Epiphany in 4th grade

I had a flashback the other day. I was remembering 4th grade. My teacher in 4th grade was Mrs. Travena. She was lovely, and in charge of the school newspaper so she was very into making reading and writing cool. What heaven for me. If only I hadn't been 10 years old, I could have appreciated it more. Because, you see, at 10 years old, I had already endured being at an "awkward" age for a year, and I was damn tired of it, and pretty cranky about it too (if only I had known it would last for another 9 years. Siiigh). I'd had my share of boys making fun of my bra by snapping it, my teeth were too big for my face, and let's face it, with my hours of reading and insufferable-know-it-all-ness I was not going to be one of the cool girls. I know this now, but at the time, it was hard that the girls I had grown up with were suddenly a seemingly different species than me.

I felt myself floundering a little, socially, and so I started trying out different friend groups. It turns out that finding my "group" in a school of less than 200 kids probably wasn't going to give me the sample size I needed (I never really did find my "group" until college, and then again in grad school, and then again, here. All three of those groups were well worth waiting for). I never really did find a group that I fit well with. For a lot of that year, I latched onto just one friend: Kelly. Kelly was cute, spunky, and had a life completely different from mine. She was funny, and had interesting stories, and her mom was soooooooo cool. I remember I was in the hallway, collating the school newspaper (by hand) the day that parents were coming in for conferences. Kelly's mom came in, said hi to me, and then went and found Kelly afterwords. She talked with Kelly for a minute, give her a big hug and high-five, and then left our the back door. Kelly saw me and came bounding down the hall, jumping up and down saying, "Oh my gosh! Guess what?! I got all C's! Alllll Ceeeeee's!"

I had a momentary pause and then jumped up and down with her and said, "Yeah!"

Internally, it took me until after she walked away to process this. As I continued to walk slowly around the table, collating by hand, I realized, for Kelly, C's were worth celebrating. That for her, this was good news. At my house, and in my family, my parents said, "As long as you do your best, we're proud," but nobody had ever had to test that beyond a B+.

I'm not knocking my former-friend Kelly. As I came to realize, she worked really hard for those C's. 4th grade wasn't easy for her, and her life at home seemed really cool to me (all that TV and independence!) but also meant she didn't have the support to do cool homework projects like I did. She probably worked a lot harder for her C's than I did for the steady stream of A-'s I got that year. You know, I knocked out some reports and science projects and diaramas, but 4th grade was really pretty easy for me. I didn't have to dig down deep for much - it's not that I didn't care, because I did, but looking back, I wasn't ever really mentally taxed at school until High School.

The epiphany fr me was realizing that I not everyone aims for the same thing, and that my standards are reeeeee-heeeaaally high. This isn't really surprising. Since I grew up as the only girl sibling in my family, and the oldest (all of that to shift and re-settle once I met my sister) I definitely have the standard - take-charge, high-achiever, structured personality of the first-born. I also had parents with high standards, and some means to support them. In my family, winning is important, competition was real, and good grades were expected. Also, despite all of us having a certain degree of special needs, we also had a lot of raw goods to bring to the task wen it came to success at school. It was fair for my parents to expect A's and B's.

It was eye-opening for me to realize that not everyone has the same expectations. This issue has returned to me again and again in my life. I've been told I have very high standards. I've been told I'm my own worst critic. I've been told I have to be kinder to myself. I've been told I'm pushy. I've been told I'm unforgiving. I've been given this message in as many disappointing and hurtful ways as nice ones in my life.

I think about this a lot when setting goals for myself, for my exercise, for my weight loss, for my to-do list at work, for whatever. I think about it when I don't hit the mark I was aiming for. Because everything I've been told about myself, whether or not it was said nicely, is true. I don't just get disappointed, I punish myself. If I eat a piece of pizza I'm a bad person, if I don't get things done on my to-do list I'm an absolute failure. If the scale goes up, I should just resign myself to being depressed for the day. If I don't get what my trainer is showing me on the first try I'm royally pissed at myself for hours. (I hate to admit it, but there was one day where I was supposed to clean-press and we had raised the weight, and I was just not getting it. I had to be more precise with my movements, and fearless, and I was not succeeding at either. By the fourth set of failures, I totally fell apart, throwing a mini-tantrum because I was so mad at myself I couldn't put it into words past "aaaauuuuuugggguuurrrrrrhhhh!")  

