i am my own best friend

That sounds gay, doesn’t it? J

It is a lesson I am trying to learn though. For many years whenever I was having a bad day I would turn to food. It was a quick, dependable and easy way to get some comfort. It was fairly short-lived however, as once the food was eaten, I needed further comfort. More food? Why yes, thank you.

I have always been viewed as a “strong” person, despite actually being quite mentally and emotionally fragile. I have talked about this before. I gave the impression of being strong because I never depended on anyone else. Why did I never depend on anyone? Because I was busy depending on food.

On days where I was feeling sorry for myself (these days still occur you know) I would sometimes feel the desperate need of a friend (of which I have many). Did I ever pick up the phone and ask for help? No. And then when help and support from friends was not forthcoming, I would actually feel angry at them. I’m there for you all the time – where are you when I need someone?! Had I just swallowed my pride and asked for some company, or sent an email, I would have received what I needed. But I never did. I turned to food instead.

A couple of months ago I was having a “black” day. This is the kind of day when the ED seems to consume me. I have been binge-free for a few months now and have not allowed myself to use food as an emotional crutch – only as nourishment. And on this day, it felt (as I have described before) as though there was screaming going on inside me, unrelenting screaming. Pleading for food one moment, forcefully demanding it the next. Thinking back on those days (I haven’t had one to that extreme for a while now) it strikes me that the internal conflict has a demonic edge to it…there’s a good cop/bad cop thing going on. There’s this pathetic voice…Please, please give me a snack. I am so hungry…quickly followed by a complete screaming tantrum…GET IT FOR ME! It is a living torment. I used to quieten it down with food before it ever reached those kinds of proportions. Not anymore.

Anyway, on this black day, I was being beaten black and blue on the inside with this bullshit. And it occurred to me that I needed a friend. And it occurred to me further that perhaps I could be that friend. Perhaps I could speak calmly to myself, offer myself reassurance, do something kind for myself. And I was right. I was able to do those things. And I felt better. I do have the capacity to take care of myself. When I do this, I am in a better state not only to love and care for others, but to receive love and care from others.

This realisation doesn’t mean that I don’t need friends, or that I don’t need to call on others for help sometimes. It also doesn’t mean that I am invincible, or that I can fulfil all of my own needs: as a Christian in particular, I definitely don’t think that’s true. However I have been denying myself a relationship with me for so long – choosing food as an alternative; ironically, depriving myself .

But this does mean that I have a caring and intelligent friend at my disposal every moment, if only I will call on her. And that’s myself. That’s a big deal.

diets don't work

Dieting has never worked for me. Diets have always made me feel very miserable, unhappy and profoundly deprived. Calling them "lifestyle changes" didn't make any difference either. Yes, I lost weight, but no, I never maintained the loss. Deprivation simply doesn't work. If diets worked, fat people would lose weight and remain thin. That just doesn't happen. Everyone I know who has ever lost a significant amount of weight by dieting has regained it all, and now yo-yos between high and low weights, in a constant battle with food, their wills and their own bodies. We treat our bodies as enemies to be defeated instead of our most beautiful and useful assets to be nurtured.

I now recognise how detrimental this pattern actually has been to my health. I found this excellent article the other day via Lori's blog. Please give it a read if you are a yo-yo dieter, as it really opens your eyes to what this habit does to the body. Please read it if you have a few extra pounds and you're thinking of starting a diet to shed them.

I am beginning to understand that depriving the body destroys the metabolism. If my body regularly experiences calorie deficits, then it's going to react strongly whenever I overeat, and try its best to hang onto the extra calories...for survival! I have often wondered why some people can go to say, a wedding, and eat and drink lots more than usual, and not gain weight. The answer is not luck. The answer is that their metabolism functions properly because it has not been confused and destroyed by cycled bouts of deprivation followed by bouts of excess. Therefore it metabolises extra food instead of turning it into adipose. My husband has always eaten pretty moderately and exercised. He does not do this out of principle - he does it because he listens to his body unconsciously, eats what he needs to, and enjoys running. At special events, he does not gain five pounds. I do, though. And it's not because I've consumed 17,500 calories worth of food either (one pound contains 3,500 calories). It is because my physiology has actually been affected by this behaviour of deprivation and excess that has been going on since I was about 13.

