Holiday blues

I think the holiday blues have arrived. 

Thanksgiving has come and gone - and it's a little late to be posting about it, but today's the first day I got to it, so here it is.

My Thanksgiving was... well, it was fine, I guess.  I enjoyed spending time with our guests, my mother-in-law and our friend Alexa, especially when we watched a few episodes of the show Tom's editing. 

Our Thanksgiving table

But something our friend Josh had mentioned in class before Thanksgiving really hit home with me.  Now that I'm a recovering food addict, holiday eating is - frankly - stressful.  It used to be joyful.  It used to be one of the rare times in my life that I ate happily... or, rather, I overate happily.  Perhaps it was because I always had company.  Perhaps it was because the holiday food is always so delicious.  Perhaps the warm feelings of the holiday were mainlined into my system via food.  Perhaps because in my mother's kitchen, food was love.

Now... food is fuel.  Tasty fuel, mind you, but fuel nonetheless.  And that made my holiday eating feel kind of... empty.  It's hard to explain.

Since I was making much of our food (I covered the cranberries, the low-cal pumpkin pie, the butternut squash, the stuffing and the turkey; Tom made the root veggies, the green beans and the Brussels sprouts) I had control over what was served.  I planned fewer dishes - and smaller, less-heavy ones - than we usually make, and adjusted the recipes.  I cut down the use of butter by about 300%.  And I tasted it. 

This is everything I ate for Thanksgiving dinner, save for a piece of my low-cal pumpkin pie and a glass of sparkling cider.

I didn't have any desire to eat more than one plate of the food.  Which is healthy, I know.  But without it, I was bummed.  I missed that butter.  I missed having lots of leftovers.  Each dish fit into single-serving tupperware, with room to spare.  It was all gone by dinner the following day.  I was living that joke from Annie Hall.  "Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.'"

Don't get me wrong.  I know the food wasn't terrible.  But it wasn't emotional.  And I missed that.  Maybe someday I'll be able to balance bringing in some positive emotion about food without going overboard.  For now, I'm just worried about how to handle the upcoming family events - starting this weekend - when I'm not in charge of the menu.

I'm a bit blue today, and I don't quite know why. 

The Santa Ana winds are blowing in, knocking out power across town - but other than the damage I do, I really enjoy them.  A rare moment of weather in Los Angeles.

Yesterday we were out in the afternoon and evening.  Tom wanted to enjoy the holiday offerings at Disneyland while he was on his hiatus, so we went around to the various Christmas-themed things (Small World Holiday, the parade and fireworks, etc.) to get in the spirit.  I had a nice time, and made food choices that were in-line with my plan.  (I did have dessert - part of a pumpkin yule log - and per Richard's recommendation, I'm allowing myself one dessert each week.)

But I saw something yesterday that I still can't shake.  We were boarding pirates with a woman in a wheelchair who reminded me of my mom.  The struggle to move her from the chair to the boat was one that was all too familiar to me.  It reminded me of recurring nightmare I have, where we're in peril and I'm unable to transport Mom to safety.

I suppose maybe I'm blue because I turned the Christmas music on - or I turned the Christmas music on because I'm blue.  Because I'm missing her.  Because Christmas really was her time of year.

There's so much to be un-blue about, though.  My friends and family.  My time with Tom this week - my life with Tom, for that matter.  My writing, both personal creative and professional freelance.  My health, and how much it's improved over the last year.  Funny thing about that word, "improved"...

Thanks to Bella of Bella on the Beach, I'm considering participating in a month-long blog carnival of sorts, called WEverb11.  And today's question is:

December 1: Choose one word.
Encapsulate the year 2011 in one word. Explain why. Imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2012 for you?

That would would be "improvement."  This year, I've improved my health, my strength, my ability to cook, the way I handle my food addiction.  I've improved my freelance career (and definitely improved my life by leaving the interactive marketing behind.)  I've improved my blog.  I've improved my creative writing.  And I've improved my overall happiness.   This is probably the year I've been most proud of.

Next year's word, I hope, is "achievement."  I'd like to continue toward the goals that I actively began seeking this year, in health, in career, in family.  And I'm hoping to be closer to achieving them next year than I am this year.  I'm certainly closer this year than last, by miles.

Or maybe the word for both years should be "care."  I'm putting so much care into my life.  I'm taking care.  And almost every day, I remind you to take care. 

That reminds me: take care of you today.

On Weigh-In Tuesday, weighing in on Cleveland's obese foster child

I'm weighing in today, with the number on the scale, and with my opinions.  Specifically, my opinions about what makes weight loss harder, what makes it easier, and how my experiences relate to the case of Cleveland's obese foster child.

