The second half of the blog year, through therapy, some great books and the blog world, in mid March the stars aligned for me. I found the faith and trust in myself and my body to feel confident enough to let go of my white-knuckle control/obsession with food. I resolved in my head the reasons I became a binger/compulsive overeater when I was a child. I took the leap from calorie counting, eating at certain times because of what the clock said, weighing/measuring food portions and getting on the scale at least once a day to just releasing all of those behaviors. I was ready to be freed from the chains that I let hold me all those years. I am now free and empowered.

Food no longer controls me or runs my life. It has no power over me. I will not let food have the control. I no longer eat because of the things that happened decades ago in my childhood. I no longer eat for emotional reasons. I enjoy the foods I want, when I want them, in moderation. I am not doing perfect Intuitive Eating, but I am intuitively eating in a way that is right for me.

When I find a passion in my life, I throw myself into it completely. This blog started off that way. I desperately needed an outlet to write about my issues with food. It was so easy to write every day, I had so much to work through, say and share. It was amazing therapy. You all were instrumental in that.

But as you know, I have been blogging less and the content has been less about my issues with food. I love the blog world, the community, and all it has given to me. I feel like I have taken so much from all of you – your kindness, support and inspiration. I can only hope that I somehow gave a fraction of that back to you.

By cutting back like I did a few months ago, I was trying to blog “half way” and that just doesn’t fit with my personality of going all out. I wanted to be part of the community, yet still have time to pursue other passions in my life. I have confirmed over these few months that there is no half way for me when it comes to blogging. I hated missing out on what everyone was saying, yet I was stressing myself out trying to find the time to write/read/comment. I just couldn’t find the balance that you all have seemed to have found.

I completely admire those of you who have came through the trenches with your eating disorders and still have fresh, creative ideas to keep on blogging. I truly marvel at how you do that. I am simply not that clever.

With that being said, I’m going to take a true break from this blog and the blog world.

With school starting up this week, I need to devote more time to my kids. I need to try to remain less stressed. I need to continue with my new found passion of triathlons, as well as having time to give myself an opportunity to write a book of my memoirs, my journey through this eating disorder. I want to somehow pay forward the things I have learned throughout these past few years about overcoming this sickness I’ve had for over 30 years called compulsive overeating. I feel good recognizing that these are my needs and that I’m trying to take care of them and myself.

I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your unending support and constant inspiration. I don’t think I’d be recovered today without all of you.

So with that, I bid you a very fond farewell. Or perhaps I should say – until another time…

PLEASE do not hesitate to contact me if you want to ‘chat’ or if for some reason you want me to guest post. I definitely want to stay in touch, as I have become ‘close’ to many of you and truly consider you my friends. If any newcomers read this, please feel free to contact me as well, I’m happy to help if I can.

I’m sure I will still lurk around here and there as I slowly pull away from this amazing blog world.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

The run ended up to be my strongest portion of the triathlon. After slogging through the bay and biking hard for 12.5 miles, I was concerned my legs would not be up to the task, but I guess from running for almost 14 years, the muscle memory kicked in and I had a really great run.

In fact, I have to say, that all I’ve read over the years about how cross training improves your running, is absolutely true.

Because I felt like I was one of the last people to finish (and yes, I know, that is not a terrible thing for my first race) and I am competitive, I knew I really had to try to dig deep and run hard.

Usually my legs are pretty wobbly after biking, but I guess the running gods were with me, adrenaline overtook the wobbles, and I was able to get a good cadence down pretty quickly. Soon it became my goal to pick off the runners ahead of me. I ended up passing 23 people! It was a great motivator and added some fun to the run.

Here is a pic of me right before the finish line high five-ing my kids. (See the family resemblance? lol!!! We are all very happy the race is just about over.)

Though I finished 200th out of 259, turns out the for the run portion, if that had been a separate race on it’s own, I finished 96th out of 259. I did the two miles in 17:12 (an 8:36 pace), which is pretty darn fast for me, especially after the swim/slog and bike. So that made me feel good.

After all races, there is always refreshments. There were tons of fresh bagels. I love me a fresh, doughy bagel, but rarely have them because they are too carb-y and a lot of calories, so it is a real treat on the rare occasions when I do eat one. It is not a trigger food, just something I pass on. Well, let me tell you, I had myself a cinnamon-raisin bagel with some cream cheese and it was the best bagel I ever had! I so enjoyed it.