What is the antidote to this problem?

My friend Lee would say, actually, that it is love. She is fully recovered from Eating Distress and has left the world of dieting far behind her. To quote her:

"I was every weight...I hit both ends...and no number on the scales, no dress size, no body size ever made me any happier, or any more content. What I discovered was, that the more I obsessed about weight, the bigger my weight got. The more I trusted, forgot about it, and just listened to my body, focused on finding a balance...my weight just stabilised. I lost the excess weight caused by emotional over-eating, restricting and not listening to my body's signals. There were times I restricted and gained pounds at the end of the week (a symptom of fluid retention and metabolic rate standing still). Then I trusted that I could eat more and never had to worry about it.

I focused on accepting my body; sending love to the parts I didn't like, and that seemed to be the answer...to live anyway and the body just kinda sorts itself out when you aren't focusing on it and you are wrapped up in doing other things...in living!

Sometimes you temporarily gain a bit of weight becuase your body is healing. The poor body...being so beaten up and broken and yet it keeps fighting for you...but as it heals, it sorts itself out. You just need to trust; to beleive it's worth it. Something that helped me was realising that what had caused all the problems I experienced with my body was the disordered behaviour in the first place.

So there was no point in going back looking for the solution in the very thing that had created the problem! The answer is to build up the self-love. When you love yourself enough, you stop hurting yourself.

Build up the acceptance: only when you accept something the way it is completely can it change in positive ways. Build up the forgiveness (forgive your body for not always meeting your expectation, trust it is doing its best...).

Work on feeling good enough the way you are...build up your sense of feeling good enough to the point that nothing can break it."

So this is what I am trying to do. It is genuinely difficult to trust that it is all going to work out ok. Our culture screams at us that all we need to do is put down the fork. That's actually not the case. In fact, many of us need to learn that it is actually ok to eat. It is actually ok to give our body what it needs. I think I have been stuck in a mindset of thinking "If I can just deprive myself for long enough, then I will reach my target weight, and then I can stop depriving." That is total bullshit. Deprivation does not work. Dieting does not work. Why would I want to go back there? It has caused so so many problems: such a sense of failure. Sometimes you can even get a bit of a (short-lived) high from depriving yourself. Yay! I ate very little today! I am hungry but my willpower won out! Soon I will be thin! You think this feeling is confirmation that things are changing in you - but they're not!

What does seem to work, in the experience of Lee and others like her, is imperfectly stumbling along in the journey of kindness and self-acceptance, while feeding the body every couple of hours with something nutritious...plenty of meat, fish, fruit,vegetables, wholegrains, nuts, pulses, cheeses, yoghurt.

I don't always get it right. I eat too much or too little sometimes, or too much non-nutritious food or whatever. Sometimes I go too long without eating, which slows the metabolic rate. I also allow stupid bullshit thinking to go on in my head instead of correcting it and slamming it down at every turn. For example, I was at a bbq recently. We were eating at the table. Plate after plate of meat and bread and salad came my way as they were passed around. Feeling a little pressurised, I mindlessly took something from every plate, not even thinking do I like this? Do I want this? When the loading was done, I looked down and saw far more food on my plate than I wanted, including foods I do not even like. I panicked slightly. I began to eat quickly for a couple of reasons. (a) So that people would not see the quantity on my plate and (b) so that I would not offend our hosts by leaving half a plateful, having helped myself! How idiotic! Halfway through my meal I was very full, but kept going. It was actually terrible. And it all transpired not because there was a lot of food and a lot of "temptation" but because my thinking was utterly disordered. However I have learned a lesson about mindfulness in such situations and I won't let it happen again.

I am definitely a bit scared at the moment. I suppose I have been feeling that I can trust that my body will stabilise at a healthy weight if I can see the "proof" on the scales. (As you know, my scales are gone.) My therapist's suggestion that perhaps seeing lower numbers on the weighing scale was in fact not proof of recovery woke me up to the realities of my motivations...as a lifetime serial dieter from a very early age, I think I was actually viewing the recovery process as the key to losing weight. How insane is that!

