I See You Lookin' At Me... Don't Worry, I Won't Eat It All

Admit it. You've been at the Golden Corral - or any other 'all you can eat' buffet - saw a really overweight person roll up to the food bar and thought to yourself "Don't eat it all!" or something along those lines. I'll admit it - I've done exactly that - and I'm sure I did it just to feel better about being there myself. But I don't do it for long. While being at the Golden Corral I'll start to notice some disapproving eyes on me as I grab a plate and make my way into the line. I have actually seen looks of disgust on peoples faces glancing in my direction for doing the same thing they're doing at that time - having some dinner. Well no worries, Skinny Minnie, there's enough Macaroni and Cheese to go around. The Golden Corral is prepared for people like me.

I heard a comedian (and I'm sorry, I don't remember who it was) recently say "a fat girl's 4 favorite words are "all you can eat!" and the crowd laughed. I didn't think it was funny - but for whatever the reason we overweight people are a big butt of jokes (Ba-Dum-Bum!). I guess the point is that socially, it seems to be ok to poke a little fun at the expense of the fat folks of the world - especially if they have the nerve to show up at the China King Buffet on crablegs night. Fair game? It shouldn't be. We eat our pasta salad the same way less large people do - one bite at a time. There's nothing funny about that.

It's not everyone, I know there's plenty of non-judgemental people in the world. But if you're one of the ones who can't help but wonder how that big gal has the audacity to line up at the dessert bar please try to mind your glaring stare. Put yourself into their wide shoes for a minute and imagine if everyone studied whatever was on your plate (or in your purse, or in your bathroom or in your 'secret closet'). Matthew 7:1, which says "Judge not, lest ye be judged" comes to mind. But it's even more than that. Since you too are standing with a plate in hand at the all you can eat buffet, Romans 2:3 says "Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself - that you will escape the judgement of God?" Remember that as you cast your stones! (You might also want to remember that I once was skinny too. Fat can happen to the best of us - even you!)

That Stupid Scale Can Kiss My Fat Butt

For as far back as I can remember I've worried about my weight. Whether I was thin or as big as I've ever been a day didn't go by where I didn't spend some time and some energy fretting over how much I weighed. I got on the scales every morning, every night and every other time I went into the bathroom. (Still do). The numbers on the scales dictated my moods. The numbers validated what I was feeling about myself. Random, ordinary numbers on the face of my biggest foe pryed themselves into my fibers, needled away at my confidence, eroded my worth. Numbers. Just numbers on a scale - in my mind were my complete and total identity. (Still is).

I am not a daughter or a friend. I was never a wife or a team member or an employee. And now I'm not a mom, a church member or an alto in the choir. I am a number on a scale. And I hate that. But for the life of me I cannot separate myself the human being from myself - the number. Recently I quit looking at the number and where does that leave me? Without identity? Stuck on the last number I saw - which was awful? You bet. Hello, my name is #265. Nice to meet you.

Where did this crazy way of thinking come from? I don't know. I wished I was as fat now as I thought I was back in high school. I remember clearly worrying about my weight so much so that I would go a couple of days without eating a bite, ever checking in with the scale to see how great I was doing. But then I would have some water and the scale would shoot right back up to where I started and I would be devistated. So then I would forego even water in hopes that the scale would give me a number I could live with. But looking back, I see that what I was doing and how I was thinking was just short of insanity. I really, really saw myself as fat. I thought I was fat and I hated myself for it. And then when the scales moved in the wrong direction it was all over but the crying. I plunged deeper and deeper into unhealthy behaviors and skewed opinions on food and it's purpose. My body image was distorted and I looked into the mirror and saw fat.

Being a teenager was hard. But I'm sure it was hard for anyone who lived through their teen years as well. I don't know exactly what my deal was and why I was so sad but I was. And my fat feelings started around that time. (It's this sort of stuff that an eating disorder treatment facility like the one portrayed on that TV show I spoke of earlier would come in handy, I suppose). In reality (and I can see it now...) I was a chunky kid growing up, pudgy or 'thick'. I remember about age 14 that I got taller and shed a lot of that 'baby fat'. Looking back what I see of me was a tallish girl for my age, about 5'6 with some curves and a little meat on my bones. But I was not fat by any logical standard (again, it's easy to see that now...). I was blessed with my mother's figure - she calls it having child bearing hips, and I had a little pudge on my belly and my rear-end was proportional to my hips. I was a size 7-8. So what's the problem? (I'd give my right arm to be that size now!!) The problem was many of the other teen girls were a size 2 with flat butts (popular at the time), pencil thin with no meat and any bones anywhere. For me I didn't measure up. Throw in a boyfriend who would say "you have a great body - if you would just tone it up a little" and the occasional "are you going to eat that?" and my still developing teenager mind started to obsess over food, size, my body, weight and the dreaded scales.

