Why?  Because for the vast majority of my life, I dreaded the return of summer clothing.  In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t really any “spring” or “fall” clothes.  They just jump from winter right to the bikini’s…in MARCH!  And that’s precisely when my self-beatings would begin in earnest.  They went something like this:

“You ran out of time AGAIN?!”

“I thought this was going to be a SKINNY summer?!”

“Why do you even TRY?!  You are so PATHETIC!”

Soon bathing suits would be the only article of clothing I’d see –  all of them seemingly there for the sole purpose of taunting me by “saying” things like, “Nah nah, you can’t wear me!”  In my panic and embarrassment, I’d look around desperately for a big hooded sweatshirt or a pair of baggy sweatpants to hide in, but alas, no such luck!  Just rows and rows of skimpy stringy things (much smaller than my underwear, I might add!), and then, way in the back corner, I’d spot the dreaded rack of the “plus size” versions that, for some odd reason, only came in various shades of “floral.”

Understandably, in the end, I stopped buying swimsuits altogether.

Even though I no longer consciously beat myself down when I am witness to the annual bikini migration, I must admit that I still get this free-floating feeling of “the springtime blues,” as I call them.  To me, it is very similar to that feeling I used to get as a child on Sunday nights in winter, when it was cold and damp and it got dark early and I would think about how great it would be if I had just one more day of weekend…

I guess all those years of negative conditioning have turned this feeling into an automatic response. Although I no longer hate myself and hardly ever think much about what I can and can’t wear, it sneaks-up on me anyway.  I feel like Pavlov’s dog responding to the bikini bell of summer.  But at least I know what it is.  In the past, non-specific feelings like these would make for the perfect excuse to eat.  Not anymore.  Now I can let myself feel it and be compassionate to myself about it.  I now understand that the damage caused by more than three decades of mental self-abuse is not going to disappear in two or three years of program.  It is going to be a slow process, and that’s OK!  Just knowing what all this is about and giving myself permission to feel the feelings is enough.

Besides…now that school is back in session and the bikinis have all flown south for the winter, it’s time to celebrate!  So, for today, I feel GOOD!   Now, check THIS out, and we can all “feel good” together!! :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVFj-_SDIHE

HAPPY FALL!

None of these things ever worked in the long run.

For me, it was not until I did The 12 Steps the way they are outlined in The Big Book that I even got close to finding out what this elusive ‘”benefit” of my binge-eating was.

I don’t really expect anyone to “get” this – – the same way I didn’t get it when well-meaning people tried to tell me the same thing – – but just in case there is the possibility that I may be able to spare just one someone the decades of pain it took for me to figure this…

Here goes nothin’…

I think it can all be boiled-down to this cliche: “the devil you know vs the devil you don’t.”  For whatever reason, it was much easier for me to focus on an obsession that, although horrible and debilitating, was comfortable and familiar to me.  In my twisted mind (the result of decades of negative thinking patterns that reinforced my fears and lead me to constantly seek “proof” of all that is bad about me and the world), the thought of having to face my real feelings or real-life situations SEEMED impossible for me to handle.  I always had this belief that real life was going to be much more difficult to deal with than it actually turned out to be.  But back then, I had nothing to compare these realities to because I had NEVER experienced them!  EVER!!  Food was ALWAYS my coping mechanism!  I knew nothing but being mentally and emotionally consumed with all things “weight,” whether that be my appearance, my clothes size, my caloric intake, obtaining my binge foods, keeping myself “hidden” (literally, behind extra layers of clothing, and figuratively, by avoiding all forms of confrontation and many, MANY social situations), eating in secret, planning my next dieting scheme, agonizing over upcoming events where people would “see” how much weight I had gained, trying to be funny, smart, overly-perfect to distract from my size,…. (not to mention the thousands of other forms of self-abuse which included lots of nasty self-talk and not taking care of myself emotionally, physically, or spiritually).  Since I had never learned any techniques for self-soothing (other than eating), I was constantly beating myself up for trying to deal with life the only way I knew how.

