The Diet Hobby

I have been on some kind of diet or another for my whole life, it seems. So, unsurprisingly, I have been on a number of weight loss websites with forums and chat rooms and personal blog spaces. Most recently, and even still today, I am a member at Spark People, and I have a fairly long blog history there. I have been re-posting the Recovering Grace blogs at Spark People, but today I’m going to change that up and re-post an old entry of mine from Spark to here.

This one was written in January of 2010, over two years ago, not long before my depression and ED were ramping up again to becoming totally out of control. I had read a post from a friend, and it got me thinking about why I ever bothered to diet at all. This post was my response to that...

It just hit me when I read this - I've been going at this weight loss thing like a hobby, something I can pick up and put down at will, something that I have to do "right" if I'm going to do it at all. And because I have to over-analyze absolutely everything, I have been wondering WHY I do this hobby, and what causes me to pick it up and put it down with very little to show for the time and the effort and the money and the pain.

Now, bear with me, I'm just working some things out here...

I'm a people-pleaser, like my mother before me. So at first I assumed that I kept starting diets because that was what other people wanted me to do. If it talked like a diet, walked like a diet, and ate like a diet, then I must be on a diet (never mind what I did when no one was looking) and people would like me because I was doing what they wanted me to do. Then I kept failing at the diets, but at least it gave us something to talk about and I could always start another one. Fair enough, I suppose.

But...

I thought again, that there just wasn't something right about that. Maybe that was where I started, but what if it got even deeper and uglier than that? It's not just that I want my friends and family to like me, you see... I can't stand to think that anybody thinks badly of me. I want EVERYONE to like me. How's that for an unrealistic expectation? Lose 100 pounds in a year - sure, it ain't easy, but if you dedicate your entire existence to it, it could be done. But make yourself inoffensive to everyone on the planet? Not gonna happen.

So here I am, left with the thought that - just maybe - I have been dieting for nearly 30 years as a way of APOLOGIZING to the WORLD for being a fat cow. Not for me, not for my health, not for my future, not even for my husband or my mother. I'm dieting out of GUILT. If I can make myself miserable enough by depriving myself of food that I love and punish myself with exercise that I hate, maybe that will prove to the world that I'm sorry for being ugly. If I hate myself as much as I think everyone else does, maybe the world will hate me less.

So, I drop some weight and I'm getting the attention that I apparently need, and then it becomes old news and I don't get the buzz anymore from the ego-stroking of friends and family because the rest of the world still ignores me just like it always did, only I see it as loathing rather than indifference... and if total strangers still think I'm ugly after losing 30 or 50 or 60 pounds, then what's the point anyway, and I'll just go have a Happy Meal or something to feel better. Only I don't feel better and I haven't punished myself enough yet, so I'll jump off the wagon and say "Frak you!" to the world and gain back all of my weight plus another 20 just out of spite.

WTF? That doesn't sound like such a good idea...

Is that what I've been doing?

Am I really that shallow and needy?

So how's that working out for me?

And... I know the diet-speak pretty well by now: "I am dieting for myself this time! I just want to get healthy!"

Do I mean it this time? Do you believe me? Do *I* believe me?

Here we go....


So that was two years ago, and then some. For most of the next year, I really hung in there. I lost another 20 pounds, for a total of 50, and then.... I hit the emo wall. I had done my absolute best, I really felt good about the way I was living, the exercise I was doing, but once the depression and anxiety hit, I was helpless all over again.

I tried to get back there again, and then again, and then again. Every other week or so I would “recommit” myself to being healthy. But the emo stuff - the hate, the pain, the misuse of food - I couldn’t just decide to not do that anymore and wait for it to go away. It doesn’t just go away by itself, you have to MAKE it go away, you have to learn to care and to stand up and to fight back. You have to do the work first.

I don’t diet anymore. I’m too busy working.

You've Got to Move It, Move It

I tried yoga for the first time today. It was amazingly difficult! But, in a good way. I might have even liked it. I didn't realize what a workout it actually is - I have done daily stretching, off and on, over the past couple of years, and I kind of thought that yoga was just an extension (pardon the pun) of that. 

On a slightly related note, the yoga class was held in a dance studio. I got some information about lessons and practices - the other student from today works at the studio. I think I will pop back in later in the week to check out a dance session and meet some of the teachers. At the very least I want to try out the first free lesson.

I have learned that getting healthy doesn't mean that I have to "exercise," as in go to the gym or to some kind of aerobics class where I feel like an outsider - a really fat, uncoordinated outsider. I can try new things, things that might be fun. I just need to MOVE, it doesn't matter what it is. I love to walk, so I do that. I love to stretch, so I do that. I love to dance, so I'm going to try that next. Yoga might just be the next step beyond stretching for me, if I continue to enjoy it. But, if I don't, then I don't have to keep doing it. I'll just try something else! 

