Wednesday, December 01, 2010

The Most Expensive Cup of Soup… Ever

Yesterday was my first day back to work after six days off for the Thanksgiving break. I had slid into a delicious schedule of waking up whenever I wanted, going for long walks in the redwoods, and eating whenever I felt like it.

I wasn't ready to go back to work. I wasn't ready to think ahead or to plan for what I might need at three o'clock when it was only 10 AM. And after a week away from work, there were none of my usual staples in the fridge, no individually wrapped string cheese, no fruit, no left overs from last night's dinner or yesterday's lunch. I cleaned it all out so as to avoid the growth of strange science projects while I was away.

So when three o'clock rolled around, and I had a little break between clients, the only thing in my office was a granola bar. Better than nothing, but not by much. When my day ended at 4:30 PM, I was long past being hungry and in that fugue state where it's probably not even safe to drive, let alone order in the drive-through.

If I'd had my wits about me I would've headed straight to food, without a thought to the “healthiness,” or “good for-you-ness” of that particular food. But my wits however had gone missing. And I found myself driving to my local produce store – a great place to find heads of broccoli, bunches of kale, and even a juicy pear, but in my hunger driven dementia, all I could think was that I had pears at home, so why would I want to buy another one. And it was cold, and I wanted to eat something hot.

So I left the produce store, even hungrier, and headed to Trader Joe's, realizing on the way there, that while they would have delicious things to heat up once I got home, I would have to get home and heat them up. Fortunately I have recently discovered a little hole in the wall right across the parking lot from Trader Joe's–a place where they serve all kinds of sandwiches and… soup. Hot, delicious soup.

That day they had both vegetarian minestrone and minestrone with meatballs. This is exactly what I needed. Hot soup filled with veggies and beans and yummy little meatballs. My tummy was so excited, it couldn't wait. And so I sat in the car, blowing furiously on the hot soup, desperate to get it into my body as quickly as possible. It was truly delicious. Within several spoonfuls, my hunger pains started to subside and I thought, “now I can drive home.”

Having allowed myself to go for that long without eating had not only taken a toll on my ability to think, it apparently wrecked a little havoc on my fine motor skills. So when I went to put the lid on the soup I found it slipping from my fingers.  As the first scalding drops hit my lap, my hands instinctively moved as if to throw the soup out the window of my car. The window being closed meant that the soup coated half the window, the door, the door handle, the armrest, the lock button, the window button, the map compartment, the trunk release, the gas cap release. Several meatballs and kidney beans managed to ricochet onto the back seat and rear floor mat.

I got myself home, where my husband, bless his intuitive heart, somehow knew that I would be in need of sustenance. I stripped off my minestrone soaked clothing, and sat down to a plate of his stirfried chicken and veggies before mustering the strength to assess the damage to my car. The spilled soup had the consistency of very moist refried beans and the smell of an Italian restaurant. It took about a half an hour and a half roll of paper towels to get most of it up.

 This morning I took my clothes to the cleaners, and my car to be detailed, bringing the total cost of my soup to about $130.

After nearly sixteen years of demand-feeding, you'd think I'd have it down by now. I guess there is always room for more growth. Arggh. I'd like to say "lesson learned," but I know better. So I will just say, lesson reinforced. And now I will go make myself a bag of lunch and snacks for tomorrow :-).

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the kitchen...

Here we are again. Thanksgiving. Around the corner, Christmas or Hanukah or Kwanza or some other feast lies in wait, ready to make you feel like a little kid again (and not necessarily in the good way). I've stopped celebrating with my family. After the years of conflicting messages (I made this stuffing because you love it. Should you really be eating that much?), I decided to make Thanksgiving my own.

After starting the work of self acceptance and self love, it just became impossible to enjoy a celebratory meal with people who wanted me to keep joining in the chorus of their favorite holiday song (to the tune of Jingle Bells):

I'm so fat
I'm so fat
I can't stand my thighs
You could stand to lose a few
Please pass the pumpkin pie...

A few years ago, my husband and I started the tradition of an orphans' Thanksgiving - not hard to do in the Bay Area, where so many people are transplanted. At the first Thanksgiving without family, I felt liberated. We consciously threw out any "shoulds" that would make the holiday feel like work. We told our friends to bring their favorite Thanksgiving dishes. We bought a smoked turkey, not knowing it would be the best one we'd ever had.