First: Hormones & The Long Haul
When I hopped on the scale last Tuesday, I was up.  By a pound.  Again.  I hadn't eaten terribly, but I still wasn't logging what I ate, and my exercise had slowed a bit.  It's very frustrating to confront my challenges again and again and again.  I try to remember that this is a life-long journey, not a race. I remind myself that so long as I'm committed to taking care of me, speed does not matter - only persistence.  It's hard not to feel frustrated.

Aware of my frustration, my mother-in-law recently pointed me to an article in the LA Times.  Apparently, a medical study found that "subjects who shed weight on a low-calorie diet were hungrier than when they started and had higher levels of hormones that tell the body to eat more, conserve energy and store away fuel as fat."  Even a year later, the subjects' appetite hormones hadn't returned to normal.  The good news is that perhaps the study will help scientists find a way to help those who've lost weight maintain their loss.  The bad news is that until then, those of us who are struggling to maintain or lose more after an initial loss... we just have to fight what our bodies are telling us, keep active, and stay on our journey as best as we can.

Second: The Team Approach
Tom's been home since last Wednesday night - for Thanksgiving plus a week of work hiatus (he goes back next Monday - and I'm reminded what a difference it makes being one of a team on this journey.  While he's working, we're still a great team... but I'm alone in making our dinners, planning our menus, doing our grocery shopping, cooking for myself.  I go to the gym alone.  To Slimmons alone.  (I see dear friends there, but it's not the same as arriving with my best friend.)  And since I'm a freelance writer, I work at home alone.

But since Wednesday, it's been much easier to do everything I was struggling to do.  We've cooked together.  We've exercised together.  We planned our meals and grocery-shopped and discussed our plans.  We've also done a lot of work together.  It supports the very first thing that Richard Simmons ever said to Tom and I.  He said, "you have to do this together, or it doesn't work."

Together with Tom, I was able to come back down a pound - even on Thanksgiving week.  Soon I hope to be back to my 70 total lost, and move on from there.  But I have to be patient with myself, and I have to be pretty vigilant, thanks to hormones that are constantly telling me I'm hungry.  I never used to feel this way.

On the Cleveland Situation
Perhaps you haven't heard yet, but there's a debate swirling around a Cleveland social worker's decision to remove a child from his parents' custody because he was obese.  The child was an honor student and involved in activities at his school, but he is now staying with foster parents.

Apparently, the state worker was trying to work with the parents, but claims that they weren't following doctors' orders.  The parents dispute that claim, that they bought him a bicycle and were working with him. 

The Cleveland Plain Dealer article includes this quote from the mother:  "Of course I love him. Of course I want him to lose weight. It's a lifestyle change, and they are trying to make it seem like I am not embracing that."

The article also states that the mother is overweight herself, and that when she "found out that other kids and a sibling might be giving her son extra food, she tried to put a stop to it."

It sounds to me like the family was torn.  I don't know the specifics of the situation aside from the story, but all I can think about is how the Team Approach helps everything.  And if a sibling - or a struggling mother - isn't doing everything they can to help their loved one (or worse, actively sabotaging them), then it's going to be that much harder for their loved one to succeed. 

One other quote from the article stuck out to me - it flashed like a blinking red light.  "Last year, the boy lost weight but in recent months began to gain it back rapidly." 

It sounds to me like the foster child from Cleveland - like the scientific study suggests - has his appetite hormones out of whack after a weight loss.  It's hard for me to control myself in this situation as an adult.  How much harder would it be for an eight-year-old?  Without his parents?  Without his friends, in a new school, with life upside-down?  I know how my eight-year-old self would have handled it. Hell, I know how my twenty-eight-year-old self would have handled it.  I'd eat.

Is it sad that an eight-year-old is over 200 pounds, and suffers from sleep apnea?  Certainly.  Does it need to be addressed?  Yes.  Are the parents responsible?  Absolutely, to the extent that they are able to control their son.

But does the child need to be removed from their custody?  I'd say no.

While he's in danger for future comorbidities from obesity, he only has apnea, and has been treated for it.  While a parent can encourage and schedule healthy eating and exercise, there is nothing they can do to stop their child from, say, buying crap at school.  Stopping at a convenience store on the way home.  Swapping their healthy apple for processed junk from friends.  I cite these three examples because they are, in fact, things I did as an overweight child.  I remember that our cafeterias had some good salads... but candy, sugary sodas and fresh-baked cookies (3 for a dollar!) were sold at our high school store. Other kids didn't have a problem resisting them... but I did.  I know there were others like me, too. 

So, what can we do?  How can we help this generation of children get healthy, and stay healthy?

For starters, while this branch of the government is removing obese children from their parents, other branches are approving french fries and pizza as vegetables.  (Not even veggie pizza, people.  Any pizza with tomato paste - a tiny fraction of what goes into a pizza's calories.)  It's Regan and ketchup all over again.  Nobody's banning food advertisements.  How many late-night tacos were born of TV commercial taunting?  Who, as a kid, didn't want to go to McDonald's to get the latest toy?  Why are we still allowing it to happen?

