My Honest Talk About Weight

When I was little, younger, a good chunk of my elementary school years were spent in Connecticut living with my grandparents on almost fifteen acres of land. I spent afternoons, weekends, breaks, wandering and rambling all over that land. Our neighbord had two hundred in an "L" around us, and I had permission to play there too. So I did. The woods were a godsend playground for someone of my imagination. I hiked up mini mountains and on huge boulders with elves. I hid under domes of leaves like Yoda's house on Dagobah. I climbed trees. I tracked through swampy wetlands. It was great. 

I'm also half convinced my grandmother was trying to kill me because who tells a 6-10 year old to go out and play in this?

That realization came later, but for a good chunk of these younger years, those woods were my refuge in many, many ways.

When I was growing up before we moved in with my grandparents, I though yogurt and granola were sweets. Even after we moved in with them I wouldn't have said we ate a lot of junk but even as I type that I know that's not true. We weren't allowed regular soda, but we had Entenmann's Coffee Cake every week. Pizza every Thursday for The Cosby Show then Star Trek: The Next Generation. We had cookies in the afternoon after school.

My grandmother had expensive tastes so I was exposed to caviar, roast goose for Christmas, duck, Caesar's Salad, escargot, bagels and lox. My family also had very strict rules about clearing your plate at dinner. I was not allowed to leave the table until my plate was empty. I have a keen memory of sitting at that table, long after everyone else was finished and done, staring at food on plate that made me sick. Liver and onions particularly caused me to gag. As did beets. And brussel sprouts. All foods my grandmother made fairly frequently. I was told I was being dramatic. Mom worked a lot, so these decisions came down to my grandmother whose child rearing was informed by her alcoholism, her inability to get out of an abusive relationship, and being raised during the Depression.

Once we moved out of their house, our lives became precarious in a lot of ways. We spent time staying in the guest rooms of friends, on couches. A lot of this time is hazy but I remember very clearly the frequency of getting McDonald's Happy Meals, and I have a large box of Legos that prove it. It was easy to grab when Mom was working and trying to juggle two small kids. 

In high school we lived with someone with a milk allergy and I was introduced to apple juice over cereal. Mom soon worked a day job and several nights in a restaurant. Once we moved out on our own our life was still precarious. Rentals were into houses that were empty during the off season and required moving in spring, then again in the fall. We didn't we own furniture, and most of what we all owned fit in  the car. I was a latch key kid so my breakfast and lunch were free and reduced at school and I honestly don't have memories of what dinner looked like.

I never saw Mom exercise. I saw her drink. I saw her smoke. I saw her high.

Yet I would have said I was a healthy kid. I liked playing outside. I never really had a bike, it was an expense and we never really lived somewhere where you could ride a bike. But I would have said I was active. 

I was always a weird kid. I always had my nose in a book. I had a weirdo imagination. It was when we moved to NC first for a short time during middle school then high school I remember feeling totally on the outside and a lot of it had to do with gym class and sports. Up until that point I had always seen gym as playtime but in NC it was about sports. It was about knowing the rules to sports and being good about it. It seemed like all the kids had been playing since they were four or five in pee-wee (whatever the hell that was) then little league (again, what was that?). I was made fun of and judged as less than from the first second. I was confused because I had enthusiasm, and liked playing but those thigns suddenly didn't matter because if I didn't know how to already do all these things, wasn't already good, then it didn't count.

So I mostly gave up.

It was the end of college before I got into karate, took ballet again, and discovered I liked going to the gym. It was a relevation to me that I could like these things that I had been taught were not for me. However these things were also up against the fact that I worked full time in the theatre department, ate crappy food on my meal plan (French fries in soft serve, 32 oz caffeinated soda to get me through 20 hour days at the theatre and candy by the pound). Before I left for college I remember Dad telling me to eat Chinese food if I had to eat "junk" because at least there were vegetables. There was a lot of pizza, and no Chinese food close to campus, and the grocery store was several buses off campus, and I was in a city I did not know with no car, and it all seemed totally inaccessible.

I saw nothing wrong with any of this, although looking at pictures from my college years I'd clearly put on weight.

When I graduated from college I immediately went to work in theatre, first as a freelance master electrician in Atlanta, then moving to New York City. The work was regular but not dependable. I never knew where the next job or paycheck was coming from. I went into credit card debt, my work schedule got worse not better, since I had to take all the jobs I was offered. Twenty hour days and weeks and months with no day off was the norm not the exception. The work was physical, I lugged cable, twenty pound lights, loaded and unloaded materials, but injuries were common, there was no workman's comp, no health insurance, no days off.

