Embellishing the Truth

Here’s the thing: my mind sees a shape other than the one in the mirror.

Last I checked, my eyes were in my head, adjacent to my brain. The information about my size has to travel only a few inches, and yet, apparently, there is a FAT blockade that distorts the data as it moves from my optic nerve to my cerebrum.

I am of normal body weight. The BMI agrees, as does Weight Watchers, the American Heart Association, and the American Medical Association. Health Central lists me as underweight, but it’s based on my ‘small’ frame, which is determined by my ability to wrap my index finger around my wrist and have it overlap with my thumb.

None of this surprises me. I am aware that I no longer need to lose weight. I still have Fat Lady habits, but I hope to quell them, even as I acknowledge it will take as long to create a diamond than it will to refrain from swooning at a peanut butter Twix. But, apart from the monthly (okay, daily) cravings, I have no problem with that. What’s irritating me now is my insistence on buying only clothes that are the smallest size possible, even when they don't fit me.

For instance: I have been a size 6 in dress pants for months. Some cuts can only be described as Saggy Butt Britches, but for the most part, they are flattering to my figure. I can slip on a 6, zip and close them and wear them the same day without a stitch of alteration. I can do this even when the slacks have that nasty inside button whose sole purpose is to imprint itself into the Octopus. I can wear side zipper, low rise, flares, pin stripes, and the occasional wide-leg balloon pants that strike me as more Bozo Goes Corporate than true business casual. I am a size 6.

So why do I insist on spending hours combing through the TJMaxx Career section, yanking every size 4 into my cart and then forcing Howard to play chess on his Blackberry until his eyes cross, only to stomp, cursing, back to retrieve all the same pants in size 6, only to refuse to buy them, because they are a 'big' size? Because, dear friends, on occasion, and with certain labels, I can wear a size 4.

I have proof of this: a lone pair of size 4s that fit me like a 6. They don’t pull across the tummy, as do other, traitorous 4s. They don’t surf atop my ankles as many of the lesser 4s do, and they do not stitch their name into my hipbones or across my fanny. They simply fit. I can even wear them during PMS week. They are awesome and I love them.

I shudder to consider that these may be a small size 6 in disguise, or that perhaps the maker went too far to the right in sewing the legs to the waistband. I’ll never know, and so I do not consider that these are a fluke. My brain has decided that I can wear this size 4, and so, by deduction, I should be able to wear any size 4. When I shop, I try on only size 4s, and then, when none of them fit me, I leave the store in disgust. This has gone on so long that I am starting to run out of pants.

The same goes for sweaters. I can wear a Small, but I can’t wear every small. I have “solved” this problem by refusing to buy anything in a Medium. I wear my jeans much tighter than my dress pants (all hail the Mother Goddess, Lycra), and so sometimes the ultra-low rise forces the Octopus into the “cheap seats”, atop my waist band. I can’t really wear fitted sweaters, or anything that isn't an extra-long, because if I do, I'll have a spare tire stretching my sweater out of shape OR poking out from under the sweater's hem. This last problem is particularly troublesome, since not only is my tummy flabby and covex, but completely inappropriate to display at work. So I have a choice: buy size M sweaters or size 4 jeans. Guess which is going to happen?

If you chose ‘neither’, you are correct. In fact, my Too Tight To Breathe taste in denim has gone to the ridiculous place. Last night, encouraged by my Darling Husband, I bought a pair of size 25 jeans. Remember the Seven jeans that I bought a few months ago? Well, those were an American size 3, and a “waist” size 26. I have a pair of Lucky’s in 27, but frankly they aren’t going to last because they get saggy during the first wearing, and so I am constantly throwing them into the wash, and then drying them on the ‘volcanic’ setting, to shrink them. I have done this so often that now they are too short, and so I have to take them out of the dryer and stretch them by hand before putting them into the kiln. It’s too much work-better to get 26s and be done with it.

But no, I couldn’t be content to own a pair of jeans that fit like tights. I had to see if I could shrink down just a little bit more. I spent a full 10 minutes in the dressing room with the 25s, tugging, twisting and grunting in the handicapped stall (the only one big enough to lie down in), and I still could not get them closed. I was on Day 24 of my cycle and I did have 3 meals in me, but still, even my absurd jeans rule stipulates that you have to get them on in order to buy them. I snuck out to show Howard, who immediately started making grunting noises of his own, and so I scurried back, peeled them off of my legs and, after circulation had returned, joined Howard at the checkout line.

