In May this blog will be three years old… and when the domain expires, I’m not planning to renew it. I do have a blogger account and I may pop in there from time to time to rant, say hi and whatnot. I haven’t decided.

The journey my life has taken in the past three years is an amazing one. I graduated from college, moved 1800 miles away from my family and friends and started trying to have a baby… the plans and dreams I had for myself when I began this blog are not the ones that have been realized. We didn’t move to Nevada. I am not yet a mommy.

Most importantly, I never “got thin.” Hell, I never even got thinner. I got fatter, in fact.

Last year, I began my fourth consecutive year of joining Weight Watchers as an unspoken sort of New Year’s resolution (I say unspoken because had I been asked if I had one, I’d have denied it, but truth be told, I did). Something had changed for me, though. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I lasted a day or two at most and then would go weeks, even months, without doing it. All the time, in my head, swearing “tomorrow I start anew” but tomorrow never came.

Something inside had snapped. I was broken in a way I’d never anticipated, and Weight Watchers couldn’t fix the problem. In fact, unbeknownst to me, WW was (a major) part of the problem.

When my husband found out he was ill, I began to consider therapy. It was hard to not, after all, given my intense emotional connection to him. He actually found Clara… and saw she specialized in eating disorders and body image issues. I almost decided against her, as the dietitian I’d seen in desperation last summer had suggested therapy - strongly recommended it, in fact - but I’d been sure I couldn’t get any further in therapy with my eating. I was convinced it had taken me as far as I could go. It felt - and I wrote about it here - like I had all the pieces, but just wasn’t sure what order they went in. Turns out, I didn’t even know what the puzzle was of. It was like a mystery puzzle.

Clara doesn’t put her clients on yet another diet called a “lifestyle change.” She uses Intuitive Eating, and with her, as you all know by now, I’m working on becoming an intuitive eater. I am finally free of the diet prison I’ve been locked in for so many years.

I recognize that this idea seems radical to many of you. Since so many of my readers are diet bloggers like I was once, this is an idea that goes against every thing you are doing. I get that, and even respect that… but I just need to share with you that at one point, I’d have reacted that way to this concept, too.

I am learning to accept my body, as it is, right now. I realized in therapy last week that I was never going to be 100% happy with my body on the dieting path. Even if I’d worked my way down into the proper BMI range and everyone told me how great I looked, I’d always have been analyzing, dissecting and tearing down the little confidence I had remaining. Dieting does that to people. I’ve read so many blogs where someone has dieted down to a healthy size, a “normal” size and still feels horrible about her body… still struggles to feel like she’s worthy, like she fits in with the rest of society. I was going to be one of those women, if I’d ever managed to get that far.

For me, it would be the excess skin, the floppy boobs, the cellulite… for me it would be the way my double chin never totally left me, or how no matter how much I lost, I still had a gut (and I would, as I did when I got to a normal weight as a young girl). I’d never have been able to give myself the full credit for getting to that “normal” weight to begin with, let alone enjoy it.

And god forbid I gained the weight back, even if it was only part of it… how many of you have lost gobs of weight, only to regain some and sit there and beat yourself up over how thin you were, while failing to realize that not gaining back ALL (and then some) is still an amazing feat? When you consider how many people fail to maintain weight loss, it’s remarkable that some manage to catch themselves before they get all the way back…

I feel like we all lose ourselves a little in the dieting process. I want women everywhere to love their bodies right now. Today! Not tomorrow. Not when you lose that last five pounds. Not when you gain five pounds. Not when you finally make it to goal - especially since so many of us have unrealistic goals anyway.

Love yourself right NOW. All of you. Ever flabby bit, every saggy bit, every fat roll. Whatever the number on the scale says, it’s just a number. Really, it is. It’s not an indictment of your lack of ability to blend into “normal” society… because that “normal” society doesn’t exist anyway. So few women are really happy with themselves, right now, as is. So few of us stand up for ourselves and say, hey, I’m really something. I’m special and beautiful and amazing.

Well… I am doing that. By refusing to follow the societal norm and continue a miserable, endless, punishing diet journey that will only make me even less happy with myself, inside and out, and less healthy, too. I am standing up and saying, it’s time. It’s time to be happy with who I am today, not with who I long to be someday.

I hope some of you will follow in my footsteps. I am not alone, and I follow others who’ve made this daring leap of faith…

You have been here for me, and I guess I want to do the same in return. I know some of you won’t be ready, and maybe some of you are actually happy right now in this moment with what you’ve got and who you already are.

Those of you who aren’t, there’s another way… and I hope you find your own path to freedom.

Thank you all, so much, for reading these past few years. I plan to visit your blogs even after this one is gone. I wish holdem pokeronline poker tourfree video poker7 card stud poker rulesonline poker schoolmac online pokerseven card stud,seven card stud strategy,seven card stud poker7 card stud how topoker download,poker star download,full tilt poker downloadtexas hold em odds7 card stud highofficial texas holdem ruleonline casino pokercrazy game of pokerstud poker,5 card stud poker,card free internet poker studholdem money play poker texasinternet poker siteinternet poker gamepoker moneycard credit debt reducingchase business credit card,chase credit card for small businesscard consolidate credit debtcanadian instant credit card,instant credit card,instant credit card canadacard credit low percentage rate,card credit low rate uk,low rate credit cardsears credit card applicationbest rate and deal credit card,best credit card rateaccount card credit searsamerica bank card credit logincaliforni card consolidation credit debthousehold bank credit card servicesamerican black card credit expressdebt interest credit card consolidationchase credit card paymentchase bank credit card,chase bank credit card paymentfirst national merchant credit card advantage,credit card merchant,credit card merchant feecard cashback credit ukcard credit debt management ukbad card credit credit historyno interest no payment credit card,no interest credit cardcard credit guaranteed ukcollege student credit card debtcard chase credit online paymentcard credit debt elimination informationcredit card debt management services,credit card debt management,card credit debt info managementcard credit machine wireless,wireless credit card machinecard credit debt eliminate freecard consolidation counseling credit debtinstant approval uk credit cardcash reward credit card0 card credit interest you all well, wherever you are in this journey.

