July 2010

It Was Part Of The Process

Yesterday’s emotional brain dump was an exercise in feeling emotions that felt as if they could destroy me. In the moment of writing, I was crying, sobbing even, and it felt uncomfortable. But it also felt fantastic. I was not destroyed. But for those of you who read it, I imagine that it was only uncomfortable. And I suspect that some of you have felt the same way.

The support and advice I got is very much appreciated.

Pat wrote: “This is pointing you somewhere. Go with it. What opportunity is this incident with the doctor giving you?”

It’s funny, my immediate reaction is to say that the opportunity I am being given is to prove him wrong, but that’s an old pattern, based on old ways of being. I’m still thinking about this one.

Lynn wrote: “Listen to yourself, hear what’s underneath the ‘bad girl’ talk, and you’ll know what you need to do to make peace with yourself.”

I think this, too, goes back to old patterns and ways of being.

“Don’t talk back.”

“Listen to me when I am speaking.”

“Don’t rock the boat.”

“I know what’s best for you.”

Joy wrote: “Have you, by chance, read the wonderful book by Tribole and Resch (who both happen to be nutritionists) called Intuitive Eating?”

I haven’t read this book, but the Living Lighter class I took at the beginning of 2090, which is what inspired this blog in the first place, used material from the authors of Intuitive Eating. I’m definitely going to check it out!

And Journey Beyond Survival wrote: “When it comes to taking his advice you can do it your way and still have the outcome he desires. That is not being bad. That is being smart.”

To be honest, I think part of the “outcome he desires” is a revenue stream that comes from sales of the Ideal Protein products. That said, it’s in my own best interest to start looking again at how much protein I am eating (not to mention fiber). At one time I was making sure I ate at least 75 grams of protein per day…and some days even more. I did this in an effort to curb my cravings for carbs and to eliminate what I call “false hunger.”

In the past five or six months, those cravings have gone away and the control I am experiencing is something brand new to me. And in my effort to “just be” and “listen to my body” and “eat intuitively” I’ve stopped tracking. Not to mentioned that I’ve also lost some weight since the last time I saw this doctor…I’ve lost between three and four inches off my waist and am wearing clothes that used to be too small.

And maybe that’s what’s bothering me…he didn’t recognize this, even when I told him.

But getting back to what’s best for me, I realize that in some ways, I’ve returned to either/or http://kclanderson.com/before-and-after/either-or-and-both/ thinking…it’s either strict accountability, counting calories and dieting, or it’s free-flowing intuitive eating.

My brain is percolating with some ideas.

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So much for resolving and dissolving

I feel frantic and confused and overwhelmed.

I feel like my desire to trust myself is being tested.

I can’t concentrate on anything.

I am jumping from one thing to another and not finishing anything.

It feels like things are spinning out of control.

I can’t get centered.

I need to be soothed and told that everything will be okay.

I feel like a bad girl.

I feel like when I am hungry, I won’t be giving myself what my body needs because I am a fool who thought she knew what she was doing but obviously doesn’t.

How could I have made SO much progress and then feel like it’s nothing? Maybe I am just imagining that my clothes fit better.

That doctor planted so much doubt in my head!

I hate that. What does that mean about who I am? My character?

It makes me angrier than it should. Why can’t I just let it go? Why does my reaction feel over-blown? Or maybe it’s not, but I am so freaking out of touch that I have no clue??

Or maybe, in my desire to trust myself, I am deluding myself? Looking for a way to get out of doing what’s right for me?

Why is it so threatening to me that this doctor asked me to consider this program and lose 20 pounds?

It makes me realize that it’s damned hard to trust myself. Why is that?

It all seems so complex and so simple at the same time.

Why can’t I just feel angry without all this guilt?

I feel like I’m a bad girl.

I feel like I’m a bad girl.

I feel like I’m a bad girl.

I feel like I’m a bad girl.

I feel like I’m a bad girl.

I feel like I’m a bad girl.

Everyone is looking at me in pity and they are laughing because they can see what I can’t.