The answers lie even beyond the ridiculousness of school cafeterias food and marketing.  But they're not easily addressed.

It would help if there wasn't such a stigma attached to being overweight.  Shame is often a chief reason for overeating - a vicious circle I was trapped in for years.

It would help if there wasn't such a stigma around therapy.  Everyone can use guidance.  Nobody is "normal."  And it's the very thing that helped me begin to address my health.

It would help if sports - especially competitive sports - weren't jammed down every kid's throat.  I have no hand-eye coordination.  I wasn't strong.  And I was scared of every ball ever thrown at me in gym class.  I was never taught to kick the kickball.  I was tossed aside on the no-cut basketball team.  And I was forever losing every race.  The lack of positive reinforcement from teachers taught me to hate gym class.  The negative taunting from my classmates taught me to fear exercise.  So, for a long time, I didn't do it.  I didn't realize that the dancing I loved as a kid could be good exercise as an adult.  I didn't know that the swimming that made me so happy on vacation could make my every pool workout feel like a vacation.  Not every kid is a softball star... and not every kid wants to be.  Maybe parents (maybe even schools) should consider an activity program for those kids who are averse to sports.

It would help if parents who struggled with disordered eating would do everything they could to address their own habits before passing them along to their children.  And that, my friends, is what I'm doing right now.

To the kiddo from Cleveland:  I hope you find your way back to your family, and that they can be a united team to help support you.  And I hope that they, along with the others around you, can help you to learn to take good care of yourself.

And everybody reading this:  I hope that you're taking good care of you, too. 

I stopped breathing.

Last week in therapy, I stopped breathing.

I didn't even realize it.

We were talking about why I think I'm stuck here at 300 (yes, I'm back to 300.  Making it only 66 pounds lost this year.)  We were going over the things that happened when I first hit this weight.

**

It was 2001.  I had just graduated from college.  The end of most people's higher education seems to take the shape of soaring crescendo.  Mine looked like that pathetic "waaah-waaaaah" of a trumpet that signals ineptitude on a game show.  It started looking pretty shaky when my heart was broken (and I mean smashed - and I mean, for years) around semester break, but I pushed through to March for my senior thesis, directing a one-act play by Madeleine George called The Most Massive Woman Wins.  The four wonderful ladies in the cast kept me going, along with my roommate, tech director and all-around best friend, Matt.

But when that was over... well, what did I have left?  No more theater.  No love interest in my life.  No clue what to do after school ended.  And according to my senior audit, I had two more semesters of school left.  Turns out when you're in two different colleges within one big university, they sometimes require 50 extra credits of you, even when you've otherwise fulfilled all of your degree requirements.

There was no final internship or real-world job-search for me after "walking" in my cap and gown.  Instead, I spent the spring and summer in Ann Arbor.  Other than the first and only math of my college career (an advanced statistics class which my adviser mistook for an introductory class) I decided to take a full slate of film classes, because that's what sounded compelling.  (On the up-side, 50 credits of it-doesn't-matter-what-you take did point me in the right direction for my career and eventual move to Los Angeles.)

On my way into that very last final - the inappropriately non-introductory stats - I prayed to any deity that would listen: LET ME OUT OF HERE.  I wanted to get to California immediately, but I had no money.  So after I passed stats-for-not-beginners, I did what haunts the dreams of all college graduates... I moved back in with my parents.

I love my parents.  You know I love my parents.  My parents know I love my parents.  They are terrific people.  They helped me save up money to get a car and a down payment on an apartment, and even loaned me a little extra in case the temp jobs didn't kick in right away.  Despite my mom's ill health and my quest for a career in an industry that's breakneckingly competitive at best, they even encouraged me to follow my dreams.  My dad even drove with me across country with a truck full of my belongings, toward a city thousands of miles away where no job, family, friends or even apartment awaited.   They are/were GREAT PARENTS.

But if you put a 22-year-old, who has lived on her own for four years, back in her parents' house... everybody's in for quite a shock.  Those eight months in Midland were possibly some of my darkest.  I temped as an office assistant at the Company Town's company from 8 to 5, and then I sequestered myself into my childhood bedroom between the hours of 6 and 8 to watch the first syndicated showings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a tiny TV.  Around 8, depending on the day, I might or might not have staggered bleary-eyed into the living room.  Or kitchen.  Definitely the kitchen. 

I was lonely.  For my friends.  For Ann Arbor, and all its Culture and its cultures, and everything it represented.  For freakin' sushi.  (Oh, timing -- Midland didn't open its first Japanese restaurant until six months after I moved to LA.)  I was lonely for my freedom.

