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Archive for the ‘Light life’ Category

Relating to food: hunger, habits, and addiction

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , , on January 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

If only making a change were as simple as making change.

If only making a change were as simple as making change.

So I have been working on eating better recently. For me, eating better doesn’t necessarily mean eating healthier foods because I generally eat a good variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats. I just have a sweet tooth and tend to rely on high-fat, high-sugar and, therefore, high-calorie treats sometimes when I get stressed. Or sometimes I just eat them out of habit. Either way, they’re not great for my health, and when it comes to the visual representation (in a way) of that inner health, those habits wreak havoc on my waistline. So eating healthy for me equals eating fewer treats.

I’ve thought a lot about how I and many in our culture relate to food. It’s the center of celebrations and gatherings. It’s an easy and quick emotional crutch. It’s just habit. We get bored, we snack. We get distracted or just not sure what to do with ourselves, we pick up food and put it in our mouths, even when we’re not hungry. Often when we’re not hungry.

Our bodies naturally know how to regulate our food intake. If we really pay attention to our hunger signals, we can eat just as much as we need and then stop when we’ve gotten enough. But because of these distortions of food in our culture, it’s gotten easy for many of us to just drown out that inner voice telling us when to start and stop.

That means that we get into bad habits and we can even get addicted to certain kinds of food and food combinations. When the topic of habits comes up, I immediately think of a talk I heard when I was a teenager; the speaker said that if we want to establish a new habit, we must do it every single day for 14 days, and it will stick. OK. So if eating treats is a bad habit, I could stop that by very, very carefully monitoring what I eat for two weeks and just strongly reminding myself not to eat those things. Then I should be in a better groove, right?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be quite that simple. One, I might do fine for a while and stay in that better habit for a good bit. But then when trying situations or simple busy-ness come up, I slide right back into that bad habit. Two, maybe there truly is an addictive element to this, so it’s not as simple as working on habits.

I am sure this topic could be talked about in dissertation-length form. I can’t possibly address it all here. But I realize that with the various elements coming into play, really changing my/our relationship with food takes a multi-pronged and layered approach. It takes a couple of weeks of really focused effort to switch out habits. It also takes a lot of emotional digging and thought to change triggers and the tendency to lean on food instead of working through an emotional difficulty the harder and truer way. It takes support and, really, ideally, it should be a societal movement, where our whole country is more attuned to the problems and willing to change as a culture how we relate to food. It takes a lot of the same steps that are involved in addict’s recoveries, and knowing that we might actually be treat addicts our whole lives, aware that we could easily slip back anytime without the proper support and personal planning.

For now, I’m starting with trying to break the habits. I’m going cold turkey off of sugars and starches and all the treats for a while. Even as I feel happy about the progress I’m making as each day ticks by and I haven’t had bad stuff, I feel in my gut that this is going to be a lifelong battle. Next step is to look at those 12 steps. Either way, none of us should be doing this alone. We need to have a huge cultural paradigm shift. That’s a lofty goal. But in the meantime, more of us could talk about it and be aware and support each other. ‘Cause the obesity problem, among a lot of other food-related problems, is not just going to go away on its own. And being isolated from each other as we all run like hamsters in our little stress-balls of life isn’t going to cut it, either. Gotta press forward, be open, and be healthy, on whatever paths will help get us there, a step at a time.

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It’s hard to fight ‘a culture of normalized gluttony’

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Yeah, so I’ve written about how I was going to take better care of myself. I was going to eat better and change my relationship with food. Yep. That was a few months ago. I did great for about a month. And then the holidays hit, and it wasn’t the holidays per se that got me — all the usual kinds of articles you read about all the treats constantly available and parties being thrown, etc. — it was simply the stress and lack of time.

