from icanhascheezburger.com
I was going to write today about body image, but I’m going to push that off till tomorrow because there’s something else I want to share today. Plus, I want to do some paintings to illustrate the body-image post, and this will give me more time for those!
Recently Erik and I have been hitting the trails in the late afternoons, right before dinner. The fresh (and chilly!) air, the companionship, and the movement make this a really lovely “happy hour.” It’s also a great time of day to get me out of the house: if I’ve been working hard since morning, then this is the time to stop, and if I haven’t been working, around 4:30 or 5 PM is when I start to panic and self-flagellate. So it’s the perfect time for a mindfulness break.
Yesterday was one of the unproductive days. I did morning pages, two loads of laundry, some tidying, and some online shopping for necessities, but after that, I basically spent the whole afternoon playing a computer game. By the time Erik fetched me for our walk, my shoulders were sore, my head hurt, and I was feeling cranky about not getting more done in the day. But out in Alvarado Park, shivering and puffing my way up the gentle uphill trail, I could see my day with a bit more perspective, and I recognized my behavior as a recurring pattern.
The pattern goes like this:
- I spend time at the computer doing something I consider unproductive, like gaming, surfing the web, or online shopping.
- Because it’s “unproductive,” I don’t take breaks. It’s as if I’m afraid that by leaving the computer, I won’t be allowed to goof off anymore when I come back, so I simply don’t leave. Moreover, I feel like I don’t deserve a break, because I’m being “bad.”
- So I keep at it, and pretty soon my head, eyes, neck, shoulders, back, and hands are all hurting.
- I can’t rest, because of #2, but I can’t concentrate on work, because of #3. Not having any other option, I just continue what I’m doing, because it’s mindless and easy.
- I only leave the computer, finally, because I have to. My body hurts, and my inner critic is going wild about the wasted day and what a lazy ass I am.
Usually, #5 happens when it’s time for a meal or bed, but yesterday it was the walk that got me up from the computer. My inner critic was mollified because I was outside walking, and that made room for the other voices that told me, “Hey, this isn’t the first time you’ve felt like this. Why don’t we take a look and see what’s happening?”
Last week I listened to an interview with Dr Anita Johnston, who has been working with eating disorders for more than 30 years. (To hear this interview and several other good ones, register for free at bodyloverevolution.com.) She said that in her experience, disordered eating is not just about eating; the patterns that are reflected in a person’s eating habits are also patterns that show up in other parts of her life. When I recognized the computer-use pattern I explained above, it was familiar, because it’s a problem I also have with food.
from icanhascheezburger.com
Generally speaking, I eat healthily. I avoid processed foods, I regularly eat fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and I drink lots of water. But I also have a very long list of trigger foods that I tend to gobble down as if there’s no tomorrow. And like many people, I never eat alone — the food police are always beside me at the table, assigning value to everything I eat or don’t eat. (In the past year, this has gotten even more complicated because I’ve started eating meat again and have mixed feelings about doing so.) So while the foods I consume are good foods to choose, my relationship to them is problematic.
A couple of years ago my friend Lisa (who has her own long convoluted history with food, as you might remember from her Open Mic post) recommended the book Intuitive Eating, which says the key to healthy, sustainable eating habits is to ditch dieting and listen to our bodies. It’s a wonderful book and I highly recommend it, but it’s often hard for me to follow the instructions, because the first guideline is no foods are off-limits. This goes against everything the food police stand for, and they won’t go down without a fight!
When I was walking yesterday and thinking about my computer-use pattern, I realized that I’ve been policing my activities the same way I used to police my food, with the same results: bingeing, guilt, feeling powerless, self-judgment. My unconscious, weirdly desperate urge to online-shop for hours without stopping is the exact feeling I get when presented with a chocolate layer cake: “I’d better go, go, go and get through all of this right now, because later I might not get the chance! Do it all now and hide the evidence before the food police shows up!” In the cold light of day, this attitude makes no sense, but hidden in the unconscious, it’s a powerful motivation that does a lot of my decision-making for me.