Hugs…

~*Mae*~

PS. Apologies to those who did register over the weekend, but so anyone can say bye, I’ve removed the restrictions and all can comment again.

(I began this post around midnight when I couldn’t sleep, but then there were some foxes wailing outside and I got distracted. So I’m finishing it now.)

I’ve been building to an update on how IE is working for me, but I hadn’t been quite sure yet what I wanted to say. Of course, it had to come to me as my husband and I were in bed, talking with the lights out. That meant no sleep for me until I got it out, so here I am.

Christie has a great post on how IE has already begun to work for her. If you’re curious about the process of becoming an intuitive eater, I definitely recommend you take a look at her blog. Take a look anyway, simply because Christie is awesome.

Back to my post, now that I’m done plugging one of my favorite bloggers.

I discovered red grapes last night. It was dinner time and I decided I wanted to have some grapes to eat after dinner, so I was cleaning them and putting them back in the fridge, and I tasted one. I have eaten red grapes for years… but I don’t think I’d ever truly tasted one before last night. That grape was so incredible. I wound up eating five or six, very quickly, and then had to pause and put them back in the fridge. They’d be there later, and I wanted to savor them, not gobble them. So I had some with breakfast, and they’re just amazing.

Why all the fuss over grapes, you wonder? Well. Let me explain.

Grapes were a staple of my WW days. I ate them all the time. I ate them when I wanted a cookie. I ate them when I wanted cake. I ate them when I wanted chocolate. A leader (one of dozens I had) had shared with us that because grapes are generally quite sweet, she found them a great sweet tooth satisfier. I took that to heart, and so grapes became my candy, cakes, cookies, ice cream, etc substitute. I ate grapes when I wanted many other foods… but I doubt if I ever ate grapes just because I wanted grapes! This is true of many foods, but it’s especially true of fruits and veggies. I love fruits and most veggies. The problem is, I think on a subconscious level I’d begun to resent them, especially fruit, because I was often substituting a juicy apple or grapes for something else sweet that, let’s get real here, tastes nothing like fruit.

I had the same experience with rice cakes, the flavored kind. The kicker is, I hate rice cakes. With a passion I never fully appreciated. I convinced myself I loved them because they were one Point each. Even for the flavored kind, and they are sweet. But to me, it’s like eating sweetened Styrofoam packing peanuts! Or at least, what I imagine that to be like, having never actually tasted a packing peanut. If I decide at some point to taste a rice cake again, maybe I’ll be surprised and I will like it… but I seriously doubt it.

This is why WW and any other diet caused problems for me… but frankly, if I am honest, maybe especially Weight Watchers. I have an eating disorder. That’s just reality. I thought for years that I was “over it” and that I just ate too much. However, it’s far more insidious than that, and diets just fueled the fire. A diet that pretends it’s NOT a diet, like Weight Watchers, is perhaps the worst thing I could’ve done to myself. I realize that for some of you, WW is a holy grail of dieting, and that’s fine. If it’s really working for you, wonderful. It wasn’t working for me, but even worse, without knowing it, WW worked against me.

I told my husband last night, when relaying the grape discovery to him, that I realize now I’ve been a Food Zombie for years. I’ve been eating, often far more than I need or want and often things I don’t even like or want, without tasting, without feeling. I’ve been in a Food Haze. I used to talk - and have heard other talk - of going into a “Food Coma” of sorts when in a binge. What I failed to realize, however, is that I was always - every single day, every bite of food - in a Food Coma.

It was rare that I emerged from this Food Coma, and ironically, the times I did emerge were times when I was giving myself permission to eat without restriction… not to binge. There is a huge difference. For example, on two different trips to Las Vegas, I decided I was not counting Points. It was a conscious decision, made in advance of both trips. On one, I decided to write down everything I ate, but not count points. I also decided, in a rare moment of thinking like an intuitive eater, that at buffets especially, where food is in abundance and choices abound, I would not finish anything I didn’t absolutely love eating. I followed through on both of those plans, and actually lost TWO pounds on that vacation. The other vacation was our honeymoon, and we ate at fabulous restaurants, and I ate whatever appealed to me. I thoroughly enjoyed that eating experience, more so than the first trip - because on the honeymoon trip I really was able to let go of the guilt. You only get married once (in my world view, anyway) and I wanted to savor every experience on our trip. I did gain weight on that trip, but I think most of it was water retention after the flight, because I stupidly went to WI the day after we returned - and then I did have guilt, and it took something away from the experience for me.

I am eating much less than I have in years. I am, in fact, frequently shocked by how little I need to eat to feel satisfied. Sometimes it takes me by surprise, and because I am used to eating so much more, I think “but I’ve had so little, how can I be full?” and then I have to fight to urge to take a few more bites. However, I’ve come so far, so fast… and it’s amazing how positive I feel, how upbeat.

When I am at the store and something appeals to me, I buy it. I have, currently, Cadburry mini eggs, a white chocolate rabbit, Almond Joy eggs, over half a small cheesecake, cookies and other assorted former “bad” or “trigger” foods in my kitchen. It’s a non-issue. I can go in and take four or five Cadburry mini eggs and be satisfied. The cheesecake, which I bought when having to eat all mushy stuff because of my jaw, was not very good. My husband and I each had a piece and neither of us was impressed by it. I’d put it back in the fridge before tasting it and totally and completely forgot - FORGOT - that I had it there. I saw it last night and said, oh right. Have to throw that away! Do you hear that? I FORGOT I HAD A CHEESECAKE. Nevermind it wasn’t very good. In the past, if I’d even bothered to notice that, the reaction would’ve been something along the lines of, but it’s still cheesecake!