I got my shopping done relatively soon and was pretty organized this year, compared to the past few, and I didn’t feel really crazy in the week before Christmas, which was really wonderful. I was able to relax and enjoy the Christmas spirit. But I was busy beforehand getting things bought and made and shipped and so on, and I was busy doing other stuff for my kids, and I was busy with all my other commitments and responsibilities that essentially for about the two months before Christmas and New Year’s I had very little downtime. I had very little time to myself, to just relax, to be with myself, to be myself, to be alone, to have my head to myself, you know? My life and my mind were taken over by everyone else’s needs.

So back to food and “dieting” — this is the bottom line: it takes real focus and energy to change habits, to essentially break an addiction. And I had no focus or energy left for myself and this very important goal after everything else in my life drained those things from me.

Now it’s January, and several of my big projects are either done or done for a while, and my kids are FINALLY back in school. I finally have some time to think about myself and my needs again. So, back to food. Back to my relationship with my body, with my self-image, the food that’s in my house, the food I put in my mouth.

I am reading this interesting book I downloaded on my Kindle, called Weight Loss Apocalypse. It’s about our relationship with food, but it ties it all in to the hCG weight-loss “protocol.” Just putting aside the whole idea of the hCG thing, there are some fine ideas in the book. The author, Robin Phipps Woodall, talks about how our entire culture (let’s confine this to the U.S. for the moment, but it certainly is a First World or Western phenomenon at the very least) essentially has an eating disorder: she says as a culture “we need to blame (the obesity epidemic on) our rationale for unlimited eating.”

Everywhere we go in the U.S., we're faced with food, especially junk and food in outlandish portion sizes.

Everywhere we go in the U.S., we’re faced with food, especially junk and food in outlandish portion sizes.

Our culture pushes food everywhere. Not just food, but unlimited quantities of food, food in abundance. We feel entitled to be able to eat everything we want, as much as we want. Then, as Woodall says, when the scales tip just enough that we’ve become obese, we’re judged by the very same culture that forces food on us in the first place.

As she says, “Our culture justifies emotional eating, but then discriminates against obesity.” Yeah, that’s fair.

If we want to fix our obesity epidemic, our culture needs a huge shift in how we use food in so many contexts. But when it comes to us as individuals, we have to find it within ourselves to stick out, basically. Woodall asks, “Can you live in our culture of normalized gluttony, and know that almost everyone eats too much, and by eating less, you appear abnormal?”

Yep. There it is. Changing our relationship to food is hard work, and it takes focus and energy. It takes a sea change in our emotional lives. And society is not going to have our backs. Sure, they’ll reward us if our weight changes for the better and we become thin as a result of changing our food habits, but in the meantime, society’s going to block us at every turn.

These are just a few of my thoughts. I’ll revisit again soon. This whole addiction thing and idea of personal and national eating disorders are just a few of the ideas that are running through my head. But those will wait for another set of posts. In the meantime, how do we support each other in beating this? Any thoughts?

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Every day can be a fresh start

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

So I’ve been very proud of myself for the past month. I’ve been good about just eating well, keeping my portions reasonable, and not indulging much in sweets. I went three weeks without any ice cream, which is huge for me. I love ice cream (I have a solid four ice cream makers in my house as well as a mini-waffle cone maker, if that’s any indication). I lost about 7 or 8 pounds in this period of time, and I’m pleased.

Unfortunately, life and physiology have a way of tripping one up, well, at least ME. So along comes PMS, that ogre that sneaks up and makes me irritable and chocolate-craving, and I suddenly had to have sweets. I managed to get through OK, but then my husband wanted to eat endless shrimp at Red Lobster. I ate a simple salad with a light dressing and had roasted vegetables. I had grilled shrimp. But I did give in and eat one of those darn biscuits. And I had one serving of “breaded” (aka fried) shrimp. I still did OK. Then that night I just sat down and snacked and snacked on crackers and sent myself way past my allotment of calories. DANG IT!

The next day I did OK, and then I snacked too much at the very end of the day. DANG IT AGAIN!