I would have said I liked the work but the truth is these conditions were toxic. In college we'd been trained that on time was late, you were expected to work all the time, there was no time off, no vacations. I injured myself on a work call, jumped off the apron, onto an extension cord, rolled my ankle and did not call 911 until the call was over. Then when the ER told me to stay off it, use crutches for weeks I was back at work the next day. This toxic work at all cost environment only got worse in NYC. Professional theatre had no space for people's mental or physical health. I was the rare woman in a technical position, I was overworked, blamed for every little mistake, rarely praised, never mentored. Older men were hostile at best, abusive and took advantage of me at worst.

Even with more permanent positions things were still precarious, I had a title, and in theory full time work but at any time I could be fired. There were no benefits and the pay while not awful was lean. I lived with a couple other techs and still operated on caffeine, nicotine, and shitty food. I lost a lot of the college weight only because I didn't eat much and worked a lot.

Once I left theatre and became a teacher my eating habits did not change much honestly. Now in my mid-twenties, maintaining the weight lose was easy only because I didn't have much money to spend on anything, including food. Also living in Brooklyn I walked a lot. I walked to the bus, the subway, I walked blocks to work, I walked to the grocery store, and lugged my grocery cart uphill to get home (well, what counts as a hill for Brooklyn).

In 2004, at age 28 I moved home to help Mom. I was still smoking, not working out, although I took a brief part time job at the YMCA. For the first couple of years I regularly attended pilates class 2-3 times a week. The studio moved, then we moved, and once the convenience was gone, so was my motivation to do anything. I also started doing more at work and just did not make the time for anything else. I was tired a lot. Stressed. Anxious. Had no outlet for any of it. 

Dad did all the cooking so maybe I ate better? But I had no control over the food and it was a lot of red meat, fat, salt. There were vegetables but not really. I ate what was put in front of me. At almost 30 I had little to no idea about portion sizes, health, good habits, or nutrition.

I got put on cholesterol medicine for high cholesterol, but told myself it was genetic, there was nothing I could do. I told doctors half-truths about what I was eating in that I told them what I ate but left off the portion size, the lack of exercise.

I was a size 8, 135 lbs when I moved home, that did not last long.

Mom became diabetic and from 2004 to 2011 when she died battles over her diabetes ruled the house. She wanted to drink soda, eat chocolate, sweets, and use her insulin. When we would meet with the nutritionist I remember thinking what she said did not make sense because she'd hold up the pudding or juice pop and say "as long as you're tracking the fiber and sugars you're fine." It seemed to me that eating all that processed food, junk, as long as the math made sense did not make sense to me. It bothered me but was not enough to get through to me. It was a start though.

Mom never got ahold of her diabetes, Dad continued to buy what she wanted. Mom would buy it herself when people took her out.

In 2009 I got Nehi, and regular walks became a thing for me. Nehi was a really active doggo so regular walks of 1-2 miles twice a day became a habit, longer walks and hikes on trails on the weekends. My eating habits didn't change though, I ate the food put in front of me. It was still normal to go to the movies, eat a large popcorn, the large Twizzlers, drink a large soda. I remember around this time starting to think maybe a medium or small soda and popcorn were okay, and started to resist upselling at the counter. But these were not real changes.

In 2013, I was 37 and 165 lbs. Nehi and I moved out to Albuquerque for my PhD. We walked a lot, twice a day, a nice benefit of a more flexible work schedule. I was also faced with having to grocery shop and cook for myself for the first time in nine years. I felt like that scene in La Femme Nikita where she shoves all those cans in her grocery cart, following and copying other people in the store. I felt like I didn't know how to cook, shop, anything.

The altitude and hills and walking were all good, as was walking across campus, but was still drinking a lot of soda, smoking, not eating great.

I ignored the fact that I had to buy bigger clothes. I ignored the fact that I was tired, stressed, anxious all the time. I remembered a James Spader interview where the guy asked him how he felt about his weight gain, and Spader answered that he just bought a bigger belt. I liked that answer. I told myself that there was nothing wrong with being bigger, that I would not buy into fat shaming, and would just keep on keeping on.

In 2016 when my PhD progress was derailed I remember feeling lost about a lot of things. I remember feeling like I needed something I could control. I went to Student Health and started talking about my weight, asking for help. They referred me to a nutrionist who told me to drink hot tea before meals because this would help my metabolism. There were other things but honestly, this crap, ridiculous sounding advice made me disengage. Still, I was starting to feel bad about my weight. I attended a friend's thesis presentation, then graduation and I remember looking at the pictures and knowing I was fat.

