creative.mother.thinking

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self-help

The Food Journal

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Some time ago I have written about starting to journal everything I eat in an attempt to help me lose weight. And then, at the beginning of September, I pulled out a nice, small notebook and started my food journal. If you were to look through it you might be surprised that according to the journal I seem to not eat daily, and on the days that I eat, I seem very often to stop eating after breakfast.

Since I never do that (part of me still thinks that if I miss a meal I’ll drop dead) there’s only one conclusion to draw: journaling my food intake isn’t working. I did find journaling useful when I first started to become more conscious about my eating habits years and years ago but these days it’s not as much about the unconscious inhaling of junk food anymore.

As of this day I release myself from the task of writing down everything I eat.

Phew.

So, now what to do about my size and weight? For the past year or so my motto has been “Eat more, move less.” with rather predictable results. Today in the morning before breakfast and dressing I weighed in at 79.2 kilos (174.6 lbs). That’s about ten kilos (almost twenty pounds) more than I feel comfortable with. Though I have to admit that when I was at that weight for the last time I still had the feeling of being too big. (My height is 1.74 m, a bit more than 5 ft. 8.)

In my head I’m still a lean person that’s just been a bit too heavy for a short time but if I’m more realistic I have to say that I have been overweight for about eight years now with a short intermezzo of being merely slightly too heavy for about half a year or so. In my head I have been on the verge of losing weight again any moment now. For more than a year. While constantly gaining.

And it’s not like I don’t know where it’s coming from, I am the one who, every single day, has “just one more treat”, “just one more sandwich”, or “just this snack”. “Just this once” is not helping me if it’s happening every single day. In the past few weeks there have been times when I stole my son’s candy, and when I broke every single rule about food that I ever made to help myself.

This is not about beating me up. It’s just my attempt at looking at the situation just as it is.

So. I’m heavier than I would like to be, and I’m not as fit as I would like to be. Is this really a problem?

No, really. What if I stayed at this weight for the rest of my life? It’s heavy but it’s not grossly overweight. I’m still fitting into regular sized clothes (thanks to stretch jeans). While I do feel a bit uncomfortable in my bathing suit that doesn’t stop me from going swimming. In fact, my weight doesn’t stop me from enjoying anything I like. The only thing is that I have put off buying a new pair of jeans for months now because I still hope to be able to fit into a smaller one. Any day now. It is as if I were secretly waiting for a visit from the weight loss fairy. One morning I’ll wake up and I’ll look the same as in 1996 again. And everything in between would have been a bad dream.

Why 1996, you might ask? Well, in the summer of 1996 I just had lost weight, and I was in the best physical shape of my entire life. I did step-aerobics, weight-lifting, and walking almost every day, and I weighed something around 65 kg. There’s a picture of me, taken at our annual summer party that year where I look really great. I had that picture of me on my fridge for years as a motivational tool, until I suddenly realized I’ll never look like that again, even if I weigh the same, and exercise the same, because I’m actually 12 years older now.

And that’s okay. This is not about turning back time. In fact I’m not so sure what this is about but I find that I don’t care about my weight or appearance enough to change my eating habits consistently. That’s the fact. All this talk about “I have lost a pound, hurray!” and “I have gained a pound, drama!” will amount to nothing.

My lack of fitness is the thing that bothers me more. I don’t like being out of breath so easily, I don’t like not being flexible, and I don’t like that beer cases and the groceries seem to get heavier every week. My current fitness regimen of a leisurely stroll every three days doesn’t really cut it. So, again, for about the hundredth time my goal is to do some moving every other day. Apart from my walks to kindergarten and grocery stores.

As for the eating I’m really tired of hearing myself setting goals and announcing the new shiny me only to revert to my old sluggishness immediately afterwards. On the other hand I was mightily impressed by another blogger’s account of how she quit smoking by just seeing herself as a non-smoker, and I’ll try that again.

You know, I don’t really care for sweets. They make me feel weak. And potato chips. Blech. Who would want to eat potato chips for dinner? I always feel so heavy and bloated afterwards. And really, I’m not that hungry. You know, I really have to move. If I don’t exercise for a day or two I’m going crazy.

Well, at least I’m trying.

No more mushy brain

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It all started when I got pregnant. My IQ dropped by about 30 points at least, and my memory, once razor-sharp, resembled a sieve. I found this quite inconvenient and irritating but not as much as my husband. Well, once I figured out that it was because of hormones I thought I could deal with it, and surely it would all miraculously be reverted once I had the child, right? Um, not so much.

