Weighty Kaity

I binged last night. It wasn't as bad as it could have been but it definitely wasn't great. Jen had Rachele over and I was stressing out from the day's work and because of tomorrow's work and I just wanted to go to bed and the shower had been dyed red because Rachele dyed Jen's hair and I just ate and ate and I feel like I undid my careful eating for the week. I know there's no "undoing" but it's getting to be that time of the summer where I appear in photographs and I just look like this big, hulking monster in them.

It's hot and uncomfortable and I ate all kinds of junk last night and kept going long after other people were finished. I just wanted to be alone and I feel like I was rude.

It's really hard to be kind to my body today. I want to be nicer and more forgiving but when it comes to photos of me I have panic attacks. However good I thought I looked, it's all undone once a picture is taken. Back when I'd been around 200 pounds instead of 240, I was largely comfortable in most pictures. Now I feel like crying. And I wish it wasn't that way, but it is.

So this popped up on my Google Reader today. :\

And a part of me says "fuck that!" but another part says "me too." Because I wonder a lot of the time about what it must be like to have thin privilege and not have my belly flop on my thighs or have a flat stomach or not worry about what people think of me when I eat something unhealthy or if I'd be more flexible if my fat wasn't in the way or how I'd feel if I could fit into a size 2 or even a size 10.

And it's hard to shake that feeling. I want to. I'm curious to know what it's like to live in a body that's not my own, especially one that's full of thin privilege. I hate the fact that wrapping my arms around my girlfriend is hard, or leaning in for a kiss requires a lot more leaning. I love her, I love our sex life, but sometimes I look at the way thin people fit together and yes, I'm jealous.

I thought I had to put that out there just to say it. I'm about being positive about myself, and I forgive myself for not being that way because I'm beautiful, too. But this image was triggering in a bad way.

I just finished watching this video. I kind of stumbled across it because this same man also did some gay rights videos that were inspiring. I didn't intend on fitness/weight loss tips, but the things he has to say are really, really kind and offer a nice perspective.

Some things that stood out for me:

Negative thoughts have physiological effects
I feel this. Not only is it my diet that brings me down, but it's my attitude. The more I talk about hating myself or not looking pretty, or being afraid of eating for fear I won't stop, or when I come down on myself for all of that, I feel bad. I feel heavier, I feel unhappy. I looked at some videos of myself from 2008 when I was at the peak of my healthy eating and exercise. I felt good. I wasn't perfect with my diet, for sure, but I'd lost some weight and I felt energetic and happy. I wasn't stuffing myself to sickness, my skin was clear. And I think part of that confidence boost was that I was thinking good things about my body.

Negative thoughts constrict the body, they weigh you down, and it's completely true. When I'm feeling confident and active and happy, nothing can stop me - until I think something bad about myself and beat myself up. And that's not good. That's abusing myself.

When you start thinking something negative, apologize
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Realize your negativity, try to figure out where it came from, and then be gentle on yourself. I know I can be really hard on myself for overeating and a lack of control - but that's no reason to be mean about it.

Treat your body like a small child
I don't have to be mean to myself. Thinking of my body as a pet or small child can help. It's young, it isn't as developed as my mind, and sometimes it doesn't know any better. It's my job to take care of it, my job to treat it right. That means making sure it gets activity, making sure it gets its proper nutrients - but it also means that if I eat too much or I'm not feeling pretty that day, to still be kind to it. Would I EVER talk to another person, especially a child, the way I talk to myself? No. I need positive reinforcement, I need to apologize for treating myself so badly. I'm beautiful. I'm going to take care of the one body that I have. It may not look like anyone else's body but it's mine and it deserves my respect. It carries me throughout the day and without it my thoughts wouldn't exist. So it's fat. So it feels heavy and worn down instead of light and loved - but being cruel to it isn't going to help.

This is kind of along the lines that I've been thinking recently, and it's nice to have it validated. I actually want to go in the direction of complaining less, of trying to use optimism to boost me up even when I'm totally feeling down. And that goes for all aspects of my life.

