Through all of my years of restriction there has been one constant: sugar. Whether I was vegan, paleo, WAPF, or raw, I have desperately feared sugar. And with good reason, right? Pretty much all diets, whether of the slimming or therapeutic type, recommend restricting or completely eliminating sweets. The unifying factor in our changing industrial diet is the mass consumption of refined sugar. And I certainly felt that sugar affected me negatively. My heart raced, my hands shook, I couldn't sleep, my moods plummeted, and most especially, it made me HONGRY. And HONGRY was scary. HONGRY made me feel out of control. HONGRY was to be avoided at all costs.
In the re-feeding portion of eating disorder recovery, all foods are good foods. All foods are necessary foods. There are no such thing as "empty" calories. There are no "junk" foods. All foods provide essential energy and nutrients to starving cells and organs. All calories are beneficial. This period is so, so challenging. Those fear-driven neural pathways are so well-trod. I pick up an apple and the accountant in my brain immediately tabulates the number of simple sugars. I eat a bowl of oatmeal and think, "There goes my intestinal lining." While grocery shopping the other day, I realized that I knew the calorie count of every single food I was purchasing, without reading any labels. The funny thing is, except for a brief period in adolescence, I've never consciously limited calories. I just absorbed that information from years of fixating on labels.
Re-feeding requires that all barriers be stripped away. I consciously consume "forbidden" foods on a daily basis. I talk myself through it. "It's okay to eat this handful of potato chips. These are easy calories and you need energy. There are no bad foods." I don't really believe this, but I eat the chips anyway. I eat the chips and my body does not immediately inflate. I breathe it out and wait it out, until the next time I must eat.
Eating is a chore right now. Three-thousand calories feels a million miles away most of the time. There's the ultimate First World Problem. But it's really HARD to eat this much!
For me, sugar is the most challenging aspect of re-feeding. Sugar is great for ED recovery because it's easily digested energy that can spur necessary hunger. Sugar is terrible for you, though. Eat too much of it and your pancreas will just explode. Right? And do I really want to feel like shit all the time? Do I really want to feel so out of control?
Well, an interesting thing has happened. If I am eating enough overall, sugar doesn't seem to affect me. I don't get the shaky hands, the mood swings, or the racing pulse. I sleep just fine and don't experience that scary bottomless hunger. I still eat a little bit of ice cream every day, because there are a shitload of calories in a small amount, so it helps to fill the gap. But after six weeks of re-feeding, I eat ice cream dutifully rather than joyfully. I do like ice cream, but I don't feel compelled by it. I certainly don't feel addicted to it. In fact, I'm pretty much bored by it.
Once I've found energy balance I doubt that sugar will be very important to me, one way or the other. This is radical. If you are restricting sugar because you're afraid of it, because it makes you hungry and affects your moods and make you feel out of control, sugar is very important indeed. Sugar dominates you. Sugar has control over you. If you could break that hold, wouldn't that be incredible? And wouldn't it be just wild if the appropriate way to deal with this "addiction" is just to cut the reins?
I'm sure someone out there will point out that people in the U.S. eat a truly incredible amount of sugar and nobody seems inclined to stop. There are a billion mitigating factors here, but this one is key: our national eating habits are closely aligned with a binge/starve cycle. I wonder if there's anywhere else on Earth where food is as moralized and guilt-laden and simultaneously gluttonously consumed and wasted as it is here in the U.S. I'd love to know if people in intact food cultures consume sugar as unconsciously and pervasively as U.S. Americans do. I doubt it. Maybe consciousness is the secret.
I don't have the answers on this one. I'm still in awe of my own experience.
In other news, I do not have a thyroid problem. All of my results
were clear, even with expanded testing and very progressive parameters
and a doctor who specializes in thyroid disorders. He was disappointed, I
could tell. He was so sure I had hypothyroidism. Other people are disappointed, too. I've been hauling around the projections of probably a dozen people who were positive that I had hypothyroidism.
I do have very low
cortisol levels and very low DHEA. He diagnosed me with "adrenal
fatigue," which is a completely made-up disorder. (As soon as you can direct me
to a peer-reviewed article showing that it's a diagnosable condition
separate from adrenal insufficiency, we can talk.) You know, of course, what mimics
the symptoms of "adrenal fatigue" and also hypothyroidism. Starvation.