I had the child, and, as a lot of you know already, there still were hormones. breast-feeding hormones that make you not only a bit dumb, and forgetful, no, you also start to burst into tears for no apparent reason. (On the other hand I was like that when pregnant too.) Top that with serious sleep deprivation, and you end up with a woman quite different from the one I was before.

Still, a year later, breast-feeding was over, I was sleeping a bit more – not enough of course – and so I waited for myself to turn normal again. You know, with a functioning brain. One that didn’t forget everything. I felt foggy and mushy, as if I had to make do with a blunt mind. Since it clearly couldn’t be the hormones anymore, I blamed it on lack of sleep.

I already told you that I went to my doctor because I started to have my period about every three weeks which is a bit too often, and that I started to take medicine for it. Agnus castus to be precise with a helping of Vitamin B for additional help with PMS. Well, imagine my surprise when, after a while, my brain went out of its foggy, mushy state. For the first time since April 2002 I almost feel like myself again.

So it seems that indeed hormones had been making me dull, and forgetful, and put me in a low mood for six years.

It’s a bit embarrassing to be so driven by hormones. I feel that my body shouldn’t work like that. It should just function properly without me paying much attention. Please?

Notice, too, that I said “almost myself again”. I fear I will never regain all of my mind power back. And I’m a bit scared of menopause. The time when hormones will go wonky again. I feel that almost 30 years of PMS is enough.

I thought, I’d share though because there might be others out there blaming their foggy brains to lack of sleep when there might be other things responsible too.

You must release jelly donuts

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if you want to lose ten pounds.

Yesterday my husband and I had one of these mornings where we talk, and talk, and talk, about us, and our relationship, and especially the problematic aspects of our relationship.

This, in particular, went on about me not doing housework. Well, not much anyway, and much less than my share. My husband kept asking me what he should do to deal with this. A reasonable approach would be to tell me that he wants me to do certain things, and then I’d go and do them, and everything would be alright. Another approach would be to assign certain work to each of us, then both would do their share, and everything would be alright. Alas, though I know that he’s unhappy with both the state of the house, and the huge amount of work that he has, I keep procrastinating about everything. (Right now, for example, I should have done the kitchen already, made myself a pot of tea, should have written my morning pages, and be on my way to cook lunch. Ahem.)

We both tried everything reasonable, and in the end the housework status between us is little better than about 14 years ago when we moved in with each other. He, of course, like a lot of women do, could just resign to the fact that I’m a lazy chauvinist pig, and do it all himself but then he would have no energy left for his music, something much more important than clean sinks. Unfortunately, we both need to have clutter-free and reasonably clean surroundings in order to be creative.

When he kept asking me what to do, and I couldn’t really say anything besides “I promise to do better.” which isn’t really helpful because I promised the same thing decades ago and about a millions times since then (and I am doing better than that, only this better isn’t very good), I resorted to pulling cards. I figured that might be helpful.

I pulled two cards for myself, one for help with the housework problem, and one to look at my life at general. Well. The solution to the housework-problem obviously is (besides just doing it): Priorities. For everything new something old has to go.

“Current routines, habits and even types of free times must be sacrificed so that you can open up to new energies.” (Sonia Choquette“Ask Your Guides Oracle Cards”)

Duh. That’s where I got my headline from. The book that accompanies the cards, I mean.

Because I still need to lose weight. Another week of beer, beer, Bavarian food, and extra helpings of ice cream, and sweets, thrown together with a definite lack of exercise has somehow failed to produce weight loss. I wonder why that is. Of course I know that I have to let go of, let’s say, eating handfuls of gummy bears at night, only I can’t really grasp the concept that this particular, tiny, innocent looking gummy bear, there in my hand, is the one that makes the difference between weight loss and gain. Surely this particular bite of pork roast can’t be changing anything? If I eat a bit less for breakfast? Please?

Seems like there is still something for me to learn. By the way I pulled a card for my husband too, to find a solution to the “Susanne isn’t doing her fair share of housework”-problem, and his said: Celebration. Seems like there’s still hope.

The card I pulled for my life in general said: Live from Your Spirit, always a nice one. And there it was, saying,

“If you feel that everything you’re doing right now isn’t working, or that every situation you face is working against you, be glad!” (Sonia Choquette: “Soul Lessons & Soul Purpose Oracle Cards”)

What? Be glad. As if. And then it goes on,

“Above all take a close look at how much of your behavior is simply an unsavory, unconscious “goulash” of conditioning acquired from childhood, peer pressure, the media, society, or even past lives, and not a reflection of your true spirit.”

It said I should eliminate overthinking and bad habits. Oops. (In German I’d say, “Treffer, versenkt.” that hit right between the eyes.)

I’m at a point where I don’t have much hope left that I’ll be able to do it. On the other hand I refuse to remain stuck in my old habits. If only they weren’t so comfortable and familiar.