So for the past five or six days, I have not felt as “in control” as I had for the previous four weeks. Now I’m about to head off on a long weekend trip (flying to two different destinations) during which I know I will not have time to exercise, and who knows what I’ll be faced with in terms of food. Right now, my main goal is to just keep myself in check, but I know I won’t be losing any weight. I’ll just need to be fairly reasonable and maintain.

Even so, I’d like to get myself back into gear now that the PMS is over and before I go off on this trip during which I will definitely be exhausted from flights and time differences and just not “strong” and at the top of my game. This is where my mindset has everything to do with everything food. I’m tired again and have a lot on my mind and am finishing up on my book project, which has me rattled. I’m scared to death of what’s going to come of it (I’ve faced so much failure when it comes to the publishing world that I’m already psyched out about being rejected again on a project I feel strongly about and have worked really hard on), and that’s contributing to my weakness in “willpower.” Last week, hormones led me a little away from the right path, and now fear is threatening to keep me sidelined. This is where long-entrenched habits come into play. Get nervous, get frustrated, get tired? Eat.

Nope, I must get back in the saddle again. I must climb back on the wagon. I must just make a fresh start. I can do this. I am going to say, yes, I am scared silly about the book, I’m nervous, I’m unsure of myself, my confidence is shot. But that doesn’t mean that my body and my self deserve for me to abandon them in this hour of need. I can still try again and just say that today is a new day.

Here goes. Wish me luck.

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Dieting versus changing habits

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2012 | 2 Comments »

So I wrote a week and a half ago that it was time to take care of myself. I decided that it would help me to kind of “diet” for a week and work really hard at the gym to see if I could lose a couple of pounds and know that it was effective. I really watched my calorie intake and started taking some supplements Dr. Oz recommends and logged extra time working out. I weighed myself at the gym and then didn’t check again for a full week. I just worked hard and hoped.

Yay! That work did pay off, and I lost three pounds.

I’m carrying that over and continuing to watch my eating and spending more time at the gym than usual so I can work towards a loss of five pounds and then 10. At the same time, I recognize that this is a “diet” and I can’t necessarily sustain this kind of intensity for the long haul that will be needed to lose the 50 pounds that I need to lose. Also, it’s nothing I can do permanently. What I must do that I haven’t done yet is really focus on changing my relationship with food. I’ve written about this a little already, I think, and I’d like to write more. Honestly, I have a stressful life, and when things get particularly hectic and intense, I turn to food for comfort, soothing, and rewarding. I eat more portions than my body needs at every meal, and I treat myself too often to high-calorie desserts. Not good for my body.

So as I write about my mini success of this past week and a half, I also want to make clear that this is just a way to kind of jump-start my long path towards truly taking better care of myself. I have been very focused over the past month on writing a book I’ve been wanting to write for over a year, and that has taken up much of my time and brain power. This is a very good thing in a number of ways: it means I have taken the time to do something that means a lot to me, that I’m working towards a goal. This is positive for me in many ways. It gives me confidence across the board that I can achieve goals, and that I am doing something for myself and something I’m good at. It also in some ways helps me to eat less because I feel better about myself and don’t need a reward so much, and because I don’t have the spare time to go in the kitchen.

The only downside is that I haven’t had the time I’d like to read the books I’ve bought and checked out from the library about emotional eating. I am OK with this in some ways because I know I will still get around to doing that; it’s just going to be once I’ve finished this book project. But even as I “diet” temporarily, I realize I still have basically an addiction to treats. I still have habits that I need to break and emotional needs to turn to food when the going gets at all rough, or to reward myself. I truly want to change those habits and addictions. Dieting right now is its own reward temporarily because I can see progress on the scale, and that works for now. I just can’t do this for the long haul.

Just going to take one step at a time, in my workout shoes, of course.

