it's been a while since i've written about food and my relationship to it. for any long-time readers of this blog you know i struggled with a severe eating disorder for years (about six to be exact). while i consider myself almost completely healed, i would be remiss if i didn't say there are days in which i struggle greatly and moments in which the disease reenters my life in a startling fashion. though, i now wonder if this isn't so much a product of my history as the culture in which we live.
i was having a very difficult time this past fall. i went home to texas for few days and i remember my mother asking me why i had taken down the side-link on the blog that detailed my history with the eating disorder.
i don't want it to define me, i said. i'm just not sure i want or need everyone to know now.
but for better or worse it is a part of your story, she replied.
(boy how things have changed since i was just out of college and my parents were so opposed to the whole blog thing).
i've begun no less than seven or eight posts about my relationship with food now, because my mother's right. for better or worse it is a part of my story, and believe it or not it is something i am deeply grateful for. but in trying to write about it, there just seems to be so much to say, and i get overwhelmed and those posts fall to the graveyard of half-written pieces that litter my blogger dashboard.
so i'm working on it. on writing about where i am with food now. and i can see where others will look at this and think, what does an eating disorder have to do with me?
well, God willing, not much.
but food is an issue in this country. health is an issue. and it is not the purview of the wealthy and elite to worry about it. the way in which eat has changed drastically over the last fifty, sixty years. and our poor bodies just can't keep up, nor can they made heads or tales of it--we have gotten so far away from natural, biological inclinations.
so i'm gonna keep talking about it. because it is vital and nothing is more of the moment.
but until i get my act together, i implore you to take a look at these.
you see, we need to take what we think we know about food and health and turn it on its head:
the real cause of heart disease, according to a heart surgeon.
exercise changes DNA.
hello giggles does it again: a brilliant article, by a brilliant woman. this one about body image.
the reasons for obesity in this country are many, but this audio article is worth a listen. (i mean, seriously, please give it a listen).
occupying or rather, de-occupying big foods. now this is a movement that i could get behind.
and should you want to know more about my story... (it goes backwards, so the most recent posts are the ones that will come up first).
food and health
dinner.
i had an almond-milk-latte for dinner, tonight. well, that and a large chocolate-chip cookie from the baked-goods section of whole foods. i mean, okay so it was vegan and surely that counts for something? but in terms of sugar...loaded and isn't that the front i'm trying to cut back on?
funny thing is, i was actually quite hungry--the kind of odd sits-under-your-ribs-painful kind of hunger. but nothing spoke to me. i circled the salad bar, weight the couscous versus quinoa versus my usual go-to of crispy falafel bites. even wandered over to the pizzas.
not one thing appealed.
well, one thing: sugar.
it was stress. the stress called out for it. and for something warm to hold between the hands. the fact that i could dip the cookie into the warm drink? icing on the cake, icing on the cake.
it was my second latte of the day.
the first was mid-afternoon. an attempt to combat a cloying exhaustion. the second, proverbial icing for the stress sugar in cookie form.
forgive yourself this dinner. forgive yourself this moment. those were my thoughts standing in the middle of whole foods, readying to head downtown for the first rehearsal in the actual space.
and you know what? i did. immediately i did. i granted myself forgiveness. and few things have felt better.
after all, i had spent my day making pretty good choices (raw savory coconut rounds and all). and given that i wasn't holding a box of entemenan's pop-ems, i figured this choice wasn't all that bad. could be worse.
balance and moderation. and forgiveness.
i fell asleep on the subway last night
i fell asleep on the subway last night. riding the long R train into brooklyn.
i've lived in new york for going on eight years now and this was a first.
turns out i'm exhausted. in the good kind of way. where life is busy and full and new. but also in the way where you fall asleep on the train and clean laundry eats an entire corner of your room and you wake each morning with no sense of what day it is and where you have to go or even if you've got your head screwed on properly.
so busy that exhaustion takes hold in uncomfortable ways and food choices go to hell.
i had leftover banana bread in my tote bag that i had no intention of touching. but on that R train, engaged in a battle between sleep and sense, losing to the deep, i half-consciously groped for the tupperware and the promise of its leftovers.
if i couldn't sleep i would eat.