There's a lot more teenager junk and I don't suppose I'm ready to start talking about it all just yet but I developed plenty - I mean plenty of bad behaviors early in my teen years. Drugs and 'diet' pills started early for me and drinking was a big one that, just like my eating habits, stuck around and caused lots of problems. (starting to get anxious about clicking on "publish post" again...). But unlike my eating disorder, I finally got the drinking under control - praise God! I'm going to write about drinking one day - just not today. The bottom line is that I've had a few addictions, hard addictions to conquer and I know it all lends itself to where I find myself this very day. I know how to practice an addiction. I know. But, and I'm blessed to say, food is the last big one. It's by far been the hardest. I'm trying now, again, for the umpteenth time to overcome it and that's why I'm sitting here this day and writing about it.

I HATE that stupid scale - and it can kiss my fat butt. It calls out to me saying stuff like "you know you want to get up here" and "step on up, let me ruin your whole day". When it's really being mean it'll say "get your number so I can tell you how much you suck. You blew it, fat ass - you might as well go eat everything in the house. Loser." I give that voice to my scale. It's easy for me to see that as I sit here typing. It's not easy at all when I step on the scale after every bowel movement - thinking "that was a big one, surely I just lost a pound?" Just like that mound of clothes I talked about yesterday, one day I'm going to send that scale packing and I will finally be something more than a number. No more will I let that hateful instrument of measure tell me what day I'm going to have or what kind of mother I can be. I will no longer let the scales be a measurement of my success or my failure. After all, wieght is just a number, right? I'll donate that thing to Goodwill with that last bag of fat clothes that's going over there also. But for right now... (the hard part, and part of my eating disorder) I'll keep my evil, dear old friend, the scale, and I will struggle not to get on it. I haven't gotten on it yet despite the curiosity to know 'the number'. But I can't throw it out yet - I just cannot. I'm just not ready to have a bathroom with out a scale. As stupid as that sounds.

It is for the freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1. (Scales included!)

The Secret In My Closet - Sizes 8 to 28 Represented In There.

Right now my entire wardrobe consists of 2 pairs of dress pants, one 3/4 length sleeve button up shirt with a collar, a pink sweater and a tight tank top to wear under it, a pair of brown, casual pants, 3 pairs of worn out jeans and a few ill-fitting tee-shirts. I also have a few long sleeve shirts that don't really work in the spring/upcoming summer. And that's all. But, I'm about to be buried under a ridiculous amount of clothes, Clothes, CLOTHES!!! Clothes, clothes everywhere and not a thing to wear...(if I can sort of plagiarize Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner...). I have a walk-in closet crammed full of clothes, a dresser stuffed so tightly that I struggle to close the drawers, I have mounds of clothes piled on top of the dresser and laundry baskets that I'm trying to find a place for. I even have large storage bins full of clothes out in my storage building. None of it I can wear except the few things I just mentioned. My closet is a symptom of my eating disorder.

Inside my closet, sizes 8 through 28 are represented. I have enough clothes in each of the sizes to constitute an entire 'wardrobe'. At least enough clothes in each size to get by. I've dragged all of these clothes around with me since I was a size 8 - a long, long time ago, adding to the mound for each size that I climbed. The result has left me with literally nothing to wear but more clothes than I know what to do with. I'm not a horder - at least not like the ones you see on TV - but I refuse to get rid of these clothes because "I'm going to lose weight and I'll be able to wear them again". At least that's what I tell myself everytime I go down to Walmart to buy more clothes hangers and another large storage bin to store more clothes in.

I have a little orange dress hanging up right in front of my face that I'm forced to see everytime I walk into my closet. I used to wear that dress - and I hang it in my face to remind me of what I used to be. In my mind it's supposed to be a little encouragement to myself but it's more like an evil voice telling me how much I suck. Since I've grown out of that dress years ago, I've hung it in a food pantry, a cabinet in the kitchen and even folded it an put it in the fridge - thinking maybe I'll see the little bitty dress and decide not to eat whatever I'm after in there. It's a diet trick that doesn't work. One of these days I'll put that dress back on long enough for me to say "take that you stupid little dress!!" and then I'll get rid of it because I'm sick of it and its hateful, constant, daily reminder.

