Fat PTS

The other night, I had a total breakdown over something small. On another blog of mine, some readers willfully misinterpreted something I wrote and wrote some attacks. This was so upsetting to me that I cried. In fact, I cried for much of the night over a few angry strangers who didn't know me at all attacking me. Though I knew that what they said of me was not true, and that their response was to an imagined intent on my part, I still wanted to delete my blog and hide.

Rationally, I knew that my response was incredibly disproportional to the potential pain inflicted by the situation. Yet, I sobbed into my husband's chest several times and told him that I was angry with myself for letting something so trivial upset me so much. I also remarked that I felt incredibly empty inside and that I didn't know who I was anymore.

The second part is likely part of a Freudian utterance. That is, in a moment of distress, the manner in which I've changed my lifestyle and how it is affecting me came tumbling out. It was an issue that I hadn't really considered until the feeling was there. I felt empty and I didn't know who I was. This feeling is almost certainly a response to the fact that I can't comfort myself with food anymore and I don't know who I am without food as my sympathetic friend. I'm defined by my weight so much so that even I don't know who I will be if I am no longer controlled by my appetite.

Getting back on track to the main point though, and that is that I reacted so strongly to small provocations from strangers, my husband said that he feels this is a form of post traumatic stress. He said that I spent so many years being attacked and hurt and building up a defensive system where I am always looking for potential harm that I can't distinguish between real threats and harm and unreal ones. He said it's like a soldier who saw a bomb explode a bridge near him who can't drive under a bridge without feeling anxiety because of that.

My husband said that my desire to delete the blog and hide is a throwback to all of the times that I was tormented for my weight and just wanted to run away and be safe from the pain. Even though the problem with the comments wasn't related to my weight or even anything tangible, it didn't matter. My fat-related PTS kicked in and told me everything that it usually does when I feel attacked. That feeling is that I must get away.

I also told him that I feared that, after those attacks, I would lose all of my readers, but he said that was also a part of my sense that no one would love me anymore and that I would be abandoned. If you're the fat kid, you don't take revenge on your tormentors because no one likes you for being fat and the few who feel sorry enough for you to be your friend will abandon you at the drop of a hat if you act badly. My husband is quite the insightful man and I am grateful that he both comforts me and guides me out of my torment.

In the end, I think a lot of people who have grown up overweight and have been tormented have similar responses. I want to keep in mind that, even if I lose weight and reach a point where I am average, I will almost certainly still suffer this form of "fat PTS" and that it's another stage in the recovery from being overweight to deal with.

The Deprivation/Compensation Cycle

People grow accustomed to the level that they live at no matter what that level is. This includes things like material comforts as well as food. That's why things like saving money and dieting are so hard. Changing our lifestyle level such that we reduce our frequency of pleasurable experiences or acquisitions is difficult and we tend to unconsciously compensate if we harshly alter our habits.

If I'm used to buying a new piece of clothing every month, I may feel deprived if I don't have the money to buy one in a given month. If I decided that I needed to save money and would only buy a new item every other month, I'd feel bad about it for awhile. Chances are that I'd spend the first several months buying things other than clothes to compensate for the lack of enjoyment during the month when I'm not buying something. This is why some people who want to save money go to dollar stores or raid bargain bins after vowing not to shop so much. They're looking to restore the balance without paying as high a price.

The same type of thinking operates with weight loss as well. A lot of people feel they've "been good" with exercise or eating healthily so they have earned an indulgence or an amplified portion of a healthy food. People tend to exaggerate the value of their sacrifice and underestimate the value of their "reward" such that they sabotage their progress to a great extent.

This sort of attempt to compensate isn't something which should be seen as stupid or self-deluding. It should be seen as a response to be expected in accord with human nature. We get used to a certain balance and it's hard to simply force ourselves into a new situation. It takes time to gradually reach a point of comfort with a reduction in consumption of anything, be it food or new items that we shop for.

One of the reasons I don't count calories all of the time and that I don't rule out certain foods for good is that I'm aware of the deprivation/compensation cycle and that I want to slowly change my situation such that I don't fail or compensate to the point where my efforts are pointless. I want to slowly whittle away at portion sizes and frequency of unhealthy food consumption such that there isn't a psychological (or biological) rebellion.