And yet, at the same time, all of this negativity and addictive behavior came naturally to me.  It evolved over so many years and took so long to fully develop, that by the time I recognized what it was, it had already consumed my entire identity.  It was actually to the point of being unconscious – – it was my “default” (as all you tech-savvy kids out there say today).  I didn’t even realize what I was doing, even when counselors came right out and ASKED me…that’s how far gone I was!  I really, honestly, DIDN’T GET IT!  I wasn’t lying or stubbornly avoiding the truth…I genuinely THOUGHT I was being honest, and I guess I was being as honest as I could be at that time.  I guess that’s what true denial is all about – – believing your own self-deception.  I had actually “fooled myself” into thinking that avoiding reality (feelings, confrontation, social situations) was EASIER than facing life on life’s terms!  I truly believed that it was EASIER to stay the way I was rather than try to learn something new about myself, even though I was simultaneously seeking a solution!!  In this twisted scenario-o-mine, the “old” had now become comfortable AND easy!  Who could resist?  And as I stayed there in this little world of food addiction that I had created, my life continued to get smaller and more restricted, which is the ideal breeding ground for fear, which continues the cycle of self-pity and self-hatred, which leads to all kinds of weird forms of self-sabotage,…  This is why I was trapped in a strange weird limbo-land where I was constantly convincing myself that it was useless to even attempt to conquer the very thing I was always trying so hard to fix!

Clear as mud, right?

Wanna see the short version?

- – – I ate because I was scared not to. – – –

In the past, I got involved with exercise programs as a means to lose weight.  Consequently, whenever I “went off” a diet, I stopped going to the gym.  It was all or nothing.  Black or white.  It had nothing to do with my health, but EVERYthing to do with that number on the scale.  In my sick mind, if I was not eating right (i.e., losing weight), what was the use?

Thanks to OA and the 12 Steps, things are different now.  For the first time in my entire life, I have joined a gym for the RIGHT reasons!!  For the past 6 weeks, I have been going three times a week as a means of decreasing stress and increaseing my heart health.  Period.

And guess what?

It’s already working!!

I tend to carry stress in my neck and shoulders, and since I have started some light weight-training, that “pain in the neck” is gone!  Also, I have been monitoring my blood pressure, and that is down several points as well!  Of course, I don’t mind the “side effect” of feeling my clothes getting a little looser, but that is not my motivation anymore.  Now that I feel better about myself, I can more clearly see The Big Picture: that I am worth taking care of and that excercise can help me do this.  That exercise is to be used as a tool to help improve my sense of well-being, NOT as a shortbcut to a smaller body size.  Took long enough for me to finally figure this out, but it finally happened!  HOORAY!

Thanks, again, HP!!

We never even made it through the doorway.

The moment I set foot in the tiny bar, a short, heavy, sweaty, drunk, bald guy with his back to the door turned around, looked me up and down, and rolled his eyes.  I was mortified but took another step inside.  I had learned over the years to at least pretend I didn’t notice.

But then he yelled-out, “J—- C—–!  It’s bad enough I have to work with a bunch of fat b—–s all day, now I come here and I have to look at THAT?!  Are you f—— KIDDING me?!”

I instinctively started back through the door I was still holding open.  I know I looked like a deer in the headlights.  All the guys in the place were roaring with laughter.  For a moment I had the dreadful thought that my boyfriend was going to get into a fight when he said something to defend me.

But he never said a word.

He backed out the door as fast as I did.  My eyes started to well-up and my heart was pounding.  I hated my boyfriend for not defending me.  Worse, I hated myself for not seeing this coming – – for not assuming that I would be ridiculed for how fat and ugly I believed that I was.  In a sick way, I actually felt like I had gotten what I deserved.   I wanted to scream and cry and run away forever.  Instead I settled for yelling at my boyfriend for not at least saying SOMEthing, to which he replied that it would have been useless anyway, since there were so many of them.

True, but not in any way consoling.

