I’m not perfect.
I’ve spent the last three years focusing on why I abused food and can now say that I am no longer a practicing food adict.
Enter my shopping addiction.
The great thing about finally gaining insight into my food addiction is that I also have new insight into my addictions in general. I didn’t abuse food for one reason and compulsively shop for another. It’s all the same shit manifesting itself in multiple (seemingly every) area of my life.
So let’s talk about my current shopping struggles, shall we?
I started a new job in July of this year. It’s a great job and I’m totally blessed. It was a great career move and the work is work that I want to be doing.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that I came in at the busiest time ever and no one has time to train me. When they DO have time to train me, I’m at max busy for a day. Several days pass before I meet with a trainer again. It will not always be this way, but it’s this way now and I’m so fucking bored I could just die.
So how do I alleviate this boredom? I shop on the internet from 9am – 5pm Monday through Friday.
Window shopping is fine. It’s fun to put together fantasy outfits (if you’re me, it’s fun anyway), fantasy furniture designs and browse, browse, browse for the stuff I actually need (when I size down I frequently need to replace the vast majority of my wardrobe).
What ISN’T fine is when I make want-based purchases without clearing them with my husband. He totally busted me last night on the two (TWO) Dooney & Bourke bags that I’ve bought in the last month. Granted, they were a GREAT deal for Dooney & Bourke (or as my husband says, ‘Dooney and Booney’), but I don’t NEED two new handbags let ALONE two new Dooney & Bourke handbags.
Sound like a familiar pattern? I’m unhappy/bored, I eat (shop), I feel good, the food is gone (or the item arrives) and I’m still unhappy/bored. Better eat more (buy something else) so I can feel better again.
Yup. I’ve swapped one addiction for another.
This happened when I had a dramatic weight loss in 2006. I became OBSESSED with shopping and had no idea why. What’s so great about the fact that it’s 2010 and NOT 2006? I now see the CLEAR connection between what I’m using shopping for: I’m using it to avoid feeling what I don’t want to feel (bored and unhappy).
So what do you do if you can’t abuse food, can’t shop compulsively and can’t smoke (I QUIT SMOKING IN JULY 2010!!!)?
There are a few things you can do:
1. Be present and aware.
When browsing online there’s always the risk that I will come across something that seems to be too good of a deal to pass up (case in point, those two handbags). When I find this item that makes my pupils dilate and my heart race it is very easy to be lost in the moment and buy without regard for the impact the purchase will have on our finances (let alone buying without regard for the fact that I don’t actually need anything).
To prevent buyer’s remorse I don’t allow myself to be carried away on a sea of cute handbag adrenaline. When I feel the familiar reactions to a cute item, I stop, remove myself from the situation, make myself wait a day before making the purchase (which waiting ALWAYS prevents from taking place).
Another form of awareness is knowing what I can and cannot handle. I cannot handle browsing the monthly specials at dooney.com. I just can’t. So I don’t do it.
I also prevent myself from making a new purchase by looking at my recent purchases (they’re usually right next to me or on my body) and acknowledging that owning these items did not change anything. Yes, they’re cute, but I’m still looking for more new items to add to the collection so clearly the same will be the case when whatever I’m about to purchase is no longer online but in my possession. Once I own the item, life will be the same. I’ll still be bored at work, but in addition I’ll have the SECONDARY problem of feeling bad about having made a purchase, wasted money, prevented our savings from accumulating as fast as it potentially could, etc.
2. Do something else that isn’t boring.
I work downtown at the end of a one mile stretch of pedestrian only highway. I love walking. I love the season (fall).
It’s very easy for me to steal away for 30 minutes and take a brisk walk. The benefits of this are many since not only am I no longer bored, but I’m moving my body, enjoying the sunshine, taking in the sights/sounds/smells of the city. It’s great!
I totally neglected my blog and this downtime is a great opportunity to update it with everything I’ve learned/am learning.
People use the internet for a lot of things. It isn’t JUST a 24 hour mall. It’s also an amazing resource on ANYTHING you might be interested in knowing about, well, ANYTHING. Best part, using the internet as a resource doesn’t lead to a drained bank account or feelings of guilt.
You get the idea. I have a lot of options and choices that don’t involve spending money. I just have to be CONSTANTLY aware of why I’m doing what I’m doing. Am I abusing food/shopping compulsively/*insert distructive behavior here* as a means to avoid feeling something I don’t want to feel? The answer is always ‘yes’. I just need to pay attention and I can uncover the TRUE motivations for my destructive behavior and address it instead of perpetuating it.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Tools
Once I got my head in order and wasn’t looking outside of myself for some magic solution to my food abuse issues, I started to seek out reading material that coincided with my outlook. I found the following books very helpful and read them several times. It was great to have the authors’ insight expand on what I was learning about myself. It was also great to have their thoughts and ideas in my head during the more challenging times.
- Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth
This book completely changed my life. It spoke to my relationship with food on a level that I had never experienced before. It also promised that I could use my relationship with food as a path to what Geneen calls ‘God’.
She’s not referring to God in the conventional sense. The theme of the book isn’t ‘Jesus loves a thin girl’. She’s referring more to the ‘sigh of ecstasy’ that so many are searching for, don’t find, and ‘replace’ by abusing food.
There is more to life than food. So much more. You don’t have to settle for a life who’s only ‘joy’ comes from the high of escaping into a binge. There IS more and if you’re willing to find it, this book can help.
Every page contained a revelation. Every page spoke to me. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Read it four times and will read it countless more. Reading this book is like going home.
- What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better by Dan Baker Ph.D.
I’m not going to lie to you, this book started out kind of hokey and I felt like a hippy was reading to me. I stuck with it and learned a lot about what does and does not lead to happiness. Most of us are looking in the wrong places. While this book doesn’t deal exclusively with food addiction, it does provide insight into what DOES lead to happiness.
