Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Eating Disorders are a hot topic again. This one confuses me, though. The National Eating Disorders Association wants you to join their ranks. Buy this bracelet and make your voice heard, is what they urge. Does that mean they want me to develop an eating disorder? Does buying the bracelet mean that I have an unhealthy relationship with food and I’m admitting it to the world?

I’ll freely admit that I have an unhealthy relationship with food. Controlling my bingeing has been the greatest struggle I’ve had through this entire journey. Do I want a bracelet that reminds me of that? Is it supposed to remind me to eat healthy? Is it supposed to identify me to others so they know to make sure they don’t get in the way between me and food the same way you would avoid getting between a mother bear and her cub?

It seems like every cause has some sort of jewelry attached to it. I know it’s just a way to make money to support the cause, but I just have a problem with this one. Is it the “Admitting You Have a Problem” step? Am I somehow not quite where I need to be in the recovery process? I just don’t know what to think about this…

Back when they introduced the Core Plan, Weight Watchers added the recommendation that we eat two teaspoons of healthy oil every day. There are even boxes to check off on the Quicktrack form. I keep my journal on my Palm, so there are no healthy oil boxes for me to check on it, but I make sure I get them in every day. I’m a rule follower, so I’m following the rules.

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I’ve heard them called a lot of things: trigger foods, red-light foods, but I tend to think of them as my Vulnerability Foods. They are foods that I like to binge with. They are friends when I’m feeling vulnerable. Some of them are old friends (Mother’s brand chocolate cookies or bite size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups). Others are new additions to my binging vulnerability (pretzels dipped in Nutella). They are foods that I search out when I don’t want to deal with my emotions. They are foods that allow me to consume a huge number of calories within a short amount of time.

Need to know how to deal with your personal vulnerability foods? Here’s a list of strategies, starting with the ones that don’t work for me and moving on to the ones that do work.

Advice That Doesn’t Work:

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As a child, I watched Richard Simmons’ show every day all summer long. My grandma wanted us to watch the show so that we could lose some weight, but she ended up hating him. She didn’t like the way he would scream and encourage his audience to scream. She said he gave her a headache, but we should watch him so we could lose weight.

The idea of watching a show so that you can lose weight seems laughable to me now. We weren’t expected to exercise with him. We weren’t expected to cook the recipes that he recommended. We were just supposed to sit in front of the television and watch the show. Somehow the weight would magically come off.

Even though he was a tool used by my grandmother to tell me, yet again, that I was fat, I loved Richard Simmons. Even to this day, I love him. (more…)

I hear this phrase all the time. I’ve thought about it a lot. “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.” It’s supposed to be a really inspirational thought. I’ve heard women say it to themselves when they are tempted to overeat. I have never found it inspiring.

I don’t know what “being thin” feels like. I have no idea if it compares to lavender creme brulee or carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Those foods taste pretty damn good, so I’m thinking that being thin must feel incredible. The problem is that I’ve never actually felt thin, so I have no idea what these people are talking about.

Of course, when I look at my old high school pictures, I realize that I was thin. I never felt thin, though. I look at those pictures and I can remember the first time I ever saw them. “Man, I am so fat.” I thought, looking at my offending body parts. Now, years later, I realize that I wasn’t so fat. I was at the upper edge of the healthy weight ranges for my age, but I wasn’t fat. I never felt thin, though. I certainly didn’t feel better than carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

I suspect that feeling thin has nothing to do with the number on the scale. If that’s the case, can’t I “feel thin” even if I’m fat? I know that I felt a lot thinner when I lost fifty pounds. I felt so thin that I actually considered just maintaining at that weight. Even though I was still overweight, losing those fifty pounds felt so good that I thought I was happy with staying there. In fact, I did stay there for about two years.

After a while, however, I got used to it. I started to see that I was still fat. Instead of feeling good about losing fifty pounds, I started pinching fat and trying to squish it into jeans one size too small. It only took two years to start “feeling fat” again.

What if it never ends? What if I get to my goal weight and I still “feel fat”? What if I never “feel thin”? What if I never understand what they are talking about when they say, “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels”? Sure, the first year, I’ll “feel thin,” but after that, when I’m used to my body, will I start noticing miniscule bits of fat on myself? Will I just turn my critical eye to wrinkles or gray hair or my speech patterns?

I have no idea. I don’t know what it feels like to feel thin. I don’t know what it’s like to be a thin adult. All of this is undiscovered country for me. Exciting, isn’t it?

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos – the trees, the clouds, everything.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Thanks, world! I’m so glad that my legs and arms and lungs and heart and head all work. They work really well, even though I left them dormant for so long. Sometimes they ache from the effort, but they keep moving.

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Yesterday, I talked about writing when you feel lack of motivation. Here is an example of what I was talking about taken from my personal journal completely uncut and uncensored. It usually takes this much writing to get to the bottom of my problem, sometimes more. When you try this, just keep writing until you feel better and motivated to stay the course.

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I’ll never forget the scene in the book, Thinner Than Thou, in which the teenager on the road, searching for his anorexic sister eats three huge steak meals. He “wins” the free meals and prize money, which helps them survive until they can find her. Afterward, their friend drives along the Interstate Highway disgusted and amazed at what he saw.

• Snopes.com – Big Burger by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
• Boston.com – Eatery offers 6-pound burger challenge
• Yahoo News – 100-Pound Woman Downs Six-Pound Burger

Once again, I am amazed and disgusted by real life. It’s all over the news, the six-pound Ye Old 96er has been conquered by a 100-pound woman. She ate the whole thing in less than three hours. I feel like I should say something about it, but I’m sitting at the keyboard, numb.

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I got a stability ball for Christmas. I’ve been reluctant to jump on the stability ball bandwagon for one reason…

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Last Thursday, I ate really well. I was tempted many times to over eat, but I ate healthy. I think it was hard going to Weight Watchers and having my weight say I was three pounds heavier…

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