Category: Detox Journey

Not Trying To vs. Trying Not To

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Don't you want to be thin?, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

I have an incredible addiction to the idea of fitting in. Of looking normal, not seeming too crazy or “woo-woo” or “out there” — whatever punitive descriptions the cult of rationality use to condemn someone who believes in Spirit, the energetic system, and so on. The idea of being judged negatively carries way more import to me than is healthy, as does my level of upset around the possibility of having people make false assumptions about me and my life choices.

Given those emotional addictions, this next series of posts feels very scary to write.

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In my first couple posts back here, I alluded vaguely to some self-care and detox “projects” I had coming up in the near future. The most significant of those is that I’ll be starting a round of the HCG detox program near the end of the week.

Anyone googling “HCG” is not going to find much of anything that’s discussed through the lens of detoxing — it’s all been subsumed under the cultural obsession with weight loss. This source at least calls it a detox program, but pretty much the rest of the text is an ad for HCG as a weight loss tool. And this article in Slate, plus this blog (and the two she links to) are pretty typical of everything else I’ve found online about HCG: something worth doing all because it makes the numbers on the scale go down. Because the numbers on the scale are quite possibly the most important detail for measuring* a woman’s value as a human being.

So it’s feeling a little weird as I’m moving towards this experience. I know my focus and intention are on detoxing a life’s worth of accumulated poisons (dietary, environmental, emotional). I know it to my bones.

Point of fact: I’m flying some few hundreds of miles away from Boston so I can start this journey in partnership with a detox center that is coming from that same place of intention, rather than going to the Boston-area places that are all about offering HCG on a menu with lipo, botox and laser peels… If I was in a weight loss frame of mind, there’s options just around the corner that don’t rack up the frequent flyer miles.

My goal in this is not about losing weight. But my research makes me pretty sure that I will lose some weight in the weeks ahead. And I have a lot of complicated feelings about that.

I worry about being seen as someone betraying the ideals of fat acceptance/fat activism by making this choice.

I worry about the likelihood that members of the “general” fat-shaming public will likely applaud me for losing weight, and the ways that false assumption will tempt me towards violent angry outbursts.

I worry that no matter how frequently or clearly I am able to articulate my intention for the HCG to be about detoxing, I worry that the experience will still be co-opted into weight-loss discourse — because that discourse is just so fucking strong in this culture. (After all, even the most outspoken fat activist really secretly just wants to be thin, right?) Something about this possibility of co-option fills me with the fiery rage of a thousand suns. Like by losing weight, I’ll be letting “them” (the fat-shamers) win — and oh! I don’t want to let them win.

And yet. In a place of deep to my core unflinching honesty, I also need to own that I worry about the possibility that some small part of me is going to be happy about losing weight. ‘Cos no matter how strongly I try to speak and live from an FA perspective, I’ve had the same share of fat-shaming brainwashing that you’d expect any middle age, middle class heterosexual American white woman to have had. And even though my internal fat-shamer doesn’t come out a lot, she’s still in my system, just a little bit. And I don’t want to let her win, either.

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A week or two ago, I read a post on Fierce, Freethinking Fatties that has given me a tiny bit of a lifeline for at least some of these complicated feelings. The post looks at the possibility of weight loss occurring as a result of someone adopting HAES (health at any every size) principles, and marks the distinction memorialized in my post title:

There is a difference between not trying to lose weight and trying not to lose weight. One means that your focus is elsewhere. . . . The other means that you are actively attempting to either stay the same weight or gain weight. . . . [M]ost people I come across who are fat and follow a HAES lifestyle fall into the first category. The act of practicing HAES usually means that they are interested in increasing their health. They are not trying to lose weight, because they are using other means to measure their success. . . . You might lose weight. And that’s okay. You aren’t going to have to turn in your Body Acceptance club card if you do. It just means that your body is changing because you’re adopting different habits.

(There’s a lot more good stuff where these words came from. Seriously, if you haven’t already followed the link up above, this one will take you there, too.)

I’m not trying to lose weight. But if I do lose weight as a side effect of choices I make for their detox and energetic benefits, that’s okay. In a complicated “mostly-okay-but-also-kinda-anxious” sort of way. But it’s what I’ve got for now.

* “Measuring.” Like weight. See what I did there? *grin*

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Edit: Because “any” and “every” start with different vowels and create different acronyms when used in phrases, and because it is a nice show of respect to get people and organizations’ names correct…

Cast(or)ing About

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey3 Comments

One of my coaches has been suggesting that I try doing some castor oil packs.

According to Greenster:

One of the most effective health recommendations made by naturopaths is the daily use of castor oil packs. It’s also one of the most mysterious and least well known.

