Archive for the ‘emotion’ Category
Learning to mourn without food
I am sad.
I have been sad now for five days (give or take two days in the middle, where I thought I’d found peace).
But yesterday, in a middle of a conversation with Michael J. about de-cluttering, despair washed over in me in waves.
The spirit of my beloved companion for the last 19 1/2 years departed her body and returned to the – for lack of a better word – “energy soup” of the universe.
And I am left here, staring at my other life-long companion – food – with longing.
And not just any food, but the fat, salt, and sugar filled foods.
If I didn’t know that Michael would catch me full out, there is not a doubt in my find that I could finish off a jar of peanut butter (or a tub of tahini or a bottle of wine) without blinking an eye.
I finally know what people mean by the term “numbing out.”
So I drink my water, munch on kale chips, and exercise.
Instead of grabbing a spoon, I picked up an old forgotten chick lit novel that I’d bought once in some airport that I started but never finished.
And when Harley, Michael J’s cat, who isn’t sure what it means exactly to be the only cat in the house again, crawls up next to me and lays his head in the crook of my arm, I am simultaneously grateful and guilty.
Feeling your feelings. Who knew?
I settled down to sleep in Michael’s arms last night and just as I started to drift, deep choking wails broke forth from my chest – again, like a tidal wave, uncontrollable, unexpected, unheralded.
Life moves forward, haltingly, without compassion – and, if I have anything to do with it – without peanut butter or anything else that I might be tempted to use not only to ease, but also to hide, cover, and ignore the loss of a life that meant so much to me.
I love you
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
Shining the Light On the Ghost of Gym Teachers Past
A few weeks ago (or maybe months at this point), I told you that I had started doing High Intensity Interval Training, otherwise known as H.I.I.T.
I was pretty excited about it and I told you that I would keep you posted. Part of the reason I was excited about it is that it gives you little bursts of energy – bursts of energy that may very well have saved the life of Michael J’s super-friendly, but not overly bright feline, Harlequin. But that’s another story and one that I’ve shared before.
Since that fortuitous day, my love of H.I.I.T. has dwindled.
1) It’s hard.
2) It’s not nearly as fun as spinning.
3) Did I mention that it’s hard?
Or at least that’s the story I kept telling myself – all the while ignoring the fact that I loved how I felt once I was done (partly because it is hard and I really felt like I accomplished something) and how I could literally see and feel myself getting stronger by the day.
So, I sat down and really thought about it. Why do I dislike this so much? Why do I have such strong internal resistance to this particular form of exercise? I mean, seriously. I am a woman who did P90X (three times) with more enthusiasm. So what’s the deal?
The clues to the answer to my question came from two places.
One, I was bemoaning my fate to my Aunt Linda and she said, “I think I might actually like this. It sounds like the stuff we used to do in school. And it doesn’t sound like you need a lot of fancy equipment.”
Ding.
Something resonated deep down in the depths of my psyche.
Two, I’ve been working with a personal coach who is awesome. She’s been having me do written exercises that will help me bust through the resistance I have to doing certain things in my real life – things like reviewing articles, starting my book, cleaning the house, doing H.I.I.T. exercises.
During the one of the exercises, one of the steps is to write down all of the negative emotions and thoughts associated with doing H.I.I.T. When I got to that part, I heard that same low tone. And all of a sudden, I was back at the gym at Carver Middle School, during the week of the the Presidential Fitness Test – thank you Ronald Reagan. May you be best remembered for terrorizing poor, clumsy, fat kids across America.
I realized that not only did H.I.I.T. remind me of middle school gym class in general (just like they had reminded my Aunt of hers), but it also reminded me of one particular instance of middle school gym class that was so personally horrifying that I didn’t even tell my sister about it until a few months ago (some 27 years after the fact). And when I told Michael J., sometime after that, I cried.
Methinks herein lies the problem.
I’m putting this out there – shining the light on my demons, if you will – to see if I can exorcise them once and for all and hopefully, get on with the act of exercising!
At my middle school, we had a female coach (Coach Holmes) and a male coach (Coach Rogers). Technically, I was in Coach Rogers’ class, who was a very sensitive and perceptive soul. However, during the week of the Presidential FItness Tests, all of the girls went to Coach Holmes’ office to get weighed and measured and all the boys reported to Coach Rogers’. Unfortunately, Coach Holmes, though nice enough, was not nearly as sensitive or perceptive as her male counterpart.
Imagine, if you will, a group of middle-school aged girls standing in line as the teacher for all intents and purposes shouts out your weight to her student aid, who just happened to be her very attractive, athletic, and if memory serves reigning kick-pin champion/cheerleader daughter, Kendra.
I step onto the scale.
Dead silence.
I look at Coach Holmes.