I bought all these Little Debbie treats I used to love. Things I used to binge on, in fact. Almost all of them went into the garbage, some I never even opened before the expiration date.

People have said to me, I couldn’t ever do IE. I couldn’t trust myself. I thought the same thing. I really thought, eat whatever I want, whenever I want? Ha! And yet, here I am, mere months later, with a kitchen full of foods I once forbade, or binged compulsively on, and I can take them or leave them, and either is fine.

I am not all the way there yet. Believe me, there’s a lot to learn and a lot to think about when learning this process. However, I’ve come so incredibly far, and so quickly… and I feel so PROUD. Diets never made me feel true pride. Even the weight loss that came with them never gave me much pride. Why? Well, first off, every time I lost weight, I gained it. So I suppose when I lost weight, it was always in the back of my mind that it wouldn’t stay lost anyway, so why get excited? But also, no matter what I lost, there was always so incredibly far to go to get to “goal.” It seemed an impossible dream, and I guess I knew, even when on the path and doing “well” that I wasn’t going to be happy with my body when I got to “goal” anyway. I’d have excess skin, saggy boobs, my stomach would always be too big, etc, etc. Not only was I busy criticizing the body I did have, in my mind I was already tearing to shreds the body I thought I’d have at the “end” of the dieting process (not that even I thought it would ever end - likely another problem I faced).

This is nice. It’s a good feeling. Oh, I still struggle every day with my negative feelings about my body, and this is probably going to be the hardest Principle of IE to adopt. It may take me a long time… but the nice thing is that even without having “mastered” all the principles, IE is already working. I already feel so much more positive about eating, about myself. I know it will be a bumpy road, and there will be pitfalls. I will always need to be vigilant about fighting off dieting ideals. I’ve had 20+ years of having those thoughts imprinted on my psyche. It will take a long time to banish them, and honestly, given the diet obsessed world in which we live, I am not sure that dieting thoughts can ever totally go away.

Clara, my therapist, says that often times her clients decide to try dieting again, and she is there to support them through it. She doesn’t judge, but rather understands. I don’t *think* I am likely to try another diet. I think I’ve gotten the desire to go on an actual diet out of my system. More of a risk, for me, is letting the “diet mentality” sneak back in, and that can result in my binging again, or forgetting to listen to my body, because in my case, that diet baggage brings fear of restriction, fear of punishment, fear of failure… and what will happen then, is I will go into what the authors of IE call “Last Supper” eating. Where I consume food frantically and overeat because I think that I will be on a diet again soon. It doesn’t matter if I have no intentions of actually dieting. This has happened to me briefly since beginning this process, but it happened very early on, in November. I lost touch with the goals of IE, with the journey, and as a result stopped eating in a way that is conducive to growing, to learning.

I’ve now finished the book, all save the last chapter on “Gentle Nutrition.” I skipped that chapter because Clara and I were talking about it and she mentioned wishing they’d left it out completely. Not because she discounts the benefits of good nutrition, of course. Simply because so many of us chronic dieters really know what good nutrition looks like, but often we go to extremes with it, and that’s counterproductive to this process. I probably know better than your average “thin” person what’s healthy to eat… but that hasn’t much helped me over the years. Clara’s feeling is that as you progress in this journey, you eventually get there… you get to the point where good nutrition becomes second nature.

I wasn’t buying fruits or veggies. I hadn’t even noticed it. I think, because of what I mentioned earlier, with the whole subconscious resentment of these foods, combined with genuine stomach issues I’ve struggled with where fruits and veggies are concerned, I just wasn’t considering them. We got home from shopping on Saturday and I had all the goodies I mentioned earlier in my bags, but what I wanted, what I longed for was an apple. A crunchy, crispy apple. I didn’t have any, so settled for applesauce, but it didn’t quite do it for me, so when we went out on Monday I bought apples and the aforementioned grapes. I have not yet had an apple, but I will, probably today. The point is, I never craved apples before, and when I did crave wholesome foods, I pushed the cravings aside for junk food - because I certainly never craved apples or salads when “On Program” and so if I had a craving it meant I was only a breath away from being back “OP” - which meant I couldn’t waste my time on apples or salads. I had to eat the junk food I wouldn’t be able to have soon.

One final note about Weight Watchers, and why it was actually toxic for me. WW give you Points based on what you weigh. This seems logical, because a bigger body needs more fuel. The problem is, there were times when I really didn’t need all of those points. Probably far more times than I realized. There were times when I needed more Points. Weight Watchers did two things there. First, it made me feel I couldn’t eat more when I was out of Points, even if I was legitimately hungry. That just set me up for an inevitable bing. Second, and possibly worse, I felt like “I’m fat, I need to eat more.” This mentality crossed over into periods when I wasn’t on WW and made it okay for me to always clear my plate. I realize that’s NOT what WW is trying to get its members to take away, but again, this is why it was toxic for ME. I am not someone who had any business dieting, not with how disordered my eating is. That doesn’t mean this is true for anyone else (though I’m sure I am not alone). Also, tied into that second point there, I was absolutely terrified of “losing” Points. I was always a “volume” eater, and the idea of getting to a weight where I only had maybe 25 Points for a day was truly scary to me. I think this is a big part of why I always seemed to get to a certain weight, and never below that. The one and only time I got to a place with WW where I had to lose Points, I maintained that weight for only a few weeks before gaining enough to be back at my original Points range.

I never even remotely suspected these things. I didn’t have the slightest clue that Weight Watchers was actually making things worse for me. I blamed it on myself… I was weak. I defended WW mercilessly against any critics. WW wasn’t at fault, I was.