One example of this is my coffee consumption. I'm not one of those people who drinks black coffee and I never will be. I always cut my coffee with full fat milk (while my husband uses cream). I started out having a pretty big mug of coffee every morning which required about a half cup of fatty milk to cut it to a strength I could enjoy and throughout several months cut down to smaller and smaller cups such that I'm using an itty bitty cup now with about half as much milk as before. Since I did this reduction slowly, I don't feel deprived despite drinking about 1/2 as much coffee as before. In fact, I feel like it's just about the right amount and that I don't need more.

Similarly, I've been slowly cutting back on carbohydrate portions with evening meals in particular. Going from one day to the next from about a cup of rice to a half cup would have felt like I was starving myself. Now, it feels just fine because I've been adjusting to smaller and smaller portions through time.

If you're going to be successful in controlling any lifestyle change whether it be portion sizes or shopping too much, the chances for success will be vastly improved if you don't try and drop your levels of consumption too rapidly and set off a deprivation/compensation response. Granted, your start toward your goal will be slower, but hopefully the new levels you adjust to will have a greater sense of permanence and pave the way for lasting change.

Counting Emotionally Instead of Numerically

Several times when I tried to "diet", I had problems with a tendency to feel that the entire day was a failure if I made one mistake. That is, if I screwed up and ate something I shouldn't have which would throw the whole day's calorie count out of whack, I'd become depressed, demoralized, and feel guilty because there was no way to "fix" the days total so that I could view it as a success.

On those days, I would tell myself that I'd just indulge even more because I'd already blown the day. In essence, I'd figure that, if I was going to feel bad about messing up, I might as well get more food pleasure for the guilt I was feeling. It was an excuse to just blow the entire day eating the crap I was denying myself. Instead of coming out at 2500 calories for the day and feeling bad, I'd come out at 4000 and feel equally bad.

While there is certainly something to be said for the illogical nature of making a bad situation worse, from an emotional point of view, this made sense. I wasn't thinking about how much more damage I was doing. I was counting food emotionally rather than counting the number of calories. This is part of the essence of the problem with overweight people. It is comfort and pleasure or guilt and pain. We don't have a logical relationship with food. If we did, we wouldn't be in the predicament we're in.

Part of the process for me in getting to the point where I am able to work on doing something about my problem is coming to terms with these issues. Yesterday, I had what I'd consider a "bad food day". While I didn't overeat, I did act on the desire to eat for emotional rather than physical reasons a few times. This is actually a more critical failure than eating too much because this is the path away from controlling my relationship with food. For me, it is crucial that I recognize and avoid situations where I eat because I want the pleasure, am bored, nervous, or sad.

If you're not fat, but you've ever smoked (cigarettes or pot), drank alcohol, had sex, taken a tranquilizer, or even exercised as a behavioral response to an emotional need, then you can begin to see what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the psychology of an addiction, but it's a more insidious and complex addiction because food is everywhere, perfectly legal, socially acceptable, and necessary to survive.

So, I had a bad day with a few lapses yesterday. The important part now is not to have another, then another. Sometimes battling my emotions, fatigue, and desires for food becomes so tiring that I will give in, but at least I didn't give in completely or write off the whole day and go crazy overeating. That's a stepping stone on the path out of my situation.

A Rucksack Full of Emotional Baggage

I'm going to go on the record with the fact that I hate the way people use the word "willpower". The reason is that this word is used to essentially deride the inability of people to implement certain changes in their lives. It's also used as a pat explanation for success. The term is not only ambiguous, but doesn't describe anything meaningful which can be used to change behavior. It is used as a cover word for the idea that one is too weak to overcome one's impulses.

Let me tell you a little story which should illustrate why I hate the word willpower. Let's say that you and your friend are each of average build and athletic capability. You are trekking through the woods and you come to a stream with a steep, muddy drop-off which is connected to another little cliff by a sturdy bridge about three feet wide with no handrail or rope support. If you fall off the bridge, there's a little stream with rocks about five feet below. You won't get killed if you fall, but you will get dirty and bruised. There's also a small chance of some sort of more serious injury if the fall is especially bad.