Here’s how tight they are-I got them on this morning, but the octopus had to be stuffed into my bra, and even after I’d worn them for a full hour, I had to lie down on the bed AGAIN to get them back on after my trip to the can. They are too small, and they are too tight, and it’s a wonder I don’t walk like Frankenstein when I wear them. But I’m keeping them. At least until after my period when a true judgment can be made.

It’s risky for me to own something that I could outgrow by picking up just one pound, or that I can’t honestly wear for 10 days out of the month. It’s risky, because if there is even one item in my closet that is too small, I may collapse. Yet I’m considering keeping the jeans because they are a size 25. Never mind that they make horizontal tracks all down my legs from the creases, or that I have “NEVES” tattooed on both hipbones from the decorative pocket divots.

This is really stupid. There’s no shame in being a 6, or a Medium, or whatever the tag reads. The tag is immaterial-it is just a label, and it’s meaningless. I weighed 144.875 pounds on my wedding day, and my Size 12 dress fit me perfectly. I was okay with that. Admittedly, I had 7 months to get used to it, and I’m still talking about it, but I accepted it. Sort of.

Okay, maybe not. And that’s the problem. Why must I strive to wear smaller clothes? I’m not getting any smaller unless I spend all day at the gym and/or reduce my food intake to tomatoes and water. I could significantly slim my waist line if I considered The Surgery, but I cannot rationalize general anesthesia for a bikini-ready midriff.

I needed to shrink for so long that my brain still considers that the only clear sign of success. Now I need a new goal, one that reinforces my current state, and that dismisses the tags as little more than a randomly assigned number. It's time for me to grow...into myself.

I want to wear the most flattering clothes I can find, and it’s important that my lines travel smoothly, and don’t need extra gas to get up over Old Smokey. I can't do that as long as I'm sucking and tucking into the smallest numbers, or wearing sweaters so tight across my stomach that I have to hold my breath all day, just to keep from looking pregnant. This is the size I am, and the size I plan to stay. It's time to build my permanent wardrobe, with pieces that I can wear most of the year, and that will last forever.

Maybe that's the trick: buy something that lasts so long that the tag falls off, and when I go to replace it, I won’t look for the label, I’ll just check the fit. Yeah, okay. And after I go buy these ‘who cares what size they are’ pants, I’ll go to the food court and indulge in a Fat-Free Cinnabon. Nice try.

But any goal worth mocking is also worth trying. The blasting is over, the sculptor has put her knife down, and it's time to pick up the paint and the embellishments. This is my size, and I will find a way to embrace it. My first act will be to go out amidst all the Christmas Crazies and find myself a new pair of size 6 pants. Maybe I’ll go nuts and get a medium sweater, too. Don’t hold your breath, though. That is, unless you’re buying jeans that fit like mine.

A the Y(ielding to the Floor)

Binge & Purge

It’s time for me to come out of the closet.

Before everyone starts pitying Howard, I do not mean to announce a switch in my sexual orientation. I am a practical heterosexual, and so my marriage and my morals remain intact. No, this is about my years-long struggle against eating like a waif in public and a walrus behind closed doors.

I’ve danced around this topic for a while, but I think I’m ready to stop being polite and tell the raw truth about the history of my food addiction. I do this in hopes that sharing my secret will somehow help me to rid myself of its hooks in me. So here goes.

My need to fill my stomach has long focused on two things-eating as little of what was put in front of me, and sneaking around to supplement my diet with junk food. I grew up one of three children in a single-parent household. When I was 17, my mother was grossing $8,000 a year. We lived with my retired grandparents, the 3 children in the house’s unheated upstairs bedroom, and my mother slept on the uninsulated screened porch out back. I went to work as the school receptionist, just so we could have a phone in the house. All 3 of us children qualified for free lunch, and at one juncture, I qualified for free breakfast as well. If I hadn’t been utterly humiliated at being given that “privilege” I would have 2 of my 3 daily meals handed to me by the state.

I was always hungry. Not Ethiopia, starving-to-death hungry, but hungry all the same. There was never any extra food in the house. I got into trouble once because I put 2 packets of instant oatmeal into my breakfast bowl. My mother had budgeted for us each to have only 1, and there was no wiggle room. I probably knew this at some level, but I was hungry at school long before lunch, so I had attempted to stave off my stomach rumblings by eating more at breakfast. As that was not an option, I went looking for other ways to fill up between meals.

I got pretty creative. For example, I stayed in Girl Scouts for years, because there were snacks served at every meeting. Bad snacks, to be sure: potato chips or cookies and milk, but food is food, and the Girl Scouts met twice a month. Eating those after-school snacks helped me get through the afternoon and, sometimes, through dinner.

