Fixing Myself
Jun 5th, 2009 by heidi
I was startled to find myself on the Fatosphere feed yesterday as I skimmed over my communities list on LJ. I’d asked to be added (albeit just with entries tagged “fat”) but didn’t expect it to happen as it had been so long. Of course, it was Ciaran’s birthday post and completely lacking in relevance to FA/SA (fat acceptance/size acceptance) and I feel like now I need to frantically make an FA post to redeem myself in the eyes of the Fatosphere.
Having seen one of the comments over on one of the posts about the Fat Chat feed lamenting how there are people who don’t “deserve” to be on the Fatosphere feed (presumably because they don’t always post about FA?), I feel even more paranoid.
Anyway, I have been meaning to post about the most courageous thing I’ve done recently (other than being a fat person eating where people can see me), which is that I finally got around to looking for a nutritionist and therapy.
I don’t like to admit that I need help. One of those things we TCKs learn early on, rightly or wrongly, is that we can’t count on people to help us. When you’re a four-year-old little girl sitting in a pickup that is driving through a village that you can’t remember ever having seen in your life, where you can’t understand a word that anyone else is saying, you realize pretty dang quickly that you are alone in this universe. No one, and nothing, can be counted on to remain the same and be a constant support except for you. No one else is doing it for you, so you’d better suck it up and do it yourself…and, most importantly, since your parents are taking care of two other children and are coping with culture shock of their own, you certainly shouldn’t give them any sign that it’s upsetting you and thereby add even further to their worries.
By “you/your” in that little parable, I of course mean, “I/me/my/mine.” Incidentally, if you’d like a little insight into what it means to be an Enneagram Type 4, please re-read the above.
Anyway. I deal with things on my own. I do not allow my depressive phases to affect my quality of work. I do not let on that things are not right, even when they aren’t…and all of that feeds, literally, my dependence on emotional eating.
So. For the first time in my life, I’ve looked up nutritionists and therapists that are covered on my insurance. I’m going to go see a nutritionist about my PCOS (if she ever returns my message, that is). I’m going to ask her about compulsive eating disorder. I’m going to see a therapist who specializes in dealing with disordered eating. I’m going to get help.
And it’s bloody terrifying. I can ask for help at work when I need it; I was hired because I like to work independently and prefer to take a project and run with it but if I need backup or have a question, I can ask. I ask for help in other ways too…but admitting that I need more help with eating than all the FA books that I have read can give me is scary.
There’s more than a little arrogance in it too, as I will readily admit. I’ve been in therapy. Some of it has even helped. I have a hard time believing that anyone has anything new to offer that I haven’t heard before or can’t think up on my own. I’m very good at looking at my problems in a logical way. I know that my eating is emotional and that I’m doing it because I don’t have other ways of working through difficult emotions. Of course I’m aware that I frequently eat when I’m not hungry and eat past the point when I should be full. What nobody seems to be able to tell me is what the heck I should do about that…and it is difficult for me to really believe that someone can.
I am so very tired of compulsive eating. I don’t binge-eat like so many people seem to do. I’ve never gone through a whole bag of chips in a single sitting (well, not a bag larger than a single-serving, that is). What I do is nibble, nibble, nibble all day long. This isn’t as prevalent at work – I’m busy with my job and I don’t need to eat out of boredom. I have my set lunch time, am hungry, and eat something. The same just doesn’t seem to be true at home. Even at work, however, the issue of not knowing when to stop is a serious problem. I’m generally not in pain when I stop eating but I do have the compulsion to finish everything on my plate…because it tastes good? Because I’m afraid that when it’s gone I won’t be able to have more? Because?
Those are the questions I have and can’t answer by myself. It’s hard to have faith that anyone else has the answers either, or can help me find them.
I’m working on feeling comfortable in my own skin. What I’m not okay with is my apparent inability to listen to my body, so I’m asking for help. I just hope they stick to the Health At Every Size approach that both the nutritionist and therapist’s websites proclaim they do. This needs to get better and I need it to get better as fast as it can possibly happen.
I am very proud of you for sharing this process here. It’s really hard to address the complexities (well, it is for me) of wanting to accept all-size, goddessy beauty and also feel like your own eating patterns need to change. I *am* a binger. I can eat an appalling amount of food in one sitting. Blergh.