I don't have to let someone else tell me what I "ought" to do to get healthy. The diet and fitness industry does not know me. Jillian Michaels doesn't know what I am and am not capable of. I don't want to work out until I throw up, and I won't keep doing it if it makes me miserable. I'll quit, just like I did aerobics classes over and over again through the 80's and 90's. I don't want to be in pain, I want to enjoy it and move my body and be happy and healthy at the same time. Every body is different and needs a different kind of movement to feel fulfilled and happy. I don't know what all of my "movements" are yet, but I'm trying things out and I'm having fun in the meantime. 

Sunday Brunch: World War Z

I have (another) confession to make. I am a huge geek. Yep, hundreds of Star Wars viewings, midnight showings of every Harry Potter movie, I own a corset and I’ve actually worn it to Renaissance fairs, and I stood in line at a sci-fi convention to meet Wil Wheaton. I have worn a Jedi knight costume, and not on Halloween. I have sat around tables with other geeks at midnight, eating pizza and Twizzlers and rolling dice and pretending to kill orcs and dire wolves. I also read like a geek.

I first discovered Max Brooks and his zombies a couple of years ago. We had some friends over to watch the Night of the Living Dead remake, and... well, basically, zombies are my Thing. That thing that really, really scares the (un)living daylights out of me. Vampires... meh! Demons... meh! Toothy aliens... meh! I've been reading Stephen King since the 5th grade, so there isn't much that gets to me, you see. Except zombies.

So, after a nervous night with the nightlight on, I come home from work to find my beloved had gotten me a gift: Max Brooks' first book, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. Since then I have found my zombie-bashing courage and have been able to enjoy a range of zombie-related entertainment. You can imagine my excitement when I heard that Brooks had released a new book. It is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.

Okay, ready for the review? This book is SO GOOD. Need I say more? All right: I stayed up reading until I fell asleep from exhaustion two nights in a row because I didn't want to stop reading. I foisted this book off on everyone I knew - B read it just after I did, and next it went to co-workers. I kept sneaking back to the book to read the bits before and after B’s bookmark, so that I could see where he was in the tale.

The concept of the book is that it is a series of interviews with people who survived the zombie apocalypse, organized in a way which tell the tale from the first known zombie infections to the ultimate all out war against the zombie horde. Yes, the typical zombie tropes are there, there's no new or innovative zombie lore (except for perhaps a description of the mechanism that causes the undead to assemble). And the reader already knows the outcome of the war from the very first page, or the description on the back of the book. None of these things are surprising. What is wonderful is that Brooks manages to take a slew of stock characters and stereotypes and turn them into living, fascinating characters with merely a paragraph long introduction and three to five pages of dialogue. Just dialogue. He transmits everything through the character's speech, the words they choose, when they pause, what they choose to talk about. It's just brilliant.

A movie is being made of this book (possibly due July 2013) but, unlike the Hunger Games movie, I'm not so much looking forward to it. It seems that they might be turning it into a single point-of-view story with Brad Pitt as the dashing hero who saves the world. Okay fine, I like Brad and that's typical zombie movie plotting, but that's not WWZ. If you think you might see the movie, I really recommend reading the book first.

(On a side note, often you CAN watch the movie first and try the book later, when both are well done. I saw the movie for Eat, Pray, Love first and thoroughly enjoyed it, and then thought the book was even better. I watched Water for Elephants first, which seemed like the better way to go, because my sister groused at the screen the entire time about how they were doing it wrong... but I liked the movie well enough, and then enjoyed the book too, shortly thereafter. I just don't see this being the case with WWZ. The book is so varied and deep, and it's the individual characters that make the book shine. Focusing on one “hero” and making the others into supporting characters seems a real shame to me.

If you give it a try, come back and let me know what you think!

Read This Too!

Occasionally I'm going to link to things I've found or blogs I like or resources I want to recommend. Today is such a day! :)

Once upon a time while trying to find fat positive places on the Net, I came across a ballroom dancer and dance teacher with a blog called Dances with Fat. The dancer is Ragen Chastain, and she can be followed in blog form, in Facebook form, and probably other social sites. I'll link toward the end, because the thing I want to get to today is her current post: "The Power of the Option."

To quote:
"I don’t care how many people are shouting a lie, it ALWAYS matters what is true.   There are people out there, right now hating themselves, starving themselves, not aware that the diet industry that is lying to them about their chances of “success”.  People who believe what they have been told -  that they can never be healthy, happy, loved, or successful until they are thin, and some of them will die trying to get it done.  I’m not wasting my time, life, or mind because it’s not about what effect I have on the diet industry or the views of the majority, it’s about giving people who are suffering a way out – another option. You can’t change the world until you change your world."

