tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2397037752245264882024-03-05T13:41:46.077-08:00Screaming Fat Girlscreaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.comBlogger416125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-88604857134568158022014-04-11T10:43:00.002-07:002014-04-11T10:43:28.941-07:00DepletionI've been away for a very long time and I'm sure many readers I had have given up on me. My life has been very difficult on many levels, as I'm sure it has been for many people. I haven't been focusing on weight issues and have largely been treading water. For me, this is success because of all of the emotional problems I've been dealing with since returning to the U.S. I apologize sincerely to the people who have had comments that have been languishing in moderation for months and months as I simply did not have the wherewithal to come to this blog in any way for quite some time. <br />
<br />
One of the things I've come up against is something which I know many other people with weight problems have dealt with and that is an increased loss of control as the day wears on. That is, night-time binging (or, as is often the case for me, "mini binging" - enough to sabotage losses, but not enough to bring on much in the way of gains). I've become frustrated at the holding pattern I'm in and with how it makes me feel when I succumb to this sense. For me, as is so often the case, it is as much or more about the behaviors and what they mean in a larger sense than how they impact my body.<br />
<br />
My study lead me to look into the topic of what is referred to in psychology as "depletion". This links directly to the concept of "willpower" and the erroneous idea that you can do anything if you "try" hard enough. Depletion (or more properly, ego-depletion) has been studied extensively and the bottom line is that we all have a finite capacity to exercise self-control on a daily basis. Those who live lives with significant stress will become depleted and be unable to control themselves as the day wears on and those with less stress will have a better time of it. In particular, those who have to exercise constant conscious control (called "vigilance"), like resisting food, will deplete their resolve reserves more rapidly than those who only occasionally need to resist throughout the day. This is why it is so common for dieters to have problems resisting eating at night.<br />
<br />
Studies have shown that those who are on a diet and are placed in a room with appealing food and resist it are far more likely to indulge afterwards. The act of resisting now depletes the ability to resist later. This, unfortunately, indicates something to me which I have not wanted to embrace for other reasons. That is, that it is important to resist temptation and not keep such food in your presence if you are trying to improve your eating habits. That being said, I have found that keeping such food around doesn't tend to "tempt" me, but rather does give me a focal point when I want to mini binge for emotional soothing purposes. The cookies in the cabinet do not call my name. I am actually pretty indifferent to them, but I think that's due to how I've carried on with my eating (as outlined in this blog). As is always the case, "YMMV" (your mileage may vary). The results of the studies in this case are something to keep in mind if you find that tasty food tempts you. If you don't feel its siren song, then it may not be a problem. <br />
<br />
While researching depletion, I was disappointed in the lack of information on how to avoid it or to manage it. As is so often the case with psychological research, there has been much more done into why and how it occurs than how to deal with it. The only research that seemed to address overcoming it was conducted with cash bribes to keep working once one had been depleted. It showed that someone who was relatively tapped out could work at the same level if you paid them to keep trying. This is, unfortunately, a pretty impractical solution. No one is going to pay you to avoid eating.<br />
<br />
As has often been the case, I had to explore the possible solutions on my own. I am at the beginning of this process and it may yet be refined, but I have found that I have a tendency to tap myself out repeatedly throughout the day. Things like thinking a lot about serious topics, processing emotional issues, doing tasks you don't enjoy, etc. are a part of what depletes one. After reading the causes of depletion in a wide variety of studies, I was actually relieved because I could see that I have been inundated with nearly every factor that they list over the last few years. Frankly, I'm proud that, after two years of constant adjustment and upheaval and being depressed for much of that time, I haven't put on a 100 lbs. by now. The fact that I'm holding relatively steady is a miracle, but I do want to work on this issue and move ahead.<br />
<br />
I came up with a behavioral plan to manage depletion. I have to say that it is not the least bit easy. Coping with a moment of weakness and overcoming the desires it brought on took a full 40 minutes the first time I dealt with it. The second wave (about 4 hours later) was much easier. It is often said, and I strongly believe it is true, that psychological strength is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. I do believe that this is so with depletion as well as everything else that I've worked on. My main focus from this time forward is to manage my time better and insert more breaks into my day in order to reduce the state of depletion later in the day. I am using some of the techniques in the list to follow, but it really comes down to take a moment to notice my fatigue and sit down, close my eyes, and do nothing mentally or physically engaging for a few minutes in order to step out of the pattern I'm in. My mind is always running fast and furious and I need to force myself to disengage. I'm hoping that will improve my situation. Only time will tell.<br />
<br />
I also realize, rather sadly, that one of the reasons that I had to set this blog aside was that I was so badly depleted that I just couldn't reflect on such things anymore. I am not actually "gone" as I don't intend to abandon this blog, but I am also not actually "back". If I have something new to say, I will say it, but I won't be pushing to add content.<br />
<br />
My apologies to all of the kind people who have wished me well by leaving kind comments and inquiring after my well-being. It is so appreciated that you care enough to drop in on me and think about me. These are things that matter in the world. The energy you put out is important and graciously accepted by me. Thank you so much for your warm and beautiful hearts and sharing them with me.<br />
<br />
*****<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Depletion</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>1. Depletion is real.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Many people believe that they are
“weak” and lacking in “willpower” but the inner resources of
an individual are neither infinite nor equal. As our inner resources
are consumed by stress – both physical and mental – our capacity
to make difficult choices is reduced. Resistance to temptation goes
down as the amount of stress and effort one expends goes up. The
first step in improving the capacity to make better choices is
understanding the the difficulty is absolutely real not just for the
individual facing what feels like a failure in “willpower”, but
for every person on this planet.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>2. Depletion is temporary.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Once you accept that the temptation you
are nearly succumbing to is based on a real lack of inner resources (and not personal failing),
then you can find a way to manage more productively in that moment.
Knowing that depletion exists means you can face it. The first step
in facing it is to know that it is temporary. That means that there
are techniques for avoiding the choice you don't want to make
(eating, drinking, taking drugs, etc.) long enough for the temporary
state of depletion to pass. These are meant to give your resolve a
chance to re-establish itself.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<b>Possible steps:</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<b>1. Talk to
someone/engage in social contact.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
One of the reasons
that alcoholics in AA will call a sponsor in a moment of temptation
is that it allows him or her to not act at a moment in which inner
resources are depleted. The social contact as well as the disruption
of the moment allow inner resources to refill both by allowing time
to pass and providing contact with an empathic and sympathetic
person. Even if you don't have someone who you can call in a moment
of weakness, you can improve your chances of succumbing to temptation
by having a social experience such as calling a friend, family
member, etc - even chatting online may be helpful.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<b>2.
Sidetrack/distract yourself long enough to allow resolve to improve. </b>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
Look at the clock
at the moment that you want to succumb. Tell yourself that you will
not act on your impulse for at least five minutes. When that time has
passed, ask yourself if you can wait another five minutes. If you
cannot, allow yourself to give in a little (one sip of a drink, one
bite of a treat, etc.) and wait five more minutes before partaking
again. Ask if you can wait longer to give in a second time.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<b>3. Self-soothe.
</b>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
Many addictions
are tried and true forms of making yourself feel better when you are
worn out. It is an unfortunate fact of life that few addicts can find
as much comfort in other activities as they find in their addiction.
They are quick and easy and generally quite satisfying compared to
any other choice you can make. However, those other soothing activities don't have
to be "as good" as the addictive behavior, they only have to be helpful
to the extent that they allow you to build up your resolve and avoid
the choice you don't want to make.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
While such choices
are highly individual, some possibilities include: taking a walk,
meditation, watching video that you enjoy (YouTube is good for
temporary diversion/refreshment), eating a hard candy that is very
flavorful while fully attending to the experience (close your eyes and really savor it), taking a
bath/shower, hugging or stroking a stuffed toy, looking at pictures
that you love/enjoy from the past, listening to music, daydreaming,
tapping your feet or fingers, rocking in a rocking chair, lighting
and enjoying the aroma of a scented candle, playing a game (including
computer games that can be played alone), breathing
exercises/progressive relaxation, drinking coffee or tea*, etc.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>3. Depletion can be reduced if you
are aware.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<b>Understand and
reduce factors that contribute to depletion.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
A great many
factors can cause depletion including:
</div>
<ul>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
exercising emotional control
(e.g., not showing temper, sadness, frustration)</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
physical exertion</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
thinking about difficult or
complex tasks (concentrating, studying, etc.)</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
dealing with difficult people</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
contemplating an uncertain future
or reflecting on past difficulties</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
resisting temptation</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
engaging in positive but tiring
behaviors vocationally over an extended time (e.g., exercising,
cleaning, preparing healthy meals, etc.)</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
being around people, noise, lights
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
social isolation</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
low blood sugar (being hungry)</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
lack of sleep</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
uncomfortable weather (too hot/too
cold/too humid)</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
health problems</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
random stressors (noise,
unpredictable relationship problems, etc.)</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
Beyond reducing
exposure to known factors which cause depletion, it is also important
to attend to your body's internal state and gain further awareness of
what is causing you tension and tiring you. Many people furrow their
brows, tense their muscles, and clench their jaws in situations, but
don't realize they are having stress responses. Bodily awareness
increases your ability to identify and manage depleting factors.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>4. The act of attempting to reduce
depletion will itself be depleting!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Changing habits and establishing new
patterns of behavior will tire you out and consume inner resources.
This means that, until you have a well-established pattern of inner
resource replenishment, your ability to manage depletion and resist
temptation will be spotty. You may find that your are hit and miss
with your success. This is to be expected as part of the process.
This is not failure. It is simply part of adaptation. The point it to
build to a state in which you can resist and cope better more often
than not, not to be “perfect” and never succumb. Everyone
succumbs to temptation on occasion. No one is a paragon of
self-control or possessing of infinite willpower and those who present themselves in such a fashion are likely lying. “Better” is the
goal, not “perfect”.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>5. The carrot and the stick play a
role in the ability to overcome depletion.</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Studies have shown that punishment and
reward improve motivation to endure a depleted state and push past an
urge. Avoiding depletion by succumbing to an easy self-soothing
temptation is seen as a form of survival as it allows enough inner
resources to remain for a person to function in a true emergency. When a strong
incentive is provided, most people in a depleted state will do better
than they do without that incentive. If you offer yourself a suitable
reward or punishment, you may be able to transcend your sense of
being unable to resist and use some of your minimal inner resources
to make the preferred choice. For example, “If I don't eat that
piece of chocolate cake, I will put a quarter in a jar and when the
jar is full, I will go out and buy something special for myself with
the money.” Placing the quarter in the jar is an immediate reward
(as it is a record of successful efforts to resist temptation) and
the long-term reward is buying some desired item. The choice of
reward is very individual, but it must be a significant motivator to
be successful. If you choose a reward or punishment and find it isn't helping you when depleted, it is not motivating enough. For many people, there is no sufficiently strong reward or punishment to stop them from making the preferred choice in a depleted state. This is not a failure.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
*Drinking coffee or tea is to be used
as a self-soothing or replenishing mechanism with caution. It can be
fortifying in various ways, but it is also a form of “biological
energy borrowing”. It is often followed by a subsequent caffeine
crash depending on ones tolerance levels. However, the act of
drinking coffee or tea is often associated with relaxation and
slowing down to drink either of these beverages can allow for an
replenishing of ones resolve.</div>
screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-12305451235881869652013-07-15T13:47:00.000-07:002013-07-16T19:03:22.347-07:00The Stages of Weight LossBefore I get to the point of my post, let me say that I appreciate the folks who have left comments or sent messages asking after me. The truth is that I've been depressed and exhausted, though absolutely not idle. I have remarked to my husband on more than one occasion that I sometimes feel like I'm tied to the back of a car and am running as fast as I can to keep up with it. Most of the time, I barely manage to stay on my feet, and sometimes, I stumble and fall. When things are "good", I get back up again. When things are bad, I just get dragged along behind in a state of exhaustion and defeat. I've been dragged along a lot since coming back "home". It's been a rough road and it's not looking a lot smoother. However, I just keep going along.<br />
<br />
Recently, I've been reading some things and one thing that I found has detailed the stages of weight loss pretty well and I'd like to share it with you. Perhaps this has verisimilitude for you, perhaps it does not. I can only say that it rang very true for me.<br />
<br />
Step 1: Deciding to lose weight.<br />
<br />
A crisis occurs which motivates one to take steps to get their weight under control. This can be reading about or experiencing the death of someone who had a weight-related illness, some sort of humiliation (an unflattering photo, inability to fit in an amusement park ride seat, etc.), or discovering that one can no longer fit into any of ones clothes comfortably. It can be a big "crisis" or a small one, but it is a turning point which motivates.<br />
<br />
Step 2: Recognition and starting to make changes.<br />
<br />
At this point, one starts to look at ones life and lifestyle and attempt to gain insight into what needs to be changed and then make what are deemed to be necessary changes to achieve ones goal of weight loss. Recognition can include the idea that one does not move or exercise enough, eats too many sweets, eats too much processed food, or simply eats too much healthy food. Once recognition of the underlying issues occur, plans to change are started and weight loss begins.<br />
<br />
<i>Commercial weight loss programs and forums are full of active losers at this stage.</i><br />
<br />
Step 3: Changes in appearance with concurrent identity alterations<br />
<br />
As one loses weight and appearance changes, there is a concurrent change in self-image and identity. Someone who formerly was not particularly athletic may now identity as a "runner" or "gym rat" as such activities are now part of their routine. A person who is on a particular diet may identify as "Paleo", "raw", "vegan", etc. Deeper changes may also occur such as seeing oneself as sexual, attractive, or more valuable.<br />
<br />
<i>Many people never get beyond this step. They tend to vacillate between this step and returning to being overweight as they cannot maintain this type of lifestyle long enough. It takes too great an investment. They will cycle between Step 1 and 3 until they tire or manage to move on. Commercial weight loss programs and forums are full of "success stories" at this level. </i><br />
<br />
Step 4: Transition to a more concrete sense of self<br />
<br />
At this point, depending on how long one has been overweight, the old sense of self as invisible, worthless, asexual, etc. may be memories and the novelty of relatively superficial identifiers is wearing off. A deeper sense of who one is comes about if a continuation of lifestyle changes and maintenance of weight loss occurs. This is where people tend to develop an understanding that losing weight doesn't solve all of their problems.<br />
<br />
<i>Few manage this step as well since it means that one is able to maintain weight and practices that keep the weight off in order to reach such realizations. </i><br />
<br />
Step 5: Addressing underlying problems<br />
<br />
With the new sense of self and the loss of the rewards that come with success, one has to start facing life on the whole and the underlying issues that were making them unhappy. Sometimes those issues contributed to weight gain. Sometimes, they did not, but since "happiness" was not magically manufactured with weight loss, this is a time of larger introspection and analysis.<br />
<br />
<i>Many return to their old ways at this stage because they have not developed ways to manage their lives without falling back into old habits. Some people will bounce between step 3 and 5 for years because it is so difficult to fully change in this fashion. </i><br />
<br />
Step 6: Long-term maintenance<br />
<br />
Statistics tell us this is the rarest of things. This is when people have fully adopted and integrated changes such that they can continue to have a healthy relationship with food and maintain a healthy weight. Since so few get past step 3, very few ever reach a level at which they can fully integrate the changes into their life logistically, psychologically, and physically.<br />
<br />
Does this seem far-fetched or does it seem realistic as a common pattern for people who lose weight? Well, for me, it seemed very realistic and I see myself as being step 5, and am currently bouncing between 3 and 5. This keeps me from losing a lot more weight, but also keeps me from gaining much either.<br />
<br />
Did I make all of this up? No, actually, I did not. This is an adaptation of the 5 steps of recovery for alcoholics and substance abuse addict (Gorski and Miller, 1986). I've been studying addiction, but it has become crystal clear to me that I am food addicted by any definition of the word "addict". What is more, many people are like me, but resist the idea that they are actually addicts because of the lack of control that the word implies.<br />
<br />
In no way am I saying that everyone who is fat is food-addicted. However, it is clear to me that I am, and also that a lot of other people are as well. Just as is the case with substance addictions, fat people are looked at in terms of moral failures and character flaws for their "choices". They are viewed as weak. They go through periods of relapse (weight gain) and recovery (weight loss).<br />
<br />
A lot of smart people insist that you cannot be addicted to food. They believe you can only be addicted to substances which create a particular neurological situation, but they ignore the fact that there are actually two types of addictions. They are substance and process. Process addictions include things like gambling and sex addiction.<br />
<br />
My feeling is that food is a combination of both process and substance addiction because it stimulates pleasure centers as well as the act of having it creates a sense of well-being. One of the more well-known food bloggers who has been struggling with a cycle of loss and regain once said that she was not satisfied with small portions. She needed to have "an experience" in which she ate a lot. This is a sign of process addiction. She derived comfort from the act of eating as much as she wanted, not from the pleasure she got from tasting the food or having a full stomach. In fact, those who have such issues, and I am one of them, will eat until physically ill or uncomfortable because the action of eating is what one requires, not the food itself. <br />
<br />
The reason I'm talking about this is because I think that knowing that this is, at least in part, an addiction means that managing it is a permanent process. Addiction is forever. All you can do is be in a state of remission. There is no cure. The best you can hope for is to stave off relapse or to not relapse too often or too copiously. Like other types of addictions, relapse is the more common experience and total remission is extremely uncommon. I think that, once I realized this, I felt a sense of relief. It's not because I think this makes things easier, because it has never been "easy", but rather because the path is clearer.<br />
<br />
My father is an alcoholic. He is addicted to alcohol. Addiction is often genetic, generational and a family issue. I may or may not have "inherited" addiction, learned it, or reacted to one addiction in the family with another. The only way for me to live from now on is look at this as a disease that I'll have to battle forever. The best I can hope for is to "manage" it, not cure it. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-54918461039493363242013-03-19T12:46:00.000-07:002013-03-20T18:30:03.701-07:00On the SidelinesI started to seriously pick up weight around the time that I entered the 3rd grade. Before then, I was a fairly average kid. By the age of 11, my life in school was a daily hell of bullying by kids who loved nothing more than to say ugly things to both my sister and me about our bodies.<br />
<br />
