I See You. I Feel You.

I woke up this morning, as I have many mornings the last few months, lacking a sense of purpose. Depression does that. It anesthetizes even my most simple of intentions, and I struggle to remember that sunlight makes me happy, if only I would look outside and see it.

It’s been 13 years since I’ve felt this way. Twenty five years since the first time. It’s nothingness and futility, acute dread, and the stinging pain of powerlessness that turns every motion into an Herculean effort, both emotionally and physically. Who knew getting out of a chair could require such debate?

But unlike 13 years ago, I won’t put a down payment on a handgun. I won’t stare into the river and call myself Jezebel. I won’t hide under the sheets with someone who doesn’t love me or numb the numbness with a bottle of tequila.  

This time, I’ve packed a more useful toolbox to work through this depression. Notice I didn’t use the words “solve” or “cure.” Solving depression is like grabbing air. Depression is in my DNA, so it will likely return some day. I want to give its reincarnations a fighting chance at being less difficult and shorter in duration, so this time, I’m allowing the feelings in rather than trying to keep them outside. Just like the smell of skunk spray, sadness and worthlessness will find their way inside. Better to keep the windows and doors open to allow fresh air to move about and neutralize the odor.

One of the tools I’ve adopted is reading positive books and reading weight-loss/maintenance blogs (many of which are written by those of you reading my own blog. I’m out there lurking, just not always commenting), and blogs that deal with everyday, real life issues. I read other people’s words for a sense of solidarity, as well as to learn how others cope with their own struggles.

There are two books I’m reading simultaneously. The first is “The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits ofLeading a Compassionate Life” by Piero Ferrucci.

Ferrucci asserts that kindness is a “universal remedy – first for the individual, for we can be well only if we are able to care for ourselves, to love ourselves.” Being kind to ourselves means being honest with ourselves, to recognize a problem rather than to pretend there is none. To illustrate, he tells the story of his son, Emilio, who was going back to school after vacation.

“He did not like the idea at all and was filled with anxiety. To him, the approach of school days was like a monster that threatened him and wanted to squash him.”

As his parent, Ferrucci would do anything to ease his son’s fears, so he decided to give his son something that was considered taboo in his family: French fries from a fast-food restaurant.

“Usually anything that is prohibited appeals to Emilio, especially junk food. I thought I had the ace up my sleeve. But  no. Emilio’s reply ought to be chiseled in stone: ‘Dad, you don’t solve problems with French fries.’

“Touche. You don’t pretend problems do not exist, and you can’t solve them with ephemeral distractions. You have to face them with open-eyed honesty.”

My depression won’t go away by ignoring it. Only by saying, “I see you and I feel you” can I begin to dismantle the barbed wire fence that threatens to bloody my life.

One of the blogs I read is Brene Brown’s “Ordinary Courage.” I took Brown’s advice and bought Richie Norton's book The Power of Starting Something Stupid. I bought it because of a quote she included in her review, one that took her breath away: 

"People wait. They wait for the elusive day when they'll finally have enough time (guess what? - you never will), enough education (there's always more to know), enough money (no matter how much you make, someone will always have more)…People wait until that fateful day when they wake up and realize that while they were sitting around paying dues, earning their keep, waiting for that elusive 'perfect time' their entire life has passed them by."

Reading that last line, I realized that for the last few months, I’ve been sitting around waiting for depression to leave me, like it’s a houseguest who understands that her boarding pass must be used by a certain date. No, I realized, I have to be the one to kick out the houseguest, to tell her it’s time to go home now. Here, let me do your laundry, help you pack, and drive you to the airport. 

Only by engaging my depression can I learn what motivates it, what feeds it. This is my depression and I am only speaking to my issues. I know depression affects individuals in many different ways and often requires medical and pharmaceutical interventions. I do not rule those tools out, but for now, therapy, reading, meditating, and crying (yes, it can be a therapeutic tool, even if it’s an all-day cry) are making a small hole in that barbed wire fence. Someday I will pass through and I will once again intuit that sunshine makes me smile.  

Ready!!!

Alice will do anything for beef jerky or peanut butter. Anything, that is, except go up stairs.

In my ancient house, there are 13 steep and narrow steps to the second floor. One friend says climbing them is akin to scaling a wall. Not an unfair comparison, actually, considering you have to ascend and descend sideways, gripping the handrail like a safety rope.