So right now I celebrate, but I have a very long way to go. I can just take a day or a week at a time and appreciate the small steps and know that there will be more work ahead on different levels. I’m just going to bite off what I can chew, so to speak, though, right now. Finish my book, celebrate my goals achieved and progress made on that, and then work on the eating/weight goals. I’m doing the best I can, and I’m going to pat myself on the back for what I’m doing better.

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Time to take care of my body

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , , on September 20, 2012 | 1 Comment »

It’s been a rough year, folks. Financially, we’ve gotten hit a bunch by big and little things. I’ve had some personal frustrations and disappointments. I broke my foot this summer and was sidelined from my regular routine for what seemed a very long time. The stresses added up and sent my emotions into overdrive.

Now that some of those stressors have receded and my kids are back in school (including the youngest — half-day kindergarten!), I’ve had a little time every day to slowly get my life pieced back together. I hate to say I’ve “taken control,” because that is one thing about how I see things that I’d like to change. I guess I can just say I’m going to just do the best I can to take care of my responsibilities and take care of myself, including reducing some of the things I do that I can control.

I’ve allowed myself to get into a bunch of bad habits. I got so stressed that I went back to emotional eating, and it’s become an addiction of sorts. I’m now taking the time to think and be mindful about what I’m eating and to do some reading to help me figure out how to rid myself of that bad habit, or reduce it significantly.

Consequently, my body is at a very unhealthy weight. At this point in my life, I don’t expect myself to be back wearing size-6 dresses anytime soon… or ever. But I would like to be at the top of the range of what I know is a healthy weight for me. I’d like to feel better physically and know that I’m eating healthy foods almost all the time, without the added sweets. I’d like to be able to just bend over, for pity’s sake, without my belly getting in the way. (Yes, there’s a reason I’ve had my 10-year-old paint my toenails. I’d like to get rid of that reason.)

I want to emphasize again that I hope to do this for reasons of taking care of this one and only body I have. I don’t want to aspire to some kind of ideal or do this for image reasons. I am still working on doing my part to raise awareness about how image-oriented our society is, and I don’t want to buy into it.

I’ve wanted to do this for some months now, but I finally am feeling confident enough to be able to just summon the emotional energy to be able to do this. To change bad habits and battle the urges to eat bad food takes emotional reserves. I finally have gathered some together, after a year of having them sapped. Here I am, writing about this because I want to remind myself of what I want to do, and to just know that other people know I’m working on myself.

So here goes. More to come.

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Pulling myself together

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It has been almost two weeks since I broke my foot, and I am still going to be in a boot a good while. Good news is that in about a week and a half, I can start trying to put full weight on my foot while in the boot. I expect that should give me some more freedom and mobility. Right now, even as I’m getting more accustomed to making my way around with crutches and making do in lots of areas of my life in that setup, it’s still a bit frustrating to not be able to do all the things I’m used to doing. I’m somewhat more accepting of my situation, but I am not settling in and making myself completely at home here. No, I look forward to freely being able to go about all my usual activities again … someday.

At first, I was panicky because of not getting any exercise and because I’m already far overweight and knowing I need to take better care of my body by replacing bad habits with better ones. (Emotional eating, yes, I’m talking about you.) And being frustrated and stressed and sitting still on a couch are certainly not great ways to break free of those emotional eating habits. Indeed, these conditions all just add up to gobble city.

My plan had been to just do my best to continue my regular exercise and try to watch and be aware of my eating for the next few weeks until my girls are finally back in school (the end of summer is the hardest, don’t you moms agree?). Then I could have a few hours every day to try to focus on mixing up my exercise routine and trying new things and work on those emotional eating habits. Good plan, I thought. But this past week, I’ve basically given up on that. Sure, I still hope to work on those things in a few weeks for all the same reasons, but in the meantime, I feel like now I’m just in survival/get-by mode, which is not as high a level as I’d hoped, which was just to exercise and be more aware. I’ve kind of kicked awareness to the curb and called in the ice-cream troops for comfort. And exercise? Well, yeah. Can’t do much of that right now.