From this article at The Fat Nutritionist:

In my mind, food that makes you feel weird or off — no matter how good it tastes right now — isn’t food you can unconditionally love. Amounts of food that make you feel bad aren’t amounts of food you actually want to eat. And if you find yourself continually sacrificing your well-being for the lovely, immediate feel and taste of food, it’s a sign that something has gone wrong.

Something is wrong. I need to keep a diary of what I'm eating and how it makes me feel, so I know what actually makes me happy vs what tastes good but ultimately makes me feel terrible.

Things that make me feel good:

- ice water at meals, and not at meals - but not too much. drinking too much in one evening leaves me feeling uncomfortable (and by "too much" I mean literally about two liters, I drink that much water)
- salad, but only when I'm out. it never tastes as good at home
- watermelon - I can eat this by itself
- mandarin oranges - delicious but too many can make me queasy
- ice cream in small amounts
- non-sugar cereal (but I can totally overdo it)
- certain sugar cereal - but they scratch my mouth and make me thirsty

Things that make me feel bad:

- macaroni and cheese - or anything with a LOT of cheese. I think I may be mildly lactose intolerant
- overeating ANYTHING, esp dairy things
- greasy, processed foods
- anything more than about 8 oz of orange juice

I need to use a smaller bowl because I feel compelled to fill the big one that I have, which leads to more eating, which leads to feeling totally sick.

This entry is total word vomit. XD

Today I had

- ham and cheese sandwich
- large iced coffee
- couscous
- barber chicken thing
- 2 handfuls peanut butter M&Ms

Dinner made me sick tonight. IDK if I ate too much or I've got so much anxiety and it's that time of the month that everything makes me sick, but my stomach turned when I ate those M&Ms.

Yesterday I had -

- 4 blueberry pancakes w maple syrup (ate 3/4s of it)
- shrimp with pasta and garlic (surprise from my mom! I ate most of it)
- mac and cheese (ate about 3/4 of it)
- mandarin oranges (1-2 servings, idk)

Doing okay with leaving a little on my plate. The last couple of days I've been really busy and active, too, which changes the way I want to eat. I don't want to eat as much. The mac and cheese was good for about five or six bites and then got boring. I ate a little more than I wanted but I still quit.

FatSecret keeps sending me messages to remind me that I have 57 pounds to lose to reach my goal. I want to shut it off but I want to maybe keep that option open? I don't know. I'll just ignore it for now.

Okay. So here's a new set of goals.

• Try to eat only when hungry.
• Leave some food left over, don't feel compelled to finish it.
• Stop eating when it feels like a burden, it's okay not to finish.
• Eat something and then be done with meals, don't graze for two hours until you've eaten half the stuff in the kitchen.

That's very, very hard for me.

But now that I'm paying attention to it I feel like I'm making a little progress.

I'm not gonna make any goals about weight loss. I just want to address the overeating and compulsion part.

List of BED/CE symptoms and signs from the Multiservice Eating Disorders Association in MA:

Eating large amounts of food when not physically hungry; bingeing or eating uncontrollably
Unable to stop eating voluntarily
Eating rapidly
Eating until feeling bloated or uncomfortably full
Eating alone
Hoarding or stealing food
Low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness
Intense guilt about eating
Depressed moods, mood fluctuations, impatience, irritability
Intense feeling of disgust with self
Loathing or hiding of the body under baggy clothes
Attributes social and professional successes/failures to weight gain/loss

That's the whole list. Every single one applies to me - not just in a "kind of" way but in a way I strongly identify with. And I don't know why I'm so reticent to admit that I have a problem. I don't want attention? I don't want to be the fat girl who has no willpower? I don't want to think I'm a special snowflake trying to diagnose myself on the internet? I've been to several sites, with all different lists and quizzes and diagnostics, and I still feel the same way. "Yeah, I feel intense guilt about eating, but... doesn't everyone?" "Sure, I eat myself sick on a regular basis, but who doesn't?" "Sure, I feel like I can't stop eating, but I just like to eat, so what?"

I want help. I need help. I'm scared to ask for it, scared to be told I'm wrong - because if it's NOT BED/CE, then where do I go from there? And I'm scared of admitting to a disorder. BED/CE is embarrassing.