Who doesn’t want to be happy?
- Naturally Thin: Unleash your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting by Bethenny Frankel
I took from this book what I needed/wanted and left the rest.
Pros:
This book gave me a lot of great tools to implement the new thought process I learned in Women, Food and God. I understood all of the concepts of Geneen Roth’s book, but wanted more direction when it came to applying these concepts. Enter Bethenny Frankel’s book.
I could relate to Bethenny’s story and her journey to natural thinness. Bethenny is a former food and exercise obsessive (sound familiar?) who decided to get off the diet and exercise treadmill and just live her life. She lays out the guidelines she follows and covers one guideline per chapter. It’s heavy on the application part which is what I needed.
She’s a huge fan of playing fast and loose. She frequently stresses that perfection is not the goal. These are guidelines. Some days you’re going to have more or less than what an ideal day would/should contain, but that’s how life is. Perfection is not attainable and it is not the goal.
Her view of exercise is in line with mine: do what you love because you’ll actually do it.
She emphasizes that her guidelines are not meant to be restrictions. They’re all meant to be used as a means to be good to yourself. I couldn’t agree more with the ‘diet and exercise as an expression of love’ concept.
There are also GREAT recipes in this book.
Cons:
Her narrative voice can sound harsh. She’s abrasive so I get it, but if I hadn’t already read Women, Food and God, I don’t think this book would have been a good book for me to read. Her narrative voice can sound a LOT like my inner-critic. She can also use negative and judgemental turns of phrase that I’m trying to banish from my life (ie: you want the cupcake right this second? What are you? Two years old?).
She says never to measure or count. That measuring and counting are obsessive. Yes, they can be. I agree, but she then goes on to describe in detail how to use different size bowls for certain kinds of foods (ie: a super small bowl for ice cream) and guidelines for a balanced day (no more than two servings of sweets a day, if you have alcohol, that counts as one sweet, if your last meal was carb heavy, your next meal should be protein based and you want to have this many protein meals and this many carb meals each day, etc). Um, sounds like counting to me. You count your way with your dishes and ‘no more than two sweets a day’ guidelines (granted, they’re good guidelines, but don’t pretend like you’re not counting and tracking) and I’ll count and track my way.
Happy reading!
- Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth
This book completely changed my life. It spoke to my relationship with food on a level that I had never experienced before. It also promised that I could use my relationship with food as a path to what Geneen calls ‘God’.
She’s not referring to God in the conventional sense. The theme of the book isn’t ‘Jesus loves a thin girl’. She’s referring more to the ‘sigh of ecstasy’ that so many are searching for, don’t find, and ‘replace’ by abusing food.
There is more to life than food. So much more. You don’t have to settle for a life who’s only ‘joy’ comes from the high of escaping into a binge. There IS more and if you’re willing to find it, this book can help.
Every page contained a revelation. Every page spoke to me. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. Read it four times and will read it countless more. Reading this book is like going home.
- What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better by Dan Baker Ph.D.
I’m not going to lie to you, this book started out kind of hokey and I felt like a hippy was reading to me. I stuck with it and learned a lot about what does and does not lead to happiness. Most of us are looking in the wrong places. While this book doesn’t deal exclusively with food addiction, it does provide insight into what DOES lead to happiness.
Who doesn’t want to be happy?
- Naturally Thin: Unleash your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting by Bethenny Frankel
I took from this book what I needed/wanted and left the rest.
Pros:
This book gave me a lot of great tools to implement the new thought process I learned in Women, Food and God. I understood all of the concepts of Geneen Roth’s book, but wanted more direction when it came to applying these concepts. Enter Bethenny Frankel’s book.
I could relate to Bethenny’s story and her journey to natural thinness. Bethenny is a former food and exercise obsessive (sound familiar?) who decided to get off the diet and exercise treadmill and just live her life. She lays out the guidelines she follows and covers one guideline per chapter. It’s heavy on the application part which is what I needed.
She’s a huge fan of playing fast and loose. She frequently stresses that perfection is not the goal. These are guidelines. Some days you’re going to have more or less than what an ideal day would/should contain, but that’s how life is. Perfection is not attainable and it is not the goal.
Her view of exercise is in line with mine: do what you love because you’ll actually do it.
She emphasizes that her guidelines are not meant to be restrictions. They’re all meant to be used as a means to be good to yourself. I couldn’t agree more with the ‘diet and exercise as an expression of love’ concept.
There are also GREAT recipes in this book.
Cons:
Her narrative voice can sound harsh. She’s abrasive so I get it, but if I hadn’t already read Women, Food and God, I don’t think this book would have been a good book for me to read. Her narrative voice can sound a LOT like my inner-critic. She can also use negative and judgemental turns of phrase that I’m trying to banish from my life (ie: you want the cupcake right this second? What are you? Two years old?).
She says never to measure or count. That measuring and counting are obsessive. Yes, they can be. I agree, but she then goes on to describe in detail how to use different size bowls for certain kinds of foods (ie: a super small bowl for ice cream) and guidelines for a balanced day (no more than two servings of sweets a day, if you have alcohol, that counts as one sweet, if your last meal was carb heavy, your next meal should be protein based and you want to have this many protein meals and this many carb meals each day, etc). Um, sounds like counting to me. You count your way with your dishes and ‘no more than two sweets a day’ guidelines (granted, they’re good guidelines, but don’t pretend like you’re not counting and tracking) and I’ll count and track my way.
Happy reading!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
What I've learned since 2007: Part 5
5. No outside influence is going to make it happen.
I've tried EVERYTHING and NOTHING has worked. Sound familiar? All people who have experienced multiple unsuccessful attempts to take off and keep off weight say this. I can’t speak to what it means for all those other people, but I can tell you what it means to me.
