Stefita

Once you’ve been on the right track for a while, it can seem so easy: “Damn, why haven’t I always done this?”  But the reason you haven’t always gone the right way is because the wrong wrong is just as easy.  And for those of us who struggle with food addiction and have years (if not lifetimes) of bad habits and psychological dependence impressed into our neural pathways, one misstep can lead us hurdling down the steep cliff of binge-eating and “I’ve already fucked up, so I might as well just fuck up a little more.”  Or worse, the failure can be so disappointing that we tell ourselves, most likely unconsciously, that we were never meant to succeed, that we in fact cannot succeed.

After weeks of bikram yoga, vegetable-laden meals, and strict intake control, I took that misstep.  I started the day right– went to yoga, ate a flax-bran muffin for breakfast and lentil soup for lunch.  Then I had a taste of a new loaf of rustic sourdough bread  that was sitting on the counter.  And then I had two tastes.  Then five.  “Okay,” I told myself.  “I’ve done well up to now.  So I’ll just discount these calories from my daily count and eat a simple vegetable dinner.”  Wrong.  Four hours later I walked into the kitchen, and while thinking about what to make for dinner, I “snacked” on the following items: chips and salsa, almonds and peanuts, pear and mango, more bread–this time dipped in olive oil, beans, and dried cherries.  For the most part this list sounds pretty healthy, in fact is pretty healthy, but those calories add up fast.  The almonds alone had 135 calories.  Anyhow, by the time I had finished stuffing my face, I was full.  Yet I had found some vegetarian “meat”, my mother had made rice, and we had lots of delicious Thai basil.  The perfect base for fried rice; no, not the “simple vegetable dinner” I had planned for myself after eating five big pieces of bread and 800 calories worth of “snacks”.  Of course, the entire time I was taking all these missteps, I knew what I was doing.  But I quieted that sensible voice and pushed it into the white-noise chamber of my brain that holds everything else I don’t want to hear or face or admit.  Finally, I topped off the night with sour gummy candies that I had previously forsworn.

As I walked past the mirror, I saw myself in an ugly light.  My stomach hurt, I felt hopelessly far from my goal, and I had the horrible feeling that I will never make it.  “This is how it always goes, Stephanie, and how it always will.  You’ll be a fatass for the rest of your life.  And you’re disgusting,” said the cruel voice.  I went to my room and cried.

That night I had a terrible nightmare.  I was trapped in a Thai prison, hands chained and destined for a life of slavery.  I had to be rescued by my dad, and the whole while, I feared that the people who had captured me would find me again.  Dreams work in funny ways.  Clearly the Thai part comes from the fried rice I had made.  I take the prison part to mean the imprisonment I feel within my own habits and body.  And the danger I felt was that even if I escape, the prison will always be just around the corner.

The tragedy is that even now, as I am writing this, even as I craft the ideal ending in my mind: “We must always remind ourselves that succeeding IS easy, we just have to remember that we CAN do it, and that if we truly want to, we WILL,” the ugly voice is telling me that I won’t make it, that I’ve fucked up my entire life, that I fucked up last night, and that I’ll fuck up again.  I want to believe in the right path, but I can’t right now.  And perhaps that is the real goal here– not to lose weight, but to believe in myself.

For people who have been overweight for a significant part of their lives, especially for people who cannot *ever* remember being at a comfortable weight, one of the hardest parts of a weight loss journey is maintaining the optimism that fuels the confidence and drive required to stay on course for the long haul.  If something seems as remote as walking on the moon, then it’s likely that over time the drive to actualize that goal or dream will start to crumble.  Therefore, I believe it is fundamentally important for a person to be able to visualize him or herself as he or she wishes to be.  There are plenty of ways to do this; here are some approaches I have thought of:

1.  Make a list.  Everybody likes to make lists.  Get out a pen and some markers, if you’d like, and start listing all the things that will come along with your new body, health, and confidence.  Write down things you would do, or clothes you would wear.  Think of ways your new body would reward itself– going on hikes, going to SixFlags, learning to Scuba Dive, taking belly dancing classes.  Have fun with the list.  How might you seduce some lucky fellow or gal?  What tattoo would you get?  What nude beach will you go to?  Write out all your fantasy scenarios.