I wish you great positivity with new food changes. I need to move in a better direction myself, because I am focusing only on calories and weight loss, always justified with the scoliosis. That’s leaving out the very important aspect of addressing quality instead of just quantity. But, baby steps are good.
HUGS!
I can’t speak for others, but my feeling is that part of FA is fat normalization; recognizing that we are more than the sum of our adipose, as it were. It’s saying out loud that we have interests, needs, abilities, activities and strengths that are separate from our fat, even when they are informed by it. Childbirth and parenting are among those activities. While I wouldn’t want a lot of blogs on the roll that virtually never cover FA specific issues, I wouldn’t want a roll that never allows for any other subject to be covered, either.
I love reading about peoples’ experiences of education, cooking, parenting, religious exploration, exercise, crafting, race, sexuality, (dis)ability, and dozens of other subjects. I like hearing from the diverse voices of a movement. We have one thing in common. We have a lot to learn from one another if we will listen. I want to listen.
Good for you for finding the help you need to develop a better relationship with food! Eating past satiety on a regular basis is neither a joyful nor a nurturing act. I wish you every success in your efforts to find a solution.
Nice to see you on the feed. I have a “finish the plate” issue as well, and I attribute it to a combination of having been poor (in which case food wasted is money wasted) and having been a dieter (where I finished everything simply because it’s all I was getting until the next appointed food time.) I think someone at SP once pointed out that food is no more wasted in the landfill than it is in the wastewater treatment plant, which takes care of the first issue. The second has taken a long time of keeping food in the house and reminding myself that I really could go get more if I wanted to. It’s still sometimes hard to allow something to be leftovers or garbage when I worked so hard to make it.
Congrats on getting on the feed! I enjoy your blog and really feel you “deserve” to be on it! You are aways honest and don’t shy away from the tough questions.
All my support and best wishes go out to you as you deal with all of these issues. I hope you are getting good RL support, too.
“What nobody seems to be able to tell me is what the heck I should do about that…and it is difficult for me to really believe that someone can.”
If you would ever like to chat about what you are going thru I would be happy to do so. I am offering this because what you have posted is exactly what I have lived for the past 5 years. I went thru intensive therapy (spending over $30,000.00) for 4 years, spent 2 years in Overeaters Anonymous and have been poking around the FA community for about 6 months. I have also worked with a nutritionist and have struggled with compulsive/disordered eating.
Of all the resources I have worked with over the past 5 years – some of the most profoundly healing things have been rather simple. So, anyway, you are welcome to email me if you would like to talk a little. I won’t “tell you what to do” but I can share my experience. carolmerel@hotmail.com
All my support to you. I am glad that you are seeking a way to deal with your issues and finding a way to have a healthier relationship with food. Also, I love that you continue to be so open here on your blog. Good luck! *hugs*
Welcome to the feeds! I think it is important to see fat people have normal lives too, which is why I am happy to include your blog on the feeds. Any reference I might have made to blogs I didnt think should be on the feeds were ones that do refer to weight loss etc as being a positive thing. I would talk about my own private life more on my own blog except that I have had issues with internet stalking, so I don’t go there too much on my public blog. Thanks for being so open in your sharing and I am looking forward to finding out more about you and your journey!
I trust you’re aware of (and have rejected, for your own reasons) the 12-step program called “Overeaters Anonymous”? My stepmother swears by it; it doesn’t seem useful to me because I don’t tend to eat emotionally.
Within the bounds of emotional overeating, they do give one a ‘sponsor’ to call instead of eating, which is to say reaching out instead of feeding in. But that’s about all I know, and they may secretly be evil. *shrug*
I will readily admit I’ve never been to an OA meeting but my understanding from those who have is that it’s based on an addiction model (naturally) and thus recommends that you avoid “trigger” foods. Considering that food restriction in the form of dieting is what’s caused my disordered eating in the first place, I tend to think that this isn’t going to be a good solution for me – in freeing up my eating, I’ve already made huge strides in decreasing the amount of actual binge eating I do (in favor of picking at things over the course of the day, which is my current issue).
I think OA must work well for some people but I don’t believe I’m addicted to food. My body will not have a physical reaction (save for starvation) if I stop eating. What I do need to figure out is what’s triggering the eating itself (it isn’t the food), and how to fix those emotions, if that makes sense!
Makes perfect sense to me.
An addiction model for food does seem rather inherently silly; pretty much everybody will have a physical reaction to quitting the habit of eating. Those who don’t tend to be . . . inanimate objects.