If my brain isn’t in the right place, no team of experts, personal trainer, hypnotist, nutritionist, personal chef, food delivery service, homeopath, herbalist, infomercial, celebrity or plastic surgeon is going to make me stick with a healthy lifestyle.
For years I was working from the outside in. I was looking to everyone else to make it happen for me and I have documented all failed attempts from 2007 on in this blog. I was looking for the right combination of foods, the magic work out, the secret code that I was sure existed SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE OF MYSELF that would lead to permanent weight loss.
Once I realized that what I really needed to figure out was exactly how to love myself, the rest all fell into place. Then and ONLY then were the tools that existed outside of me (eating in a loving way, moving my body for the joy of it, reading inspiring books on the subject of living a healthy lifestyle) effective.
Once I got my own head screwed on straight, I started to see how so many people around me, almost everyone, had food issues of some sort, abused food in some way, and/or were looking for a solution outside of themselves. ANYTHING to avoid feeling whatever it is that they are abusing food in order to avoid feeling.
Here is one example of many. I tell this story without judgment as this story could be my story. Heck, it kind of IS my story:
I used to work with a gentleman who was obese. He had the lap band surgery and binged all the way up to the day his pre-surgery diet started. Clearly his head was not in the right place, but he was sure this tool would fix the problem.
After the surgery he lost some weight, but his main focus was not to adopt a healthy lifestyle. His main focus was to cheat the lap band. If he couldn’t EAT the calories, he would drink them.
He said that his quality of life decreased after the surgery. Of COURSE his quality of life seemed to decrease. He could no longer use food in the same way to escape his discomfort.
He also gained back any weight he lost (which wasn’t much) and over a year later is in the same place physically and, from what I observed, emotionally.
I don’t judge, but this is one clear example of many. Clear to me, anyway. He has no idea what the problem is. No idea why he can’t lose weight. Like so many of us, he hasn’t addressed the issues that cause him to abuse food.
One day, he sent out an email with the following subject line:
‘I’m totally stressed and need some junk food. Anyone want to order Chinese?’
Until he acknowledges that he abuses food, discovers WHY he abuses food, and decides that he will no longer abuse food, nothing will ever change.
At my dance and fitness studio, people have noticed my transformation and everyone wants to know what my secret is. When I tell them what the catalyst for my transformation was, I get blank stares. It CAN’T be as simple as loving yourself. For me, it was. For you, it’s as simple as *insert-reason-you-abuse-food-here*.
I've tried EVERYTHING and NOTHING has worked. Sound familiar? All people who have experienced multiple unsuccessful attempts to take off and keep off weight say this. I can’t speak to what it means for all those other people, but I can tell you what it means to me.
If my brain isn’t in the right place, no team of experts, personal trainer, hypnotist, nutritionist, personal chef, food delivery service, homeopath, herbalist, infomercial, celebrity or plastic surgeon is going to make me stick with a healthy lifestyle.
For years I was working from the outside in. I was looking to everyone else to make it happen for me and I have documented all failed attempts from 2007 on in this blog. I was looking for the right combination of foods, the magic work out, the secret code that I was sure existed SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE OF MYSELF that would lead to permanent weight loss.
Once I realized that what I really needed to figure out was exactly how to love myself, the rest all fell into place. Then and ONLY then were the tools that existed outside of me (eating in a loving way, moving my body for the joy of it, reading inspiring books on the subject of living a healthy lifestyle) effective.
Once I got my own head screwed on straight, I started to see how so many people around me, almost everyone, had food issues of some sort, abused food in some way, and/or were looking for a solution outside of themselves. ANYTHING to avoid feeling whatever it is that they are abusing food in order to avoid feeling.
Here is one example of many. I tell this story without judgment as this story could be my story. Heck, it kind of IS my story:
I used to work with a gentleman who was obese. He had the lap band surgery and binged all the way up to the day his pre-surgery diet started. Clearly his head was not in the right place, but he was sure this tool would fix the problem.
After the surgery he lost some weight, but his main focus was not to adopt a healthy lifestyle. His main focus was to cheat the lap band. If he couldn’t EAT the calories, he would drink them.
He said that his quality of life decreased after the surgery. Of COURSE his quality of life seemed to decrease. He could no longer use food in the same way to escape his discomfort.
He also gained back any weight he lost (which wasn’t much) and over a year later is in the same place physically and, from what I observed, emotionally.
I don’t judge, but this is one clear example of many. Clear to me, anyway. He has no idea what the problem is. No idea why he can’t lose weight. Like so many of us, he hasn’t addressed the issues that cause him to abuse food.
One day, he sent out an email with the following subject line:
‘I’m totally stressed and need some junk food. Anyone want to order Chinese?’
Until he acknowledges that he abuses food, discovers WHY he abuses food, and decides that he will no longer abuse food, nothing will ever change.
At my dance and fitness studio, people have noticed my transformation and everyone wants to know what my secret is. When I tell them what the catalyst for my transformation was, I get blank stares. It CAN’T be as simple as loving yourself. For me, it was. For you, it’s as simple as *insert-reason-you-abuse-food-here*.
What I've learned since 2007: Part 4
4. I decided to stop using torture and hatred as a means to transform myself.
I’ve lost weight, significant amounts of weight, countless times in my thirty two years on this earth. Each weight loss followed the same formula of equal parts restriction, torture, self abuse, and misery.
I have talked to so many women and our belief as a society of what healthy eating and exercise should feel like is frequently the same: in order to lose weight, you have to be totally miserable.
You need to eat things you have NO DESIRE to eat just because they ‘fit’ into your ‘diet’. If you were Champagne Chai, this meant that you greatly restricted your salt, sugar, carb and fat intake. What does this leave? Not much. Shocking that once the weight came off I couldn’t maintain these eating habits, isn’t it?