She looks at me.
We look at the scale: 180.
“It must be broken,” she says.
“It’s not broken,” I say. “Why would it be broken now when it wasn’t broken when anyone else stepped on it?”
“That can’t be right,” she says.
“It’s right,” I assure.
Kendra, bless her heart, looks embarrassed.
“Go down to Coach Roger’s office and use his scale. That can’t be right.”
“It’s right.”
“Just do down to Coach’s office and try it again.”
I remember stepping off the scale and marching, face beet red, down to the other end of the cavernous gym, thinking I had never been so mortified in my life.
I was wrong.
Halfway down the length of the basketball quart, I hear Coach Holmes yell, “Coach Rogers, I’m sending Lively down there to weigh, because I think this scale is broken.”
The entire gym fell silent and 60 pairs of eyes landed on my chubby body simultaneously.
Someone laughed.
(Do you blame them?)
I kept my head up and walked steadily into Coach Roger’s office.
“Lively?”
“It’s not broken,” I said.
And he nodded silently and laid a sympathetic hand on my arm. “I’ll tell her.”
Maybe there is something valuable about airing your dirty laundry, because as I tell it, it doesn’t seem that bad. But as I carried it around with me for years, it was one of my most tightly guarded miseries. I’m hopeful that tomorrow, when it’s time to exercise, I will not feel that lingering sense of dread, reluctance, or resistance.
By putting it out there for the world to see, to share, and perhaps even to think, “What’s she complaining about? That’s nothing,” maybe it will, indeed, become nothing.
As always, I’ll let you know.
And if any of my old middle school friends read this and you ever happen to see Coach Holmes, give her my best. Because I realize, in retrospect, that that’s what she was only trying to do.
Falling off the food wagon
Filed under: challenges, emotion, food, relationships, stress eating, travel |
Leave a Comment The last couple of days have been more indicative of family vacations, I’m afraid.
Ironically, it wasn’t even them. It was all me.
Monday, we were off for an unexpected family funeral that was scheduled at 2:00 p.m. I got up, went for a walk, had a shake, packed up some blueberries and that was it. And although my mother has a medical condition that requires that food be readily available, my parents hadn’t packed anything else either. At some point my Dad said, “Why didn’t you bring one of those little bags of carrots you’re always carrying around?”
Good question.
Bad answer: Poor planning on my part!
As it turns out, my Aunt lives truly in the middle of nowhere and we were having lunch after the funeral (that is, dinner), not before.
Luckily I had a Dark Chocolate Zone Bar in my purse.
The funeral ran long (as they often do when held in a church in the south). We stopped at a gas station, where I scrounged a bottle of V-8 juice and a bag of Baked Lay’s. Has anyone ever noticed how Baked Lay’s taste like cardboard?
Back to the story: it was also as hot as hell and when we got to my Aunt’s (along with 30 other people), the air conditioning was out and she still insisted on frying fish and potatoes, making it officially hotter than hell! These were to accompany the pork roast, the brisket (no more brisket, please!), the pork and beans, the spiral ham, the brownies, the cake, and her world famous chocolate cream and coconut cream pie. Not a vegetable (other than corn on the cob swimming in butter to be found).
Luckily, it was literally too hot to eat. Though I did try a sliver of chocolate pie; it’s still as good as when I was a child.
We got home at 8:30. I made a shake, went to a friend’s house (the friend that I was supposed to have had dinner with). We ended up going to a local pub, where, still ravenous, I had two dirty martinis and split an appetizer with her of her choice, which turned out to be a thin crust, wood fired pizza. Not so bad, though I probably should have skipped the second martini.
It was when I got home at midnight that it went even further south. I bienged. It was unbelievable: icecream, lavash with hummus, and tabouli (not in that order). When I finally forced myself out of the kitchen, I felt disgusting, and not unlike I was about thirteen again!
But, unlike the thirteen yeat old I once was, I at least realized what went wrong.
Poor planning and inadequate nutrition leads to poor dietary choices. I was also tired and even though the person that died wasn’t a close relative (she was my mother’s sister’s husband’s mother), there was something about the funeral, the energy, and being around my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins, that set off my desire to emotionally eat. It also may have something to do with the fact that everytime I come home, it seems, we’re going to a funeral. In fact, this one was unplanned, but I had had the foresight to toss in a skirt. Maybe it’s the fact that my parents are getting older and I’m afraid that the next time might be them. Whatever it was, it was an ugly combination for food. And I’m sure that the inhibition olive dressed libation didn’t help either.
One of those days!
I woke up in a great mood today. The sun was shining. I had a good work plan. I had packed a nice, healthy lunch. I decided not to go the gym first thing, because I was going to work out at home with k-bells and maybe even do a little bit of yoga.