I put on a good front when I say to people (generally people who approach me with jobs that don't work for me), "I don't have to be good at everything. There are things I know I am truly exceptional at. I make amazing soup, and can do full splits!" But, the truth is, not being awesome at things is generally not ok with me. I can live with not being fab at the following: Scrabble, poker, rock climbing, drinking Bourbon, making pie crusts, and parallel parking. But everything else, come on, I need to rock at it. Dental exams are to be aced, shopping trips should not only be efficient, but hit the budget mark within a penny, and it's important to me to get good reviews at work. My brother and I have a running joke with my mom that we're her "favorite." It comes up over and over. She'll tell me thank you for something and I'll say, "Mm-hmm, that's because I'm your favorite."

I made a lot of fun of Charlie Sheen, and "winning!" continues to be my ring-tone, but come on, winning is cool. As much as I love winning, I hate losing. Unless winning is losing. And right now, all I'm doing is losing at being a loser.

That's right readers. I lost nothing this week.

Pardon me for a moment, . . . "aaaauuuuuugggguuurrrrrrhhhh!"


In the crazy two weeks that I've had at work, I've managed to fight to find the time and wherewithal to weigh and measure eehhh-hhhheeeeee-verriiii-thing, to bring healthy lunches and dinners with me, and on two occasions breakfast too, to tote around my gym bag and fit my cardio and lifting workouts in SOMEHOW . . . for THIS?! Seriously?!! I hit all of my goals for serving sizes and all of the right number of servings for each thing. I even skipped several carb servings, subbing in extra servings of RAW VEGETABLES. I had several days where I skipped my discretionary calories altogether, and I left alcohol out of the equation altogether.

I stood on that scale and looked at her and said, "I'm sorry, but I cannot put this much time into measuring everything I put into my mouth, and fighting to get my workouts in and still have things be this slow. Everyone else I know can go to the gym a couple times a week and stop eating chips and lose more weight in a week than I do in a month. I'm probably going to eat pizza today. For reals." and then I cried, but just a little

I want to win at this. I have to win at this, even if winning means having lower goals than EVERYONE else. And it's heartbreaking that I'm digging my heels in this hard to deal with my food issues, to be accountable, to peel back as many layers and be truly honest here, to fight myself kicking and screaming into the gym, to give the popcorn the finger when it's what i really want, and to generally know that my endocrine system is a little like that old adage that no matter how far you lower the bar, there are some who will insist on slithering beneath it. No matter how reasonable I think my goals are, or how much harder I am working than everyone else I know, my endocrine system can still frak it all up. And the truth is, my standards ARE high. I expect a lot of myself, and this makes me very much want to pull the covers up over my head. And eat pizza.

I came home, and stood at my counter, and fought off the urge to order pizza. I did not cry. I thought about Kelly, and her C report card and wondered if I could be happier finding my way into that mind-set. What if I was ok with winning less? What if getting a C was ok for me in this case? The problem is, Kelly worked really hard for those C's, and (here's the key) was happy with those grades. I'm working really hard, really, really crazy hard, and trying to talk my way into accepting that C's are the right thing to expect, and getting D's. Deeeeeeeeeeees.

So, I didn't order pizza, and I didn't cry (until shedding a few more tears now) but I did eat two slices of pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and I did skip my run today. then, I felt like a failure and decided to eat vegetables for the rest of the day. I can't phone it in every day, I know, but just for today, I needed to want less and to not try.

What the nutritionist said

So, I've owed readers his post for awhile. I'm not sure anyone is keeping track, or even reading me that closely, but I mentioned three weeks ago that I was referred to a dietician and said I would tell you all more about that and what I learned.

I'll be very honest - I went in with my guard up a little. I didn't want to be told I had to eat anything weird, or that I had to give up foods I liked forever. In my mind, it's not reality to never have pizza again. For instance, there is someone in my life who says, "I don't eat carbs. Ever. Even fruit." Except . . . he drinks, so he does imbibe carbs. I wanted advice on how to get the best results while still keeping in mind that my job requires I travel, a lot, and, I have to be able to go out and have fun sometimes too. I needed some help finding the land of moderation and figuring out how to put down roots there.

I'll also admit that my guard was up because people make assumptions about fat. People assume that when they see fat it means the person wearing it doesn't like vegetables, doesn't work out, has no concept of how to eat, etc. And frankly, my problems are not about knowledge or even about effort. My problems are biological and psychological. I have a lot of knowledge about the benefits of salad and protein and why it's important to eat breakfast and have a couple of well planned snacks. I'm not saying I know everything, I'm saying that my hypoglycemia and my years of dieting means I know more than the average person, regardless of my size.

