(no subject)

[serene]

I was telling someotherguy today that I wish there were some way to get my hindbrain to know the difference between:

a) "I am dieting -- that is, restricting food -- to lose weight"; and

b) "I'm trying to improve my health, so I want to eat better foods -- not less food, not yucky foods, just better foods."

I asked him if he had dealt with this internal dialog when he was first dealing with his diabetes diagnosis, and he said, "No, I never had to deal with that. But then again, I'm not a woman in modern society."

Yep. (Please, oh please, if you have comments about how this isn't solely a women's issue, give me a little credit and keep it to yourself, kthxbye!)

I get really angry at the social programming that makes something as simple as "gosh, it's a good idea to eat a variety of wholesome foods in abundance" feel the same (in the gut, not in the rational brain) as "god, you're disgusting and you're committing suicide with your fork -- maybe if you just don't eat anything but raw vegetables for a year, you'll be worthy of respect."

I get angry when my friends are diagnosed with illnesses that may be treatable in part by changes in food and exercise, but there's so much goddamned baggage around food and exercise that it causes more anguish than it's worth to try to make that kind of a change.

So here I sit, trying to bring the generalities to bear on the specifics of my own life.

Five years ago, I was as fat as I am now, almost exactly, but I had never had a single illness that any doctor could ever point to as being weight-related, food related, or whatever. Colds and flu, sure, but nothing in the classic lineup of shame-producing garbage for this culture -- no high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, PCOS, or any of that stuff. And as much as I'm not proud of feeling this way, I was inordinately proud of myself for my innate good health, as though I had woven it with my own hands.

I don't think it was all in my imagination that I had something to do with the state of my health -- I ate lots of veggies, got a moderate amount of exercise, got plenty of fiber... However, it's certainly true that eating one's veggies and exercising is not a guarantee of health, and I cannot take the credit for my body's generally healthy mechanisms.

The part that's hard to make sense of is how all of a sudden, a few things coincided in my life:

1) Cute-poet-chick kicked me out, and I was too sad to eat much for 6 months;
2) I started seeing someotherguy, who is a walking fiend, and started walking so much I was wearing out my shoes;
3) Likewise, I started having LOTS of hot, sweaty sex that I hadn't been having before, so I was getting more exercise in that fashion, too;
4) I lost a bunch of weight in a short period of time (about 80 pounds in 6 months; about 100 pounds by the end of that first year); and
5) I got sick. Joint pain, heart issues, various other stuff, and eventually cancer.
[EDIT: 6) I started eating meat after 20 years as a vegetarian.]

I have no idea how much of my illness is related to stress, or to diet, or to age, or to luck of the draw. There's no way for me to know, really.

So I've been working on the stress levels, and bringing them wayyyyyy down -- ended a relationship that was making me feel untrue to myself; quit the day job and found a part-time job with benefits at home; reduced my daily commitments down to a really manageable level; etc.

And now it feels like the only thing left that I have any control over (I can't fix age or luck, really) is food. And on many levels, that feels like an easy fix. Hell, I was a vegetarian for 20 years, and I've studied nutrition since I was a small child. I know how to cook a healthy meal, and how to order one from a restaurant. I like vegetables and am not a big fan of sugary snacks. This is an easy fix.

But it's not. Because the voices in my head cry "Ack! Diet! Food restriction! Harm, doom, death, destruction!"

The voices in my head can be morons sometimes.

Thoughts, advice, understanding mutterings...?

Comments

[ailbhe]

Um. Are you one of the people who can swear to eat only food she loves and end up healthier? I know I eat better when I refuse to eat crap I don't want.

Of course, I've never been overweight, only underweight (and congratulated for it). I'm neither now, I'm the right weight for me.

I say we dismantle the patriarchy first, then eat them.

[dr-brat.livejournal.com]

I've been struggling with much of the same thing and have been trying really hard not to think about food restrictions but about food goals: I want to eat 2 servings of veggies a day (not a lot for most people, but a TON for me). I want to eat one fruit a day. I want to drink 4 glasses of water a day. None of these are final goals, they're all starts. I'm hoping that as I add these things in, other things will fall away and I want to increase all of these amounts. I'm not totally successful, as you probably know by my moanings about it, but for me, it does feel less like restriction and more like restructuring.

[dr-brat.livejournal.com]

I say we dismantle the patriarchy first, then eat them.

Eeeeyeeeeew. *grin* *icky food face*

[karenbynight.livejournal.com]

I was muttering "yep, yep, yep" all the way through reading this. I've not been diagnosed with PCOS, but I've got a whole bunch of symptoms that lead me to believe that I'm at least teetering on the edge of it. Plus, family history of adult-onset diabetes.