When other people are enjoying a piece of cake or a steak or anything that isn’t on my ‘diet’ I have to have iron will power and not participate. ‘Giving in’ to such evil, sinful foods means that I am a failure.
Exercise must be akin to torture. If I can breathe, I'm not working hard enough. If I'm not miserable, clearly whatever I'm participating in isn’t going to be effective.
Every pound lost is meaningless if no one’s noticed/I'm not down a dress size/I can’t fit into those pants the way I want to/I'm not in a certain outfit by a certain date/insert-expectation-that-is-specific-to-you.
All of the above is exactly the behavior and thought process that I believed would lead to successful weight loss. If I failed (which I always did since I failed to keep the weight off) clearly it was because I was somehow defective. There was nothing wrong with my methods, I just lacked willpower, I didn’t want it badly enough, etc.
EVERYTHING was wrong with my methods.
Because I now loved myself, there was no way I could follow this same eating and exercise process ever again. Who would do that to someone they loved? I love my dogs and I have yet to express this love by depriving and torturing them. The same logic was to be applied to how I treated Champagne on her new journey. I was going to love myself every step of the way. But how?:
A. I eat when I’m hungry. I stop when I’m full.
How do I know when I'm hungry? How do I know when I'm full? After years of abusing and not listening to my body, I had no idea.
I’ve learned that if I have to ask myself if I'm hungry, I'm thinking about it too hard: I need to get out of my head and into my body. Do I feel hungry? Not sure? The answer is likely ‘no, I'm not hungry’. I need to wait an hour and check in again (‘an hour’ is arbitrary. I may wait 15 minutes and FEEL the hunger in my BODY. That’s the point, not some amount of time. My body is different everyday and needs food at different times. It doesn't live by the clock. I now LISTEN to it). Hunger is a feeling. I will FEEL true hunger and not be able to mistake it for anything else. For me, hunger feels like emptiness. My stomach growls and feels vacant. I also get fatigued and irritable if I let myself get too hungry. Life is unpredictable and ideally I never allow myself to get to the point of extreme hunger, but it happens. Bottom line, I took the time to listen to my body and learn what hunger feels like.
What does fullness feel like? This one is harder for me. I’m still learning what fullness feels like so I’m not able to put it into words very easily. Since I can’t easily identify satisfaction after years of over and under eating, I check in with myself every few bites. I eat slowly, chewing my food thoroughly. I try to eat without distraction (still working on this one) so that I can be aware of what I’m eating and how it makes me feel. Sometimes the feeling of fullness is sudden and obvious and I drop my fork. Other times I’m not sure so I have a few more bites and check in again. It can be subtle, but if I pay attention I can tell when I’ve had enough.
B. I let my body decide what I eat.
In addition to eating when I’m hungry and stopping when I’m full, I’ve also gotten to know what foods make me feel good and keep me operating at my best. This involved some trial and error, but that’s okay since perfection isn’t the goal.
I had to learn how to distinguish between what Bethenny Frankel refers to as my ‘food noise’ and my ‘food voice’:
So I’m DESPERATE for cheesecake. It’s all I can think about. I eat it. Plow through it. The entire thing. I feel terrible after... I just listened to my food noise.
I see a commercial for something and am now DYING for it... Also food noise.
Last night after my workout, I was ready to eat my arm. I got home and was desperate for a green salad loaded with all my fave veggies topped with grilled salmon. I was able to pay attention to the entire meal, savor it, feel it nourish my body and stop eating when I was full. This was an example of me listening to my food voice.
It’s not always this clear cut, but knowing that most of my cravings are just food noise and will pass if I just sit tight makes it SO MUCH EASIER to recognize the craving for what it is.
I’m not perfect and I don’t just sit there and bask in my self control when a craving strikes. Sometimes I too need to satisfy the craving with a substitute (I see a commercial for Doritos and would now sell my soul for a bag. If I can’t wait it out, I hit the fridge and eat a pickle or two. The salty crunch was a fine substitute. Craving averted. Moving on).
Other times I can just sit there and endure the food noise now that I know what triggers most of my so called ‘cravings’: I would have a fight with my husband and ‘crave’ something; I would not be able to wear an outfit that made me feel beautiful and suddenly I’m having a ‘craving’. ALL. FOOD. NOISE.
C. Food is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just food.
I used to be TERRIFIED at the prospect of being put in a situation where I would be confronted by food that was not part of my uber-restrictive diet. WHAT IF I HAD ONE BITE OF SOMETHING THAT DIDN’T FIT INTO MY EATING PLAN!!!???
I actually had good reason to be terrified because when one is starving oneself and/or eating only foods that bring no joy, it is completely likely that a binge is only one bite of delicious food away.
But I’m no longer starving myself. I’m listening to my body, eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m full and eating what my body wants. NOW I can walk into a situation that involves delicious food and eat it. Or not eat it. It’s just food.
Eating it isn’t the end of the world because now that I eat when I’m hungry, I didn’t ‘save up’ for this event. I’ve eaten normal meals all day long. I probably had a huge salad right before this event as an extra precaution. Since I’m not walking in ready to inhale the first plate of food I see, I’m able to do a lap, look at everything, eat what looks good, eat what appeals to me most, eat just a few bites of some things, CONSTANTLY checking in with myself to see if I’m still enjoying this bite as much as the last. Asking myself if I am full? Am I overfull?
This event is not the last event that I will eat at. Knowing that this food won’t make me happy/won’t make me love myself/it’s just food/I’ll see all this food again in my life/I’ll see better food in my life/etc makes it so much easier to enjoy what appeals to me most without needing to wear stretchy pants. I love myself every step of the way. Stuffing myself and making myself uncomfortable is no way to love myself with food.