Time for some back story: Last week I took my five year old car in for a 60,000 mile tune up. The shop recommended that I have a small seal replaced (as it was still under warranty). It was a bad seal to have leaking, because they had to take the transmission out to get to it. All together, even with the warranty (and $400 worth of rebates from my credit card company) it was still close to $500. Ouch.
As soon as I drove the car off of the lot, I noticed that there was this high pitched airy whine that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t consistent, though I noticed it more whenever I would shift into third gear. It kept it up all week and then I didn’t drive the car all weekend.
This morning, on my way in, I decided to swing by the auto shop. 1) The whine was much more pronounced. 2) I was also beginning to hear something that sounded broken. 3) When I shifted from third to fourth, the car gave a deep shudder — like a horse on its last legs. I decided to go through town instead of taking the back roads.
Right as I was heading around the town square, in one of the biggest commuter spots in the region — which, granted, really isn’t that big — the car seizes up, shudders, and drops to a dead halt. Whoa, Nelly! I think she’s dead, Jim.
I ran across the street to the local Curves (where I used to workout) called MJ, called the car store, who promptly called a tow truck. When I got back to the car, two minutes later, the police were already there.
I rode with the tow guy to the car place and they dropped me off at work.
What does this have to do with food, you ask?
Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve sat it my desk and munched my way through my daily allotted calories — and the clock hasn’t even struck three! More to the point, I realized somewhere between the two Balance bars that I plowed through (within a hour period) that I am on a low grade binge. It’s been a while, but here I am. I thought I’d gotten a better handle on stress-related eating. Apparently I was wrong. Though, not to beat myself up too badly, there were days in the not so distant past that I would have eaten 1,303 calories in an hour, let alone 8 1/2! But still. Sigh.
So, what’s my plan? Well, first things first, I just drank a second slug of Perfect Food to (hopefully) break the cycle.
I also gave in and called the car store and it turns out that I was right. The seal they put in hadn’t set. All of the transmission fluid leaked out. The transmission locked up. And the heat melted/destroyed several of the ball bearings in the transmission (and who knows what else, but if they do know, they’re certainly not saying)!
Good news: their fault, not mine. Towing, repair, and rental are on them. Thank god for small mercies.
After that, I managed to get some work going, but then I hit another wall.
So, as soon as MJ comes to take me to the shop to pick up the rental, I’ll go to the grocery store, head home and exercise. And when I’m done there (depending on the time), I’ll sit down with a huge platter of steamed vegetables, read a couple chapters of a good book, have some herbal tea, and go to bed.
As a famous heroine once said, “Tomorrow is another day.”
Learning to Say No (with grace)
Yesterday, one of my colleagues walked into my tiny airtight office with a plate of freshly baked (I mean, she had just baked them in the toaster oven in the main office–damn devoted mothers of three children who know such evil tricks!)–and said, smilingly, “It’s cookie time!”
“No thank you,” I responded sharply, through gritted teeth, holding my breath. I barely even glanced at her.
Just to provide a little back story, I gained twenty pounds last year eating chocolate chip cookies while I was waiting for my tenure decision. It’s not that I don’t like chocolate chip cookies. On the contrary, I love chocolate chip cookies. And, to add insult to injury, yesterday, I just happened to be a little tired and a lot stressed. Not the optimal time for someone to walk in bearing my own personal version of crack!
Anyway, back to the story. She said, “Oh, sorry.” Turned and immediately walked out.
So I got what I wanted, right? Not really. Because I had turned down her emotional offering as well as her baked goods. In a broader sense, I also rejected her (during a time when she, too, has a lot going on). Believe it or not, I called her back to explain.
“I’m sure they’re wonderful,” I admitted. “And normally I would love to have one–maybe even two–but in this case, I have to pass because I’m committed to maintaining my weight loss. But thanks.”
She accepted that. I had given her a reason that seemed reasonable. And more importantly, she felt like I had accepted her gift, even though I hadn’t.
All together it was a win-win and, fortunately for me, it was warm enough to open the window!
Speaking of Useful Acronyms….
When I posted the other day about C-A-N-I, it made me think of another anagram that I have used over the years. Back during my days at Weight Watchers, my group leader kept a big colorful poster on the wall. HALT, it said. Don’t ever let yourself get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Throughout all of my fitness efforts, I have tried to keep that in mind, because it’s when I’m really annoyed, hungry or tired that I tend to overeat. And not only overeat, but eat the types of things that do not support my body in a healthy and vital way. Unfortunately many of us have learned to manage our emotions with with food.
In coming posts, I will talk about the links between emotion management and hunger management.
Despite their seeming dissimilarity, they are surprisingly close. I’ll also share some strategies that I have learned/developed in order to combat both.