There was nothing I hated worse than riding the school bus. As the first kids on and the last kids off, we were subjected to a total of an hour and a half of potential teasing, tormenting, and abuse five days a week. School was no great shakes, but riding the bus, in which kids were rarely monitored for anything other than standing up or getting loud enough to annoy the driver, was far worse. <br />
<br />
One day, after a particularly brutal session of bullying by the kids riding the bus with us, I snapped. As the two of us were ready to disembark the soon to be empty bus, I started screaming at the driver in frustration for his failure to protect me from the suffering I endured day after day. At that point, I had spent at least 3 years being tormented and I could not fathom why an adult in a position of authority would do nothing while that went on so openly and blatantly.<br />
<br />
My sister stood behind me as I laid into him in the manner that a 12 year-old can do. When I was done and stepped off the bus in tears, he essentially said something to her which was tantamount to, 'what's her problem?' I'm not sure if he genuinely had no idea what went on on that bus, or if he simply felt that I had no reason to expect him as the only adult present to look out for my welfare, but he seemed perplexed at how upset I was.<br />
<br />
The truth is that many adults stood on the sidelines as I moved from being a child to a young adult and did nothing to stop the suffering being inflicted upon me. Teachers knew I was being teased mercilessly about my weight. A few of them did a little extra nurturing of me by praising me in class for my artistic ability or my intelligence, but none ever tried to step between me and the abuse or to put a stop to it.<br />
<br />
I don't know if things would be different in this day and age in schools. The repercussions of being the responsible adult and not stepping in while a kid is abused in some fashion may be enough of a threat to get an adult to step in nowadays, but I somehow doubt it. There was a news story in the last year or so about a fat boy in Australia who was being tormented by a smaller boy (including being hit) who got fed up and picked his tormenter up and dropped him on his head (in a move he emulated from a pro wrestler). The internet applauded the tormented boy while some parents fretted that the bigger boy could have harmed the smaller one.<br />
<br />
It has seemed to me all too often that the world has stood by while I was hurt by people because of my body. I spent many years of my life full of anger because of this. Starting at a young age, I felt vulnerable and like someone should be protecting me. When no one did, and, indeed, when I was often told by various "caring" adults that I wouldn't be teased if I lost weight, I just felt more hostile and resentful. They were blaming me for my pain, rather than placing the fault on those who inflicted it. <br />
<br />
As a kid, and even as a teen, I didn't know why I was so fat in light of the fact that I never ate the sorts of food believed to make you fat back then (cookies, chips, soda, pastries). I saw skinny people eat that sort of stuff and they never gained weight. I ate boring food that poor people ate like potatoes, white bread that cost 30 cents a loaf, cheap cuts of meat, and pasta. None of that stuff was the stereotypical stuff of fatness. Of course, now I know better about the factors that contributed to my childhood obesity. Then, I just was a poor kid being fed what my parents provided me and being criticized for not eating what was cooked simultaneously with being taken to task for being fat.<br />
<br />
Emotionally, I felt vulnerable on all fronts. Kids hurt me. Adults validated the manner in which they hurt me by saying it was my fault. If I just conformed, they would leave me alone. The seeds of self-loathing and world-hating were being planted every day in deep soil. They would grow for many more years than they would lie fallow.<br />
<br />
I realize how profound an effect the situation in which I grew up had on me. If you put an animal in a cage and poke at it repeatedly with sticks or shock it with cattle prods, it will grow increasingly hostile and defensive. If even the most caring of individuals tries to approach such an animal, it will attack first as a defensive measure. In a world that hates fat people and isn't afraid to let them know it, I think we're going to see a lot more people developing a personality in line with the constant abuse they suffer. That will be the subject of my next post.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-71179549257596487342013-03-11T17:16:00.001-07:002013-03-17T19:00:39.932-07:00Not mentally ill, just big-boned<a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-normal-is.html">In my previous post</a>, I talked about "normal" and "abnormal" and how such things impact how we are treated. People tend to think that the purpose of psychological treatment is to target "abnormal" and to make it "normal". That is <i>not </i>the of purpose psychological intervention or study. It has never been and never will be about reshaping people to some sort of acceptable average or filing off their quirks and character traits so that we are all the same.<br />
<br />
In fact, there are critical rules for when something is considered pathological as opposed to merely "different". Unless you are demonstrably and clearly a danger to yourself or others, there is actually no way in which someone can force you to be treated. Most people who see therapists are going to them because they have problems they want help with. No one is making them change. They want to change. It's not about forcing "normal" on them, but rather their desire to find a new "normal" for themselves. <br />
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"Normal", <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-normal-is.html">as I said in my previous post</a>, is a relative state within a system, but it also can be a reflection of where one falls in a statistical range. Recently, it was announced that narcissistic personality disorder was being removed from the "bible" of psychological disorder diagnoses, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders">DSM</a>. In the DSM V (currently, the DSM-IV-TR is in use), narcissistic personality disorder will not appear. The reason for this is that self-absorption and self-involvement are so prevalent in society in the internet age that these are no longer considered atypical behaviors. What is more, and this is critical, they are no longer considered personality aspects which lead to functional impairment in the current social order. When everyone is self-involved, it is seen as "normal" <i>within the system</i> and those who display such traits are accepted rather than rejected when it comes to jobs and relationships.<br />
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I mention this situation because it is important to remember that what is considered "disordered" and "normal" are fluid. Just as a mental state that was once considered a problem can disappear when the zeitgeist catches up with it, a mental state which wasn't a problem in the past can become one now. Changes in society can erase the idea of abnormality, and they can create new abnormal states. <br />
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The two core aspects, statistics and functionality, are important to consider when thinking about whether something should be considered a psychological disease. The former is not enough to consider a behavior or state a disease that one would do well to treat. Statistically, there may be few people who are hearing the voice of God in their heads on a regular basis, but their state is not of concern until it interferes with their functioning. If such a person can live a life as a productive member of society or at (least a non-disruptive and independent member) regardless of their atypical state, it does not matter whether they receive treatment. No one will force someone who is capable of self-care and who is not interfering with others to be treated no matter what their mental condition. <br />
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Of course, people who hear voices are often unable to function because their impairment is so great that they cannot survive in society. Indeed, there is an extremely high rate (50%) of self-injury (either suicide or self-mutilation ) among people with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. They are not only distracted and troubled by the voices they hear, but they are driven to harm. However, it is not unheard of that extraordinary people who suffer such disorders can develop the capacity to cope with their problems without psychiatric or pharmacological intervention.<br />
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This was the subject of the movie, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_%28film%29">A Beautiful Mind</a>". However, such people are extremely rare and their anecdotal cases cannot be used as reasons to fail to treat others with their condition or as an excuse to "depatholigize" a pathological condition. If you are one among thousands who has a condition and does not suffer functionally for it, that is not a reason to expect that others will manage in the same manner as you. Such exceptions are inspiring, but are nearly meaningless is the greater scheme of things.<br />
<br />
So, while a handful of critically mentally ill people are capable of functioning despite their atypical life circumstances, the vast majority will require treatment to improve their quality of life and be functional. A necessary precursor to treatment is diagnosis, and that's why things like the DSM exist. It's also why obesity is currently being considered for insertion as a mental disorder into the DSM V.<br />
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The idea that obesity is a mental health issue is hotly debated both by laymen and experts. Personally, I think that obesity is a physical state and a symptom of a potential mental disorder or a set of disorders. The state of being obese is not, in and of itself, anything other than a reflection of body composition in regards to fat percentage. Sometimes it has an organic basis and sometimes it has a mental one. Whether you are super skinny or super fat, your functioning in life is impeded and the underlying issue, whether medical or psychological or both, could be improved if treated.<br />
<br />
Just as an anorectic's skeletal appearance reflects deep emotional problems, the super fat person's body size also very likely reflects deep problems. The notion that one extreme is a mental disorder and the other is not seems absurd. Starving yourself to dysfunction and possible death is a mental health issue. Why isn't eating yourself to dysfunction and death one as well? This seems illogical and hypocritical.<br />
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The answer to why being super obese isn't a sign that someone has a mental disorder is, my opinion, because of both prejudice and a lot of denial. The prejudice comes from people who think that fat people are gluttons who lack self-control and if they merely exercised some restraint and moved around more, they wouldn't be fat. This is an oversimplification which is gratifying to those who need to elevate their self-worth at the expense of others. It's not seen as a mental health issue, it's a deficiency of character. <br />
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The aforementioned denial comes from the very people who could be helped by a DSM V classification of obesity or an obesity-related mental state diagnosis. The claim is that 'they're not mentally ill, they're just big-boned'. There are numerous assertions about the compositions of their diets, homeostasis, exercise habits, health issues, etc. as ways of explaining being super fat.<br />
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I have <i>no doubt</i> that some people are naturally fat, just as some people are naturally thin. I also have little doubt that most women of average height and build (excluding the very tall, very short, and very muscular) are not naturally at a homeostatic point over 200 lbs. and most men at a point over 250 lbs. Even if you were born to be fat, chances are you weren't born to be super fat. There is either an underlying biological issue that needs some attention or a psychological one (or both). <br />
<br />
Without a doubt, there are many organic disorders and medications that can make someone obese. No small number of drugs are known to induce metabolic syndrome and taking them requires a concurrent change in lifestyle which can be seen as "unfair." People on such drugs have to eat far fewer calories and often limit carbohydrates compared to an average person. Emotionally and physically, this can be very hard, but such restriction does not result in a loss of health due to poor nutrition. It just is very, very hard to accept that you eat 1500 calories a day and struggle not to gain weight while another person can eat 2500 a day and not worry. It's also terribly difficult to be hungry all of the time because of this type of restriction.<br />
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That being said, I personally believe the inability to comply with such restricted diets is largely (but not entirely) psychological for most people. I've been researching a lot of underweight people's lifestyles and behaviors and what I have found is that such people actually don't eat much. Many quite thin people really do just "go hungry" for so long that they learn to ignore hunger. <br />
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There's a BBC television show called "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCa0Sf8rKEQ">Supersize Vs. Super Skinny</a>" that can be viewed for free on YouTube which gives a lot of anecdotal examples of the differences in eating habits between very heavy and very thin people. It goes some way toward showing different mindsets as well as different habits. People who don't have eating disorders view food and hunger differently than those of us who do. While I don't think someone who has been fat will ever tolerate hunger as well as someone who has never been fat (because having been fat, especially for a lot of your life fundamentally changes biochemistry), I do believe one can use behavioral techniques to stretch their tolerance levels and re-frame the role of food in their lives to help improve their relationship with food. <br />
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The fact that obesity can be brought on by drugs or organic conditions does not negate treating it or regarding it as a pathological condition. There are many organic disorders that can create psychoses, anxiety, depression, and antisocial behavior. These include brain tumors, cancers, thyroid problems, and hormonal imbalances. All of those disorders when brought on by organic or pharmacological agents are treated with concurrent medical intervention and therapy. Why should obesity, especially super obese states, be regarded differently than these other conditions? Why is it simply explained away by fat activists as being a natural state of being for some people? Well, because fat people don't want to see themselves as "sick". They just want to see themselves as fat. <br />
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Here's the thing, crazy people often don't think they're sick either. It often takes significant pressure or serious difficulty in functioning for them to come to terms with their illness. Even for those who are seriously ill, and they might be cutting themselves, drinking cleaning fluids, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tim_McLean">beheading people on buses</a>, they are sure they are behaving rationally.<br />
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Weighing 300+ pounds at average or near average height and saying you are in no way sick borders on the absurd. Something is wrong somewhere. Such a body will not function well in the long run and many are not performing optimally in the short haul either. Sure, there are some cases of very heavy people who are extraordinarily healthy and mobile. They are the stuff of an obesity-based version of "A Beautiful Mind", but their cases <b>are not typical</b> and cannot be generalized to everyone who is morbidly obese or super obese. <br />
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I'm not saying fat people are crazy, but I am saying there's a mental health issue in many cases (along with an accompanying physical one in most cases as well) and denying it doesn't change the fact that functionality is impeded, quality of life is degraded, and relationships with food are disordered. Anorectics, incidentally, similarly feel (off and on) that there is nothing wrong with their weight or relationship with food. It's not <i>them</i> that has a problem, it's the rest of the world. These days, fat advocates say the same thing. It's not <i>them </i>that has a problem, it's the rest of the world. <br />
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The question of whether obesity is a sign of a mental disorder is a tricky one because the media so often focuses on the symptoms rather than the causes. Just as being skinny (not mentally ill) isn't the same as being anorexic (mentally ill), being obese isn't the same as being super obese and engaging in the behaviors that made one so. What is more, anorexia is not a bodily state. It is a set of behaviors and thinking that result in a bodily state. Classifying obesity as a mental disorder is wrong, but classifying the set of behaviors that lead to a<i> level of obesity that creates functional impairment</i> would be a step toward dealing with the problem productively and without political and judgmental statements.<br />
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The bottom line is that I believe that there is a set of behaviors that lead to super obesity. A new term, I might suggest "redundorexia" (excess appetite, which is the opposite of anorexia or no appetite), might be in order. The term would not refer to body size, though body size would be one of the symptoms. It would refer to a set of behaviors that result in <i>obesity that functionally impairs someone</i>. Now I will say that, if such a disorder existed, <b>I</b> would be diagnosed with it (possibly with it being seen as being in a state of remission at present, possibly not). The characteristics would be as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li>high body weight (at least obese, if not class 1 or 2 obesity)</li>
<li>strong identification with body size</li>
<li>restriction of social or work activities due to feelings related to body size</li>
<li>feelings of dissociation of mind from body (e.g., the sense that the body has betrayed one or that one exists separately from ones body) </li>
<li>inability to operate in the world due to body size (e.g., inability to use public facilities like stall-size toilets, ride on airplanes due to seat size, etc.)</li>
<li>physical impairment due to comorbid health issues brought on by body size (e.g., back pain, type 2 diabetes, joint pain, edema, etc.)</li>
<li>impairment of relationships due to body size (including conflict over weight with significant others, inability to be physically intimate for physical or psychological reasons, misdirected anger or paranoia about being judged because of ones weight, etc.)</li>
<li>preoccupation with food or dietary habits</li>
<li>anxiety about eating in front of others</li>
<li>inability to moderate eating habits despite repeated attempts (e.g., repeated attempts at "dieting")</li>
<li>hidden eating/hiding food</li>
<li>moralizing of food and changes in self-esteem in line with what sort of food one eats ("good food"/"bad food") </li>
</ul>
This is not a complete list of potential issues, and certain other disorders (comorbidities) would be common. In particular, anxiety and depression would often accompany a diagnosis with an obesity-related mental disorder.As is the case with all DSM disorders, one would have to meet all or a certain high number of these criteria in order to be considered to have such a disorder and those behaviors would have to persist over a long period of time (at least a year, if not longer). Merely having several would not be enough and engaging in them only occasionally would also not be enough. Most people have experienced some of these attributes, if not all of them, on occasion in their lives. Persistent suffering is always a part of whether or not someone has an actual disorder. <br />
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Why am I talking about diagnosing obesity-related behaviors as a mental health disorder? Well, I'm talking about it because it would be a significant step forward in dealing with the problem in a manner which does not blame the sufferer as well as create a system which would facilitate treatment. Before there was a term for H.I.V., there wasn't a treatment system. There was just labeling and blame, especially in the gay community. <br />
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Beyond the fact that a diagnosis will create a system for research and treatment, it also creates an economic avenue for receiving help. Insurance companies won't pay for things which are not officially called diseases. If you are obese and want therapy for your condition, it's harder to get your insurance company to pay for it than something like bariatric surgery. They recognize that being fat is a health issue, but not a mental health issue. If you want CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) to deal with your food relationship, you may or may not get insurance coverage for it.<br />
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Mental disorders come and go with the times as we can see by the removal of narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM. Given modern lifestyles, I think it's more than past the time that "redundorexia" or something to that effect was added to the list of possible mental health disorders. In my next post, there is another related disorder which I have noticed has evolved as a result of the obesity epidemic and the manner in which fat people are treated.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-92226471439189185802013-03-09T10:24:00.002-08:002013-03-10T16:26:17.899-07:00What "Normal" IsAs some of my readers may recall, I've been taking a graduate school class with my husband over the past couple of months. I'm able to do this because his school graciously allows partners to audit (take part, but receive no official credit) one class per year. The experience has been an emotional one for me on many levels, but has failed to significantly challenge me intellectually for the most part.<br />
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The "emotional" aspect has come from being faced with the various personalities of the participants (of which there are about a dozen) and the perspectives they present. All of them are younger than me, and have significantly different (and more limited) life experiences. Sometimes, I'm very frustrated at the myopia they exhibit, but much more frustration is elicited by the lack of critical thinking that is displayed.<br />
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The dearth of critical thinking is shown in a variety of areas, but one in which many psychology students struggle is with the notion of normality. At my husband's school in particular, an institution which is more expansive, open-minded, and embraces a holistic approach to living, healing, and mental illness, the idea that "normal" can be defined is more resisted than among the population at large. These are people who are in that place because they reject conventional thinking on multiple levels, and that means they do not want to pigeonhole or embrace concepts that are as limited as a notion of "normal".<br />
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While I think it is important not to try to reshape everyone into a round shape so they can be placed in the corresponding round hole, the notion of "normal" is of value and embracing it should not be viewed as a destructive pattern of thought. The idea of defining it should not be seen as an effort to marginalize, isolate, or pathologize people, but rather to understand states which create the greatest functionality and healing.<br />
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I'm talking about the concept of "normal" here because, in terms of body weight, the idea of "normal" is very controversial. Often, it is medically determined in a manner which simplifies rather than rationally explains why body size matters. That being said, I don't believe the concept of a "normal" weight has to be considered a toxic means of straitjacketing the populace into fitting into socially or medically determined forms. A more complex and nuanced notion of "normal" in terms of all things, not just weight, is of value. To that end, I have been pondering the idea of "normal" as of late.<br />