I've had doctors in the past assume that I am unwilling to eat healthy, or a couch potato. I had one doc tell me if I was unwilling to work on my weight, he wouldn't take me as a patient in his asthma management practice. That's how he brought the topic up with me. He didn't ask what I had done in the past to address my weight - he assumed it was something he would have to convince me of. Ummm, hi. I look in the mirror every day. Do you think I dig sweating in the gym 4-8 hours a week to be this size? When I then told him how much I was working out and how healthy I was eating, he dismissed me and said, "Well, then you'd be smaller than this. You should think seriously about a 1200 calorie diet or getting your stomach stapled." I looked him straight in the eye and said, "I'm not unwilling to talk about my weight or even work on it. Do you have any constructive suggestions or are you just going to continue to assume I'm lazy and ignorant.?"

I lodged a serious complaint against him and found a new doctor, who, by the way did some tests to prove that in fact my lung capacity is not impacted by my weight. But it stuck with me that that doctor felt free to assume so much about me after having me in his office for 4 minutes, and felt free to recommend something medically dangerous for me. (If a doctor who is educated about the body and how it works could assume this, what does the person passing me on the street think?)

It was with this baggage I entered into the dieticians office. I know I'm overweight. I've known it since I was seven. I also know that I have medical conditions that make it impossible for me to ever be a size 2. I know those same medical issues make weight loss a very slow battle. And I know that my lifestyle and work don't do me any favors in that area either. And I know that when you add all of that together it makes it very, very hard for me to stay motivated. Perhaps most importantly, I also know that food is my drug of choice. I choose it over alcohol and caffeine every day and twice on Sundays. It's not just that I am someone who likes food or enjoys it and has somehow accidentally enjoyed too much of it recently. Food makes me feel better, but then it makes me feel worse. It's an abusive relationship. I mean, sometimes I can eat chicken and salad and not feel anything other than glad I ate lunch. But other times . . . mmmmm, all I can think of is unplugging myself with some snack of choice.

The dietician did some really awesome things for me. She confirmed that it's crazy to try and count calories all day long, and that people who do that are more likely to either struggle in the other direction, becoming obsessed with how few calories they can have, or to become someone who doesn't consider that not all calories are created equal (100 calories of brussel sprouts are always going to be better for you than 100 calories of soda). She gave me an opportunity to practice my working knowledge of serving sizes and good choices (1 cup = a tennis ball. 3 ounces of protein = a deck of cards, and so on). She took my RMR which told us how many calories I burn by breathing and doing nothing else. This gives us a baseline of how I should plan to exercise and eat to get the best results. We agreed on the following - 5 servings of bread, grains, or starchy vegetables, 2 servings of fruit (I can combine those for 7 overall servings of "carbs" but it's best for most of those to come from whole grains or vegetable sources rather than fruits), 3-5 servings of non starchy vegetables (tomatoes, broccoli, V8, asparagus, brussel sprouts, etc.), 3 servings of dairy and 7 of protein, 5 servings of fat (1 tsp of butter, 1 slice of bacon, 5 almonds, etc.). This left 180 discretionary calories a day (honey and granola in my Greek yogurt, 1 beer, a handful of chips, etc.) We calculated all of this based on aiming for an intake of 1850 calories a day and taking into account 2 hours of lifting and 3 of cardio a week.

The goal was to lose 1.25 pounds a week, and I'll be honest, that sounded like a lot to me in good and bad ways. Typically at my best if I eat perfectly and work out a LOT I might lose 3 pounds a month. But, she did the math and I wanted to believe in this. I paid for the appointment out of pocket, after all. 5 pounds a month sounded GREAT!

She didn't ask me to take any weird supplements or anything, and the only things she suggested I try were a particular kind of low-calorie organic bread and spaghetti squash as carbs. She suggested these because those two options allow me to have larger servings so she hoped it would mean my feeling more full and satisfied.

We discussed how someone with my medical issues has inherited a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance, and this means I have to have the right kind of carbs to "unlock the gates" and let food get let in to be converted to energy instead of being stored as fat. I'm lucky that with all of this going on that I never, never test as being pre-diabetic or as having even borderline issues with my thyroid. Still, that insulin resistance will make it tricky to find the right food combination for me for the rest of my life. It will often mean I eat but my body forgets it has energy and reacts to low blood-sugar. (Low-blood sugar crashes, are without a doubt, the worst feeling I've ever had. I prefer bone breaks and serious asthma attacks to that feeling)

As it turns out, it also means my dietician has some more work to do. After three weeks, I lost less than one pound. ARG! I know that her practice probably does see a lot of people who are making their first attempt to get healthy. But she's one of my last stops. After this I . . . well, I won't give up. But I may put more effort into dealing with myself rather than continuing to spend a lot of time and money on trying to be something I'm not or can't be. If I can't lose weight, maybe putting more effort into maintaining and being ok with that is wise. I know, I know, maybe I can lose weight just very, very slowly. Or maybe plugging all of my numbers into a formula doesn't capture the whole picture of how my body works. Maybe we just haven't found the answer yet.