But I love my fat body and have very few body image issues. And every time I say to myself, "self, you might consider upping your consumption of veggies and complex carbs and lowering a bit your consumption of sugars and over-processed carbs to some perfectly reasonable standard in order to head off clearly impending health issues," my subconscious hears "I'm going to starve us and lose lots of weight at the price of our currently happy, healthy body image so that we will return the extreme body neurosis and desperate need for external validation of our teenage years".

So, I don't have any solutions, but I certainly appreciate the problem.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

(hugs) I so get this. I am trying to figure out HAES myself--how do I make changes that I'm pretty sure would be good for my long-term well-being (esp., MOVE more), without it triggering all the self-shaming messages in my head? And I have NO FRIGGING CLUE.

So these are some steps I'm taking for me right now:

Ordered this book this morning: http://www.bodyimagebook.com/

And will be taking this local course, Love Your Body at Any Size (https://www.feministtherapyassociates.com/LoveYourBodyWorkshop.html), in Oakland on Sunday afternoon 4/20.

Also, ordered Making a Change for Good: A Guide to Compassionate Self-Discipline (http://www.amazon.com/Making-Change-Good-Compassionate-Self-Discipline/dp/1590302087/ref=pd_ybh_1?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1HPNFK4NYHMHDB503Z38) and There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate (http://www.amazon.com/There-Nothing-Wrong-You-Self-Hate/dp/0971030901/ref=pd_ybh_2?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1HPNFK4NYHMHDB503Z38), and made a tentative plan to work with another friend on the "30-day practice" mentioned in one of them.

(Those last are not about body-stuff so much as about my depression stuff, but I'm imagining that the two will be intertwined and probably they will be helpful in addressing the body stuff too.)


I'm quite certain that you've already done a lot of the work in these various books etc. that I'm just beginning on. But I'd thought I'd share anyhow, in case anyone else found value in my current steps.

Good luck getting your head to realize that thoughtful food CHOICE is not the same as knee-jerk food RESTRICTION. I very much appreciate the work that you have done, are doing, and have shared around your own body. I have found you to be inspirational on more than one occasion. Thanks.

[snippy]

Yeah, my head's there, but the gut? Not so much. I know my issues: hunger and deprivation in childhood, so that *any* hunger now sets off childhood patterns and panic.

I'm having some success moving the goalpost, though: I eat when I'm hungry, but I'm meditating for about 60 seconds before I get out of bed in the morning on feeling satisfied with smaller portions of better food. Like I said, it seems to be working 9 days out of 10. (I'm on one of the non-working days today, and that's okay: I eat what I want when I want it.)

[skywhisperer.livejournal.com]

And now it feels like the only thing left that I have any control over (I can't fix age or luck, really) is food. And on many levels, that feels like an easy fix. Hell, I was a vegetarian for 20 years, and I've studied nutrition since I was a small child. I know how to cook a healthy meal, and how to order one from a restaurant. I like vegetables and am not a big fan of sugary snacks. This is an easy fix.

But it's not. Because the voices in my head cry "Ack! Diet! Food restriction! Harm, doom, death, destruction!"

I fixed a lot of this by making it a point to be more aware of what I really wanted. Did I really _want_ a Big Mac for lunch? If the answer really was yes, then I went and I got one. If I spent all day thinking about the piece of cake from the bakery down the road, I got one on the way home.

What turned out to be interesting was how rarely I really did want those things. I was eating McDonald's because it was fast and I didn't have to think much about it, not because it was what I wanted. I was eating junk from the vending machine at work because I wanted to get up and walk around, and it seemed like a reasonable destination, not because I really wanted a bag of chips. And by going and getting what I really wanted, when I really wanted it, it didn't feel like a diet.

The other thing I did was exactly what they tell you not to do when you're dieting - I didn't throw out all my junk food. In fact, I didn't even stop buying junk food - I just thought about it before I actually ate it. For me, it was a lot easier to look at the bag of Doritos sitting on the counter and say, "eh, I don't really want that, but if I do want it tomorrow, it'll still be on the counter." Yeah, I gave away a lot of nearly-expired packages of junk food, but by removing the implication of scarcity, I ended up eating much less of it. Eventually it bled into my grocery shopping - "gee, I'm sick of giving away Oreos. If I still want them tomorrow, I'll just stop by the store and pick them up on the way home."