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The first thing that is important to keep in mind is that "normal" is a relative state. What is more, it is relative within various "systems". For example, hearing voices, taking hallucinogenic compounds, and sacrificing animals is normal within some tribal systems that have shamanistic practices. That being said, though these activities and experiences are generally normal, they are only appropriate (and therefore "normal") in certain settings. Even in societies in which hearing voices is a normal part of ritual experiences, it is not a normal part of everyday life. A person who is actively psychotic and hears voices outside of the ritual setting (and who is not an appointed individual for whom such experiences are considered part of their role) are definitively deemed abnormal and will be socially isolated, rejected, or marginalized.<br />
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Similarly, certain types of dress are utterly normal within a certain system, but would be considered inappropriate and "abnormal" in more mundane ones. If I were to wear an evening gown to an orchestral performance, it would be seen as "normal". If I were to wear one to work, it would be considered "abnormal". Context matters. The system you are operating within determines whether or not you are "normal".<br />
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This leads me to talk of body size and appearance. Part of what got me intro trouble recently on Facebook was talking about one of the more zealous fat activists and how she looks. I asserted that her appearance, which is far outside the mainstream in ways unrelated to her weight, muddles her ability to represent the oppression that fat people endure. In no way did I say that the obese and especially the super obese (so-called "death fats", <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/03/tribe-less.html">of which I have been a part of for the vast majority of my life</a>) are not treated abysmally and with great cruelty. However, what I said was that her extremely atypical choice of style of appearance muddled the picture significantly and made her a poor choice of example for how fat people are publicly humiliated.<br />
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The truth is all people who appear "strange" will elicit abuse, and I cited an article in a psychology journal in support of this notion. Unfortunately, I can't link to it here because it's an academic article behind a pay wall that I could only access via my husband's academic account, but you'll have to trust me when I say the study exists and that what I say about it is true. That study was conducted with normal weight people who dressed, styled their hair, etc. in highly atypical fashion. They wore large polka dot prints or other "loud" patterns and displayed unusual hair coloring. The purpose of the study was to measure the responses of strangers who encountered these unusually groomed and attired people in public. The results showed that, quite overwhelmingly, "abnormal" appearance elicited aggression. This happened when weight was not a factor.<br />
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So, I think if you are going to hold your treatment out there as a fat person and say that you are abused, you have to "control" for this factor. It muddles the picture if you are both very fat and dress in a manner which the society you are operating in deems "abnormal". If your clothing and style choices are far outside the norm, it will be very difficult to tell whether you are treated poorly because you are fat or because of your unusual style. Beyond confusing the true motivation among bystanders for their negative attention, it also undermines the sympathy of others when hearing your story. They will look at the strangely dressed person and not think, "she's abused because she's fat," but rather, "she's abused because she dresses so weirdly." It undercuts the potential for empathy and harms the cause of fat activism.<br />
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My talking about this is not to be confused with condoning the abuse of anyone based on appearance. I don't care what people dress like or look like. I spent more than enough years of my life being treated like a walking pile of fat garbage to condone the abusive behavior people heap on others for their appearance. What I'm doing here is talking about the reality, not making an excuse for it.<br />
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The reality, very likely, is informed by evolutionary forces. Our distant ancestors that responded aggressively to those who appeared markedly different very likely survived. Those who were tolerant and accepted likely did not. Conformity promotes recognition among the tribe and means that you will see the enemy as the enemy and a friend as a friend. Bystanders who see a stranger who looks weird (or acts strangely) are therefore fearful and become aggressive and they probably don't give a second thought to whether or not the response is rational.<br />
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There's probably some part of their brain in the amygdala (the home of our aggressive and fearful responses for the most part) that activates. In order not to have those feelings, they must engage in active suppression and process cognitively. Such processing requires awareness, energy, and the taking of an advanced perspective that people are unlikely to do simply to benefit a random stranger. The question of whether they "should" do it is another one entirely. Of course, they "should", but we do not yet live in a world in which children are taught to question and mitigate this response at a young age, and that is where the process should start.<br />
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My purpose in broaching this topic is not to explain what happened on Facebook and upset someone else. This is actually only part of the picture and, as I said before, I was at fault because of how I characterized the individual in question (in a manner which was uncharacteristically derogatory and which I apologized for twice). This is just the start of my talking about conclusions I've reached about the "fat mindset" and my feelings about obesity as a mental disorder. The reason I'm talking about "normal" and how "abnormal" is to set the stage for what will no doubt be a series of posts about the topic that will lead up to my conclusions. <br />
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The bottom line is that being super fat is not "normal" within the current systems in most societies. Aggressive responses to abnormal appearance are, unfortunately, a part of human nature regardless of the reasons or shape of that "abnormality". Well-meaning and self-serving attempts to "normalize" atypical behavior across the board will not change the reality of human biochemical responses to that which is markedly different and one cannot control the behavior of others, particularly when they are operating in line with societal norms and biochemical responses beyond their control. Just as they cannot easily regulate their heart beat, they cannot stop the rush of chemicals that create an aggressive response when they experience something which is not normal within their system. This is, in essence, where the seeds of what is considered pathological are sown. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-4826938273393092832013-03-07T11:38:00.003-08:002013-03-07T15:54:58.831-08:00Tribe-less<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBu8rl-n4Sv4hJsdK9wtVEt6NMI_KwUjvG3iW-R1RPgHeXtZD-p4PkwQrVCWj5Wgsdq_nofg6nmNJBhi4gy88BQbESHvwH68L7FD0ARl02p0DPsoFo_8kAhLOO60k_r5uaQ1OKirVm_XC/s1600/sfg+at+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinBu8rl-n4Sv4hJsdK9wtVEt6NMI_KwUjvG3iW-R1RPgHeXtZD-p4PkwQrVCWj5Wgsdq_nofg6nmNJBhi4gy88BQbESHvwH68L7FD0ARl02p0DPsoFo_8kAhLOO60k_r5uaQ1OKirVm_XC/s320/sfg+at+12.jpg" width="273" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Me at age 12, wearing the sort of stretch pants my mother bought for me which helped make me even more of a social pariah than I already was as a result of my weight. </b></span></div>
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Recently, in an exchange on Facebook in which I was frankly at least somewhat (if not greatly) out of line, one of my friends by way of the internet seemed to be saying that, since I'm no longer living in the "death fat" range of weight, I can't understand or appreciate the value of fat activists. I cannot say whether or not this is true. The truth is that I wasn't in the fat activism camp even when I was in the super morbidly obese weight range. I always had problems with the skewed manner in which many of them frame their world and the denial of the health problems that come along with being super morbidly obese. <br />
<br />
I can't speak to how having lost weight may have impacted my view of the value of fat activists. I can only say that, the implication that I can't relate to the pain of being dramatically overweight and what it is like to live like that upset me. I felt as if my experiences and knowledge were being invalidated because I've not been in that weight range for the last few years.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg43RsV5yJWJelXh08rgaWbrMeH0yRfVYYf0nXN9okYeVGBO8FKKzb_T5zwvDQeC8s5phXouOPX4Lk4Wu1OGPSQF9cYZjZscRfBAa4HoKBfY1npXc0VDfv1gKiHD_jRY6t3KTxFsUgESuxW/s1600/sfg+at+14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg43RsV5yJWJelXh08rgaWbrMeH0yRfVYYf0nXN9okYeVGBO8FKKzb_T5zwvDQeC8s5phXouOPX4Lk4Wu1OGPSQF9cYZjZscRfBAa4HoKBfY1npXc0VDfv1gKiHD_jRY6t3KTxFsUgESuxW/s320/sfg+at+14.jpg" width="291" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Me at age 14, trying to hustle out of camera range because I loathed having my picture taken because I was so disgusted by my appearance. Note the double chin which <span style="font-size: xx-small;">I hated. </span></b></span></div>
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That being said, perhaps the fault lies with me because I haven't spent enough time talking about my history and what I grew up like. It's one thing to follow my recovery process. It's another to know very clearly how little of my life has been spent in any mental or physical space that can be considered in the ballpark of "recovered". To that end, I'm offering this post.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmbnNMtHExaSYkwOp9vFZ13NlS3JT5tyTHUUB5GNIpkRwca4ygQz1xR15fdeYhLsvGOWYODr2PPMaryMwz3hWTsZBLrZxCIOZLppBOv772XAErwHEqM1YXeZcuG-Gd26Y6RrLwY1kp3lzH/s1600/SFG+high+school.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmbnNMtHExaSYkwOp9vFZ13NlS3JT5tyTHUUB5GNIpkRwca4ygQz1xR15fdeYhLsvGOWYODr2PPMaryMwz3hWTsZBLrZxCIOZLppBOv772XAErwHEqM1YXeZcuG-Gd26Y6RrLwY1kp3lzH/s320/SFG+high+school.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Me at 17, at my high school graduation sporting the sort of body that insured that I'd never get a date, go to a prom, or be seen as anything but an ugly mass of flesh. This was in 1982, and I was the only fat girl in my entire class. The world was not yet full of super obese people. </b></span></div>
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I have lost significant amounts of weight twice in my life. The first time I remained at various weights under 200 lbs. for approximately 3-4 years before regaining. Most recently, in the past 3 1/2 years, I've lost weight and maintained around 180-190 lbs. in the last year only. Note that I choose the sub-200-pound range because I have learned that that is the point at which you tend to not be treated as in incredible fat freak in my experience. I'm speaking of the perceptions of that weight range at this time in history only. When I was growing up, I was tormented for weighing less than that.<br />
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Keeping in mind that I had to go down from 380 to my current weight and spent many of my "losing" years at extremely high weights and totaling the years of my adult life, here are some numbers:<br />
<br />
lowest weight ever: approx 160 lbs.<br />
time spent at lowest weight ever: approx. 1 year <br />
<br />
highest healthy weight for someone my height: 145 lbs. <br />
number of adult years spent at a "normal" weight: 0<br />
<br />
Current age: 48<br />
number of adult years spent at under 200 lbs.: approx. 5<br />
number of childhood years spent at a "normal" weight: 8<br />
number of years spent in the obese or super obese range: <b>35</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvanVhGCrHBcMuDL0AFiVUxNK1iOVeLU8otbFwVcdS31ORmXo2MzaFQHE74IF2e2g2nXAJHBrqs5pk4PvxihaAj1YgyKRb4AInxrI0fk8hCVmmaljFydC53fuuUmDz2AaUaG8iuNcL5CzT/s1600/wedding-shot-1989.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvanVhGCrHBcMuDL0AFiVUxNK1iOVeLU8otbFwVcdS31ORmXo2MzaFQHE74IF2e2g2nXAJHBrqs5pk4PvxihaAj1YgyKRb4AInxrI0fk8hCVmmaljFydC53fuuUmDz2AaUaG8iuNcL5CzT/s320/wedding-shot-1989.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Me before my wedding (age 24), having regained a lot of the weight I lost at the end of college. This was hardly the end of it. Much more was to come. </b></span></div>
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That means that I've spent 35 years of my life and <i>all but about 5 of my adult years</i> grossly overweight and in a state of self-loathing, social isolation and torment, and physical difficulty. The 8 years I spent as a child (from birth to some point in 3rd grade) were hardly ones in which I was aware enough to appreciate not being fat.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYjRaYqjn5chI_zwbXkBRAr-XfELdZRG3y_aWOOhdgtQPNX7voVFQQ5Bh6KPdsKXWj66wk_-GDnggWrRTm2_S5W5Gb1im4qN8UTffmjPcVrGs1xp51C__fWH8QHktShRVFBpB10_iorwg_/s1600/comparison.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYjRaYqjn5chI_zwbXkBRAr-XfELdZRG3y_aWOOhdgtQPNX7voVFQQ5Bh6KPdsKXWj66wk_-GDnggWrRTm2_S5W5Gb1im4qN8UTffmjPcVrGs1xp51C__fWH8QHktShRVFBpB10_iorwg_/s320/comparison.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>And just for the record, the pic on the left was me in 2009 (age 46) after having already lost about 30 lbs. I looked like that for at least 10 years. A line can be drawn from how I looked at my wedding in 1989 to 2009 to show how my weight escalated.There aren't any pictures<span style="font-size: xx-small;">, because I wou<span style="font-size: xx-small;">ldn't let them be taken at <span style="font-size: xx-small;">that weight.</span></span></span></b></span></div>
<br />
My point is that I could hardly have forgotten what it is like to live in the world as a super fat person given that I spent 35 years mired in such a state. That means I've been obese or super obese longer than some overzealous fat activists have been alive! I have spent <b>a lot </b>more time being afraid to leave the house for fear of mocking, afraid of not fitting in chairs, afraid of the physical pain that came with walking in that body, and afraid of not being able to two squeeze into narrow spaces than I've spent not thinking about such things.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, I still think about them, to be honest. Ridding myself of that mindset doesn't come easy. I still think about whether or not I'll fit in a bathroom stall, squeeze my fat ass past a narrow gap between chairs in a restaurant, or if people are staring and pointing at my gut and laughing at me. If people look in my direction and say something to a friend and laugh, I still think it's about my body. I still suffer from fat PTSD.<br />
<br />
Also, it's not like I'm all skinny and trim now. I'm 5' 4" (164 cm) and weigh on average 185 lbs. (84 kg.) I'm still technically obese.I still have a huge flap of skin hanging down from my stomach as well as a large belly. I'm still fat, just not fat enough to prohibit me from walking, getting on public transportation, or going to a restaurant. I'm not complaining about my current weight, but I am still fat. There's no mistaking that. <br />
<br />
What I'm realizing is that my voice is now doubly not taken seriously because of where I'm at. I'm not fat enough to be taken seriously as someone who has experienced life as a "death fat" (despite spending an overwhelming amount of my life in that range) and I'm not thin enough to be taken seriously as a person who has successfully lost weight.<br />
<br />
Neither of these tribes would welcome me as a member because I'm a betrayer to both. By losing weight, my years and years of experience suffering as a super fat person appear to have lost all validity. By not losing enough weight, the manner in which I have lost has no validity. Frankly, while I find it upsetting that anyone could think I've forgotten how horrible it is to be super fat in a world which hates you, I've also figured out a few other things about the "fat mindset" as a result of this which are setting me along an entirely new path of thinking. I'm sure I'll share it here when I'm ready. And I'm nearly as sure that it'll get me in a lot of trouble. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-29854870979456729522013-02-21T14:46:00.001-08:002013-02-21T14:46:04.427-08:00Brightening the LightsRecently, I've been learning more about the brain's reward system pathway. I don't want to go too deeply into it because, frankly, even people who know a little about it get frustrated and irritated when I go deep into the details. It's pretty dense stuff, and only those who want to know the science very well need to know about it. So, I'm going to speak in general terms, and entertain questions about details should my readers want more concrete answers.<br />
<br />
What I've learned recently enhances what I talked about in the previous several posts, and it has mainly applied to substance use and abuse. In particular, I've learned a thing or two about how drugs that affect the parts of your brain that experience pleasure mess up your ability to take joy in anything else. The woman who was teaching the class I was sitting in on told us a story which, after hearing it, ran a bell very strongly with my experience with food.<br />
<br />
This woman has a PhD, is a registered nurse, and a practicing licensed therapist as well as a teacher at a private graduate school. One can conclude she has a lot of practical as well as book-oriented knowledge. She told us about a client that she had who had spent several years using cocaine. Prior to his cocaine use, he used to enjoy music greatly. After using cocaine, music no longer could offer him the same joy, not even long after he'd stopped using the drug.<br />
<br />
What had happened to this man was that the parts of his brain that were stimulated by the drug were the same ones that allowed him to take pleasure in other things. By abusing the drug to hyper-stimulate those areas, he changed the way they experienced the world forever. That's right. Forever. They were permanently changed such that nothing would ever give him pleasure in the same way again.<br />
<br />
The reason this story really hit home with me was that, when I started changing my relationship with food, I wrote about how my life was changing. In <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/02/wanting-it-all-answering-few-good.html">this post</a> (12th paragraph), "I should note that there is very much
an aspect of this which is “duller” than things used to be. That
is, the lights were more brilliant and the colors were brighter when
food was fully centralized". This was a reflection of the fact that food was the thing that lit up the pleasure centers in my brain in a way <i>nothing </i>else could.<br />
<br />
A lifetime of using food for comfort has almost certainly altered my brain's reward pathways just as those in the cocaine addict were altered. The highs were rarely as high for me as they were when I was fully invested in partaking in food with not restriction. However, I do believe that there is a difference between what happened to me and what happened to the cocaine addict. He was damaged and can't be repaired. I am damaged and am in the process of being repaired.<br />
<br />
It continues to be a long and complex path. Due to the psychological processing I've done, I can never regard food as the end all and be all of pleasure. The "buzz" I got from it died and I can't honestly say that anything has replaced it in intensity. I can say that things have slowly gotten better as I've tried to replace that pleasure with other types of pleasure, but it's more about collecting little bits of thing to enjoy then one whopper that delivered it's payload of joy in one sitting.<br />
<br />
I don't know about the biology for certain, but I'd be shocked if people like me didn't see their reward pathways light up like a Christmas tree from food and provide dim lighting from other sources of pleasure. I think that this could be part of the complex picture of why people who lose weight regain. Just as the cocaine addict goes back to the drug because life becomes dim and joyless without it, the addicted eater may similarly find that the lights need some brightening when they try to abandon their drug of choice.<br />
<br />
I know that it has taken me years to decouple destructive pleasure seeking in food and it's still there to some extent (as my last few posts illustrate) and similarly has taken years to elevate other pleasures to a meaningful status in terms of my response. I'm not saying every fat person does this, but I do think that for those of us who became fat as children and continue to be fat as adults, there's a good chance that our brains are built around this way of deriving pleasure from our world. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-67642504775749356822013-02-03T10:38:00.000-08:002013-02-03T13:06:13.998-08:00"Methadone" for your food addiction - part 2If you haven't read <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/02/methadone-for-your-food-addiction-part-1.html">the previous post</a>, this one won't make much sense so I encourage you to give it a read before reading this. This post is about a rough "plan" for those who are food addicted (likely due to biochemical imbalances) and is a follow-up to the previous one.<br />
<br />
I think that the approach to food that we are encouraged to take in life comes basically from the perspective of a person who does not have an emotional dependence on food. I've written before about how people who have a roughly healthy relationship with food (which is not to be confused with a "healthy" diet) aren't dealing with food the same way that someone who does not does. They see the choices as indulgence or deprivation. Those with a dependence on food see the choice as suffering or not suffering. And I'm telling you that that suffering is not just some sort of childish "I want to enjoy food". It is real psychological pain which is not dissimilar from physical pain on a chemical level. People who aren't biochemically oriented to be dependent on food do not experience such suffering while depriving themselves.<br />
<br />
So, I've been pondering this situation rather deeply and I think that there needs to be a radically different approach toward food for people who have such issues. This is a rough plan, but one which I think would function better for most people with such issues than the absolutism that they are generally presented with.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 1:</b><br />
The most essential aspect would be to reframe the role food plays in your life as not simply one in which it provides sustenance, but one in which it actually can regarded as medicinal. Enjoying food is a matter of psychological survival. You aren't just eating a candy bar to indulge your desire for sweets, you are lighting up a chemical center in your brain which shines into a darkness created by some part that needs that brightness.<br />
<br />
It is imperative to abandon guilt over eating food for pleasure. If you are dealing with an imbalance by creating endorphins by eating, you're going to sabotage the impact of that by creating more stress for yourself due to eating guilt. Berating yourself, feeling bad, punishing yourself only creates a stronger loop in which you need to medicate more by eating more. <br />
<br />
<b>Step 2:</b><br />
Knowing that food pleasure is an essential part of "medicating" your condition, you need to incorporate it in the least destructive and most productive fashion. It doesn't have to be "all or nothing".<br />
<br />
For me, a big part of this has been eating small treats throughout the day and <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2010/06/settling-for-less.html">mindful eating</a>. I eat sweet food for breakfast most of the time, but in far smaller portions than most people. I would never eat more than half of a bakery-size muffin, and generally eat my own homemade sugar-free muffins which are under 250 calories. I also eat small "desserts". I finish off lunch with a small cookie or a tiny bite-size candy bar that I eat slowly and think about. This is a type of "dosing" throughout the day which does not have a big impact on weight. Eating mindfully increases the chance that my brain's pleasure centers will light up from a much more limited experience. <br />
<br />
<b>Step 3:</b><br />