I
tried to tell my doctor. He asked if I was feeling any differently
since I saw him last. I said yes, I have more energy, less depression,
and I think my hair has stopped falling out. He was pleased. Obviously
the fish oil he prescribed was working. I decided not to tell him that I
haven't been taking those horse pills religiously. "I think what's
making a difference," I said, "is that I've been eating more."
"Hm?" he said distractedly.
"Well,
this is a little hard to explain, but... I've been restricting calories
for a long time. I didn't think I was doing that, but because I cut so
many foods, like whole food groups, and macronutrient groups, and I've been so afraid of food in general, I've been
under-eating. Like... sometimes as little as 500 calories a day?"
I waited. He looked at his chart.
"Well, almonds are great for energy. Just carry a few in your pocket, you know. You don't need a lot, just a few every hour."
Message received. I would be doing this completely on my own.
During my fifth week of re-feeding, I had a little breakdown. Wait, that sounds more serious than it was. It was maybe just a little freak-out.
I was thinking of all the different ways that my body has changed since I began the re-feeding process -- I'm not cold all the time, my hair has stopped falling out, I sleep like a rock, my skin isn't so dry, I have a little more energy, and in the past couple of days a few friends have asked if I've lost weight. I've actually gained about five pounds, and I'm still slow with exercise, so it's not a lean gain. But I think I look healthier overall, and weight loss is the only language we have for improved health in this culture.
The hell of it is, I still torpedo myself with negativity every day. I still engage in that toxic self-talk and feel thoroughly disgusted with my body. I still dress in dark long-sleeved layers and it's getting hot, so I have the anxiety of knowing that I should strip down but being terrified of the exposure. And people comment on this all the time -- "Why are you wearing a coat? Why are you wearing black in this sunshine?" -- so I also have to justify it out loud. And since I'm not cold all the time I don't have any excuse except that I need those layers. I need them. And none of this has improved since re-feeding. None of it has changed at all. Except that I don't want to live this way anymore.
When I had my little epiphany and began this process, I saw a list of symptoms, I saw a cause, and I saw a cure. The cause was under-eating so the cure was eating enough. Once I began eating enough, the symptoms would reverse themselves and everything would be peachy. Suddenly I realized that everything would not be peachy. Nothing would be peachy because the rot was at the core and this starvation thing was just the bloom on the peel.
And so I had the tiring thought, "I haven't even begun to work on this."
So I found a nutritionist who helps people learn to eat normally after years of dietary restriction. It was a huge leap of faith to write that first email, detailing my experience and asking for her help. I hate paying people to help me. I'm a DIY-er all the way, baby. I change my own damn tires, I don't call AAA. But after this tiring thought it occurred to me that I might need some assistance. Or at least a consultation with someone who could tell me if I need assistance.
I filled out a bunch of different forms for her, and then she told me that according to the screening tools, I'm at high risk for having a clinically-diagnosable eating disorder. She works with people who are mildly disordered due to dieting behaviors, and since I'm already re-feeding what I probably need is a therapist who specializes in eating disorder recovery. So she referred me to a few low-cost/sliding-scale therapists in my area.
I'm just holding on to those numbers for now. Waiting it out. Seeing if I can DIY this bitch.
cheap-ass photo wall
For years, I've dreamed of enlarging & printing some of my photos and framing them for our walls. It's never happened. Well, maybe a handful of 5x7s and the occasional 8x10. But for the most part, it's just been too expensive of a project, and if I could only print & frame a few I couldn't decide which ones to do. So I have some 2000+ photos saved digitally, but very few in hard copy.
Finally, I decided to do this.
It's not the prettiest thing, but I still love it. I feel so happy every time I see it. Altogether it cost about $20, and there's still room to grow.
How do you hang your photos?
Finally, I decided to do this.
How do you hang your photos?
april favorites
Favorite reads from the month of April.
:::Metabolic health is a feminist issue.
:::Your kids and the diet mentality. Thinking long & hard about this one.
:::Planning to eat carbs in the future? Make a heavy-duty potato cage.
:::"If you don't teach your children to be alone, they'll only know how to be lonely." (See also.)
:::What gay marriage threatens.
:::Margaret Cho was Eating The Food ten years before it was cool. (Of course.)
:::Good news for those who hate cardio.
:::Let us appreciate goats.
:::Photographers take on urbanization in China. (This one makes me sad. I've always dreamed of visiting China, but it's changing so fast, I don't think it will be anything like I've imagined it.)