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A Post In Which I Express My Anger Constructively…In Which I Ask Myself How I Really Feel…In Which I Am Able To Let It Resolve And Dissolve

I went to see my hormone specialist today. It’s been a little more than three months since I started this new regimen, including bioidentical progesterone, pregnenelone, and going off Lipitor. He also recommended supplements like extra vitamin D, fish oil, CoQ10, a supplement touted as “nutritional support for healthy blood lipid levels,” and an “adrenal calming” supplement. I recently had more blood work and saliva tests done to see where things are.

But first of all, I have to say that I feel so much better, physically, mentally, and emotionally, than I have in a long while and I believe that getting my hormones back into balance is the main reason. It remains to be seen if Lyme is an issue, and I am beginning to wonder if I really had it at all. But I digress…

I told him about how great I am feeling, that I am exercising more, that I’ve lost inches off my waist, that I am wearing clothes that once didn’t fit, etc. I told him that my cravings and “false hunger” have been greatly reduced, and so on.

The results of my tests showed that everything has improved, except my cholesterol and my thyroid function. In fact, my cholesterol has gotten worse (the overall number went from 179 to 239; my LDL, which is supposed to be less than 130, is now 158; and the particle size pattern of my LDL cholesterol has gone from large and buoyant, to small and dense). My HDL and triglycerides are fine.

I guess this is no surprise, given that I stopped taking Lipitor. He suggested that all of this could be due to the fact that my thyroid still isn’t where it needs to be. He suggested a thyroid hormone that is effective and which also happens to help weight-loss.

But he said there were other ways to address it, including a supplement called L-Carnitine with Chromium. Then he switched gears and said that he had a colleague who had recently lost 35 pounds…how the guy had been doing PX90 for months and hadn’t been able to lose a pound but then BAM, he lost weight. At first I thought he was talking about the supplement, but then he picked up a brochure, handed it to me, and started talking about some new program. On the cover of the brochure it said “Ideal Protein, Your Last Diet.”

::::::insert sound of screeching brakes::::::

NO! No diets! No programs! NO NO NO! Don’t you get it?? I am trying to trust myself here.

Don’t you DARE try and sell me a diet!!

Okay, that’s not what I said to him. But that’s what I was thinking.

He went on to say that it’s a program that teaches you how to eat certain types of foods at the same time, and how you shouldn’t eat carbs and fats in the same meal, and about getting more protein, blah blah blah. I tried to get him to tell me specifics, like is it actual meals that you buy? He mentioned that he was going to have an informational presentation at his office next week so he can learn more about it and he said he was inviting interested patients.

I tried to tell him, as briefly as I could, about where I’ve been in my life and why the last thing I want to do now is “go on a diet.” He said that this wasn’t a diet. I asked him again what they were selling and I got the impression that it was protein in the form of various products like shakes, bars, chips and so on. He said that it involves eating “your own food” but he also said that on this program, you end up eating about 800 calories a day.

And here’s the thing, I got the impression, as he was telling me about it, that he was expecting me to light up with glee and excitement, as if I’d just discovered the Holy Grail of weight loss and would immediately and desperately sign up for it.

I told him that this is exactly the type of thing I want to avoid and I asked him if he’d read Women Food & God. I think I may have seen just the tiniest of eye-rolls and he said he’d heard about it and that his wife has it. I told him he needs to read it. He said he would.

By the way, the name of this program is Ideal Protein. And it appears to be a program that involves eating foods that you buy from the company. Rather than give it any more space here in my blog, you can go to the company’s site and read, if you’re interested.

Okay, so if you’re still with me, thank you. Here’s the part where I practice:

I feel upset, angry and betrayed. It makes me not want to trust this doctor who I really want to trust! I know that he knows his stuff and is highly respected. He’s  been voted, many times, as a top doctor in our state. I’m mad because I feel like I have to defend the fact that I am seeing him.

DEEEEEEP BREATH

I feel rebellious and like stamping my foot and saying, “you can’t make me.” I feel like eating something “bad” just to spite him. Not really, but sort of.

DEEEEEEP BREATH

UNSCRUNCHING SHOULDERS

I feel like society has gotten to the point where, if you don’t want to “lose 3-7 pounds per week,” you’re the weird one…

DEEEEEEP BREATH

UNSCRUNCHING SHOULDERS

SOFTENING EYES

I am okay, and he’s okay too. It’s not like he wants to feed me poison. Maybe he just hasn’t had a patient like me. Maybe he’s under pressure from his other patients to help them lose weight more quickly. Perhaps this program will help some people.

