True Addiction

I've never been addicted to drugs or alcohol or sex or any of the more "standard" addictions. But I have been addicted. To food. I know I'm not the only one out there but it has caused such deep shame, guilt and anxiety in me for so long.

Things are a lot better now than they ever have been. I'm so much more cognizant of when the urge arises to go out and purchase a bag of potato chips with the goal in mind of eating the entire thing. "You can't eat just one" is a cliche, but it applies to me without a doubt.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have used food to soothe my emotions for as long as I can remember, maybe age six or seven. I remember that if I'd had a bad day as a kid but then realized that I hadn't had my nightly dessert yet, I'd feel.... better, more hopeful about things to come. I don't know what stressed me out as a kid, but I do know that just the thought of eventually having food gave me comfort, peace, and stability.

That hasn't really changed for me. As an adult, I still look forward to food for reasons beyond physical nourishment. The urges are less and less often but when they hit, they are almost impossible for me to ignore. I have felt so disgusted at myself for not only giving in but for not feeling like I had enough control to stop eating. I wouldn't stop if I were full, I'd stop when the bag was empty and I'd often feel sick and worse emotionally than I had prior to eating. But it was a cycle I couldn't break.

Sometimes the cycle still comes out of nowhere and hits me across the head. Adding in healthy foods and crowding out unhealthy ones has helped. Cutting out processed foods has helped diminish cravings for those foods. Really focusing on self-care has helped because it puts me in touch with my body on all planes and makes me realize how special and strong it is and therefore I want to take care of it.

The thing that I'm holding on to the most to help, though, is that I'm not actually addicted to FOOD. I don't know why this came as such a revelation recently but it did. I mean, yes, part of me is addicted or habituated to eating something fatty and salty. If you read "The end of overeating." by Dr. David Kessler you'll find a whole bunch of reasons people can't stop themselves from overeating.

But for me it's more about the addiction to the desire to shelter myself from my own emotions. That is f*&ing sad. Since a young age, for x, y, and z reasons, I have been sheltering myself from my own feelings. For Pete's sake, what else have I been sheltering myself from then?! How have I been living a life where I wanted to hide from my own emotions so badly I stuffed myself, I caused my body to be overweight forever, and I've stopped myself from pursuing activities/relationships/etc. because I was overweight.

I feel angry and like I've been missing out on my own life for a long time and I'm only now just realizing it. I'm not guaranteeing I'll never binge again. I'm just guaranteeing that I'm more awake to the reasons I do it and hopefully just that awareness will stop the cycle.

Sleep Like You Mean It

It's the most basic form of recuperation, healing, and self-care yet almost no one I know engages in it as much as they need to. What am I talking about? SLEEP. Even I, who knows just how important sleep is for every bodily function and for mental and spiritual recharging, have not been getting the sleep I need recently.

After returning from the first class weekend at IIN, I was so energized and inspired to create a business I really believe in. But I also returned home feeling totally overwhelmed. How am I supposed to work 40+ hours per week; cook full, healthy meals; exercise at least three days out of the week; clean my apartment; run errands; be a present roommate, friend, daughter, sister, and girlfriend; AND devote time to creating a thriving business; AND get nine hours of sleep a night?! Apparently I need to strap on the sexy boots and cape and morph into Super Woman. Who knew?!

So the last couple of weeks have been rough for me, I'll admit. I've been anxious and can't seem to shake it. So my sleep has been severely lacking. I know it seems obvious but when you aren't getting the hours of sleep, or the quality, your body needs, EVERYTHING falls asunder. When I'm overtired, I don't want to do anything. I'm not a great friend/roommate/girlfriend. I only want to down cups of coffee and eat potato chips and not cook for myself. I don't want to get up at 5 a.m. to go to the gym (though, to be fair, even on my most-rested of mornings, 5 a.m. comes too soon). You get the point.

So what's a girl to do? I want to be there for everyone in my life and really focus on business but there are only 24 hours in a day and only so much my brain and body can take. My advice is:

PRIORITIZE SLEEP.

More than anything else, get enough hours and good quality sleep. This will mean different things for different people. I know that nine hours is ideal for me. Any more and I'm groggy and headache-y. Any less and I'm lethargic and cranky. Do what works for you. And don't discount the quality of sleep part. Even if you're lying in bed for 8, 9, 10 hours, but you're getting up to the use bathroom once or twice, or tossing or turning, etc. you'll still wake up feeling exhausted.