It always fascinates me how much the various areas of our lives overlap. I had thought this bingeing pattern was just a food problem, but now I see that addressing the problem could really help with my work/not-work habits too. Listening to my body helps, self-nurturing helps, and writing these things out (as in this post!) also helps. This is all a part of cultivating a more balanced, happy life, and it’s all important.
from icanhascheezburger.com
I had to start making no foods off limits for myself, like that book you mentioned says. The pressure of “policing” myself is just too hard to bear otherwise. I’m 5’2″ and I went up to a little over 200 lbs. during my difficult marriage, because I easily drift to banana splits and other so-called comfort foods to take the place of love and affection. When he left, so much pressure left with him and I lost some of the weight. When I ran out of money last summer, I lost even more. Now I’m left with about 30 lbs. to go and perhaps more pressure than there was in that cruel marriage, and here is where I need to exercise, but I don’t make time for it. I already know that I was blessed with a body that responds to it very well, but it’s been hard to begin the physically painful work that it is in the beginning, because I have to do it in my living room, alone. (The alone has always been my biggest issue — when my daughter was young, it was her little job to pause whatever game she was playing a couple of times during my workout and say, “Good job mommy! You rock!” That was so cute and nice of her that it fortified me!) These issues are so hard for so many of us. It sucks that there is no one easy solution.
That is so cute about your daughter supporting your exercise when she was little! You are so amazing for losing so much of that weight already. I hope you’ll find a way to exercise that works for you. One of my favorite stories from Twyla Tharp’s book on creativity is her fitness ritual. She describes a crazy routine of going to the gym every morning at 5:30 to work out for three hours. But she says, the ritual is not the workout, the ritual is calling the cab to take her to the gym every day (she lives in NYC). That’s the hard part. Once she’s there, she’ll do the workout, but forcing herself to pick up the phone and make that call instead of getting more sleep, is the real obstacle. I find that that’s true for me too. Sometimes I have to talk myself into getting out on the trails by saying I’ll just walk slowly for ten minutes and then come back home; almost always, once I’m out, I’d rather go briskly for nearly an hour, but I need that initial illusion to get me out there. And sometimes, quite frankly, I bribe myself with food, though I’m free to refuse the treat or choose a healthier one after the workout (and I often do). But it has taken me years to come up with habits that work for me, and even then, when something in my life goes wrong, exercise is the first thing to go. I’m still working back up to my movement level before Tisha’s passing.
Oh my gosh! Me too! Why is exercise the first to go? And it’s that transition into an exercise session that gets me too. If I can just get to it, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. You’ll make it back to that momentum level, I’m sure. I’m sending good thoughts out into the universe for you!
Thank you, Ré! You too! 🙂
Interesting post, Lisa. I can see the same pattern in my life and have never made the connection between food and other areas before. I think the idea that no food is off limits is freeing. Just don’t keep your trigger foods at home. You can still enjoy them when you go out but they won’t be calling your name every time you pass the kitchen.
It’s interesting: in the book, the authors actually recommend making a list of all your trigger foods, and then choosing one or two a week to just run with. If you want to eat pounds and pounds of butter cookies, do it. If you want to eat buckets of fried chicken, do it. Their belief is that if you really let yourself eat them, really, then sooner or later your body will recognize its own desires, and you won’t need to eat these foods so desperately anymore. Yes, you may gain weight initially, but over the long run, you’ll normalize your relationship with these foods. I can do this when I’m having a mindful day, and it has really, really helped me with my eating issues. I can even ignore desserts in my fridge, if the rest of my life is nicely balanced and I’m feeling good about myself. But on other days… it’s still quite the process!
Wow, what a fascinating post. Thank you so much for sharing your personal struggle! I’ve actually been processing something really similar this week, and I’ve been writing about it like a maniac in an attempt to untangle everything, so I’ll email you soon with some thoughts that you might find interesting, and to get your feedback. 🙂
Ooh, cannot wait to receive your email. 🙂 Thank you, Mo!