Overall, it was a great first experience. The swim not being a true swim was both good and bad. As a negative – it did not allow me to really see how I would do, but on the other hand, being the swim is my weakest link, it was kinda nice not to swim the whole time.

I have to admit, as I had been warned, I have been bitten by the tri bug. I am going to sign up to do another one that is in mid September. I want to really be able to do the full swim and just experience the whole event again. I love having a goal and I love the training.

Other notes:

This was the first getaway/vacation I ever went on where I did not bring my calorie book and little notebook to keep track of every morsel I ate. That was freeing and empowering!

On Sunday night, the evening of race day, I started to get cramps and woke up with them on Monday morning and found that Aunt Flow had come to visit. Bless the T.O.M. gods for waiting 24 hours to send her over! (TMI?)

Have a great weekend everybody!

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

Focusing on Intuitive Eating

I can’t remember exactly how I heard about Intuitive Eating. More than likely it was through the blogosphere.

I read Evelyn Tribole’s book, Intuitive Eating, A Revolutionary Program The Works, and I also really got a lot out of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me by Jenni Schaeffer.

It’s amazing to me how reading certain books at certain times can be so impactful on our lives. I don’t think the books would have affected me as much if I had read them before I realized I had an eating disorder. I think everything happens, or people/things come into our lives, for a reason, and those books came to me at a time when my mind was open to accept what they were saying.

I had been toying with the idea of making the transition from daily calorie counting, weighing/measuring food portions, to intuitive eating for about a week or two in mid March. Due to a combination of therapy, blogging and reading books, I felt ready to trust myself and my body to try this totally new way of eating and thinking about food. I was trying to decide when the best day it would be to start based on some other events that were going on in my life. Do I wait until those events passed, what day would make the most sense to get started with this, how exactly do I begin?

In the middle of wavering about when and how to start, before going to bed one Friday night, I read in Jenni Schaeffer’s book about taking the leap off the mountain without a parachute. I had my answer. The next day, with little fanfare, I didn’t count my calories or weigh/measure my food portions. I took the huge leap of faith. I finally had the trust in myself that I could listen to my body and that my body would not do me wrong. I realized that food is just that, food; it is not something that has magical powers over me. I control it, it does not control me.

That was over three (update – four) months ago and though there are days here and there, especially in the beginning, when I still sometimes tally the calories in my head (long-time habits are hard to break!), I still did/do not write it down as I had done for decades.

I still feel like a work in progress. I am now pretty good at reading my hunger cues, but am still working on my satiety cues. (My cues have been thrown off after 30+ years of compulsive overeating and bingeing, so I understand it’s normal that it will take some time for my body to send me the right messages and for me to interpret them properly.) I have however, maintained my weight, so I guess I’ve been making good choices.

Right now things are a bit tricky because though I’ve always worked out 3-4 days a week, I’m training for my first triathlon, which is more intense than my normal workouts, and it has thrown off my hunger cues. My appetite, oddly enough, has been reduced greatly. I know eating less would not be good for my training or for maintaining my weight, so I have had to eat even when I’m not hungry in order to keep my body properly fueled for my training.

I feel like I’m walking a fine line between eating more because I know my body needs the fuel, and eating “just because” I can, bordering on compulsive eating. I have decided to weigh myself twice a month instead of once a month to help keep a tab on my food intake in relation to my triathlon training. As I’m dedicated to doing this first triathlon, I am equally dedicated to not blow my 2+ years of binge-free hard work and more recently, IE, but it’s difficult at times to keep my old ways from overtaking me again.

Still, letting go of the calorie counting, weighing and measuring food portions and making no foods forbidden has been freeing and empowering. When you stop framing foods as “bad” it takes away its attraction. Everything in moderation actually has meaning in my life now. So do the terms “eating to live” instead of “living to eat.”

I love and embrace the new mindset of no food is forbidden, although I do choose to still make healthy choices, for instance, not choosing a meal with a cream sauce or one that is fried. Although when it comes to dessert, the sky is the limit, just in moderation. =)

Follow up to when I wrote this about a month ago… with some daily self affirmations I was able to get my head back on straight and am back to IE. In fact, with my training intensifying as the race is getting closer, I am hungry almost all day long, so no problems following my hunger cues there!