It’s funny because if you back into my archives and look at what I wrote in the beginning of this blog you’d see that at that point I was quite hopeful that I could conquer my old bad, unconscious habits and build new, healthy, shiny ones. Now I’m telling myself that I can do it again, and again, and again, regardless of how long I’ll have to practice, and how often I will have to start over. All the while my poor husband will be suffering. And all this about things like cleaning, and eating.

What would you do in our place?

How much journaling is too much?

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I have been reading “The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size” by Julia Cameron. I like the book very much. If you have read this blog for any time at all you know how much “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity” changed my life. And since I love writing the idea to “write myself right-size” holds a lot of appeal for me.

So far I only read the book once, and – I’m sad to tell you – reading the book doesn’t really change much. I will have to change my behavior. Again. But that’s not what I want to write about today. I want to write about one of the first tools that she gives you, right after the Morning Pages and Daily walks, both things I have been doing almost daily for the past nine years. That tool is that you keep a food journal. It is for recording what you eat, and when, and how you feel, and sometimes for writing instead of eating.

I have found myself strangely reluctant to start this food journal despite the fact that I already bought one, and have been carrying it around in my purse for the past week, and despite the fact that I think it’s a great idea, and will help me a lot, and despite the fact that I unearthed food journals that I kept in 2001 and 2003 and found them very interesting to read. Or I might say insightful and a little disturbing. So, despite all this I was reluctant and kept telling myself I’ll start the journal tomorrow, or maybe next week, or maybe in September.

Then I thought about that for a bit because that’s what I do, I sit there and think, and I found that my reluctance partly stemmed from the multitude of journals that I’m keeping. I can scarcely look anywhere without stumbling over a journal of mine, and journaling already consumes quite a bit of my time. This is what I have so far:

  1. Morning Pages journal (That’s three pages written by hand every day)
  2. Practice journal (A notebook where I write down when I play music, what I played, and sometimes how I felt, or ideas for songs)
  3. Quicken (In theory I record every cent earned and spent. In real life I have a high stack of bank statement and receipts sitting on my desk waiting to be recorded. I haven’t done that for about six weeks already.)
  4. A gratitude journal (Every evening I sit down and write down five things I am grateful for.)
  5. A general notebook (Filled with bits and pieces, phone numbers, ideas for blog posts, stories, notes on PTA meetings, everything.)
  6. My “notebook” on ravelry (All the details of everything I have knitted since last summer.)
  7. Flylady control journal (In theory this is where I keep track of housework and such, in real life I haven’t opened it for ages and, instead, transferred all the really important reminders to my PDA’s to-do list.)
  8. And, not the least of them, this here blog.

So, self-improvement is a nice goal but right now I’m not sure if maybe I’m trying a bit too hard. Also who wants to keep a special nice journal just to record things like “Ate a whole bag of potato chips, and two candy bars because I was angry. Afterwards I felt bloated and still angry. Waited for fifteen minutes and ate a whole bag of gummy bears.”

I know there are people who change their behavior in order to not have to write down things like that. I also know that there are people who cheat when keeping a food journal. There also are people who are too lazy to get out the notebook for a handful of almonds and so they don’t eat the almonds. I’m not one of them. In the past I have written down minute detail of everything I ate and why and how I felt afterwards but it never kept me from eating still more even when I wasn’t hungry at all.

On good days I think about all these notebooks and journals as my legacy and hope that some future scholar will gain insight in the everyday life of our times (though that insight might be a bit warped). On bad days I imagine my poor son reading hundreds and hundreds of pages that his parents wrote. Every single day recorded. Poor thing. I better tell him that he can give that all away without ever looking at it.

So. Do you keep journals? Food journals? Do you think it will help?

(And, on a completely unrelated note, please remember to send me posts you read or wrote for the Just Post roundtable until August 7th. If you haven’t heard about that yet, just click on one of the little birds down on the right sidebar.)

Getting off auto-pilot

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I actually might make this into my goal for the near future. I spend a lot of time dreaming and thinking while going about my day. I’m absent-minded and side-tracked. And I’m very reluctant to give that up.

So, why should I? Well, because it might be the one thing that can save me. I’m still a bit down, I’m feeling over-whelmed, and confused. These days that seems to be my natural state of mind. Especially the part about being confused. Some of it is hormonal (always, these days) some is the beauty that’s July, the last month before summer break with all the parties, events, barbecues, and social gatherings, because everything has to happen before August.