But after talking to an old friend this morning, I thought, OK, it’s time to pull yourself together.

(Which immediately made me think of Gaston and LeFou in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” … “Gaston, you’ve got to pull yourself together!!” — Because in our family, every thought has a great corresponding movie quote. Just hang out with us for a couple of hours and you’ll see. Original thoughts? Low on the ground.)

OK. So I have a little desire in me to try to pull it together. I don’t feel super-motivated yet. It’s really just a tiny little ember that’s sparked and that I’m going to have to blow on very carefully and shield from big gusts of wind and rain. My desire to get it together and to tackle this stack of great books that can help me work through this emotional eating addiction I have is fragile, but I am going to try to make it stronger. I owe this to myself.

But I still think I’ll have an easier time of it in three weeks. Hasten, hasten, school days.

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On brokefoot couch

Posted in Beautiful life, Home life, Life of the mind, Light life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 17, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Oddly enough, fate has put me in a position that has me simultaneously pondering on all of the main topics I write about here. And it has made one of my friend’s previous comments eerily prescient. I was complaining about trying to be Superwoman (or trying NOT to be), and she said that having shoulder surgery helped her to realize that the world could go on without her.

Almost exactly 24 hours after breaking my foot (and THAT was a funny story), I am still not anywhere close to accepting that possibility. I simply don’t know how some things are going to get done while I sit here on the couch, my foot immobile.

(I could say on the one hand that I’m simply trying to be a good patient and obey doctor’s orders, but really, I’m only sitting here because moving my foot in any way sends shards of pain screaming up my leg and through my body. Sitting still doesn’t hurt. Simple as that.) My children are hovering (not too close, or my husband says, “Leave her alone!” but not too far so they are available if I call for help). They circle me to fill my water glass or bring me things because I can’t carry anything while hobbling around on crutches. And it’s great that they’re able to do that. But that’s not going to last. Two of them are set to go to camp tomorrow, and my husband either has work or has scheduled to go help hike with them in two days, making all three not available to wait on me hand and … foot.

That leaves me to ask other people for help. A few friends and some extended family who live close by. I know they are happy to help, but I also know that they have families and other people who need them for various things at various times. Heck, everyone I know is busy. It’s hard to ask for help because I know it will invariably displace something or someone else in their lives. The superwoman in me cringes.

Sitting here reminds me of what usually keeps me busy and that those things either are not getting done, period, or that I’m not getting to do them. Food can be handed off to someone else (breakfast: cereal, toast, eggs?; dinner: takeout, stir-fry, or friends). Laundry can be done by someone else with a little guidance. Grocery shopping was done last night by my husband with a little bit of guidance. At the same time, I kind of miss being able to get up and make dinner or breakfast if I feel like it (but a lot of the time I do get tired of constantly having to think up what the menus are going to be). Right now, I can’t go out and swim with the girls. I can’t go bike-riding. I can’t do some fun, active things.

What’s also weighing on my mind is just that: weight. I cannot exercise right now. I can barely get down the hall to go to the bathroom without the possibility of putting some weight on my foot and screaming out. But I love my daily workouts. They just make me feel good. And psychologically and literally, I know that working out can help keep my weight down, or even help me lose weight.

So right now, I’m scared to death that I might be stuck unable to exercise at all for a week or six weeks or somewhere in between. At the very least, there’s no doubt I’ll be limited in what kind of exercise I can do. And since I’ve already written about how I’m already at my heaviest weight pretty much ever, I’m feeling a bit panicky now (and despite my efforts and awareness, I am succumbing to feeling bad about how I look). And I’ve also already posted about my issue with food. So sitting here, not exercising, combined with being within one room of the kitchen (even though I do have to ask people to bring me stuff), along with my emotional frustration of being immobile and incapable, which leads me to want to eat (which I DO plan to work on, but this situation has all kinds of ingredients for setback), is definitely a recipe for weight gain. NOOOOOOOOO!