:::21 Roads to Drive Before You Die.
:::Glorifying obesity.
:::A sweet dose of happiness.
:::Loving this entire site.
:::And finally, a handy chart for understanding your haters.
Have a beautiful weekend!
:::Metabolic health is a feminist issue.
:::Your kids and the diet mentality. Thinking long & hard about this one.
:::Planning to eat carbs in the future? Make a heavy-duty potato cage.
:::"If you don't teach your children to be alone, they'll only know how to be lonely." (See also.)
:::What gay marriage threatens.
:::Margaret Cho was Eating The Food ten years before it was cool. (Of course.)
:::Good news for those who hate cardio.
:::Let us appreciate goats.
:::Photographers take on urbanization in China. (This one makes me sad. I've always dreamed of visiting China, but it's changing so fast, I don't think it will be anything like I've imagined it.)
:::21 Roads to Drive Before You Die.
:::Glorifying obesity.
:::A sweet dose of happiness.
:::Loving this entire site.
:::And finally, a handy chart for understanding your haters.
Have a beautiful weekend!
just a little patience (recipe: mujadara)
Today Jeremy and I made the sad decision to wait for a while before adopting goats.
Our place is perfect for goats, and we're a little bit desperate for them because there's so much poison oak here. Goats won't chew poison oak away entirely, but at least it would not be knee-high or taller, covering every inch of the property that is not a dedicated pathway.
Unfortunately, the poison oak also makes it rather difficult to erect fencing. There's only so much chopping you can do at poison oak before you are guaranteed to come in contact with it.
 |
| I hate you so much. |
There are other reasons, too. It's the end of the school year and we're both heavily laden with work. We just moved a month ago and we're still settling in. We're broke. I might not have a job soon. I'm still fatigued, and overwhelmed with this recovery process. It's getting hot fast and the mosquitoes are already colonizing. We're raising 20 chicks. We need to build a garden in the next month, on a challenging site, with no money and no time. Is that enough?
You know what sucks? Patience.
That's my clumsy segueway into the topic of this post, which is mujadara. This is one of Jeremy's favorite meals, which I have not made in a very long time due to the inclusion of gut-destroying, insulin-spiking, fat-producing legumes and grains
Mujadara is a Middle Eastern dish of lentils and rice, thousands of years old and likely with thousands of variations. What keeps it from being the blandest dish on Earth is the inclusion of caramelized onions. Caramelizing onions is challenging, because the line is so thin between sweetly golden-brown and burnt. I've burnt many an onion in my time, but I've finally mastered the technique, and that means we'll be having mujadara much more often. The most difficult thing about caramelizing onions is the impulse to simply raise the heat to make them cook faster. This doesn't work. Just be patient.
I love mujadara served with mango chutney, labneh or strained yogurt, and flatbread. I made these gluten-free flatbreads with Pamela's gluten-free blend. They puffed up to such a degree that they blended into one amorphous blob of batter and bore not even a passing resemblance to the author's photos. I probably made a mistake adding baking powder since the blend already includes a leavening agent. I thought they would not be salvageable, but they actually turned out quite good.
You can save time by caramelizing the onions while the rice and lentils are cooking, but still plan for at least an hour of cooking time altogether.
MUJADARA
3 onions, halved and sliced
4 T. ghee (or olive oil), divided
1 c. brown lentils
1 c. basmati rice
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. cumin
1 bunch of parsley, chopped
labneh or strained yogurt, mango chutney, and flatbreads, to serve
Combine the lentils with 3 c. water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 25 minutes, until tender but not mushy. Drain.
While the lentils are cooking, heat 1 T. of ghee in a large frying pan. Add the onions and sprinkle liberally with salt. Cook over medium heat for roughly five minutes, stirring only if they seem to be sticking.
Add another tablespoon of ghee, stir the onions, and let them cook for another five minutes. Again, don't stir unless they seem to be sticking. By this time the onions should be quite brown and soft.
Add the last two tablespoons of ghee, reduce the heat to low, and continue cooking for an addition 5-10 minutes, stirring regularly until the onions are very limp and deeply golden-brown.
Combine the lentils with half of the onions, the rice, the cinnamon, and the cumin. Add two cups of water and a heavy pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the rice to continue steaming for 5 minutes.
