Two or three lifetimes ago, I confided to a new friend that I was unhappy in my marriage and that I didn't know what I was going to do about it. She gave me some very simple and compassionate advice that I have always remembered: "Give yourself permission to do nothing about it, except get ready for change." At the time, I was young (24) and it hadn't occurred to me that I could just sit with my feelings, be aware that I had a problem but do nothing to solve it. Her advice came as such a huge relief to me. "When you're ready to do something, you will." She was right.
Well I've been giving myself permission to not deal with my dieting and eating addictions for about 10 years now. Not that this has only been a problem for 10 years. But 10 years ago was when I started seeing a therapist after successfully dieting down to 120 pounds. Despite the fact I preened in front of every mirror I passed, I was utterly miserable. My job was stressful, I was over worked and under appreciated. I was engaged to a guy I loved dearly but was not in love with. I hungered, but I did not know for what. I got into the habit of binge eating for 2-3 days after getting weighed in, and then exercising furiously and eating frugally for the rest of the week in a desperate bid to hold on to my new thin body.
I told my new therapist about my diet/binge cycle and she said if I really wanted to get to the core of the problem, I needed to stop dieting all together. "Eat whatever you want," she told me, even if it was cake for dinner. Music to my ears! I gained 20 pounds in the space of a couple of months. (Hmmmm, my inner Marge Simpson thought.) She also suggested that I try "eating in awareness". That is, don't watch TV, don't read, don't do anything else while you are eating. Stay in the moment and pay attention to what happens when you eat. I tried it a few times and I gotta admit, it freaked me out. I found the exercise too challenging. It made me afraid.
I'm not sure what I was afraid of, but I can tell you that the fear has never left me. It is at times paralyzing, debilitating, and probably contributes greatly to my cycling depression in the past few years. I know that I'm afraid that "there is no cure" for what ails me. I've tried to just accept that binge eating is "what I do", and tried to control it with a balance of eating well and exercising in between. But I know there's a lot more to it, and that I've been afraid of the hard emotional work I need to do to get to the bottom of it.
Some time later, after I'd quit my stressful job, broken up with my fiancé, gained 10 more pounds and stopped seeing this therapist, I realized that I wasn't ready to deal with the core issues behind my eating disorder. In the interim years since then, I've yo-yo'd up and down the scale, been officially diagnosed with binge eating disorder, sought treatment that I wasn't ready for, and started to believe that there is no hope for me, that I will always look to food as my best friend and worst enemy, recognize it as hollow and superficial but keep running back to it, seeking the validation I desperately crave. All along, in the back of my mind, I know that diets don't work, that I am substituting food for... something, that I am avoiding dealing with some fundamental core issues. When I have those conscious moments of awareness, I soothe myself by saying, "give yourself permission to do nothing, until you are ready". I think sometimes it just takes as long as it takes, and the best thing we can do for ourselves is forgive ourselves for needing and taking comfort where we know we can find it, even if it is fleeting.
In my blog from last month, Coping with success, my beloved friend Joy commented that she'd been reading Geneen Roth's latest book, Women, Food and God. Joy said Geneen Roth has been around a long time writing about "food stuff", but I had never heard of her. I did a bit of googling and decided to check out some of her writing. So I went out one restless Saturday night and picked up one of her first books, Feeding the Hungry Heart. On the way back from the bookstore, I bought a huge bag of chocolate from the bulk candy store. Heh.
It took me a couple of weeks to start reading it. And I am reading it in small bits, taking time to absorb the message. But as soon as I opened the book and read the introduction, I realized I had found someone who understands. It gave me hope. My intuition had told me this would be my experience, before I even opened the book. (Hence the pit stop for chocolate en route home, avoiding the book for a couple of weeks, etc.... I knew reading it would, or could, lead to facing some powerful demons.)
I have not given up dieting (have lost 20 pounds, FYI), and I have not given up bingeing on weigh in day. But I am getting ready to make a change, to face the real hunger within. It feels like the right time, at last.
I'll keep you posted!