After two years of this, I really haven't lost any significant weight, but I've gone from eating mostly junk to eating mostly lean meat and veggies, which did fix my cholesterol and my blood pressure. And it's helped normalize my relationship with food a lot. Now, as soon as I figure out how to regulate portion sizes without feeling deprived, I'll have it made. :)

[wimsey70.livejournal.com]

My sister and I were talking about food and children once, and she said that children are perfectly happy, in most cases, eating healthy food. It's society that teaches us that "snack" and "dessert" foods are more desirable, and thus we want to "indulge" in them. Yet, when I think about it, I'd rather have strawberries than cake, and I'd rather have broccoli than chips.

In the end, the lure, for me, is the ease of processed food. Eating healthy food takes more work. Sometimes I wish we hadn't invented processed foods because I think we'd all eat better.

73%

[vonnielee.livejournal.com]

I heard and have heeded: Stop eating when you are 73% full. You know that place when your mouth wants more, but your belly is saying, "Oh, I think that might be enough..." When I stop eating at 73% satisfaction, I wait 15 minutes before putting anything into my mouth, and if I am, in fact, physically hungry, I give myself permission eat a bit more, but so far I've yet to eat anything more, because after 15 minutes everything settles down and I'm 100% satisfied.

I also struggle with the "diet" mindf*ck and have to see the big picture. I'm relatively healthy now, but my body is aging, and unless I take steps to slow it (eating healthy and moving purposefully), it will continue to age rapidly and I'll develop health problems. I've seen in in family members and I know if I don't do something now, soon I'll be facing 60 and be handicapped.

Another thing that has helped is writing down what I eat to gain a true perspective of the food I'm consuming. I had NO idea how much fat I was taking in, until I saw it. I thought I was making relatively healthy decisions and choices with food. now I have the memory of a days worth of total fat grams in B&W in my brain, and when deciding if to have butter on or just plain veggies, I see that total. It makes the decision a little easier.

I'm' babbling :)

'zactly

[vonnielee.livejournal.com]

today I was in a pissy mood because what I wanted was a salad and I didn't have the time to sit down and eat a salad. However, I found that Jack in the Box makes grilled chicken strips that are quick and easy to eat, but not so bad for me. Instant protein helps me brain better :)

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my head's there, but the gut? Not so much. I know my issues: hunger and deprivation in childhood, so that *any* hunger now sets off childhood patterns and panic.

This one is the huuuuuge kicker for me.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I kicked the unconscious-eating thing decades ago, and I'm already at eating exactly what I want. (Note: I have no desire to lose weight, or to change the look/shape of my body in any way.)

I have a healthy, normal relationship to food, and I don't desire to fuck that up. At the very same time, I'm wondering if I could make better choices within the constellation of things I might want at any one time. Does that make sense?

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Oh, sweetie.

Personally, I think your health crap should just clear up and let you live your happy functional life.

I guess I'm not sure if you want to change your eating habits to see if things get better, or if you want to change your eating habits because they're the only thing left to change. If it's the first, a scientific spirit of inquiry might help (along the lines of "If I eat that instead of this, I'll screw up the experiment and I won't know"). If it's the second, that's harder. Some good advice above, though.

food

[betonica.livejournal.com]

Similar to what some others have said, I find it easier to concentrate on what I *am* eating, rather than what I shouldn't eat. It's especially helpful when I manage to change my mindset so that I know and recognize that I'm nurturing myself (and enjoying myself) when I'm eating good-for-me foods. But it sometimes takes a while to change that mindset.

I think a huge part of the issue is, as you say, this insane society. Someone else-net was recently expressing this really weird mindset wherein taking care of ones self was somehow *selfish* - and as a woman, she'd been brainwa^Wtrained to take care of others, instead. Wacked. (I get around that one by reminding myself that I'm much more use to others if I'm healthy/fed/whatever before I rush out to do the helping thing.)

But I guess that's a slight digression. I hear you expressing two related things: (1) The restriction thing. I *hate* that one, and do whatever I can to avoid it, including emphasizing to myself that I can eat as much as I want of those delicious kiwis. I flood my brain with the thought of the taste and smell and juiciness and tartness etc. of kiwis, so there's no room for the french fries (though, actually, if I think about it I probably want the kiwi more than the french fry anyway). It also helps to tell myself, as someone else mentioned, that I don't have to eat it all *now* - I'll still be able to have that chocolate bar tomorrow. (Where did I ever pick up the idea that I might not have good-tasting food available Ever Again and I need to eat it All Right Now? Just recognizing that tomorrow and the next day will also contain good tasting stuff really helps.)

Item (2) is the respect thing. That one is *such* a mess in this society. I'm not sure I have any answers for that one - you seem so much better than me at recognizing how screwed up our culture is. That the voices in your head insist on parroting must be extremely frustrating.

