Happy Chrismaka

I bought myself this gift for Christmas this year. I always end up buying myself at least a couple of things –when you’re a shopaholic going holiday shopping is very problematic—kind of like being on a strict diet and then going into Dunkin Donuts for coffee; what’s the chances you’re not going to break down and buy a donut??? During my holiday shopping, I often end up doing one for them, one for me, which means for every gift I buy, I get something for myself which is a bad situation, considering the budget I’ve been on for the last three years. I was doing pretty well this year and then I saw this. After much deliberation, I decided to buy it because a). I have been looking for a lotus necklace for a long time, and b). I love the symbolism of it. The lotus is considered a sacred symbol in both Hinduism and Buddhism. It grows in dirty, muddy water and yet blossoms as a pure, uncontaminated flower. So the mud and impurities feed the flower below the surface and this beautiful fragrant flower floats on top of the dirty water.

To say that I am a big fan of transforming the negative into something positive would be an understatement. I believe wholeheartedly that every soul is striving toward health and wholeness and that everything that happens in our lives is in service to that.
I believe that everything happens for a reason and that reason is to bring us to a more evolved place in ourselves. This principle runs rampant through the universe and yet, it isn’t always in operation in people’s lives because they are often too busy being upset about the negative that they can’t see past it to the gift. The gift requires work though, and many people have neither the desire nor the energy for such things. It’s too bad because that’s where the magic is—inside the difficulty, disguised as hardship.

I love this quote from A Bag of Tools by R.L. Sharpe:

Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass,
A book of rules;
And each must make,
Ere life is flown,
A stumbling-block or
a stepping stone.

I wish you, my dear readers, a transformative holiday season where the difficulties and hardships be they emotional, physical or otherwise end up being nothing more than fertilizer for your dreams and highest aspirations.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober;
Not to make us sorry but wise- Henry Ward Beecher

The Question

This month's O Magazine was very, very interesting. Oprah wrote an article about her recent 40 pound weight gain. What struck me was the conclusion that she came to at the end of the piece. It was a huge validation for me and the work that I've been doing in the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body Workshops with women. In the article, Oprah realizes that the solution to her weight problem is not about finding the right diet or the right exercise plan, it's about saying yes to herself, making herself a priority, and giving herself proper self-care. She also found THE QUESTION, the question that I asked myself every time I wanted to eat something for a solid two years: What am I really hungry for?

Oprah's answer was that she was hungry for balance, hungry to do something other than work. For me it came down to two words really. Yes and freedom. It wasn't so much that I wanted to eat certain foods even though I spent many hours obsessing over whether or not to eat them, it was that I wanted to feel as though I could eat them if I wanted to. I wanted to have the freedom to say yes to whatever it was that I wanted. I realized that I put this into the framework of forbidden foods but in fact it was a metaphor for my life. I wanted to be told yes to whatever I wanted and I wanted the freedom to allow myself to want. My soul longed to go after the real thing and stop accepting inferior substitutes. I was looking for the freedom to explore the possibilities without that critical voice in my head rattling off a diatribe of why what I want to do will not manifest. I was hungry to hear YES, YES, YES to whatever my heart desired and then I wanted to be able to support myself emotionally enough to see it through. I wanted to be on my own team for a change instead of standing at attention like a mercenary waiting to shoot down my next idea. I wanted to be surrounded by my own inspiration and encouragement rather than be immobilized by my own fear and lack of self love. I wanted to nurture my gifts and see their value, instead of dismissing them or repressing them from my consciousness. I wanted to find solace in myself and my own resources, not look to food to heal my wounds. I wanted to stop looking for love and fulfillment in all the wrong places. I wanted to stop thinking that the Yeses were frozen somewhere in a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

I'm already so tyrannized by the thought of having to post on this blog that I can't even think of a title--nevermind coming up with actual content. Well, I guess I can start with the remnant of a conversation that I had with some friends that were over for brunch on Sunday. One of them had suggested that maybe I do a cookbook of healthy recipes that taste really good. I had thought about doing this many years ago when I had my personal training business but just never got around to it. At this time, I don't really feel passionate about spending my time that way so my answer to my friend was, "maybe when I have an abundance of both time and money I'll reconsider it."

And today I thought to myself, what would I do if I had an abundance of both time and money. Here is my list and I encourage you, my army of readers to come up with your own and post it in the comments. I'm very interested in the deep desires of my loyal following. Truly, I am. But for now, here's mine:

If I had an abundance of time and money I would:

* Buy a barn in upstate New York and convert it into a retreat center where I could conduct Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body Workshops that are a week long for women who need to recharge, revitalize, and reconnect with themselves (don't think I won't be using that as the tagline in my advertising materials because I think it's brilliant)!

* Write long letters of adoration and thanks to all of the women whose work has shaped my being: Martha Beck, Geneen Roth, SARK, Anne Lamott, Robin Posin, Marianne Williamson.

* Go for one month to the Gurudev Siddha Peeth Ashram in India.

* Go to Jim Caruso's Open Mike Night for Broadway Peformers and Everyone else at Birdland on Monday nights.

* Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge

* Make the short film Kill the Cheesecakes that I've wanted to make for the last five years.

* Do volunteer coaching at a local shelter.

* Go back to tap class.

* E-mail Stew, the creator of the musical Passing Strange, nothing in the Broadway theater before or since has ever affected me like this show has and I never got to communicate it to Stew.

* Go to Point Reyes in Cali for a week and just hang out by myself and contemplate and write.

* Go to the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center and view all of the Bob Fosse shows that are archived there.

* Read A Remeberance of Things Past by Marcel Proust for crying out loud

Well, I think that's a pretty good start and I can see that there are a couple of things that I don't have to wait to do. I can do them right now. I'll let you know how it goes. And don't forget to make your own list. It's very enlightening.

Liquid Lunch

This week's New York Magazine had a feature article about female drinking. The article was eye-opening for me because I'm always thinking that I'm alone in my epic struggles with food. It was interesting to see that there are scores of women whose lives revolve around an outside entity also. Different substances yet the same feelings:
And so alcohol is our choice to soothe us in times of trouble, celebrate with us in times of joy, engage us in times of boredom. We use it to change our mood, to forget our problems, to give us courage, to access some essential, uncensored, better self. “It’s literally like insta-spa,” says a friend. “You have some alcohol, and your muscles relax. I can smoke a bowl or pop a Xanax, but it’s like wine is the likeliest choice.” Says another, vodka soda in hand: “I feel like I’m the shit when I drink. I feel invincible. You kind of get beer muscles. The bullshit falls away.”

Having a vanilla thick shake float from Carvel is not just an insta-spa for me but it's also a serotonin and dopamine sandwich. Good vibes all around for many hours afterward. When I eat gelato, I do forget my problems. Believe it or not, I have felt courageous after a pint of Ben and Jerry's. And yes, my muscles get very relaxed after a big dish of frozen custard slathered in whipped cream from Shake Shack. After a large mug of hot chocolate with a dollop of whipped cream the size of a baseball floating in it, I'm downright euphoric.

We all have our thing that we do to add some excitement to an otherwise boring day, to burn off stress, to feel like we're letting loose, or to just go to get numb. And as all the eaters out there can attest to--there is such a thing as a food hangover!

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.