My first garbage-picking memory starts out nice enough.  Every Saturday night my family would gather downstairs to watch a show or movie and mom would make pigs-in-a-blanket.  That tradition is one of my happiest childhood memories.  Unfortunately, it is also intertwined with the early stages of my eating disorder.  That is the part I will be focusing on here…

I can remember lots of obsession related to this particular group of food memories.  It would start with being fixated on when the food would be ready to eat.  I would watch the clock…

tick…tick…tick…

…get the condiments out…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the plates…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the napkins…

tick…tick…tick…

…and the drinks…

tick…tick…tick…

Truth be told, I was being TOO helpful.  It was not in my nature to be that useful.  “Selfish motives” were the thing powering me at that time.  When “the dogs” were finally taken out of the oven, I would choose the largest one, never giving a single thought to the possibility that someone else might be as hungry as I supposedly was.  Then I risked burning the roof right out of my mouth by biting into one of the steaming “pigs” while everyone else had the sense to wait for theirs to cool.  Before I knew it I was on my second one and already mourning the fact that I wanted a third but couldn’t have it for fear of looking like the thing I was eating.  All the while I ate, I was silently plotting a way to get more.

I knew that the leftover dogs would be sitting in a the pan on the stove until we were finished watching tv.  If I pretended to go to the bathroom, I could make a pit-stop in the kitchen and eat another one before I rejoined the family.  Sometimes I would wimp-out, especially if there was only one or two left, thinking that would be too obvious.  But luckily for me, I come from an Italian family where food shortages are a rarity.  Most times there were as many as four or five left, so I was easily able to convince myself that no one would notice if one more was missing.  That usually held me for a while, and then I could focus on the show and enjoy the time with my family…

Until…

…after the show it would be time to clean-up.  I would watch helplessly as my mother dumped the rest of the uneaten dogs into the trash, then I would hold my breath and wait to see if anything got thrown on top of them.  If they remained “clean” on the top, as they usually did, I knew that I had all the makings of an early morning snack.  I swear that knowing this would wake me up the next morning hours earlier than usual.

At about 5 a.m., barely allowing myself time to pee, I would silently race to the kitchen trash container and grab the room-temp dogs.  I knew that by that time the dough would be rubbery on the outside and gummy on the inside, but I didn’t care.  I didn’t even put anything on them.  That would be too messy, since I wouldn’t be using a plate.  Besides, I didn’t have time for luxuries like that!  I was in a race against time!  What if my parents heard me?!   I would gobble the dogs, one in each fist, while standing in the hallway entry so that I could keep an eye on my parents’ bedroom door.  If one of them DID wake up (and it happened!), I would dash back to the trash can and throw them back in.  I’m sure they would know what was going on, but no one ever said anything to me about it.  But not to worry…I beat myself good and hard after every time I did it.

Years passed, my disease progressed, and my gorging was completely out-of-control.  I was buying bags and boxes of stuff I swore I wouldn’t finish, but I’d ALWAYS finish them!  Finally I got desperate enough to try a new way to stop myself.  I would get rid of whatever food I had started to eat (but didn’t want to finish) by burying it at the bottom of the trash – only to dig it out hours later.  I can’t tell you the humiliation of wiping coffee grinds off a bag of smashed chips or of eating out of a container of half-melted ice cream – –  because I “had to.”  Later-on I figured-out that unless I removed whatever type of food I was sick of bingeing-on from its packaging and mixed it with the trash that was already in the can, there was always going to be that possibility of me going back-in for more.  Of course, there were the times when I would try to fool myself by not disposing of “the goods” properly, knowing full well what I planned to do later on.  I’d play the whole horrible game with myself, only to end-up eating every last bit of what I didn’t want to be eating in the first place, no matter WHERE I put it!!

To live this way, day after day, week after week, year after year,…was pure torture.  I always felt helpless, like there was no way out, and ashamed that I couldn’t stop myself.  But today my life is completely different.  All the obsession and compulsion that I had surrounding food has been removed!

The same can happen for you!

I say,…

“O-A…

IS the way!”

