In a general sense, I feel like I'm doing better than failing entirely, but I don't feel good about what I'm doing. I'm making rules that I follow most of the time. It helps when people know the rules and could (by observation) keep tabs on me and make a judgment if I break a rule. Accountability is something I haven't always held myself to - but I don't keep the rules if no one is holding me accountable. I can convince the person watching that I will be OK if I break this rule this once, and since they are usually different people, I can also convince them that it really is only this once - which makes me feel like I'm being incredibly secretive and dishonest, but also that it REALLY is just this ONCE. That's kind of ugly. And I feel like beating myself up about it.
Phase 2 has so much fruit and grain in it that when I think about following it closely, I panic a little - though I understand that fruit and grains are important. So I decided, last Sunday with Doug's assistance, to eat one serving of grain per day (tennis ball size) and 1 serving of fruit per day until Sunday Feb 28.
On Wednesday, I skipped my therapy appointment to spend time with Doug in town. We went to Blue Plate. Doug and I had a serious conversation about whether or not I should eat that bun and those fries - he said he never knows what will happen to me. Sometimes I'm fine, and sometimes it puts me in a funk for a week - Grumpy, Sad, Introverted. I convinced us both I would be fine. On Wednesday while I was eating that bun and those fries with my burger, I felt fine. While driving home, I felt fine about it. No guilt, no self abuse, no problem. But when we got home, all I wanted was more and more and more and more sugar - I ate a lot of fruit mostly, but that's when the problems started over again. Doug was really onto something, but I didn't understand exactly what until this morning.
I picked up a copy of "When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies" by Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter several months ago. My roommate said it was incredibly influential in her life when she was in her twenties. This morning I read the preface, and am now only on the 2nd page of the introduction and it hit me . . .
It's not so much that I shouldn't eat refined sugar and high starch foods because of the guilt (that's part of it) . . . but because refined sugar makes me crave more sugar for several days afterward. Those cravings are my body in action . . . blood sugar rising and falling, insulin resistance, etc. Which is where my diet comes into play - to avoid pre-diabetes I have to prevent that from happening and cure my insulin resistance.
About two days after a refined sugar and potato indiscretion, I find myself not just slipping down the slope, but skiing!!! Not with freedom of will and desire - joyfully and with love for good food, but ANGRILY, obsessively, with self-loathing, fear, panic - with outright HATRED that I cannot control myself. I start to feel AGAIN! that I am a bad, immoral person.
I do things like drink coffee in the morning and then, panicked about what a bad person I am, I try not to think about food at all . . . before I know it, it's 1:30 in the afternoon, I've been on the phone all day doing project work, my email is piling up and suddenly all the people who couldn't reach me in the morning are calling. I'm desperate, hysterical, hungry, stressed out to the max and I reach for what is available to me - 2 slices of a pepperoni pizza that my co-worker ordered from Dominos.
The problem is NOT just blowing my diet, but food obsession, and self-loathing. I can see in me now a need to protect my health, but also a need to treat the behavioral issues that continue coming up. I don't want to do this anymore. And I feel like I've said this before. I'm glad it is back in front of me.
The preface of this book talks about a "non-diet approach" allowing these women to find out how to eat what their bodies actually need; allowing these women to learn to speak to themselves with compassion. "When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies" says that women use "dieting and body hatred to cope with the central issues of their lives" to a great extent.
Because my health is on the line, I don't feel like I can say no to dieting and body hatred like these women have - I've only just started to diet. But I choose to read this book with an open mind. Another sentence says that "women have a way of saying: 'We want to free ourselves from body hatred and dieting, but who will we be without them?" It sounds familiar.
Doug asked me once, and says in other words every time I get super intense about something that shouldn't matter, "Are you ever going to be ok with being ok?" I would be lying if I said that today the answer is yes - I am ok with being ok. After he posed this question to me the first few times it occurred to me - I've called myself a "Self Actualizer" and it is one of the things I strive for - constantly wanting to be a better and better version of myself. Who would I be if I weren't working on an issue?
Part of me doesn't want to "work" on this at all. I want to just be 'foot loose and fancy free'. I want to eat whatever I want in amounts as big as I'd like - but I only want that if the consequences go away - no self-loathing, and no risk of diabetic coma!
So instead I commit to not setting myself up on that slippery slope in the first place. Especially when I see a little bit of success. That back-slide I do when I feel like "you did it" is part of the trouble. Rewarding myself for losing weight by eating a brownie is not a good idea. Martha Beck would say it's the wrong decision if it feels like it takes my freedom away, and this feels like hell, but I think once the sugar craving goes away (probably by tomorrow or the day after) I'll get my freedom back.
I want to work on this. I want to resolve it. I want to get to a place where, if it comes up again, I'll know how to speak to myself and to others with compassion. That feels good.
P.S. if anyone has any ideas about how to make chicken and beef more exciting (without breading) please let me know because if I have to eat another grilled chicken breast, I'm going to puke.
Well, Casey makes this awesome Mango Salsa that we had on chicken. It was great. It was mango, bell pepper, jalapeno, onion, orange, grapefruit...ummm....something else....oh, I think it had lime and lemon juice too. It was really good on chicken. Also, chicken curry is really good, but it's usually served w/ rice....so I don't know. You could do a rotisserie chicken or even better, just buy a whole chicken, take out the giblets, put it in a casserole dish, flavor however you like (lemon pepper, garlic herb, whatever) and bake it at 350 for an hour and a half! really good!
ReplyDelete