I feel very, very tired when I think about how much work it is for me to do this, even with help, and still see minimal results. I do the workouts, I eat the salad, I take the meds . . . it seems like it's time for the pay off. She looked at my food logs and was stumped, because I have been eating a lot of yummy vegetables and doing a lot of exercise. In my heart of hearts I knew that 5 pounds a month was a lot to hope for - not for "normal" people maybe, but for me. I feel I've eared a break and it would be nice to have something work the way it's supposed to. It turns out doing the math right isn't enough.

In a way it was good to know I'm not the only one that my weight is mysterious to. It's good to know I'm not the only person who has to look at me and wonder why the things that work for everyone else don't work for me. It's good to know that someone else has to do extra work to make my diet and exercise give me the results I should have. It's also really discouraging that the things that work for everyone else don't work for me. It's disappointing that hard work isn't enough because I don't know what else to do. I hope the dietician does.

I will say, just as a chance for me to stick my tongue out to that awful doctor - the dietician also told me that less than 1600 calories and/or no-carbs would make my hormones worse. So there. Phhhhhttttttt!!!!

Lacrosse balls, food logs, and breathing, oh my!

I'm someone who needs a lot of professional help. I try to do things myself as much as possible, but sometimes, I just can't do things on my own. I hire people to wash my car. I sometimes hire people to do my toenails, not because I can't do it but because I love, love, love pedicures. I used to cut my own hair, but the truth is, it's worth it to pay someone else to do it. I pay to have my clothes altered because I never learned to sew. I hire people to change my oil and my condo association hires people to do our lawn care and landscaping (thank god!). I have friends who do these things on their own. I have a couple of friends who do their own oil change, and one of my oldest and dearest friends spent the summer re-siding his HOUSE for God's sake. Not me. I mean, I don't pay to have my laundry sent out or anything, I can do things for myself (I cook! I do my laundry, I hate folding, but I do it!) there are just things that it would take me so much time to do or to learn to do that it's worth it to pay to get it taken care of.

There are a couple of things about this that fascinate me. For one, it is one of the most conspicuous signs that I am in the middle class. While I grew up in a family that was comfortable most of the time, I also grew up during the last great recession, in a family with three kids. So there was very rarely extra to go around. And with one parent who was working incredibly hard to transcend not attending college and another who left a white collar job for a blue collar one, I think it's fair to say I grew up not quite in the comfortable middle class - perched nearby but not quite soundly there. I grew up in a town full of incredibly privileged families, so while we weren't ever worried about putting food on the table, I was aware of the differences. We didn't have someone clean the house, we didn't go to Disney World. New cars, nuh-uh.

I am often uncomfortable with the fact that I have launched myself into this class in society. For instance, I can't fathom buying a new car. And, I don't know that I will ever be able to hire someone to clean my house (not that I need to, my house is fully cleanable by me) because cleaning houses was one of the four jobs I worked to pay college tuition. I feel very weirdly self-conscious when I pay someone to hem my pants. I am aware that I have choices like buying plane tickets and iPhones.  And there are times (like when I bought my iPhone, or when I moved into this place with in house laundry. Not in-building . . . in my HOUSE! Life-changer, woot!) that I celebrate it.

The other thing is that . . it becomes more and more natural to ask for help. In the long run, this is a good thing. I used to be pathologically, stubbornly independent. My mother loves to tell the story that when I was two I would cry out if either parent started to help me, "I'm inn-deeeee-peeenn-DENT!" It used to be painful for me to ask for or accept help. When I was on crutches for a year, my boyfriend-at-the-time offered to go down to the basement and get me a ginger-ale. I was mortified. Now, it seems like it's nothing to me to ask for help. But underneath, I am always a little concerned that I should just suck it up and do it myself.

But yeah, I get professional help. Just in the last week, I got my hair done, saw my trainer, saw a therapist, and followed a plan made by the dietician. I am logging my food, and following a plan of how many carbs, how many vegetables, how much fat and fruit, and what counts as a serving size.  This means I have to measure all my food, plan carefully to get enough of everything, and do a lot of cooking (thank goodness I can do THAT by myself). I am writing everything down and thinking, "Oh, I should eat more olives tomorrow," or "Oh, I should remember that that only counts as a half serving." It's a lot to think about when I just want to grab lunch.