Map out your eating to suit your psychology and biology. For me, I realize that I need to eat small amounts 5-7 times a day. This generally includes a very small breakfast, fruit between lunch and breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner, and some snack in the evening about an hour before bed. Small portions and careful attention to a balance of nutrition with "treats" has helped me maintain at my current level for over a year now.<br />
<br />
<b>Step 4:</b><br />
Refine portions and types of food to reduce overall calorie consumption without sacrificing pleasure. This means finding enjoyment in less, and this is by no means easy. I'm no stranger to the pleasure extracted from mindlessly eating food until I reach the bottom of the bag, especially high carbohydrate foods which do the best job biochemically of addressing HPA axis imbalances.<br />
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One of the things about being in America now which has "helped" to some extent is that there are many more food options which are lower calorie that I can use to fulfill my needs. No, they are not the best choices in many cases, but mine is an imperfect situation. Personally, I'd rather eat sugar-free gelatin with low-fat whipped cream an hour before bed as a palliative than to take an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. Both have toxic elements (the gelatin has artificial sweeteners and food additives), but one provides balance by adding endorphins to my brain, the other messes with neurotransmitters in a far more complex and omnidirectional fashion. <br />
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<b>Step 5: </b><br />
Deeply internalize the idea that this is not a "pass/fail" situation. Sometimes, you're going to eat a lot because that's all that will "do". The goal is to manage as best you can, not be perfect. Also, understand that you may never be thin. It may not be in the cards, but it is better to weigh 250 lbs. than 350 lbs. (or, in my case, it's better to weigh 180 lbs. than 380 lbs.).<br />
<br />
<b>Step 6:</b><br />
Augment the manner in which you try to work with any biochemical imbalance with other actions which also create endogenous opiates. This is difficult if you have a disability or difficulty moving (as I did when I started losing weight), but this would include exercise, sex, engaging in creative behavior (true creative inspiration releases endorphins), laughing, and <i>engaging</i> social behavior (as opposed to empty or stressful socialization). Diversify your life to actively incorporate these alternatives. You may not be able to exercise, but you can schedule phone calls with friends or watch a comedy on T.V. Don't just "let" these things happen. Plan them in actively. They are not distractions. They are ways to correct a chemical imbalance.<br />
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As a last thought, I'm going to say, unless you have a medical issue, don't give up carbs. For people who have the sort of issue I'm talking about, carbs really play a role. The only caveat I'd add is to consume them with some fats and protein to try and slow absorption and the blood sugar impact. You want to get the benefits without the blood sugar spikes.<br />
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This is by no means a full "plan", but just an outline. Obviously, therapy would be a critical aspect of any attempt to deal with an issue that is psychological in nature. As my readers know, I have been analyzing and conditioning myself now for 4 years. Only now do I have a notion of why what has worked for me has worked so well whereas other attempts have failed. The way in which I have eaten may have, coincidentally, addressed an underlying issue which I knew stemmed from my upbringing. It wasn't merely all a mindset though. It was a very likely a chemical issue which will never go away.<br />
<br />screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-73650684409375874382013-02-03T10:02:00.002-08:002013-02-03T13:26:34.985-08:00"Methadone" for your food addiction - part 1In <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/02/this-is-why-youre-fat.html">my previous post</a>, I talked about how I believe brain changes related to stress can result in food addiction for some people. When I say "food addiction", I don't mean psychological, but actual biochemical addiction. The neurochemical imbalances that result from early life stress (not <i>trauma</i>, folks, but negative stress which is chronic and of a particular type) prime some people to become compulsive eaters. This eating actually alters their brain chemistry in a way which restores a greater sense of psychological well-being by regulating parts of the brain which are not functioning in a manner which offers psychological well-being.<br />
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Before I get too far, let me say that I am not for a moment asserting that <b>all </b>fat people are in this situation nor that all people who suffer such stress become compulsive eaters. I can say that there is a very high probability that all people who experience such stressors in childhood have an imbalance of some sort to greater or lesser degrees depending on their particular biological vulnerability. Those who are most damaged may deal with the imbalance in various ways. We all know that some people are prone to various addictions more than others. It could be alcohol. It could be drugs. It could be sex. It could be workaholism. Or, it could be food.<br />
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Since this blog is about me and my weight, and I have a strong sense that I am addicted to food and am a compulsive eater and that this is, in part, due to biochemical imbalances in my brain due to early life stress, I'm going to focus on this point. A lot of people talk about "how" you became something which is a problem is less important than what you do about it, but what I'm going to talk about points out the critical nature of knowing the "why".<br />
<br />
If I assume that I have an imbalance which I'm addressing through food, then it becomes exponentially harder to restrict eating. Beyond the normal biochemical pressures that come along with blood sugar changes, the cellular push-back when you lower energy levels, starvation reactions, and changes in hormone levels that come along with eating less food, I also have to deal with the fact that I'm going to suffer psychological problems as a result of restriction. There are various ways in which to manage this which I will consider.<br />
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One is that you can take medications to handle the imbalance. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is hardly a good answer for people with weight issues because most of those types of drugs carry the side effects of metabolic syndrome/thyroid problems which result in weight gain. Also, personally, I'm not a fan of introducing toxins (and all medications are a form of poison) into my body if I can find another way of managing.<br />
<br />
Another solution is to transfer the problem to another behavior or addiction. I'm certain that I worked with this aspect of my overeating when I first lost large amounts of weight in college by exercising 90 minutes a day. High amounts of exercise will produce the same endogenous opiates (e.g., endorphins) that help with neurochemcial dysfunction that overeating can produce. The problem is, and I learned this later as I got older, you cannot keep it up either due to time constraints, life circumstances, or injury. Exercising to keep up the "happy chemicals" in your brain is not a permanent solution.<br />
<br />
You can also simply transfer your addiction to another equivalent addiction if such a one exists, but clearly this is also a poor choice. Taking drugs or drinking alcohol may, if you are so biochemically oriented, work for you. However, substituting one destructive behavior for another would not be a viable option.<br />
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What I have realized, and this is what has been working for me, is that you can choose to do the methadone equivalent of managing your diet and lifestyle. For those who don't know, methadone is a drug used to ween people off of more severe opiate addictions, especially heroin. The drug is given to people to soften withdrawal and allow them to transition away from drugs. Of course, when it comes to food, full withdrawal is never possible. We need to eat or we will die, so it's not as if you can simply walk away from your addiction.<br />
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I have been pondering the fact that people like me may simply need to approach how they eat from multiple perspectives that include the very important idea that food pleasure functions as an <i>essential</i> palliative for them. It isn't a weakness. It isn't a character flaw. It's part of a loop of chemical action in which some part of their brain (likely <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/02/this-is-why-youre-fat.html">the HPA axis that I mentioned in the previous post</a>) has become dysfunctional and certain types of eating restores a balance. The balance cannot be "fixed" permanently. It can only be dealt with through the ingestion of substances, whether it be food, illegal drugs, alcohol, or prescription medication.<br />
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In <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2013/02/methadone-for-your-food-addiction-part-2.html">my next post</a>, I will outline what I believe is a viable plan for people who suffer from this issue as I believe I do.<br />
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<br />screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-11866186175419124312013-02-01T21:22:00.003-08:002013-02-03T13:30:07.483-08:00This Is Why You're FatThe title of this post should more properly be, "this is possibly one reason why you're fat," or, perhaps more accurately, "this is probably one of the biggest reasons why I'm fat." However, I can't make a nod to that web site which shows food monstrosities by choosing such accurate titles, so there it is. The truth is that I try hard not to speak for anyone but myself, so I'll just say that I've learned a few things which have the potential to explain a lot and that I hope they shed some light on things for others as well.<br />
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This is going to be a hard post to write, not because it is going to be emotionally charged, but because it's going to almost certainly blind people with science. One of the hardest things for people to abandon when they think about psychology is the idea that it is inextricably linked to biology, and biology, my friends, is where weight issues live. The reason for this difficulty, at least in my opinion, is that we are mired in the idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29">Cartesian dualism</a>. We believe that somehow the mind exists apart from the body. Even when we imagine ourselves as scientifically minded modern thinkers, we continue to believe that mind can triumph over matter and that we can accomplish anything if we just "try hard enough." Quite often, our notions do not match our scientific understanding because we staunchly refuse to believe that a strong will cannot overcome all. <br />
<br />
Getting back to baffling you with science, I've been studying the brain as of late. It's a topic which I've touched on before in this blog, but not in intricate detail. I strongly believe that the physical nature of our mind as expressed through how pathways are laid out in the brain is created by experience. We sometimes come into this world somewhat broken and sometimes we are broken by what happens to us. Lately, I've been learning a thing or two about just how one can be broken by childhood stress, and that can happen in such a way as to affect the rest of your life.<br />
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One of the many aspects of the brain that I've been studying has been something called the HPA Axis. For those who care, this is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. You don't have to understand it, but just believe me when I say that it is an important part of your brain when it comes to stress management and anxiety. When you are a child, if you experience the wrong kind of stress, and I don't mean abuse or serious trauma, your HPA Axis can become compromised in such a way as to create a high likelihood of a variety of disorders.<br />
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The HPA Axis is responsible for handling stress hormones and there is a "loop" of activity which handles a negative stimulation, activation of bodily systems to handle the stress of it, and then puts an end to that activation. I'm massively oversimplifying here, but anyone who wants to learn more knows how to do a Google search or ten and can get more details.<br />
<br />
The bottom line is that early childhood issues such as insecure attachment to parents, chronic unresolved stress, neglect (even moderate), etc. can create issues in this area of the brain. There are multiple potential consequences including the potential to suffer anxiety disorders and depression. This is, in simplistic terms, due to over-activity in the HPA axis. Another, and this is a theory, but it's a plausible one, is that you can become a compulsive eater.<br />
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The way this works is that<a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/stress-and-anxiety/print.html"> imbalances in the HPA axis which result in over-activity (from stress) can be slowed down by eating comfort food</a>. Food that is high in carbohydrates in particular can produce more endogenous opiods (e.g., endorphins) and stimulate reward pathways. You can, <i>quite literally</i>, become addicted to food.<br />
<br />
Here is the thing, once the HPA Axis is screwed up due to childhood experience, <b>it cannot be made normal again</b>. There is nothing you can do to repair the balance to what it should have been had you not had the stressors that created the imbalance. You can try to replace your food addiction and find something else to stimulate the same pathways such that you slow down the over-activity, but you will never be normal like other people.<br />
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The possibilities for replacement are hardly numerous, but they do have some effect. Drugs for depression or anxiety may help as they can have an impact on the HPA Axis, though some of them carry greater risks than overeating. Exercise, which also produces endorphins, can also be of help, though the levels you may need cannot necessarily be consistently sustained throughout the day and if you need consistent "medicating" to combat the imbalances, then it isn't enough to merely work out once a day, not to mention hard exercising can be side-lined at any time by physical injury.<br />
<br />
This information came as a breath of fresh air to me, though it is also somewhat difficult to live with. The reason I believe I have been able to lose weight this time (and under circumstances in which I could not exercise) was because I kept eating food for pleasure. I eat small portions about 5 or 6 times a day, and I "treat" myself in small ways often. I trade off on portion sizes of healthy food at times to eat things I enjoy. I think I do this because of this imbalance in my brain which was brought on by my very hard upbringing.<br />
<br />
The reason this is a breath of fresh air is that it validates the fact that I can't simply be a food puritan as people think I "should" be in a way which makes sense scientifically and emotionally. I eat to survive psychologically as well as biologically, and I have a richer understanding of why that is the case for me when it is not the case for others. I don't just "love food". I am not weak willed. I'm biologically messed up in a way that I didn't have anything to do with. <br />
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That is not to say that eating is my only "medication", nor that I may not be able to correct at least some of this biochemical imbalance through other means (such as cognitive rewiring techniques, exercise, and all of the other things I've talked about in this blog). However, I do feel I have a fundamental problem which cannot be addressed in the way in which society dictates. By knowing this, I can "manage" my problem by allowing portion-controlled access to comfort food as well as engage in continued management of stress and my outlook on life.<br />
<br />
It is imperative that I not self-judge (as so many would have me do), but treat this as as much of an "illness" as any physical one. Sure, I could go to a psychiatrist and pop some pills, but those pills (and trust me that I know this well) are just as likely to bring on weight gain through other issues (metabolic disturbances, thyroid problems) as my self-medicating with small amounts of comfort food. However, I also need to be aware that I am constantly at risk, especially when I am stressed and depressed as I have been.<br />
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I'm talking about this because, if I have any readers out there who are also compulsive eaters (and I remain one, though that state is often in remission relative to what it once was), I want you to know that you may have an HPA axis problem as well and that you are not simply lacking in willpower and self-control. You may be struggling to deal with an imbalance and have a bona fide biological addiction to food which is little different than the addiction that anxiety sufferers experience when they are taking benzodiazepines (a highly addictive anti-anxiety drug that is very difficult to wean people off of). You can manage this by moderating your consumption of food and managing frequency as well as managing stress and exercising, but chances are that any sort of super strict diet of deprivation will almost certainly fail you. <br />
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<br />screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-58182643172946259162013-01-21T09:25:00.001-08:002013-01-21T09:32:19.625-08:00A Woman of Low VirtueI wish I had more mental space these days to write posts for this blog. The truth is that, one of my accomplishments in my relationship with food is that I don't think as much about food and weight. That means that all of the deep issues and thoughts that plagued me earlier in this process have done their dance and moved along.<br />
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Occasionally, however, something will spark a thought, and I'm afraid that these days I'm too preoccupied with other mental and emotional battles to take the time to entertain them here. However, a comment on my previous post has been, from time to time, spending a little time doing the soft shoe on my mind. An anonymous commenter said "no one gets to be 380 lbs by eating 1500 calories of grilled chicken and green vegetables and doing meaningful exercise for 30 minutes a day."<br />
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The statement is presented to be factual, I'm sure, but the critical subtext is clear. You did not get very fat living a life of eating virtue. You must have eaten like a pig and sat on your lazy ass. The story of how I came to weigh that much is detailed throughout this blog for anyone who cares to really know the details, but few care to know. They prefer to judge and point a level finger in accusation.<br />
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It is true that I didn't get to 380 lbs. by eating 1500 calories of grilled chicken and green vegetables and meaningfully exercising for 30 minutes a day, but the truth is that a lot of women who weigh 120 lbs. don't maintain or achieve that weight on a similar routine. I also didn't get to 380 lbs. by eating candy and sitting on my ass, as anyone who has paid attention knows. I got to that weight through eating refined carbs, uncontrolled portions of healthy food, compulsive eating due to psychological problems and a very damaged food relationship, and excruciating back pain which made all exercise, including walking more than a minute impossible. But, hey, if I had just eaten more virtuously I wouldn't have been in that situation.<br />
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But, wait, I didn't get to 380 lbs. by eating 1500 calories of grilled chicken and green vegetables and meaningfully exercising 30 minutes a day, but I also did not lose 200 lbs. by doing that either. I lost 200 lbs. by examining the way in which I was using food to cope with the difficulties in my life and managing those issues psychologically. I did it by eating chocolate, cake, and cookies everyday. I did it by walking for about 5 minutes a day and building that up. I did it by forgiving myself and slowly making a series of tiny little changes which never included extreme restriction in my eating or anything that smacked of "deprivation".<br />
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So, I didn't get to 185 lbs. from 380 lbs. by eating 1500 calories of grilled chicken and green vegetables and meaningfully exercising 30 minutes a day. I am a woman of low virtue when it comes to eating and weight loss, but I'm not nearly as angry as the woman who made that comment nor is my relationship with food likely as dysfunctional. I don't judge people's characters by what they weigh or how they eat, and I exclude myself from that judgment as well.<br />
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Incidentally, for those who'd like to open their minds to the possibility that it's not all about eating like a hog or eating like a bird, there's a<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/kristof-warnings-from-a-flabby-mouse.html?smid=fb-share"> good piece in the New York Times</a> about a study with two rats in which one is exposed to an endocrine altering chemical and gets fat while eating the same number of calories as a skinnier rat that was not exposed. It's not all about calories in/calories out. That's a part of it, but it's not all of it.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-28034302494247355282012-12-24T11:40:00.000-08:002012-12-24T11:40:19.501-08:00Prejudice, in all its formsWhen I lived abroad, people tended to make a lot of assumptions about me based on their generalizations or stereotypes about foreigners from America. I figured when I returned to the U.S., this would stop. However, it turned out that people are still making assumptions based on generalizations or stereotypes, they are just doing so with a different set of them.<br />
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Several weeks ago, I met an new acquaintance of my husband's at a coffee shop for the first time. At the early stage of our conversation, we were discussing size differences in beverages. The country I used to live in did not offer "venti" size drinks, but it did offer "short" ones. This talk about everything being bigger, including the spaces around the tables, in the U.S. prompted this new acquaintance to mention how large the people in America were. Clearly, she was referring to weight.<br />
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As a way of handling this somewhat derogatory remark, I mentioned that I felt American weight issues were largely linked to acculturation. We are acclimated to larger portions and find them natural and normal. My husband also pointed to his drink and said that it cost a mere 20 cents more to go from a large to a venti so you are economically encouraged to have more. We proceeded to discuss how the cost of food products is largely wrapped up in marketing, packaging, and sales and that the cost of the actual food you are consuming is such a small percentage that there is much more profit in getting you to fork over an extra dime or quarter for more food because of this.<br />
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This new acquaintance, who I actually <i>really </i>like and I was not offended by what she said at all, in large part because she accepted what I said about food and culture with a thoughtful mindset rather than a defensive one, made assumptions about me based on how she saw me as I am now. I'm fat, for sure, but she's also a little overweight. She was looking at me as a "normal fat" rather than an "abnormal fat" and had no idea that she was talking to someone who used to weigh 380 lbs. and who has lived most of her adult life over 300. If she had known, my guess is she never would have casually remarked about how large Americans are to me within the first 3 minutes of having met me. <br />
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It isn't only about weight that I've found people are reaching conclusions about me. My sister-in-law has had several conversations with me in which she's has taken to "educating" me about a variety of things which she has no experience with and that I have, shall we say, copious experience with. The absurdity of her telling me what it is like for people to grow up with an alcoholic parent, in poverty, or to be around seriously mentally ill was hysterically ridiculous.<br />