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

If you just started reading my blog, this will fill you in on where I’m coming from. If you already know my story, just skip the post below. =)

My eating disorder story began over 30 years ago when I was about 8 or 9 years old, when I became a compulsive overeater and binger. I had a mother who hid junk food from me because she said/knew I would eat more than my share and not leave enough for the family to enjoy, and I had a father who teased me in my teen years about my rear end being big. He thought he was a riot and that I knew he was teasing, but he had no idea how that “teasing” affected me.

For many years I binged on sweets like there was no tomorrow, always hiding the wrappers, packages and bags out of shame. My weight ballooned up and would come down when I would diet, only to balloon back up again. It was an ugly cycle.

As I got older and got married, it continued. When we went to parties or events, my mind was busy centered on the food, instead of enjoying time with friends. When we hosted parties, I loved cleaning up because then I got to devour leftover desserts when everyone had gone. I lived to eat, instead of eating to live.

I thought about food all the time. I would think about what I would eat next before even finishing what I was currently eating.

My recovery first began in December of 2007, a few months before I turned 40, when one night, the words “compulsive overeater” somehow popped into my head. I got on my laptop and did some googling, and found my way to the Overeaters Anonymous website. They had a list of questions that asked something to the effect of “are you one of us?” I answered “yes” to most of them.

This was both horrific and wonderful at the same time. There was the shame of having a sickness, a disease, an eating disorder, but at the same time, being an A-type personality, I was thrilled there was a name for what I was doing and realized that I could get help.

So my passion then became getting help for myself. I went to OA meetings, I found a therapist, and I got honest with myself and my husband. I wrote him a very long, cathartic letter revealing all of my food/eating secrets. He knew I liked to eat sweets, but had no idea that I did so much eating in secret and how much I thought about food/eating.

I cried off and on for days. Decades of my secrets had finally come bubbling up to the surface.

OA helped me to realize that I was not alone. Through therapy I learned that the things I mentioned earlier in my childhood are what turned me to the comfort of food. I was not getting the nurturing and love that I needed from my family, so I found it in food. This pattern repeated itself over and over again as I got older and had become deeply ingrained even though I married an amazing man almost 13 years ago.

I have been binge-free since I realized and embraced that I had an eating disorder. I lost the extra weight I had been carrying and have maintained the loss for 20 months now. I did this by counting calories, weighing and measuring food portions, and working out. I also weighed myself every day.

Oddly enough, I weighed myself and have counted calories for over 20 years actually, even when the numbers were astronomically high. I felt like food was the only thing I could control in my life.

In January 2010, I started to just get on the scale once a month. The mere thought of that gave me heart palpitations, but it turned out to be quite simple. Then in late March, a certain calm or peace came over me and I decided I was ready to delve into the world of Intuitive Eating. Six months prior, the mere thought of giving up my calorie counting, weighing/measuring my food portions would have had me laughing in your face, but at the end of March, all the therapy, eating disorder books I read and blogging gave me the awarenesses I needed to make the giant leap of faith.

Almost three months later, I can’t tell you how empowering and freeing it is to have dropped that white-knuckle grip of control I had on my food. I have come to learn that “normal” eaters overeat occasionally. The difference is that they don’t focus on it and beat themselves up about it. They just put it behind them and move on to the next meal or day.

The “voices” in my head that roared like a lion when I was in the throws of compulsive overeating and bingeing have become the whispers of a mouse.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

The triathlon is in just under four weeks now. I am sitting on the edge of my seat reading about Rita of The Giggly Bits as she is writing about her first triathlon experience.

I’m still finding the swim harder than the running and biking, but I guess that is only natural as I’ve only been swimming four eight weeks and have been running for over 13 years. The biking so far just seems comfortable to me, I guess because all of my cardio up until now has been involving my legs. My training schedule called for some swim sprints yesterday morning and oddly enough, I found them enjoyable. It was good to know that I could kick it up a gear.

My eating has gotten back to my new-since-march-IE “normal”. I took off the weight I put on during all those dessert buffets I was faced with a few weeks ago. As goofy as it sounds, I did some daily affirmations in the mirror after the events/buffets were over and I felt like that was helpful. I am back to honoring my hunger and my body.

Here is a photo of me (that the race people took) at the end of the duathlon. I have the timing chip around my ankle and I am just crossing the mat at the finish line. (Sorry, not the greatest photo, our scanner isn’t working.)

And oh, last but not least, I am the grateful recipient of a blog award, which I will happily pay forward later this week or next week.