Meanwhile, my trainer has me not only working the kinks out in my muscles, but re-learning how to stand and walk. Today it's snowing so I'm camped on the couch because my brain is full of thoughts on how to walk. "Three point walking - heel, ball, toe." Standing is work because I'm constantly having to remind myself to change my posture, shift my weight off my toes, and unlock my knees . . . it's how the rest of the world stands, but it feels like my knees are bent when I do this. This is what is in my head while I'm cooking, while I'm showering, putting on make-up, reading the label on some granola in the aisle of Whole Foods. While I'm standing in the grocery line, or talking to someone on my feet, it looks like I'm doing normal things, you know how you do, but really I'm trying to revamp my whole way of staying upright and moving through the world. My brain is full, and it's work to keep track of this.

I am foam rolling my muscles, and using a lacrosse ball to roll my feet out. That's not only work, but it's painful and time consuming.

Add to this following a technique from the therapist about how to be assertive without expectation, and breathe through anxiety and I'm constantly questioning myself. What would expectation look like? Is my weight on my toes? Is that cheese one serving of dairy or two? Am I walking correctly? Did I roll out my leg muscles and IT band today? Breathe, breathe, assert your wants, but don't cling to any expectation about them. Is this assertive or aggressive? What do I want. Unlock your knees! Oh no, didn't eat enough fat servings today!

Oh, it's work. And it sometimes seems backwards that I pay to add this work to my day. But, I know in the end, I asked for this help. And I need it. I need not to bring more mess to sort through into the middle of my relationship. I need to have a an eating plan that allows me to eat on the road, but also be healthy and chip away at my goals. And I need (oh, I can't believe I'm going to say this) to be able to go running. I need to work out and feel good about it. 


So I seek help. I work hard to work those things into my schedule. I work hard to follow the things I learn, the things I need to change, into my day-to-day. So, I bought me two lacrosse balls, I carry around my food log, and I'm working on breathing my way through the messy feelings I have right now. Oh my!

Honesty, Part 2

Six weeks ago, as a new blogger I wrote this post about honesty with myself. I'm fundamentally very, very attached to my honesty and my ability to say what is true, even if it isn't received well by others. So I explored how that would feel if I turned that honesty on myself. It felt a little uncomfortable, but not painful. In this post I got a small taste of how others must experience me - the uncompromising high standards are probably intimidating. I guess my honesty is too. A good friend pointed out yesterday that anyone with issues probably feels a little concerned or intimidated by the fact that I am very open and honest, because they know their issues will be exposed.

It was an eye-opening conversation for me. On the one hand, I'm not going to stop being honest, but on the other hand I don't want that penchant for speaking out about hard things to be mistaken for a lack of empathy, or worse, some kind of blind spot about my own issues. I take it as a given that my issues are up for grabs too - I mean, I started a blog about them - but I also recognize that if I appear intimidating, then it's probably doesn't seem like I'm approachable on those subjects. My sister told me that when she reads my blog she feels like she's trespassing on my private diary (I reassured her that I have a journal I wrote in just for myself and I'm aware that this is published and read by others) but at the same time, writing about me isn't enough to make sure I'm just as open to being honest about me as I am about others. I have to speak it too.

I often give people the impression that I'm very open. I think this happens because I answer questions very openly. There isn't much I won't talk about in terms of theme or subject - my childhood, my dad's death, sex, you name it. I'll answer it. This often gives people a false sense of knowing me deeply and/or that I am an open book. I remember last year during my scary-but-wonderful singing class my teacher trying to help me perform with more emotional openness saying, "I don't believe this performance. You need to show me more inside." I responded saying something to the effect of I didn't know how to do that and she said, very lovingly, "But I know you! You're an expressive person when you talk. You're very emotional and open!." She wasn't wrong but what I thought was, "Yeah, you THINK you know me, but there's a lot you don't know." Because I am expressive and talk a lot about feelings and reactions, because I talk with my hands and have animated facial expressions, because there are few taboo subjects with me, people frequently get a false sense of closeness with me. I don't mean to mislead them. I'm not trying to lead people down a garden path. It's more that I give a lot up front, but conceal important truths and feelings to keep myself safe. I described this once to another student in the class as being a real estate agent showing a house. I'll invite you in, tell you to look around, invite you to enjoy the open house food I've laid out and encourage you to ask any questions you have. But I'll just conveniently leave out that the house is haunted, or some other important detail.

The need to be more honest to other people, about myself, out loud, was never more clear than when I met with my trainer yesterday. This was the first time seeing him since I saw the dietician last week. I was medically referred by my doctor after messing up my body and my eating with the diet plan that could never work for me (silly Christie, diets where people lose large amounts of weight are for other people!). I didn't think anything about going, but after getting my new eating plan from her, I wanted to share it with my trainer. I texted him as I was leaving the office and said, "Saw the dietician today! Have lots to share - looking forward to Sunday."