Now, once I stop crying and get myself in hand, I can try to shore up my emotions and think about the possibilities that might even be positive. But it’s going to take work. And that’s daunting. I’m frustrated and a little depressed about this and feeling completely out of control. And somehow within this really-not-ideal situation I must find the emotional strength to pull it together and eat sensibly and make the best of this.

So here I am, thinking, pondering, wishing, and still trying to run my kingdom from my throne, dependent on my loyal subjects to carry out my wishes. I’m scared, I’m worried, I’m nervous. My immediate future is a big question mark. Right now I kind of wish I was Superwoman. If I were, some crystal would heal my foot, and I could fly off at top-speed to catch up on what I’m not being able to get done. Oh well. Stay tuned to see what amazing life lessons I learn from this experience.

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Weighing the options

Posted in Light life, tagged , , , , , , , on July 7, 2012 | 4 Comments »

So I’ve begun researching ways to help redirect myself when it comes to eating. I’ve learned a few things the past few days as I’ve started this process:

  1. Just addressing some of my time and energies toward the topic has helped me to be more aware, but, more importantly, more confident and strong in my ability to fight back. Knowing I’m taking steps to take better care of myself gives me power.
  2. There are a lot of books out there about weight loss, but not nearly so many about emotional eating and food addiction, which I think are huge contributors to many people’s problem with weight gain. There are probably as many “diet plans” available as there are obese people, but really, what so many of us need is a way to work through our emotional problems first so we can then just be able to eat more sensibly. We need programs, books, and buddies and trainers who are going to help support us through the emotional parts, rather than just give us tips about what diets or exercises can spur our weight loss.
  3. Developing that further, we don’t need platitudes or trainers who don’t “get it” when it comes to the emotional aspect. A family member told me that a friend of hers has a trainer who just told her client, “you need to think of food simply as fuel.” OK, definitely true. And that may be an a-ha moment for some people. It may very well start them on their journey just fine and give them just what they need. But others of us know that. It’s a “duh” statement. We need some specific, concrete tips and support that will help us to change our deeply rooted habits and mindsets to be able to get to that point. But just saying that and thinking that it’s “that simple” could be completely unhelpful. Me, I have a bit of a distrust toward the trainers who are so devoted to their physical health and upkeep that they’ve either never had a problem with seeing food as something other than fuel or that they’ve forgotten what it felt like to use it as reward or friend. I don’t want to feel condescended to or insulted somehow. I do need someone in my corner who really “gets” how hard the changeover is and can be a real support emotionally as well as physically.
  4. I think I’ll end up going into more detail about this later, but even as emotional eating and food addiction are closely related, they are distinctly different. There are emotional triggers that make us eat to soothe and reward ourselves, and then there are physiological triggers that make our body want more of sugary and fatty foods. Some of us may have more problems with one than the other, or equally with both. Any successful weight loss will need to focus on whichever issue (or both) that we find most challenging.
  5. Losing weight effectively and for the long term is work. It requires our attention emotionally as well as physically. But it’s ridiculously easy to be attracted to quick fixes and crazy diets. For example, this week I ran across a book that addresses emotional eating but within the framework of the hCG diet. I read through a sample and honestly found myself drawn to it for a little while. Sure, I thought, I can still do the hard work here and focus on the issues I have, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to give myself a kick start with the hCG plan and lose some easy weight? It was born out of sheer desperation. But for one, there still aren’t many studies supporting the plan, and too many of those who sell the plan or the hCG are not doctors; they’re just people out there wanting to make a quick buck. Two, it can be expensive, and three, it could very well be dangerous.