Ideally I’ve eaten before this event. But what if this was a non-ideal day? What if I did allow myself to get overly hungry and I arrive at the event ready to tie one on? Simple: I find foods that are part of my daily intake (salads, soups, fruit, veg, lean proteins) and eat my usual portion. Most events offer something that resembles food that I would eat on any given day. I eat this first. Wait. Check in. Listen to my body. Once I’ve brought my blood sugar up to a normal level and I’m able to make sensible decisions about the more indulgent items, I do another lap and pick the foods that I want to sample and I do just that: sample. I have a few bites, enjoy them, check in, rinse and repeat until my body tells me to stop.
Again, perfection isn’t the goal. Sometimes I pull a chair up to the hors d'oeuvres. It happens. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I don’t beat myself up. I love myself no matter what. Over eating does not affect my self worth. I move on.
I also use over eating as an opportunity to check in. How do I feel now that I over ate? Am I bloated? Exhausted? Sluggish? Did I have to race to the ladies room and shit my brains out? If I feel like garbage, I’m not being very loving to myself. Again, I don’t judge, I just check in and continue to take stock, without judgment, of how different foods make me feel. The more mindful I become, the easier it gets to eat a comfortable amount of ANY FOOD because I know that I don’t want to feel sick and bloated.
D. I love myself with exercise.
There was a time when we all moved our bodies for the joy of it. I don’t care who you are and how much you think you hate exercising. There was a time, even if you were only a few years old, where you loved to do SOMETHING that involved physical activity.
As time passed, I lost the love of movement because I bought into the idea that exercise had to be torture to be effective. Sure, going for a 30 minute walk probably doesn’t burn as many calories as a 30 minute run. But I won’t run since I hate running. I will walk because I love walking. See where I’m going here? DOING something I love is more effective than not doing something I hate.
I won’t go for that run. I will think about how I have to run later and dread it ALL DAY. Then, when it’s time to run, I will delay it as long as possible. If I do run for a few days or even a few weeks, I won’t stick with it because NO ONE WILL STICK WITH SOMETHING THAT THEY HATE. Nor should they.
I was at a point with exercise where I genuinely thought that I hated anything that involved movement and I had to relearn my love of movement. Anyone can do this. Here’s how I did it:
I was a dancer my entire life but stopped dancing after college. When I gained weight and stopped performing, the opportunities for me to dance were all but non-existent. I was inspired at my heaviest to start taking dance classes again. When I got into class, it was like coming home. Sure, I was out of shape and not one-tenth of the dancer I used to be, but dance is one of my greatest loves and my hours in class flew by.
I was busting ass and sweating like a beast NOT because it would lead to more calories burned, but because to dance, for me, is my body’s ultimate form of expression. I have to dance or I will die. It literally POURS out of me.
So that was one night of the week. What about the other six? I would leave class each week WANTING to move more, but the urge to ‘exercise’ never hit me the other six days of the week. Why? I know now it’s because I needed to remember other activities besides dance that used to bring little Champagne joy.
Quite by accident (and I’ve written about it in this blog), I discovered that I love to bike ride. While on vacation in a beach resort, some friends and I rented bikes (I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I figured that if it was torture, it would only be one hour of my life). Much to my surprise, I LOVED it. When we returned from vacation, I was DESPERATE to own a bike. Once I owned that bike, I would wake up at 5in the morning (no lie) unable to sleep because I was so excited to hit the bike path. This love was the exact same love I had of bike riding as a child but had totally forgotten about.
Once I had dance and bike riding I knew I was on to something. I live in Buffalo and can’t ride year round so I had to dig deep and remember other activities I used to love.
In middle school, I couldn’t sleep the night before a roller skating party.
Growing up, you couldn’t keep me out of the pool during the summer months.
My senior year of high school, I went indoor rock climbing for the first time and LOVED it.
You get the idea. Do what you love (and trust me, you love something).
This has progressed into an exercise habit. Now, I try to move my body every day. I’m not obsessive about it, but have learned through listening to my body that moving on a daily basis makes me feel good. I sleep better. I wake feeling rested. I have a means to relieve stress. The list goes on. Life happens and some days there just isn’t time, but I don’t obsess over a missed workout because I’m going to have another work out tomorrow. And not because I have to, because I want to. Genuinely. I wasn’t always this way, but this has been my progression.
Some days I don’t feel like working out (GASP!). It’s true. But I know that I can’t trust my feelings. My feelings are a huge part of what got me into this mess in the first place. I can really only trust my body. When I don’t feel like working out, I check in with my body. What’s going on in my body? Is it fatigued? A little…how’s about I go to dance class anyway but take it easy tonight. I can always leave if I’m too tired to continue once class starts.
What always ends up happening is I get to class and feel energized. Some classes I have more energy than others, but my body isn’t a machine. It doesn’t operate on the exact same level every day. I have yet to go to class on a day that I ‘felt’ too tired to work out and abandoned ship in the middle of class (or regretted going).
Go. You can always leave. Your feelings are lying to you.
D. Bottom Line: Everything you do for yourself should be an expression of how much you love yourself.
I’ve lost weight, significant amounts of weight, countless times in my thirty two years on this earth. Each weight loss followed the same formula of equal parts restriction, torture, self abuse, and misery.
I have talked to so many women and our belief as a society of what healthy eating and exercise should feel like is frequently the same: in order to lose weight, you have to be totally miserable.
You need to eat things you have NO DESIRE to eat just because they ‘fit’ into your ‘diet’. If you were Champagne Chai, this meant that you greatly restricted your salt, sugar, carb and fat intake. What does this leave? Not much. Shocking that once the weight came off I couldn’t maintain these eating habits, isn’t it?
