I am convinced that we all have one. An ideal. A less-than-ideal. A "I have become that guy" number. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps some Americans go about the world without even thinking about it. But with every other news story being related to "America's Obesity Epidemic" (talk about a misuse of the term epidemic), I have a hard time believing that even the most well-adjusted conscious consumer doesn't have a set of numbers shelved in the back of their subconscious, retrieved every once in awhile when insecurities come knocking.
When I went to my first nutritionist appointment in July, she asked if I had a number. She asked after we talked about my eating disorder medical records. I knew the "right" answer. "No," I said. "I would like to lose between 20-30 pounds because I think I would be healthier and closer to my weight range but I don't think my body will ever fit into the weight range doctors prescribed. I think my body will decide where it wants to be." She nodded in approval. This is what an eating disordered person in remission would say.
I don't believe this. But as a health conscious person, as a person seeking balance, as an academic who focuses the bulk of my research on the Women's Health Movement and the Disability Movement (including the anti-institutionalization movement), I want to believe this is true. I want to trust that my body knows something that the rest of me doesn't. But I actually think this kind of rhetoric is a utopic metaphor. I don't believe my body has a separate set of knowledge from my brain--the two work together and are also the same thing. Panic attacks are a great moment to realize how much the two are actually the same.
My partner-- an athlete, a radical lefty, a visual culture theorist-- recently got on a scale herself after six months of krav maga training. She confided that she was surprised that she weighed the most she ever has. After a few days, she followed up: "I decided I am just going to embrace it. I'm healthy." Which is true. But the medical charts would likely tell her to lose weight (those bmi models were created during the depression to regulate starvation and have not been updated since--yet we are basing an "obesity epidemic" on them).
Cat, the most balanced person I know, has a set of numbers. She doesn't fixate on them. She doesn't base her self-worth on them. But when she hits some sort of "oh shit" number, she takes some time to adjust. And I think following a "trust your body, it will do it's thing" model, which is a utopic premise reiterated like a mantra at many eating disorder clinics (including the one where I spent two years), ignores important cultural meanings that need to be thoughtfully contested. Numbers exist. The same medical industry that mainstream eating disorder treatment centers are pandering so hard to in order to be considered legitimate are emphasizing diagnostic models based on numbers. And while clinicians base much of their praxis following medical industry protocol, they are telling their patients that numbers don't matter. This is one way the medical industry is maintaining its control.
What happens to an industry's power when individuals question numbers, hold numbers accountable for representing well-being as opposed to ignoring them? Where is the balance between the practical reliance on numbers and the body/brain knowledge?
This is a project about finding balance in my twenty-eighth year. And losing some weight. This in the midst of beginning a longer-distance relationship with my partner, taking my PhD Candidacy exams, and continuing my mental health recovery.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Emergency Cookie
Those close to me (I won't name names, but you know who you are) don't believe the following is a real recipe. But it works. I swear. It actually came from my aunt, who bakes constantly for church and does mini-catering for funerals and other church events. I have relied on this recipe when in a pinch for years.
1 cup peanutbutter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
Makes 12 cookies. Bake at 350 for ten minutes-ish.
This is what I like about this recipe: you probably always have the ingredients in your cupboard. It also only makes 12 regular-size cookies, which means they won't hang around the house too long. And unlike the pre-made dough that you can buy and slice and make one or two cookies at a time if you so wish, this is cheap.
When my nutritionist was asking me last month a little bit about my eating disorder history and how I ended up in the hospital, she asked if I had any "binge foods". My response: "I was purging 5-6 times a day for a couple of years by the time I was in the hospital, so I would say everything." Her response: "So it was just a lifestyle."
This is true. It was a lifestyle. But it is also true that there are some kinds of foods that affect our brain chemistry in a way that makes it either hard to stop eating them (because they don't make us feel full, because, as with sugar and caffeine, they have some addictive qualities) or hard to keep down (because they make you feel too full--they are greasy, heavy, or cause indigestion). Just as bodies react to alcohol differently, each body as its own way of responding to food combinations. When I was just beginning recovery, I wanted to make my space a safe zone so I was careful about what I kept in my cupboards (hard to do with roommates, but that is why I always had roommates who I was completely "out" about my disorder with--being out was a prevention in itself). This meant no snack food, ever.
As I got more confident in my recovery, I became more lax and tortilla chips and salsa and pbr became a staple in my fridge (I always wanted something to offer when people came over). Once I started dating my partner, I would say our cupboards became "normal"--Cat likes to keep one salty and one sweet snack stocked (we are on a budget so our snack food is at a minimum). But cookies are something that she LOVES (that, and ice cream). So we often don't keep them in the house because they risk getting eaten too quickly. If we want them, we go to a cafe or an ice cream shop.
So last night, Cat and I are sitting on the couch watching Spike Lee's 1986 film debut and I needed cookies like it was going out of style. I had been busy helping a friend with her new baby all day and packing boxes for her and had completely missed lunch. So even though I ate my other snacks and two meals, I still had missed a substantial amount of food. At first I thought it would just even out over the next few days but around nine o'clock, I was ravenous and craving. The up side: I knew exactly what I wanted.
Enter: the emergency cookie recipe.
Even with our food split between two houses (turns out, the baking sheet was also in the new apartment, which meant I had to bake the cookies in muffin tins), we had the stuff for cookies. Twenty minutes later, I satisfied my craving. And made the house smell phenomenal.
No binging. No scavenging. No regrets.
1 cup peanutbutter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
Makes 12 cookies. Bake at 350 for ten minutes-ish.
This is what I like about this recipe: you probably always have the ingredients in your cupboard. It also only makes 12 regular-size cookies, which means they won't hang around the house too long. And unlike the pre-made dough that you can buy and slice and make one or two cookies at a time if you so wish, this is cheap.
When my nutritionist was asking me last month a little bit about my eating disorder history and how I ended up in the hospital, she asked if I had any "binge foods". My response: "I was purging 5-6 times a day for a couple of years by the time I was in the hospital, so I would say everything." Her response: "So it was just a lifestyle."
This is true. It was a lifestyle. But it is also true that there are some kinds of foods that affect our brain chemistry in a way that makes it either hard to stop eating them (because they don't make us feel full, because, as with sugar and caffeine, they have some addictive qualities) or hard to keep down (because they make you feel too full--they are greasy, heavy, or cause indigestion). Just as bodies react to alcohol differently, each body as its own way of responding to food combinations. When I was just beginning recovery, I wanted to make my space a safe zone so I was careful about what I kept in my cupboards (hard to do with roommates, but that is why I always had roommates who I was completely "out" about my disorder with--being out was a prevention in itself). This meant no snack food, ever.
As I got more confident in my recovery, I became more lax and tortilla chips and salsa and pbr became a staple in my fridge (I always wanted something to offer when people came over). Once I started dating my partner, I would say our cupboards became "normal"--Cat likes to keep one salty and one sweet snack stocked (we are on a budget so our snack food is at a minimum). But cookies are something that she LOVES (that, and ice cream). So we often don't keep them in the house because they risk getting eaten too quickly. If we want them, we go to a cafe or an ice cream shop.
So last night, Cat and I are sitting on the couch watching Spike Lee's 1986 film debut and I needed cookies like it was going out of style. I had been busy helping a friend with her new baby all day and packing boxes for her and had completely missed lunch. So even though I ate my other snacks and two meals, I still had missed a substantial amount of food. At first I thought it would just even out over the next few days but around nine o'clock, I was ravenous and craving. The up side: I knew exactly what I wanted.
Enter: the emergency cookie recipe.
Even with our food split between two houses (turns out, the baking sheet was also in the new apartment, which meant I had to bake the cookies in muffin tins), we had the stuff for cookies. Twenty minutes later, I satisfied my craving. And made the house smell phenomenal.
No binging. No scavenging. No regrets.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
On Gear-Heads and Common Sense
Yesterday my partner appeared, adorably (as usual), at my apartment door with a pack of tennis balls and two small wooden rackets ala 1960's (we think). Three dollars spent at goodwill. We had an evening of hilarity at a tennis court that is a thirty minute walk (along a river bike trail) from my house. I was proud of myself because I had made gym plans earlier in the day and when she arrived just before lunchtime with our new equipment, I was able to let go of my "routine" for another activity. This flexibility is key for me because of my history of compulsive over-exercise. My nutritionist advised that as long as my activity is around 30 mins/day, I don't have to worry so much about what I am doing to get my heart-rate up and my muscles moving. This is a relief because given my chronic pain and mobility issues in my hips, a lot of repetitive exercise is off-limits. Because neither of partner or I is an actual tennis player, I wouldn't say the tennis playing itself was much of a workout but combined with the sixty minute walk, I would say it was successful movement. But here's the other thing I realized: I liked having the outlandishly old equipment. And here's why.
Experts are always saying that the key to losing weight and getting healthy is finding exercise that you like doing. I'm personally finding that the other key is finding something not excruciatingly painful. But I know I find myself a little less willing to learn new physical things as I I get older because I'm self-conscious about my body and my coordination. My family never had the money to invest in dance classes or karate and my neighborhood (a working-class, working-poor neighborhood in urban Massachusetts) didn't offer much by way of sports teams. And of course, with the budget cuts in the early 1990's, we had no phys ed in school and for a time, no playground. Needless to say, my physical skills are limited.
It took a few years with a phenomenal anti-racist, anti-classist feminist therapist in Boston (who is against participating in DSM diagnosis) to figure out that part of what was keeping me from learning new physical things was a feeling that if you don't have the advantage to learn something early on, you shouldn't do it. It's not available for you. And this is one way, I think, class oppression continues across generations. It's not just in how much material wealth we have, but in how much we feel opportunities to learn new things (intellectual, physical) are available to us as adults. My parents, for instance, haven't taken a class unrelated to work for as long as I can remember. Anyway, I broke this cycle in Boston. I took my first dance class from one of my grad school besties who studies Middle Eastern dance. I was atrocious. But I moved. And I got to show off my flexibility, even when my coordination was suspiciously absent entirely. I also signed up for university yoga classes. I had been doing yoga since being involved in a high school yoga club (which functioned as a lunch time catch all for all the new kids who had no friends--I had just moved from MA to Maine) but did most of my learning through books and dvds because I felt classes were too expensive. I got in a little bit of a rut again when I moved to Ohio but the four months of Krav Maga classes with my partner this winter helped me dig my way out of the "undeserving" mindset again.
I think I've gotten a little off-track. Here's the thing about gear-heads and playing with old tennis rackets that I'm trying to get at. The idea that you need expensive special equipment to be involved in sports is not only materialist and ridiculous, but it actually functions as a form of class oppression. I led girl scouts on hiking and camping trips around Alaska in a three-year-old pair of 60 dollar LL Bean boots. I've hiked all over Germany in doc martins that I waitressed in for six years. 3 dollar pajama pants work for yoga (or, if you are in your living room, your underwear). You can bike in sweatpants. Goodwill tennis rackets are fine. This isn't to say that biking shorts that wisk away sweat aren't nice, that smartwool socks that cushion hiking boots aren't helpful, that yoga shorts themselves don't help when you reach a certain level of balancing postures (fabric can be impeding). But unless you are training, you don't need stuff to work out. You need company. You need to replace your running shoes every 6-12 months (regardless of how much you pay for them). You need to pump up your bike tires (my bike was bought used from a fabulous Boston organization Bikes Not Bombs and has been running great for years. My bike pump cost me six bucks).
I went to college in the mountains in Maine. There's a certain subset of people who hike who are obsessed with the lightest gear, the most high tec gortex boots, and wool hats that have specific branding emblazoned across the front. These people profess that its dangerous to go out without specific kinds of gear. The problem with this is that it make mountains feel off-limits to a whole class of people. What's dangerous is going out without common sense and a water bottle.
Two days ago, I was walking from the pool to the locker room in my one piece red flowered swimsuit that I purchased as a first-summer camp counselor when I was 18. A twelve year old waiting with her little brother said to me: "That's a pretty swimsuit. Where did you get your tattoo?" And pointed to my back. And I thought to myself: all I need to workout is my body.
Experts are always saying that the key to losing weight and getting healthy is finding exercise that you like doing. I'm personally finding that the other key is finding something not excruciatingly painful. But I know I find myself a little less willing to learn new physical things as I I get older because I'm self-conscious about my body and my coordination. My family never had the money to invest in dance classes or karate and my neighborhood (a working-class, working-poor neighborhood in urban Massachusetts) didn't offer much by way of sports teams. And of course, with the budget cuts in the early 1990's, we had no phys ed in school and for a time, no playground. Needless to say, my physical skills are limited.
It took a few years with a phenomenal anti-racist, anti-classist feminist therapist in Boston (who is against participating in DSM diagnosis) to figure out that part of what was keeping me from learning new physical things was a feeling that if you don't have the advantage to learn something early on, you shouldn't do it. It's not available for you. And this is one way, I think, class oppression continues across generations. It's not just in how much material wealth we have, but in how much we feel opportunities to learn new things (intellectual, physical) are available to us as adults. My parents, for instance, haven't taken a class unrelated to work for as long as I can remember. Anyway, I broke this cycle in Boston. I took my first dance class from one of my grad school besties who studies Middle Eastern dance. I was atrocious. But I moved. And I got to show off my flexibility, even when my coordination was suspiciously absent entirely. I also signed up for university yoga classes. I had been doing yoga since being involved in a high school yoga club (which functioned as a lunch time catch all for all the new kids who had no friends--I had just moved from MA to Maine) but did most of my learning through books and dvds because I felt classes were too expensive. I got in a little bit of a rut again when I moved to Ohio but the four months of Krav Maga classes with my partner this winter helped me dig my way out of the "undeserving" mindset again.
I think I've gotten a little off-track. Here's the thing about gear-heads and playing with old tennis rackets that I'm trying to get at. The idea that you need expensive special equipment to be involved in sports is not only materialist and ridiculous, but it actually functions as a form of class oppression. I led girl scouts on hiking and camping trips around Alaska in a three-year-old pair of 60 dollar LL Bean boots. I've hiked all over Germany in doc martins that I waitressed in for six years. 3 dollar pajama pants work for yoga (or, if you are in your living room, your underwear). You can bike in sweatpants. Goodwill tennis rackets are fine. This isn't to say that biking shorts that wisk away sweat aren't nice, that smartwool socks that cushion hiking boots aren't helpful, that yoga shorts themselves don't help when you reach a certain level of balancing postures (fabric can be impeding). But unless you are training, you don't need stuff to work out. You need company. You need to replace your running shoes every 6-12 months (regardless of how much you pay for them). You need to pump up your bike tires (my bike was bought used from a fabulous Boston organization Bikes Not Bombs and has been running great for years. My bike pump cost me six bucks).
I went to college in the mountains in Maine. There's a certain subset of people who hike who are obsessed with the lightest gear, the most high tec gortex boots, and wool hats that have specific branding emblazoned across the front. These people profess that its dangerous to go out without specific kinds of gear. The problem with this is that it make mountains feel off-limits to a whole class of people. What's dangerous is going out without common sense and a water bottle.
Two days ago, I was walking from the pool to the locker room in my one piece red flowered swimsuit that I purchased as a first-summer camp counselor when I was 18. A twelve year old waiting with her little brother said to me: "That's a pretty swimsuit. Where did you get your tattoo?" And pointed to my back. And I thought to myself: all I need to workout is my body.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Trust
I think this one is a hard one for me. I'm realizing that Project 28 is really a project about trusting that my body will somehow get to where it needs to be.
Ten official days into my project, I decided to get on a scale. When I brainstormed this Project 28 initially, I thought that I would weigh myself just once a month to make sure things are on track, which is also something the nutritionist recommended doing (but no more than once every 2 weeks, because numbers fluctuate naturally).
But I found myself at the gym, feeling defeated, like I had been too lenient with myself, missing a few workouts, eating a few too many carbs. I felt my body (shoulders, neck, chest) tighten up as I got onto the gym scale and when I looked down at my hands, I noticed my fingers were crossed. It's funny how our body can respond without our knowing it. I looked around. I felt like I would get in trouble, like one of the clinic nurses would sneak up on me from behind and give me a lecture about how "numbers aren't important" and how I'm "derailing my trust in the program by looking at a scale".
This is the thing. I spent a lot of time in clinics in my early twenties, getting manipulated by patriarchal authority (I would say, as someone who theorizes disability and psychiatric history for a living, that mainstream eating disorder treatment, supported by organizations like NEDA, are the vestiges of psychiatric institutionalization--I'm sure I'll write more about this later), being taught not to trust my body or my own intuition, but to "trust the program". I remember my first meal in the clinic when I felt I couldn't fit a sandwich, my stomach tightening against my sides, acid searing my esophagus, the director of the clinic saying, "You can't trust your body. You've trained your body to be too unhealthy. Trust the program." Trusting the program meant trusting him, trusting a treatment model designed for anoretics by insurance companies statistically designing how to pay the least amount of money. I wasn't an anoretic. I didn't need to gain weight. And I did need, because of my internal bleeding near my aortic artery, to not have heartburn. I involuntarily threw up, blood, minutes after that meal. Perhaps the heartburn should have told me something--told the treatment team something. That solid food was not what my body needed. That I had nearly no digestive system. Perhaps my cardiac arythmias, what I felt so intimately alone in my dorm room, what eventually scared me enough to get into treatment in the first place, should have been the thing "trusted".
But of course, my body was sick.
My intellect and intuition could not be trusted.
Someone else must watch me, bathroom door open.
Someone else must keep track of my "numbers", to be reported every day to an insurance company (weight, electrolytes, ekg) so that they could decide when treatment was done.
What I'm learning is that this Project 28 cannot be determined by numbers. It must be determined by trust. And trust is not a science.
Needless to say, despite the oreos, pizza, and general stress of moving, the scale told me I am right on track. And knowing that renewed my trust.
Ten official days into my project, I decided to get on a scale. When I brainstormed this Project 28 initially, I thought that I would weigh myself just once a month to make sure things are on track, which is also something the nutritionist recommended doing (but no more than once every 2 weeks, because numbers fluctuate naturally).
But I found myself at the gym, feeling defeated, like I had been too lenient with myself, missing a few workouts, eating a few too many carbs. I felt my body (shoulders, neck, chest) tighten up as I got onto the gym scale and when I looked down at my hands, I noticed my fingers were crossed. It's funny how our body can respond without our knowing it. I looked around. I felt like I would get in trouble, like one of the clinic nurses would sneak up on me from behind and give me a lecture about how "numbers aren't important" and how I'm "derailing my trust in the program by looking at a scale".
This is the thing. I spent a lot of time in clinics in my early twenties, getting manipulated by patriarchal authority (I would say, as someone who theorizes disability and psychiatric history for a living, that mainstream eating disorder treatment, supported by organizations like NEDA, are the vestiges of psychiatric institutionalization--I'm sure I'll write more about this later), being taught not to trust my body or my own intuition, but to "trust the program". I remember my first meal in the clinic when I felt I couldn't fit a sandwich, my stomach tightening against my sides, acid searing my esophagus, the director of the clinic saying, "You can't trust your body. You've trained your body to be too unhealthy. Trust the program." Trusting the program meant trusting him, trusting a treatment model designed for anoretics by insurance companies statistically designing how to pay the least amount of money. I wasn't an anoretic. I didn't need to gain weight. And I did need, because of my internal bleeding near my aortic artery, to not have heartburn. I involuntarily threw up, blood, minutes after that meal. Perhaps the heartburn should have told me something--told the treatment team something. That solid food was not what my body needed. That I had nearly no digestive system. Perhaps my cardiac arythmias, what I felt so intimately alone in my dorm room, what eventually scared me enough to get into treatment in the first place, should have been the thing "trusted".
But of course, my body was sick.
My intellect and intuition could not be trusted.
Someone else must watch me, bathroom door open.
Someone else must keep track of my "numbers", to be reported every day to an insurance company (weight, electrolytes, ekg) so that they could decide when treatment was done.
What I'm learning is that this Project 28 cannot be determined by numbers. It must be determined by trust. And trust is not a science.
Needless to say, despite the oreos, pizza, and general stress of moving, the scale told me I am right on track. And knowing that renewed my trust.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Two Fridges and Not a Damn Thing in Them
So the problem that I'm encountering right now with my Project 28 Goal is that Cat and I are splitting our time between two apartments. It reminds me of when we first started dating a few years ago and we commuted across our Boston neighborhoods, staying the night wherever made the most sense. Except that we each had our "own" fridges and didn't have joint expenses. I fed us when we were at my house, she fed us at hers. Now we have two "joint" fridges, one joint banking account; trying to keep groceries within budget yet stocked in both fridges is becoming tricky. Which house has the soy chicken patties? Which has the stir fry veggies? One house had plums that needed to get eaten today--which one was that?
This particular challenge to Project 28 is temporary. Slowly, as we move more kitchen stuff to my new apartment and eat less at the old apartment, the challenge will dissipate. Also, much of my time for the next month is my own since I am not teaching and not taking a second summer session of classes. Which means no structure. Which makes eating healthy (i.e. remembering to eat at regular intervals so I don't hit the desperate-starving stage of hunger) difficult.
Here's something about me: Every time a new quarter starts, I pull out a blank sheet of paper and with pen and pencil, sketch out my ideal weekly routine. In the schedule is meal times, shower times, gym times, teaching times, class times, writing times, reading times, research times, office hours, prep time, volunteer time ( I spend about 3 hours/wk at a local AIDS service org) and even, dare I say, television time. And I try to leave a few chunks of time completely blank for my partner and I. As well as evenings after 7 (I start my day around 6:30). I've used my google calendar before but I find the process with pen and paper more relaxing and more concrete. But here's what I'm realizing as I am moving into this next phase of my life: I may have to do this schedule week by week. As I move away from structured time and into my exam "reading hours" and as my partner starts her own PhD in Chicago (she has been working a 9-5 nonprofit job, which meant more structured time but I know her own preferences for schoolwork are much less structured than my own), I realize that my concentration for work isn't going to happen at the same time every day. There is a part of me that is terrified of losing structure, as if structure itself equals focus and commitment and control.
For this month, Cat and I are making our plans day by day.
I also have been realizing in the past few days that structured time is also the only way I believe that Project 28 will work. More on this later.
This particular challenge to Project 28 is temporary. Slowly, as we move more kitchen stuff to my new apartment and eat less at the old apartment, the challenge will dissipate. Also, much of my time for the next month is my own since I am not teaching and not taking a second summer session of classes. Which means no structure. Which makes eating healthy (i.e. remembering to eat at regular intervals so I don't hit the desperate-starving stage of hunger) difficult.
Here's something about me: Every time a new quarter starts, I pull out a blank sheet of paper and with pen and pencil, sketch out my ideal weekly routine. In the schedule is meal times, shower times, gym times, teaching times, class times, writing times, reading times, research times, office hours, prep time, volunteer time ( I spend about 3 hours/wk at a local AIDS service org) and even, dare I say, television time. And I try to leave a few chunks of time completely blank for my partner and I. As well as evenings after 7 (I start my day around 6:30). I've used my google calendar before but I find the process with pen and paper more relaxing and more concrete. But here's what I'm realizing as I am moving into this next phase of my life: I may have to do this schedule week by week. As I move away from structured time and into my exam "reading hours" and as my partner starts her own PhD in Chicago (she has been working a 9-5 nonprofit job, which meant more structured time but I know her own preferences for schoolwork are much less structured than my own), I realize that my concentration for work isn't going to happen at the same time every day. There is a part of me that is terrified of losing structure, as if structure itself equals focus and commitment and control.
For this month, Cat and I are making our plans day by day.
I also have been realizing in the past few days that structured time is also the only way I believe that Project 28 will work. More on this later.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Moving Weekend: Pizza anyone?
This blog post will be a short one. It's moving weekend so I'm finding it necessary for me to be flexible with the gym and nutrition plan. My body (hips--I think my physical therapist will be upset with me when I get back to her) is already aching just from the few trips I've done to my new place with small boxes and wall hanging in the backseat of my car. And it's becoming increasingly more difficult to cook at the kitchen gets packed up. I know SO MANY of you can relate to this--I'm hoping that I can get back to everything a week from now and for the next few days, do my best to eat fruits and veggies and stretch out my body.
I do have to say, though, that when I got the key to my new place and realized that I would have a digital code to get into my building, I felt some of the tightness in my shoulders tighten. I have never lived in an apartment with an outside door lock. (One of my Boston apartments had the door lock removed, despite a break-in and stolen bike, because the woman below us sold cakes out of her apartment and needed people to come and go. The flip side: her cakes were delicious and our kitchen was always warm with the smell of sugar! Not a bad set-up during a Nor Easter...) They say that one of the best ways to manage weight is to manage stress. So perhaps my new place will be one more step toward life balance.
I do have to say, though, that when I got the key to my new place and realized that I would have a digital code to get into my building, I felt some of the tightness in my shoulders tighten. I have never lived in an apartment with an outside door lock. (One of my Boston apartments had the door lock removed, despite a break-in and stolen bike, because the woman below us sold cakes out of her apartment and needed people to come and go. The flip side: her cakes were delicious and our kitchen was always warm with the smell of sugar! Not a bad set-up during a Nor Easter...) They say that one of the best ways to manage weight is to manage stress. So perhaps my new place will be one more step toward life balance.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Police Violence and Carbs
I think today's post will be an example of how life gets in the way of well-meaning projects.
I'm home, back in Columbus with my partner. Had a great birthday with ice cream cake at midnight (which is when I arrived home) and a birthday of a gym date, some tv watching, and general bumming around with my partner. Really, it was exactly what I wanted.
I thought I wouldn't have much to report on Project Twentyeight just yet since I've been sort of easing back into the nutrition plan (though I never left it entirely on my trip, I'm proud to say) and getting back into the gym after my break. But last night there was an incident in my neighborhood and I found that it's been affecting my body a bit this morning.
I was out walking the dogs in the little park across from my house, laughing at the pee-wee football practice and the 7-year-old cheerleaders in the basketball courts when I heard gunshots. I was right on the street at the time and thought at first it was a car backfiring but I realized all the kids were on the ground as I backed up into the grass and saw a body fall ten feet from me. I then saw a cop empty his gun into a victim. Scruffy, my 13 year old cairn terrier, riggled loose in fear from this collar and I found myself army crawling across the park to catch up with him. Police tape went up. The sidewalk in front of my house was closed. I couldn't get home. There was screaming. There were swat car (a neighbor counted 16 of them).
When it was safe to stand up, I waved to my partner, who was anxiously standing at the door (I could read her anxiety by the way her shoulder seized backwards, her legs hip length apart, her head darting back and forth across the park looking for us). When I knew she found me, I waited in the park to see if the dogs and I could get home. We waited for over an hour. I had no cell phone. No keys. Just a poop bag and two aging terriers. Word got out that I was a witness and news crews started coming up to interview me. I left.
I walked to the house of my nearest friends and waited on their doorstep for them to come home. I wasn't sure my dogs could make it back to the park or if we would even be allowed into the house. Luckily, they rescued me after a few minutes. When I saw them pull up I began crying. This, unfortunately, isn't the first shooting I've witnessed, but it is the first time I've been only a few feet from the body. We called Cat. We spent an hour getting in touch with the police station to get Cat escorted out of the house so we could pick her up. At 10 o'clock, body was still on the sidewalk. There was a rumor it was a 14 year old kid but as of yet, it's just speculation.
I took some of my anxiety medicine later that night and went to bed on an air mattress with my partner and my dogs, nauseated.
This morning, part of our house is still taped off but we could pull into the driveway and enter through the backdoor. I dropped Cat off at the bus stop because she has two days to find her apartment in Chicago. (More on this in later entries, I am sure. Our long-distance relationship is about to commence!)