and i'm gonna level with you, that choclate-chip banana bread was damn good.
i've been meaning to write about food for a while now. i've certainly sat down to do it several times. and somehow i get distracted or overwhelmed or maybe even a little embarrassed by the prospect of sharing where i am in the life-long fight to eat well, and so i've left half-begun, half-finished drafts littering my desktop.
so here goes.
i want to write food and the value system we attach to it.
i said this to a friend recently and she said, what do values have anything to do with food?
sigh, deep breath, gather my wits.
let's start here:
we certainly attach a value system in this country to fat and thin. do we not?
instead of that, let's redirect. let's focus on what we put in our body and feel good about that, trust that, and then let the pounds fall where they will.
getting to the good part
when the impulse for a binge came i could feel it travel through me. a slow, steady, steam-roll of progression.
first came the thought.
that was all. an idea. a whisper, a promise, a strand of air. the thought: binge, it would say. go ahead, make your way to the store, get what you will, and eat it. all of it.
and that was it. the thought was the beginning, middle--the end. i was helpless against it. it would slip down my throat effortlessly, burn a little as it passed through my neck and across my shoulder blades, and then it would sit heavy and pulsing at the pit of my stomach.
i was a woman possessed. there was no defense against the thought.
it was a helplessness that i'd not experienced before and God willing, never will again. it was consistent, relentless, overwhelming and at one point, near daily. and it was stronger than me. it was real and nearly impossible to describe to others.
if it's just a thought, why not ignore it?
if only.
how to explain?
to ask me to ignore it would have been like asking the waves to ignore the pull of the moon. to stop their continuous and steady progression along the coast line.
impossible.
the very first time i met with tom (head of the eating and weight disorder program at one our new york city hospitals) he so clearly and calmly said to me: it's called thought action fusion. right now your brain can't distinguish between the though and the action that will follow, the binge. it's physical and it's science.
life raft. that information was the first life raft.
have the thought to binge. wait five minutes, and then go ahead.
next time, give yourself ten minutes between the thought and the action.
then fifteen, then twenty, and on and on. that will strengthen that muscle in your mind. it's exercise. and it will allow you to separate the two.
the thought is the thought. the action, the action. they are separate. apart. different.
and so it began. and i began to accumulate life rafts. little bobbing boats that pulled me from the great, unforgiving, unrelenting tidal wave of blue.
it has been such a long, slow road to finding my way back--much of it chronicled here, peppered through the now three-year archive of this blog.
an eating disorder is a disease. an addiction. but you don't get to swear off the substance you so like to abuse. and while you, like so many others need to lose weight, every lick of leading diet information and advice will not aid you, it will not only serve to make you far, far sicker.
take a minute to imagine that, will you? if every piece of good medicine or leading nutritional information or common, popular dogma only served to make you worse, immeasurably so.
for me, the process of getting better has been one very grand experiment. and as with any scientific study failure is necessary--it provides some of the most valuable feedback.
i pretty quickly figured out some basic things: counting calories doesn't work. cutting out carbs doesn't work (but don't think i didn't try both those thing many, many, many, many times just to be sure).
the long and short of what i've learned is this: if i can't do it every day for the rest of my life, it just won't serve me.
i learned to make food bigger than myself. i became a vegetarian because it's good for the environment. and what right do i have to place the human desire for meat over the welfare of planet earth? that's not to say i encourage everyone to cut out meat. or eggs or cheese or any of that. though i do implore others to eat locally. to support restaurants that employ the farm to table model. to buy from road stands and refuse the plastic bag when you can carry the container of blueberries and bottle of water the short distance of the corner store to home without it.
i learned that (for myself) i'm happiest when i delay breakfast, when i don't worry about five square meals. a late breakfast and three do me just fine. i like eating lighter in the morning and heavier at night. i do that and i lose weight--how bout that for going against the grain?
i also worked out that sometimes going to the gym just isn't in the cards. and so i get a massage instead. because there are a million different ways we can be kind to our bodies. and because when i'm ready i do return. and the pulsing and the squats and the pain of it all--well, my body likes it, even if i don't.
i learned that exercise is best when i engage the mind.