I made my personal favorites, a corn casserole - the recipe taught to me by my old roommate's Southern mom. It's one of those crazy, easy, cheesy yummy recipes - a can of corn (Trader Joes' is sweet and crispy), a can of creamed corn, a bag of shredded cheddar cheese, a jar of pimentos, a half a sheath of crushed saltine crackers, a slightly beaten egg to hold it together and a blob of sour cream for a little extra tang. Mix everything together, reserving some cheese to sprinkle on top. Cook at 325, or 350 or 375 till the cheese on top is bubbly and golden. Yum.

My friend, Shauna, brought her favorite - yams with marshmallows. My friend Shawn brought an old staple from his family's table, cottage cheese (I know, weird, but hey, that was Thanksgiving for him!). Laura brought apple pie with the only crust I've ever liked. And my husband grilled marinated veggies on our barbecue in the rain. It was all so good. But looking back, what I remember most is the ease and comfort, the complete absence of pressure, guilt or remorse about eating. I remember that we laughed a lot that night, a string of Martha Stewart jokes, building on each other.

And I still feel thankful - thankful for the many friends who've taught me that love really can be without condition, without criticism, without body-baggage. I'm thankful for the freedom I've created, from the tyranny of my own inner critic who almost never pops up these days (and even when she does, I know now that she is probably feeling afraid and needs me to soothe her).

And this year, when my mom said, "You could come to our house for Thanksgiving," I was grateful that I have learned to lovingly decline.

What boundaries are you grateful for this year? Are their new ones you'd like to be grateful for in the years to come? What would make this holiday season one that feeds and sustains you without guilt or drama? What do you need in order to give yourself permission to have true joy and peace through the holidays?

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Huge - Fat friendly TV???

Nowhere is our culture's insanity over weight more obvious than television. When I first saw ad's for the new TV series Huge (ABC Family, Monday nights). I felt my antennae go up. Would this be a show that celebrates diversity, or just a fictionalized version of The Biggest Loser?

The jury is still out on that one.

Watching the first episode, I loved Willamina's (Nikki Blonski) refusal to be bullied into self-hatred. Yet her young resolve to love the body she has seems more rooted in rebellion and anger than grounded in real self-love. I don't know if this is a bad thing. After all, the path to self-love and self-acceptance at any size is rarely a straight line. I know a few very mature adults, even some card-carrying members of NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance), who have struggled with self-acceptance.

The camp setting of the show provides a good microcosm of the pressures we face in this culture to conform - if not to thinness, then at least to self-contempt for failing to conform to that ideal. The "veterans" in the camp are quick to let Amber (Hayley Hasselhoff) know that she can have any guy at the camp, by virtue of the fact that she is not AS fat as some of the others.

This is a pressure that many of us know and feel, regardless of our age, our size, our sexual orientation, even our marital status. Looking "hot" or sexy (which in our culture means thin) is equated with having social status. Thinness promises a sense of belonging and value - among the most basic of human needs. Thinness promises a shield from humiliation - explored in this show when the seam in Amber's shorts split.

The question now is, will the show honor size diversity? Or will the campers (and our poor psyches along with theirs) succumb to the shame doled out by the Nazi exercise counselor?

I'd love to hear your feedback on this one. Have you seen the show? What are your thoughts?

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Self Acceptance, Revisited

I've said it before, but it never stops being true. Until you are safe in your own skin, you can't be safe anywhere.

Emotional eating goes hand in hand with self-judgment. You tell yourself you shouldn't be hungry (I just ate an hour ago, how could I be hungry again?). You tell yourself you shouldn't want cake (Why can't I just be satisfied with a salad?). You tell yourself you should be thinner (I look awful... I'm so fat... My cellulite is so bad, people can ski the moguls of my thighs).

When your inner critic judges you, you are left with shame, and a self divided. One part of you is harsh, critical, and unloving. The other feels judged, punished, and unlovable.

Common wisdom says, change the parts you don't like so you can love yourself. If you operate under this belief, you may already be realizing something very important. It doesn't work. No one has ever hated or judged themselves into happiness.

When you're hating yourself, hating your body, the only way out is to explore and heal the shame.

For most of us, shame is circular. Initially, we may have been judged by someone else - classmates, a critical parent, a spouse or lover. The judgment was never questioned, never confronted. Boundaries were never set (It's not okay for anyone to criticize your looks. Ever).

You believed that you had a problem. It was your fault, and yours to fix. You believed that the only way to ensure you were safe from judgment was to fix the problem. Then you set about criticizing yourself in order to motivate change.