A couple of years later, having finished my PhD, back teaching high school full time, having mostly Nehi and I were walking more, but at this point my weight was in the 170s. I had stopped smoking by this point and that was when I changed a bunch of things. I started trying to run. I tried to eat healthier, seeing quitting smoking as a chance to change the habits I'd had for twenty years along with smoking.

I felt better, I didn't get sick as much, but the weight stayed the same.

Because I had a new job I had a new doctor and this was the first time I was told that at 5'4" and weight in the 170s I had a BMI that put me from overweight to obese. Now, I know there are real issues with using BMI and I agree with most of them. The fact is though even being told I was considered obese didn't really sink in because to me I walked every day, I didn't really eat junk, my habits did not match what I saw as "fat people" habits and so I kept keeping on and the weight kept creeping up.

My doctor suggested I try Bright Line Eating. It's a pretty simple system that operates on the idea that if you're allowed to have a cheat day or cheat foods that it's easy to go beyond portions or common sense so they draw bright lines that you don't cross. Ever. The main ones are no flour, no sugar, and the book talks a lot about the addictive properties of both.

For my mind, this made sense, it seemed easy, so I started making moves away from any processed foods, no flour, no sugar. I ate Cheerios, milk, fruit for breakfast. Sometimes yogurt and fruit and oats. Lunch was carrots or celery with guac (an approved "fat") and apple or grapes. Dinner was a salad with a portion controlled protein. No more sugar in coffee. No soda. Started drinking lots of water, tea. It was an effective program, and I started to lose weight.

I ran into a problem though that was in hindsight totally predictable. 

See, I'd never asked about why I had a problem with food. I never asked why I accepted the idea of "comfort food." While I had some vague sense of the food pyramid and the plate picture, these seemed like abstract ideas, not practical things that I applied. I never had good models for how to eat, or working out or healthy actions as habits. Never in all these conversations did I ever talk about the fact that I'd always been told my biological father was an alcoholic, that I knew my mother had addiction issues with food, smoking, alcohol, drugs. Never had I ever heard anyone talk about how suffering abuse as a child often led to trying to solve things with food. How precarity as a child could affect people for years. About the trauma that food and housing insecurity does to folks. On top of all this, while my compulsive behaviors were know to everyone who knew me, and often the butt of jokes, it was never something I talked to doctors about.

All of these things came to a head with the BLE because I started to worry about not having enough food. I rebelled against being told I could never have a dessert (despite never really caring about sweets up to this point) or bread. These things were contradicted by an obsession with checking my weight daily, counting calories, recording food, counting portions, grams of sugar. The BLE system triggered the worst of my obsessive compulsive behaviors. Food became all I thought about, and I rebelled against it.

So I started easing off. I added whole wheat items. Then bread. Then tortillas. I added an occassional bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I never went back to eating a lot of processed foods, or sugar in my coffee, and still ate mostly salads for dinner so I told myself I was doing well.

But weight stopped coming off, and while my lowest weight was 158 at the height of PhD stress, the next lowest was 167 in 2017 with these changes. But they didn't last.

I stopped paying attention, or rather, I stopped caring. I decided there was nothing wrong with me, that in a lot of ways I was the healthiest I'd ever been and I would not be shamed.

I moved crossed country, started a new job, adjusted to lost of new.

 I wouldn't say that my habits changed, but they did. I would buy a whole pie, or gallon of ice cream and eat it over a weekend. I was eating bread at every salad dinner. I'd eat a dozen cookies from Friday grocery shopping to Sunday. This binge eating made me sick. Sometimes I'd get halfway through something, recognize it was awful and throw it out. But a week or two later, I was back buying it.

The cycle was to eat mostly healthy- Cheerios, 2% milk, bananas or bluberries. Small lunch, no sandwich, no bread, snacks were nuts or apples, salad for dinner with protein. Vinegratte dressing. Milk, tea, no soda. But then I'd eat a whole pie. Or 12 cupcakes. I lost the ability to stop. If it was in the house I ate it. All of it. Throwing it out if I could manage was the only thing it seemed I could do. I knew it was bad. I could not seem to stop.

Then the pandemic hit, and it seemed like my stress and anxiety got worse, and I still had no coping strategies. Nehi died. I was terrified all the time. I hurt my hip in a fall and my morning walk of 3-4 miles went away.