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It's as if she just can't hold the thoughts in her mind that I grew up incredibly poor, surrounded by dysfunction, worked with seriously mentally ill people, and with an alcoholic father when she looks at me. She simply can't reconcile whatever image she holds of the present me with a person who lived that life and takes to talking to me as if I were an idiot who can't possibly understand or empathize with the difficulties of the people she is talking about. I've literally had to repeat each of these points at least 3 times during various discussions to make her understand that I'm not some middle class entitled person (which, ironically, she is) who has landed on these shores after an exciting and privileged life abroad. I've worked hard, suffered greatly, and came from absolutely nothing.<br />
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The intransigence of the stereotypes and generalizations people form about another person based on present day limited knowledge is something I find very frustrating, especially since people instantly believe my life was an easy one. They see me as middle class economically (even though currently I have no income at all), educated, and out of touch with the difficulties of minorities and the poor. The idea of "white privilege" is all around me and people speak as if I have no idea what it is like to be a minority and to experience prejudice. They assume I don't know what it is like to be judged on sight, rejected based on skin color, or have doors closed to me based on ethnicity.<br />
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I spent 23 years being gawked at, insulted, talked about, turned away, and having my opportunities severely limited because I was in a country where more than 99% of the people were not like me. I think I do have some idea what it is like to be part of a minority. What is more, I spent about 20 years of my life at home in America being marginalized because of my weight. I have always been part of an oppressed minority, at least up until now. But, people don't see that, and won't even believe it when I tell them, because they cannot break out of the thought box their generalizations about me lock them in. <br />
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I find that I was less frustrated by the prejudices I experienced abroad than the preconceived notions I experience back home. Part of the reason for that is that my former home abroad is not a country in which people are educated about prejudice and how not to act on it. Part of it is that I disconnected emotionally from those people as a survival mechanism and could do so because they saw me as outside and I could see myself that way. Here, the perceived inclusion is stifling because I'm in an individualistic culture which is fiercely intent on pigeonholing me as something other than an individual. Even when I assert clearly that I am not what people perceive me to be, they push back or refuse to see who I truly am in favor of their notions.<br />
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One of the sources of my depression has been a deep disappointment and frustration at how I am perceived and how I did not expect to have this sort of thing happen. While I did not expect people to look at me and assume I used to be much more overweight, I did expect them to at least be open-minded to the fact that I can't be sized up with little more than a look. People used to think I was a lazy, donut-scoffing pig before based merely on my looks. Now, they think I'm some easy-living, entitled, spoiled middle-aged white lady. Perhaps I was naive in thinking that losing weight would change the way people reach conclusions based on appearances. The cursory judgement didn't end. The conclusions people tend to reach just changed, and they're not really for the better in my experiences. They still diminish me. They still serve to elevate others at my expense. They still are shallow and self-serving.<br />
<br />screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-41622182573673446362012-12-14T09:51:00.001-08:002012-12-14T09:51:28.093-08:00Holding My GroundI've been away from this blog for a long time because of the emotional difficulties involved in making certain transitions to the changes in my life since leaving the Asian country I had been living on for over two decades. The bottom line is that I've been depressed and sliding deeper into it for quite some time. The issues that lead to that depression are complex, and actually have only a little to do with weight, weight loss, or my relationship with food. <br />
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This blog isn't really a place for me to talk about other aspects of my life, including depression, but there are parts of it which fit the motif. Mind you, I know my readers would be more than happy to listen if I'd like to talk, and I may yet go into some elements of this depression which are not related to food or weight. The one thing about it that I can and will say is that people often believe that depression is about sadness. It is, but the greater part of it is more than that. Depression is a thief. It steals your energy, your ability to experience joy, and your resilience. During the last few months, my ability to cope, experience pleasure, be productive, and endure any hardship have been eroded by depression. I haven't blogged because I've been barely coping with what I have to do. I didn't have to blog, so I didn't.<br />
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Things are slowly getting better. Circumstances have actually not changed, but a turning point was reached in certain aspects of my life where I decided that I had to yank myself mentally out of the downward spiral I was in and start rebuilding mentally or I'd never climb out of the hole I was being dragged into. That is not to say this is a complete process at this point, but I pulled myself out by sheer force of will and a realization of the long-term cost if I did not break the cycle I was in. I keep resisting being dragged back down. I am not always successful, but I am finding enough success to keep trying.<br />
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Before I go on, it is imperative that I say that I don't believe that people can overcome depression by will or by "snapping out of it". I am/was depressed due to circumstances and not due to innate biochemistry. I do believe that certain techniques can slowly help a person re-write their biochemical nature, but not if the roots of it are genetic. My case is unique, as am I. If anyone takes a message of pulling oneself up by ones own bootstraps from this post, then there has been a misinterpretation of my intent. What I've suffered is hard, and what I'm doing to deal with it is difficult, but it is not something I think just anyone can do. We all live in our own skins and within our own unique set of circumstances. <br />
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The process by which I'm dealing with my depression and the situation surrounding it is not at all different from the "<a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/01/rewiring-yourself.html">rewiring</a>" that I did to help change my relationship with food. The biggest difference is that the results are absolutely faster because I haven't spent as many years building to this state as I spent getting to 380 lbs. It's a lot easier to overcome a few years or months of biochemical changes brought on by difficult experiences than to rewire decades of them. <br />
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Getting to the aspects which concern this blog, I wanted to speak of how this has impacted my eating/weight. My weight remains stable. I'm still not thin, of course, but I've been maintaining my 200 lb. loss without calorie counting, restriction, or extreme exercises. I have not found myself compelled to eat compulsively to deal with my feelings. Sometimes I have actively wished that that would still be effective for me, but I have undone the connection that says that eating will make me feel better. I remember that it might make me feel bad enough to forget how miserable I am emotionally, but I have not turned to that. The cognitive "rewiring" I did has served me well in this regard.<br />
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What no amount of mental conditioning can do, however, is take away the fact that, as a force which drains you resolve and resilience, depression makes it far harder to deal with additional difficulties. That is, I've found it harder to spend time being hungry or to resist eating impulsively rather than to simply wait for meals. While this has not had an impact on my weight maintenance, it has certainly hindered more loss as well as made my overall diet "noisier" than it should be. By that, I mean that I've been inclined to snack more and less healthily, though absolutely there is no issue with quantity.<br />
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I don't mention these things to deal with this punitively. Trust me when I say that I'm not beating myself up over eating 3 tiny pieces of candy a day instead of one. I mention this here merely because I want to say that my depression has had this particular impact on my eating. It dampens impulse control. It undermines the ability to endure discomfort, even routine hunger which is normal between meals for most people. It is a factor, though it hasn't been a highly destructive one for me.<br />
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In an odd way, this depression has revealed a certain triumph for me. My biggest fear upon returning "home" has been that I would re-gain the weight I'd lost as I dealt with the hardships of being here. I gained a lot of weight last time I made a move from my East coast home to my husband's West coast home because of the stress and emotional upheaval it brought. This time, it did not happen despite even greater difficulties that had to be faced. I attribute this to the mental groundwork I laid to change my approach to food as well as my increased awareness. My husband's support and cooperation are also a part of this. If he had invalidated my pain this time as he had done nearly two and a half decades ago when I made the initial move, I don't know where I'd be this time. Fortunately, his eyes are open this time and he has been a lot better about making the changes necessary to validate my concerns as well as be supportive.<br />
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It has been a hard road coming home, and I'm nowhere near riding out the bumps. This post is just checking in to let my kind readers know where I am and what has happened. I hope to tell more when I have greater energy, but, for now, I'm holding my ground. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-66065513053199648572012-10-04T13:37:00.003-07:002012-10-04T13:51:25.774-07:00Backward SlideBefore I get far, I have to make it clear that when I talk about sliding backward, I'm not talking about what most women who are talking about weight are discussing. This is not about regaining weight. It is about mental changes relating to food and the place it holds in my life. That being said, I do believe that those mental changes are where the potential for weight regain reside, so it's important to nip them in the bud now and deal with them. <br />
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Since returning to the U.S., my life has been immensely stressful. I cannot begin to make anyone understand the effects of the reverse culture shock that I'm experiencing because one would actually have to have been in this situation. The best way I can say it is that I feel like everything around me is wrong and these differences are a consistent source of stress. I feel tense every time I go shopping for food. Walking along the street and having someone pass by me gives me a tiny amount of anxiety. Getting into the car makes me tense up.<br />
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There is no cognitive processing underlying these responses. I am not afraid of anything nor do I have a concern for doing the wrong thing, looking foolish, or appearing out of place. I simply feel like the world is askew relative to how I expect it to be. This is a neurological response issue, not a choice on my part. It's one that I cannot over-write by force of will and has to do with brain chemistry patterns and systems that are laid down by association with situations and people of a particular type. Time and experience are the only things which will make it better as new experiences and patterns are allowed to emerge. I understand the underlying neurological and chemical issues, but I will not trouble my readers by going into jargon-filled explanations.* Suffice it to say, this is not something that can simply be gotten over.<br />
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The everyday actions of others that they blithely carry out in the normal course of their days are an effort and stressful to me. <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/06/roadmap-to-changing.html">The range of "easy" choices for me</a> in a given day are tiny now. The range of "not easy" and "difficult" is huge. I'm exhausted everyday, even when I appear superficially to just be doing a normal amount of activity. Every night, I'm incredibly tired, even when all I've done is the type of thing I did before in the country I previously lived in. <br />
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There are, of course, other issues. I don't have a job. I'm not yet living in my own place (that will come very soon though). My husband and I continue to deal with bumps along the road in our relationship as the result of the changes in our lives (as should be expected). I'm not sure where my life is going, but I do know that I'm unhappy where I am. Sometimes, it is manageable as it is today and sometimes I just want to leave and go back to where I was.<br />
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Hating it so badly that I am driven to tears is something that I can't say is uncommon. However, I have to accept, at least rationally, that this will change. I have had experience before with this sense of suffering. When I first started college, I hated it so badly that I'd come home everyday and cry. I desperately wanted to quit and abandon the whole idea. Since I'd borrowed a lot of money to go, I didn't feel free to simply walk away. By the end of the first year, it was okay. By the end of the second, I loved it. I hang on to that experience as an indication that things will get better, even if I hate it now. <br />
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Yesterday, I had what can best be described as a meltdown. This has happened several times since coming here, but it was the first time that I sat there, alone and crying, thinking that, "if I just ate, this wouldn't be like this." I knew that, if I started to stuff myself again, I'd be both comforted and uncomfortable enough to ignore my feelings, and fall into a pattern that would distance me from the suffering I've been enduring. I could do the equivalent of getting drunk or high to put myself out of my misery rather than sit there just stuck in the pain of the moment (or the hour or two, as was the case).<br />
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I didn't do that, of course, but there have been other mental backslides as well as some behavioral ones. One is that I've been finding myself devoting about 400 calories a day to incidental snacks like cookies, pretzels, chips, etc. I'm not overeating, but I am eating smaller amounts of healthy food and then eating these other things. This is not a good pattern. What is more, it is starting to feel more compulsive than mindful. I decided that this has to stop. Sure, I can have my treats, but not like this. Eating 200 calories of "dessert" after both lunch and dinner as well as another 200-400 calories at tea time is not necessary to satisfy my sweet tooth. That is an immense daily calorie dedication to gratifying my desires as opposed to eating nutritious food. I need to get back to smaller, more mindful, and discrete habits.<br />
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Finally, there is a return of my treating my body as a garbage can. One of the things that I forced myself to stop doing was eat things which didn't taste good because they were there and I didn't want to waste the money. Since I'm not working and my husband and I are drawing on savings, I have increasingly started to eat things which are old, poorly made, and not especially tasty (but at least nutritious) because I feel they should not be wasted. This is not the end of the world, of course, but it is the start of placing the small value of food above myself. I need to stop doing this as well.<br />
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I'm hoping that recognition of these issues at this early point will help nip them in the bud. I'm sure that this is happening because I'm deeply unhappy where I am and with what my life is like at present. However, I knew that things were not going to be easy when we moved and I know that I have to be able to hold my food habits together at the worst of times as well as the best. If I don't have the mental tools to manage it now, then I need to do some more exploration of what is going on in my head and find some other coping methods.<br />
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It's not enough to be doing well only when life is good. I have to maintain the same relationship with food regardless of my current circumstances. I believe I can do that, but only if I actively attend to my feelings, experiences, and needs. That's what I'm going to do. The first step is right here and that's awareness.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>*If anyone wants the deeper explanation, e-mail me and I'll tell you about it or send reference links.</i></span>screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-68612922175484689652012-10-01T14:53:00.002-07:002012-10-03T06:05:01.705-07:00The Price of ChangeMy life is an unusual one in many aspects. I know a lot of people believe that, but, in my case, it really is true. I have access to my past in a way that few people do because of the unique nature of how my husband and I came together. When people hear that I married a pen pal, I'm not sure what they imagine constituted the content of our distance "courtship". No matter what they may speculate on, it's almost certainly not the reality.<br />
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I have a large box of greeting cards, postcards, and letters that my husband and I exchanged over our year of separation. They paint a certain picture of how things were between us, but they are actually far less descriptive than may be expected. Most of them talk less about our thoughts and lives and more about our undying love and missing one another terribly. I wrote to him nearly every day in one form or another. He wrote to me less, but there was a reason for that. The printed material we have is revealing, but not nearly as much as the other materials that we kept.<br />
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My husband and I primarily talked to one another on old-fashioned cassette tapes. We didn't merely send a few hours here and there, we narrated our entire lives, played games together (question-based ones), talked about the mundane and the epic details of life, had fights, made up, cried (mostly me), and expressed joy. The full range of a life "together" is on those tapes. We didn't save every one of them, as it would have been economically unfeasible given the cost of tapes at the time, but we saved about 50 of them. This constitutes a broad cross section and hours and hours of our lives at the ages of 22 and 24.<br />
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I have been listening to these tapes over time and, while I'm delighted by my husband's old tapes as they bring me such joy, I'm fascinated by mine as well. The truth is that the emerging me, the one that went from being in control of her weight and her lifestyle habits to plummeting back to super morbidly obesity is right there. In fact, she deconstructs herself, tears down the psychological walls that gave her the toughness to make hard changes, and becomes a creature of utter vulnerability. When I finally got together with my husband, I was a nicer person, a better partner, a more rational, productive and constructive communicator, and one small psychological breeze away from utter physical destruction.<br />
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There are two instances on tapes in particular which I listened to which were utterly devastating in revealing what I had done to myself. The shocking part is that the process is so obvious, palpable, and can be pin-pointed directly to <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/01/rewiring-yourself.html">my technique of mental rewriting</a>. I was actively rewiring <i>as I spoke to my husband</i>, and I was falling apart emotionally as I did so. It was hard, painful, and it tore down defensive walls that were hurting him. Until I listened to those tapes, I had no idea that I had started doing this to myself so early in my life. I also, of course, did not conceptualize it for what it was. I followed the process, but this was me "feeling my way through it." It was a process as it unfolded, not consciously undertaken.<br />
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I don't want to be cryptic here, but it is hard to detail the contents of hours of self-reflection spoken into tapes. The first stage of this is seen when my future husband and I suffer a conflict in which I am angry with him and confront him in an aggressive and "attacking" manner. When he asks me if I could talk to him about these problems in a way which is loving and supportive rather than hostile, I respond to him by saying that I want to do that, but I have no idea how. I tell him that all of the role modeling in my life and all of my experiences were carried out in the manner in which I dealt with him and that I would try, but I didn't know how just then to be the better communicator in the midst of heated conflict.<br />
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On another later tape, after some particularly stressful and difficult times in my life, I tell my husband that I believe that I am "sick" emotionally and psychologically and I'm not sure that I know how to get well or if it is even possible. I was at an acute turning point at which I realize that behavioral changes alone were not going to "fix" me in a meaningful way.<br />
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I was a staunch follower of behaviorism, a psychological philosophy which neatly addressed stimuli and responses in order to change, but it came crashing down on me that this sterile and ordered way of dealing with issues was not nearly enough. Yes, it helped me lose weight and gain a sense of control in my life, but it didn't deal with the deeper issues. I looked better, felt better, and had all of the trappings of external accomplishment, but I was filled with pain and lacked emotional control. No matter how disciplined I was, I was not happy and still dealt with people, and my then-boyfriend-now-husband in destructive ways. Behaviorism was not the answer, at least not the all-healing and encompassing one.<br />
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Surrounded by people who were as "sick" or "sicker" than me, I could not see how I behaved as anything but a reflection of "normality". My interactions with him and how I dealt with him, because he was and still is the most psychologically "well" person I have ever known, revealed the depths of my dysfunction. Those issues hurt him, and they hurt out relationship and I wanted desperately not to infect him with my "sickness". At that time, though I loved him deeply and completely and wanted nothing in life more than to have a future with him, I told him that if he didn't want to deal with someone as messed up as me, I would understand if he ended our relationship. Being the person he is, he said that <i>my </i>perspective was that he may catch my "sickness", but <i>his </i>was that it was possible that I might not instead catch his "wellness".<br />
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During a long-running conflict over interactions with an ex-girlfriend of his who we were both still in communication with, I engaged in another long and tearful period of self-revelation. It was this tape that was pivotal in the sequence of tapes I was listening to that made it clear to me that I was now practicing the "reflection" phase of <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/01/rewiring-yourself.html">my rewiring</a> as well as having an emerging awareness of patterns. While listening to this tape, and realizing what my 22-year-old self was doing, I started to weep. There was a truth that I have been rejecting that was undeniable after what I'd heard my younger self say.<br />