When other people are enjoying a piece of cake or a steak or anything that isn’t on my ‘diet’ I have to have iron will power and not participate. ‘Giving in’ to such evil, sinful foods means that I am a failure.
Exercise must be akin to torture. If I can breathe, I'm not working hard enough. If I'm not miserable, clearly whatever I'm participating in isn’t going to be effective.
Every pound lost is meaningless if no one’s noticed/I'm not down a dress size/I can’t fit into those pants the way I want to/I'm not in a certain outfit by a certain date/insert-expectation-that-is-specific-to-you.
All of the above is exactly the behavior and thought process that I believed would lead to successful weight loss. If I failed (which I always did since I failed to keep the weight off) clearly it was because I was somehow defective. There was nothing wrong with my methods, I just lacked willpower, I didn’t want it badly enough, etc.
EVERYTHING was wrong with my methods.
Because I now loved myself, there was no way I could follow this same eating and exercise process ever again. Who would do that to someone they loved? I love my dogs and I have yet to express this love by depriving and torturing them. The same logic was to be applied to how I treated Champagne on her new journey. I was going to love myself every step of the way. But how?:
A. I eat when I’m hungry. I stop when I’m full.
How do I know when I'm hungry? How do I know when I'm full? After years of abusing and not listening to my body, I had no idea.
I’ve learned that if I have to ask myself if I'm hungry, I'm thinking about it too hard: I need to get out of my head and into my body. Do I feel hungry? Not sure? The answer is likely ‘no, I'm not hungry’. I need to wait an hour and check in again (‘an hour’ is arbitrary. I may wait 15 minutes and FEEL the hunger in my BODY. That’s the point, not some amount of time. My body is different everyday and needs food at different times. It doesn't live by the clock. I now LISTEN to it). Hunger is a feeling. I will FEEL true hunger and not be able to mistake it for anything else. For me, hunger feels like emptiness. My stomach growls and feels vacant. I also get fatigued and irritable if I let myself get too hungry. Life is unpredictable and ideally I never allow myself to get to the point of extreme hunger, but it happens. Bottom line, I took the time to listen to my body and learn what hunger feels like.
What does fullness feel like? This one is harder for me. I’m still learning what fullness feels like so I’m not able to put it into words very easily. Since I can’t easily identify satisfaction after years of over and under eating, I check in with myself every few bites. I eat slowly, chewing my food thoroughly. I try to eat without distraction (still working on this one) so that I can be aware of what I’m eating and how it makes me feel. Sometimes the feeling of fullness is sudden and obvious and I drop my fork. Other times I’m not sure so I have a few more bites and check in again. It can be subtle, but if I pay attention I can tell when I’ve had enough.
B. I let my body decide what I eat.
In addition to eating when I’m hungry and stopping when I’m full, I’ve also gotten to know what foods make me feel good and keep me operating at my best. This involved some trial and error, but that’s okay since perfection isn’t the goal.
I had to learn how to distinguish between what Bethenny Frankel refers to as my ‘food noise’ and my ‘food voice’:
So I’m DESPERATE for cheesecake. It’s all I can think about. I eat it. Plow through it. The entire thing. I feel terrible after... I just listened to my food noise.
I see a commercial for something and am now DYING for it... Also food noise.
Last night after my workout, I was ready to eat my arm. I got home and was desperate for a green salad loaded with all my fave veggies topped with grilled salmon. I was able to pay attention to the entire meal, savor it, feel it nourish my body and stop eating when I was full. This was an example of me listening to my food voice.
It’s not always this clear cut, but knowing that most of my cravings are just food noise and will pass if I just sit tight makes it SO MUCH EASIER to recognize the craving for what it is.
I’m not perfect and I don’t just sit there and bask in my self control when a craving strikes. Sometimes I too need to satisfy the craving with a substitute (I see a commercial for Doritos and would now sell my soul for a bag. If I can’t wait it out, I hit the fridge and eat a pickle or two. The salty crunch was a fine substitute. Craving averted. Moving on).
Other times I can just sit there and endure the food noise now that I know what triggers most of my so called ‘cravings’: I would have a fight with my husband and ‘crave’ something; I would not be able to wear an outfit that made me feel beautiful and suddenly I’m having a ‘craving’. ALL. FOOD. NOISE.
C. Food is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just food.
I used to be TERRIFIED at the prospect of being put in a situation where I would be confronted by food that was not part of my uber-restrictive diet. WHAT IF I HAD ONE BITE OF SOMETHING THAT DIDN’T FIT INTO MY EATING PLAN!!!???
I actually had good reason to be terrified because when one is starving oneself and/or eating only foods that bring no joy, it is completely likely that a binge is only one bite of delicious food away.
But I’m no longer starving myself. I’m listening to my body, eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m full and eating what my body wants. NOW I can walk into a situation that involves delicious food and eat it. Or not eat it. It’s just food.
Eating it isn’t the end of the world because now that I eat when I’m hungry, I didn’t ‘save up’ for this event. I’ve eaten normal meals all day long. I probably had a huge salad right before this event as an extra precaution. Since I’m not walking in ready to inhale the first plate of food I see, I’m able to do a lap, look at everything, eat what looks good, eat what appeals to me most, eat just a few bites of some things, CONSTANTLY checking in with myself to see if I’m still enjoying this bite as much as the last. Asking myself if I am full? Am I overfull?
This event is not the last event that I will eat at. Knowing that this food won’t make me happy/won’t make me love myself/it’s just food/I’ll see all this food again in my life/I’ll see better food in my life/etc makes it so much easier to enjoy what appeals to me most without needing to wear stretchy pants. I love myself every step of the way. Stuffing myself and making myself uncomfortable is no way to love myself with food.
