It's sort of dangerous
I've been spending a
lot of time with my latest obsession, Facebook. AnonaBaby took a two and a half hour nap today and I spent far too much of it looking up people, taking quizzes and hoping that people would acknowledge my invitations to be friends.
It's weird how much feels at stake. I've looked up many many people who don't appear to be on the site. And I've looked up many others who were. I exhausted their friends, I think I've exhausted mine and I've scraped the bottom of the barrel for folks from high school and old jobs. What I'm left with is that I don't know many people. Not really.
I didn't keep in touch with many people from high school, though my two best friends from then came to my daughter's first birthday party, so you know we're still close. I went to a commuter college and my friends during that time were all from work (I worked at a restaurant and if you've done that you know how tight that bunch can get). It doesn't look like any of those folks are on Facebook. Then I went into my career and... well, I'm not a work friends sort of person, mostly. I was really young when I went into high tech (still in college), and I worked with my father, so after work drinks were right out.
I stayed in high tech for years but cut ties with all that when I got disgusted with the business and switched over to teaching. I have some friends from work, but not a ton, and teachers aren't very tech savvy in general.
Facebook is exciting in that it gives me hope that I will find that one friend, that one person who I lost touch with. Maybe we'll get back in touch and I'll have a new old friend. And that would be lovely, but I don't really think it'll work that way. Not for me. I'm just not the type.
Besides, I can't think of anyone else I'd like to get in touch with. It's sort of a downer. I'm sure the novelty will wear off in a week or so.
SighLabels: Confession is Good for the Soul, Who ARE you?
Resolution
After writing yesterday, I spent the rest of the day as I'd planned. AnonaBaby woke about 10 minutes after I turned off the computer, so I got her up, changed and fed her and then we went to the local pool to go swimming. So far this summer I've stuck to my plan of taking the baby to the pool twice a week, but I haven't stuck to my plan of working out there
alone twice a week. Oh, I dropped the baby at my mother's and came back an hour and a half later, but I didn't get to the pool. As we know, I ate instead.
While I was hanging with my girl, and then afterwards, as I sat through an unsuccessful nap (hers, not mine. If I'd tried to nap I would have been successful. Except for the screaming baby part. I would have had trouble with that), my mind wandered back to what I'd written. The fix seems
soooo simple, right? Stop eating the wrong things. Eat the right things. Exercise. Lather, rinse, repeat. After a while, get on a scale. Viola!
I know in my head that that's how it should work, but I always screw it up. And I'm the sort of person who, once fallen from the proverbial wagon, does not simply dust herself off and get back on. I fall off the wagon and then leap into a cavern of destructive behavior. Ate a couple of cookies? Might as well eat the whole bag. And some Pop-Tarts for dessert.
How do you think I got to this weight? Salad was not the culprit.
I can't begin to count the number of times I've sat down and was stern with myself. "Lady," I'll start, "You need to get your act together. Today. Right now. Actually, tomorrow morning because it's 10:30 pm at the moment. But tomorrow morning, by God, there are gonna be some changes around here." And then I list out every rule I want to follow and I feel so virtuous and composed like this time, goddamn it all, it's going to work.
And sometimes it does for a few days, or even a few weeks. But somehow all the resolve vanishes long before I've lost enough weight to want to keep going. Then I gain it all back plus some more for good measure and it all starts over again.
For nearly 25 years I've been doing this.
25 years.
That's a lifetime.
This morning (after skipping the workout and eating stuff that doesn't make me feel that great) that number really struck me. 25 years. I've been doing this to myself for a quarter of a century. Do I want to spend the next 25 years - years that my baby will be watching - treating myself this way? Do I want her to watch me play these games with myself while I tell her that she should eat healthy foods until she's satisfied and then be done? Do I want to be the mom whose central message is "Do what I say, not what I do"?
I don't. I really, really don't.