and that the further away i get from that abysmal period in which i starved myself (six years now) the more forgiving my body is of those moments i over eat. because my body knows me now. knows i won't ever withhold again, so there's no need for it to hold onto the empty calories.
as well as i am now, and i am, i'm very well, there are pockets of time when i slip into old habits and old ways. these pockets don't usually last so long but they are unsettling and difficult nonetheless.
these last three weeks i've eaten little more than entenmann's doughnuts and ben and jerry's ice cream.
there i said it. my two great accomplices. donuts and ice cream. and of course these two things make themselves visible on my body. because those can't be your two main food groups and you not see a change. and in the throws of something bigger than myself i look in the mirror and voila! i am as big as i've ever been (not true), but so the feeling goes.
the thing about this go round, this little battle with the gods of health. well...this go round life continued on. and life was good. despite the difficulty in getting out of bed. despite not feeling beautiful. despite feeling down and low and wanting to eat just to eat, i went out at night. went on dates. sojourned out with my best gal pals. i would wake in the morning and have my coffee and play the music and attempt to live normally. and all in all, life was pretty good.
better than pretty good.
and as i separate life from the eating disorder, as the two things begin to live in different spheres, i am reminded of though action fusion and the strengthening of the muscle that separates the two.
i am strengthening the muscle of life and the more space--the more distance i can put between my life and my struggle with food, the weaker the struggle with food becomes until eventually it is eclipsed, outrun, overrun by the bounty of my desire to live well and truthfully and with integrity.
most people say that those who struggle with eating issues will do so for the rest of their life. it's a lifelong battle, a lifelong struggle. a chronic disease.
i say, what a grim diagnosis. what a shortsighted, but easy to propagate media sound bite.
i'll be damned if i deal with this for the rest of my life.
there are few things i know with great certainty in this world, but this i know (in my gut, in my toes, in every fiber of the purest form of me) i know this: i will not struggle with an eating disorder for the rest of my life. i will not even struggle with eating issues for the rest of my. because i'm dealing with it now. because i'm challenging it on every level at this very moment and so it will pass and i will pass on to better things. because i am armed with invaluable tools and immeasurable amounts of (the correct) information. and because i am slowly regaining an inner confidence stronger than any amount of weight, any number of donut boxes, any stockpile of mornings in which getting out of bed is difficult.
i'm willing to venture and say that, at this point in time, my relationship with food is healthier than the average american woman's. this is not to boast, but rather to comment on the despairing nature of food culture in this country.
there is a balance that must be struck--a balance between loving the body i have in this moment and a desire to be kind to it. and the more i love my body, the kinder i am. and the kinder i am, the more my body surprises me and the more beautiful it becomes.
i have hips. beautiful, lovely, full hips. and why shouldn't i celebrate them--just as i celebrate the inordinate number of moles peppering my skin and my almond-shaped eyes that nearly disappear when i smile?
dear kate moss, nothing tastes so good as skinny feels? what a sad and constricting way to live one's life. what a small idea to think the two mutually exclusive (dangerous, even). what a lie that's being parceled out by numerous sectors of our society.
i want to live in a world where i don't read magazines in which they suggest the best way to deal with body image issues when showering with a man is to wear a t-shirt--more coverage for you, male-fantasy for him. don't get me wrong, the whole t-shirt thing sounds kind of exciting. but really? really? the men don't care. they don't see the extra weight. they're beside themselves with giddiness. it's not the men making women self-concious--it's the articles suggesting you should be aware, uncomfortable--that there is something to hide.
someone recently asked if i regret any of what i've written on the blog regarding my struggle towards health? if it's uncomfortable to know that both friends and family read it?
i would be remiss if i didn't say there were moments it was difficult or embarrassing or even shameful. but for me it was necessary. so that other's might understand, (especially so my parents might understand) what i'd never have the courage or clarity so say out loud.
but to say i regret any of it would be to diminish the power of this life--not just my life, but the sphere of life in which all things take place. to say i regret any of it would be to dismiss humanity.
so i found my humanity in a box of donuts and an eating disorder? it's a little funny, no? and a little beautiful and little bit just entirely the way life goes.
i don't regret the past or the mistakes or my few extra pounds because they're all part of the story. and the story's still unraveling. and i have this sense that i'm just about to get to the good part.