Uncover and add salt to taste. Stir in the parsley. Serve topped with additional caramelized onions, scooped onto flatbreads, with labneh and chutney. Enjoy!
 |
it's broke
There doesn't seem to be an opposite corollary to the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," but there should be. Something like, "If it ain't working, fuck that shit." But with more profanity.
This hasn't been working. But how does one go about fucking that shit? The hole left behind is monstrously huge. I can hear the vacuum. What will slide on in there if I don't consciously fill it?
A few days ago, I had this revelation: I know more than almost any human being has ever known about nutrition. This isn't arrogance. Think about it: the calorie was not discovered until 1824. Protein wasn't described until 1838, vitamin C wasn't isolated until 1907, and it probably wasn't that long ago that you first heard about "good" cholesterol. Our ancestors ate what was available until a surplus appeared with agriculture, and then they learned what to eat and how to eat based on trial & error. They never counted calories because calories didn't exist. They didn't cut the fat off their meat or worry about toxins in goat liver, because fat and toxins didn't exist. They combined corn with lime and wheat with wild yeasts and curdled milk in animal stomachs not because bad things existed in their food but because good things could result. Everything was just food, and bad food was spoiled food. Of course, there was no food utopia. Nobody understood bacteria or parasites or viruses. But everything was one big experiment that eventually became custom, and many people did eat quite well.
If you think about it, what has really fucked up our collective relationship with food is mainstream interpretation of science, what Michael Pollan calls "nutritionism." We became afraid of the meat and rice and bread and butter that had nourished our families for generations. We knew better so we had to do better. We didn't eat the food anymore; we ate this food because that food would kill you, not because it was laced with parasites or bacteria, but because it was contaminated with pesticides or CAFO run-off or transgenic material. And this food might be milk or it might be lentils -- one way or the other, we were destined for tragedy. The science said so.
So here's what I'm thinking now: it's possible that I know everything I will ever need to know about nutrition. As new information comes to light, it probably won't serve me very well. At this point, I know very well what I should not eat. I shouldn't eat rice because of lectins and carbs. I shouldn't eat beef because of animal protein and fat. I shouldn't eat almonds because of phytates and rancidity. I shouldn't eat kale because of goitrogens. If I track down the research and guru-gossip on every single thing I've ever eaten, I will find something wrong with it. Someone out there will swear to me that I will lose weight and never die and have sparkling rainbows fall out of my ass if I stop eating it.
Knowledge is not wisdom. Objective logic is not subjective experience. So now I am eating all the things. I am listening to what my physical self has to say about kale and pork and cream and maple syrup and lentils and onions and rice. Mostly what my physical self is saying right now is, "WOO-HOO! Calories!" Eventually (I hope) I will be nourished, the enthusiasm will be tempered, and then I can listen as it says, "Hm, maybe not so much of that. And more of that, please."
And I will try very hard to listen. But I know this intuitively: I can't listen if I can't hear it. I have to learn to tune out the fear-mongering, and hoo-lardy! Has there ever been so much fear-mongering about food as this exact moment in history?
So I'm taking small steps. I'm setting small boundaries, shifting what I willingly consume each day. Because we have to feed ourselves emotionally, too, right?
So.
If it makes me feel afraid to eat something...
If it makes me feel ashamed of my body...
If it spends any amount of time shaming the bodies or habits of others...
I eliminate it.
Right now, I'm very unforgiving. I read a great number of food-related blogs, and if I see even one post about how consuming this common edible substance damns the fertility of the next seven generations, I unsubscribe immediately. I unsubscribe from writers who post about dieting (including "total lifestyle change!!!!!!!!!!") or body-shaming or who can't keep their eyes on their own plate.
This whittled my Feedly down to size in no time. Virtually every "paleo/ancestral/traditional" blog was removed. Every fitness site except zen habits was removed. I kept a handful of "paleo" recipe blogs, like The Urban Poser, because I do love a good almond flour cupcake, but most of them had to go.
In the end, more than 40 websites were removed from my feed. I replaced them with just a few that I find to be universally encouraging and inspiring, such as:
Beauty Redefined
Mara Glatzel
The Militant Baker
This Is Not A Diet
Radical Hateloss
Then I did the same thing to my Facebook pages. I'm taking a little vacation from Facebook, but I took a few minutes to make a clean sweep of all pages that make me feel like shit. More than 100 pages were removed. Then I subscribed to a few new ones, like these:
Institute for the Psychology of Eating
Love Your Body Project
Brene Brown
Martha Stewart Living (Her food has always been in the "look but don't touch" category for me.)