When I ran into my friend who also works with the same trainer, she said, "So, you saw a nutritionist?" Since I don't really know the difference between a nutritionist and a dietician I said, "Yep. I really like her." And my friend said, "Well, that's great. Just a question for you. What about (insert our trainer's name here.)" In my brain it made this noise, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." All of a sudden I realized, CRAP! I totally didn't talk about this with him! And he might want in on this to make sure we're all on the same page.

I was medically referred, yes, and there's nothing wrong with me going, but if my goals with him are weight loss, then he needs to know about my medical status and diet; just like when I met with the dietiician I brought info about my diagnosis and medications, as well as about my workouts with him. That door has to swing both ways since the goals are the same in all three consultations. I had given him the impression that everything was transparent between us by conveniently leaving out that the house was haunted, or more specifically, that I was medically compromised and that's why I needed to see someone.

Actually, being more honest about it means saying this: I changed my eating drastically without telling him or my doctor when I went on that plan. I don't have to search hard to find that the reason I did that is because I didn't want to hear cautions or reasons not to go on that plan. I wanted to focus on the 50+ pounds my friends had lost. I wanted, no I needed, to believe that that could happen to me too if I was just committed and disciplined.

My trainer said to me, "I'm not sorry you went, and it sounds like the information and structure you got is helpful. I want to talk to you more about it while we work out. But I also want to make sure you know I could have done that for you too." He thought for a minute while he was setting up kettlebells for me and finished up with, "When I got your text I was a little surprised."

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "I know. I realized that after. I'm sorry. I know you can do this too, but I need as much structure as I can get. My doctor medically referred me because I messed up in July and August. I went way too low with my calories so I lost fast and then stopped losing at all, and that's a warning sign. And my labs were awful. Ahe waved them in front of me and basically said, despite being the nicest, sweetest little Indian lady, 'what the hell are you doing? This is a mess!' I think you should be pissed, but be pissed that I changed my eating drastically then and didn't consult you. It just feels like I'm always on the extreme ends of the spectrum with my eating, and I don't know how to find the middle point on my own." That was all deeply honest, but if I was plumbing the depths of this story I would also have said this: I am a food addict, but self aware enough to know I sabotage myself. That means there's hope for me to find recovery, but it also means when I mess up I feel not just like someone out of control, but like a bad person. It's very painful for me to go through these last few months having to fee my feelings during things that are really hard in my professional and personal life, and all I want to do is buy frozen pizza and Cheezits and pull the proverbial covers up over my head. But if I do that, I'm faced with the feelings of failure and being unworthy of love. I need help. From wherever I can get it.

I think he senses what a struggle this is for me, not just the weight loss, but talking about it because what he said was very firm, but compassionate. "I wish you had told me your labs were bad. In one sense, talking with your doctor is separate, but in another sense, if I had known that I could have done things differently. You don't have to tell me about your labs and doctor's appointments but if you do we can work together better. "

I said that I wanted to share my food logs with him, and have him be involved in that. He gently said,
"You can tell me the medical doctor stuff too." He's not wrong. By leaving things out of the conversation, I wasn't dishonest, but I wasn't honest either. I was avoiding his help because I didn't want to hear that what I did was wrong, or that what I wanted wasn't possible. I didn't know that this plan wouldn't work for me, but I knew that not talking about it with him was a bad idea. So much for the idea that I'm completely open and honest when it counts.

If I want to get better, if I want to like myself more and be more worthy of my own love, I need to be willing to, as a 12 step program says, "make a fearless and searching moral inventory and quickly admit wrongs." I was wrong to pay my trainer to help me get stronger and thinner but not tell him I had changed my eating. I was wrong to not tell him when my doctor discovered my body was crashing and burning on the inside. I was wrong not to tell him that I had been referred to a dietician. I was probably also wrong to not tell him the full truth about me as I know it now and to hold back on saying, "I'm really messed up on the inside, and for the first time I see a way to try and make it better." I was wrong to let him spend the last 3.5 months thinking he knew what was going on with me, and thinking that I was being open with him. Clearly, I'm not as strong on honesty as I like to think when I can so easily leave things out of the conversation to avoid things I don't want to hear.

Yesterday was a wake up call for me. When we sat down and he looked through some of the items from the dietician he said, "Well, I would like to be involved in this stuff with you even though i know you have a plan laid out with her (the dietician) too. "

I said, "Yes, I need you to look at my food log every week. I need all the accountability I can get because I mess up and it becomes a slippery slope really quickly and then I feel like I'm failing at life."