If I could get off auto-pilot and into the present moment I might feel calmer ad more at peace. Also I’d have more energy. I know that when I’m really in the moment all those worries, and fears, and unfinished things to do become a sort of background noise. They are less important and less overwhelming. And that often means that I’m getting more done, that I’m staying focused when actually doing something, and am able to follow things through.

I’m reluctant because I am afraid I’ll lose something crucial when giving up all this living in my head. Daydreaming is nice. Writing blog posts in my head while doing the dishes makes my life seem less mundane.

But in the end I’m fooling myself. When I’m blogging in my head while doing the dishes, I’ll be surfing the net while blogging, and knitting in my head while surfing the net, and so on, and so forth. In the end I will have missed most of my life because I wasn’t present to savour it.

So, that’s what I will be practicing for the next weeks at least. Doing the dishes while doing the dishes, blogging while blogging, be with my family while being with my family. And I’ll keep in mind the piano students of mine who say, “But I have been playing the piano for a whole year! Why am I still not brilliant?”. Because some things take a while.

It will be an interesting and unusual experience for sure.

Story of the Month: Twice as much ain’t twice as good

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It’s not really about food.

“I wish I could eat like you. I’d have no problems losing weight.” Pia says to me at lunch. Then she looks at my tummy. Well, if I always ate like I do at work I’d have no problems losing weight either. I pick at my salad, limp and soggy, drenched in that kind of dressing you only get at restaurants. White and milky with a taste like starch.

The afternoon at work seems to pass backwards. On top of everybody working as if in slow motion I have to sit through one of these meetings which are held solely because my boss likes to hear himself talk. Also, it’s good to make him feel in charge.

I’m hungry. I’m always hungry. In the afternoon Pia brings a big tray of gummi bears. I never eat sweets at work. There’s no point.

Just when I’m about to leave the phone rings, and I have to deal with my boss yet again. Obviously he feels that I’m not enough of a team player. Ugh. It seems that somebody accused me of pushing too hard. Brain-dead snails, the whole lot of them.

Finally, I’m out. Today I’ll take good care of myself. I’ll take a nice bath, steam some dumb vegetables, and go for a walk later. It will make me feel great.

I’m hungry. My feet walk to the grocery store out of their own accord. I’ll just get a bit of chocolate. I had a bad day, I deserve a little treat. Just one or two pieces after dinner. There it is. Chocolate. Mmm. Home.

Finally there. I kick off my heels, get out of the constriction that’s the “power suit”, jacket with shoulder pads, short skirt, blouse that I can’t lift my arms in, pantyhose, underwire bra. Finally able to inhale all the way again.

While dressing in yoga pants, a tee, a hoodie, and two pairs of soft socks, I put the Red Hot Chili Peppers on. Loud. That’s better.

I’m beat. Open the fridge, get a cold beer. Fetch a glass. Unpack the chocolate, potato chips, gummi bears, and licorice. Pour the beer. Put everything on a tray together with my novel. I sit down in bed with my tray, and the remote control. Finally, I can relax.

I open the bag of potato chips first. They smell delicious, I put them in my mouth, and they crackle as I bite down. I’ll only eat a few, and then I’ll put the bag away. Spicy, crunchy, garlicky, hot. Just a few more, just a few. Now a sip of beer. A bit of licorice interspersed with the gummi bears. Chips, beer, gummi bears, licorice.

I start reading. The next time I look up the chips are gone. Oh no. I did it again.
I’m feeling bad. Bloated. Fat. Unworthy. I finish the chocolate. Whatever. I get up and fetch another beer.

It’s not my fault, food is the only thing I have. It’s my security blanket, my comfort. It’s like a cave. I dig myself in, and then I close the door. And I’m safe.

The taste, the texture, the feeling of being full.

It’s my drug of choice. It makes life bearable. It isn’t really important which food it is. It can be anything.

Of course, I’m not stupid. I know that it doesn’t really help. But I do feel better. At least for the moment.

That feeling of the salt rush comes first. The blood races up into my head. Making me a bit breathless. Next comes the sugar high. My heart beating faster. All the while the fat makes me feel safe and warm. The beer like a clear mountain stream going down. It would all be fine if I could stop in time. Just a bit and then close the bags, and put it all away.

I totally lose control around food. There’s this vortex in my middle. It’s always hungry. It sucks me in, and it doesn’t let go.

Afterwards I feel bad. Fat. Bloated. Weak. Sick. But the vortex still isn’t satisfied. I’m still hungry. If I wait a bit I can finish off the second bag of potato chips. Maybe I should take up smoking. At least I wouldn’t get fat.

If only I could stop eating altogether.

This is sick. Why can’t I stop. Nobody’s force-feeding me. I know I can do it. Tomorrow I’ll eat nothing but salad and yoghurt all day.