I wasn’t to blame. Maybe WW isn’t, either, though I do take issue with their new ad campaign where they say “Stop dieting. Start living.” It is and always will be a diet, and that’s simply a reality. I think that there is a benefit, that at least in theory, WW does allow for people to deal with real life situations, which isn’t the case with most diets, especially the ultra-restrictive ones like Atkins, and even South Beach (especially in the early stages).

When I look at the statistics, though, even with Weight Watchers, and see that many, many more people fail than succeed - especially long term, I can’t help but think the diets, even WW, are to blame. It makes sense, after all… if we succeed, truly succeed, we won’t need to pay for the products, services, foods, etc anymore, and an industry that makes somewhere around $50 billion dollars annually will suddenly make far, far less. Combine that with the media and you have a recipe for failure, if not one for disaster.

So… am I thinner? Not yet. Not that I know of, anyway, since my broken scale is not something I plan to fix. However, someday I know I will be. Maybe I’ll never be even close to the “ideal” weights I once imagined or that the BMI charts arbitrarily assign to me based on my height and age, without taking into consideration anything about me specifically. Yet I will be something better than just thinner. I will be healthier, mind, body and spirit -and that, my friends, is absolutely precious and a hell of a lot more important to me than the size of my clothing or a number on the scale.

~*Mae*~

First, Happy Valentine’s Day to you all. I hope it’s a lovely day full of wonderful surprises.

I have some plans, but nothing major. We’ve got somewhere around five or six inches of snow out there and it’s still falling. Plus, we’ve got a blowing snow advisory for later. We at dinner at Pier 49 last night, but it was overpriced and not worth the wait. It was okay… just not worth a wait of 15 minutes and the expense. Plus, it’s a very different style of pizza than we’re used to as former NYers. So it took getting used to. I do have to say, when they served this 8″ personal pizza we both were like, uhm… that’s not much food! Four tiny slices… but then we began to eat it, and I finished well less than three slices. He finished it all, but said in retrospect, he shouldn’t have… he was stuffed. I finished just in time. I’m learning to recognize when I am comfortably full. Sometimes I recognize that, and still struggle with “oh, this is really good, I want more” - but that’s a throwback to the times I was splurging when on a diet and didn’t believe I’d get the chance to eat something like that again any time soon. So I try to gently remind myself… you’re full. You’ve eaten all that you need, and if you eat more now, you will feel overfull and that’s a gross feeling. You can have this again next time, if you really want.

This is one area in which I have made a great deal of progress. Also, when it comes to satisfaction of food. IE invites us to enjoy the sensual aspects of eating again… to have a sensory experience, and really to pay attention to what foods we like, what textures, tastes, and so on. I have been really enjoying this aspect, and it’s been fabulously helpful to me. Learning that most of the foods I’d binge on when dieting or struggling with dieting are foods I don’t even remotely like is really liberating. By eating what I am craving, instead of trying to find a way around that craving, I’m learning that I actually eat less. Often far, far less… than I would’ve if I’d tried to satisfy said craving some other way. Not only that, but denying a craving for me almost always led to binging. I might binge on something “Points friendly” but it didn’t matter. I was still binging. I was overeating in a way that was emotionally very damaging, and at the end of it, I’d usually consumed more calories/fat than I would’ve just giving in to the craving. Furthermore, I was always left unsatisfied, because I didn’t eat what I really wanted, and worse, I felt guilty about binging on something I couldn’t even recall the taste of.

All of this isn’t to say that IE is easy, or without struggle. I struggle when I slip back into a diet mindset. I struggled the past week and a half, because of my sprained jaw and limited capacity to chew. It’s exceptionally hard to judge your hunger level when you’re not chewing your food. This is why, in retrospect, liquid diets never worked for me. I didn’t even last long enough to see if they would allow weight loss. I’d get frustrated, feel like I was starving and pig out after only a few days. Why? Because drinking most of your calories is largely unsatisfying. Determining my hunger level when I’ve gone a week without chewing is hard. There’ve been times I’ve overeaten, and I only knew it when my body signaled to me, hey, enough’s enough! Give it a rest already! So learning to pay attention to hunger cues has become a big focus of this week. Emotionally, this type of eating is incredibly unsatisfying…

One nice change, though, is that especially knowing that I am going to feel largely unfulfilled, in terms of how satisfying the food choices I am able to make are, I’ve made a more conscious effort to choose foods that I enjoy greatly. So rice pudding, for example… with banana slices and Reddi Whip. This is something I find very filling and emotionally satisfying. It’s still not the cheeseburger I’ve been craving for five days, but eventually I’ll be able to chew again, and when I can, if a cheeseburger with pickles is still what I want, I will have it.

When I had five teeth pulled about five years ago, I was back on WW for the first time in a while. I’d just started, and then had to have the oral surgery. I told myself I was not counting points while recovering, and that I would eat the things I was able to eat and not feel guilty. I didn’t count points, and I did eat the things that I was able to… but I felt really guilty, and when I returned to my next meeting for Weigh In, I was down four pounds… and all I could do was beat myself up, because if in the past that second week’s weight loss was always more than that. Instead of saying, hey that’s awesome… you lost weight, despite drinking a lot of milkshakes and eating mac & cheese galore, all I could think of what the way in which I’d failed. Worse, when I talked at the meeting, despite my weight loss of FOUR pounds during a week in which I’d had general anesthesia and five teeth cut out of my mouth, the other woman agreed with me and told me what a huge mistake I’d made in not counting Points for the week.