I loaned myself out as a babysitter at age 10, and routinely raided the household refrigerator after the kids went to bed. I say this without pride: I’ve since had those kinds of babysitters, and while I sympathize with them, it still irks me to go into my fridge for something that should be there, only to find that it’s gone, or that there’s that last sip left—you know, the one that’s useless, but keeps the bottle/can/container out of the trash.

The only vegetables we could afford came in cans. They were cooked in a rolling boil until the last remnants of taste disappeared into the range hood. Hot dogs, hamburgers and baloney sandwiches (our standard dinner meals) were served on white bread with mayonnaise as the only condiment. I hated most of it, and, unless forced, would not eat it. To this day, I cannot stomach even the smell of real mayo.

I probably wasted a year of my life sitting at the dinner table after everyone else had gone, desperately trying to choke down inedible (to me), and now cold food. I wasted another year in my room or in punishment for throwing out the food when I thought no one was looking.

I earned a decent allowance and was a regular babysitter at several homes in my neighborhood, but I never had any extra cash. The whole of my weekly allowance went to dime-store candy, the best value for my quarters at the time. I wasn’t allowed to have non-parent-bought food in the house, and so whatever I purchased had to be consumed in secret, before I got home.

In college, where every meal was a buffet, I ate as little as I could manage (dining commons food is also inedible), and then spent evenings in my room, unwrapping candy bars or aluminum tins of cheap breakfast rolls--whatever I could find that was cheap and filling. I wolfed them down, eating as fast as I could manage, so I could wipe my mouth off and stash the evidence if someone came to the door.

I worked off-campus for 3 years during college. I would eat a sparing lunch in the campus commons, take the bus downtown, find something in my company’s building drug store and eat it (alone) in the elevator going up to the office. If there was someone in the elevator with me, I would take it to the ladies room and hide in a stall, taking care to flush the wrapper down the toilet. Always destroy the evidence. Never let them see chocolate on your fingers or foil in your hands. On the way home, I’d do the same thing.

I found 5 or 6 different places where I could indulge my habit, and I rotated where I went to buy things, so the clerks wouldn’t take too much notice of how much I took out with me. I ate what I could at the bus stop, or if there were others around me, I’d sneak it in bites on the bus, or cram it all into my mouth on the walk back to the dorm. Once back on campus, I’d go to dinner, again eating very little, but sneaking out with a napkin full of cookies to eat in my dorm room before Howard came over for the evening. If I went back to the dorm alone, sometimes the cookies (6 or 8, on average) wouldn't even make it to my room.

It became easier as an adult, and as I’ve always had a job that paid me enough to have food in the refrigerator. But by then it didn’t matter-the habit had formed. I dusted my stove more than I scrubbed it, and I once lived in an apartment for 2 years and never once turned on the oven. I ate at the couch, hunched down below the windows, or in the bathroom with the door closed. I lived alone, but I would not eat anywhere I could be spotted. I stuffed the wrappers inside milk cartons or their carry-home plastic bags so the trash men wouldn’t see what was in my garbage.

Last year, before Howard came back, I was involved with someone who fancied himself a cook. He was wrong, but compared to me, he at least made food that was hot and unpackaged. We were both trying to lose weight, so he modified recipes to suit our lower-calorie desires, and tried to serve some sort of steamed vegetable every night. In truth, even though we barely did anything worthy of weight loss, he started losing. I did not. Not only was I still eating too much, but I was eating all day long. As soon as he left for the day, I would dash from my office in the basement and raid the pantry. I would barely get back downstairs before I’d consumed whatever I’d grabbed, and so back up the stairs I went, this time taking a larger portion so I could do a little work between “meals”.

By the time my boyfriend arrived to cook dinner, I was reeling from the sugar high and really, too full to eat anything. Yet I sat down to dinner every night, unwilling to admit I was stuffed from binging all day. I ate bits of what he’d cooked, and then made up an excuse to go out on an errand at night so I could feed the habit before bedtime.

Writing it now, it's obvious how crazy my behavior was. Eating on the sly became a habit so ingrained in me, and so steeped in guilt and shame that I couldn’t share it with anyone, and so I couldn’t break it. If you substituted "heroin" or "alcohol" for food here, it's easy to see what level of addict I had become.

Weight Watchers talks about how their program works because they endeavor to change people’s habits. Rather than flood members with pre-packaged meals that won’t teach you anything other than how to spend money for processed food, Weight Watchers sets you loose in your own neighborhood with psychological counseling, group therapy and weekly “confessions” at the scales. Sixteen months of this and my habits have changed. I eat salads for lunch instead of ArbyQs. I have jello for dessert instead of half of a pecan pie (the other half was for dinner). I walk more, I drink more water, and I know how to choose the right foods. My habits have changed.