I need to realize that a bad picture is a bad picture and not a reflection on my character or my personality. Because right now, seeing a bad picture of me absolutely shatters my self image. And I'm afraid to tell people not to take pictures of me when I'm not ready for it, but at the same time, seeing them on Facebook really can crush me, like instead of people going "wow that's a bad picture of Kait" they'll think I'm just hideous.

It also reminds me how much weight I've gained. I'm trying very, very hard not to let this get me down. I don't want to fall into the diet trap again, the obsession of losing weight, but I also don't want to feel like this. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin and there's this horrible conflict of interest. I can't force myself to be comfortable and confident like this because I was confident and comfortable forty pounds ago. But I also don't want to become obsessed with my


EDIT: I just kind of abandoned this halfway through and had a long talk with Jen. Feeling a little bit better and supported instead of wary.

Today's food:
- egg salad sandwich
- packet cheez-its
- ice pop
- cream cheese/crab/avocado sushi roll
- 1/2 taco bell fresco bean burrito
- 3/4 taco bell cheesy rice/bean burrito
- 3/4 large lemonade
- 2 coconut patties

I think that's ok? I don't even know. I feel like my idea of what's too much is really skewed, so if I eat any more than two small meals I'm overeating. I ate when I was hungry and when I ate taco bell, I quit when I wasn't hungry anymore. Which I normally never do. So good good good.

Jen kept asking for a cheeseburger so I went to Wendy's with her. Good news: I didn't want anything so I didn't get anything. Bad news: I mooched a little off of her. Still, it's a start, but I feel so shaky and upset. I started to talk to Jen but I was going to cry. Ugh. Hate this.

So today...

- couscous
- 2 ice pops
- small bowl pasta w. sauce
- 2 packets ramen w. sauce
- handful of fries and some frosty

Yesterday and today I've had some nasty tooth pain. All my front teeth, top and bottom. It's kind of a dull ache that worsens when I breathe in through my mouth, and reminds me of the kind of pain I had when my braces would get tightened. I'm not sure what to do about it.

That coupled with my revelations/breakdown today and I'm struggling. Things that I've noticed I do:

- I stare at the clock and try to justify eating. It's been ___ hours since I've eaten, I get to eat again, instead of being actually hungry. (Only right now I really am hungry but don't know what I can eat without aggravating the pain.)
- I think that the tooth pain is a GOOD thing because it will keep me from eating as much and maybe if this keeps up I'll lose some weight.

And I know that both of these things are disordered ways of thinking, on two different ends of the spectrum.

Stopping and starting and stopping and starting, coming back to read all these false starts.

Look. I've gained back all the weight I lost. I'm happier in some ways, unhappier in others. I don't really have another outlet to talk about stuff like this, so I just type it to myself in here.

1. I hate diet rhetoric.
I hate it. I hate fatsecret.com - I think it's a good idea in theory but I hate diet rhetoric and I hate the obsession with the scale. I don't want to be thin, I want to be myself. And I feel like "myself" is about 200 pounds, not 240. I felt happy and confident and because I was so fucking obsessed with the scale and getting under that weight, I stressed myself out and caused myself harm. And I hate that I did that.

You know what else I hate? Everything on TV. Every ad that tells a thin woman she's not thin enough, every ad that tells a woman she has to skip food to have that dessert, or oh hee-hee look how bad she's being eating that cake-flavored yogurt ... it's upsetting. It makes me hate myself, and that's exactly what it wants me to do. I'm so angry. I am an angry fat girl, like thousands of other angry fat girls. Want to know why fat girls are angry? That's why. Discrimination and shaming and this sick media obsession with telling women they aren't good enough. We could be off ruling the world but instead we're curled up in corners at home crying about how our pants fit. And as much as I know this and want to rebel against it, years of socialization and constant pressure can't disappear. It affects me. It hits me hard.

2. My self worth is tied to my body image.
I've been called vain in the past, for being really careful about how I look. But I feel worthless if I have to go out the door looking less than my best. I have to look as thin as possible, as pretty as possible, like somehow people will forget I'm fat because I wore these stripes or that color. Anything that's uncomfortable will distract me all day. If my hair isn't perfect I will literally be on the verge of tears. I know this is a problem. I can't fix it.