Please link on over to read the whole thing, it's wonderful!

Here is the Dances with Fat home page. Scroll down toward the end to see the embedded video of Ragen and partner ballroom dancing. Beautiful!

Here is her Facebook page, too.

Caturday: The Monty Python Edition

Found at: http://imgfave.com/view/894245

Hopeless?

I wrote my very first journal entry for therapy just one year ago, on May 27th. I was so full of self-hatred that I could barely move. I spent days just lying on the couch, intermittently sleeping or crying. I got up and pretended to be okay if I absolutely had to - I went in to work a couple of times a week, I managed a Mother’s Day outing, got drunk on my birthday...

I had been dieting fairly successfully for over two years, but once again it was all falling apart. The weight was creeping back up, I couldn’t get interested in counting calories or going back to the gym. It all seemed so useless. And unfair. Besides, no matter what I did or how much weight I lost I was still so ugly, and stupid, and selfish. What did it matter anyway? What did *I* matter, anyway?

And so I go to this therapist and she wants me to talk about myself - no, not just that, to WRITE about myself, about my stupid, selfish feelings. I’m supposed to take a look at these bad things I say to myself and take them back, replace them with things that are good about me.

I had no faith that it would work. But I am a people-pleaser, and I do what I’m told. I wrote the first entry, and the next, and the next, and soon the words were flowing every day and I wanted to write in this journal, I NEEDED to write, to get it out. Sometimes these thoughts are like poison and you have to suck it out, spit them out on the page and take a good hard look at them so that you can heal.

So... the following entry is me, a year ago. How strange and long ago it seems.

Journal Entry #1

I am embarrassed to even keep a journal of this. I don't think that I even like myself enough to sit here and have a conversation with me, and especially not about food, or eating. I hate eating, I hate food, and I hate me.

But I don't want to.

First day of therapy today. Mostly I spilled my guts, said all of the stuff that no one, single person has ever known. I cried a lot. I hate that too. I guess I've gotten soft in my old age, because it's gotten harder NOT to cry in front of other people now.

We set goals:

• Breathe
• Move
• Practice Driving
• Eat (5-6 small meals per day)
• Write

I am a mess. I don't think that I created this mess alone, but I certainly helped. Now the mess is too damn big to clean up all alone. Fortunately, I am not alone. At least there's that.

I'm fat. I'm plain. I'm boring. I'm needy. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm mean. I'm weak. I'm empty. I'm selfish.

I'm smart. I'm funny. I love. I'm a friend. I'm a writer. I'm an auntie. I am loved. I am not alone.

(5/27/2011)

“You think you deserve this pain, but you don’t.”

Who Do I Think I Am?

It’s just a few days into this blogging thing and I have been wondering what I’m really trying to accomplish here. Do I think I’m special or something? Yeah, I’ll admit to being an attention fiend, I get that straight from my mother. But am I important? More special than other survivors? Ummm... that would be a big no. 

So what am I doing this for? Because I’ve gotta be honest with you, this is frightening. Even if no one is reading it other than a few really close friends, this is damn scary stuff. And, and, and! AND, Holy Guacamole, what if Other People ever somehow stumble across this thing and start to read it. Other People are kind of mean sometimes, and sometimes some of them are really, really mean, and frankly, I’m just not equipped to deal with that. Yet. 

However... 

My story isn’t different, important, or even terribly dramatic. No one hit me. No one raped me. Even as far as the sexual abuse went... well, let’s just say other people have far more horrible tales to tell. 

I wonder if there are a lot of us out there, left in some kind of limbo. Wondering how we can be so messed up if nothing that bad ever really happened, if there’s no one to point a finger at, no incident to hold up and say, “This! This is what made me broken!” It just didn’t seem all that bad, but here we are, sort of broken and kind of functional. The in-betweeners. 

Growing up, I had a couple of neighbors who had their suspicions. They knew something was wrong at my house, but they had no proof. They befriended me, talked to me, tried to be pseudo-parental figures, but there was nothing they could do. What were they to say? They don’t love her enough. He says mean things. She has too many chores, too much responsibility. She’s a 10 year old running a household while her mother works 60 hours and her stepfather drinks. They tell her she’s not pretty, not good, and not normal. No, there are no scars, no bruises, no horrific fights, no domestic violence calls. 

Still and yet... damage was done. 

And maybe that is what is important to tell. We all deserve to be loved, to find trust, to get better, to feel better. Even if what we went through wasn’t The Worst Thing Ever. Even if we feel guilty for thinking about it as “abuse.” Even if we still love them, as bad as they made us feel. Even if we think that it isn’t their fault, that they didn’t mean it, that they were doing the best that they could. Even if we feel like we don’t deserve to be angry. 

Someone hurt me and I didn't deserve THAT. That matters.