Wow, I wish I could be as honest about myself as you are - you are truly an inspiration. That's not to say I'm not SELF aware, I am and I know my issues, but getting to dealing with them and letting myself feel okay about where I am RIGHT NOW, is close to impossible.
ReplyDeleteThanks man!
Barbopolous xo
http://www.oprah.com/packages/women-food-and-god.html
ReplyDeleteHey Linnnns...so glad you posted this. I have been getting my brain right with a book called "The Gabriel Method" and it comes with an audio-meditation-thingie the entire premise of which is that your body knows what to do to put food in it's proper place but, it's the brain that needs to come on board. In "not dieting" I'm lost a measly 3 pounds, but "dieting" I'd be struggling to maintain. I'm going to check out Geneen Roth's stuff too. Oh, and Jon Gabriel went from 400 plus pounds to something under 200.
ReplyDeleteSo, here's what I'm hearing from reading your posts for a while: (consider it a smack down of sorts) it seems your brain is on the "I'm a loser" channel. Pick up the remote and change it to the "I'm a normal healthy eater" channel. Fake it...pretend after weigh in that you're Valerie Bertinelli and wouldn't dream of bingeing to undo what you had just worked so hard to accomplish.
Better yet...*&%^$#@ all the diets and the scale and eat healthy when you're hungry...I'm trying to fake this whole healthy relationship with food thing but this way seems a whole lot more sustainable than some diet that will eventually end. Just my measly two cents from a fellow struggler. Kat
Barbtastic, it's so hard, isn't it. I mean, even as I'm reading this book and nodding and saying, yes, I realize that the goal to be thin is a total smokescreen, that eating mounds of chocolate on Saturdays after I get weighed is stupid and a product of feeling deprived because I'm on a diet... I still don't want to give up those behaviours. They are comforting and familiar, even if they are counter-productive. I think just saying it out loud (or committing it to print and blasting it out to the whole flippin internet, or the 18 people who visited yesterday...) is a step forward. When I admit these things to myself, I don't have to act on them, but at least I know moving forward that I am responsible for the decision to not act.
ReplyDeleteWas that you who left the link to Geneen Roth's appearance on Oprah? It was great - I read through the whole thing. I feel inspired, but I also feel the familiar anxiety that goes along with the notion that I have to do something about this, now that I've named it. But I will practice kindness to myself, and I hope that you will too.
Thanks for being such a great friend. Yesterday at the gym I was on the monotonous elliptical machine and two guys were next to me, chatting. I thought, "Barb and I could catch up on chatting doing this just as easily as we could over beers." Let me know when you are ready to get going with Good Life. I think it would be great for both of us.
Kat, oh it's great to hear from you! I've been wondering how you are. "The Gabriel Method" - I will have to look into that. Geneen Roth has a whole slew of books, and I am looking forward to delving into all of them. I've never been one to partake of self-help books, but I just immediately intuited that I could trust her and learn from her.
Check out the link just above your comment to Geneen Roth's appearance on Oprah. One of the audience members shares her horror that she is passing on her body image issues to her 7 year old daughter. Geneen's advice to the woman is to start treating herself with the same kindness she would treat her daughter with. Why is this so hard for us to do? Anyway, thanks for the suggestion about changing the channel. "Fake it to make it!" We will get there, together. And if we don't, at least we're together. Cheers, sweetie.
I am SO happy that you are finding Geneen's books helpful (and only slightly chagrined that Oprah "discovered" her a week after I told you about them). I seriously almost didn't mention them, because I felt like you may feel as cringy as I do about self help books, but this one felt different to me.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that you mentioned the story about the woman with the 7 year old daughter in your last comment. The woman who teaches my meditation class said the exact same thing to another participant last night, and he reacted like she had just told him he could take a vacation on Mars. It was kind of incredible to witness.
Man, I have so much more I want to say, but I'm late for work. I'll be back...
xoxox
Dear Linds: I feel such gratitude that you decided to write this. It's like it was meant for me.