This Is Not A Diet
Why did I continue to expose myself to messages that denigrated bodies like mine and encouraged me to fear something as fundamental as food? For my own good, of course.
Which leads me to this question: am I just being hedonistic? After all, I'm doing stuff because it feels good. This is a big no-no in Flagellation Nation. If I'm fat, shouldn't I be punishing myself? If I'm American, isn't it true that I have no idea how to eat right?
Let's get back to that adage. Hatred, fear, and restriction are not working. Fuck that shit. I need a little peace.
Setting these boundaries in personal relationships will be much harder. That's where the real work comes in. And what of my little blog? This whole place is about food.
Hm. I'll have to think about that. For now, here's a picture of me with a chick on my shoulder.
This hasn't been working. But how does one go about fucking that shit? The hole left behind is monstrously huge. I can hear the vacuum. What will slide on in there if I don't consciously fill it?
A few days ago, I had this revelation: I know more than almost any human being has ever known about nutrition. This isn't arrogance. Think about it: the calorie was not discovered until 1824. Protein wasn't described until 1838, vitamin C wasn't isolated until 1907, and it probably wasn't that long ago that you first heard about "good" cholesterol. Our ancestors ate what was available until a surplus appeared with agriculture, and then they learned what to eat and how to eat based on trial & error. They never counted calories because calories didn't exist. They didn't cut the fat off their meat or worry about toxins in goat liver, because fat and toxins didn't exist. They combined corn with lime and wheat with wild yeasts and curdled milk in animal stomachs not because bad things existed in their food but because good things could result. Everything was just food, and bad food was spoiled food. Of course, there was no food utopia. Nobody understood bacteria or parasites or viruses. But everything was one big experiment that eventually became custom, and many people did eat quite well.
If you think about it, what has really fucked up our collective relationship with food is mainstream interpretation of science, what Michael Pollan calls "nutritionism." We became afraid of the meat and rice and bread and butter that had nourished our families for generations. We knew better so we had to do better. We didn't eat the food anymore; we ate this food because that food would kill you, not because it was laced with parasites or bacteria, but because it was contaminated with pesticides or CAFO run-off or transgenic material. And this food might be milk or it might be lentils -- one way or the other, we were destined for tragedy. The science said so.
So here's what I'm thinking now: it's possible that I know everything I will ever need to know about nutrition. As new information comes to light, it probably won't serve me very well. At this point, I know very well what I should not eat. I shouldn't eat rice because of lectins and carbs. I shouldn't eat beef because of animal protein and fat. I shouldn't eat almonds because of phytates and rancidity. I shouldn't eat kale because of goitrogens. If I track down the research and guru-gossip on every single thing I've ever eaten, I will find something wrong with it. Someone out there will swear to me that I will lose weight and never die and have sparkling rainbows fall out of my ass if I stop eating it.
Knowledge is not wisdom. Objective logic is not subjective experience. So now I am eating all the things. I am listening to what my physical self has to say about kale and pork and cream and maple syrup and lentils and onions and rice. Mostly what my physical self is saying right now is, "WOO-HOO! Calories!" Eventually (I hope) I will be nourished, the enthusiasm will be tempered, and then I can listen as it says, "Hm, maybe not so much of that. And more of that, please."
And I will try very hard to listen. But I know this intuitively: I can't listen if I can't hear it. I have to learn to tune out the fear-mongering, and hoo-lardy! Has there ever been so much fear-mongering about food as this exact moment in history?
So I'm taking small steps. I'm setting small boundaries, shifting what I willingly consume each day. Because we have to feed ourselves emotionally, too, right?So.
If it makes me feel afraid to eat something...
If it makes me feel ashamed of my body...
If it spends any amount of time shaming the bodies or habits of others...
I eliminate it.
Right now, I'm very unforgiving. I read a great number of food-related blogs, and if I see even one post about how consuming this common edible substance damns the fertility of the next seven generations, I unsubscribe immediately. I unsubscribe from writers who post about dieting (including "total lifestyle change!!!!!!!!!!") or body-shaming or who can't keep their eyes on their own plate.
This whittled my Feedly down to size in no time. Virtually every "paleo/ancestral/traditional" blog was removed. Every fitness site except zen habits was removed. I kept a handful of "paleo" recipe blogs, like The Urban Poser, because I do love a good almond flour cupcake, but most of them had to go.