And I'm sorry that those voices are being so difficult. Whenever they say "Ack![...] restriction![...]," could you reply with "No restriction; here, have six carrots, a peach, a half cup of pecans, perhaps the rest of this pesto-fish dish from lunch, and these green beans are nice and crispy-juicy, [...]"? And when they say "you're disgusting[...]" can you reply that you're gorgeous and you're rewarding yourself with some delicious veggies? I don't know how effective it would be, but that's what I'd try.

[hmms-sio.livejournal.com]

Before reading the other comments, at least a zillion understanding mutterings. I /have/ been dieting to lose weight in the past and the only thing I succeeded in, as everybody else knows of course, is in getting heavier and thicker. Both my men are around the same figure, and pretty heavy set. And I'm facing some of your problems at this same moment.
HMM is diagnosed with diabets type 2, I'm on the onset of that with a little high bloodsugar levels myself and Kees has this leg pain (what he had when I got home from Vegas, remember?). This turned out to be a nerve that acts on his outer thigh, it comes out of the hipbone somewhere in the exact spot where it is crushed between pants and belly. Combining this with long (2 hr up and down when traffic is bad) drives into his new work since last year march, he has simply 'crushed' that nerve. Solution: less belly, loser pants, find a better way to sit in the car.
But prominent thought for all three of us is: get moving and try to eat healthier than we do. And we /do/ eat healthy. We vary, I cook most of our meals from scratch, we don't eat out often (not since I manage to grill a steak to perfection).
Yes, we do eat meat, but we also eat a lot of fresh vegetables, and we try to eat two pieces of fruit every day.

And I feel the same as you. And I nearly get anxiety attacks by just thinking of 'dieting'.

so...
hugs
and thoughts
no advice
lots of mutterings

want a cookie?

[saluqi.livejournal.com]

I gave a lecture to new dog training class participants tonight and one of the things we cover is using food to train. Food is a great training tool for dogs when used properly but humans are so messed up about what food means and project that onto their dogs that it takes some time to go through the issues.

In the end I resorted to just saying "look, humans have baggage around food, and dogs don't - see if you can just treat it as a tool". It is yet another reminder that I wish things weren't quite so nuts tho'.

[cappyhead.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to chime in & say that I LOVE your icon. May I steal it?

[waywardcats.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think your health crap should just clear up and let you live your happy functional life.

Motion seconded.

[waywardcats.livejournal.com]

I understand exactly how you feel, as I age it takes more care to keep my health in the same place.

You've gotten lots of good advice already, the only thing I can think to add is maybe some sort of tonic? Daily small doses of garlic, ginger or ginseng for example some believe can have an effect on the immune system.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

I created that one myself from a T-shirt design somewhere on the web (which unfortunately I seem to have not made a note of; I usually credit the artist when I know it), using lechatron's El Jay icon maker: http://co.ntagio.us/eljay/iconmaker/. You are welcome to use it, crediting me for icon creation but not art. :^) Maybe "Artist unknown; icon by dawnd"?

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Well, FWIW, I think it makes perfect sense. And I understand the dilemma of not wanting to screw up years of work on intuitive eating. I wish I had advice, but I think all I have is empathy.

Random thoughts

[firecat]

[hugs]

It's not clear from your post what exactly you are hoping to control by restricting food or types of food. Are you trying to maintain your weight loss? Improve your energy level? Is there evidence that limiting the types or amount of food you eat helps with the type of cancer you have/had?

You say you want to reduce stress, but to me trying to control food looks an additional stress, not a stress reduction.

I assume that advice from someone who is much fatter than you and who has most of the fat-related medical conditions won't mean much, but my experience is that letting myself eat exactly what I want in the short term really works to improve the variety of my food choices in the medium/long term. It is scary though.

Are there any HAES / nonrestriction nutrition resources out there? How about nutrition resources that treat food as food and not as inconveniently packaged vitamins?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

:-) A cookie would be nice. Thanks! *hughug*

Re: Random thoughts

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

The weight I lost when I was sad/sick has all returned, and I'm happy with that. My body feels like my body again, not an alien body. My specific thoughts around food are that maybe if the proportion of things like veggies and grains and things of that nature were higher, and the proportion of grease and red meat and butter were lower, it might impact my health positively. (My research says it's nearly a sure thing, especially around stuff with my arteries.)

I don't discount what you have to say because of your size and health -- that would be idiotic. :-) In fact, I daresay that I can't think of anyone I know whose opinion about this I value more. (Also, that you're one of the people my hindbrain doesn't want to disappoint by even *talking* about imposing rules about food.)