Ya know what? The first two days after surgery, I barely ate. The first day, in fact, I spent a good bit of time puking and miserable. The second day, I managed some broth and a few bites of mashed potatoes. I was also in a painkiller haze. When I was able to finally stomach more, I was absolutely starving. I ate whatever was feasible to eat, and believe me, it wasn’t vast quantities of anything. My body was healing. It needed fuel. I was giving it what it needed, in ways it could handle it, and there is NOTHING wrong with that.

So looking back on that experience, and comparing it to this one, I see major progress. I don’t feel guilty if ice cream is one of the few things I can eat and it’s the only one I want at the time. I’m craving things I’d love to eat… like the baby carrots in my fridge, or a crispy salad. I can’t do that yet, though. I also have been craving cheese… and I can’t do that yet, either. It’s too painful to chew it still. I managed to have Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast today, which was a big deal. I’ve been drinking 2% milk with Ovaltine, and that’s very filling and at least I get some protein. I tried to eat cottage cheese with pineapple, but discovered it has an artificial taste I don’t care for, and so next time I’ll just buy plain cottage cheese and then add the pineapple myself. Tonight I am making meatloaf, and I shouldn’t have any trouble eating that.

I still struggle with body image stuff. Last night I had a mini-meltdown because I’m not “hot.” It was stupid, and I knew that… and Missy said it best, because I told her via AIM what I was thinking and she said, and I quote, “thats the most ridiculous thing i’ve hearddddd lol (remember, she’s 16!).” and I said, “thanks, lol.” She then said, “you’re soo prettyy.” And I pointed out that I have an amazing husband who loves me the way I am, and she just said, “exactly.”

Wisdom from a teenager… *sigh*

I was sharing it with another friend, who is single, and she pointed out that she has been hot in her lifetime, but that I am loved… and she wishes she were loved. So I felt a bit silly, which is good. The point of all of it is, that sometimes it’s hard to focus on reestablishing my relationship with food, without thinking of the weight aspects of the situation. However, I do fully understand and accept that IE isn’t about weight loss… and weight loss from IE only comes once you’ve really mastered the techniques, and you are truly an intuitive eater again. I told my husband recently that I think I will need about a year… that after a year of working the principles of the book, and working with Clara, I should be at a point where weight loss starts to happen… but I can’t know that, of course. It’s just a guess.

In the meantime, as I learn to listen to my body, I will get healthier. I’ve already seen it happening, with the huge drop in my cholesterol numbers. That’s a positive change, and a more important one than losing five or ten pounds. I’ve lost far more weight than that, even, and not had a change in any of my lab tests… so that’s very meaningful.

While I wait for the weight loss to happen, I am remembering the freedom of not dieting. I am remembering that I feel good about my food choices, and that I have the control and ability to make the choices that are best for me at any given moment. I am eating less, overall, and I am eating foods that are more satisfying… I’m eating less junk, by far, then I did when I was on Weight Watchers. I honor my body’s cravings and needs and I move on from them without shame or guilt. I recognize that I don’t need to be “hot” to be a gorgeous person, inside and out.

It’s, thus far, the most rewarding journey I’ve been on with food. I’m learning, albeit slowly, to just take it one meal at a time, and to accept that this is a process. It’s not a structured plan, and no two people will take the same journey on IE… which is so appropriate, when you think about it. None of us have the same fingerprints, either… why should our paths towards being healthier be identical?

~*Mae*~

PS. It’s officially been a year since my husband threw away my birth control pills, and wished me an early Happy Valentine’s Day. I really thought I’d be a mom by now, and sometimes it’s very hard knowing I am not and may not ever be a mom. I’ve already cried over it today, and I am hoping to put it behind me for now. I can’t change anything with those tears… so I let them go, and now I hope to move forward. Maybe by next year I’ll be a mom… maybe not. Either way, it doesn’t make me less of a person, wife or woman. I just need to remember that.

I Am…

I am not pink satin trimmed in white lace
I am not going to fit into that pretty baby blue box,
with the tightly looped bow
I am never going to be Cinderella, my feet are simply not that dainty
My hair will rebel against its straight sisters and lie in a tangled mass around my face,
like a reddish halo
I am a strong wine…
Full bodied…
Intoxicating…
I will linger long after you drink in the last drops of me,
My taste and presence imprinted
indelibly on your lips…

I wrote this poem 10 years ago… for a while it was my voice mail personal ad on the telephone dating service I met my husband through. He heard it, and it was part of why he wanted to meet me (helps that I have an incredibly sexy voice, lol).

Anyway… with where I am right now, in this process of rediscovering intuitive eating, I thought I should post this poem… as a reminder to myself - and to anyone else reading.

You are who you are, and you are GORGEOUS just that way.

~*Mae*~

Last night the subject of secrets came up, and it turned out my husband had one… one that has been bothering him. Two women from his past have emailed him in the past year. One of them emailed again just last week.

He didn’t see any need to upset me, because he had no intentions of writing back. He cut both women out of his life years ago. He deleted the emails and tried to forget about them… but he did feel guilty keeping it from me, so last night when the topic came up, he admitted his secret.

In the year we first began to date, my husband and I had some very major ups and downs. The problem was largely that he was 22 when we met, and at the end of our second date, knew on some level that I was the “one” - and he wasn’t ready for that. Both of these women were part of our on-again/off-again romance that year.

Maeve, he went to high school with. Sometime not long before I met him, they had one fabulous date… but Maeve had a big problem with alcohol, and it doomed any chance they had. The story is long and complicated, but she came back into the picture during the first few months we dated. At the time, I fervently believed he was chasing her because she was unattainable. An alcoholic free spirit is not an easy woman to catch… and while there had been a time when I think he’d truly wanted to be with her, I don’t believe that was the case by this point in time. However, in the moment, I believed it wholeheartedly.