In the end, more than 40 websites were removed from my feed. I replaced them with just a few that I find to be universally encouraging and inspiring, such as:
Beauty Redefined
Mara Glatzel
The Militant Baker
This Is Not A Diet
Radical Hateloss
Then I did the same thing to my Facebook pages. I'm taking a little vacation from Facebook, but I took a few minutes to make a clean sweep of all pages that make me feel like shit. More than 100 pages were removed. Then I subscribed to a few new ones, like these:
Institute for the Psychology of Eating
Love Your Body Project
Brene Brown
Martha Stewart Living (Her food has always been in the "look but don't touch" category for me.)
This Is Not A Diet
Why did I continue to expose myself to messages that denigrated bodies like mine and encouraged me to fear something as fundamental as food? For my own good, of course.
Which leads me to this question: am I just being hedonistic? After all, I'm doing stuff because
Let's get back to that adage. Hatred, fear, and restriction are not working. Fuck that shit. I need a little peace.
Setting these boundaries in personal relationships will be much harder. That's where the real work comes in. And what of my little blog? This whole place is about food.
Hm. I'll have to think about that. For now, here's a picture of me with a chick on my shoulder.
what 3200 calories looks like
Hey, guess what?
If I put "ice cream" on the shopping list, alongside the kale and grass-fed beef, I'll bring it home and then it will just sit in the freezer until I want it, and then I'll have just as much as I want and no more.
This is completely different from having a guilt-ridden "treat day" after a week of skipping meals, or eating something before a "cleanse" or "fast" like it was going to be the last time I'd ever eat that thing, or bingeing on something all at once so I could get rid of the evidence.
(Read this if none of this is making any sense.)
* * *
For the past fifteen years I have consciously restricted or outright avoided almost every available edible substance in one way or another. Meat in all forms, dairy products in all forms, grains in all forms, sugar in all forms, fat in all forms, carbohydrates in all forms, protein in all forms, beans, lentils, soy, nuts and seeds, cruciferous vegetables, nightshade vegetables, starchy vegetables, seafood, eggs, fruit, coffee... You name it and I have thought it responsible for my ill health or large body size and therefore tried to strip it from my diet. I've also gone through a range of activity levels, from daily workouts at the gym to using a bike as my sole means of transportation to moving only from the bedroom to the couch.
But I have never lost weight and my health has never been all that great. My stress level regarding food has always been astronomical, and the weight of restriction and deprivation has always been unsustainable.
Now, for something completely different. EATING THE FOOD.
I eat whatever I want. I eat whenever I want. I eat however much I want. I eat regularly. I eat enough. I don't count calories (except to ensure I'm eating enough). I don't count macronutrients. I don't avoid any foods because they are not "healthy" or "whole" or "clean."
When Amber of Go Kaleo shared my post on her Facebook page, some dude commented, "Eating processed foods isn't the only way to avoid caloric restriction.... [T]his whole, 'eh, screw it and eat whatever/nothing is good for you, nothing is bad for you' sentiment is just not true." I'm not sure how he got that from my post, because I didn't say anything about giving up on real food and just eating Twinkies for the rest of my life.
However, a central message to Eating The Food is this: if I want to have a Twinkie, I can.
Over the past ten days, I've eaten many things that I would not consciously allow myself to touch before. I might have eaten such things before, but only shamefully, secretly, and after a bout of restrictive eating. Things like... chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs. Ice cream. Pancakes. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. White rice. Potato chips. Sour gummy candy. Oatmeal. Bananas. Corn tortillas. Sugary caffeinated beverages.
Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of meals loaded with "real food." But I also have potato chips in my house right now. I don't particularly feel like eating them, so I won't. Eventually I will probably eat them. That's okay. I won't gain a million pounds. I won't die. And I don't need to eat every last one of those chips right now because I might never get to have them again.
When I restrict my calories or macronutrients, I have no balance, and no balance means no brakes. "I can't have any" ends up meaning "I can't have just one." If I'm eating enough, and eating anything I want, I might eat something that is not ideal, but then I just... move on. I maintain perspective. I don't need to lie to myself. I stay upright. I don't fall into the bag of chips or the carton of ice cream because... I just don't need to do that if I can have them whenever I want.
* * *
A few emotions I have experienced over the past ten days:
- Guilt, because I'm breaking the rules.
- Euphoria, because I can do whatever I want.