Doesn’t mean I want to do it, though.

At first I looked at my beloved pink packets (the yellow ones make me physically sick and the blue ones just scare me) as what I “deserve” – – the same way I used to look at all foods I wanted to eat – – as if eating them was a reward for good behavior.  At that time, I was consuming about 15 packets a day.

About a year into my food plan, I started to look at those packets as “treats” – – something to give myself a little pick-me-up.  I could finally recognize that they were not the best choice, but that they did help me stay on track by satisfying the need we all have for sweet-tasting foods.  In an odd way, this was growth for me, because it was acknowledging that it was OKAY for me to like sweet things and that, even though I may not have the “perfect” food plan,” I had made one that it was do-able, which, for me, was the most important part.  At this point I was down to about 10 packets per day.

After 2 years of abstinence, it finally started to dawn on me that “food equals fuel.”  Period.  It is not “good.”  It is not ” bad.”  It is not “a reward” or “a “punishment.”  It is not a comforter or something to use to get revenge on others (or myself).  It is simply the way I get the nutrients required for my body to work properly.  There is nothing EMOTIONAL about it!  I am not saying that I have this concept entirely down pat yet, but it is definitely starting to take shape.  I have since substituted agave nectar for many of my pink packets (I chose this sweetener because it supposedly has a low glycemic index) and for the past 4 months I have not noticed any difference in cravings.  I currently use 3 tablespoons per day, plus 3 pink packets.  Not perfection, but definitely progress!

Then, a couple weeks ago, I was at a convenience store and there was a sign for a sugar-free frozen drink made out of diet soda.  Hmmmm…

Had to try it.  I’m not gonna lie.  It was YUMMY!

Next day I had another.

Next day another.

That night I was sick.  Must be made of yellow packets.  Had to give it up.

Doesn’t mean I wanted to, though.

…and the battle continues….

Not surprisingly, when my husband and I moved into our first house, complete with our own front yard to take care of, I brought my neurosis with me.  In both houses we have owned, the rule was that I did the backyard gardening and he did the front.  And that was set in stone.  I wouldn’t lift a finger in the front yard, again, for fear of being seen.  At my current house this became more of an issue because the front yard is very large (so my husband could really use the help) but it is also on a busy road (which means – GASP! – people!!)  During the fall, especially, I eventually had to help rake leaves in the front yard, but that had to be on my terms – early morning weekends ONLY – (I am talking about BEFORE 7 a.m. here!)

All that started to shift last year.  I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but several times I found myself picking-up stray sticks or raking up a little patch of leaves in the front yard WITHOUT having to analyse all the reasons why I couldn’t be the one to do it.  Last spring I filled flower boxes in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the FRONT YARD!  This past fall, I even raked leaves “in broad daylight!”  But the biggest change happened just a few short weeks ago.

For some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to rake out the beds, take apart the existing rock border, and re-stack it in a neater design.  I looked at my schedule and penciled-myself-in for the following day.  I got out there around 10 a.m. and worked until around 4 p.m. (stopping only for lunch and a couple small snacks and drinks).  I was so involved with what I was doing that I didn’t even realize that I had spent an entire day, in the COMPLETELY unflattering position of sitting cross-legged on the ground, in SHORTS, working in the FRONT YARD!!!, and IT NEVER EVEN CROSSED MY MIND that there may be passers-by who were making fun of me or thinking negative things about my body, or making fun of what I was doing or how I was doing it – – all the crap that had consumed my thoughts for my entire life!!

This was a TRUE MIRACLE for me!!

Thank you, HP, for freeing me from all that horrible, draining, unproductive insanity!!

That pretty-much summed-up the unrealistic idea I had of what my life would be like if I could just get to (and stay at) that “magical” number on the scale.

Of course, there are some real things that would be great about getting to my ideal weight.  First on the list would have to be the health benefits, of course (although these mattered to me very little when I was in the throws of my disease).  Being able to buy clothes in a “normal” store would also be nice!  (Although I must say I have experienced a little of that lately!  Yeah!)   And since I love the water and sunbathing, I would love, love, LOVE to experience what it is to walk around on the beach in a bathing suit without having one single self-conscious thought enter my mind (it doesn’t even have to be a bikini!  I’m not greedy!)  Now THAT would truly be a dream come true!