Clothes shopping for me is now just a necessity. I hate to do it but I will if I must. (I'll get more into shopping and just how horrible an activity it is for me in some later post...as I'm just not ready to talk about that yet)...Generally, every shopping trip ends with me vowing to never buy another thread of clothes "in this size". And I'm about as determined in that as I can be. "I have a closet full of nice things - and I'll just lose some weight and wear them", I tell myself. But it only takes a very short amount of time before the 'act of shopping' and the state that it leaves me in to go ahead and completely consume my senses and I try to make that all better by eating. And then I beat myself up some more for eating. And then I eat because I beat myself up so bad for eating. And then I add my purchases to my ever-growing clothes mound and I get on the couch in defeat and exhaustion.

I've successfully lost a good bit of weight a few times. And one of the diet "tricks" I've utilized in that weight loss is when you lose a dress size - give away/get rid of your 'fat clothes'. The thought behind this trick is that you're less likely to gain back your weight if you don't have clothes to wear. Yep. Whatever. As many clothes as I have now - I would have a great deal more if I hung on to all the "fat" clothes I've given to Goodwill. And the truth is somedays I wished I still had some of those clothes - that 'diet trick' didn't work as I don't have a clue what I've spent replacing them when I gained back every ounce I ever lost and then some.

I'm looking forward to getting healthy again. Healthy this time in mind, body and spirit. If I can change the ways I deal with things - mostly with food as my go to - I may be able to get rid of some things once and for all. I'm ready to make a giant donation to the Goodwill store once and for all and remove this burdonsome mound of clothes off my shoulders forever. If I drop a size I vow to drop that sizes wardrobe from my vast collection and I'll make a big fuss over it as if conquering a giant. Each and every piece of clothing I lose will be instead counted as a gain.

Whew! That's a load off my shoulders already! I won't even get started on the shoes!

I Can't Believe I'm Going to Post This But Here Goes Nothing...

I'm on Facebook all the time so sometimes I read something there that I get a little inspiration from. Today was one of those days. A facebook friend of mine posted the quote from an unknown source: "Never give up on something you can't go a day without thinking about". I needed to hear that. I need that seared into my pshche. I wake up every morning with big plans and by mid-morning it's all over but the crying. I need to remember not to forget. Today is that day. I will not give up this time.

I can only imagine what the sales meetings are like at the General Nutrition Center (GNC), or any other store just like it. There's a room full of thin, pretty girls, meaty, muscley young men with gelled hair and a gold chain stretched tightly around his thick, body builder neck. They're wearing their khaki pants with their polo shirts tucked in nicely and everyone is tanned and gorgeous. The management team is just as put together, just slightly older and clearly graduates of whatever marketing school they attended. All very polished, all love themselves a great deal and all satisfied with their jobs. And hey, 20% employee discounts on Mega-Extreme Lean Body Muscle-Building Protein Powder is icing on the cake. Life is grand!

"Ok TEAM!", says the managers to the sales people. "There are lots and lots and lots of fat people out there. They don't love themselves like we do. They are lazy and they sit on the couch all day just wishing they wouldn't be fat anymore. They are always on a diet and they always fail. They search far and wide for some easy, quick-fix and they're willing to pay any amount of money for it. They know it won't work. They know it because they've tried everything out there. They've bought into every infomercial, every women's magazine article, every advertisement. They will even tell you 'I've tried it all and nothing has worked!' What they won't tell you is how they get up out of bed in the middle of the night, eat a massive bowl of sugary cereal with whole milk and then go right back to bed. They won't say 'I took the diet pills and then I went to McDonald's for lunch, adding a 12 piece Chicken McNuggets to go with my Big Mac Meal. Oh, and a large sweet tea.'" The management/motivation team continue, "These fat people are desperate and we need to prey on, er, help them. We're here to help!" And the beefy, beautiful sales team cheers!

"Ok", says the director of marketing. "How can we help the poor, poor fattys and capitalize on their flightly 'I'm really gonna do it this time' determination?" He continued, "When the fat people come in and start looking around for the 'magic pill' I want you to lead them over to the entire back wall - full of diet products. We even have a big sign over the shelves that says 'DIET'. See?" and he points to the back wall and the meat heads nod in acknowledgement. "Every month we'll have a different sales incentive program and we'll focus on a different bottle of magic pills", he said with a tooth-whitened grin and a chuckle. "And whoever sells the most wins a 60 ounce tub of Mass Fusion Optimum Micronized Lean Muscle Body Building Creatine Powder! In Strawberry!!" He whipped the team into a frenzy with high-fives all around, peck flexing and strutting. "Now go help a fat person!" he finished, clapping then dismissed the meeting. Then the fit and trim sales staff went on to work - on a mission.