Wonderful though my parents were, being back in their home meant being back under their rules.  There was a curfew.  There was no heading out to a bar alone, which wasn't my style anyway, but I was desperate for some socializing.  My one close friend in the area was a bride-to-be/on her honeymoon/a newlywed, and though she was lovely and kind, there's only so much wedded bliss a single bridesmaid can take.  Except for Willow and Xander - and they were fictional - I felt very, very alone.  (Side note: little did I know that my future husband felt the exact same way at the exact same time.)

So I ate.  And I ate.  I ate at the first hint of heartbreak in my senior year, ordering the first of many 2 AM deliveries of Pizza House pepperoni breadsticks and milkshakes with my roommate.  I ate during my thesis - a play set in a liposuction clinic - having baked Valentine's cupcakes for no Valentine in particular.  I ate when we found the Girl Scouts special edition Samoa ice cream. ("Please, sir, I want Samoa," we joked.) I ate sushi when I left the Ann Arbor for the last time.  I really ate in Midland.  Fast food.  Slow food.  My parents' food.  My own stash.  Sometimes all in the same night.  Brazenly, not caring who saw me.  Secretly, not wanting to share.  Not wanting to be judged.  I ate.

**

I was finishing this thought when my therapist interrupted me.  "I'm sorry, but I really have to ask you to breathe."


What?

I had been expressing all of that pent-up sadness -- and anger, my therapist tells me -- and I had no idea that I'd been hyperventilating the whole time.  I took a breath.  I tried to make it a deep one.  It seemed impossible.

**

Since my therapy session last week, the concept keeps popping up again and again in my brain.

In my life, I have gained so much weight that I now cannot breathe at night without the help of a machine.

When I binged, I binged until I could hardly breathe.  And I certainly couldn't move well without breathing well.

When I exercise, I exhale.  I breathe out emotional smoke - from the embers of suppressed anger, into which I can so rarely tap.

To fully take care of myself, I must leave enough room to breathe.  In my stomach.  In my schedule.  In my heart.

Today, I will do that by posting on this blog - because holding my words back here is holding me back.  I will do that by planning my food, preparing my food, and eating my food mindfully.  I will do that by sweating at Slimmons, focusing each breath to release of whatever it is inside of me, blocking my progress.

I hope you'll take care of you today.  And I hope you'll breathe.

KEEP BREATHING.

Yesterday I was full of fear.

Afraid that the addiction would overcome me, instead of the other way around.
Afraid that I'd gain what I lost.
Afraid I would lose what I gained.
That I wouldn't listen to myself.
That there were people listening to me.
That if I struggled, and shared that struggle, people would judge me.
That if I didn't share my struggle, I would be dishonest with others - and with myself.
That I would end up in a jail of my own creation.
That I don't have what I takes.
To beat addiction.
To stay focused.
To create beautiful things.
To build a career.
To maintain my strength.
To maintain my health, in tandem with any of those other things that I was afraid I couldn't do.

Yesterday I was full of fear.

Today I am breathing.

The big picture is terrifying.  But I need not look directly at it, searing my eyes like the sun.  I have to remember that each small step draws me closer.  All I need to do is keep my eyes on each small step.  And breathe.

Share your truth and keep breathing.
Be mindful and keep breathing.
Gather yourself and keep breathing.
Put pen to paper and keep breathing.
Get active and keep breathing.
Be still and keep breathing.
Forgive yourself and keep breathing.

I just tried art journaling for the first time.  I'm not an artist, but I am a recovering perfectionist.  I remind myself that it does not have to be perfect.  It just has to be true.

  
Food log, Tuesday September 20
Breakfast - Slice of whole grain bread with 1/2 peach and 2 tb fat free ricotta mixed with 1/4 tsp sugar-free almond syrup.  1 boiled egg.
Morning snack - 16 oz pressed vegetable juice.
Late lunch - at a combination restaurant/movie theater.  3 mini roasted portobello sliders with about a cup of chips.  Ginger chicken fresh spring roll in rice paper.  Peanut butter mousse.
Dinner - I didn't eat it.
Beverages - 64 oz water.

Food log, Wednesday September 21
Breakfast - at a buffet restaurant. Egg Beaters omelet with mushrooms and cheese. 1/2 slice french toast with tsp syrup. 1 chicken sausage. 1/2 cup hash browns. 1/2 cup apple salad.  Two pieces of pineapple.  Mini bagel with 2 oz salmon, 2 tomato slices, and tsp cream cheese.
Lunch - at a restaurant.  Seared ahi tuna chopped salad with cabbage and champagne vinaigrette.  Side order of corn bread with tb maple butter.
Snack - I bought a very large box of coconut candy.  I ate two pieces, and, disgusted with myself, threw the rest away.
Dinner - at a mini golf course. Small turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato.
Beverages - 4 ounces coconut water with pomegranate and acai, 8 ounces skim milk, 64 ounces water

It's not perfect, but it's true.

Take care of you.