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This truth is one that I have not expressed in this blog because I have largely rejected it to date. My husband said to me quite some time ago and on several occasions that he believes that I regained weight because of the way in which I tore down my defensive walls and made myself greatly more vulnerable in order to be a more suitable mate for him. The woman he met was superficially "stronger" than I feel I am now. She exhibited mental toughness that I feel I no longer possess. As my mother used to say, I didn't "take any guff." People were intimidated by me, and that made sure they didn't find a soft spot from which to hurt me. I stood alone, and I made my own way. <br />
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Instead of being hostile, defensive, and keeping people out, I became positive, loving, and accepting to let him in. Unfortunately, this change opened me up to a world of suffering. Though he did not hurt me, what was to come when we finally got together physically and moved to his home area, absolutely destroyed me. I had put down my emotional shield and sword, and I got slaughtered.<br />
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I resisted this truth for a variety of reasons. One was that I did not want to "blame" him for my weight gain in any way. I felt that even considering his observation as the truth would be tantamount to doing so, albeit in an indirect fashion. Another was that I felt it was wrong to not take full "responsibility" for my fatness, especially since doing so allowed me to hate myself and confirm a poor image of myself.<br />
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Another tape revealed the completion of my alteration from the tough and combative "bitch" I was when I was upset to what I was by the time our distance courtship reached its conclusion. I was combative with my mother's verbal and emotional abuse when my then-boyfriend and I came together through our pen pal relationship. By the time I was packing up and leaving to join him in his home area, I was not engaging angrily with people anymore. When my family dealt with me with hostility, I would calmly say, "there is no need to be hostile." They would angrily mock me for having taken on this new pattern of behavior. I had changed fundamentally.<br />
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The reason I'm writing about this is that I have a record of myself which is detailed, covers a long span of time, and is historically undeniably accurate. As a record of personal change, it cannot be doubted in any way. I can see how changing to become a better person in one way took away the fragile structures which held my weight maintaining and loss habits in place. When I could not fight back, I had to seek solace and comfort. I couldn't cope by being angry and hostile, so I turned inward and ate and self-hated. The price I paid for the changes I made was that I got super fat again, and I stayed that way for over two decades because I couldn't turn back to what I was without damaging the relationship I had with my husband or hurting him and I couldn't move forward because I didn't have the self-understanding required to build new coping mechanisms.<br />
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My husband was right. The changes I made did have a profound effect on me such that I regained weight. Of course, that's not the end of the story, but it is a <i>very important piece</i> of it. This piece reveals that we operate in balance in our lives and that the ability to operate in the world in a particular fashion is impermanent. When a critical change occurs and the balance is upset, the ability to make positive choices can crumble like a house of cards.<br />
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The truth is that I let down dark, spiky and hurtful defensive walls before putting solid, stable, protective mechanisms in place. I did not know that I was attempting to address this very problem over the past three years as I have lost weight again, but I had a strong sense of the price I'd have to pay this time when I lost weight if I didn't dig down deeper than simply deciding to "eat less" and "move more". Yes, I needed to change behaviors, but I needed to know why I engaged in those behaviors in the first place and what changing them was going to mean to me emotionally. <br />
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A big reason that I explore the psychology of weight loss is that I was terrified of losing a lot of weight again and then regaining and I wanted to make sure that that did not happen again. I knew identity would be an issue and that I'd have to work on building a new one. I knew I was losing a source of comfort and would have to find other ones. I knew my routines would be lost and I'd have to find more productive ones. I knew that I couldn't dismantle one critical aspect of my life (that with food) without building others simultaneously or I'd be at risk again. I just didn't know that I was actually attempting not to repeat a particular mistake that I'd already made 24 years ago.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-45432638537977844782012-08-27T10:14:00.001-07:002012-08-27T10:14:52.591-07:00Birthday (what makes me happy pt. 2)This past weekend was my birthday and my husband and I took a road trip with an overnight stay to celebrate. In the previous posts (and some others far back in the buffer), I've mentioned that food was the part of any experience I most looked forward to in the past. The idea of going to a new place and sampling a restaurant or finding a novel item at a bakery was something I really looked forward to. Even as I went down in weight and controlled portions and overall nutritional content, I still looked forward to these experiences.<br />
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When birthdays approach, many people see them as a time to indulge in a fashion which they would not normally do. I also was this way. I'd think about what sort of special dessert I would permit myself or the meals that would help me enjoy the day more. If my birthday happened to fall on a day that I was in one of my many failed weight loss attempts, I would utterly resent the idea that I had to be denied a cake or other indulgent food, or I would see it as my one big chance to do what I really wanted to do (eat food which was high in calories and very enjoyable).<br />
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This year, because something in my head had changed, the food aspect of the celebration didn't even enter the picture. Of course, when the idea of eating came up because we were hungry, I talked about what we'd eat with my husband. However, the truth was that it didn't matter for the most part what we ate. Each time, he'd ask me what I wanted and I'd say I didn't care and he could choose. I think, at first, that he felt I was setting aside my desires and deferring to his, but the truth was that I really didn't have much of a preference.<br />
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The food simply wasn't that important a part of our celebration. I cared about the time with him, the activities we did, and talking with him. I wanted to enjoy the food, of course, and I wanted to eat when I was hungry, but it was merely a small piece of the experience which carried less weight than other aspects. Trust me when I say that this surprised me as much as it may anyone else. I remember that emotional hunger to indulge as well as anyone else. It just wasn't there. There was no fighting or struggle, no emotional tug of war with what I "should" do and what I wanted to do. <br />
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I wondered if this is what it feels like in people's heads who don't have serious issues with weight and food. Do they live each day without longing and torment and simply in accord with their hunger and tastes of the moment? Do they approach their days thinking about other things and only consider food when hungry? Is this where the successful journey to having a healthy relationship with food ends?<br />
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I don't want to convey the impression that I don't care about food at all, nor that I ate in a spartan or nutritionally pious fashion. I had an egg and toast for breakfast (made at home), shared a chicken/bean wrap with my husband for lunch, ate some grapes and half of a Luna bar as snacks, and had 2 slices of pizza and a little garlic bread for dinner. The following day, I had 3 mini muffins and coffee for breakfast and Indian food for lunch at a restaurant, and chicken, rice and a salad for dinner with a modified "Eton Mess" for dessert (two crumbled meringue cookies with sugar free jam and low fat whipped cream). I was not sacrificing food enjoyment, but I wasn't thinking about food or the food aspect much at all. I took things as they came and ate when I was hungry. It only occurred to me as an afterthought that I skipped the cake/special dessert entirely. It just didn't matter enough to pop into my head. <br />
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Looking back over all of the changes I've made, especially de-centralizing food and trying to focus on other interests to cultivate pleasure in other areas, I recall all too vividly how hard it was to do these things. It was like being torn away from joy. It was like a child clinging to her mother for comfort and screaming in pain because someone was pulling her away. There were times when I felt I'd go mad trying to disengage myself from food in the manner I was connected to it. I hated it so much and I felt that the rest of my life would be this mental battle between my desires. I can't convey enough what an enormous relief it is to find myself here after all of that hard work.<br />
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It's like I've been dragging myself up a long mountain for years without being able to see the summit. Slogging my way up, I'm certain I will never reach the top and the rest of my life is just going to be this hard journey every single day. Suddenly, I'm simply there. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-75511357951085980342012-08-24T07:19:00.003-07:002012-08-24T08:30:47.263-07:00What makes me happy After an emotionally difficult morning, my husband and I sat looking at each other over our respective lunches. I asked him what he was thinking, as I am wont to do, and he said, "I want to make you happy." I told him that <i>he makes me happy</i>. Jogging on my mini trampoline makes me happy. Writing makes me happy. Talking to my friends makes me happy. Playing RPGs online makes me happy. Taking a walk makes me happy. Cooking makes me happy. Having new experiences makes me happy. Doing work (both house cleaning and paid work), oddly, makes me happy. <br />
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After I said these things, I happened to look down at the table and saw the "fun size" candy bar which I'd eaten half of and wrapped the remainder back up with a rubber band. I said, "this doesn't make me happy, but I enjoy it." At that moment, I realized that another fundamental change had taken hold with me. It was a long, long time coming, but an immense step forward. It's okay to enjoy food, but it shouldn't be one of the wells from which my happiness springs.<br />
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In past posts, I've talked about how food was often the part of any experience that I most looked forward to. I have talked about how it made me happier than anything else and that limiting its role in my life made my life feel dull and lifeless. The lights didn't shine so brightly. There was nothing to look forward to. There was an empty hole that used to be filled with the happiness food gave me, and with all of the pain I felt everyday from my body and my mind, it was extremely difficult to bear, especially in the earliest stages of trying to lose weight. At that time, I had no new sources of happiness or pleasure and the misery of all of my limits and physical pain.<br />
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For a very long time, there were only two things in life that made me happy - my husband and food. My husband couldn't fill my need for happiness alone. Food shouldered the rest of the burden. When I took that away, I asked more of him than even he could bear and we had problems. <br />
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Through time and mental conditioning, it seems I've reached a point whereby food has lost that central role in my life. I <i>enjoy </i>it, certainly. I'd still like to eat more than is required to maintain a desired body weight because I'm no fan of being hungry and hate to sit around waiting to eat. However, food is not a source of "happiness", but rather a source of "enjoyment." There is a big difference. One is the fulfillment of a deep psychological need. The other is sensory pleasure.<br />
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I never set out purposefully to change this, though I did try to remove food as a central focus in my life (hence the reason I stopped counting calories and measuring food once I had an awareness of portions and general calorie content). This was not a goal I purposefully set up but a consequence of a multitude of related goals and actions that included an alteration in habits, attitudes, and thought patterns. The most important of which, in my opinion, was slowly building my repertoire of alternate things that could make me happy. However, I think this was a million little switches being thrown at different times resulting in a light finally going on. This light was one which I didn't even realize existed. <br />
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One thing about behavioral change and especially mental change is that you can't do it on a dime. You can't say to yourself, "okay, today, I'm not going to allow something that has made me happy for decades to make me happy." You can't hate something you love and need out of your head. If that were true, no one would ever suffer unrequited love as they could banish their unwanted affection for another. It took a long time to get here and the things that bring me happiness now were rather dull colors in my daily life at first. I did them, but it took time and repetition for them to gain brightness and meaning, just as it took time for food to lose it's glow.<br />
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I think that finding happiness is integral to banishing a bad relationship with anything. I have been reviewing old correspondence with my boyfriend at the time (now husband) that I first lost a tremendous amount of weight just after college and I am talking to him about how falling in love with him made me stop thinking about food obsessively. I inaccurately say that the love made me stop, but it wasn't the love. It was the happiness. After a long separation, he and I finally were able to live together in his home state. When I moved there and experienced things which made me incredibly unhappy, I turned back to food for happiness. I had never changed this dynamic.<br />
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I can't say that food will never be a wellspring of happiness for me again. I can say that I'm happy that things are as they are now and I believe I have a strong foundation for not falling back into the food for happiness trap. Anything which brings you pleasure can once again assume a central role. I can say that having this experience and awareness is something I find comforting. I knew a lot about how I dealt with food 25 or so years ago, but I didn't know enough to stop me from sliding back into old patterns. This time, I'm hoping that when something difficult happens, I don't go back to overeating for my needs. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-62681095539151424942012-08-18T08:05:00.002-07:002012-08-18T17:04:52.724-07:00Preoccupied with "beauty"As anyone who has been following this blog knows, I didn't lose weight to attain beauty. I'm 47 years old, soon to be 48, and I know that the best I could hope for physically was to escape the stigmatizing and physical pain that come along with being nearly 400 pounds. Nonetheless, the idea of "beauty" has been on my mind a lot lately, and I want to explore why.<br />
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One of the things that makes me think about beauty in this way is the manner in which some of my friends talk about how men interact with them. These women are contemporaries of mine, a few years older than me. One of them lost 40 lbs., but is still a little chubby and decidedly looks like your average middle-age lady from a physical characteristics point of view. Even at her lightest weight ever, she has had a flabby neck and double chin (much to her chagrin).<br />
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There's nothing wrong at all with her appearance, but she's also not some hot mama who you could see strange men walking up to and hitting on her. She has been married, happily from all external appearances, for a very long time. She mentioned on Facebook that a guy hit on her in the supermarket while she was buying a deli salad.<br />
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Another one of my friends is very, very short (4' 11", I think) and somewhat apple shaped with disproportionately large breasts and possesses a classic middle-aged Italian lady look (if you're thinking Sophia Loren, think again). Again, there's nothing wrong with her appearance, but she's no Roman beauty. She's just an average woman in her early 50's. She has mentioned that a friend of her ex-boyfriend has always wanted her and started hitting on her after her former relationship ended. I believe that, from time to time, she has talked about other men wanting her, but her having no interest in them. She is unmarried (never has been) and is actually one my my husband's former girlfriends (though he chose her, like he chose me, for personality, not appearances).<br />
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After losing so much weight, I feel as if something must be very "wrong" with my appearance when I hear about contemporaries getting hit on despite the fact that they don't appear to possess any special beauty. I realize that this is unproductive for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I'm pretty sure I'd be creeped out if a man tried to pick me up and I am utterly devoted to my husband. However, a part of me wants this sort of validation, and I'm not happy about it.<br />
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I've been pondering why I want this because my husband is the only person whose opinion matters, or at least it should be the only one that does. He adores me and tells me he feels I'm beautiful. I adore him and think he is the sexiest creature on the planet. I have never wanted another man after committing to a life with him, and the truth is that, if something horrible were to happen and I lost him, I don't think I'd ever want another man in my life again. <br />
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I should also note that I don't like being touched by people other than my husband, but I absolutely love to be touched by him (as much as possible). We are incredibly physically affectionate, sometimes to an extent which makes other people a little uncomfortable. We always hold hands when we walk together, kiss or hug intermittently when walking around, put our arms around each other, and sit in contact with each other if it is at all possible and not socially inappropriate. I am not one of those people who just doesn't want to be "pawed". I love it, as long as it is coming from him. <br />
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Despite my high level of comfort with being physical with him, it's sometimes an effort for me to engage in social hugging because I really don't want to have such contact with others. This probably stems from a certain amount of distrust of others as well as deeply ingrained fear that they secretly are repulsed by touching me, a remnant of being so overweight for most of my life and knowing people were repulsed by touching a morbidly obese person. I mention all of this because I want it to be clear that I'm not sitting around desiring other men in any way.<br />
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Though I've been picking at this psychological knot for awhile, I haven't quite untangled it. I think that there are a variety of insecurities at play in this. One is that, when I was much younger and lost weight, no men expressed any interest in me. I look back on pictures of myself from that time (age 21-22, around 170 lbs.), a time when I thought I looked pretty good "for my weight" and wonder what was wrong with me. At that time, I believed it was because I was still fat and any fatness at all was a huge turn-off to men. There was a man who was far fatter than me (about 75 lbs. overweight) who I was interested in who did not return that interest. There was a man who I had a crush on for over a decade who was not particularly attractive who turned me down even after I'd lost weight. In both of the cases I'm citing here, it's important to note that I knew both of them well, socialized with them a lot, and made my interest clear. I didn't hint, I directly asked, and was nicely told I wasn't seen that way by them.<br />
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I never got any validation that I was physically appealing even when I was younger and had a greater potential to be seen as such. Since my picture is not on this blog, you'll have to trust me when I say that I do not have any unappealing facial features. I don't think anyone would look at me and say I was "ugly". In Asia, where I was considered "exotic", I was often told I was "beautiful" by the natives. Their standards are different and some of them were almost certainly just flattering me, but I think that if I was actually strongly physically unappealing, they wouldn't have said that.<br />
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Looking back at some women who had boyfriends at the same age as me (in my early 20's), frankly, I think they were not very visually appealing at all and many of them were as dull as dishwater to boot. In retrospect, this continues to baffle me. Not only did young women get more attention than me then, but middle-aged women I know get more than I do now.<br />
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So, I wonder, what was/is wrong with me? Well, the answer is that I still am seeking external validation for my worth based on my appearance. This is not a good thing for two reasons. First of all, even if I got it, it would never be enough. In fact, getting it would very likely make me want to seek more of it and start to hang more of my esteem on a continuation of such validation. Second, it's more of placing control of my sense of worth outside of myself.<br />
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I think what I'm experiencing here is a re-occurrence of a life-long pattern. People have always invalidated me based on appearance and I have accepted that that is their right. Now, I want them to validate me based on appearance because I think that is also their right. I'm so accustomed to my appearance being a critical factor in how my value is determined that I continue to look for cues that I am valuable (or value-less) in this area. Clearly, this is a point which I have to work on. screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-17666921124048286312012-08-15T08:27:00.000-07:002012-08-15T16:49:59.282-07:00The Discomfort ZoneLiving life in accord with your fears is something that has been much on my mind lately. One of the reasons for this is that I'm living in the house of a woman who did that so much that her world grew tinier and tinier. Another is that my father-in-law, who isn't really fearful, but operates almost completely within his comfort zone and won't try much of anything new, has been showing me a level of rigidity that I would like not to demonstrate in my life.<br />
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When I was still in Asia and in the process of losing weight, I had to push myself everyday to go beyond my comfort zone. Actually, at that time, it was much more about spending more time deeply in my "discomfort zone". I walked when it hurt. I didn't eat when I was hungry. I went out in public when it brought on mockery and made me embarrassed.<br />
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It's important to emphasize that I did these things at a slow pace. I wasn't one of these "give until it hurts", "no pain, no gain", or "no excuses" sorts of people. I walked until it hurt and stopped for awhile. I didn't eat when I was hungry, but not for hours. I put off eating for 5 minutes or 15. I endured discomfort, but it was a slow, relatively gentle stretching of my boundaries. I see no virtue in excessive suffering and have nothing to prove to anyone in regards to my character strength. The sole purpose of living in my discomfort zone was growth in a particular direction, not to prove how tough and committed I was.<br />