I believed that he’d rather be with some earth-mother alcoholic than with me, and it broke my heart. Mind you, he was also deliberately making things sound more serious than they were, but they were serious… at least on the surface. He went away one weekend, without telling a soul, to the state where she was living. That weekend proved pivotal in our relationship, because during that weekend Maeve played so many games with him - and he realized it wasn’t fun to have your heart fucked with. When he got back, he apologized to me, and promised to not play anymore games with my mind… or my heart.

At this point, we were “friends” only, and barely that. I’d walked away, and it was only because of a speed dialing accident that we wound up speaking again - an accident in which he intended to call Maeve, but called me instead. I was pissed, but eventually, we began to talk. However, I was tired of the games, tired of being in love with someone who wasn’t able to return those feelings. It was hard to walk away the first time, and that weekend when he came back to NY and apologized to me, I’d been planning to walk away again. That apology and promise were the only things that kept me from cutting him out of my life… or at least, trying to.

This was late April. In June, he was on a business trip. I’d had a fling, just because I needed to try to prove to myself I was single. While he was away, he met Hannah. She picked him up in a bar. Twice divorced at 36, with a ten-year-old daughter Hannah was an unlikely person for him to be involved with… she also lived in California, clear across the country. Still, instead being just a one-night stand, somehow they exchanged information, and he decided she should come visit with him the following month.

When he got back and told me about Hannah (remember, we were still doing the “friend” thing), I was extremely upset, and yes, jealous. Yet again, he had developed an interest in an unattainable woman. In the case of Hannah, I think both of them knew it could go nowhere, but they had fun pretending for a while… for Hannah, I think my husband is a fond memory of the much younger, rather sexy guy she picked up one night in a bar while away for business. Her trip to visit him in July coincided with him finally realizing, and accepting his feelings for me… and again, I think our relationship progressed in part because of another woman. It clarified for him what he did and did not want…

As you can see, both Maeve and Hannah bring up complex, intensely emotional memories for me - for us. Hannah ultimately knew all about us… and she was happy for him, but I think she never wanted to let him go completely (even when in a relationship, she’d write sometimes) because somehow that made the experience with him less real.

For Maeve, it’s much sadder. He is the man she could’ve had, the one she had the chance to have it all with… and she let him go. Hannah’s email, he said, was one of “hey, how’s it going?” while Maeve’s was one of “I miss you… I want to talk to you again.” Maeve also didn’t really ever find out we were together, as far as either of us recall. She may have heard it from mutual acquaintances, but then again, my husband doesn’t talk to many people he knew in high school, and I don’t think they had a lot of friends in common, either. So she probably has no idea he’s married, let alone to me.

I met Maeve one awkward September night at a bar. There was a band they both liked and knew people in playing, and I was there as his guest - but not as his date. She’d known about the concert as well… and showed up. She was nothing I expected her to be, and I think in another life, I might have been friends with her… but not in this one. We barely spoke, and I think it was uncomfortable for all three of us to be there (thankfully, there were other people there to distract us), together. By this time, my husband and I had been seriously involved, with the big “L” word used by us both… but it still wasn’t time for us, and I’d broken it off with him, and was trying desperately and often unsuccessfully to be just friends with him again. A week or so after that show, we made up and began the process yet again, but there was still one final breakup in our future, before we finally got it right.

You can see why he wanted to spare me. He doesn’t like to think of that first year. It was a heart wrenching, twisted emotional ride for both of us… and I don’t generally think fondly of it, myself. Except in that, knowing what we had to go through, and knowing we made it, I know we could make it through anything together…

When he first told me, I was a bit hurt that he’d kept me in the dark… I trust him completely, and I know him well enough to know that he wants nothing to do with either woman. In fact, Maeve managed to really piss him off, because in her email last year she told him if he didn’t write back, she’d never contact him again - she promised, in fact… but then she broke that promise - and acknowledged doing so - in her email last week.

Of course, hearing about them is a bit… unnerving, if not exactly upsetting. I don’t like to think about my husband’s former liaisons (and I will acknowledge that he never did more than kiss Maeve). I think it especially pisses me off knowing that my past relationships are sort of a joke… I had an extremely long-term relationship with one guy - he was my first kiss, and the first guy I slept with… but he wound up being gay, which makes the whole thing laughable. He also proposed to me when I graduated from high school, and I all but laughed at the idea of marriage to him… the point being that, while at times I told myself I loved him, I didn’t even take it all that seriously in the moment. So how can anyone take it seriously now, especially knowing the guy is gay? And aside from that seven year on-again/off-again relationship, none of the others were all that serious. Most of them are, frankly, laughable. My husband is the first man I loved… and so, yes, it bothers me on some level, to know he had serious relationships (and I’m not including Hannah in that - it’s only hard because it happened while I knew him) before me… but I don’t really let it get to me anymore, because we’re married and because I know all the bad relationships led to ours.

I was initially shocked, and then suddenly I realized something that made me feel a bit… smug. These two women, neither of whom he has seen in nearly NINE years, are still thinking about him. I have him.

Then it made me grateful, and a little sad for Maeve and Hannah… but especially Maeve, because she had a real chance with him, prior to us meeting. She could’ve been with him, and she lost him forever - and she knows it. He’s the guy that got away… and that makes me sad for her because I knew, almost immediately, that he was the guy I had to fight for. He was the one to risk everything for. He was worth all the hurt and disappointment in that first year… because I knew he had to be the man I married someday. If I’d played one wrong move, I could’ve lost him forever, just like Maeve did… and I know, in my gut, that I’d never have gotten over him. I’d never have been able to truly move on.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to. I am my love’s and he is mine forever, sealed with a seal and safe forevermore…

You may wonder why I’m writing about this, since apparently, I am over it, or it didn’t really bother me… well, it didn’t “bother” me, but it has deeply affected me. Let me explain…

It makes me appreciate, all the more, what an amazing man I married. Almost a decade after last seeing him, Hannah - who spent all of maybe six days with him - can’t forget him… and nearly a decade after her “last chance” was blown, Maeve hasn’t been able to forget what she gave up, what she missed out on. That’s something, isn’t it? To be married to a man that memorable?