I hit 191 lbs. A 41" waist.

My mind ping-ponged. I needed to work out more. The walking I did was fine. I ate well. I didn't eat well. It was about calories in-calories out. It was about stress and cortisol. It was about genes. Other people ate way worse, why couldn't I have a bowl of ice cream? I cut out all these things, I did without, that wasn't fair. I was in the best shape of my life. I was obese. I was stressed and anxious. I needed to destress.

I surfed the internet looking up thyroid issues, cortisol, heart failure. My hands and legs started to swell in the morning, I went to doctors, no one said anything. They ran blood work, nothing wrong with me.

I am 45 years old, the scale this morning said 187 and this is where I am.

• My natural brain wiring of obsessive compulsive behavior now obsesses about food as well as color coding, patterns, and rug corners being rolled up as well as counting windows. It does not matter that this was not always the case, what matters is that this is true now.
• I have started to be aware that I am susceptible to the idea of comfort food, of "rewarding" myself with ice cream, sweets, and I am actively working against this. I am working to not use food as an answer to good or bad things.
• Diet sodas are not a solution, a compromise, because I have them and feel like crap for days.
• I do need to destress and find a way to lower my anxiety. So every night before bed I'm working through beginning yoga forms, sitting the meditate, and using the lavender infuser a friend gave me. It's not a quick solution, but my shoulders have less tension and I'm generally sleeping better.
• I'm back to mostly not eating sugar or flour, watching portions. 
• I'm back walking most mornings barring bad weather. But I'm also learning on days I hurt, or overslept that it is okay for me to take a day off.
• I'm trying to let go of "I should be able to..." and "I never used to..." and instead acknowledge that this is my reality now. I cannot have sugar in the house. For me, even if I think I'm eating healthy, I have to be more aware of portions, that extra cheese, meat in my salad adds up. 
• That I need to be more aware of what I'm eating, why, when, in response to what?

Look, I'd love not to think about food all the time. I'd love to feel healthy. I'm starting to realize that while I may get there I am NOT there. There's a lot going on, in the world and for me, and I need to make life changes I can live with, long term habits.

So this is where I am.

I feel a little ridiculous that at 45 I'm just now figuring these things out. I certainly wish in hindsight that more in K-12 was about finding healthy workout habits that you can take with you through life. I wish I'd had models of good eating and a healthy life. I wish I'd had better models for how to get through rough things without depending on bad things. How to deal with stress, not be so anxious. Not go off the deep end when confronted with some things.

But wishes and horses.

I wrote this in part because I do think we need to have more honest conversations about health and weight. Women in particular. I think we need to normalize how society teaches us that food is a way to cope because we don't have access to health care and mental health care and because those things are stigmatized while "chocolate therapy" is a funny joke. For me, reading Roxane Gay's Hunger  helped a lot, reading how experiencing trauma can cause women to eat to deal but also eat to make us unattractive to potential abusers.

I wish we talked more about how our work environments, the seemingly global expectation that we work, overwork, no matter what. That there is no space or pausing for grief. For loss.

For me, it's been easy to lie to myself, to convince myself I was fine in large part because a lot of what I was and wasn't doing didn't match the image the media shows us of what people who have food issues look like. Because as a society I don't think we have these conversations, teach these things.

I think I've had the very bad habit of lying to myself through half truths. Yes I walk most days but not fast. I don't push myself. I've done yoga and pilates but I don't do it regularly. I eat salads every night but probably put too much protein on it and don't watch my portion sizes. I eat "healthy" snacks like nuts and fruit but again excuse the amount because it's healthy. 

I am 45 years old and 5'4". Depending on who you listen to my "ideal weight" (and I've got issues with that term) should be 108-132 lbs. I can't tell you I'll ever hit that. I can tell you I'm trying. I can tell you I'd like to lose the inches at my waistline because not seeing my feet, being uncomfortable when I bend over to lace my shoes, being at a higher risk for heart issues, these are bad things that get realer and realer the older I get. So I'm calling myself on my bullshit. I'm working on telling myself the truth. I'm trying to, at 45, establish the habits that I should have always had.

I'm trying to focus on how small moves add up. Smaller portions. Days I don't buy sweets. Days I drink more water. Days I walk. Nights I get through three cycles of the yoga form. The nights I don't fall down in any of the yoga form. 

I'm trying to be more aware, and make better decisions for me, all the way around. I think I'm in a better place than I have been. I do tend to self-sabotage, so I'm focusing on not doing that. 

But for now all I've got is work in progress.