So if two-legged creatures have issues with my stairs, imagine what a four-legged pup must think. In Alice’s case it’s, ‘Are you KIDDING me?’

I spent two-and-a-half weeks bribing Al with her favorite treats, the ones that make her “sit” and “stay” and reward her for doing her business outside. I would set a bit of jerky on the first step. She’d reach for it, no problem. Second and third steps? East peasy. Fourth step required a bit of stretching, but with a bit of snout and tongue maneuvering, she got it.

The fifth step took some contemplating and some pacing back and forth across the threshold. After she had time to think about it (“How bad do I want that jerky?”), Al would skittishly hoist her back legs on to the first step and stretch just far enough to nab the jerky before running into the dining room to feast.

When I set a jerky on the sixth step, she looked at me from below like, “Um….no, human. That is NOT happening.” Even though every time I went upstairs, she’d sit at the bottom looking up, wondering, no doubt, what was up there, the jerky treat sat on step six for days.

So imagine my surprise last Wednesday at about 9 p.m. when I heard something moving around upstairs. As far as I know, my house isn’t haunted, so I stood up from my desk and looked around for Alice. She was not on her couch or in her crate or sniffing around the garbage can. Windows and doors were all securely shut, so she hadn’t escaped. The only place she could be…

I looked up the stairs and there she was, peering at me from around the corner of the spare bedroom, her tail thumping against the door, like she’d discovered some secret passageway to Nirvana.

I don’t know what motivated Alice to climb the stairs on her own, but I find great inspiration in her actions. No amount of bribing, cajoling, firm tones, soft tones, or words of encouragement from me were going to convince her that climbing the stairs was in her best interest. Only she knew what was right for her and when.

Al slept on her bed beside me that night, and I thought about the 19 steps that challenged me eight years ago. I had to climb them every day to get to my second-floor apartment, and every day I’d look up to the doorway at the top, draw a deep breath, and grab the metal railing. My knees crunched and my hips popped, and my lower back burned, and by the time I go to the top, my head was pounding and I could barely breathe. Then I’d sit down on the closest chair and tell myself, “That wasn’t so bad.”

But it was that bad, and everyone around me knew it. And yet no amount of bribing, cajoling, firm tones, soft tones, or words of encouragement were going to convince me that losing weight was in my best interest. Only I knew what was right for me and when.

Like Alice, eventually I figured it out, but I did it on my own terms and in my own time. Brave Alice and her determination to discover what was at the top of the stairs is no different than me or you or anyone else who finally says, “I’m ready!”

In the process of writing this blog over the last few days, I was fortunate to read Jen’s post, "Transitioning My Eating" (she writes the blog, “A Prior Fat Girl”) about her move to transition her eating from more to less processed foods. She wrote: “A lot of you have been very vocal in telling me I should do this for years. But I wasn’t ready then, mentally or emotionally. I wasn’t there yet. Something changed though…in the past couple months. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching @dietitiancassie’s tweets, and the articles she’s sharing. Or maybe it’s because of the conversations with my co-worker, Darcy, over the past couple months. Or maybe it’s because I’m just ready.”

“Ready” doesn’t always mean “I'm super confident that I can succeed!” “Ready” means ready to take a chance on the process with a hope that the outcome will be in the ballpark of our expectation. And if the process or the outcome aren't what we thought it would be, if our path takes us somewhere else, well, then, we still took a chance because we were “ready.” 

AIM: A Girl’s Gotta Eat!

 

This is hardly a news flash for those of you who’ve been reading my blog for the last year: I’m not the tracker and planner I used to be. What might be newsy-ish, is that in and of itself – for me – that isn’t such a bad thing. I was waaaay militant about tracking and planning for years, to the point where I’d panic if I missed adding an olive or a couple of almonds to my food diary.

What I’ve found is a sort of left-to-middle ground, one where I call on my experience with food and the confidence I have in myself to know what’s best and not best for me. (Although, as you will read, I don’t always take my own advice, thus left-to-middle. I’m still working to find that perfect middle ground).

I decided for this topic I’d examine the “What Do I Eat?” portion on my FAQ page, written in 2009, and compare it to what is real for me now. The text in italics is from my original post.

I became a vegetarian after I got to goal in 2007.

This year, I have added fish back to my diet, particularly salmon, scallops, shrimp, orange roughy, flounder and canned tuna. I eat fish roughly three times a week.