But I have not. The Sneaky Snacker still lives in me. I am still that person, and Halloween is a testament to that.

There’s a leader who substitutes on occasion at my regular meeting. She talks about how she always gets a Mrs. Field’s cookie when she goes to the mall. She takes great pains to make sure the cookie isn’t eaten at the mall, or in the car on the way home, but in her home, out in plain site. “I eat my cookie in the daylight, and with dignity,” she stated. “I only do it once in a while, and I enjoy it, every time. I have earned it, and I deserve it.”

I fear that if I “allow” myself an occasional indulgence that eventually it’ll be an everyday thing, and then an all the time thing, and then all my size 3 clothes will go to the women’s shelter while my closet fills up with bigger sizes…and stashed treats. I have no ability to monitor or to moderate myself. For me, it's all or nothing. I am a nerve cell when it comes to food. I eat it all, or I have none. There is no middle place.

I persevere and I have hope. I’ve come all this way, and really, this is the first mishap in months. I can’t plan for these things; I’d self-destruct. But maybe I can just know this about myself and do what needs done to fix it after it’s happened. And maybe, some day years from now, I won’t have to worry about it at all.

Wish me luck.

A the P(romise to be Funny in the Next Post)

Hallo Weenie

Well, I think I’m sufficiently past Halloween now that I can talk about it.

I think that the great Pagan New Year is just going to be my red-light holiday. I can skate past Thanksgiving, breeze through Christmas and sleep through New Year’s Eve. I ate more buttercream icing at my wedding than I have in the last decade, so birthdays pose no threat to me. Today when Howard stopped to check in with some Ben & Jerry’s sorbet, I looked on, unfazed. Weight Watchers and my devoted husband have pulled me along, so that now when I say I’m disciplined, I mean that I’m disciplined in how I eat, rather than by what I eat. Every day is regimented, satisfying, and healthy. Every day is a treat to be in my 145.50 pound, size 3 frame. I love who I am, and I love who I have become.

Except on Halloween.

Last year, I had a total meltdown at work. The CEO announced that kids would be trick-or-treating in the building, and so I bought 2 bags of snack-sized candy and put them out at my desk. Tragedy ensued. I still can’t believe that I lost weight that week, though considering how little real food I was ingesting, perhaps it’s not so incredible.

I rallied immediately, and managed to keep from pilfering DS’s candy stash, despite the fact that my old favorite, a Reese’s cup came home in his plastic trick-or-treating pumpkin. I put the pumpking out in the garage, and eventually forgot about it. When I went to retrieve his pumpkin this year, there sat the Reese’s, fused to a bag of Skittles and a trio of melted tootsie rolls. Summer in the garage had been unkind to this crowd, and I had to soak the bucket overnight to get them unstuck from the bottom.

I thought I was ready for Halloween this year. I’m a totally different person than I was last October, I rationalized. Back then, I was just 3 months into my diet. Right now, I’m 5 months into maintenance, and I’m so in tune with my body that I know exactly how to regulate my weight, right down to the amount of sticky rice I eat on sushi nights. I still get the Chocolate Heebies at PMS time, but they’re more annoyance than temptation, and anyway, my clothes all fit so tightly, even a 3 pound misstep would mean I’d be going to work in pajamas (which I do not own). So, motivations abound to keep myself in check, including the happiness and pride I feel at keeping myself down here in the 140s.

I opted to work remotely this Halloween, staying away from the cluster bombs of candy bowls that popped up like tulips all over the place. I would go home, lock myself in the house and stay there until DS returned with Lynda from his own jaunt around the neighborhood. My Amazing Boss, ever understanding and sympathetic, approved my request with good wishes.

Halloween came on a Wednesday this year. On Monday of that same week, a package arrived for me-some small gift from a vendor. I opened the package, ever wary of anthrax and letter bombs, and found instead a sealed glass jar of Hershey’s miniatures. I’d never before so hoped that the box had exploded instead. I stood up to hand it over to the Aussie triathlete downstairs who keeps a satchel of loot slung off the corner of her cube, when I saw a gleaming golden wrapper near the top. Reese’s miniatures. Suddenly, my brain flooded with all form of meeting rationale-you can’t deprive yourself, it’s better to have one than to binge later. There’s 35 points every week that you haven’t used in 18 months…and blah, blah, blah, excuse, excuse, excuse, until I decided that I was strong enough to handle it. I opened the jar, retrieved the nugget and had my little piece of heaven.