What has worked for me in the past has been to force myself to shut off my computer, to stop checking email, to not take or make phone calls, etc. an hour before bed. I journal, I read, I stretch, I meditate, I drink tea, I dim the lights, etc. Again, it's whatever works for you. If you're a TV junkie at night, try shutting it off a little earlier. Anything to get your brain to recognize that it's time to start shifting into relaxation/sleep mode.

I think once you start sleeping better, everything else will fall into place. You'll want to take care of yourself and then you'll have the mental clarity to work on creating your business or to be a present friend or to create delicious and creative meals for yourself. Trust me. I don't think anything else is as important as sleeping well.

You don't have to be Super Woman (or Man) to accomplish everything you want or need to in a day, you just need to prioritize your health and wellness. Say no to people if you need to. Set your self-care activities into your daily planner. Do what ever it takes to live optimally.

But I still might look into getting the sexy boots. Hey, you never know when those could come in handy...

From All Angles

After my first weekend of classes at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, I am more inspired than ever to prioritize my health and to help others do the same. I've been so passionate about food and cooking since childhood, and environmental conservation since adolescence, but I didn't notice people coming out of the woodworks to talk about it. Now that I'm at IIN and eating and living and looking differently, I feel like people are coming from all angles of my life to talk about nutrition and health. It's so exciting!

My kooky, no-holds-barred grandmother can't quite keep track of what I'm going to school for, but the other week she felt the need to share with me what foods work to keep her regular and what "blocks her up." A year ago, I would've been horribly disgusted and embarrassed. I have never been comfortable talking about that sort of thing.

Now I realize just how important it is to have a digestive system that is in good working order and to experiment to figure out which foods work and don't work for your body. I know for me, eating a creamy, steamy bowl of oatmeal in the morning does wonders. It's seriously like clockwork! I stir in a tablespoonful of coconut oil and a tablespoonful of nut butter with some fruit and cinnamon and it's pure indulgence in my mouth. I realize this is too much information for some of you, which is what I would've thought if my grandmother had shared her story with me six months to a year ago.

Now I feel like I can talk about anything. It hasn't just been with my grandmother, though. My partner has always been weight conscious and she is athletic but now she comes to me constantly for advice on sleeping better, losing weight, reducing stress, and solving some digestive issues. That certainly isn't something I thought I could help people with, but now I feel like people are seeking me out as an educated person when it comes to health and nutrition. It feels amazing.

My younger sister has Rheumatoid Arthritis and was diagnosed as a juvenile. She's had major surgeries and injects herself daily with major medication. She's always been very private, almost stubborn, about accepting support or advice so it's not a subject I broach often. However, there was a woman at IIN the first weekend who announced herself and said that she has RA and through a shift to a more holistic way of eating, she has been able to abstain from any pain medications for five years! When I brought this to my sister's attention, I was worried she would be turned off but she surprisingly was really open, now, to hearing what I had to say and wants me to give her more information. You don't know what this means to me.

Friends, family, acquaintances, roommates, strangers... I taught an employee at Costco recently about natural nut butters vs. processed, modern ones. She didn't even understand why the one nut butter was so full of fat since it was natural! I felt satisfied walking away thinking that she might make at least one informed, healthy choice in her day because of me.

It's important to make change within yourself, for yourself. But I think it's also crucial to take it to the street, so to speak. Help others the way you've helped yourself, the way you know how. Everyday that I wake up, now, and pursue this work, I feel more solid, I feel more necessary in the world. I hope I can one day help others to feel the same.

It's Weighing Less On My Mind

Forgive the pun, but weight has been weighing less on my mind these days. It’s this amazing shift that has been happening in the last week or so. I can’t even begin to tell you how surprising this is to someone whose earliest memories are tied up in having an overweight mother and being an overweight child.

As I’ve stated prior, my mother put me on a diet around the age of six or seven. It was humiliating. I didn’t understand why I, and only I, couldn’t eat dessert at night or how eating yogurt instead of cookies was better for me. I was six or seven! I just knew that there was junk food in the house and I wanted to eat it.