Many people have asked…how I get enough protein each day. I strive to get between 55-60 grams of protein a day. 

I stopped tracking that stat a few years ago.

I don’t eat “fake” meat (except for Boca vegan burgers) because the sodium content is so high. 

That’s still true,

I like to make my own homemade bean burgers and keep them in the freezer.

I like to, but have I lately? Ummm….no. (Note to self: make burgers this weekend.)

My go-to protein sources are:

3 egg whites: 11 g

Cabot 75% reduced-fat cheese, 1 ounce: 9 g

Greek yogurt, ½ C: 11 g

Boca burger: 13 g

Soy milk, ½ C: 4 g

Edamame, 1/3 C: 12 g

Bean burger: 6-12 g

Lentils, 1 C: 17 g

All still true.

As for volume, I eat a LOT of veggies.

Not as true anymore. Where I used to eat up to nine servings a day, I struggle now to consume four or five. It may be because my meds have changed a bit, namely I now take prescription strength iron and B12, although I’ve found no literature indicating these things cause a change in appetite.

Many veggies I used to love just don’t taste the same, and so I’ve had to come up with new and more appealing ways to eat them. Also, salads – once a staple in my diet – don’t cut it for me anymore. I suspect overkill. I got bored.

I usually eat something every 2-3 hours.

This is still true most days. I eat a fairly big breakfast that includes protein (either egg whites or yogurt) and fruit and sometimes veggies. Once in a while I’ll include a grain such as an English muffin or toast, or opt out of the higher protein foods and eat oatmeal or cereal with fruit.

Entirely carb-based snacks leave me unsatisfied. I like to eat a bean burger, edamame, some almonds, a piece of cheese or a hard-boiled egg. Sometimes I’ll have PB2 (Bell Plantation’s dried peanut butter that you mix with water to make it smooth) with a banana. I also love squash. Any kind of squash: butternut, acorn or spaghetti. Leftover squash makes a great snack. For butternut and acorn squash, I mix it with a small amount of reduced-fat butter and maybe a bit of brown sugar. I put butter, pepper and Parmesan cheese on my spaghetti squash.

I want to be THAT person again! OK, so I’m not that far from that person, but I admit it’s been awhile since I’ve bought a squash.

Hummus is a must-have in my house, too. I prefer to make my own, but some store-bought is good, too (particularly Trader Joe’s brand).  

I haven’t made homemade hummus in months. I found the Giant Eagle store brand to be far superior to even Trader Joe’s! I keep it in my fridge at all times, along with cottage cheese, something I rarely purchased before.

I also like to have a vegetable soup on hand for a quick snack. Other soups I make are usually bean- or lentil-based and they make good lunches or dinners.

Yes and yes! So…maybe I’m not as far from the old me as I thought.

I limit my fruit intake to two servings each day. My other rule is no more than one tropical fruit serving a day (i.e. bananas, mangoes, pineapples). I also try to limit my grain-based carbs to two a day (reduced-calorie bread, crackers, cereal, etc.), I rarely eat pasta, and I limit potatoes to once a week (I used to eat them 3-4 times a week).

This is actually still very true. However, fruit is another food I lost a taste for, so I don’t always eat two servings a day. I also eat potatoes maaaaybe once or twice a month, although I confess I discovered Kettle Brand baked chips and I do munch on them sometimes…in moderation. I make pasta salmon salad a few times a month, too, and use whole wheat pasta. Otherwise, pasta doesn’t do much for me.

What else that's different from when I wrote “What Do I Eat?” is I socialize more, which means more restaurants, more food on the go, and eating more frequently at friends’ homes. This trend has tried to lead me by the hand to my old ways of eating, and I confess I don’t always resist in the way that would be best for my body. Bread baskets and butter pats, full-fat dressings, a bite here and a bite there of appetizers, desserts, or the meals others are having….all have found their way back into my eating behavior.

But while clearly there is room for improvement in the ways I eat away from home, I am more mindful of these patterns than ever before. A huge improvement in the way I used to maintain any weight loss. I reign myself in faster, tweak my diet quicker, and say no to myself more often.

I’m no longer a slave to food, but a student of food, which is a BIG step further along my path to the perfect middle ground.

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AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you'd like us to address!

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Debbie @ debby weighs in

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet