The First Nutritionist Follow Up

Today's the day I realized I can't actually do this without my nutritionist.

It's my first appointment since the project began. I felt heat run through my body as I entered the waiting area, flushed and nauseous. It has taken me a few years to pay attention to the changes in my body as it enters different social spaces and I'm not always the most adept at it but today, the change was immediate. I thumbed through a magazine (seven articles of clothing, 31 spring looks!), took some deep breaths (that scarf looks stupid as a belt, let's be honest--but as a sarong shirt, fabulous!) and tried to think through my body's reaction.

I know I feel like I've been failing the project. Last night, while flea-bombing my apartment, I hung out with two of my besties, sharing a six-pack and some cheetos and watching their dvr. The night before, I ate an extra bowl of cereal to ward off a binge. I was seeing extra calories everywhere I looked. I had not had a perfect day and since I came back from Chicago and I don't have an excuse. I control my cooking. I control my exercise. I felt like the appointment was a surveillance. I felt like the appointment would be a treatment-style battalion where all of my failures would come to the fore-front. And I think there's still a small part of me that believes, eventually, some day, I will end up back where I started ten years ago.

Of course, it wasn't like that. We sat and talked about the last few months. She was practical. She was compassionate. She said that not having eating disordered behavior is all she wanted from me. That weight maintenance would have been great, too. That losing the weight was only secondary.

I argued with her. I pointed out my physical therapist's concerns.

She pointed out I was over the hardest part. That this idea of beating myself up over a few beers was eating disordered.

We worked with my tendency to move around pieces of my meal plan. Eating Disordered. My feelings of not being able to exercise hard enough. Eating Disordered. The realities of my not being able to afford the foods I need. Not Eating Disordered.

"But what if it doesn't work?"

"It will."

"What if it stops working?"

"Then we'll deal with that."

"What if it's not working now?"

"Let's see."

She pulls out the scale. We talk about my not weighing myself alone anymore. Only in her office.
I kick off my doc martins. My body flushes as I step up. Five pounds down.

"That's not fast enough." I say. "I'm behind my weight goals."

"Get rid of those. The body doesn't work like that." Eating Disordered.

My body: a (sometimes) walking freak show

This is the scene:

I'm laying on my stomach. A middle-aged, energetic lady athlete with a blonde ponytail and those athlete-khakis and track jacket, is standing above me to the left, one hand on the bottom of my foot, the other hand behind my knee. She's slowly lifting my leg off the physical therapy table. "Do you feel that?"

"No."

"That?"

"No."

"How bout that?" There is a slight surprise in her voice.

"No." There is a slight annoyance in mine.

"Come here," she calls to her two P.T. interns, wearing those same athlete-khakis. "Take that leg." She motions toward my right leg. "Now lift it like this."

One of the interns takes my foot, bend my leg, and begins to lift. My belly stays flat on the table. The second intern stands by head, hands on her hips, poker-faced.

"Do you feel that?" asks boy-intern holding my foot.

"No."

"That?"

"No."

"I wish I could bend like that," says girl-intern, moving closer to the other end of the table, so to get a better look.


"If you could," say my P.T., "you would have her problem and not be able to walk." She pauses, readjusting her hand against the laces of my shoe. "And this? How to you feel here?" I can feel the sole of my shoe gently graze the back of my neck.

"There's a little pull, I guess." I say this because I don't want them to think I'm a total freak. Girl-intern gasps.

"Were you in gymnastics?"

I did two years once a week at the Y when I was in elementary school. I don't tell her this. It's not the answer she's looking for. I wasn't training. I was standing in line waiting for my turn to do a hand stand on the uneven bars while my sister braided my hair. I'm not an athlete.

But that information came as a surprise, evidently, as I walked into campus yesterday for a quick swim before spending my evening with one of my besties watching the Housewives.

"You must be an athlete." A black gentleman around my age speeds up to meet my stride. I mention he's a man of color here because it has only ever been men of color who compliment me on my body, with one exception in my memory. When I was early in treatment and a bit under-weight, I was forced to take a college Health class, which required a 3-day a week "lab" in the fitness center. Despite my treatment team's phone calls to the school to get a medical exception (I was out of my first hospitalization for only a few weeks when I had to begin these "labs") and then a disability accommodation, the school didn't budge. I had to be in the gym but I would only be required to walk laps for 45 minutes (counting laps is really excellent for anyone prone to compulsive exercise). Once a week, one of the personal trainers would join me on my laps. One week, having read my charts, this thirty-something white guy asked me "Why do you do it?"

"Do what?" I ask.

"You don't need to lose weight. Your body is perfect just the way it is."

I ignored him. He pulled my arm. "Hey. Look at me. It's really fine the way it is."

I kept my pace and gazed at my feet. He was an idiot. My body was not fine the way it was. My heart beat irregularly. I had internal bleeding that was still not under control and my electrolytes needed constant monitoring. But that's fine. Judge away.

Back to yesterday, walking to the gym: "You must be an athlete," the gentleman repeats. I wasn't sure he was talked to me.

"Huh?"

"Your legs are huge!" I'm at a loss for words but I don't break my stride.

"Yah, well..." I shrug. Is there an appropriate response here? Thanks?

"No! It's not bad. They look really powerful." I glance down. My jeans are loose and holey and partially covered by my trench coat. "Do you work out?"

"Yes."

"What do you do?"

"Swim."

"You must be fast. Are you fast?" Here's the thing. I don't really swim. I got to the pool and spend thirty minutes practicing laps.

"No."

"I bet you're fast." I keep walking. "You look good." And just like that, he breaks his stride with me and turns right toward the bus stop.

And I'm left, my big, slow, bendy legs carrying me through the rain.

Spinning My Wheels, Syncing My Breath

This will likely sound like the cliched lifetime movie I wrote in my last post. But I'm wrestling with numbers again. In terms of the "Project 28" itself as a weight-loss project, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels a little bit. I keep going back and forth with the same three pounds and I'm beginning to become discouraged.

I've seen other progress. I've never been much of a swimmer but when I started swimming laps in early Spring, I could barely get my body to do one--my coordination was off, my muscles weak, my breathing out of sync. Two days ago, getting in the pool for the first time since Chicago, I swam ten laps without stopping. I can't do the cool looking turn-around-thingy other people in the pool do but at least I am getting a momentum. Swimming is a lot different than any other exercise I've done. You can't listen to music. You can't read. You can't really do it socially (in the sense of carrying on a conversation). It's thirty minutes of nothing but me with my body. And in that way, it feels like a gift.

So I'm trying to focus on that right now and not get too caught up in the frustrations of losing weight. And I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I may never reach any sort of doctor-prescribed ideal. In fact, this whole project might just fail in the weight-loss category. And if it does, how am I going to deal with that? How am I going to insist, against the medical industry, that I am healthy? And what if, at the end of the project, I'm not healthy?

The Eating Disorder Melodrama--or Why I Will Always Watch a Lifetime Movie with Hunger in the Title

After a week of moving hell, Cat and I finally got settled in Chicago and got our internet installed just in time for her to spend the next day at a Grad School orientation. Which meant: I am alone in an apartment with the World Wide Web. Given that I was in a new city with plenty more neighborhoods to explore, I might have found myself cafe and museum hopping. But nope. It was kind of grey outside. I was a little achey. And I had the internet for the first time in over a week. I could have caught up on my news sources--Huffington Posting myself out and actually figuring out what is happening on the Syrian Lebanese border. But nope.

I went to hulu. And what did I find on the front page of their "movies" section? A list of lifetime movies. Usually, lifetime movies I could take or leave but what I really truly love is a good eating disorder melodrama. It's probably some really fucked up subconscious identity relation thing that pulls me to click on the link "Hunger Point". But here's my rule of thumb about these things: if it is a two word title and one of the words is "hunger", I am basically going to give up everything for the following two hours.

I was in luck this time. The cast involved Christina Hendricks (of Madmen fame) in 2003, playing the older sister (and main character) of a woman who eventually dies from her anorexia. And of course, Hendricks is the "fat and sensible" character, the foil, who, in her grief, dabbles with bulimia before their father catches her over the toilet and says "I can't lose you, too". And just like that, her eating disorder is gone. And she gets a middle-class job after losing waitressing jobs for the past few years (this film is obviously made in the doe-eyed years before the recession) and, lucky her, finds a man who loves her. It's all heterosexual utopia. It's all predictable. And yet the hospital scenes with her sister on the eating disorder ward are strikingly realistic--the fidgeting of the patients creating a mis-en-scene reminiscent of my treatment days.

Here's the thing. I know these movies are TERRIBLE. They play on cultural fears of mental illness. They still promote images of true health as a heterosexual, reproducing female body whose adolescence is stolen from her in her pursuit of thinness. And I don't believe eating disorders have much to do with body image. I don't believe that surveillance technologies of mainstream e.d. clinics are effective. And I actually don't believe that there is "recovery" in a utopian "I've found my authentic self and now I don't have a problem" way.

But just like I watch the L Word for queer representation even though there are a myriad of problems with representation on the show (perhaps another entry) as a way to escape the heterosexual-everywhere of the world we live in, I watch these Lifetime dramas as way to escape the ableist-everywhere. I believe mental illness is illness and is best understood as a kind of disability. I believe that we need to accommodate and not expect utopic transformations (does everyone in a wheelchair eventually get up to walk? maybe in lifetime movies...) of people with all sorts of mental illness. We need to think about diversity as accommodation and inclusion, not assimilation. And while lifetime gets representation of mental illness, eating disorders included, wrong so much of the time, there's also something to be said for the moments they get right--the defeated-looking therapist when approached with pro-ana website material; the older sister who, despite her best efforts to understand her sister's world, still fails in her offer of half a sandwich to her sister; the minute movements of patients in the clinic who attempt to subvert surveillance at any cost. Perhaps lifetime melodrama isn't always the most effective way to approach mental health representation but it begs the question: effective for what? And how do we read it? And what do we get out of it?

When Cat got home from orientation, I told her what I watched. She rolled her eyes. We made dinner. I felt relaxed for the first time in a week as we fell into bed.

A Good Guiness and Chicago Crooks

There's something about being surrounded by an igloo of brown U-haul boxes that makes a Guiness taste like holy water. Well, maybe not, but it is a welcome bite at the end of a long series of evenings holed up in a comfort inn with retired- in-laws while apartment-hunting, lawyer-hunting, and bathroom-crying.

Cat and I thought our move from Boston to Columbus was possibly the worst a move could get between severe poison ivy that required emergency room visits and steroids, mono, a broken down truck in upstate new york, and a pair of movers recently released from prison on a felony charge. But the thing about that last move: at the end of it all, we had a place to lay our heads.

This time around, our health has been remarkably good, by comparison.

It took nine and half hours to drive caravan with Cat's parents to Chicago (it's usually a six hour drive). I drove most of the way in the Uhaul (I gave Cat a two hour leg with her still-new license) despite my physical therapist warning against it. At the end, my hips felt as if knives were searing through from the outside while pinching ants were attacking from the inside. When we gps-ed our way to the new apartment and got out of the car, I could barely stand. But I thought: we will unload quickly, grab a pizza, then sleep. Then its over. The three months of moving will be over. I felt like what I imagine the Boston Marathon runners feel when they hit Heartbreak Hill.

As we jimmyed the front gate open, ascended the stairs, and saw our first glance of home, we felt relieved. Then we turned on the kitchen sink to give the dogs water and it sprayed all over the floor. The fawcet was not connected. The tub had blue paint-tape x's over the jets. There was a dead christmas tree on the postage-stamp-sized deck. We started counting the myriad of other maintenance problems when Cat realized this wasn't even the right layout. The apartment had been switched.

We found out later this is a common scam in Chicago by leasing agencies. We drove away. We called the person who had shown the apartments. He didn't know what happened. We should talk to closing. We called them. We had signed the lease--they said--so you need to talk to the property manager. We went to the office the next morning, which was Friday. The property manager was out of town until Tuesday. We left a message. We found out about free legal services through Northwestern, where Cat is starting grad school. We sent them a message. But they are free, and not in until September 20th.

Meiver, our roomie, woke early and made a list of Craiglist apartments to follow up on from her home in Boston.

Cat got a call from the property manager: there's not another apartment in the building but they are evicting two families in mid-September: do we want to be on the list for those?

Our dogs are costing us 30 extra bucks a night to stay in the Comfort Inn. Which they think is fine--in fact, they might actually prefer the funky smelling carpets of the hotel to the hardwood floors of our apartments.

I made appointments.
A condo-owner took pity on us. Cat's dad offered up the security deposit.
We moved in the next day.

Tuesday, Cat and I went back to the office. Property manager was out, showing apartments. Can we come back later?

I sat firm and said we would wait.

Twenty minutes later: He'll be back at 1:30. Great. We'll get lunch and return.

Property Manager is all "there's not much we can do, you signed the lease" and "I've lost time showing this apartment"
Me: "We've lost nearly 2000 bucks and you have first month's rent"
Cat: "We just want out of the lease right now"
PM: "Well, I don't know what I can do"
Me, impatiently: "Here's the thing. We have already been in touch with a lawyer from Northwestern and they think we have a case of misrepresentation so we can either take care of this now or"
PM: Slams his chair back: "That's it. I can't talk to you." Puts his hands in the air. "The second you mention a lawyer, I have to talk to my lawyer. And this is going to get messy. I was going to let you out of the lease but now I can't do that because you brought a lawyer into this"
Cat: "Just let us out of the lease so we don't need to bring in legal services"

He leaves. He's a big white dude the size of my father, the age of me. I think I really fucked things up with my bravado. Cat reminds me its all a performance in masculinity. Right. She's calm. My palm's are sweating. For her, this is research.

But I know the money terrifies her. All of her savings--gone.

Eventually, he comes back, sweetly, with a lease release. It says nothing about not being able to ask for our money back later. We take notes and pictures and photocopies for our meeting with the lawyer. We feel success, even if only partial.

I haven't been able to walk for days.

Exercising in our igloo of boxes is almost impossible. Our days have no routine. I can only try to get as much movement as possible as we scrub, paint, and unpack.

And the guiness: a bitter, biting ending to a bitter, biting week.