But what I did understand, on an emotional level though not yet a mental one, was isolation, criticism, and shame. Instead of instituting a familial shift around playing and moving more, eating more fruits and vegetables, and not having soda in the house whatsoever, my mother unintentionally taught me that a) I was fat, b) I was fundamentally WRONG for being that way, and c) it was something I had caused and something in my control to undo.

At a young age, it is not within a child’s control what foods are brought into the house or what parameters there are around television watching. But I am 26 years old now and everything is within my control.

So, guess what? I, casually, came to the realization that I don’t care as much, anymore, about losing weight. I’ve still got fourteen to nineteen pounds to lose before reaching my ideal goal and I’m not saying that being at a healthy weight for one’s body isn’t important. On the contrary, it’s crucial to living long and living well. It’s also something I plan to help others achieve in my future health counseling career.

But there has been a mental shift, a MONUMENTAL shift, in my attitude toward my own weight loss. My ENTIRE life I have either been on a diet or thinking about starting a diet next week, on Monday, after the holiday... As I’ve been making these lifestyle changes in the last 4.5 months or so, the ultimate focus has still been weight loss.

That mentality has become increasingly antiquated for me. I have made change upon change and I feel like a different person, a person who truly prioritizes health, not just talks about it. Yet I was still criticizing myself and feeling angry and stuck when the numbers on the scale weren’t dropping like I wanted them to.

Not to toot my own horn, but I am the healthiest person I know. I prioritize exercise, I experiment with a variety of healthy fats, proteins, greens, nuts, foods I never would have dreamed of incorporating into my daily diet a year ago. I’ve cut out dairy 100%. I consume a lot more water than I ever used to. I don’t eat very much in the evening, which was a difficult transition for me. I almost never eat processed foods.

What I’m trying to showcase here, besides the fact that I am pretty awesome and dedicated (I jest! I jest!), is that I am damn healthy. I am prioritizing my life, my whole self, in a way that I never have. So what, I’m 164 pounds. I’m 164 pounds and healthy. I’m tuning in to what I need on a holistic level. I’ve got more energy and a more regulated mood than I had before. I look at my arms in the mirror and they are looking so strong. I see my stomach and I don’t hate it as much, anymore. I see it soft and youthful and beautiful, even if it’s not totally flat.

I still want to see 145 to 150 pounds on the scale, I’m not going to lie. It’ll feel unbelievable to be able to walk out of the mall with a pair of size twelve or even size ten jeans. That’s not something I’ve ever experienced in my adult life. But if I push myself to get up at 5:00 a.m. to go to the gym or I actually look forward to my sauteed kale with garlic at lunch because it tastes good (and, oh yeah, it’s chock FULL of nutrients), I’d rather do it for the sake of doing it. Because it increases my energy, because it makes me feel full of vitality and vibrance, because I know I’m contributing to a healthier environment by choosing organic, whole foods. Just because that’s what I do now. I am a healthy person. Someday I know I’ll hit that mark on the scale. Until then, so what? I don’t think that I will ever again operate with weight loss as my dangling carrot.

What a Difference

What a difference a few months can make. When you become so bogged down by self-doubt, by poor eating habits and constant lethargy, you start to feel like this is all there is. It's hard to see a way out of the tunnel.

As I posted right before Thanksgiving, I was feeling so stuck, so miserable. I thought I was trying really hard to maintain a healthy eating regime, an exercise routine but I wasn't seeing the results I wanted as quickly as I wanted. I was headed to LA to visit my girlfriend and I was sick with anxiety and self-deprecation. I wasn't excited, I was worried about how I looked.

I hated feeling that way. I wanted to be looking forward to seeing her and basking in the sunshine but all I could think about was, "What if we go to the beach? How am I going to avoid being in my bathing suit?" It was such a waste of energy, especially because once I got there and I saw my girlfriend and we had fun bashing around town, those anxieties slipped away. I still wasn't happy with my body but I was not thinking about it every moment, like I was right before I left.

I'm headed to LA again in four days and I have to tell you, I feel differently now. I'm still not where I want to be physically and am still frustrated by that fact and still step on my scale far more often I should because it only leaves me frustrated. BUT, I feel like something has shifted emotionally and mentally. I'm less focused on weight now. Not because I'm happy to be 164 pounds because I'm not.