As with many beneficial remedies in naturopathic medicine, there’s not a ton of scientific research surrounding this practice. Its effectiveness is mostly anecdotal and passed down due to repeated clinical success. I would venture to say that the reason for this is that not much money would be made on using castor oil…and that using it takes a little half hour out of your day, which most people insist they don’t have.  But all joking aside, castor oil has been used for thousands of years for a variety of different conditions.

So, once I get over my initial rush of panic at trying something so new and unfamiliar to me, I’m off to run a little experiment, and will report back when I’m done.

Wish me luck!

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I’m back!!

A bottle of castor oilOkay, some first, unorganized thoughts…

Thought the first. More logistical awkwardness than I’d expected. I’d forgotten about my general aversion to slimy textures, so I’m sure I under-saturated my flannel, because ew!

I also don’t think the directions I was following are necessarily the best for curvy gals — I feel as if I would need to be an octopus to be able to do everything required to get the flannel applied:

  1. hold shirt out of the way
  2. hold boobs out of the way
  3. apply flannel
  4. hold flannel in place while still holding shirt and boobs out of the way
  5. wrap lower torso in saran wrap to hold flannel in place — while still holding shirt and boobs out of the way…

(I ended up hollering for Mr. Mezzo to come help me truss myself in plastic wrap, which was only ever-so-slightly embarrassing. I love my husband, and I am rather appreciative that he loves me enough to handle this with grace.)

I am sure these logistical matters will become easier as I get more experience with this.
Thought the second. The plastic wrap in the house is extra sticky so it clings better for food storage, which means it was veritably adhesive on my skin. May buy some of the cheap stuff that sucks for food storage but won’t hurt quite so much like a mofo when I take it off.
Thought the third. Baby wipes are the bomb. That is all.
Thought the fourth. I’d been afraid of getting bored having to lie down and not move for 45 minutes. I’d even given myself permission to stop at 30 on this first try, if I was beginning to get antsy. But with my book and iPad nearby, the time passed rather pleasantly.
Final thoughts. So…did it do anything?  That I do not yet know.
Obviously, I didn’t expect any instantaneous results, so I’ll just keep paying attention as I do more of these. I will say that my stomach kept gurgling while the pack was applied. (Or something in my abdomen.) And I don’t normally gurgle like that, so it was certainly very interesting to have this new thing happening in such direct conjunction with the timing of the pack.
Image:

Are You In Or Are You Out?

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Health at Every Size, Meta-Blogging1 Comment

With the demise of Google Reader (my long-ago link into the blogosphere), I’ve been trying to work out whether the Fatosphere blog feed is still operational, and whether “Just Another Lifestyle Change” is still in the club.

As best as I can make out, the answer to the first question is a double “yes” (double on account of availability in both feedly and blogspot flavors), while the answer to question #2 is, I think, a “no.” Evidence for that latter theory: my “I’m back” post from last night hasn’t hit the feed, leading me to guess that years of silence led to my blog being culled from the feed on account of appalling inactivity. (It is also possible that new posts are now manually moderated for inclusion into the feed resulting in an inevitable time lag, but I think that’s less likely.)

In all honestly, I think I’m more relieved than disappointed at the notion of having been edited out of the feed. There’s certainly part of me that would have liked to still be there, cos hey! more potential readers. But I’m also aware that during the past week, as I was actively contemplating starting writing here again, that I delayed and procrastinated a tiny bit for fear that I was still in the feed.

Don’t get me wrong: I am still very committed to the ideals of fat acceptance/size acceptance as I understand them, and I expect that as the weeks and months go on that I’ll have opportunities to explore those topics.

But — even though all the conventional wisdom is about finding your bloggy niche and sticking to it — I don’t want to just be writing about fat acceptance topics here.

For example, if I’m reading a really interesting book that’s marking a distinction between “happiness” and “pleasure,” and I want to contemplate the overlaps with my own noodlings about living on mission, I don’t want to censor that line of exploration simply because it’s not a “fatosphere” kind of post.

More pressingly, I’m about to spend some time actively learning about and exploring different methods for physical detox. And this is going to include some serious work on the huge percentage of processed food and sugar in my diet.

I know to my core that my detox journey is not for the purpose of losing weight. But I know it is possible that my weight may fluctuate or drop in this experiment, and I also know that the dominant discourse around detoxing in the U.S. culture is all about weight loss. So I imagine that me describing my detox journey on the Fatosphere feed might be a very tricky thing to do — no matter how strong my intention to present the journey through the lens of size acceptance.

So, everything in its rightful place. Including “JALC,” twinkling on its own in the bloggy firmament.

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PS, and apropos of nothing aside from a coincidental overlap with my post title: Swedish pop never gets old. Oh ABBA Museum, someday I shall make thee a pilgrimage….