I have to battle against this mindset now on a daily basis, but at least I am aware of it, which means I can get into the ring and fight it, instead of taking the covert digs from the condition day in day out without really realising how I am ending up so battered and bruised...

Here's to self-care, self-nourishment and the rest. Later.

i only have today

I was talking with a friend of mine today while we sat in the sunshine eating delicious sandwiches, drinking tea and solving all the world's (and our own) problems. She asked me some hard questions about what exactly it is that I am trying to do: what's the meat and potatoes of it? How does it work out in practice?

I understand: it's confusing. I am definitely confused myself. I am muddling through my own distorted thinking (which has been deeply influenced by the culture in which I live) trying to find the truth about myself at the bottom of it all. And something that has been very helpful to me is the acknowledgement that I only have today.

Now, I don't mean that I can't make plans. I don't mean that I can't dream about the future. In fact, it's the opposite of that. Acknowledging that I only have today in fact helps me to make plans and have dreams. And my plans and dreams will not be defined by a dress size or the number on the scale, thanks very much. Just because I carry extra weight does not mean that I do not deserve a bright future.

If I only have today, then I only have to worry about today's emotions. If I only have today, then I only need to worry about what I eat today. I don't need to stress about tomorrow, or that wedding I'm going to soon. If I am worried that I will be fat and unhealthy forever, well, making plans to lose 2lbs a week for the next 40 weeks isn't going to alleviate me of that worry. Also, binging isn't going to alleviate that worry: it's obviously making matters worse. However, choosing nourishing, delicious foods for my body today (which is all I can do) and trusting that those choices are all part of this journey toward full health - emotional, physical and spiritual - makes my tasks seem smaller.

If I feel overwhelmed today and want to stuff it down with food, well then I need to ask myself why. What exactly is overwhelming me? And what else can I say to myself or do for myself that will allow me to feel less overwhelmed? Being overwhelmed doesn't come from nowhere. Neither does anger or stress or frustration. Our emotions have roots. If I am overwhelmed, perhaps I need to sit quietly and feel it. I can take a look around my brain and my heart in that quiet moment and get the reason why. Once I have located the reason, I can make a choice as to how to react to the problem. And sometimes it's simpler than we might think.

For example, I might wake up, take a look in the mirror and feel upset with what I see. This might lead to feelings of anger, or being overwhelmed.

I might then think upon reflection that I feel upset because I am fat, or because I am ugly, or because none of my clothes fit right. I might mistakenly think that those are my problems (being fat and ugly). But that is not why I am upset. Being fat and ugly are not my problems.

I am upset because I have decided that to be a truly beautiful woman is to have perfect hair, a symmetrical face, a size 12 figure and expensive, well-cut clothes. More than that - tanned skin (not this white freckly stuff), nice hands and feet, medium height...this can all be added to the mix. Let's not forget that this imaginary woman also has a fantastic career, a clean home and a happy brood of kids around her. She is not stressed out or disappointed by life, either (ha!). I am upset because I have made decisions in advance about what is acceptable and what is not, and as I do not fit into this imaginary acceptable category, I cannot feel happy.

My husband says I am beautiful every day. Is he a liar? No. He sees my beauty as I am right now; no changes necessary. My friends often tell me I am beautiful. Are they lying too?

And when I tell one of my own friends (none of whom are supermodels) that they look very beautiful, am I lying? Of course not. Sometimes I am struck by how gorgeous they appear - each and every one of them! - because I am seeing their spirit and their personality shining out of their unique faces, and they are stunning to me.

So I've gotten out of bed. I've looked in the mirror and I appear to have been hit by a train. Am I willing to look myself in the eye and say, "You look good actually. You have good eyes with long lashes, a straight nose and strong teeth. You have a mouth and tongue which have the potential to say truthful and kind things. You have arms and hands that can hold your loved ones, or welcome a stranger. You have strong legs that can walk a thousand miles - literally and metaphorically. You have a sharp mind, safe in a head of dark hair. You have a heart that beats every moment, and that can feel and love."

Isn't that enough, for today?