ReplyDeleteThere's a peacefulness and soulfulness that you transmit in this here post that soothes me. Thanks for that. My Cloclo wakes up in the morning sometimes and says, "You know, Mummy, I don't know what it is but it's like there's something missing." I pray to the gods that she'll learn to reckon with that missingness the way you do in this post, with forgiveness, self-knowledge, and patience.
That line -- "Give yourself permission to do nothing about it, except get ready for change" -- is amazing. What a gift to have been told that.
Love you tons and will write more in private.
xo
shan
Lindsay, I was also so glad to read this post. First, glad that you have found a powerful tool in the book you picked up. Also because I know that sense of . . . something not being dealt with, yet when you stumble upon something that may hold a key, you just know. I think I may have come upon a book like that recently, and have to go back and find it. (I had found it at the "library" which is part of the corner espresso place, which I love, and which actually has "lending privileges." Took the book home, didn't read past page one . . . and yet I know I was supposed to read it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, kudos on having taken that important step. I hope that book helps you delve into some part of your brain you haven't visited before. And also congratulations on losing 20 pounds! That is fantastic. It sounds like, while you have work ahead of you, you are doing pretty well at the moment.
As for me, trying to find a job, still, may be about to get a roommate (temporarily) for the first time in 20 years. I know big changes are afoot for me, too. Not sure what it will look like. But, I have lost seven pounds myself and am pleased as punch about that!
Always wonderful to read you here, and hoping you and the Qat may make it down to NYC againn one of these days . . . I was sorry to miss you last time.
xox
Diane
Joy, I am astounded that Oprah didn't already know about Geneen Roth! Who knows, maybe she did. The write-up of that show made it seem like it was new to her. So funny how you were cringy about self-help books. Me too. I think the last time I read one I was in university, and it was for a "growth" class I had to take for my Bachelor of Education.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I am so grateful that I started this blog. I feel as though the things I am putting out there are helping the few people who read it, but the things you all say to me (and in a way, to each other) are even more helpful to me. It's a risk to publish your demons for the world to see, but it's been so very rewarding, having my fears reflected back to me. I once described it to a very good friend this way:
"It's a strange thing when you realize that the vicious self-loathing you live with alone in your existential void is not so unique after all. I don't know if it's a comfort to know that other people, people who are bright and talented and good-looking and interesting, share the same core-shaking doubt in their ability to find happiness in this life. I think maybe it is. Anyway, I'm right there with you, in the pit next to yours. We can't see each other when we're in there, but maybe we can try to remind ourselves that the aloneness is an illusion, even if the loneliness is real."
Thanks for being next to me through this.
Shannon, Oh how I love you and always will. It is amazing to me that this hunger, this yearning, is discernible to one so young as Cloclo. Back in our churchy days, I heard it described as a "God-shaped hole" that some people spend their lives trying to fill with stuff that just doesn't fit: alcohol, food, sex, gambling, television, shopping, relationships... I still believe that, although I would make it a lower-case "g" now. I find it so poignant that Cloclo is already aware of it. But maybe this is a good thing somehow. I'm not sure, but instinctively it doesn't scare me - I guess because her youth makes the condition seem that much more natural. It's just a matter of finding how to live with the feelings and learn from them rather than run from them or try to fill the hole with some kind of top kill.
Diane, it's good to hear from you, dear. Big changes ahead for you. I know when we talked awhile back about the notion of you taking on a roommate, you were reluctant. I hope this will be a growing experience for you. I've read your Facebook updates (I particularly love the poetic way you write about everyday wonders like walking in the rain) and admired how you've managed to stay upbeat through a difficult time. And congrats on losing seven pounds! That's terrific!
For sure, next time we get to NYC, we will make sure to let you know about it. xoxo
I feel the Good Life will be arriving imminently! I need to gab while on a treadmill, or bike, or one of those whipping your arms and legs in different directions machines (they probably have a shorter name). And I can't think who I'd rather do it with than you! I will let you know when I finally work up the courage.
ReplyDeleteLove you!
Barbopolous xo