I came home and all I wanted as a bagel with butter. So I had it. I wanted comfort food. I wanted another one. Luckily, there was only one in the fridge. I stopped short of binging. I realize, this is the only way I know how to react. I was a bulimic for twelve years, hospitalized for two after purging 6-8 times a day and suffering from a mallory weiss tear and other internal bleeding in my esophagus and stomach. I've been in recovery for 7 years. I've done a lot of work in therapy thinking about where, when, and how I binge and purge. And today reminds me of Becky Thompson's insights (my former MA advisor and author of "A Way Outa No Way" which she later expanded into a book, one of the few useful eating disorder books out there because because it doesn't focus on body image) that eating disorders are creative responses to trauma.
So now it is my task, alone for the next few days, to work out new creative responses. And perhaps find a new park to walk the dogs in.
I'm home, back in Columbus with my partner. Had a great birthday with ice cream cake at midnight (which is when I arrived home) and a birthday of a gym date, some tv watching, and general bumming around with my partner. Really, it was exactly what I wanted.
I thought I wouldn't have much to report on Project Twentyeight just yet since I've been sort of easing back into the nutrition plan (though I never left it entirely on my trip, I'm proud to say) and getting back into the gym after my break. But last night there was an incident in my neighborhood and I found that it's been affecting my body a bit this morning.
I was out walking the dogs in the little park across from my house, laughing at the pee-wee football practice and the 7-year-old cheerleaders in the basketball courts when I heard gunshots. I was right on the street at the time and thought at first it was a car backfiring but I realized all the kids were on the ground as I backed up into the grass and saw a body fall ten feet from me. I then saw a cop empty his gun into a victim. Scruffy, my 13 year old cairn terrier, riggled loose in fear from this collar and I found myself army crawling across the park to catch up with him. Police tape went up. The sidewalk in front of my house was closed. I couldn't get home. There was screaming. There were swat car (a neighbor counted 16 of them).
When it was safe to stand up, I waved to my partner, who was anxiously standing at the door (I could read her anxiety by the way her shoulder seized backwards, her legs hip length apart, her head darting back and forth across the park looking for us). When I knew she found me, I waited in the park to see if the dogs and I could get home. We waited for over an hour. I had no cell phone. No keys. Just a poop bag and two aging terriers. Word got out that I was a witness and news crews started coming up to interview me. I left.
I walked to the house of my nearest friends and waited on their doorstep for them to come home. I wasn't sure my dogs could make it back to the park or if we would even be allowed into the house. Luckily, they rescued me after a few minutes. When I saw them pull up I began crying. This, unfortunately, isn't the first shooting I've witnessed, but it is the first time I've been only a few feet from the body. We called Cat. We spent an hour getting in touch with the police station to get Cat escorted out of the house so we could pick her up. At 10 o'clock, body was still on the sidewalk. There was a rumor it was a 14 year old kid but as of yet, it's just speculation.
I took some of my anxiety medicine later that night and went to bed on an air mattress with my partner and my dogs, nauseated.
This morning, part of our house is still taped off but we could pull into the driveway and enter through the backdoor. I dropped Cat off at the bus stop because she has two days to find her apartment in Chicago. (More on this in later entries, I am sure. Our long-distance relationship is about to commence!)
I came home and all I wanted as a bagel with butter. So I had it. I wanted comfort food. I wanted another one. Luckily, there was only one in the fridge. I stopped short of binging. I realize, this is the only way I know how to react. I was a bulimic for twelve years, hospitalized for two after purging 6-8 times a day and suffering from a mallory weiss tear and other internal bleeding in my esophagus and stomach. I've been in recovery for 7 years. I've done a lot of work in therapy thinking about where, when, and how I binge and purge. And today reminds me of Becky Thompson's insights (my former MA advisor and author of "A Way Outa No Way" which she later expanded into a book, one of the few useful eating disorder books out there because because it doesn't focus on body image) that eating disorders are creative responses to trauma.
So now it is my task, alone for the next few days, to work out new creative responses. And perhaps find a new park to walk the dogs in.
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