Eatin' it

In previous postings I've mentioned that this isn't going to be a weight loss blog, that I wasn't going to be a slave to a food journal, that I didn't care how my favorite foods shake out nutritionally, and that I would never turn down dessert. I'm now in the position of eating my words on all of that.

While I'd want to slit my wrists if this really became a blog centered solely on weight loss, I will be talking a lot more about weight loss as it pertains to my own experience. I've felt very alone for the past couple weeks as I've done this food journaling and tried to modify my food intake, and the best thing for me to do right now is to get it all out in the open and talk about it.

In a lot of senses, I feel like I'm backwards from most women. You don't have to delve too far into the movie or book archives to find a storyline involving a woman who has been dieting her whole life only to discover during her mid-life crisis that she's been denying herself some major foodly pleasures. Eat Pray Love is a perfect example, as is the Sylvie Woodruff character in one of the best reads I've had lately, Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home. Who knows, of course, if the reality of most real women is like these characters. I do know a lot of real women who have been dieting for the great majority of their lives, and if not dieting at least watching their weight in some way. I guess you could say I've watched my weight over the years, just not quite in the same way. I've always wanted, and sometimes painfully wished, to be thinner but for various reasons I've never embarked on a major weight loss plan. With that has always come the smug satisfaction that at least I'm not constantly fixated on what goes into my mouth, and, at least I can eat what I want without guilt. Of course that's not entirely true because I definitely have gotten fixated on, say, that chocolate birthday cake sitting on the counter and I've definitely felt glimmers of guilt after eating three pieces in a row of said birthday cake. I'm just guessing that it's been nowhere near the degree of fixation and guilt experienced by a lot of folks who are dieting.

Now that I'm in a different place, I can see where the Dieters are coming from. Whereas previously I'd stare onto that gorgeous chocolate cake and dream about the moment it will first cross my lips, now I stare onto that gorgeous chocolate cake and ponder how many calories it has and what I'm not gonna be able to eat later to compensate for having it. Followed by the thought that maybe the cake isn't worth the calories in the end. Followed by the voice in my head mimicking Mr. Garrison that says "WHAT did you just say to me???" So, let me just say that this process has been really confusing and conflicting so far. Because, fuck... am I a Dieter now? Have I crossed some threshold and I'll never be able to go back to eating food normally and thoughtlessly again? It's all so weird!

I've found myself feeling like "that girl" recently. You see, "that girl" is a little game I play with myself in which I'm never the winner. When I was planning my wedding, I never wanted to be "that girl who was so obsessed with planning the details of her wedding that she became a bridezilla." Annnnd, there I found myself... pissy with the world because no one understood my stylistic vision, telling one of my Best Women that she needed to "shut the fuck up and listen to me for once" and being so anxious that I had insomnia for a year. When Honey Bunny and I stopped using birth control to see if we could get pregnant, I never wanted to be "that girl who becomes obsessed with trying to get pregnant." Annnd, here I was (am???)... trying to pretend not to be affected by getting my period month after month but secretly crying on the inside every time, ceasing all social drinking and smoking until it happens eventhough that didn't feel right, and yakking my therapist's ear off week after week about why it hadn't happened for us yet. Now I'm "that girl who's obsessed with counting calories and losing weight." I guess the point is that we will all be "that girl" at various times in our lives, even when we don't want to be. At any rate, it belies some naivety as to what others have gone through, that I haven't been able to relate until the present moment to someone I've judged for being "that girl". Walk a mile in someone else's shoes, right?

While the experience of being a bridezilla, being baby-crazed and being a Dieter are all legitimate, it does say something about taking the experience too far. How to not take it too far is beyond me. Taking it too far is my middle name in a lot of instances. And yet, I wonder if it's just part of the process to take it too far in the beginning. I'm really hoping so because, frankly, I can't live like this. I can't have my love of food taken away and trying to balance my favorite foods in X number of calories per day is making me tear my hair out.

Which bring me to my next point: treats. I went to dinner with a great friend in town for business and my husband the other night, to one of my fave places, Dosa. I enjoyed the food but was sitting there confounded as to how to enter it in MyPlate, and whether I should even track it at all. My friend joked, "just enter that you ate 500 calories and call it a day!" Being a closeted statistician, I felt like I needed to either enter nothing and just know that day's tracking was incomplete, or to try to enter something approximating the dinner. I ended up doing the latter and whoa... my calories for the day red-lined. The next thing I started worrying about was what my weight reading would be for the next day. I've been weighing myself daily and entering that in MyPlate as well. Being on the heels of Thanksgiving extended weekend didn't help a damn thing, as not only was there Thanksgiving dinner but also a big Mexican dinner with a different friend who was in town, and going to the movies twice, where this girl loves herself some buttered popcorn and the giant chocolate dipped rice crispy treat. And maybe there was some movie theater nacho cheese and chips somewhere in there, too. Ahem. Point being: when exactly do you call something a treat? How often is it okay to have a treat? And god damn it, why are so many of the things I love in treat territory??

I've been fortunate in not watching my weight thus far, truly. If I'd been watching my weight this entire time, this entire life, I wouldn't necessarily know the unimpaired depths of foodly pleasure that Tia Margarita has to offer, or Miette, or Vosges Haute Chocolat, or Bolani, or Cowgirl Creamery, and so on and so forth. I've tasted and enjoyed a lot of food, and I'm so glad I have. What I don't get at this point is how to have those things and still watch my weight. The simple answer is that I still get to have what I love, but just less of it. That's such an odd feeling to process. It's logical and it does make me feel better on some level. On other levels, it does nothing at all to appease me, and that's some deep shit that I'll go into another day (maybe).

There is a lot of food to love in this world. I walked through Whole Foods last night after eating humbly all day and then doing 60 minutes of hard circuit training before dinner. To say I was like a kid in a candy store is a gross understatement. To see the magnitude of tasty food they offer, treats or not, on every shelf, in every chafing dish, around every corner, was really overwhelming. For the first time it also felt overwrought and like the huge mixed message my previous therapist, Sharilyn, always said it was. We're supposed to watch what we eat and be thin and lose weight, and essentially we're not supposed to be food's bitch... but isn't that exactly what Whole Foods wants? If you've exercised control over food your whole life, whether by genuine means (ie. you've never been interested in being food's bitch) or by force (ie. Dieter or similar), maybe you can walk into that store and just be totally blase about all. If you're like me at present, if you're food's bitch, and especially if you're trying not to overindulge (or indulge at all) in your little treats, going into that store is like doing battle with the devil. And you want to know the most cruel irony of all? I've gone into Whole Foods at least once a week for the last year to pick up lunch and I've never been confronted like that. I've always known they have lots of tasty things but I've never been overwhelmed by it. I would just pick things to buy and leave. Blase.

Man, I could go on and on about all this stuff. I'm processing a lot of shit in my ol' noggin right now and always appreciate hearing what other people's experiences have been... if you have any wisdom to share, please comment.