But all the rest of that crap about the fame and fortune?  It is just that…crap.  I don’t know where the idea that “thinness = the perfect life” originally came from, but once it had me, it wouldn’t let me go.

Reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song called “Backstreets” – –

“…trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be.

Well after all this time to find we’re just like all the rest…”  

In other words, it has taken me all this time (in program) just to figure out that no matter WHAT size I am (or what kind of “hero” I think I have to be), I am “just another bozo on the bus!”  There are ALWAYS going to be issues to resolve, people to confront, deadlines to be met, bills to be paid, legs to be shaved,…no matter WHAT I look like!  That’s called LIFE!!  No one said it was going to be easy, but having a program (and more importantly, a Higher Power) to help me (and YOU) through it all is the ONLY thing that can make WHATEVER is going on BETTER!

REALITY CHECK:

It’s not about the weight! 

It’s about finally growing-up and accepting “life on life’s terms!”

Do you know how that makes you feel – – to look into that closet, day after day, week after week, month after month…and see all the things you CAN’T wear?!  Talk about self-sabotage!!

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard about this “condition” was to do a closet clean-out and only keep things in there that you have worn in the past 12 months.  WOW!  What a novel idea that was for me!  I have always had a fear of clothes shopping (that’s another post for another day), so it’s not like I had tons of clothes to start with.  But once I finally decided to go through the clothes I did have, I was shocked to find that I hardly had ANYTHING to wear!  I mean, even though I had several things in my current size, the TRUTH of the matter is that I had only been wearing the same 3 shirts and 3 pairs of pants for months!  The other items that fit were things that I didn’t even LIKE!  In a way, it was like the overflow of wrong-sized clothing allowed me to ignore the fact that I was out of clothes and needed to buy some more, simply as a means of taking care of myself!  (Is it me, or is there a hidden meaning in that “overflow” being a distraction/excuse for not dealing with the real problem – – like food used to be?)

More hurtful to me were the two large bins of “skinny clothes” that I kept at the bottom of my closet.  Over the years, I moved them from apartment to apartment, from house to house, always hoping that some day I would magically fit back into these clothes that I only wore for about SIX MINUTES in my twenties!  I finally realized how unhealthy this whole thing was and went through all of the items.  Half of them were totally out-dated (although, have you seen some of the fashions lately?  Lookin’ pretty Cyndi Lauper-ish, if you ask me!) and most of the rest I didn’t really care about so I donated them to charity.  I did, however, allow myself to keep three things I really liked.  I folded them neatly and tucked them into a corner on the top shelf.

By the way – – if I ever DO get to my goal weight, don’t you think that I’d like to go buy some nice NEW clothes?!  Insanity at every turn!!

Nowadays my closet is still not full, but at least everything in it fits me.  When I get some extra cash, one of my goals for this year is to go out, by myself, and do at least a couple days’-worth of serious clothes shopping – – I am talking about the kind where you actually try things on and spend a good amount of time going to different stores in search of the perfect fit.  I don’t think I have ever done that in my entire life.  But today I am actually looking forward to it.  And that new attitude is all thanks to OA and my awesome Higher Power!

QUESTION OF THE DAY:  What’s in YOUR closet?!

Today my life is completely different, and it is all thanks to this program.  Much of that change came-about even before I worked the steps.  Just being around fellow recovering addicts had a positive impact on me.  It made me more comfortable in my own skin and it gave me the confidence to tell myself that I am just as important and worthy of gas-pumping as the next person!  That was a big revelation to me (as crazy as it sounds).

So even if you have not yet mustered-up the motivation to get crackin’ on those 12 life-changing steps, just keep coming!  Little by little, a new outlook will begin to sink-in to your psyche, and before you know it, you are going to WANT to change…for the better!