The difference is, I wasn’t a fantasy fling… nor was I too blind by fear to take the chance, to make the biggest gamble of my life. I threw myself into our relationship whole heartedly from date one… and even when I was doing things that seemed contrary to use ever working it out, I was making every choice with my heart. I knew he was The One. I knew he was worth it… and he was. Every day of my life, I am grateful that I had the guts to take the risks I had to take to be with him, that I had the strength to fight through the difficult moments, and the patience to wait for him to be ready… and the thing of it is, when it comes right down to it, I am grateful to every woman who was part of his life before we found each other, because each of them shaped what he wanted, what he needed in his mind and his heart, and led to us finally being together. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to hit one or two of those women - but all the same, I’m grateful.

And I’m glad he told me his secret, and glad that Hannah and Maeve wrote to him… because it reminds me not to take any of this love for granted, even for a moment. It reminds me, all the more, of just how special he is.

So here’s to old flames, and all they teach us… about ourselves and the ones we are meant to love.

~*Mae*~

Okay… this is a rant, just be prepared.

I yawned over the weekend, and that was a big mistake, apparently. There was a loud pop and now my jaw is sprained. It hurts like hell, I have to eat mushy foods… no chewing, little talking, no yawning (as if), no moving my tongue, rubbing my lips (like when you put lip gloss on?)… basically don’t move it for two weeks. Argh. I miss real food. I miss chewing.

To top off the intense pain from my jaw, my period started yesterday. This is good because it means I ovulated on clomid, but bad because obviously it means I am not pregnant, and furthermore, it is the worst period I’ve had in like 9 years… it’s (TMI ALERT) heavy, disgusting and painful. I have horrific cramps. Between the cramps and my jaw, it’s the worst pain I’ve ever dealt with.

Put it this way… the doctor had me take ibuprofen and extra strength Vicodin - and that barely touched the cramps or the jaw pain. Worse, I’m pretty sure the drug cocktail is responsible for the puking I just did… and I’m not sure I am done puking, either. Argh. I ate when I took the pills, but maybe not enough. It’s hard to eat when you can barely open up wide enough to get a fork or spoon in there, even if it’s mushy stuff that I don’t need to chew, I still have to open up to get the stuff in - and that’s rough.

ARRRGGGHHH.

I hate this week.

~Mae~

A friend of mine, also with PCOS found out she is pregnant today. I am thrilled for her, but also a little jealous. We were “cycle buddies” meaning that we started our periods around the same time and both took Clomid - and that makes it a little more bittersweet.

Especially given I am done. I’m throwing in the towel. I’m not going to see a specialist this month, and I didn’t reschedule my appointment.

Maybe someday. I try to tell myself I’m only turning 32… but that seems old when your ovaries don’t work right. Maybe next year… but at this point we have too much other stress happening, and I just think pursuing any fertility treatments when we all ready have so much stress, is senseless.

I won’t go on birth control, at least not at this point. However, when it takes drugs to make you ovulate (and even that doesn’t wanna work), not going on birth control doesn’t mean a whole lot.

They make us all so paranoid that if we so much as think about sex in high school, we’ll get knocked up… and that’s true for sooo few.

So, I am mourning this… I am saying goodbye to a dream I’ve held for so long. Maybe someday we’ll be in a place where I feel we should give it another go… but not right now.

Right now a very long break is needed… and I am left to battle my sorrow and jealousy, while celebrating with my friend (who would understand every feeling, just as an fyi).

~*Mae*~

If you don’t read Meg’s blog, you really ought to. She’s incredibly insightful, passionate and overall just wonderful. Take this post, for example. It’s bloody brilliant.

I began leaving her a comment, and realized I was in such a rant of my own, I should just turn it into a post… but I highly recommend that prior to reading my post, read hers - because mine might not make so much sense without the context of Meg’s brilliance, but even if it does, no one should miss her rant.

*My comment-turned-post follows*

Meg, you are so awesome. This is sort of the point where I am at in all this.

Let’s face it, diets aren’t made to work. If they did work, then we wouldn’t spend all that money anymore. Worse, diets and the whole attitude behind them, shame us into thinking we have to be something we aren’t… they leave us constantly reaching for unattainable - and often unhealthy - goals.

It’s a nasty, vicious cycle that slowly erodes our self-esteem, while telling us we feel good about ourselves for having “willpower.”

AAAARRRGGGHHH.

Did you read The Beauty Myth, but Naomi Wolf? I read it in college when I did a presentation on how the media portrays women. Try being like 200 pounds overweight giving THAT speech - and ya know what? I’d do it again in a heartbeat, because SO many women in my class (it was a somewhat older than average group because it was a community college) came up to me afterwards and said, oh, my god, you’re so right. I even had some of the guys verbally patting me on the back about it - one said he never realized that the things he said to some of the women in his life were so horrible until my speech. But I digress…

In the research for that speech, one of the books - and I think it was The Beauty Myth - talked about how women are invited to have this love affair with food - and it’s true. You look through magazines for women and you’ll find things about “indulge yourself” or “pamper your taste buds” or things with that sort of theme. So, on the one hand, we’re being told to have a love affair with food, we’re being instructed on how it can soothe our stresses and comfort us like a lover, but then in the next breath, we just need willpower to look like that anorexic, 5′11, 120 lb Brazilian supermodel in the string bikini for the fashion layout of the month. It’s insanity. Utter insanity.

I don’t want to have a love affair with food anymore, and I also don’t want to be told I can be thin if only I exercise x amount of hours x amount of days while subsisting on about 1200 calories a day and a lot of veggies. I’m so tired of all of it.