Well, woe to the atheist who considers it a good idea to eat the christian afterlife. My brain went completely into overdrive, and before I knew it, there were 4 unaccounted for wrappers in my trash. I marched the rest to the kitchen, dumped out the contents on the counter and went back to my desk and sat motionless until the insulin rush passed. I had a little Come To Leader meeting right there at my desk. Ok, then. I cannot be a ‘one-bite good, two-bite better stop’ Weight Watcher. I know this, and while I’m sorry that I experimented, it was probaby good for me to remind myself that I’m not strong enough to be around things that still attract me. I’ve build hedges of greens and fruits and lean turkey breast for a reason-they insulate me, and my spiking blood sugar, from myself.

So misstep has now come and gone, and I’m ready to announce that Halloween for me means a costume and some fun pictures for Grandma and Grandpa Florida, but nothing else. No 2-point turtle pie , no pumpkin fluff, none of this “I can have just a taste” reasoning, and no more thinking I’m far enough away from the Fat Lady to look back. I’d still turn into a chocolate bunny, apparently, and then I’ll eat my own ears just because they’re right in front of my face.

Wednesday arrived, and I showed up at work in full armor, loaded with a steely determination to eat nothing other than what I’d brought to work. I made it until 12:30, whereupon I packed up my laptop and raced home. I didn’t dare stop at the grocery store for much-needed milk. Candy goes on sale at Halloween, and it’s everywhere-at the register, beside the bread and tucked in behind the tampons. Actually, this last one is brilliant, but I was in no mood to appreciate genius marketing. I had to retreat.

Once home, I had my lunch, I made a pot of coffee, and I went downstairs to work. Unencumbered by interruptions and assaults on my vulnerable nose, I pounded out 3 days worth of assignments in about 4 hours. Around 5:00 I got up to refill my coffee mug and happened to look out the living room window as I passed through. A woman walked by, pushing a stroller and escorting two costumed children. Oh no! Halloween had come to Wheaton!

It was dusky already, and there were no lights on in the front of my house so it would be easy to pretend I wasn’t home. But I’m a momma now, and I wouldn’t want some cheap old lady to play possum at her place, just so DS couldn’t get his treat. So off I went. I drove to Jewel, bought the minimum amount of candy I thought I’d need for the 2 hours of trick or treating, and went home, determined not to open a single bag until the doorbell rang.

I made it home just in time to see the first clan leave my neighbor’s house and head across the lawn to my front door. I barely had time to yank the bag open before they rapped at my door. I dumped a stuffed handful into each bedsheet, made polite chatter with the moms while the kids ooo’d at their good luck and waved good-bye as they skipped off down the road.

I emptied the remaining candy into a big silver bowl and then dashed back to my office. I’d just stay downstairs, coming up only when someone arrived at the door. I’d stuff their bags as full as I could manage while holding the door open, and then I’d head back to my office, pretending there was Nothing To See in the living room.

Well, that lasted until I sent off a group of kids and could see the next group heading up the walk to my neighbor’s. I knew I wouldn’t have time to get downstairs, and it wouldn’t be practical. It was 5:45 by now, and I’d stopped working for the day. I stood by the door, my eyes glued to the children. I can do it, I can make it, I am stronger than those little chocolate squares.

I made it, but I’m shaken by the experience, and I admit that more than a few of the trick-or-treats wrappers wound up in my own trash can. It was nothing like last year, but it was more than I wanted (which was zero), and more than I needed (also zero). I just can’t trust myself to be around candy when I’m alone, especially on a holiday that’s all about forbidden indulgences.

On a happy note, I did discover this week that I can still eat pumpkin butter. It’s very sweet and it gets my sugar tooth going, but there's no fat in it, and just half a teaspoon in a dessert cup of fat free cool whip has me sighing in pleasure all evening. It’s enough for me, I really like it, and here’s the kicker: I can eat it in front of anyone and not feel guilt or shame. Maybe that’s my litmus test and my challenge. If I think I want something like this, I must eat it in front of someone. That ought to cure me of any more Halloween slip-ups.

But just in case I’m wrong, next year I’m going to take Howard’s advice and spend the afternoon at the library. Maybe I’ll put a Skinner Box on the porch, so each child can come to the house, pull a lever and get their goodies without me as the handout. I don’t mind the double standard, really; each person has to decide for themselves whether to buy and/or eat candy. And I’m not going to become one of those Moms who hands out apples or dental floss or play-doh. DS doesn’t need that kind of reputation, and anyway, that’s not how the U.S. celebrates this ‘holiday’. But I can’t be an active participant—I’m not ready. Perhaps I never will be. I hate that I had to fall off the wagon, AGAIN, to find out. But at least now I know for sure.

A the S(till in Rehab)