3. I think I have binge eating disorder / compulsive overeating disorder.
I've been throwing this around for a while and I keep pushing it aside. I got really involved with HAES and fat acceptance and just said "screw it" and started eating whatever I wanted. Which sounds great, but whatever I wanted meant all the things it shouldn't mean. I've been eating constantly because I feel like I can't stop. The moment I get bored or emotional I need to eat, and I need to eat CONSTANTLY. I eat until I'm sick. I hide food. At parties I graze and eat because I'd rather eat than interact. I promise myself I won't eat out anymore and a day later I'm back eating as much greasy pizza as I can stuff in my face, even after I stop being hungry, even after I know that I don't want anymore. I keep eating because it's there, because I made it or bought it and can't/won't save it for later.

And I've been fighting this, because I don't want to believe that it's a disorder. I don't want to admit that it's something that's wrong with me - because I'm rebellious and I want to believe that it's just me, being stupid, and that calling it a "disorder" makes me weak, or like I'm seeking attention, when really I'm just a fat girl who can't stop stuffing her face because she's fat. And not accepting it or deliberately not seeking treatment has me more stressed and more easily triggered. I'm denying my own personal needs and feelings because of how embarrassed I am, or my own judgment values of this kind of disorder - because I think if I have an eating disorder and I identify it as such, I'm denying acceptance of my fat self or the fat acceptance movement in general, and it's just another convenient (but less socially contrived) way of dieting. And then I think that BED/CE doesn't exist, because why shouldn't I eat constantly, my views about eating are just skewed by the media and images of control ANYWAY.

All of this just boils under the surface in me and causes these wildly conflicting viewpoints that leave me incapable of changing.

4. I bounce between being guilty and obsessive about weight loss to hating the idea altogether.
I swing between two extremes, and I realize that either way I swing, I'm still obsessed. Really obsessed. I can't just let it go, I can't just not care. I stopped dieting obsessively because it was stressing me out and I hated the bullshit, but I can't ever STOP thinking about food or what I'm going to eat next and when I can sneak a snack. This kind of crap runs my life.


I need to do something about all this. I just don't know what. And here's why:

1. If I journal my food intake and talk about losing weight, I get obsessive in a bad way and stop eating until I crack and binge.
2. If I don't, I eat nonstop and feel guilty and gain weight and feel terrible.

I think I need to shift this journal to document my eating not only for diet reasons but to document binge eating and overeating and pay attention to trends. Maybe if I go back to writing things down w/o measuring or mentioning calories I'll be able to figure out what helps and treat myself. Otherwise I need to seek help and 1) I can't afford it and 2) I hate doctors because of fat-shaming. I have to be really careful about seeking treatment and finding someone to help, because in the end someone could just make it worse.

And while this is public I don't think I'll be telling anyone about it. This is for me.


Right now, this is how I'm feeling: triggered and stressed. I need to go cry. But this is good. I'm evaluating my life and what's going on and what's wrong and what I can do. I think I might have to admit to needing help. I also need to talk to my partner - again. I did it before and then it just kind of slipped out of our minds and she has her own shit to deal with without dealing with me. I know I know I know my thinking is unhealthy. At least I know that.

I think all of my progress from the last two years has been undone. I'm super out of shape and I've gained a lot of weight. I can do better. Meh. However, I feel like my attitude to food is slightly healthier and my attitude about my weight is healthier. I care less, I stress about it less. I just want to be comfortable and happy. Eh.

Snack: small packet pretzel m&ms (150 cal, 5g fat)
Breakfast: 1 can chunky italian wedding soup (320 cal, 6g fat)
Snack: 16 oz orange honey passion juice (300 cal)
Lunch/Dinner: homemade vegan corn chowder (I'm going to guess 400-500 cal, 7g fat based on ingredients)
Dessert: 2 servings chocolate hazelnut gelato (320 cal, 14g fat)
Snack: 1 packet hazelnut cocoa (120 cal?, 3g fat?)