"Well, if you want to use me for accountability, you need to tell me these things. Just sayin'"

So true. Good talk.

Calling myself out

Ok, I started this in part to keep myself accountable. So, now I have to do that.

That means admitting I've been off the proverbial wagon for the last seven days. It's hard to admit this, because it means admitting the bad choices I've made, and the fact that I knew they weren't the most helpful choices as I was making them. It's not like I can say, "What?! I had no idea that it was a bad plan to eat that cake!"

I needed things I wasn't getting, so I put other things in place that were not what I needed but made it seem like I was getting by. I loved my friends' visit, but of course being "on vacay" or having people visit from out of town often means eating out. Still, though, while there were some extravagances during their visit (most notably more alcohol than I generally do, risotto, some apple cake - delish by the way - and some self-serve fro-yo) there was also a lot of vegetables, a lovely salad lunch, and some exercise. What really was caused me to fall over the edge was not their visit or my semi-vacation eating, but instead all the things leading up to it. If anything, the semi-vacation time in my own city brought some balance back to "the force."

See, September put me on the road every day but three, and it wasn't good for me. I needed more time, more support in my work and personal life, more practical help from my office, more sleep, a more solid plan to eat well and exercise, and some downtime so that I could process, think, and set myself up to make good decisions. What I got was an average of 5 hours of sleep a night, the need to do all of my cooking in two hours a week, having to make myself go to the gym after 9pm and after 10-14 hour work days, eating in the car, and working longer and longer hours and falling more and more behind on administrative office work. I got a lot of tired, a lot of unanswered personal and professional questions, and a lot of pressure to do and be more.

I am glad to report that I missed only two of my workout assignments from my trainer in September, and worked really hard for all of the days September, to eat healthy. I walked in the mornings, though the beginning of the end of my commitment was when I stopped getting up at 6am to do that regularly. I ate a lot of healthy food, but the FRED voices worked their way in. I was tired and stressed out pretty much every day, all day and there was a stress toll paid as well. I've noticed that FRED has a lot less to do with bad food being present, and a lot more to do with addictive eating, emotional or stress eating. FRED has almost nothing to do with being hungry, but for sure being tired is a big predictor of what I will hear loudest inside my head.Yes, that's right . . . like a schizophrenic, something I'm starting to learn about myself is that there are some internal voices I need to make friends with; those that ell me it's a good idea to have the whole box of Cheezits, as well as those that clamor for kale salad and chicken breast.

It started so innocently. I baked some gluten free pumpkin bread for my singing class. I didn't intend to eat it, but to give it away. But then my class was canceled and I had a serious carb (with chocolate!) on my hands. I had a few pieces and then decided it was wiser to throw it out than keep it. Good job, Christie, good job.

Then the next week I had done 10 hours of working out, and I needed to add a couple of hundred calories to my day - pizza. A week later, I had joked with my boyfriend about cheese fries and he showed up with them. None of these things derailed my results, so it was easy to treat them as isolated incidents, instead of a pattern. Looking back though, there was a result I hadn't taken into account - how I felt about what I was doing, and an erosion to my resolve and my choices. Pumpkin bread, pizza, and cheese fries became sandwiches, a cookie, and a scone. And soon, September ended and I was tossed into a two day conference in October. Have you been to one of these things? It's food allllll dayyyyy loooooooong. It's also a sit-fest and an expectation to be professionally "on" all day, up to 10 hours, and then still somehow make up for the phone calls and emails that have been missed afterwords. I found myself in a hotel, not all that far from home, but it might as well have been in Srilanka for as far away as I felt from the semblance of eating-and-exercising routine I had established. We were at breakfast at 7:30-8, in workshops from 8-5:30, and then had networking sessions. I wasn't obligated to be at the networking sessions, but with as many people as I'd been in small group exercises with, and as many people there from my company, it would have been rude not to go.

My first day at the workshop went like this:
7:30  Breakfast of fruit and bagel. I swear, that was the healthiest choice
10  Snack - the same foods as offered at breakfast plus a rack of chips
1  Lunch - I ate salad because it was the best choice, but there were no protein sources I felt comfortable with so I knew I would be hungry in the afternoon . . . damn.
3ish Snack - chips, veggies and dip, candy bars, ice cream offered. I had veggies and dip and Smartfood popcorn. I was really hungry from lunch. I stared down the candy bars . . . it was hard to walk away.
5:30 Our cocktail hour and networking session. Beer,well drinks, wine, sushi that I couldn't eat because it had mayo in it (you really don't want to know how much I hate mayonnaise. Trust me), fried spring rolls, fried cheese, cheese and crackers, veggies and dip, meat I couldn't make myself eat because I didn't know where it came from, and a whole mess of desserts. I had two beers, three pieces of cheese, veggies and dip, and one tiny fried spring roll. So, I knew I was still hungry.
7:30 I knew I was in trouble when I headed into my "make-up work" session. I grabbed an apple, a bottle of water, and headed for the lounge hoping to scoop some wifi and knock out some emails. What a mistake. It became social time as more and more people joined us, and while I loved it, after that day, it was hard not to have a couple more beers, snack on some calamari . . . oy.