- Depression, because I have made myself suffer for so long.
- Self-loathing, because I'm bound to gain 1,745 pounds.
- Skepticism, because nobody my size could have an eating disorder.
- Anxiety, because I might never get better.
- Regret, because I don't want my daughter to follow in my footsteps.
- Self-doubt, because this probably won't have any positive effect.
- Impatience, because I'm sick of thinking about this shit.
- Worry, because this won't be easy.
- Hopefulness. Just because.
Sometimes I spin into a panic. Sometimes I sit with my head in my hands, thinking What the FUCK am I DOING?! This is STUPID! Sometimes I think I'm feeding my eating disorder with just another way to disorder my eating. Sometimes I'm not sure who I would be if I were not obsessed with food and numbers and restriction. I wonder what I could accomplish if I were not consumed by fear and doubt.
At the same time, I am constantly surrounded by the background noise of weight loss pressure. It seems like people are talking to me about their diets ten times more than usual. This guy did a “raw food bootcamp”
and lost 15 pounds in a week drinking only vegetable juice. This couple is restricting all grains, sugar, and alcohol and eating
only non-starchy vegetables and meat. This lady is trying to get rid of the loose skin on her belly from her last round of the HCG diet by doing another round of the HCG diet. I feel like the universe is
testing me. I feel like a crazy person. I feel gargantuan and insane.
I aspire to one day rise above and just eat whatever I want whenever I'm hungry without having to remind myself that this is normal behavior. For now, Eating The Food is close enough. This will be a long process.
* * *
In response to my own question, here's what 3200 calories looks like.
In addition to keeping ice cream in my freezer, I've learned that my hunger cues are broken and my body is in serious need of repair. But everything was delicious. My weight is the same. And I had the energy to pick up my weights this week, for the first time in months.
Let's do this shit.
put a bird on it
I'm working on a follow-up post to the last thing, but for now...
Chicks! Twenty Gold Sex Links, to be specific.
Twenty seems like a lot to some people, but trust me, once you've raised a few chicks, there's really no difference between four birds and forty. If you are serious about eggs, you might as well raise a quantity of chicks. They all have the same needs and those needs are easy to fulfill: food, water, warmth, and light. That's it.
We bought these birds from the feed store -- they were on sale for $1.99 each, cheaper than the hatchery, and no shipping costs. Plus, they were already a week old, so any that were sickened or weakened from transit were already gone. These birds are super-healthy and we haven't had any problems, except the expected pasty-butt.
Pasty-butt happens when their tiny little anuses (ani?) get plugged up with poop. It's very common, and easily corrected, but it can be deadly if you don't watch for it and address it quickly. You can tell if a bird has pasty-butt because a big plug of birdshit is stuck on their backsides. I hold them gently while wiping their bottoms with a cloth dipped in warm water and dish soap. Then they go under the heat lamp immediately, since being wet and cold is a serious risk. I've never lost a bird to either pasty-butt or being wet, but I don't take any chances.
We assumed these birds would be a straight run, but they're all females. So pretty soon our average haul will look like THIS again.
Jeremy and I can't agree on how we want to handle the birds. I want to spend a lot of time with them so they'll be more tame and friendly. Jeremy wants them to stay relatively wild so they'll be hardier.
We've compromised by allowing the kids to take a few birds out of the brooder for ten minutes a day of play. It's possible that I play with them, too...
Chicks! Twenty Gold Sex Links, to be specific.
We bought these birds from the feed store -- they were on sale for $1.99 each, cheaper than the hatchery, and no shipping costs. Plus, they were already a week old, so any that were sickened or weakened from transit were already gone. These birds are super-healthy and we haven't had any problems, except the expected pasty-butt.
Pasty-butt happens when their tiny little anuses (ani?) get plugged up with poop. It's very common, and easily corrected, but it can be deadly if you don't watch for it and address it quickly. You can tell if a bird has pasty-butt because a big plug of birdshit is stuck on their backsides. I hold them gently while wiping their bottoms with a cloth dipped in warm water and dish soap. Then they go under the heat lamp immediately, since being wet and cold is a serious risk. I've never lost a bird to either pasty-butt or being wet, but I don't take any chances.
We assumed these birds would be a straight run, but they're all females. So pretty soon our average haul will look like THIS again.
We've compromised by allowing the kids to take a few birds out of the brooder for ten minutes a day of play. It's possible that I play with them, too...
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