2.  Make a collage.  On a piece of paper, cardboard, or wood, paste down cut-out pictures of clothes or accessories from magazines that you would love to wear with your new body.  Or, just make cut out things that you think of when you think of your new body and health and confidence, and make a motivational collage that isn’t necessarily about fashion or body type.  It could be flowers and space objects or Angelina Jolie’s body with your face on it– whatever inspires you or reminds you to keep trucking toward that goal.

3.  Keep a scrapbook.  This can obviously combine elements from 2 and 3.  Include lists, collages, recipes, inspirational quotes, calorie counts of common foods.  You can plan your meals, write diary entries about your successes or failures, cut out and paste pictures of clothes you want to wear, etc.  This is like a blog in many respects, but the nice thing about keeping something like this is the physicality of it– you can keep it and look back on it, you can include more personal/revealing entries without worrying about others seeing it, and the hands-on artistic elements can be really fun.

4.  Check out other people’s weight-loss victories.  Look up before and after pictures online.  For example, www.theweighwewere.com has many amazing weight loss stories with before and after pictures.  Actually seeing that other people have done this before can be incredibly inspirational.  Check out previous winners from The Biggest Loser.  Look at how much a person can transform his or herself.  It’s amazing!

5.  Try online visualization tools.  I know that at least two sites offer ways for you to visualize your weight loss.  The first one is a site that takes a picture you provide them with, and alters it to make you look slimmer.  It takes about a day to get your picture back, and it’s not generally as dramatic a change as you’d like it, but it does offer a visual aid: www.weightview.com  (see my example below)

The second site doens’t actually use a photo of you at all.  You create a virtual model according to specifications that match your body type, race, and features, and then you compare it to a virtual model that reflects the weight loss you desire: http://preventionweightloss.mvm.com

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now.  Let me know if you have other ways to visualize weight loss, or let me know if you try any of these!

XO,

Steph

WeightView photo modification:

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Because my 30 day/$30 trial is close to its finish, and because the actual cost of attending is WAY out of my price range, I have resorted to finding other means of assuring that I can continue my yoga classes.  Because I would *never* have the discipline to do this on my own.  Anyway, this is what I discovered, and this is what I suggest to those of you who may not be able to afford the hefty cost of Bikram:

Ask your local studio if they offer a work-exchange program.  Most of them do.  You go in a few times a week and fold towels, etc., and in exchange, you get free classes.

Instructions:

1.  Inhale deeply though the nose.  Allow the scent of the dangerous food item to fill your entire body with yearning.

2.  While  smelling the food, close your eyes. Take a moment to clear your mind and enter a state of meditative-ly induced superhuman willpower.

3.  Will yourself to imagine that said food item is in your mouth.  Continue to inhale deeply through nose.

4.  Make chewing motions with your jaw in order to bolster the illusion of eating.

5.  Swallow

Remember kids, taste is 80% smell.  Simply fill in the other 20% with your all-powerful imagination!

Boy oh boy.  Whenever it comes to movie theaters, I seem to become so inundated with food lust that resistance seems futile.  Red-vine licorice,  buttered popcorn, nachos, pizza and beer (at some of the cooler venues)– these things are evil little suckers.  Especially when you’re sitting between two of your siblings who are eating ALL of this, passing delicious vittles across your lap.  Which is why I am very proud of myself at this moment.  When they asked me what I wanted from the concession stand, I said “diet pepsi.”  “What?  Is that all?” “Yes,” I said, biting my tongue.  And even when they continually passed their delicious snacks right before my eyes and nose, even when they shoved food in my face, practically begging me to eat some, I resisted!  Lord knows how I did it, but I did it.  And lord knows how I couldn’t do it before.  It’s so damn easy, when it comes down to it.  But at the same time, all our psychological/emotional/biological ties to our eating habits make it seem impossible at times.  But it’s all about being honest with yourself IN THE MOMENT.  Not “tomorrow.”  I couldn’t count how many times I’ve said “well, I’ll eat everything I want today because tomorrow I’ll start a super strict diet.”  And what ends up happening is “tomorrow” always sounds better than “now.”  And then you’re screwed.  The delicious, fulfilling, utterly-divine satisfaction of food lasts only a few minutes.  But the guilt can last, well, however long you’re overweight.  When I think about what I have eaten in the past to get myself to this state of obesity, I think about all the foods that weren’t worth it, all the foods that I would gladly erase from the chronicles of my diet.  Facing the reality of the “now” is crucial.  It will always be “now.”  Tomorrow will not solve the ordeal of facing whatever it is you’re putting off facing, because tomorrow it will be “now” all over again.  So yes, I suffered for that half hour while my brother and sister stuffed themselves.  But I avoided feeling like utter shit in the long run.  I have left so many theaters with a stomach ache, a guilty conscious, and a busted self-esteem– all for a few moments of fleeting satisfaction.