By the last time I walked into the GNC I had tried every infomercial product, every women's magazine article and every diet product sales pitch had me hook, line and sinker. I've read every book, I've tried every kind of diet from Adkins to the Master Cleanse. I've prayed about it, attended Overeaters Anonymous, considered surgery, gone to medical weight loss centers, put magnets in my shoes and starved myself. I've vomitted, taken laxatives and I've excersized myself nearly into heart failure. I've swallowed vinegar before every meal, I've taken fat blockers and I've lived on speed and diet pills until I worried that my heart would stop. I've taken water pills until my muscles cramped. I woke up EVERY SINGLE MORNING and started a diet only to fail miserably by lunchtime. I've been sick with envy of the thin people of the world, I've beaten myself to a pulp with guilt and self-loathing and I stopped looking at myself in the mirror. I had blamed everything there was to blame and I had all but given up, resorting to sitting on the couch and wishing I would lose some weight.

Believe me, I know there's no such thing as a "magic pill". I know how to lose weight because I've lost lots of weight a few times. But for whatever the reason that day, I found myself face-to-face with a beefy sales-boy at the GNC, asking me if he could help me find something. "Yes", I said. "Point me to your magic pills", I joked. Mr. Muscles blinked a couple times, probably couldn't believe his luck as he harkened back to the GNC motivational sales meeting, realizing there really are fat people in the world who believe in magic pills and he was one sale closer to that tub of muscle-building goodness! He led me over to a product display and literally handed me a bottle of pills and told me everything a fat person wanted to hear - take these pills and you'll lose a zillion pounds without even trying. The sad part was that he thought I was serious. Even sadder was that I bought the damn thing, knowing - knowing - I was buying another bottle of snake oil. I took my bottle of 40 something dollar diet pills home with me, took a few of them and promptly gave up again. And I was mad at the guy for preying on my desperation - blaming him (and probably some sales meeting that I just made up in my mind) for my failures. And then I thought if he - and the rest of the multi-billion dollar a year diet industry - only knew how I felt about myself and my failures and how much worse I was going to feel when the "magic pill" they just promised me didn't work, then maybe they wouldn't try so hard to earn their money at my expense.

Last weekend I was sitting on the couch watching TV (the only thing I do that doesn't make my joints ache) when I happened onto a program on the Oprah Network. (*disclaimer* - I'm not trying to promote The Oprah Network here - it could have been any reality show based network...) The program was called "Addicted to Food" - a reality show based on a treatment center for various types of eating disorders. Every thing the program said, every point it tried to make, every participants story, every single thing about that show screamed at me to PAY ATTENTION! THIS IS ALL ABOUT YOU!! It wasn't a lightbulb moment, I've always known what my food issues are and have been for years. But it was eye opening and at the least a little nudge - while I sat there on the couch - to get up and try to get myself back together. In this particular treatment center they used the actual Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps for recovery substituting the word "alcohol" for "food" and they treated the participants like actual addicts complete with food detox, strict and very closely monitored treatment plans and intensive cognitive therapy. And they were also a christian based center, I believe, the TV program showing the counselors at least praying in the name of Jesus Christ which made the show even better to me.

I made note earlier of all the diets I've been on before and all the tricks I've tried. I've done it all. Well, all except get honest. As I watched the show (and it was a program 'marathon' with 4 episodes shown back to back) the more I realized that it was time for me to do something. I could have been any one of those people - and watching them from the "outside looking in", it was easy to see the need for help. There were interesting story lines in the 'cast' and all resembled me so much. I wrote down some of the teaching portions of the show and I tried to soak up everything the counselors told the addicts. I was getting geared up to get on with doing something about my weight problem once and for all and then the head lady at the center said something that disappointed me. She said to the patients there - "No one can do it alone. Just like a heroin addict needs to be detoxed, counseled and helped into sobriety, so does the food addict. You need help, you can not do it alone". I am alone. And I went into the kitchen and fixed myself something to eat.

But I'm stuck on it this time. I know what I've lost as a direct result of my eating disorder and I know what my eating disorder has prevented. My love for my 'drug' has choked out my enjoyment for many other things. It's robbed me of good things that I deserve and it's very definately stolen from me my general well-being and good health. I've decided to get honest and tell others about my eating disorder - sort of like those people on that program unveiled themselves for the world to see (or whoever watches the Oprah Network). Starting yesterday I've decided to address my weight and moreso the things that cause my weight to be what it is and I'm going to write about it as my "help". If someone reads it then I'm not alone. As I sit here typing, I'm feeling anxious about actually hitting the "publish post" button but I'm going to do it and see where it leads me. Over the course of my self-help treatment program I believe I'll write about it all, what got me here, my big food secrets, what I'm doing now, etc. I might even post a picture or two. And I'll see what happens. It's something that I haven't tried yet and once and for all this has to be the first step to regaining myself; to be a better mom, a better employee to whoever will hire me, a better daughter to my mom, a better christian, a better church member and a better friend. Ok, here goes nothing. Click publish...