creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

spring dieting – workout and weight loss are not related

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I’m totally finished with exercise. In the course of the last fifteen years I have changed from a couch potato girl to somebody who has to move at least three times a week in order not to get really cranky.

In the beginning I hated every single minute of it. Later I liked the feeling of power, strength, and muscle-tone. When I was pregnant and a friend told me to be glad that I didn’t need to exercise anymore, I just could stare at her. I wasn’t even allowed to to my regular walking routine! Much less dancing or strength training. Now, as a mother, I have switched to walking and yoga. My regular walking routine consists of putting my three-year-old into the stroller and pushing him through the neighborhood for 35 minutes. When I have a babysitter I’m turning into one of those ridiculous nordic walkers.
Yoga, I’m doing in front of my computer with a dvd, while my son clings to my leg, not knowing whether he wants join me or not. Mostly he wants both at the same time, throwing a fit while I’m trying to follow the soothing voice of the yogi on screen, and to breathe in and out in synch with the people on dvd.
So, working out is something I’m capable of doing. Even in not quite ideal circumstances.

But back to my subject: diet. I’m a big fan of the anti-diet-movement. My heroines are Debra Waterhouse, Susan Powter (with growing reservation), most of all (without reservation whatsoever) Geneen Roth. Geneen Roth’s books have helped me tremendously in unearthing the cause of my eating disorder. I kept journals, did the homework, and wrote down what I ate when, and how I felt, for weeks.

For most people that act of writing it down is enough to change their eating habits. They find having to write: “I ate two bags of potato chips, because I was bored.” so embarassing that they stop eating the chips. Not so easy for me. My eating journal contained things like:

2 pm: ate two plates of spaghetti bolognese, salad, had three glasses of wine. afterwards half a bag of jelly beans for dessert. feeling good, a little stuffed. food was delicious, felt satisfied before the jelly beans but wanted something sweet.

3.30 pm: one bag of potato chips, still stuffed from lunch but bored. procrastinated folding laundry

So I already knew when I ate more than I needed. And why. But that didn’t stop me from eating all that junk anyway.

Some time in the fall of 2004 I had enough of me whining the hole day:

“My God, look at my stomach, how fat I am!”

“I know, I shouldn’t be eating this, oh, only one bite, and another, and another, tomorrow I’ll eat no sweets at all, oops, all gone!”

“What, dinner time already, I’m still stuffed, but I have to eat real food once in a while…”

Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

I woke up, and asked myself: “Is my weight, food, and the way I look really the single most important thing in the world?” “Why do I spend every waking moment thinking about it, instead of being glad about my marvellous family, and spending my energy on my
music?”

(to be continued)

spring dieting – why I try eating different anyway

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Well, I know that feeling fat has nothing to do with your weight. Weighing thirty pounds less than now had me feeling really fat, and weighing only eight pounds less, I have felt attractive, sexy and curvy. But there are reasons to change the way I eat. Ate.

I’m no advocate of dieting for weight loss, because of philosophical, health, and feminist issues. But even if I were, I’m not the right kind of person to diet. The minute I get the feeling of being told, whether I should be hungry; what, when, and how much to eat, I start protesting, “Who are you to bar me from my food?”

In the meantime I was so frustrated by my upwards creeping weight, and my long lasting quest to morph from a compulsive overeater to a normal eater, that I started visiting the weight watchers homepage weekly to see where the next meeting would be. I tried to picture myself converting every bite into points, and then at the end of the day I would have to do aerobics for about three hours to be a good girl. Very funny! This picture drove me to the candy drawer. Immediately.

Yeah, I have a candy drawer. But it’s been moved to a cupboard my son can’t reach. I read that children learn food cravings from their mothers in the womb. I’m really glad that I didn’t drink alcohol when pregnant. The child loves eating: chocolate, potato chips, beans, pasta, rice, jelly beans, carrots, and yoghurt. The carrots and yoghurt are not my fault.

My main goal in all this was not wanting to be driven by compulsiveness for the rest of my life. And then a size twenty makes shopping harder, but with my tendency to slowly gain and gain I’d be needing made-to-measure clothes in retirement.

I’ve been trying to change since I realized, not every human being goes on a major binge every few days, and eats about 3000 calories at once. After this realization I saw a talk show about overeaters. The show’s guests talked about their eating habits, and the only difference between them and me was the amount we ate. Because I didn’t weigh 270 pounds. That was 25 years ago.

(to be continued)

spring dieting

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Captures your attention, doesn’t it? Now’s the time to do your traditional diet to fit into your bathing suit in summer. Anybody talking about bikinis?

