all the food i would eat if i wouldn't gain weight. it was huge amounts of high calorie mixtures -- pancakes drenched in butter and syrup with bacon and eggs, pecan pie with wet walnuts, ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream,

with bulimia, i ate all those foods and so many more and then purged, starved and binged again trying to fill the bottomless pit that was my soul.

if weight gain were not an option, i would have eaten constantly all day without breaks.  when asked, hypothetically, what i would do if i found out i had only hours to live, i wanted to pull my car into Applegate's Dairy in Montclair, NJ and eat ice cream until the end.

such a sad life, limited to food