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Since my weight seems to be in an extended plateau (around 185), and I'm okay with that, I've been focusing on finding other ways to grow that do not relate to food or weight. I was doing this before by doing normal things that average weight people did without thinking. After I could go to restaurants, take a walk, go to a movie, etc., I decided that when I returned to America, I was going to keep pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone by doing things that even average weight people of my age may not be comfortable doing. Since I'm still fat, some of these things are more intimidating, but I'm doing them anyway because I want to build a level of comfort with my body as well as enjoy things.<br />
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Last weekend, I took part in a market test for a console game. In and of itself, this probably doesn't sound too adventurous, but this was a fitness game. Taking part in the test required me to go into a big room with strangers, watch an instructor on the screen and see a silhouette of my own chunky body next to him doing exercises.<br />
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I'm in very good health, and I can walk for hours, but I don't have the greatest overall capacity to do exercises well. I do table push ups, but I can't do a real push-up. I can run in place, but not with my knees high. I can jump, but not very high. I did all of the things I was asked, and I did them poorly in front of a stranger. And, in the end, I didn't care. Sure, I was self-conscious at first, but I got over it and in the end I was glad to have put myself to the test. Even if the woman who watched me though I was a huge lumpen failure (which she probably didn't care at all), what of it? I was still walking away with my loving husband to live our new life. What was more, I had grown from the experience. It may have been a small thing for other people, but I'm pretty sure that even people who do not have weight problems would have been reluctant to do that sort of thing.<br />
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One thing I realized is that an after effect of the pattern through which I lost weight has followed me beyond the process. That is, I've learned the benefits of slowly stretching your boundaries on a regular basis. I don't want to end up with a shrinking life as I get older because I live in accord with my fears. I want to end up with a bigger life because I conquer them one piece at a time.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-80655956048303012722012-08-11T08:46:00.002-07:002012-08-11T08:46:27.300-07:00My SisterPeople who follow my blog regularly may recall that my <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/search/label/sister">sister</a> has been battling <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/03/medical-roller-coaster.html">uterine cancer</a> for the past half year or so. Since being treated with radiation and chemotherapy, she has been in a holding pattern waiting for the date of her surgery to come. It was several days ago and she had a full hysterectomy.<div>
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The surgery went fine, but not without some peripheral issues thrown into the mix. They suspected she had type 2 diabetes because her blood sugar was 187, but her <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 28px;">HbA<sub style="line-height: 1em;">1C</sub></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> test was 5. For those who don't know, fasting blood sugar numbers, which are considered "normal" as long as they don't exceed 100-110 (depending on who you talk to), measure one day. The </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 28px;">HbA<sub style="line-height: 1em;">1C</sub></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> test measures over the last 3 months and is a stronger indicator. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">My guess is that the number was abnormally high because of stress, saline solutions with glucose that were given and somehow not factored into the situation, or the fact that she may have eaten some liquids within the time frame and no one realized it (or she forgot). I don't know, but I do know that a patient recovering from cancer doesn't need to have additional false information heaped on her while she's spending her first day with a big incision in the stomach and having had a bunch of her internal organs cut away. It is irresponsible, in my opinion, to even speculate to someone at that point in time. Do the test and be sure, but don't push her into another hole before she's had a chance to climb out of the one she's in.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">The other bit of bad news they gave her was that they suspect she has sleep apnea. They did this based on the fact that she wheezed as she as coming out from under anesthesia. I don't know if a snore or breathing issue when you've been under general anesthetic can be interpreted so broadly or not. I suspect the answer is "not", and that they are diagnosing by her weight (around 400 lbs., possibly a bit more), not by anything scientific. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">The good news is that the cancer has been carved out along with her reproductive system. They discovered that she had a severely malformed uterus which was nearly in two parts as well as two giant cysts on each ovary. One was the size of an orange and the other the size of a grapefruit. She also has a conjoined kidney and there was concern that if anything went badly during the surgery, this single kidney may fail or be damaged and things would be very bad indeed. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">My sister has to do many more prophylactic rounds of chemotherapy, but this crisis seems to be coming to a close. As I have mentioned in other posts, I strongly believe she did not seek routine pap tests because of her weight (and economic issues) and the humiliation people often face when they are obese and visit doctors. The level of difficulty and pain she has endured could have been greatly reduced had this been discovered much earlier. The lesson to take away is not that fat people are at higher risk of cancer so don't be fat, but that fat people need to get the same level and type of treatment as those of average weight or they are at risk of dying from diseases that are detected too late. </span></div>
screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-15714406311564075162012-08-02T10:46:00.001-07:002012-08-02T12:15:12.928-07:00Not "worthy"As discussed in the previous post, I've been wrestling with my unemployed state, searching for work and not getting any responses to my applications yet, and the freedom that I may or may not take advantage of. For those who didn't read or don't remember, the situation was that there was a job that was mine for the taking, but paid very poorly and wasn't what I wanted to do. It was part-time, and would have made enough money for me to pay my rent (and greatly reduce the dip into savings). With my history of childhood poverty and my feelings of worth (or lack thereof), I was pressuring myself to grab the first thing that came along. It was a monumental struggle for me to turn down the opportunity because I grew up being told not to say no to any opportunity because there may not be another chance.<br />
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Part of wrestling with this issue has been talking about my tendencies in this regard with my husband. He told me that I have taken any job I have been offered each time regardless of whether I actually wanted it. Now, the truth is that most people don't apply for jobs that they don't want, so this doesn't necessarily mean that I've been living on whatever crumbs have come my way. However, it is true that I have felt that I have a habit of taking whatever I can get when it comes to work and some of those decisions have had a very bad impact on me.</div>
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As I look back over my employment history, I have taken three jobs that I really wanted and experienced personal growth from, and several others that I took because I felt I "should" that didn't turn out very well for me. One of those jobs was one that initially was good for me, but grew into a bad situation in which I overstayed and ended up clinically depressed and gaining about 100 lbs. or more over the years I worked at it. I did that because I was afraid to leave and thought I'd never get another job if I quit.</div>
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People change jobs all of the time in America. They step up or step down based on the prevailing economic winds. Sometimes, they stay in a state of unemployment for a long time. Many of them will not take work which does not suit them and will choose to remain jobless for a longer period of time rather than take something which is simply a way of making money if they have that luxury. Some people have little choice but to do what it takes to put food on the table and cannot afford themselves the luxury of being picky. I know this well as that was what slowly ground my mother down through the years. She worked because she had to, not because the work was good for her in any way.</div>
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At any rate, I've been considering why I don't take the path that my husband has said is available to me. That route is one in which I do what I want (mostly write) for the next 2-3 years while we live off of our savings and my husband pursues his new career path. At the end of his study and internship, there is an excellent chance that he will get the sort of job that will allow him to support us both on his income if we live in the same modest fashion that we have for most of our lives. Instead of waking up every day and feeling so stressed out that I get headaches and feel exhausted by early afternoon, instead of pushing myself to apply for jobs regardless of whether they suit my skills or desires, instead of eating myself up inside with worry, why don't I just decide to walk down that road?</div>
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The answer, as is so often the case, is not simple. Part of growing up poor means growing up with an immense amount of insecurity. The potential outcome of the path he's taking is hard for me to comfortably live with. I want a promise of something more concrete and that means that I want to be relying on income I generate now rather than something which may or may not happen later. In my world, "may not" is always stronger than "may", but this is an issue I need to deal with, not necessarily a reflection of reality.</div>
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The second aspect of this is that we worked hard for those savings, and part of the reason we did so was that the money was ear-marked for retirement, not for me to "squander" by sitting around doing nothing. Though I had begun the process of wrapping my head around the idea that the money was not promised to the little grey-haired old lady that will be me in another 20 years and could be used by the somewhat grey-haired lady that is me now, that psychological transformation was incomplete. </div>
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Third, I want to work. The truth is that it's about feeling productive and engaged. I want to be a part of mainstream society here in my home culture again. Though I can get that through other means (other social groups, volunteering), I'd prefer for it to be something I'm paid for if that is at all possible.</div>
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Finally, and this is probably the biggest part, there is an identity issue at play which is interwoven with my self-perception based on, you guessed it, my weight. To put it more accurately, it is based on my former much weightier self. Though I'm still fat (I'm currently 185 lbs. and seem to have stuck there for the time being - and that's okay), I'm not the sort of fat which is considered freakish or unusual in current society. However, I still see myself in a particular way based on having lived most of my life between 300-400 lbs. My sense of self is still at a much higher weight.</div>
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Primarily, I see myself as the sort of person who isn't looked after or cared for by someone else. Pretty girls, that is to say, thin girls, get to marry and be supported by their husbands. Cinderella had her prince come and save her while her evil, ugly stepsisters were left in the dust. When I was growing up, my fat mother had to work at a series of minimum wage jobs while the thin, middle class moms of my friends were housewives. I'm not from a stock or a class that gets to be taken care of. </div>
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Deep down, I feel like I'm not attractive enough to live a life in which someone else earns the money while I pursue my own interests. I'm not worthy of that. I have to be a beast of burden. I have to work, even if it harms me because I'm doing something which is emotionally hard for me. Those soccer moms buying expensive food at the high class grocery store I sometimes peruse? Their husbands work and they are cared for because they are prettier than me and they are "prettier" because they're not fat.</div>
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I've talked many times before about identity, and how I've tried to rebuild mine as I've lost weight. I've dealt with a lot of it, but this was a facet that hadn't been discovered until now. I still see myself as fundamentally unworthy of certain things because I grew up being told so often that I was sub-standard. And it wasn't even what I was "told", but also what I experienced. No one wanted to date the fat girl. No one wanted to hire the fat girl. No one wanted to be friends with the fat girl. If you're the fat girl, you have to grab the first thing that comes along because you won't have another chance. Your stock is so worthless that you're lucky to get any buyers.</div>
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Though I've had years of a husband who loves me unconditionally (truly) and who told me how valuable I am, deep down, I'm not convinced because the person who has to convince me of my value is me. One bit of irony is that an option that may come easily for many, that is, deciding to kick back, not work, and be taken care of by someone else, is coming so hard for me. I have to at least entertain the notion of "letting myself" be taken care of with equal weight to the idea of working. At the very least, I have to want to work for reasons that are healthy, not because I believe I'm fundamentally of lesser value than women who are also supported by their husbands. The bottom line is that the best thing I may do for my self-esteem at this moment is to perhaps act in a manner which many may view as incredibly indulgent. I'm absolutely not there yet, but it is something I need to at least entertain as a possibility. </div>
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<br /></div>screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-53526404151470936252012-07-27T10:05:00.001-07:002012-07-27T10:21:24.277-07:00Arbitrary GoalsEarlier this week, I started job hunting. As anyone who is unemployed knows, this is an odious and onerous task. Even when you possess good skills (as I do), it is very hard to find a job in a sluggish economy with a high unemployment rate. There are lots of people out there looking to secure a decent job and lots of others who have jobs they don't like who are looking to find something better. The market favors the latter over the former, and I'm one of the former.<br />
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As part of my job hunting, I've set up a spreadsheet of all of the ways in which I'm looking. It includes temp agencies that I have applied to, individual jobs I've applied for, the dates I've applied and responses, if any. I started looking on Monday and today is Friday, so it's a little soon for responses. However, I'll be adding in "follow-up" letters to job applications as one of the things I track soon. I think it's silly that I should have to remind people that I sent them my resume, but I've been told it is a good technique to help you stand out a bit more in the crowd.<br />
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One thing that I did early on was decide that I would apply for at least three jobs a day. I set that goal because I figured that it would push me to look more aggressively. On the third day of looking, I was struggling to find a third place to apply to and decided to send my resume for work that I had done before (residential assistance to the mentally ill), but wasn't necessarily keen on doing again. This is the sort of "last ditch" job that pays so poorly that it would be hard to live on the income, but I was scraping the bottom of the barrel that day for my third application and it fit the bill.<br />
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A problem arose when they called me pretty much immediately to schedule an interview. It became clear that I was a perfect fit for this job because I'd done something very much like it before. If I interviewed, there was every chance I would have gotten the work. Unfortunately, I didn't really want the job. Upon reflection, the prospect of doing it made me feel terrible about myself. I felt like it was a step backward and was the type of work that would not challenge me or increase my skill level or knowledge. The pay was dramatically less than I made before. Pondering taking this job made me feel less valuable and as if I would never be offered anything better. I felt like it would be cramming me into a slot that said I couldn't move on in life to better things. It made me feel right back where I started from economically (poor) and emotionally (worthless).<br />
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I've mentioned before that my mother pressured me just after college to take the first job that came along. In that case, it was work as a waitress in a mall snack bar. She always engaged in "<a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2010/07/sky-really-isnt-falling-part-1.html">the sky is falling</a>" thinking and talked as if you had to take the first thing that came your way because there may not be another chance. This mentality was drilled into me as I grew up, and it is very hard for me to walk away from a job opportunity because of it. It didn't matter that the job was not "right" for my goals, the cost of living where I'm going to set up my life, or in line with my skill set. Someone was offering me a job! I "had to" take it.<br />
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As I was emotionally struggling with this, I talked about it with my husband. He said that he was worried that this sort of thing would happen when I started to job search. I told him that I couldn't just sit around and do nothing while he was in grad school (which he just started). He said to me, "actually, you can." And he's right. I can. We saved enough money to live without either of us working for about 6 years. While it isn't preferable to drain our savings in this way, it is possible, and he will likely finish his path to a new career within about three or so years tops. That means that we have more than enough to live on until he gets a professional job most likely.<br />
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Despite all of this, the only reason I gave up on interviewing for this job (and the idea of taking it) was that my husband did something he has never done before. He directly told me what he felt I should do. He told me to cancel the interview and start writing the book I should write in relation to this blog and what I have accomplished while continuing to search for appropriate jobs that I want to do. It was only because he gave me "permission" to "fail" that I could make that leap. He said it was okay to break out of the box I'd arbitrarily put myself in, and so I could. Otherwise, I don't know if I could have done it at this point in time. Since I trust his judgment more than my own, I could manage this. I hope next time to do it on my own, but this is a leap I wasn't quite able to make alone. <br />
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One of my problems throughout my life has been the setting of arbitrary goals which do not line up with rationality or sometimes reality. I set up a set number of jobs to apply for and when I couldn't locate three, I made a bad choice which landed me in a difficult situation emotionally. Had I not set that meaningless goal, I wouldn't have applied for a job that I didn't actually want and then been put in a bad position when it was almost certainly going to be offered to me. The fact that it was so quickly tossed in my lap in a difficult job market is an indication that it is not a desirable job and that they are having problems finding someone to do it, yet I felt that I had to take this scrap that was being tossed my way because I had another arbitrary notion that I "have to" work as soon as possible.<br />
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Of course, the desire to work isn't an arbitrary one. The truth is that I want to work for a variety of reasons. The primary one is I'd rather make money than use savings, but I also simply want to be engaged in meaningful and stimulating activities. I want to make connections with people and engage in my home culture again. I also want to start paying into the Social Security system once more so that my retirement benefits will be better. Working isn't merely about making money to get by everyday for me at this point in time (a luxury I <b>earned </b>through decades of hard work in Asia, frugal living, and an emphasis on saving), and that is exactly why it was a bad idea to take a job which was little more than shepherding and babysitting people with physical and mental disabilities. It's not that the work is beneath me or anyone else, but just that it is not a challenge for me. I've done that already. It's not bad work, but it's not a personal growth or learning opportunity. Frankly, I'd rather go back to Asia and do what I was doing before than return to the job I did just after completion of college.<br />
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Getting back to the point, I have this tendency to set up a rigid framework for myself and then feel trapped in that box. In this case, it was the goal of three job applications per day and the absolute necessity that I get to work as soon as possible. The fact of the matter is that there is no reason for me to apply for a set number of jobs at all costs and I don't have to start working as soon as humanly possible. There is little logic in these goals and they ignore some important realities, especially emotional ones. Primarily, it ignores the fact that there may not be 3 jobs that are right for me everyday. This is something which is beyond my control. I should apply for 10 jobs if there are that many available or none if that is the case. Beyond that, I disregarded my needs to be stimulated, creative, and to learn entirely by placing a (very small) paycheck above my mental health.<br />
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This situation is not isolated. It is part of a pattern in my life and a pattern I see among many other women who are overweight and trying to lose weight. They set arbitrary goals and then feel stressed about not meeting them or like failures. They say their goal is to lose 2 lbs. a week, 10 lbs. a month, etc. The truth is that no one has any control over how much weight they lose. You can control the actions that may lead to weight loss, but you can't simply decide to lose "x" number of pounds and force your body to do it. Your body will metabolize fat or consume muscle tissue and reduce your mass in ways you can't control.<br />
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Similarly, people will choose exercise goals which are arbitrary and try to stick to them regardless of their health condition. They will work out "x" number of days per week for "x" number of hours/minutes and if they are injured, sick, or exhausted, they will push to do it anyway because they set an arbitrary goal and they are going to make it. The goal is health and fitness, not figures on a spreadsheet. You can't have good health if you do things when you are not well enough to do them. It flies in the face of logic. <br />
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The goals we set should be logical and flexible. Rigidity only serves to create stress and conditions under which we will have an increased likelihood of failure. That applies to all things, but it tends to happen more in weight loss for a variety of reasons. One is that we don't trust ourselves and we set the bar strictly to provide motivation. Of course, if you end up defeated by a bar that is set too high, it's hardly a good motivational tool to set an arbitrary goal.<br />