DEEEEEEP BREATH

UNSCRUNCHING SHOULDERS

SOFTENING EYES

ACKNOWLEDGING REALITY

I feel better, and am doing better…and I know better. And I will continue to see this doctor because he is helping me. I am an intelligent, adult woman who can make her own decisions. I am okay.

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So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wrote yesterday and today there’s been all kinds of things for me to feel.

• Feeling worried that I pissed some people off.
• Feeling scared that some people might not like me any more.
• Feeling hypocritical, that I was preaching, not practicing.
• Feeling excited because I said what I needed to say.
• Feeling like a phony-baloney because I am not a “weight loss success story” (any more) so who do I think I am, touting this new-fangled touchy-feely crap?

And I engaged in two activities that tend to be fraught with danger, when I don’t want to feel what I am feeling:

Shopping for clothes (when I do not need any)

and

Shopping for food

Not only did I shop for clothes and food, I shopped while hungry.

But here’s the thing…at the clothing store, nothing appealed to me. I didn’t feel the need to buy anything. In fact, the thought ran through my head several times: “I am enough…I don’t need anything else.”

And I will tell you right now, for me, shopping is as much a mind-numbing, don’t-feel-your-feelings activity as binge eating. In those dark moments of feeling worthless and bored, and when I knew that bingeing was no longer an option, I’d shop. And then I’d binge anyway. Sometimes.

And then I went to the grocery store. And mind you, I was hungry. I mostly bought what I went there to buy and in the end, I also purchased a bag of salt and vinegar Popchips. And when I got home, I ate the entire three-ounce bag. And I enjoyed it, and I wasn’t distracted when I ate it, and I was hungry, and it was enough…not too much. I was not full when I finished. There’s really nothing more to say.

I want to share this from Mishe, at Eating Journey. She’s been three weeks binge free and today wrote:

“I am beginning to realise that what I have inside of me is enough…it’s my source of energy, light, peace, grace, fire, strength….”

I am enough.

A couple of things I wanted to bring out from the comments to the previous post:

My dear friend Cathy (All Things Power) wrote:

“I feel lost without a goal, I don’t trust at all.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with a goal. I think that having a goal and trusting yourself, both at the same time, is possible. I know in the past I have thought that goals are evil (for me) but I also envy those who can set a goal and work towards it. Lovingly. I would like to think that I could set some sort of concrete goal and achieve it without all kinds of dancing around.

And Foodie wrote:

“I feel like you CAN be aware of the “numbers” – of calories, of your own body weight AND have a spiritual, intuitive relationship with food, and they are not anywhere near exclusive. I know that for myself, I need a combination of intuition, being aware of my body, as well as being aware and educated about my own food and fitness choices.”

I was thinking about all of this last night after I turned the computer off and was having some quiet time before going to bed. And I have to acknowledge that it’s precisely because I decided to go on diets and count calories that I know as much as I do about food. And it makes me wonder, can someone who is obese and clueless about how much they are really eating go from that state to enlightenment without having gone through diets and counting calories? Is the process linear?

I will say that I think what Geneen Roth advocates goes way beyond eating intuitively or mindfully, although yes, that’s what’s on the surface. What she really advocates is using our relationship with food to get in touch with who we really are, because in that moment that we’re…

• figuring out if the food we’re about to eat is “good” or “bad”
• counting calories
• checking to see if this food OP (on plan)
• not trusting
• obsessing
• craving
• feeling guilty
• about to binge
• already bingeing
• feeling disgusted and sick because we’ve already binged…

…we’re not feeling a feeling that for whatever reason we’re afraid to feel. And in not feeling it, it never resolves. What you resist persists. And so we turn to something…something that’s usually (in the end) destructive, in order to numb the feeling. And like most things that numb, they only numb temporarily and we’re back facing that feeling once again.

And finally, I came across this today and felt it was perfect to share here:

“People assume that if you don’t have their passion for their priorities that you aren’t ambitious or committed enough. The reality is that everyone saves their commitment and ambition for their own priorities. Or they spend their lives unhappy because they’re following someone else’s dream instead of their own.”

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