The Healing

The date on this one is 11/14/2003. I've been on and off the merry go round a lot since then, but I think I'm returning to this place.

The other day while I was standing at my kitchen counter eating way too many rice cakes loaded with butter and fruit preserves (my version of a pastry), that voice in the back of my head wasn’t saying “don’t eat this, stop right now, you’ve already had too many. You’re veering off, you’re getting fat, this is going right to your gut, you’ll be sorry tomorrow.” And I thought, wow, it’s quiet in here. I can just eat this last rice cake and then get right on with my life. I don’t have to go into my bedroom and start trying on my pants to make sure they still fit. I’m eating something I really want right now, I’m eating as much as I want and that’s O.K. It doesn’t mean that I have to keep eating for the rest of the day. It doesn’t mean I have to stop eating for the rest of the day, as a matter of fact - it doesn’t mean anything.

I’m having something to eat, and that’s it. No biggie. Look no drama. It feels sostrange to not make the rest of the evening a bingefest or a whipping session. Just put the butter and jelly away, close up the rice cakes and on to the next activity. No feeling like a guilty glutton. No emotional whipping session. The food police must be on vacation today.

And I thought this is how eating is for people who don’t have food issues. Amazing. It’s a bittersweet moment when one realizes that one’s demons are no longer fully in charge.

For so many years the Food Police ruled my world. I don’t mean this in a playful sense, I mean it literally. They dictated everything. If my eating was controlled and I was fitting into my skinny clothes, well then life was good and no matter what happened it never got under my skin because when I looked in the mirror, I liked what I saw, I knew I looked good and for me that was the most important thing. Being thin meant everything to me. Feeling fat was the equivalent of a death sentence. If I was feeling fat nothing was right and nothing could make me happy. When I was feeling fat, it was as if my entire being was shrouded with a layer of hopelessness which nothing could penetrate.

Along with depriving myself of pleasure around food, I also missed many great moments in my life, moments I will never get back because I was so wrapped up in the terror that I was losing control and gaining weight that I could not participate in life as it was happening.

The food roller coaster can be quite an exciting ride. Sometimes there are long stretches of life that are very uneventful - same scene different day. Getting onthe food roller coaster is an instant injection of excitement. For me, going off my diet can sometimes feel as exhilarating a sky diving - only without the risk. The syndrome that is bingeing and dieting gives me a sense of control over my life. I know how to let myself go, but more importantly I know how to reel myself in when I want to. There’s nothing like that Monday morning going after the fat with a vengeance routine to make me feel like I’m in charge of my destiny. And then when I actually lose a few pounds well, I’m on top of the world. “I’m in control… I’m in charge, see, I can solve my problems. I CAN make myself happy.”

And then if I’m bored or I’m really stressed out or angry or sad, I can always interrupt my feelings by downing a pint of ice cream, which takes me out of the real issues and catapults me into, “Oh no, I broke my diet, I can’t believe I’m doing this, why did I let myself have that” and on and on which starts the cycle all over again.

The function of all this I painfully found out, was to keep me orbiting my world without ever getting close enough to inhabit it. Life became very small and thus very manageable because it was always about my body and food - not the bad relationships, the unfulfilling work, the not feeling loved, valued, or appreciated. Instead, life became a merry go round that revolved around bingeing and dieting and I just kept circling the same issues over and over, and never actually moving forward with any of them. That was the bitter. Here is the sweet.

Once I stopped eating sugar, I was able to eliminate an entire area of obsession in one foul swoop. Not having sugar in my life just freed up so much of my psyche that when I realized how much more time was available to me because of it, the idea of going back and eating dessert just seemed like emotional suicide. Yeah, it tastes good for as long as it lasts, and for me that was never more than 3 minutes, but then it’s over and then what do I do?

Well I would either start obsessing over what to eat next or begin the dreaded cycle of regret. It just seemed like so much work for really not that much pleasure, mostly because I wasn’t able to allow myself the pleasure which made me realize “IF YOU’RE PUNISHING YOURSELF EVERY TIME YOU EAT IT OR BLOCKING THE PLEASURE THEN WHAT IS THE POINT OF EATING IT?????? There really isn’t one. I ate it because it’s what I knew how to do. It’s what I learned would make me feel better. It’s was a habit. I never realized there was another way.

When I started eating so that my body would feel better and began focusing on cutting out the things that were in opposition to that I began to see the possibilities. I began to really focus on myself, which was the attention I was really craving all along. Once I got off the merry-go-round of diet, binge, regret I started to slowly find out what I really, really needed to be happy; answers that up until that point had been a mystery. I longed to be on a journey to the center of myself, not the self-centered obsession from which I could not seem to break free.

Once I stopped eating dessert, so many things in my life came into sharp focus. The clarity was breathtaking. It is the serenity and the clarity that keep me from putting my hand into that clear glass jar filled with double stuff oreos in the kitchen at work. Of course I look at the jar for a second, I have the thought, and I JUST SAY NO, get my stuff out of the fridge and move on.

EVERY TIME I say no to something like an oreo or a kit kat, I’m saying no to insanity and yes to serenity. It’s hard for me to fathom that something as innocuous as a cookie could send me over the edge, but it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind which to me is so much more valuable than the momentary pleasure of a sleeve of double stuff oreos.