So there’s what I’ve been thinking about these past few days. I’ve been trying to watch what I eat a bit, but I’m not trying to jump into weight loss right now. I’m gathering information and support for what will need to be a long haul that will take serious emotional and physical work. (I’m also waiting until my kids are back in school in about six weeks so I can devote more time to it and have less stress in my life keeping me from being able to turn away from my emotional-eating habits. Having kids at home for a summer can be pretty stressful, especially when they’re whiny and fussing at each other and asking me for stuff nonstop. But that’s another topic and another post…)

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Baring my soul about another lifelong struggle: weight

Posted in Beautiful life, Life of the mind, Light life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 3, 2012 | 4 Comments »

By now, if you’ve read any of my other blog posts, you’ll know I’m a perfectionist, Type-A–personality woman who is the busy mother to four daughters, loves to read, has lots of projects, and struggles with mental health. It may not come as a surprise, then, that I struggle with my weight as well. Having four children and lots of projects keeps me busy, and the mental-health issues make me a little more fragile or susceptible to stressors than perhaps some others, I think. Add in that there are some serious addictive tendencies going a ways back on my paternal side, and — voila! — I comfort myself with food. Sometimes the compulsion gets so bad I feel I just can’t stop eating, and it’s frankly a bit scary. I feel possessed.

Beauty Redefined sells these great messages as sticky notes. I find them inspiring and very positive. I want to talk about health and curbing emotional eating, but I am not posting images of skinny people or before-and-after photos of myself (at least not at this point).

Because I also feel strongly about the issue of body image and beauty in our culture today, I am going to try to frame this discussion outside of pounds or before-and-after photos. I decidedly dislike going on Pinterest and seeing all these “fitspiration” pins that feature photos of teeny-tiny toned chicks wearing next to nothing and showing off their nonexistent tummies. I don’t care how great the tips are that lie behind those pins; I’m simply not going to look at them, and I’m definitely not going to perpetuate them by repinning. (For a really great discussion about this topic, go to Beauty Redefined and read their take.)

Yes, I am looking in the mirror right now and at recent photos of myself and finding myself ashamed and appalled. I am also into my biggest clothes and scared that I might eat myself right out of those into sizes I don’t even own. I stepped on a scale at my gym this week to find out exactly where I stand and wasn’t too surprised but also was definitely not pleased to see that I am now the heaviest I’ve ever been, barring the very end of my first pregnancy. So I am falling right into the trap of feeling bad about my whole being because of how I look. Not good. But that doesn’t mean that I should just accept where I am and move on with life.

One, where I am is not healthy physically, no question. Two, emotional eating is just a crutch, a way to avoid dealing with other issues, and I’m the type of person who wants to do things the right way, no shortcuts, no excuses. It pains me to think I’m using this crutch. So for my emotional well-being, I’d like to try to dig deep and figure out ways to toss this crutch. I’d love to complete that sentence with the phrase “once and for all,” but the realistic side of me recognizes that this may very well be a fight I wage for the rest of my life, much like any other addiction. Alcoholics never consider themselves cured; they’re always “recovering,” and I think that’s where I’m at. Right now, I’m off the wagon and wallowing in the mud on the side of the road. But I am starting to get up enough … strength? desire? motivation? … something… to get back on the wagon and try to stay on there for a good long while.

So this post is going to be the first of many. I’m starting a new category on this blog, about my “light life.” Like I said, I don’t want to frame this as a numbers game or show off before-and-after photos of me in little workout clothes. I want to come at this from a health viewpoint, that of my physical body and of my emotional and spiritual selves.

What I’m looking for is ways to help me get over my addiction to food and eating as a crutch. I’m going to start collecting some good articles and talking about them as I go. I’m still feeling pretty wobbly back here behind the wagon, and I’m not even sure I have the strength to grab for the wagon. But I’m going to put this online, so perhaps that will give me a little extra push.

Please comment and give me some direction as you think it might fit into this viewpoint. I don’t need dieting or fitness tips. I need emotional tips, encouragement, and some solid guidance as I try to find my way and get myself happier and healthier. No platitudes or cheesy dieting sayings (like the infamous “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”: I mean, really — if that were true, all of us emotional eaters would be skinny and loving it).

Weigh in on this topic. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.

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