I'm going to put myself out in the open now in the interest of making a public declaration of commitment. Think of it as coming out as a relapsed person & holding myself accountable.  

I wrote BIG FAT DISASTER, a story about a teen girl with binge eating disorder and how she (and others) perceive of her body, because I was searching for a way to resolve my conflicted feelings about having regained a substantial amount of weight I'd lost in 2004-2006. I'd gone from a size 24 to a size 6 over those two years and I worked for a total of 6 years in therapy (2004-2010), to overcome/learn to manage the scars I have as a result of being sexually abused/neglected/abandoned by my parents when I was a child. I wrote THE PATIENCE TRILOGY over the course of six years when I was in therapy, and seeing the situation through another person's eyes really helped me, so I gave it a shot with my eating disorder, too. Thus, BIG FAT DISASTER.

The first thing my therapist and I worked on when I started therapy in 2004 was stopping me from killing myself with food. Letting go of that crutch--dealing with my addiction to numbing my feelings-- was one of the hardest things I've done, and it is something that never, never, NEVER goes away. Over the past four years, since ending therapy, I fooled myself into thinking I didn't have to remain vigilant about it.

When I started in 2004, I didn't have a "diet" so much as a "plan," and it wasn't prescribed by anyone; it was more like, "I'm figuring out what I'm going to eat each day and committing it to myself and I can do this for 24 hours at a time. That's it. 24 hours at a time. Don't think about getting through tomorrow. Just do it today."

And, I began to lose weight. And, I won't lie, it was both thrilling--because eventually I was able to shop in the Junior department instead of the Plus-Size-- but also terrifying-- because I was exposing myself by letting go of the shell of fat that I felt safe inside of from the time I fell into my eating disorder in my teen years.  It's when I allow myself to think that I can have the same relationship with food that non-eating-disordered people have that I fall into it again.

When I had lost a significant amount of weight and began letting go of wearing over-sized, draping shirts and long sweaters, for the first time in years, men--strangers-- began paying attention to me. I don't know of any woman who enjoys being ogled by strangers, but for me, it sets off PTSD triggers because my stepfather stalked me and watched me when I was a child.

 For some reason, at one point when I was showing a significant weight loss, I have a very strong memory of being at a convenience store to fill up my car, and I was walking from the gas pumps into the store, and this man was holding the door open for me. He openly stared at me, looking at me from head-to-toe, and I wrapped my arms across my chest as I had when I was a child and my step-dad looked at me the same way. I don't even remember what I did in the store, but when I got into my car again, I was shaking all over. Nowadays, I am much tougher mentally and that stuff would not/does not have the same affect on me. Even before I regained weight, I had toughened up to the point of adopting and broadcasting an aura that said, "I will not tolerate being messed with." I'm much braver/ballsier than I was when I was still healing. I have much more of a self-concept that is rooted in my intelligence and ability to manage challenging situations than I did at that time. In other words, as Joan Crawford so famously said the movie, _Mommy Dearest_: "DOOOOOOOOON'T FUCK WITH ME, BOYS!"  ;)

Over time, I forged a commitment to finding my inner strength in part by discovering (and marveling at) how strong my body could feel when I was working my muscles. I became more strong mentally, too, because I had a kick-ass (beloved) therapist who taught me to be tougher. The person I am today--the one people know so well that they have a hard time believing that I used to be afraid of everything and everyone-- is the direct result of the tough love/reparenting I experienced over those six years from my kick-ass therapist. He's also the person who taught me not to lie to myself.

Several years after my initial weight loss, the pain in my feet became too much for me to ignore, and I went to a podiatrist. I sat in his office and cried because my feet didn't just hurt when I worked out; they hurt ALL THE TIME and crunched so loudly that I could hear it. He looked at my feet and said simply, "You don't have a runner's feet." I'm thinking... "What, just because I have feet so wide that they're shaped like a duck's, these babies aren't meant to pound the pavement?" ;)

Then he took some x-rays and by the end of the visit, I discovered that the running/super hard treadmill workouts (like walking fast on an incline for an hour)  that had helped result in weight loss and love of feeling my muscles had had the simultaneous effect of revealing a congenital birth defect in both my feet. (Sadly, my eldest daughter, who also discovered a love of running, has inherited the birth defect as well, and her clue was the same as mine-- pain beginning over her big toe where it joins the rest of her foot. She's being proactive much earlier, thank God.) I won't bore you with details; I'll just say that it was a mechanical issue resulting in jamming and bony overgrowth, creating feet that went "crunch" with each step I took, and eventually I lost the ability to walk without limping. I missed working out and I tried the elliptical since it is so easy on the joints. I was able to do it for a while, until the bone spurs from the arthritic overgrowth were literally catching on the tendons in my feet, and my feet began spasming into claws for hours after my workout.

Depression set in and I reverted to soothing myself with food-- except that I LIED to myself about it and told myself I wasn't eating as much as I was. I just couldn't understand why I was gaining weight since I had not relapsed into prior behaviors such as buying 2 loaves of French bread and consuming an entire loaf by myself; I wasn't eating fast food burgers and fries; I wasn't baking cakes so I'd have the excuse to make frosting and eat it with a spoon; and hey, I'm in my mid-late 40s, and isn't this what happens? Y'all, think of a rationalization. Think of a way I've tried to make peace with my weight gain. Think of the stuff I've told myself, reassuring myself that just because I'm heavy again, it does not lessen my talents or skills or value as a human being. Then pass the pie because by the way I'm also trying to "normalize" my relationship with food and don't healthy people also eat pie? Why yes they do so I'm having a piece or two now. And when nobody's looking, I'm also going to stand over the sink and eat another piece, just like I did in the bad old days and then OH MY GOD what am I doing????