I'm realizing that I am really healthy. I eat whole foods, I make exercise a priority, I take lots of supplements to ensure optimal health, I cook my own food 90% of the time. I am healthy. I feel far more energetic, focused, CONTENT than I have ever been. I know that it's in part due to cutting out all of the refined foods that were bogging my body down. Pure fact: you operate far better when you are putting in high-quality foods.

Mentally, I'm also starting to realize that I am more than this body. I want to take care of it because I want to live as long and well as possible. But I'm extricating my self-image from my physical form. I've held myself back from feeling and exploring and learning so many things because I thought as a fat person, I couldn't or shouldn't expect certain things. What a life I have missed living simply because I was overweight. Because I saw myself almost exclusively defined as being overweight.

Fat people shouldn't expect very many people to hit on them or want to date them for very long. Fat people shouldn't expect to excel at sports and shouldn't even try because they will look ridiculous. Fat people shouldn't engage in fun, physical activities with their friends, like ice skating on a pond in the winter or rollerblading on the boardwalk at the beach in the summer. When cute, thin women fall while ice skating, it's cute and silly. When fat women do it, they just look fat.

I'm not exaggerating. This is exactly how I have thought my whole life. I really wish I were a better ice skater and would love to hold hands with the person I'm dating and skate for one hour each winter. That's it! But I'm not very good and I'm so afraid that if I fall, I won't look cute and silly, I'll look like a fat person who fell. It's sad even articulating this but I know other people must feel/have felt this same way.

I'm not perfectly content yet. I might never go ice skating. But I'm EXCITED to go to LA. I'm EXCITED to see my girlfriend and to hang out on the beach and to maybe go bike riding in her neighborhood. Not because I've found the magic cure to self-acceptance but simply because I've been able to sustain a HEALTHY lifestyle for months and months now. My focus is shifting from weight to just being healthy, just being happy.

What a difference a few months can make.

Getting in Touch

So it is's been awhile since I've posted last but only because I've been so busy focusing on getting ready for school. It's still mind-boggling to me that I am about to start classes to be a HEALTH counselor. That I will be counseling other people whose shoes I have been in how to eat, and live, intuitively.

You have no idea what it means to me to, for the first time, be getting in touch with what I actually need. I have turned to food as a means to fill the void (of friends, of an non-stimulating job, etc.), to shut out the critical voices (mine and other people's) and to be a constant in an ever-changing, chaotic world for decades. What I constantly seemed to forget was that after I finished bingeing I would still feel that void or hear those voices or remember the instability. PLUS, I would then feel the shame, guilt, and anger at myself for overeating. So I, in the end, made myself feel WORSE.

Not to mention that on the physical side, eating foods laden with salt, sugar, and bad forms of fat and/or overeating contributed to my lack of energy, lethargy, lack of desire to exercise, etc. If I felt tired in the afternoon at work, I, like a lot of Americans, wanted to grab the nearest cookie or, if I felt really bored (as I often do at my current job), I would just want to eat crackers as a way to feel my life was more interesting. Funny thing is that I always ended up feeling full, thirsty, more lethargic, and just plain gross on top of all the negative emotions I was trying not to feel.

The point of all this being that over 26 years, I have learned how to be completely out-of-touch with how I actually feel and what my body actually needs. As human beings, we are so complexly and beautifully designed to need very specific nutrients at specific times and to know instinctively what those foods are. But because of our focus on being thinner and thinner in the 20th century, we have lost touch with what we actually need to consume to be healthy and to be a weight that works for us. Also, we have lost ourselves in the desire to buy more, own more, have more money, work more hours, go, go, go, multi-task, multi-task, multi-task and we've stashed our emotions so deep down that it makes us uncomfortable to just sit with those feelings.

Guess what? I'm not doing it anymore! Let me repeat that: I'm not doing it, anymore!! Every day that I drop some weight, every day that I call a friend or write in my journal instead of opening up a box of crackers, every day that I choose to eat a piece of fruit over a piece of cake, I realize that I've turned a corner and I can't ever turn back. For the first time, I don't want to. I don't miss those days.