But there is another part of you, the one being judged, who knows that what she really wants is not thinness. It's love. She knows that love based on her looks is not really love at all. She knows that for love to be real and lasting and always safe, it has to be unconditional. She needs to be loved at any size, at any weight, no matter what.

So whenever your inner critic puts you on a diet or tells you no more carbs, the other part of you says, Oh yeah? I'm eating whatever I want, and you can't stop me! Usually this part doesn't have much of a voice. Instead, you just find yourself standing in the kitchen eating frozen cheesecake out of a box, wondering, Why am I eating this?

Transforming the inner critic
Instead of trying to change your body, what would it be like to change your inner critic? What if you spent time looking in the mirror each day, practicing just being with yourself in a non-judgmental way?

Most of the time, when I recommend mirror work to clients (which is done... naked), what comes up is fear. They don't want to see themselves. They don't want to feel the harshness of the inner critic coming down on them, confirming their worst fear - that they are hideous and unlovable. But those that do the work find something very different begins to happen. When they practice just being with themselves, noticing themselves, describing themselves without judgment, the inner critic starts to get quieter.

In time, a new voice emerges - the voice of self-love. When you can look at your whole self with care, with kindness, with sweetness, you become a safe person to live with. You become a great roommate. And the safety and care you create within then becomes all the protection you need in the world. When you are in loving relationship with yourself, you can be in loving relationship with the world.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

New Years' Resolutions for Emotional Eaters

If you are like most people who turn to food to soothe feelings, you probably started a new diet on Jan 2nd, or maybe this past Monday (who really starts a diet on the weekend?). Now it's Wednesday. You may be powering along, feeling like this time for sure, you'll lose the weight and keep it off. Maybe you're still following the diet, but you're at that phase where you've started dreaming about forbidden food. Or maybe you're battling with yourself, wanting cookies but gnawing celery. Or you may have already slipped or cheated or had a full scale binge.

Because that's the cycle. And it's all part of the emotional eating problem. Diets don't fix the feelings that make you turn to food. In fact, dieting, like overeating, is part of the compulsion. It keeps your focus on food (in this case, not eating it). Your thoughts become obsessive, counting grams of this or ounces of that, weeks till you hit your goal. It's just another way of avoiding or escaping your internal emotional world.

And since 95% of diets fail within the first 2 years, there is a good chance that you will cheat or binge, feel all kinds of guilt and shame, and then have to eat more to escape the bad feelings until the next wave of dieting kicks in. Dieting gives the illusion that you are "getting somewhere," when in fact, you are on a merry-go-round making endless circles (or as my friend, Jill says, the treadmill of rumination).

This year, I want to invite you to try a different sort of diet all together. Since you eat to soothe and escape bad feelings, I want you to consider a diet that restricts self-induced guilt and shame. The goal of this diet is to become a safe, nurturing and loving person to live with (because you are the roommate who will never leave).

Here's the plan, written in the form of New Years' Resolutions
  1. I will not yell at myself or beat myself up for turning to food when I feel bad. In fact, I will not yell at myself, period.
  2. I will abstain from activities that fuel my inner critic including things like: Magazines and TV programs/ads that emphasize weight loss and achieving the perfect body; engaging in conversations about diets, fat, exercise, health or anything else that is really body hatred in disguise; spending time with people who think it’s okay to judge or criticize my eating habits or body; using clothes shopping as a reward for weight loss/depriving myself of nice clothes right now
  3. When I overeat, I will practice kindness, gently wondering what happened that felt painful, scary or difficult, that I needed to escape.
  4. I will actively seek help, learning to identify my emotions, and develop ways to be loving and present for myself when I feel bad, so that one day, I won't need or want to turn to food to escape.
  5. I will actively look for friends who are accepting, loving, and who model healthy self-care.
  6. I will not allow anyone to bully me about my size or weight, not my spouse, my doctor or even my mother.
  7. I will find something beautiful in everyone I meet, teaching myself to see my own beauty.
  8. I will practice treating myself the same way I would treat my dearest friend, with love and kindness, respect and compassion.
  9. I will listen care-fully to my hungers and cravings - for food, for rest, for security, for fun, for space, for quiet, for friends, for love, for self-acceptance.
  10. I will honor those hungers and cravings to the best of my ability whenever possible, and when I can't, I will still be present and loving for myself.
You already know that dieting doesn't work. You already know that self-criticism doesn't work. So maybe this is the year to try something new. As you practice self-love, you may find that your weight problem is no longer a problem. But that's not the real gift. The real gift is spending every moment of your life with someone safe, loving and nurturing - YOU.