You are right about restricting food being stressful for me. I think that the problem is that even if I approach it from the angle of "Oh, I need to *increase* the number of yummy vegetables I eat, and not restrict anything at all", the diet klaxons go off. They're well-trained klaxons, to be fair, and they're doing what I've told them to. I spent YEARS making sure that my brain knows that any talk about nutrition is a warning sign of destructive dieting; likewise any talk about making rules about food.

I have been eating exactly what I want for at least a decade. That has worked marvels for my mental health. I think it's possible it's done some damage to my physical health, though of course, I cannot be sure, and even if it has, I am not willing to punish the rest of me for any ill health I may have, no matter what its source is. So that's where I sit at the moment.

Re: Random thoughts

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Well, that's where I sit at the moment, with the addition of a whole pile of resentment about having the baggage around food that means that I can't just restrict foods if I want to for my health without adding a bunch of stress and historical bingey baggage to the mix.

Re: Random thoughts

[firecat]

Message to Serene's hindbrain: "Serene gets to talk about whatever she wants."

Based on what I see you write about food and what food I see when I come over to your house, your food choices already tend toward a pretty high proportion of grains/veggies to red meat/butter.

and even if it has, I am not willing to punish the rest of me for any ill health I may have, no matter what its source is.

Yeah, that.

My research tells me that eating veg and fiber is good for my health. The least invasive way I have found to eat veg/fiber is to make/get a meal that includes it, and also includes other stuff I like, and to eat the veg/fiber first. My hindbrain doesn't seem to interpret this as restricting.

food/diet issues

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i am extremely lucky that for some odd reason i just haven't internalized all those messages for women around food, neither from society, nor from fat acceptance activism.

but i have my own personal issues that have a lot to do with deprivation and restriction in childhood (not because of my gender, but because we were poor, and i was a "bad" child). i'd fought those pretty successfully i thought, while i was healthy/not-so-healthy at sizes and weights that weren't ascribable to fat and didn't correlate at all with prevalent messages from doctors. but now, for the first time, i'm fat and have pre-diabetes and sky-high blood pressure -- and of course out come the doctor's messages about "losing weight" (though my doctors are very mild with that, or i'd drop them).

and man, does trying to push myself slowly towards eating more healthy things bring on the "deprivation" voices. and i need the additional stress like i need a hole in my head.

i think i've exhausted all the tricks, and none of them work for any length of time. i suspect the only way to counteract this for me is to argue with them, quietly, but with a "so there" attitude. with all the crappy stuff from my childhood what has ended up changing things has been knowledge acquisition / meditation / quiet but insistent argument / some kind of reward. yes, that is somewhat stressful. but so is not listening to sound nutrition guidelines, knowing i could do better and not doing it because my fucking mother screwed me up. that's really galling. "don't let the turkeys get you down" is a good motivator for me, what's aggravating is that there are different turkeys at odds here, no matter which way i argue. i expect this wlll take years; there is no quick fix.

i am sorry you have all these health problems come down on you like a ton of bricks. it just sucks.

Re: Random thoughts

[firecat]

[hugs] The resentment sounds really hard.

I can't even get to a place of wanting to restrict foods for my health. I can get to a place of "They say" and "you should," but not "I want".

I try to influence my health through exercise and, lately, keeping a lot of detailed notes about my day to day physical condition. I have fewer negative messages around that stuff, I guess.

[misanthropoid.livejournal.com]

Here I come to save the daaaaaaay!

I have all the nutritional ins and outs hard wired.

Assuming that you are a laying hen.

Oh, you're not...then I'm really going to have to revise these calcium and phosphorous numbers.

Look, you're a beautiful (freud beautifly) person (now that's a cool freud) I just hope whatever you do makes you feel good too.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Proof that I'm really supertired: I now want to be a sidekick to Superfly. Look at me -- I'm BeautiFly!!

(Thank you. :-)

[skywhisperer.livejournal.com]

It does make sense, but I don't have any advice because I don't have that mode. I have two food-related states: I'm either hungry, and I want anything, in which case I don't feel deprived if I just grab something healthy out of the fridge, and I have a mood in which I want one particular thing - I want sushi, or cake, or peanut butter, or whatever.

My bf's the exact opposite. At any given time, he has two lists: things he's in the mood for, and things he isn't in the mood for. Something which is a favorite food can suddenly move to the "not in the mood" list, sometimes in the time it takes me to cook it. :)

I doubt he has a solution to your problem, either, because the extent to which he thinks about his food choices is generally limited to asking, "What's for dinner, dear?".

(to be wondered and possibly rambled about, someplace that isn't your food thread: Does the same dichotomy show up in the way he and I approach sex?)