Yep. It's THAT EASY.

 Prior to going through therapy, I had nothing but self-loathing and couldn't even believe OTHER people could love me since I was so worthless. I've come out the other side of the journey with tools to combat self-hatred; I'm able to think of things I am good at doing. It was amazing when I realized that the first thought I had upon waking every day wasn't self-hating- and it all had to do with my body/what I'd put it in the day before. THAT VOICE HAD BEEN GONE.

And it...came...back. It didn't just come back; it came back with a vengeance. It was nastier than it'd been before, too, because now it came with a whole new fresh coat of shame at having regained weight. It asked me, "What do you think so-and-so will think when she/he sees you again? You're so fat!"

It came back to remind me that I can't wear the smaller clothes that are now in boxes in a closet. It came back to find me shopping in the plus-size department AND dressing to disguise my body so that I am less aware of having lost what I worked so hard to feel: my body being strong, to match the strong person on the inside.

So this monumental struggle inside myself is what led to me writing BIG FAT DISASTER. It all came from this question: "I'm fat again, so does that mean I'm also worthless?"  
BIG FAT DISASTER is the result of that question. (Spoiler alert: the answer is, "NO.")
The challenge is continuing to fight that self-loathing voice.

Over a period of 2 summers, I had one foot at a time repaired and although I mostly don't limp any more, I am still unable to run without painful consequences. (I ran after my grand-dog earlier this week and paid for it the rest of the day.) My left foot healed to the point it is basically normal now, but my right foot has more arthritis in it and is often still painful. The following summer (last summer), I had abdominal surgery for other problems; I had complications with too-low-blood-pressure;  THEN I chased that with gum surgery a month later because I risked losing 9 of my teeth if I didn't. Throughout the past three years, there was a lot of sitting because I had no choice but to be still and quiet.

(By the way, I swear to God I am not darkening the door of another hospital for YEARS. At least I hope I'm not.)

Over the past month or so, my beloved informed me that I was snoring like a freight train and that no matter how many pillows he puts over my face, he can still hear me. {Pause to laugh here, because he's totally serious when he says it.} He cannot figure out if it's me or the dog who are louder, but he DOES assure me that it does not matter how he shoves me-- onto my back or onto my side-- I still emit a sound so loud that he has to turn up the volume on the TV in order to hear the show he's watching.
Yeah, yeah, I can acknowledge, sometimes I snore when I'm really tired. But, no, it's more serious than that: a problem I had when I was heavy before has returned: I've stopped breathing in my sleep. I used to have a CPAP machine, but when I lost weight, I no longer needed it.
When Daniel told me that I stop breathing, it got my attention. It also explained why I am SO. FREAKING. TIRED all the time. And I also have to acknowledge that my hips hurt like they used to because I'm carrying around 50+ extra pounds; and I have to admit to myself that the arthritis in my feet is not helped in the slightest by hauling around the equivalent of a sack of sunflower seed, 24 hours a day.

I'm back at square one, y'all: I've gotta stop killing myself with food.

I told Daniel, "My eating disorder's got me by the tail again. I've gotta get it under control."

We agreed that that needs to happen, AND that if I'm still doing the stop-breathing thing after a month of weight loss, I'll go in for a sleep study and get another CPAP machine. (I gave mine away when I didn't need it any more.)

Just like always, Daniel is incredibly supportive and loving of me, no matter what the situation is. He understands that I can only buy Coffee-flavored ice cream for him, because it's the only kind I won't eat. He gets why I boxed up all the remaining Christmas candy and put it on the top shelf of the pantry. (I am able to resist it if it's not at my eye level. When I first began recovery from an eating disorder, however, the only way to keep myself from whipping up a bowl of frosting was to dump all the problem foods into a trash sack and then dump a loaded cat litter box over it. I have, I will admit, dug food out of the trash in the past, to eat it. Lots of people with B.E.D. (Binge Eating Disorder) do that kind of stuff. But even I won't eat stuff that's got cat shit atop it.) ;)
He doesn't ever comment on or--especially important to me-- make fun of my planning out what I'll eat, measuring out amounts, etc. Daniel loves me for me, and even though I've relapsed in my eating disorder and I'm born again in my awareness of it, I'm grateful that I am also able to love me. I'm glad that I'm not so far gone that the lessons I learned in therapy have been lost on me. I'm grateful that there is not one person in my life whose love or acceptance of me hinges on my appearance or on living an inauthentic existence.

Which brings me to today. I'm six days in to resuming the way I eat when I'm managing my eating disorder in a healthy way: I have a plan every day, which includes an hour workout on a recumbent bike, which I can do without my feet hurting.  In order for this to work, I have to remain diligent, deliberate, and mindful, 24 hours at a time. The entire thing is mental. If there's one thing I learned out of all the others in therapy, it's this: behavior comes before feelings. And as a person whose eating disorder is rooted in soothing uncomfortable feelings, that is key.  I won't lie to you: it is hard. Living a life of honesty with oneself usually is.