Total: approx 1710 cal

Sup.

I left IJ for a bit to go to fatsecret.com, and it was ... you know, it was great for a bit, but it was too public. I don't feel like sharing everything with the world. If someone stumbles across it, fine, whatever, but I felt like I had to manipulate things to get a better "score" or something. I don't know. I do know that recently I stopped using journaling altogether because I decided it wasn't a priority. I was working on accepting being fat and liking it. And I feel better, less neurotic. I needed that time.

On the other hand, I've gained some weight back and I can't afford clothes in new sizes, which means I need to get the weight back off. It's a tricky thing, because I want to keep a healthy attitude toward food and my body while still paying attention to my weight. I don't quite know how to do that. I know how I gained the weight, and that's because I've been eating nothing but junk food for weeks, on this insane schedule. Lots of pizza, mac and cheese, Taco Bell. I've been going through some changes in my life and my work situation and I've felt too poor to grocery shop, or too exhausted/lazy to cook. I need to get over that and move on.

I don't know how long I'll keep this up but at least the intent was there. This journal was incredibly helpful in helping me lose weight, but I gave in to a lot of rhetoric and a lot of neuroses that weren't healthy. I tried to keep a healthy attitude but I think a lot of the time I was fooling myself. I wish I could just not stress about food, but I've also got clothes to fit into.

Let's try again.

• 2 english muffins w. strawberry jam
• lunch/dinner at Piccadilly Pub: potato skins (2), lobster bisque in a bread bowl, a few sweet potato fries, a couple bites of brownie dessert (stolen from Jen)

• 1 bowl cinnamon Total w. soymilk
• 1 bowl Progresso vegetarian vegetable w. barley
• a few bites of Jen's pita chips and hummus
• 1 medium apple, a couple strawberries, a few slices of pineapple
• lots of water
• baked sweet potato with soy butter and salt

I love sweet potatoes. End of story.

It's been a bad week for me. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, I'm being treated like shit at work, my car's in trouble, our oldest cat peed twice on the bed just to be a bitch, and everything is bringing me down. It's very, very hard not to treat that with food. I ate a lot yesterday, and I've eaten out the last few days. I've also pulled something in my back that makes -sleeping- painful, so working out has kind of been out of the question. It'll pass. This will pass. I'm in the right mindset, just not the right state of mind to deal with it. Or something.

• 1 bowl cinnamon Total
• 1 medium apple
• 2 or 3 servings Cheez-its (nibbled a few times)
• 3 slices cheese pizza (staff meeting, lala)

Food

• 1 bowl wheat chex
• 1 serving fat free stonyfield farm peach yogurt
• 1 medium apple
• dinner @ Piccadilly Pub: calamari (very spicy, holy cow), sweet potato fries, sole stuffed with lobster, glazed carrots, and a bit of brownie dessert

Activity

• 30 min YBB workout
• 1h30min driving
• 2h working

I went grocery shopping today, and I'm going to try something a little new. Hopefully I can keep up with it. But my goal is to list everything I bought and then cross it OFF the list once I eat it. Once all of the perishable items are crossed off, I can shop again. Some stuff on here is also old fridge stuff.

Eat first!
• 3 yellow bell peppers
• 3 orange bell peppers
• 1 package celery hearts
• 6 1 honeycrisp apple
• 2 navel oranges
• 1 sweet potato (not new)
• 1 everything bagel (not new)
• a few carrots (not new)
• leftover Whole Foods lunchy things (not new)

Not as urgent!
• 1/2 gal plain light soy milk
• 1/2 gal 1% milk (Jen's)
• 10 7 stonyfield farm yogurts
• 2 large tubs classic hummus
• 1 loaf potato bread
• english muffins (a friggin' boatload - these aren't new)
• 1/2 jar strawberry preserves (old)
• leftover mushrooms (in freezer)

Not urgent at all!
• 1 box cinnamon Total cereal
• 1 box wheat chex
• 4 3 cans progresso vegetable soups
• 1/2 gal orange juice
• 1/2 gal apple cider
• 1 jar nutella
• 1 jar strawberry jam (new)