This is a bigger shift than I even realize sometimes. I have been overweight, unconfident, lethargic, unsatisfied, and living below the level of happiness and satisfaction that I deserve, since I was a child. You get to the point where you think that a) things will never change and b) this is all you are capable of being and feeling. That's a very powerful and taxing thought to have, even if you're having it unconsciously. I realize now that I'm not alone. More people than I even realize are living just below that level of health and happiness. Not so sick and depressed that they feel compelled to seek help, but not nearly at the level they could be. We are a nation of people living mediocre lives.

I'm a shining example that you can change. You can change! It's so easy to think that this is status quo, forever. But it's not. I'm not saying that change is easy but when you start to make changes, you start realizing how much better you feel. You start to realize that you can feel better. You can have more energy, sleep better, think more positively, love yourself better because you're taking more care of yourself.

When you start to live from a more intuitive place, you really start peeling the film from your eyes. Life has possibility! You are capable! You are beautiful and worth it! It becomes about more than just food, about way more than just losing weight. Living intuitively applies to every aspect of one's life. Start with the food piece, see how it evolves.

If you don't believe this, just ask me. I know from incredibly personal experience.

Living Out Loud

I consider myself to be on a journey. A journey toward accepting my body in all of its glory and for all of its flaws. A journey to discover how optimally I operate when I'm eating healthy and moving intentionally. A journey toward being the change I want to effect in other people.

But it's not even close to being easy. I've been overweight as long as I can remember and I've been aware of it as a "defect" in my character for almost as long. When you're put on a diet at a young age by a mother who is also overweight and you watch the rest of your family having dessert every night while you don't, you internalize pretty early on that there's something wrong with you. I felt guilty and ashamed and embarrassed for being overweight. I felt that it was my fault. Even though I didn't do the food shopping or cooking as a young child, I somehow felt weak and responsible for my size. I can go to therapy for years, I can journal all I want, I can rationally tell myself that this thinking is useless and just plain incorrect, but you can't feel one way for 20 years and change it overnight.

I never wanted to talk about my weight growing up. On the school playground in the third grade, I remember my friends sharing how much each of them weighed. I easily weighed 10, 20, maybe even 30 pounds more than all of them and I was humiliated. So as each of them confessed, I kept my mouth shut. When it was my turn, I pretended weight was the last thing I cared about, that I never weighed myself nor wanted to. What a lie. I was aware of myself as a fat kid every moment.

As I've grown up, the situation changes, but in effect, it's always the same. My thinner friends and acquaintances sharing their unhappiness with their weight. It always managed to deepen my shame about my size and my fault in getting me there. If my 140 pound friends were upset with their bodies, how could I ever manage to pull myself out of my fat misery at 170 and 180 pounds? So I never talked about my weight. If I put myself on a diet (which I did often but which rarely lasted), I wouldn't tell people because in my mind admitting out loud that I was on a diet meant admitting my realization of just how big I was and if I did that, people would really realize it, too, and focus on it. I could never risk that. I was always trying to wear the right clothes, make the right jokes, stand or sit the right way so that people wouldn't realize how big I was.

The unfortunate side effect, among many, of never talking about this out loud was that I never got healthy growing up. I never stuck to a healthier eating plan. My views of my body and my intense layers of shame and guilt bogged me down. I thought that if I didn't talk about my body people wouldn't have to notice it or pay attention to it. I've secreted myself away and have lost part of my essence.

So now, I talk about it. I'm enrolled in this program where all you do is talk about health and our bodies so it's inevitable that I would talk about my weight and my goals. But now it's in a different context. I'm loosening my grip on guilt and on shame. I was an overweight, unhealthy child because my parents raised me that way. Once it became my responsibility to prepare meals, my habits were so entrenched that it was impossible for me to change.

Now I'm 26 and I'm on a new career path and talking about my body and my weight and my health are becoming commonplace and I feel so inspired. I've been told that I'm inspiring others. For a kid who felt so traumatized and so defined by her weight to now be inspiring others to live healthier, more intentional lives is almost unfathomable. It's an incredible, overwhelming experience. And all I had to do was stop living in secret.

When the majority of Americans are obese, overweight, or could be healthier if they lost even a little weight, I, and you, should feel comfortable expressing your concerns, your desires. Find a community who understands you, who will listen to and support you. I don't think I would be where I am today had I not started speaking out about where I've been and where I plan to be. Now you can't shut me up.