Unless it pours, I’m set to do a sort of trial race on Wednesday, 7/7. It is a duathlon that involves the same distance open water swim as my tri , followed by a 5k run. It would be really helpful for me to do at least one open water swim before my triathlon, so I won’t be shocked from doing all my training in a pool, where I can see clearly, to going to seeing lord only knows what kind of aquatic life and other junk in the open water. Though I will only be 6 weeks into my 12 week training, it will be a scary test to see how my training is coming along. Overall it should be great experience for me.

So while all that is great, there is a bit of negativeness in all this… I’m still battling with my eating, i.e. eating enough to fuel my body for my training, but not taking advantage and crossing over the line back to compulsive overeating. I’m trying to listen to my satiety cues, but with some carte blanche to eat more, I know darn well I am ignoring my cues and it has to STOP.

I have not binged, but I have definitely been exhibiting some ED’d behaviors

The past couple of weeks have been stressful. I’ve written a little about it in my last few posts, so don’t want to bore you again with my issues. Suffice to say that on top of those, I have been exposed six days/night out of eight, to buffets of desserts. Tough for even a “normal” eater to deal with! Once a week or every two weeks eating a little too much is “normal” and I’m totally good with it.

But for the past few solid weeks, the fact remains that while before I was just standing next to the line in the sand, that if I stepped over would lead me to the “dark side”, I feel like I’m now standing on top of the line.

I got on the scale to touch base to see how I was doing and I have in fact gained weight. I’m totally fine with that, but I don’t want to keep gaining. I’m sure some of it is muscle from the training, but I can’t kid myself, I know that some of it is from my carte blanche eating.

I need the rope of common sense, the lifeline reminder of how hard I’ve worked to recover from my eating disorder, the help and support to keep me from being drawn back into the world of compulsive overeating and bingeing, to pull me off of “the line” and back into making the right choices.

Today is my last BBQ. I’m going in with the mindset of not giving myself carte blanche anymore. I’ve sampled and enjoyed enough junk five times already in seven days. I know they are unusual circumstances, but I need to go back to making better choices for myself.

Sorry for the rambling thoughts, thanks, as always, for listening!

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

Please email me your addresses so I can get those books out to you.

Other notes… I’m feeling totally discombobulated. My parents came up from Florida to visit/stay with us on Saturday. They left yesterday afternoon. We hosted 20+ people at our house for brunch on Father’s Day. My kids are done school and camp doesn’t start until Monday, so they are home and require entertainment. With all that going on and no routine or schedule, I am completely out of sorts. I haven’t had time to post or read posts/comment and I hate when that happens.

But to give you a quick update…. the triathlon training is going well. My biggest challenge, as I knew going in, is the swim portion. I have 7-1/2 weeks to be able to swim the 1/4 mile distance w/out stopping. When I first started training a little over five weeks ago, after one lap I had to heave for air. Now I can do four laps before needing an oxygen tank. I need to work my way up to 16 laps without a break, though I will shoot for more than that because I want to feel as comfortable as possible in the water in case there are any mishaps like people kicking me or whacking me in the head. I don’t want to lose my composure in the water and flounder around.

I’m still struggling with the eating more for training, as opposed to following the IE path and eating because I’m hungry. As I said before, I feel like I’m walking a dangerous line here. I don’t want to slip back to the “dark” side. It is scary for a recovering compulsive overeater to have some carte blanche with eating without taking advantage of the situation and falling back into my old ways. I’m definitely eating more, hopefully with the right thought process. Tomorrow I’m due to get on the scale for my now twice-a-month weigh in, so I should have a better idea of how the additional eating is affecting my weight.

Throw into the mix that I saw my doctor yesterday and for the next few weeks, we are experimenting with some medications I’m on. It will be interesting to see if my appetite, training and just things in general are affected by the experiement. Should be fun!

I feel like after starting off on a high note, that this turned into a downer post, sorry ’bout that.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

However, there is a bit of a wrench thrown in there with the triathlon training… as often happens when you workout a lot/differently, you sometimes lose your appetite.

Now if I was following the rules of IE, I would only eat when I’m hungry. But because I know that my body needs refueling from all the effort it is putting out, I really need to make sure I’m eating enough calories so I have the energy for the training.

So as a recovering compulsive overeater, I’m walking a fine line here. Because I know that I need to do it for my body, I’ve often been eating even when I’m not hungry. That is dangerous territory, but I know training-wise, it is the right thing to do.