And this morning, as I was holding her, the most thunderous idea hit me. What if... and this is a big question... but what if I treated myself the way treat my daughter?
It would certainly simplify things.
No rules to follow, no timelines, no pressure to be perfect. Just... walk the walk, you know? I don't feed AnonaBaby junk food. I shouldn't feed it to myself. I take time to make her meals, which I make sure are balanced with protein, fruit, vegetables, calcium... I could do that for myself. She doesn't get soda, candy or processed filler food - not because I'm punishing her but because they're not good for her.
What if I looked at the lack of Pop-Tarts in my life not as a punishment, but as a way of treating myself with love and caring?
I feed my daughter foods that are good for her. I pay a lot of attention to what I buy for her and what I make for her. It's not like it takes up a lot of my time. I just do it. What if I did it for me too?
So I'm making a commitment here, in front of God and everybody - a different kind of commitment. Usually I'm all about setting a goal weight and then mapping out what weight I should be at certain dates if I'm "successful" and then writing down all the things I'm going to do differently so that by the time the sun comes up on my "First Day of the Rest of My Life" I'm so wrapped up in things I can't do and ways to fail that I'm halfway ready to run to McDonald's before I've even started. This is different. There is only one rule, and it hardly feels like a rule at all.
Be a good role model for AnonaBaby. Aim the same patience, compassion, understanding and love that I give her towards myself. Celebrate small stepping stones as the precursors to larger milestones that they are.
I don't know if I can be that gentle with myself. But I think I want to try.
Labels: Confession is Good for the Soul
Weight Weight, Don't Tell Me
I feel the distinct need to stop typing and close down my browser at this moment. Today I want to write about something difficult for me and part of me really would rather go downstairs and watch something fluffy on TiVo. Of course, that's part of my problem, so... here goes.
I'm fat.
That's not news to anyone who knows me, though if anyone here is reading who knows me, I'm sort of in trouble, since this isn't my public blog. But it's nothing people who look at me can't see. I'm not hiding anything.
Or rather, I'm not hiding anything outwardly. Inside there's a lot going on, despite having wrestled with the fact of my body for 35 some-odd years now. Therapy helped some. Some. I don't hate myself with the vehemence I did in my twenties. I still try not to think about myself from the neck down, though.
When I was in my twenties I used to wear makeup. I had a rather elaborate morning routine that included foundation, powder, eyeliner, mascara and shadow, blush, lip liner and lipstick - everything. And I had a large amount to choose from. Buying makeup was sort of a hobby. I amassed quite a collection and used it all regularly. But the weird thing was that I would spend all this time doing my makeup and then I'd put on a ratty t-shirt and pants, my beat up hiking boots and a baseball cap and go to work (I worked in a field that allowed a pretty wide range of clothing selections, since I didn't work with the public). My hair has always been a problem since it's frizzy and I'm unwilling to spend more than 5 minutes on it at any time. And my body... I just didn't want to think about it. It took a therapist to make me realize that there was a disconnect for someone who spent that much time and money on her face and so very little on the rest of her.
The oddest thing was that for the longest time, I wasn't even particularly heavy. It's been an up and down thing for me, all starting when I was about 11. That's nearly 25 years, people. You'd think I could get my act together by now. And I have - at times. Throughout high school I gained weight, until I hit about 170 lbs. Then I went to college and hated where I was and stopped eating. I dropped 40 lbs and at 130 lbs I looked the best I had in my adult life. I have a pretty big frame so 130-140 is a good range for me.
I stayed at that weight until my college boyfriend moved out here. I distinctly remember the day he told me he was going to move from his East Coast home to my area. We had met at a high school leadership conference and kept in touch. He called often, we wrote - we were friends. When he moved out here... I didn't really think I wanted more than that. I was a junior in college and I'd never had a boyfriend. I didn't actually want one. I liked my life very much the way it was.
But I never said any of that.