what i want to hear those politicians talk about for this upcoming presidential election.
i'm on my third attempt at brewing a pot of coffee this morning.
i put in the grounds, the filter, turned on the light and upon returning to pour a cup...i had forgotten the water.
so i turned it off, put in the water, gave it a minute...never turned it back on.
now it's on, there's water, and i'm still waiting. let's hope the third time really is the charm.
i tell you this in warning. if it was that hard to get a pot of coffee going this morning then, well, i'm really not sure what might come of this rambling post.
okay, here goes:
i am not a foodie. i count this as a blessing. i am not a person who tastes the gradations of good in food. once it's good, i'm set. i don't taste the subtleties beyond that. i realized this upon a visit to tom colecchio's restuarant craft. i sat with five friends around a massive wooden table and watched and listened as they made sounds and faces usually reserved for the bedroom. this is soooo goooooood they crooned. and i sat there thinking, yeah it's good. it's good, but...hmmmm. tell you the truth? i was far more interested in the rustic decor and the simplicity of the dishes--the fine, local ingredients that had been sourced.
i've been a vegetarian for coming on two years now. few things can i say with such pride. (though i must admit that every once and again someone i live with throws bacon on the stove and the smell infiltrates every crevice of our apartment and i can barely contain myself. i'd give it all up for just one slice of that stuff, i think. but i haven't--not yet, anyway).
food is fun again. for me, it is fun. after so many years of it being anything but, it is suddenly fun again. there is a challenge to the art of eating locally. to eating well and wholly. to reducing the amount of oil used in getting the food to our table. we are a nation of gas guzzlers. i think we can all agree on that. so we talk about riding bikes and commuting together and taking public transport and we pass judgement on those with unnecessary suv's (oh, you don't do that, it's just me when i'm home in texas? hmm. well, okay). and all of those things are good and right. but i don't hear too many people talking about all the oil that we guzzle in getting our perfectly packaged, hermetically sealed foods. consider the following:
americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides use oil an natural gas as their starting materials, and in their manufacturing. but getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of the total oil used for our food. the lion's share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. each food item in a typical u.s. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. in addition to direct transport, other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking), packaging, warehousing, and refrigeration. energy calories consumed by production, packaging, and shipping far outweigh the energy calories we receive from the food. if every u.s. citizen at just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. (animal, vegetable, miracle...page 5)
when i was really sick, really in the throws of an eating disorder i was accused by more than once of being terribly selfish. and i was. it made me into an entirely different person--a terribly, unbelievably selfish human being and that is something i have to reconcile myself with day after day.
but we americans, we're not doing much better, are we? we want it and we want it now and we're entitled to it. forget the impact on oil consumption and those multitudinous political ramifications, forget the impact on the environment--in fact, why think about those things at all?
we cast off environmentalist as radicals or tree-huggers and we blame big-oil for much of the world's problems, all the while demanding more of it, more oil.
before the catastrophic bp oil spill, does everyone remember the exxon valdez spill? of course you do, it's been a watchword for years, a warning, a catch-all for the harm the oil industry rails against the environment day after day. but in 1995 smithfield (america's leading pork producer) spilled more than twenty million gallons of lagoon waste [pig shit] into the new river in north carolina. the spill is twice as big as the iconic exxon valdez spill six years earlier... smithfield was fined $12.6 million, which at first sounds like a victory against the factory farm. at the time, $12.6 million was the largest civil-penalty pollution fine in US history, but this is a pathetically small amount to a company that now grosses $12.6 million every ten hours. (eating animals...pages 178-179).
every ten hours. wow.
why am i blogging about this this morning? i'm not sure. i guess because i feel like not enough people are. children are getting fat. and people are dying from obesity related illnesses. and all the while we're depleting the environment at a terrifying rate. so shouldn't we all be talking about this? shouldn't this be what the 2012 election is about? shouldn't this be the hot-topic issue?
one meal. one organic, locally grown meal a week and we'd reduce the united states oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels per week. that's easy. one meal? that's nothing. there are things we can do. steps we can take. we just have to get off our fat asses (literally) and do them. and demand the government make it possible.