Ideally I’ve eaten before this event. But what if this was a non-ideal day? What if I did allow myself to get overly hungry and I arrive at the event ready to tie one on? Simple: I find foods that are part of my daily intake (salads, soups, fruit, veg, lean proteins) and eat my usual portion. Most events offer something that resembles food that I would eat on any given day. I eat this first. Wait. Check in. Listen to my body. Once I’ve brought my blood sugar up to a normal level and I’m able to make sensible decisions about the more indulgent items, I do another lap and pick the foods that I want to sample and I do just that: sample. I have a few bites, enjoy them, check in, rinse and repeat until my body tells me to stop.
Again, perfection isn’t the goal. Sometimes I pull a chair up to the hors d'oeuvres. It happens. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I don’t beat myself up. I love myself no matter what. Over eating does not affect my self worth. I move on.
I also use over eating as an opportunity to check in. How do I feel now that I over ate? Am I bloated? Exhausted? Sluggish? Did I have to race to the ladies room and shit my brains out? If I feel like garbage, I’m not being very loving to myself. Again, I don’t judge, I just check in and continue to take stock, without judgment, of how different foods make me feel. The more mindful I become, the easier it gets to eat a comfortable amount of ANY FOOD because I know that I don’t want to feel sick and bloated.
D. I love myself with exercise.
There was a time when we all moved our bodies for the joy of it. I don’t care who you are and how much you think you hate exercising. There was a time, even if you were only a few years old, where you loved to do SOMETHING that involved physical activity.
As time passed, I lost the love of movement because I bought into the idea that exercise had to be torture to be effective. Sure, going for a 30 minute walk probably doesn’t burn as many calories as a 30 minute run. But I won’t run since I hate running. I will walk because I love walking. See where I’m going here? DOING something I love is more effective than not doing something I hate.
I won’t go for that run. I will think about how I have to run later and dread it ALL DAY. Then, when it’s time to run, I will delay it as long as possible. If I do run for a few days or even a few weeks, I won’t stick with it because NO ONE WILL STICK WITH SOMETHING THAT THEY HATE. Nor should they.
I was at a point with exercise where I genuinely thought that I hated anything that involved movement and I had to relearn my love of movement. Anyone can do this. Here’s how I did it:
I was a dancer my entire life but stopped dancing after college. When I gained weight and stopped performing, the opportunities for me to dance were all but non-existent. I was inspired at my heaviest to start taking dance classes again. When I got into class, it was like coming home. Sure, I was out of shape and not one-tenth of the dancer I used to be, but dance is one of my greatest loves and my hours in class flew by.
I was busting ass and sweating like a beast NOT because it would lead to more calories burned, but because to dance, for me, is my body’s ultimate form of expression. I have to dance or I will die. It literally POURS out of me.
So that was one night of the week. What about the other six? I would leave class each week WANTING to move more, but the urge to ‘exercise’ never hit me the other six days of the week. Why? I know now it’s because I needed to remember other activities besides dance that used to bring little Champagne joy.
Quite by accident (and I’ve written about it in this blog), I discovered that I love to bike ride. While on vacation in a beach resort, some friends and I rented bikes (I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I figured that if it was torture, it would only be one hour of my life). Much to my surprise, I LOVED it. When we returned from vacation, I was DESPERATE to own a bike. Once I owned that bike, I would wake up at 5in the morning (no lie) unable to sleep because I was so excited to hit the bike path. This love was the exact same love I had of bike riding as a child but had totally forgotten about.
Once I had dance and bike riding I knew I was on to something. I live in Buffalo and can’t ride year round so I had to dig deep and remember other activities I used to love.
In middle school, I couldn’t sleep the night before a roller skating party.
Growing up, you couldn’t keep me out of the pool during the summer months.
My senior year of high school, I went indoor rock climbing for the first time and LOVED it.
You get the idea. Do what you love (and trust me, you love something).
This has progressed into an exercise habit. Now, I try to move my body every day. I’m not obsessive about it, but have learned through listening to my body that moving on a daily basis makes me feel good. I sleep better. I wake feeling rested. I have a means to relieve stress. The list goes on. Life happens and some days there just isn’t time, but I don’t obsess over a missed workout because I’m going to have another work out tomorrow. And not because I have to, because I want to. Genuinely. I wasn’t always this way, but this has been my progression.
Some days I don’t feel like working out (GASP!). It’s true. But I know that I can’t trust my feelings. My feelings are a huge part of what got me into this mess in the first place. I can really only trust my body. When I don’t feel like working out, I check in with my body. What’s going on in my body? Is it fatigued? A little…how’s about I go to dance class anyway but take it easy tonight. I can always leave if I’m too tired to continue once class starts.
What always ends up happening is I get to class and feel energized. Some classes I have more energy than others, but my body isn’t a machine. It doesn’t operate on the exact same level every day. I have yet to go to class on a day that I ‘felt’ too tired to work out and abandoned ship in the middle of class (or regretted going).
Go. You can always leave. Your feelings are lying to you.
D. Bottom Line: Everything you do for yourself should be an expression of how much you love yourself.
What I've learned since 2007: Part 3
3. I realized that being thin would change NOTHING.
You read that correctly. Being thin does not change a thing. Like most people, I had built up 'thin' in my mind into this future magical place where I had no problems, everyone approved of everything I did, I was smart, successful, sexy, funny, fabulous, never insecure, and on and on and on.
This isn’t true. When thin happens, it happens in the present. In the present I am still me. I don’t have a perfect or charmed life. I still struggle, get upset, people are still mean to me…all the triggers for abusing food and hating myself are STILL present in my daily life.
Knowing that I’m thin and my life isn’t perfect and recognizing that this doesn’t mean that additional weight loss is required to achieve happiness was a HUGE revelation for me. Happiness and pant size are not related.