Instead, I became a Girlfriend. I slept with him the second night he was in town. I felt like a slut but I pretended I was giddy with him. Sometimes I
was happy with him. Sometimes I was miserable. He was a kid and so was I. He didn't really want a serious girlfriend (he wanted regular sex), but I became one. I was
very serious. We fought a lot - about places he wanted to go (strip joints in the city, for example), how late he'd be out (three, four in the morning), girls he kept in touch with (I was the jealous type and in time it became pretty clear that I had foundation. He was a cheater)... everything.
And during the two and a half years we were together my weight crept up and up and up. By the time we got engaged (engaged, folks! That's how good I am at deluding myself!) I was 180 lbs. I cried when I looked at the pictures we took in Europe, where he'd proposed. And I finally decided to do something about it.
Enter Jenny Craig. I was merciless with myself. I never cheated. I exercised daily. I remember stuffing corn chips in my mouth and chewing them and then spitting them in the trash. I was terrible to myself.
And our fights got worse and worse.
Finally, everything came to a head. About 3 weeks after I'd hit my goal weight (135 lbs), we had a terrible fight. We'd bought a house (all in my name because I had credit and he didn't - also he hadn't filed taxes in three years... I can really pick 'em) and he announced that he wouldn't be moving with me. It was over.
Those were some of the hardest months of my life. I hated myself. I was furious with the house I moved into alone. I was angry and lonely and scared. I stopped eating. I lost about 8 lbs before I began eating again and even then it was not much.
It was during this time that I met the man who became AnonaDad. We began seeing each other about 6 months after I broke up with East Coast guy and we've been together ever since. That was about 13 years ago. And, of course, my weight has been steadily rising ever since.
That's not strictly true, actually. My weight has yo-yo'd all over the place since we got together. I've never been at 130 lbs again, but I'd gain 10 lbs, lose 2, gain 20, lose 5, gain 40, lose 12, gain gain gain...
I actually
lost weight when I was pregnant with AnonaGirl. I was on a strict diet (gestational diabetes) and between the lack of carbs and no alcohol, I was down a lot after her birth. When I got pregnant with her, I weighed 252 lbs - my highest weight ever. When I went in for my induction, I weighed 234 lbs. And three weeks after her birth I was 208.
I had so many plans to lose weight as soon as she was born. I would breastfeed - that would help. I would exercise by walking my baby around the neighborhood. I would eat right - I knew I could from the diabetes diet.
But, of course, everything went to hell.
I couldn't breastfeed. And my relationship with my boobs in a whole post unto itself. Suffice it to say, even when I'm thin, they're big and I hate them and always have. When they didn't work? I was furious. I was angry that I couldn't feed my baby and I raged that I'd carried these mofo's around with me for 25 years and the joke was on me. They were huge
and useless. And my hopes of breastfeeding helping me lose weight were gone.
And, of course, the weight came back.
Today I weigh 245.5 lbs. I am miserable. I am constantly uncomfortable. My clothes (what little I have) fits poorly. My husband, rightfully so, does not find me attractive and we have no sex life. There are a million and one reasons for me to lose weight.
So of course, yesterday I went to a restaurant and had potato skins, 3 glasses of wine and an apple cobbler and I'm tempted to do it again tomorrow.
I have tried it all. Jenny Craig, Stop the Insanity, Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, The Zone, the Rotation Diet, cleanses, laxatives... I could go on. I don't know what do to. I know if I keep this up, it will kill me. I have a history of diabetes, high blood pressure and congestive heart failure in my family - it's what killed my father at 56. I feel like the smoker whose family has all had cancer but who lights up anyway. I know what I'm doing to myself. It's slow suicide.
And I have this amazing little baby who I would kill for. And I want to be there for her and I want to be a good example for her and I don't don't
don't want her to hate herself or her body. I don't want her to go through what I went through.
What I'm going through.
But neither do I know how to stop, how to change.
Labels: Confession is Good for the Soul