The span of the bridge is about 10 feet. It's not too far, and most average people can manage to cross it with no problem. Your friend walks across the bridge exercising minimal caution and waits for you on the other side. You are reluctant to cross because, unlike your unencumbered friend, you're carrying a heavy rucksack which makes it harder to balance yourself. You also hurt your right foot and are unable to walk normally, and the sun has just come out from behind a cloud and is shining right in your eyes.

Your friend, who effortlessly traversed the bridge, is getting impatient and can't understand why you're being such a weak baby about crossing. You tell him about your various problems and he scoffs at you, saying that he would be able to manage even if he had your burdens. You attempt to cross, and you lose your balance and fall off. Your friend calls you a klutz.

This story is my little metaphor about willpower. Your friend has no emotional problems with food and you do (that's your rucksack). He doesn't have a body which is making it difficult for him to resist eating (that's your hurt foot). He doesn't have your inability to ignore food cues or resist a rumbling stomach (that's the sun in your eyes). Ignoring food and hunger is far less of a challenge for him than for you so he can summon up the "will" to manage as easily as he crossed that bridge, and the chances he will fail are very low. Since he knows he can do it, he isn't reluctant to try because it doesn't even represent a milestone or substantial hurdle for him. You find the task very daunting and the prospect of failing is all too real. When you do fail, as you are very likely to do with your problems, you are mocked and judged, and you lose confidence in your capacity to ever succeed. Racking up one failure after another demoralizes you, and the fact that your friend keeps succeeding just makes you hate yourself all the more. What is more, his insistence that it's easy and you're clumsy or weak makes you feel even worse as you internalize the notion that you are deficient.

Talking about using willpower to deal with weight problems is essentially telling people to just cross the damn bridge already. It ignores the burdens and problems that make them reluctant to even try and the fact that those factors will almost certainly cause them to fail which will in turn result in more reluctance to try.

Repeated failure at any task results in something called "learned helplessness". That is where you fail so many times that you stop trying even when there is the prospect of success. This is why some overweight people simply give up and eat as much as they want, drowning their pain in food because they can't face the failure anymore. Before getting people to try, it's important to first remove the emotional baggage and find a way to deal with the physical problems before expecting that bridge to be successfully crossed. The less often they fail, the more likely they will be to keep trying.

So, I don't like the word "willpower" because it assumes we're all working with equal capacity to succeed or fail in our life's challenges. It's just another way for those who are blessed with an average capacity to cope to judge those with a less than average capacity to do so and has nothing to do with strength of character or even the motivation to overcome one's problems. Focusing on "willpower" only increases the chances of defeat and relapse.

Thursday: September 4, 2009

This was a pretty busy day work-wise and socially speaking, and I wasn't as "tight" about eating as I sometimes am, but didn't go over 1300 calories (at least by my rough calculations - it was 1270). I started the day with something which felt indulgent, but ended up being pretty good at seeing me through. I made dry French toast with one egg, one piece of white bread, two packets of Splenda, vanilla, and cinnamon which I cooked in reduced-calorie margarine. I was worried about the white bread, but it seems the egg balanced the blood sugar issues I have when eating white bread and I felt sated for about 4 hours.

I'll definitely make this French toast again because it was sweet, crispy, and filling (even without syrup or butter), but next time I'll throw a few more calories into the mix and cook with real butter. The reduced calorie stuff was so watery that it added no taste at all and the bread stuck to the pan while cooking. Given how little fat it takes to cook in a non-stick pan, I figure it's worth a bit more to have the flavor of butter.

In the evening, as is often the case, I had some problems which I dealt with by having 1/2 a pear, some crackers and some soup. Even though my count crept up near 1300 on a day when I want to do 1200, I was relatively pleased as I didn't eat at any time when I wasn't hungry and felt largely in control when I ate. That's often the bigger indicator of my sense of success than the actual counting as it influences my confidence in having such control throughout the week and in the distant future.

I read a bit about the New York City advertisement against drinking sugary sodas. That's the one where a hand pours a Coca-Cola-style bottle into a glass and the soda turns into human fat. The whole notion is to shock people. Personally, I don't know if the ad will work, but I haven't drank sugar-based sodas for a long time. I always drink diet sodas. I doubt most weight problems are based on soda consumption in large part, particular when you hear so many fat bashers mocking overweight people for ordering diet drinks with their super-size burgers and fries. The poster is just another simple solution to a complicated problem, and I expect it to generate more talk than good results.