I did eat some delicious garlic broccoli later on, and not only was it delicious, it made me feel great.  All the suffering I had felt while resisting temptation was wiped away as I munched on my healthy and truly fulfilling antioxidant-rich meal.

It was a good day.

For a recent comparison to my “before” picture (230 pounds or thereabouts), here is my most recent picture (193 lbs):

See, I’m smiling!

I find that overeating, undereating, drug addiction, or any obsession for that matter, is based in profound psychological and spiritual ground.  If it were as easy as saying “I’m only going to eat until I’m full, exercise every day, and forsake all unhealthy meals,” then we would all be Madonnas.  But what makes overcoming our deepest and most difficult neuroses so incredibly complex is that there is a whole slew of currents and tangles beneath the simple exterior that must be sorted out.  We do not one day become obese.  We do not one day become obsessed by food.  These things happen over time, in response to certain triggers, and lie like dark seeds in the inner landscapes of our psyches.  While it’s great to be taking practical measures to reach your goals, say, weight loss, it is equally if not moreso important to take a deep look into your self– your inner self.  You must listen to what your unconscious knows through the symbols it speaks in.  If you are overweight, perhaps you are attempting to use food to “fulfill” you– literally, it fills you– with another deeper, psychological or spiritual need.  One must examine for ones’ self what lies at the basis of our person in order to be able to heal ourselves and water the seed of our true, healthy Self.

Take a moment to think about these excerpts from Marion Woodman’s Book “Owl was a Baker’s Daughter” (painfully transcribed by moi):

 ”Jung was eventually to conclude that bodily symptoms were messages from the psyche itself.  They therefore could be a given a symbolic meaning…For Jung, the healing power resided in a conscious awareness of the symbolic nature…which provided the psychic meaning of those body symptoms which by the spirit struggled to communicate its condition and its needs…To become conscious of the body was to become conscious of the spirit…Bearing this in mind, obesity must be understood in terms of the symbol.  In that understanding lies the treatment and the possibility for healing.”

” ‘Honey’, ’sweetheart’, ’sugar’, are all terms of endearment; from the cradle to the grave we look to the one we love for ‘food’.  The need for love is thus easily confused for the need for food.  Since love is so much a part of life, tasting food is tasting life, but conversely, avoiding food may be avoiding life.  The system of punishment and reward in relation to feeding the obese body becomes a moral issue.  When they feel rejected by others, they tend to compensate for their loss by eating; when they are angry with themselves, they punish their bodies by eating; when they are happy, they reward their bodies by not eating.  In short, food becomes the scapegoat for every emotion, and forms the nucleus around which the personality revolves…”

“Food becomes the focus for depression, for repressed anger, for anxiety, for repressed sexuality.  It becomes a means of attempting to control one’s fate, of expressing defiance of another’s control, defiance of the law and social customs, or even defying nature and god.” 

“Obese women tend  to shy away from the topic of food or to understate their emotions in relation to it.  Onlywhen they express their overwhelming sense of futility, and describe their suicidal tendencies, is the full impact of their powerlessness in the face of their obsession revealed.”