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Another reason that we make such arbitrary goals is that they give us a sense of progress. It's gratifying to know by the numbers that we're doing what we set out to do. That sort of feedback is a lot more rewarding than a general sense that we listened to our bodies each day and did what felt right. Our school systems reinforce the idea that measurable goals are important and rewarding when they give us grades for our work. Striving for excellence as reflected in an "A" is something we can relate to. Getting a perfect "score" by exercising for an hour five days a week provides a familiar sense of accomplishment. Getting a less than perfect one by being sick one day and only accomplishing it for four days gives a sense of being inadequate.<br />
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I'm not suggesting that people not set goals for themselves, but rather that those goals not be arbitrary or rigid. They should be flexible and reflect reality rather than a box we place ourselves in because we feel that is the framework we need to operate from in order to measure progress or motivate ourselves. For me, I've pondered why I have this tendency in general (my husband does not, he is rational about such things). I believe that it reflects my need for security and predictability in life. I grew up in chaos and being told the sky was falling so I have to construct boundaries to make me feel protected and ensure that I'm moving ahead. Those boundaries offer the sense of structure I didn't grow up with, but they can also be prisons. This is something that I have to be aware of as I navigate my entire life, not just in dealing with my relationship with my body and food. <br />
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<br />screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-90744047304059204652012-07-18T11:11:00.002-07:002012-07-23T10:04:48.540-07:00Shopping rather than doingDuring my transition back to my home culture after more than two decades living in a foreign one, I've spent time in three different homes. Two of them, including my current residence, belong to my in-laws. Those two places were decorated by my mother-in-law, who passed away last November.<br />
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I didn't know my mother-in-law very well because I had a rocky road with my in-laws in general. I've written here before about their social skills, or lack thereof, and the way in which my fragile esteem was damaged by the way they treated me as if I were a burden or simply invisible shortly after my husband and I started to live together.<br />
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Before I get to the meat of this post, I should explain a little about the background of my relationship with this woman. Before we married, my husband lived and worked abroad in Asia for a year while I remained in the north east in the U.S. We conducted a relationship over our year's separation by post. The separation was terribly hard on us and when his contract ended and he finally came home, we were desperate to be together. We knew we'd live in his home state on the west coast, but he was coming in fresh from life abroad with no job or apartment. His family have a very big house and they had a spare room that people slept in on occasion. My husband asked if we could temporarily stay with them until he and I pulled our life together. His parents said, "no". <br />
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The main reason for their refusal was my father-in-law didn't trust that my husband would get a job and move out fast enough to suit his desires and he didn't want to face the prospect of an indefinite term in which we would be invading his privacy. This was fair enough. However, when we were offered a room in the home of my husband's best friend's parents' home, my mother-in-law's response was essentially 'we can't let them do that because it'll make us look bad.' So, they didn't want to offer us a temporary place to stay while we found our footing (finding jobs, getting cars, etc.), but she also was not comfortable with our staying with someone else even though it meant that he and I could be together immediately.<br />
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During the time we resided with the friend's family, my husband's mother didn't have much of a relationship with me beyond occasionally making passive aggressive comments related to our progress in getting out of another party's home. When my husband and I once got some take-out food from a local restaurant, she said, "you won't be able to keep doing that if you don't get a job." She also mentioned that we really should move on and stop inconveniencing his best friend's mother.<br />
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My impression of my mother-in-law was that she had little personality aside from that of someone who fretted over all sorts of things, both trivial and large, and a selfish concern for how our actions reflected their lack of generosity toward us. When we made a trip home after a few years in Asia and visited them, she was more preoccupied with our not dirtying anything which her first grandchild might end up crawling on with our clean stocking feet (shoes are taken off at the door) than spending time with her son and daughter-in-law who had not been around for 2 years and were going to go away again in 5 days. Nearly all of my interaction with her was critical or as a third party observer. She had no qualitative relationship with me at all.<br />
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I had heard and continue to hear a lot of stories about my mother-in-law from her children. My husband long ago told me about many incidents in which her anxiety and overly cautious nature created problems for him. When he was 12, he told his parents that he could go to an amusement park with other kids if he sold enough papers. When he proceeded to work hard to sell enough, his mother wouldn't allow him to go because she was afraid that something bad would happen if he did and she was unwilling to go along to assuage her fears. She simply exercised her paranoia at his expense. <br />
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To her kids, she was responsible for denying them pleasures because she spun unlikely scenarios of doom. Even her husband has told me tales of how she had a great many irrational fears, but he would allow her to dictate that her children live in accord with them while explaining to them that the world wasn't all that dangerous, but it would make their mother feel better if they just did what she wanted.<br />
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From my limited (and largely negative, though not horribly so) interactions as well as the multitude of stories I was told and continue to hear, I knew my mother-in-law to be a person who lived captive to her fears and anxiety. Only yesterday, I had a conversation with my sister-in-law in which she told me that she feels that her mother was always passive aggressive with her and that she feels that her mother slowly destroyed herself from the inside out with her emotional problems. She felt that her mother accelerated her decline into dementia and that her lifelong health problems were the result of her inability to come to terms with her panic and anxiety.<br />
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I mention all of this because it provides context for the point I'm trying to make. Two of the houses are reflections of this woman. The current place is more her than the other, and it is a very telling situation indeed. This house is liberally peppered with Buddhist paraphernalia. There are no fewer than three Buddha statues, two signs which say "namaste" on them, bells, beads, and copious numbers of books with themes about not sweating small stuff, meditating, relaxing, and finding inner peace. This house is a shrine to a mentality that my mother-in-law never possessed, not for a moment.<br />
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I asked my sister-in-law about this contradiction in her mother's personality and the trappings I saw all around me. She told me that they represented what her mother wanted to be, but could never succeed at. No matter how many Buddhas, singing bowls, bells, or books she bought, she couldn't purchase the inner peace she craved.<br />
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This situation strongly reminds me of how women approach weight loss. They buy exercise equipment, diet books, packages of diet food, and take part in forums. What they don't do is actually change enough to lose weight and keep it off for good. If throwing money at problems could make them go away, my mother-in-law would have had the inner calm of the Dalai Lama and most fat women in America would be thin.<br />
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The problem isn't that people aren't trying, but rather that they spend more effort on the trappings than on the actual work because they think that the trappings <b>are </b>the work.<br />
My mother-in-law's problem wasn't that she didn't try. She went to meditation classes, listened to lots of relaxation tapes, and read about and practiced a variety of techniques to achieve inner calm, but she didn't deal with the core issues. Those were that she was playing fear and anxiety recordings in her brain in a continuous loop. Rather than focus upon finding a way to stop those recordings, she just tried to paper over them with a lifestyle she hoped to emulate. In other words, she tried to fake it until she made it, but faking never resulted in making.<br />
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I've written before about <a href="http://screamingfatgirl.blogspot.com/2012/01/rewiring-yourself.html">rewiring your mind</a>. This is a Herculean mental task which requires millions of adjustments in thinking through time such that you stop going down mental routes that you are comfortable and familiar with. People don't want to do this because it's incredibly hard and taxes the blood glucose in your brain such that you are exhausted. It also forces a complete change in self-definition and an alteration in how you view your identity. Though it is far more effective than trying to buy a lifestyle you want in the hopes that it'll somehow magically replace whatever your problems in your current one are, it's also far less immediately gratifying. I don't know if my mother-in-law could have found some peace had she spent more time trying to stop her worry train before it left the station, but I'm pretty sure that trying would have been better than continually buying Buddhist paraphernalia and scattering it around her home.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-24936096258732188092012-07-13T07:52:00.002-07:002012-07-16T07:55:58.605-07:00It's not how you do itThis isn't the sort of blog in which I write about the details of my daily routine and weight loss, at least not anymore. It's not that I don't believe such things may be helpful to some people, but rather that I realized a long time ago that each person has to follow a different path in terms of the mechanics of what they do to manage their daily food and exercise routines. I mainly try to address the broader issues that affect the relationships that people, especially those with life-long problems and severe overeating or compulsive eating problems, have with food.<br />
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That being said, occasionally, I do pause to talk a bit about the smaller things. I do so mainly to offer a realistic portrait, track my own behavior more concretely for my own records, and to show people that I'm human, too. To that end, I want to talk about how things have been going since I went through the monumental changes I've been through in the past 3 or so months and where my relationship with food stands at present.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglP1Bdvk08iw_VrhpBWWSPy9Byj_aeoiXyDHNK9kuzjaDBt42o4N-3gZWfFW2lYbX2faKHEZ0p-xVzr8WqV9XZ4ZVno7PFVs4RaqKhSG3OPR7ztmWZ-UOKxy4oqXaSVEAsN87paadhXemX/s1600/now-and-then.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglP1Bdvk08iw_VrhpBWWSPy9Byj_aeoiXyDHNK9kuzjaDBt42o4N-3gZWfFW2lYbX2faKHEZ0p-xVzr8WqV9XZ4ZVno7PFVs4RaqKhSG3OPR7ztmWZ-UOKxy4oqXaSVEAsN87paadhXemX/s320/now-and-then.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Left: now, right: about 25 years ago (not my lowest ever, but the pictures of my lowest ever aren't as well posed to display my body)</b></span></div>
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First of all, I've been looking at old pictures of myself from 23-26 years ago when I initially lost a lot of weight and seeing my body at its thinnest. I never weighed myself at that time so I don't know what my lowest weight was. However, I think that I am probably about 10-20 pounds heavier than I was at my absolute smallest ever, and I certainly didn't spend long at that weight. That weight was achieved at the height of my exercising (that's 90 minutes a day - 45 of aerobic and 45 calisthenics, 5 days a week). It was done by not eating any fat or sugar and eating a lot of whole grain carbs, low fat dairy (especially cheese), and fruit. I ate salads, but vegetables weren't as big a part of my life then as they are now (because I'm a better cook and have broader tastes). It was done in a way that was nearly impossible to sustain without devoting my life to my body, and that is why I regained.<br />
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The body I have now, which is slightly heavier, was achieved through the processes described in this blog. That is, moderation, no limiting of sugar, fat, or any particular type of macro-nutrient (such as limiting carbs or whatnot). Because of physical difficulties and the bare basic facts of adult life (having to work and have time for relationships), I could not exercise beyond walking and modest weight lifting and stretching. In other words, my current body, which is very much like my hard-fought body of two and a half decades ago, was achieved with <i>far less</i> time spent daily on exercise, far less Draconian dietary changes, and a lot more mental effort than physical. The irony is that it was achieved in almost the same total time (in years), and beginning from a likely higher weight. Certainly, it was achieved with a less youthful metabolism. <br />
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Of course, my current body is far from ideal. I'm still technically obese. I'm still fatter than I'd like to be from the viewpoint of going out and looking for jobs, but at least I can move. I can go out and play Frisbee in the park with my husband (and I have!). I can walk without back pain. People aren't staring at me or making fun of me all of the time. I'd like to lose more weight and will continue on the path I'm on with moderation in all things. However, I have to accept that this may be where my set point is likely to stay.<br />
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When I say that, it is not an admission of defeat, but an acceptance of some real possibilities. First of all, I'm not in my early 20's anymore. The reason I'm holding my arm and making a muscle like that is so you can see all of my bat-winged glory. I've been working on building arm muscle for firmness slowly through the last 3 years and I have muscle definition in my upper arms, but I will never lose that extra skin. It has been stretched out and no longer has the elasticity to retract. The same goes for skin in all areas of my body, especially my lower belly, hips, and behind. There will always be a lot of excess skin, probably as much as 10 lbs. of it, on my body. I can live with this because I'm 47 years old and I would not subject my body to the mutilation of plastic surgery (cutting away healthy skin) for aesthetic reasons or to bring down a number on the scale. I also note that my waist is not as small as it got before, but that is
the effect of gravity. I will never have the shape I had before. <br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b> Me at high school graduation. </b></span></div>
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Second, I have been obese my entire life. I was a fat child and finished my teens at a very high weight. The number of fat cells in my body is much higher than that of a person who was thin when younger and later gained weight. My body will deflate those cells, but it will never eliminate them. Fat cells, once added, are forever. This I have known for a long time. Having a high number of these cells causes fat bodies to be different (hormonally, neurochemcially, and likely more) than thin ones and that is the case forever.<br />
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In order to be appreciably thinner than I am now, there is a distinct possibility that I would have to devote my life to weight loss and only weight loss. I don't have the time, joints, or desire to become a slave to my body in this way. I'm in excellent health with no problems at all. There is no reason other than vanity to push so hard, and I'd rather be mentally healthy and fatter than obsessed and thinner. I do not want to be obsessed for the sake of acquiring a particular look and nothing more, but more than that, I want to live my life fully, not spend hours and hours pushing myself to exercise or fretting over whether I can eat anything at a social function because my diet options are so restricted. <br />
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My feeling right now is that I will continue to lose weight, but it will happen at a trickle over years. I think that it will be hard for my body to go lower, but it will slowly happen over time. It will probably be pretty inconsequential and only noted over a long period of time. It's also going to be very "up and down" based on having good days and bad ones through time. That's okay. I will just stay the course and see where it leads.<br />
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The odd thing is that, though I'm not especially pleased with my body, I'd rather live in it as it is with the lifestyle I have than go back to the thinnest I ever managed with all of the time and effort I had to put into it. It's not ideal, but little in life is. I find more happiness in moderation and in not pushing myself to spend 90 minutes most days on hard exercise or depriving myself at every turn. If people want to judge me for that, then they're welcome to do so, but they can keep their thoughts to themselves because they're the only ones who are reflected in them and going to be affected by them. In fact, given all the talk about health and weight, anyone who does judge me negatively will endorse the fact that fat disapproval is about beauty, not health. My heart is in good shape. My insulin function excellent. I was thoroughly tested late last year, and I'm in better health than thinner people of the same age. <br />
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The bottom line is that, looking back over my two great weight loss experiences in life, I ended up at almost the same place doing it two dramatically different ways. It doesn't seem to matter how you do it, as long as you keep doing it and keep moving in a particular direction. There is no one path for anyone, and sometimes, there's not even a single path for the same person.screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-239703775224526488.post-26628922113955306092012-07-13T06:27:00.001-07:002012-07-13T08:54:02.060-07:00The Worth of a Normal Human BeingI've been away from this blog for awhile and I apologize to those whose comments languished for a little while in moderation. I've completed the third transition to a temporary domicile since returning to America. Each move requires adjustment, not to mention very practical considerations such as packing and unpacking. Settling into a new space always requires adjustment, especially since each time there is overlap with the owner.<br />
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In this case, we are staying in my father-in-law's house while he stays at the cabin we began our return in. We were there for 2 months. He plans to stay for 3 and we'll be in his place until we find our own and start paying rent again. While I'm not looking forward to the large bites that will be taken from our savings when that happens, I am looking forward to being autonomous again. Living in other people's spaces means living by their rules and in a space shaped to suit their individual desires.<br />
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This place is rather different than the others because it is familiar. I didn't spend a lot of time in this house before I went off to live in that Asian country, but I did visit all too frequently... far more so than I would have liked at the time. The seeds of the changes which lead to my regaining weight were fertilized here, though I imagine they were already planted none too shallowly in my psyche. I'm not sure if they can ever be dug out and removed, but I can continue to hope.<br />
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I used to be extremely bitter about how I was treated here by my in-laws and, at that time, felt it was an indication that I was worthless. Since I was raised and conditioned by experience to believe that others were entitled to assess my value, I embraced deeply the notion that I was inadequate. Now, I know that it had nothing to do with me. <br />
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A lot of people say that sort of thing when they want to explain that others are mean to you because they are acting out on their own problems. That's true. However, that's not what I am talking about. In this case, these are people who are so self-involved and socially inept that they have no clue that they are behaving poorly and making others feel bad. Sitting at a dinner table with them, supposedly as their guest, and having people talk as if you weren't in the room would clearly be an epic act of rudeness to most people, but not these ones. They are most comfortable with each other and will focus on each other because they do not know any better. I'm not sure they even realized what they were doing on any level.<br />
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So, now when they act in a self-involved manner, and they do so less now than before because life has changed for them, too, I take it in stride. I see it for what it is, and it's not a reflection on me. I'm actually a little surprised at how I've completely let go of the bitterness and anger that I had about this for so many years. I think part of the reason for that is maturity and self-reflection. Part of it is also that my husband has become so much more clued in about the truth and has been supportive of my viewpoint (he has changed, too). Another is that I've lost weight again and that sense of worth that was lost because of the way I was treated due to my body has returned.<br />
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When I say things about my "sense of worth", I in no way mean that I'm the greatest thing on the planet. I mean that I no longer believe I'm a sub-human piece of garbage that deserves to be looked upon with disgust and disdain or treated as invisible. My "worth" in my estimation is that of a normal human. If you've never been super morbidly obese or if you did not grow up fat, you can't know what it is to walk around day after day feeling as though you are nothing and contemptible. You haven't been conditioned by thousands of external cues, both subtle and gross, that make certain that you know that you are a pariah in the eyes of the world.<br />
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A lot of people will say "get over it". A lot of people lack much depth of understanding and sensitivity. Those same people will cry and say how sad they are if they learn that a child was verbally abused and told he or she was stupid and worthless by an angry parent for years. They'll know that cripples that person's esteem in a way which the adult may never fully recover from. They can understand how the abused may seek abusers in relationships in the future because they associate love with abuse.<br />
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However, they fail to see that being fat and being mocked, derided, and belittled day in and day out for your entire life has exactly the same effect. They don't see it because their prejudice against fat people is too great for them to set aside and find compassion. It is a powerful and painful way to have grown up, and it is the ugly ground upon which all of the seeds of my psyche were sown. <br />
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<br />screaming fatgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09556199963917842135noreply@blogger.com2