So, why do you have a bathing suit that doesn’t fit? What good is that? Oh, it’s helping you to eat less. So why didn’t you? And did it fit last year but not this year? And if we’re talking about fitting yourself into the bathing suit, I’d have to hurry and gain twenty pounds in order to fit into the bikini that I bought the year before last. Then I had been at the point where I wrapped myself into a pareo when watching my son playing in the lake.

Never would I have thought that I’d come this far. I thought that if I ever turned so immensely fat, I’d at least not try to hide it.

So my relationship to this whole diet-loose weight-eat healthy-subject is ambigous at best. Because of my mother, myself, because of me being as tall as now when I was thirteen, and only growing bigger since then. And it has to do with the fact that I’m a compulsive overeater. A term that I like way better than “addicted to eating”, that would be “esssüchtig” in German.

I have been a skinny child by the way. I was told continously to eat something, to eat more, because my bones were sticking out. This hasn’t been true for the last decades.

This month I’m proud to announce, my BMI is less than 25, so now I’m officially normal weight and not over weight.

What’s this, you say? First a rant against diets, and then I’m proud to have lost weight?

(to be continued)

Away with the sippy cups!

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When I introduced my son to sippy cups at the age of seven months, I expected to be done with them after a few months. I read all those helpful parenting books (still do) saying that a one-year-old is perfectly capable of drinking out of a real cup.

When he was one year old he could drink out of a cup, but I’d rather not have him, because of spilling – or throwing the cup on the floor regardless of its contents. In our quest for uninterrupted sleep I provided him with a cup placed in his bed, so he could help himself to a drink of water during the night.

I thought, okay, at least he’s not drinking from a bottle, I’ll put the sippy cups away when he’s eighteen months old. Since then I’ve talked it through with him now and then, he’d say that he’s a big boy now, and doesn’t need a sippy cup at night, I’d put him to bed, he’d cry for his cup. (Same thing with the pacifier, but that’s another story.)

This morning, my husband put our breakfast things into the dishwasher and said, how much he hated taking apart those cups. And I thought, why don’t we dispense with them altogether? I told everybody, my husband’s glad, my son will be having a glass of water in his room (he never drinks in the night anyway), and there will be less stuff in the kitchen which is always good.

So bye sippy-cups. I liked you very much when my son was a baby, even ‘though you were dripping, but now it’s time to part.

spring?

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It’s a good thing, I finally washed my long johns. (Now you finally know that I’m so totally un-cool!) But it’s a good thing, because it’s snowing again. In April!

No, I’m not living near the North Pole, I’m in Germany. In these parts of the world the easter bunny rarely has to trek through snow. And it’s not as if we hadn’t had our share of snow this winter. I’ll show you:

The snow was so heavy, we had to shovel it off the roof! (Did I mention that I’m afraid of heights?)
No, this is unfair. Not okay with me. And on top of a depression too.

And to think that I chided my son for wanting to wear a snowsuit to kindergarten today…

still depressed – sorry

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Since last week I tried to write a new post. Preferably funny. I wrote something in praise of my gore-tex jacket, I wrote “Stop feeling guilty” and a couple of other brilliant and funny and insightful things – all in my head. Every time I sat down in front of the computer or my PDA, my mind went blank. You see, – I’m still feeling depressed.

After the last post I kept searching the net on depression. In typical hypochondric fashion I diagnosed myself with cyclothymia. Sounds interesting, and like something female and embarrassing.

Well, it is. In a way. ‘Though, as far as I have learned, it’s the only form of bipolar disorder that afflicts as much men as women. So am I suffering from a mood disorder? Or what?

I asked my husband, and we both think it likely. But it’s mild. I’m functioning quite well, even when manic or depressed. No suicidal tendencies. But moods that grip me firmly. For no apparent reason.

I never thought the state that I call my overdrive mode, could be a problem; but since I have been trying to live more conscious, I saw the breakdowns coming in the midst of feeling powerful and energized.

Finding a label for the maelstrom was relief. Not being responsible. That maybe it was all chemical. I didn’t do something wrong.

But what should I do now? Ask for help? Get medication? Somehow I doubt that going to my doctor would be a good move. He thinks if there’s nothing broken, or you’re not having a heart attack right now, it can’t be serious. And if he thinks it’s serious, he’ll give me a pill. Take this and you’ll feel better, bye.

In an attempt to heal myself I’m going more deeply into the techniques of “Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction“. I ordered two books on bipolar disorder. Which will probably make me depressed. And I stay confused.