Going into the second day, it got harder and harder to stare down the chips and candy bars, and I won some of the battles, but not all of them. And so I began to feel I was losing the war. That's the mentality I carried with me going into picking my friends and being in the mode to enjoy their visit and my time off. Do you see how a few pebbles can so easily become a landslide?

I feel like the J.K. Rowling quote becomes my life when I look at these patterns and what it will take to break them. "Constant Vigilance!"

So, I began calling myself out while my friends were here and mentioning why yes, I do very much want dessert, but I'm putting fruit on my fro yo. Or, I'm aiming for more vegetables today. Or, i really need to work some exercise in. Not perfect, but looking for that balance in enjoying myself and living life and also not going hog wild at the trough.

I hadn't really planned it this way, but when I made my appointment with the nutritionist I made it for 3 hours directly after leaving my friends (with lots of hugs, gratitude, and love) at the airport. It was kind of perfect. (it is moments like these that I really think things happen for a reason.

Several people commented, "After all of your self education about your medical conditions and carbs and food do you really think she can tel you anything you don't know?" I went in there with the attitude of, "For me to get better results, I have to consider that either I don't know everything or that I do know things but haven't been accountable to that knowledge." It was my plan to challenge this woman to give me my money's worth by helping me come up with some systems of accountability and some ways to really get the kind of results that are realistic but also keep me motivated. We worked very hard with a lot of information to plan what we felt was doable, what my body can handle without faking itself out, and what allows me to still live my life - a lifestyle that we had to frankly acknowledge does not make it easy for me to get big results.

I did hear a lot of things that were news to me, and I heard things that helped me or taught me something new. More on that in coming entries, but for now, a renewed sense of what I'm tackling, my goals, and a better map of how to walk that road.

Best of all, when she wanted to weigh me, we had a very hard discussion where I said, "I'm normally fine with stepping on the scale, but it's been a week of eating off of my plan and not exercising as much. I'm not sure I want to weigh today." she gently said, "We will have a much better idea of what is working if we can track the change on my scale each time you come in." Like the giant nerd that I am, I said, "I can get behind looking at the delta, not the number." As we walked over to the scale she said, "We're not going to marry this number, we're just going to meet it."I liked that. I'm not married to this number, I'm just using it for tracking purposes. I liked even better to find that I had only gained 2.5 pounds. I hate that I gained since my body is such a fighter when it comes to letting go of the weight, so I know mow much time it takes to take off 2.5 pounds. i like that my hard week doesn't mean I am a total failure or have completely backslid.

It's an important lesson to me - accountability is important, and something I continue to need to work towards, but life also happens and I need to know that not every week can be a perfect week. Better even than that, I need to plan that when things aren't perfect, I need to not let it continue to roll out of control. But, like many things, I can't see it clearly inside of it . . . what felt like certain doom to me, was actually 2.5 pounds and a roller-coaster week where what I saw was the cake, the waffles, the ravioli and risotto, the for yo, and the little tastes of chocolate. What I didn't account for was the best run of my life, a hike, a lot of "out-and-about" walking, and some choices that were amazing! I ate vegetables at the conference snack, not ice cream! I made sure we had three servings of vegetables at our dinner party!

So, I'm calling myself out for not logging my food last week, I'm calling myself out for not making time for myself at that conference, because really, 10 hours of work should've been enough so running and giving myself an hour was more than reasonable. I'm calling myself out for the things I ate that were just ridiculous. Not the ravioli. Not the risotto. But things like the fried spring roll and the candy bar. Just unnecessary. (Some of the other choices were good food, made in good ways, just food that happens to be a little carbier than is optimal on a regular basis. Fried food and processed candy, not so much.) But I'm also calling myself out for being so hard on myself that one error feels like the end, because that is likely where the crack in the foundation formed causing things to fall down a bit.

So, I'm back, and I'm ready to make the rest of this month be about what this should be about: accountability, and a goal to take care of myself, not to beat myself into the ground. Off to finish all of my doctor's appointments (I hope) for the rest of the year!