“The voice of the negative animus thunders ‘Thou shalt not, Thou shalt not, Thou shalt not.’  Imprisoned by that negativity, a child very ealry begins to live in terms of defense mechanisms and develops a protective shell which may seem to be a strong ego.  This is a reactive pattern, however, which leaves the real person unconscious in her cage, unaware of her own need.  Thus the fat girl often looks older than her years as a child, and younger than her years as an adult.  Her secondhand feelings are not rooted in her own reality and therefore her inner child lies buried in her adult body.  While her own child starves, she feeds he animus– his fury, greed, ugliness, and jealousy– and is obliged to live without the positive bridge to her own unconscious.  “

“In the Western countries threatened by [obesity and anorexia], the feminine has been devalued for centuries and is now profoundly distorted.   In the individual suffering from these symptoms, the feminine is feared and rejected…Her rejected body epitomizes the present-day alienation from the feminine, and her obsession with her ‘daily bread’ is only one cultural manifestation of the desperate search for spiritual meaning.  The way back to the feminine for the obese and the anorexic no different for the way back for any woman.  Society as a whole has to find the lost goddess.

I recently started Bikram yoga classes.  They’re intense, 90 minute, physically demanding exercises done in a 100 degree room.  It is *very* hard to maintain any kind of attractiveness when you’re drenched with sweat and red-faced.  And it can be especially difficult when you and your entire class are facing a mirrored wall; not only do you have to look at yourself, but others can look at you too.

Having been overweight since I can remember, I have become a very self-conscious person.  I think constantly about how ugly I look, how deformed I feel, and compare my self constantly to  those around me.  And then I had this revelation in yoga.

It all started when the sweat was dripping into my eyes and because there are no breaks between postures, I had very little time to wipe the sweat off, given that my glasses were always in the way.  Also, it was difficult to do some of the “head to knee” or “face to floor” arrangements when my glasses were in the way.  So I just took them off.  Sure, I was blind.  And no, I could not see myself in the mirror.

I felt this secret glee at not being able to see anything other than hazy shapes.  All thoughts of others’ judgments, all nervousness and self-consciousness just magically lifted.  By essentially blinding myself, I entered my own little private sanctuary of hazy bliss.

I suppose this story isn’t all too inspirational.  The moral to a story should never be “blind yourself”, I suppose.  And I’m sure there are better ways to confront one’s feelings of self-doubt and projected revulsion than to shut yourself off from the outside..  But it felt nice, and I found some peace.  And I suppose that’s not a bad thing– getting used to the feeling of knowing that you can be fat, clumsy, sweaty, and red-faced in a room of thin, flexible, graceful yogaphiles and block out all the negative energy that you create against yourself by comparison and self-doubt.  Maybe one day I won’t need to take off the glasses.

Alright, so I’ve come to terms with the stubbornness of my scale.  Screw it.  I’m eating extremely healthily, I’m exercising, and I’m focusing less on food.  The more I research vegetables and their amazing properties, the more I want to eat them.  I try to fit as many different varieties into my day as possible.  Roasted rosemary vegetables with Sriracha hot sauce and brown rice: fucking DIVINE.  No joke, vegetables are badass.  Here’s a little rhyme I heard my roommate bustin’ out:  Listen up, listen up, do your body a favor.  Fruits and vegetables is a happenin’ flavor.  Haha.

Anyway, I encourage anyone to start reading up on vegetables and their amazing properties.  Plus, getting into cooking creatively can be really fun.  I actually find that when I cook, I don’t care so much about eating because I’m involved with food, but not actually eating it.  if I really feel compelled to eat when I know I’m not hungry, I start cooking a meal for my family or friends and it’s a whole lot of fun.  Plus, I love experimenting with spices, ethnic dishes, etc.  Good stuff.

The only problem:  my mom has decided to bake a homemade pie every friday.  And those things are *reallllly* hard to resist.

Okay, so now it’s been about two weeks and I haven’t lost a pound.  In fact, I’ve gained a pound.  Yet I’ve continued to  eat a vegetable-based diet, and eat in the 1200-1400 calorie range.  What’s going on?  It’s hard to maintain a strict diet when you’re not seeing results.  I’ve missed about 4 days of yoga (before I was going 6 times a week…), and now I feel that it’s getting harder and harder to stick to my diet.  Even though I’ve been slipping a little, it’s still not enough to not be losing (and especially not enough to be gaining).  Is this the said “plateau”?  Bikram yoga is an hour and a half of intense calorie-burning, sweat-inducing balancing acts.  And 1200 calories of mostly vegetables has to about as good as it gets.  So I’m puzzled.  And discouraged.  And being discouraged makes me want to eat pie.  Specifically, the apple pie my mom is baking.