Why Humiliation Doesn't Work

I've written a lot about how people go out of their way to judge and humiliate overweight people. One might wonder why, if it is so embarrassing and awful to be fat in this world, people don't just lose weight to escape the suffering they have to endure. The only people that wonder that are the same people who think the obesity problem can be solved by simple solutions. Their thinking about the issue is extremely shallow so they can't see the obvious.

What is the obvious? Here it is: people who are emotionally dependent on food to the extent that they develop an eating disorder are damaged. You don't make someone who is damaged better by beating up on them more. You damage them even more and send them further into their destructive coping mechanisms and make it all that much harder for them to find the capacity to change.

While certainly there will be a small number of people who can adopt an "I'll show everybody" attitude and pull themselves out of their lifestyle patterns, such people are rare, and it's even rarer that they don't eventually find themselves slowly slipping back to where they were. This is one of the reasons people so frequently regain their excess weight (and more). If you don't deal with the underlying biological and psychological issues, you're usually doomed to fall back into the patterns that made you fat in the first place.

If ostracizing, mocking, and judging fat people worked, we wouldn't have a growing obesity problem. If the world would figure out that hurting hurt people is unproductive and would try and support them, we could get started on dealing with the problem productively. Unfortunately, the trend appears to be to treat fat people more and more punitively rather than to attempt to create circumstances that will support any efforts to improve.

Fat Myth #4 - fat people are lazy

The general thinking about fat people is that they got that way because they were too lazy to move. I don't think that we can blame The Simpsons depiction of Homer as someone who spends his free time lazing on the sofa watching T.V. eating pork rinds or chips, but it sure isn't helping.

I can't speak for everyone who is overweight, but I rarely watch T.V., let alone do so while snacking on salty treats. Personally, I've known far more thin people who act like couch potatoes than fat ones. In terms of sloth, I have never witnessed a clear difference between people based on body weight. In fact, my husband is unabashedly a lazy person, and I rarely rest. That doesn't mean my activity is aerobic, but I'm always working on something. How can I be "lazy" if I never stop working?

The difference tends to come in when one looks at structured exercise. A lot of overweight people don't go out and jog, attend gyms, etc. Many people believe this is an indication of innate laziness and a lack of concern for one's well-being. That's a pat judgment which I believe rarely reflects reality. Most people who are overweight and sit around snacking at night have boring jobs that wear them out, kids to look after who tax their free time and energy, or, and this has been an issue for me, have a fear of going out in front of others and moving.

I've wanted for quite some time to just go out and walk for as long as I can everyday as a form of exercise which I can manage at this stage in my weight loss plan, but I had to work up a lot of courage to do so. If you can't guess why, then I'll tell you a little story from my youth that sums it up pretty well. One of my friends was a year or so younger than I and reported a situation that occurred in her class one day. They were in English class and my gym class was playing softball outside their window. When I came up to bat, the kids in her class had a high time making fun of me and how I was fat, slow, and not very good at playing. To his credit, her teacher defended me as someone who was smarter and harder studying than the lot that were mocking me (bless his heart and soul).

The point here is that any time a fat person tries to exercise in public, he or she has to face public judgment and mockery. Instead of people looking at the fat man out there trying to jog so he can lose weight and improve his health, they're tittering, whispering behind their hands or out and out making fun of him. If you knew that you were going to be belittled and humiliated every time you tried to engage in a physical activity, would you be out there engaging in it? In the end, one can exercise at home, but that requires a different sort of motivation. It isn't as healthy or enervating to jump on an exercise bike or elliptical trainer in your basement. Leaving the house is a cue for movement and gets you out of the environment which you are usually distracted in. Staying in it is a situation which requires you to cope with whatever else may interrupt your exercise like other people's demands, the phone, the doorbell, or nagging notions of what needs to be done around the house.

Fat people are not slothful. They work plenty and move plenty. If you don't see them exercising, then it probably has to do with society's attitudes toward watching them move. It's hard enough when your body is large and ungainly to exercise without the added notion that you're some sort of comedy floor show for the world.