Don’t get me wrong. Just like with the joy that is delicious food, there is the joy that is being able to wear the clothes I want, fitting into a certain size, getting into those pants that I haven’t worn in years, and so on. But just like that frappuccino, bag of Doritos or piece of birthday cake, the joy of being thin is fleeting. It’s not enough to make me happy day in and day out hence I do not rely on being thin as my sole source of happiness or self worth.
Bottom line, if I didn’t love myself fat, I wouldn’t love myself thin (and neither will you).
You read that correctly. Being thin does not change a thing. Like most people, I had built up 'thin' in my mind into this future magical place where I had no problems, everyone approved of everything I did, I was smart, successful, sexy, funny, fabulous, never insecure, and on and on and on.
This isn’t true. When thin happens, it happens in the present. In the present I am still me. I don’t have a perfect or charmed life. I still struggle, get upset, people are still mean to me…all the triggers for abusing food and hating myself are STILL present in my daily life.
Knowing that I’m thin and my life isn’t perfect and recognizing that this doesn’t mean that additional weight loss is required to achieve happiness was a HUGE revelation for me. Happiness and pant size are not related.
Don’t get me wrong. Just like with the joy that is delicious food, there is the joy that is being able to wear the clothes I want, fitting into a certain size, getting into those pants that I haven’t worn in years, and so on. But just like that frappuccino, bag of Doritos or piece of birthday cake, the joy of being thin is fleeting. It’s not enough to make me happy day in and day out hence I do not rely on being thin as my sole source of happiness or self worth.
Bottom line, if I didn’t love myself fat, I wouldn’t love myself thin (and neither will you).
What I've learned since 2007: Part 2
2. I learned to love myself, flaws and all, by disengaging from what author Geneen Roth has named ‘The Voice’.
We all have it. That ‘little voice inside our heads’. Our ‘conscience’. What this voice tells us is how we really feel about ourselves, right? It’s our TRUE self, right?
WRONG!
The Voice is lying to you. Stop believing it.
The Voice is a combination of society’s influences on our lives: parents, teachers, authority figures. When we’re young, The Voice keeps us safe. We know that touching the stove will burn us because our parents have told us as much millions of times and, when they’re backs our turned, The Voice tells us we shouldn’t touch the stove.
The Voice has outlived its’ usefulness now that you are no longer a child. If your 'The Vouce' speaks to you the way mine spoke to me, you know how nasty The Voice can be. If any human being on this earth said all of those horrible things to you, I’m sure you wouldn’t listen to them or consider them an expert on who you really are. The Voice isn’t an expert. The Voice doesn't know you. The Voice has NO insight into your true self.
So how do you disengage from The Voice? It’s really hard because you’ve been listening to The Voice for years and are so used to believing it that disengaging may be a slow process. I disengaged from The Voice by envisioning two people in my head: (1) The Voice and (2) Loving Champagne. Whatever nonsense The Voice threw out there, Loving Champagne would counter:
The Voice: You are so fat and ugly.
Loving Champagne: I am beautiful today, as is. No one is more beautiful than I am and I am no more beautiful than any other human being.
The Voice: You are such a failure.
Loving Champagne: Shut the fuck up! I don’t have to listen to you. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know me. I am not perfect, but I will not earn the love of society or my own love through success. I am worthy of love RIGHT NOW.
I also decided to be kind to myself the way I could be kind to others. I love my friends, flaws and all. If they told me that I shouldn’t love them until they were perfect, I would ignore this request and continue to love them. Even if they were mean and YELLED at me about how they were not worthy of my love, I would still disagree and continue to love them. Truly love them.
I now love myself this same way.
Don’t get me wrong. I still struggle, but the days where I love myself FAR outnumber the moments that I struggle to love myself. When The Voice rears it’s ugly head, 99.9% of the time I recognize it for what it is and counter its’ claims.
We all have it. That ‘little voice inside our heads’. Our ‘conscience’. What this voice tells us is how we really feel about ourselves, right? It’s our TRUE self, right?
WRONG!
The Voice is lying to you. Stop believing it.
The Voice is a combination of society’s influences on our lives: parents, teachers, authority figures. When we’re young, The Voice keeps us safe. We know that touching the stove will burn us because our parents have told us as much millions of times and, when they’re backs our turned, The Voice tells us we shouldn’t touch the stove.
The Voice has outlived its’ usefulness now that you are no longer a child. If your 'The Vouce' speaks to you the way mine spoke to me, you know how nasty The Voice can be. If any human being on this earth said all of those horrible things to you, I’m sure you wouldn’t listen to them or consider them an expert on who you really are. The Voice isn’t an expert. The Voice doesn't know you. The Voice has NO insight into your true self.
So how do you disengage from The Voice? It’s really hard because you’ve been listening to The Voice for years and are so used to believing it that disengaging may be a slow process. I disengaged from The Voice by envisioning two people in my head: (1) The Voice and (2) Loving Champagne. Whatever nonsense The Voice threw out there, Loving Champagne would counter:
The Voice: You are so fat and ugly.
Loving Champagne: I am beautiful today, as is. No one is more beautiful than I am and I am no more beautiful than any other human being.
The Voice: You are such a failure.
Loving Champagne: Shut the fuck up! I don’t have to listen to you. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know me. I am not perfect, but I will not earn the love of society or my own love through success. I am worthy of love RIGHT NOW.
I also decided to be kind to myself the way I could be kind to others. I love my friends, flaws and all. If they told me that I shouldn’t love them until they were perfect, I would ignore this request and continue to love them. Even if they were mean and YELLED at me about how they were not worthy of my love, I would still disagree and continue to love them. Truly love them.
I now love myself this same way.
Don’t get me wrong. I still struggle, but the days where I love myself FAR outnumber the moments that I struggle to love myself. When The Voice rears it’s ugly head, 99.9% of the time I recognize it for what it is and counter its’ claims.
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