And so, I begin the process of really accepting who I am, excess weight and all. Why do I need to be in the Weight Watchers weight range for my height and age to feel like I deserve this? Because you know, in my wildest fantasies, I can’t imagine being that weight anyway. I never dared to look at those ideals as goal weights, because whenever I did, it just overwhelmed me… and even the therapists/doctors/Weight Watchers leaders told me not to think so far ahead. Just make “baby step goals” was something they often told me… and so I tried that instead.

What I never tried was just accepting myself as is. Not fully, at least… oh, I’d play the game. “I have great hair” or “I am a good, loyal friend” but never “I am okay, just the way I am, flaws, neuroses and fat included.”

Why could I never do that?

Well… how can any of us do that, when we’re constantly being told differently by the rest of the world?

How can we accept ourselves while we’re constantly struggling to lose weight, only to gain some, if not all and then some, back? How many people do you know who lose all the weight they want and never gain any of it back? I know a LOT of people who have dieted and lost weight and not a single one who has kept that weight off in its entirety…

Then I know these women - not many, but a few here and there - who just eat what they want to and basically stay the same weight. They may have a fluctuation here or there, but when they do, it’s no big deal. They don’t torture themselves over it. They don’t immediately look for the next hot diet to get the weight off. They don’t run screaming back to Weight Watchers… they just do what they’ve always done… eat normally and eventually, they stabilize back to the weight they’re usually at.

I always thought they just had great metabolisms, and I’m sure they have better than average, because so many of us are chronic, yo-yo dieters that we’ve damaged our metabolisms… but with these so-called “normal” eaters, it’s just simply the way they eat, the way they relate to food. Food is enjoyable and necessary, but it’s not all consuming.

A lot of diets want us to think we can’t enjoy food. Weight Watchers isn’t like that, at least, but there are still hidden messages in some of the propaganda that leads to mixed messages… there’s still a subtle “this is good, this is bad” message, even in Weight Watchers.

How many of us have sat in a meeting and heard someone say, “last night I really wanted pizza, but I thought about it for a while and instead took some carrots and then I was satisfied.” How many of us have done just that, and tried to convince ourselves we were satisfied? And how many of us really, truly were satisfied?

It’s a twisted satisfaction… it’s a satisfaction born out of denial. It’s an “I conquered that craving” sort of satisfaction, and it never lasts. It leads to feeling deprived… and the saddest part is when you have the Points on WW and you still deny yourself because somehow that makes you stronger… that means you have willpower. That proves to you that THIS time it’s DIFFERENT. This time it’s REAL. The light switch has been flicked on, the camel’s back is broken… this time, on this diet (be it WW or something else - I just use WW because it was my fall back diet) you are GONNA DO IT. And when you do, it’s gonna be great…

The problem is, for almost all of us, the “doing it” equals getting to goal… and as Weight Watchers themselves repeatedly says, this is just not the experience for most of us. “Results not typical,” right? Implying two things… 1) no matter what, you’re almost certainly gonna fail and 2) that person, in that success story, is “not typical” and therefore is somehow better than you.

I don’t mean to bash WW. It worked better for me than any other diet… except that in the end, it didn’t work at all… I lost more weight on WW, but I also gained more weight with every renewed effort. I also lost more of the limited supply of self-esteem I had each and every time I had to rejoin.

Now, you can say - and there are likely those of you who will at least think it - that I lack the determination, I’m not “hungry enough” for weight loss success. I’m a glutton who thinks she can eat whatever she wants and that’s okay. I’m just not a strong person, and that’s why I repeatedly failed. You can say that, but I will delete your comment. Just an FYI, and so better to just think it. Why? Because I said that to myself often enough. All of IT. Every last horrible thing that can be said about or to a fat person, I have said to myself, to my reflection… all of that negativity was deeply etched onto my psyche over a period of about 28 years. That’s a long fucking time…

And I am DONE. Why should I beat myself up? Because I’m not a size six? Because I don’t fit into the world’s ideal of what a woman should be? Fuck ‘em all. I am not anyone else, and I am not anyone else’s ideal.

I am ME. And I fucking like that.

None of this means I *like* being fat… or that I *want* to be fat. All it means is that it’s okay to like myself, even if I’m 200 pounds more than some stupid BMI charts say I should be.

I was once in a cult. It’s a long story, but I was… for about 4 very long months at the age of not-quite-twelve. Dieting is a sort of cult, only instead of turning you against your loved ones (though some diets do as a side effect), the process turns you against yourself. You stop listening to what your body needs. You actually PUNISH your body for wanting food. You punish it with excessive exercise or starvation or by giving it foods you don’t like because they are “good” foods… and you reward your punishing behavior by celebrating it as “self-control” and when that facade of power inevitably breaks down, you beat yourself to a bloody (though hopefully not literal) pulp.

I’m done beating myself up. I am not the failure. Diets are.

Rant at me, if you will… but just remember that every single diet will tell you, in a roundabout way, that the problem is the diet, not you.

“Results not typical.”

It’s not your fault. I swear it.

~*Mae*~

Actually, score nine… nine as in, my LDL (bad cholesterol) level has dropped nine whole points since November (when I began to actively start listening to my body). My doctor was very pleased with that level, because combined with the high level my HDL cholesterol has been at, it puts me in good stead.

So… if my goal has been to become healthier, obviously it’s starting to work. The best part? I don’t ever feel deprived, because I truly am not.

Now, that’s not to say it’s all easy peasy… it’s not. It’s hard, and time consuming and requires a lot of listening to my body, which is something I did not do for years… so it’s going to take time, but at least I have something tangible to hold on to as I continue this process.

I’m getting healthier… yay.

~*Mae*~