A friend saw me at the gym last week and thought I looked like I had lost weight. I appreciated her honesty and took it the way it was intended, with caring. I had some major trouble sleeping last week, so that combined with her comment led me to get on the scale Friday morning (instead of waiting for this week’s weigh-in for the month) out of medical concern. I have dropped another pound. That makes 3-4 pounds down since starting the IE. While that is a wonderful, hopeful thing for all of us to know, (as I feared I would gain weight by not counting calories and weighing/measuring food) to be honest, it would not be healthy for me to lose more weight.

Aside from the freaky two nights of not sleeping, I feel OK and my training is going well. So I’m really in dangerous territory here — I know that I can afford to gain a few pounds, and due to training, I’m eating more because I know I should, not because I’m hungry, yet I’m still trying to be an intuitive eater. Quite mixed bag, huh? *sigh*

I’m wiggling the “rules” a bit to stay strong for my workouts, but I SOO don’t want this to head in the other direction. It’s hard to tell a recovering compulsive overeater, who has been binge-free for over two years, that they really can/should eat more. I’ve worked so hard at my recovery, got to a really great place, but I’m not an idiot, like an alcoholic or drug addict, it wouldn’t be hard to slip back into the old habits I had for 30+ years.

I need to keep my head in the right place. I can do this. I’M WORTH IT and it is definitely not worth going back to bingeing/compulsive overeating.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

The rules of the award are that I have to tell you 7 things that you don’t know about me yet…

1. For two seasons, when I was about 9 and 10 years old, I was the only girl in the boys little league baseball league.
2. I went sky diving (a tandem jump) in 1998. My husband and his friend did it as well. That was before we had children. Words cannot describe how amazing it was.
3. My very first job, after I got working papers at age 16, was at a local Burger King. (Those brown and orange polyester uniforms were the worst!) I have vivid memories of standing over the french fry bin and stuffing my face with fries. I also vividly remember melting bacon and cheese in the microwave and eating it, over and over again.
4. When I was about 14, I was a mother’s helper in Atlantic City. The boy I watched was 2-1/2 years old and had cerebral palsy. Long story short – I once had to give him the Heimlich maneuver to keep him from choking on a peanut butter sandwich. Thank goodness it worked! It made me so ill though, the family had to cut their weekend short to bring me home.
5. I got certified for scuba diving, along with my husband, before our honeymoon in 1997, so we could dive the coral reefs of Australia.
6. I am one of those weirdos who is always cold.
7. I am an embarrassment to the female race – I do not like shopping, I know next to nothing about make-up, designer labels or shoes, and I’m not into fancy jewelry.

The 2nd rule is that I have to pass the award on to seven other Beautiful Bloggers. Yikes! This is hard, there are so many I like! So in no particular order, here are some, ok, ten, that I didn’t get to mention when I was lucky enough to win one of these awards a month or two ago…

1. The Balance Broad
2. Waisting Time
3. Anonymous Fat Girl
4. Eating Journey
5. The Giggly Bits
6. Living Healthy in the Real World
7. A Weight Lifted
8. Poise in Parma
9. Tippy Toe Diet
10.Half of Jess

I hope you’ll check these out! They are all great blogs about things like losing weight, eating disorders, intuitive eating, healthy living and fitness, mixed in with life.

A shout out to Michelle at Eating Journey for her awesome Happy Giveaway.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

It says “Do you feel out of control with food? Do you find yourself spending a lot of time worry about what you ate, what you’re eating, and what you plan to eat? Ever feel like you start a meal or a snack and suddenly it’s gone, and you don’t really remember eating it?

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Easy ways to reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom.
•  The one essential vitamin that you’re definitely missing
•  Why you can’t stick to diets (hint: it’s not about willpower).
• Why you find it hard to stop eating at night.
• How to heal from habits that no longer serve you.
• Whether emotional eating is a new problem for you or you’ve been doing it as long as you can remember, you’ll get at least 3 BIG insights into how to heal from emotional eating that you’ll be able to use immediately to reconnect with your body and eat healthfully with ease.

 
Even though I don’t really emotionally eat very much at all, I’m still going to check it out because I feel like there will still be some great info for me.

Other stuff…  tomorrow will mark 10 weeks of intuitive eating.  Thank goodness it is still going well.

My triathalon training is coming along.  The swim portion is tough, but I’m doing my best.

Have a great weekend everyone!

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body