Category: Self-Acceptance

wood-slice-walkway

Going with the Flow and Against the Grain

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

wood-slice-walkwaySome time last week, I posted about having tickets to see Pentatonix this weekend. Considering how much I love the group, I’ve been struck, as the week has worn on, by my emotions about this upcoming event. Because instead of feeling excited or looking forward to the concert, I was feeling much more a sense of exhaustion and obligation.

There’s a lot else going on right now. Three big proposals all due next week: I’m responsible for writing two of them, and also for wrangling a lot of the extra docs in all three proposal packages. And, of course, it’s tax season, so Mr. Mezzo and I need to give attention there. Plus the usual routine of unpacking and laundry and groceries & cooking — all of which I’m well behind on due to my detox weekend out of town and last weekend’s energy crash.

With all of that on my plate, the idea of a trip into Boston’s House of Blues was definitely carrying a whole lot of pressure around it. The time that it would take. The anxiety of navigating an unfamiliar neighborhood and location. The difficulty of being someplace with food and drink I’m not currently allowed to eat, and knowing I’ll have to go hungry because I can’t figure out how to bring my own dinner along into that setting and past the door guard.

I want the feeling of going to a concert to be a happy step out of the routine, rather than another hoop to jump through. But if I was going to be fearlessly honest with myself, “another hoop to jump through” is exactly how it was feeling.

So Mr. and I have decided to take the concert off of our weekend agenda.

I feel some guilt about having wasted the money — we bought the tickets a couple months ago. And we’ve decided to back out so last-minute that there’s no way to resell anything on Stubhub or the like. So those dollars are just gone.

And I’m also aware that this decision goes against much of the conventional wisdom about how to bring self-care into one’s life and how to prioritize fun and joy in the midst of life’s many responsibilities.

But a big part of the self-care I’m learning during this detox journey is about listening to my body and discerning what is (and isn’t) in true alignment with my system. And, for whatever reason, this planned excursion wasn’t feeling in alignment for me. So I want to practice moving with the flow of my own instincts, even if that leads me to choices that seem illogical or counter-intuitive to someone else.

And this way I know I’ve got a good chance of getting to bed at a reasonable hour for all of the next three nights. Which, considering all my early mornings this past week, is a source of joy all unto itself.

———-

Image credit: http://www.katyelliott.com/blog/2009/03/wood-slice-walkway-inspiration.html

Data Points

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Don't you want to be thin?, Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance1 Comment

The doctor’s office that prescribed my HCG gave me a booklet to help me track all kinds of things. Portions of food, my water intake, supplements, ketosis level — and, yes, a daily weigh-in.

I’ll admit, I toyed with the notion of skipping that last piece. Ultimately I decided I wanted to respect the protocol in every possible detail. Including weigh-ins: even if I have all kinds of associations between morning weigh-ins and the evils of the diet industry, I’m willing to take on this task in the context of tracking my weight as one among a set of data points.

02.scale_So I dragged the scale out of the basement* and threw it into the bathroom, where it and I have been having a daily, emotionally-guarded, one-on-one.

As I expected, this detox process has meant that my numbers on the scale have been going down, a little bit each day. And, as uncomfortable as it is to admit, there’s been part of me enjoying that trajectory. I spent so many years being brainwashed around the value of skinny** that I know there’s part of me that can still fall into that old model of thinking.

Aside from that, there’s been some concrete benefits. Some of my slacks had started getting a bit tight in the past few months, and even though I would have been 100% willing and unashamed to buy a larger size if need be, I can’t deny that I’m glad not to have to spend the money and to instead be feeling more physically comfortable in my current wardrobe.

I was having a similar issue with my wedding rings feeling a tiny bit tight and uncomfortable, and it’s especially nice for those to be back to fitting better.

Anyhow, today, I had my morning date with the scale and the numbers were exactly the same as they were yesterday.

This is entirely unsurprising. All the information about HCG — even from a weight-loss perspective — talks about the inevitability that some days your weight will “plateau” instead of being lower than the day before. I kinda think the diet guides make a really big deal out of this possibility just so someone doing HCG for the purpose of weight loss won’t freak out when this occurs.

But it was fascinating to witness myself when this moment occurred. In an instant, I could recall all the old tricks I would have used, back in the obsessive-dieting days, to make the scale move in a good direction. Maybe I should weigh myself starkers, or try again after another trip to the toilet.

Or maybe not.

For all that I was able to recall the ways a “plateau day” would have thrown the old diet-obsessed Sherri for a loop, perhaps the most surprising thing about this morning was really how little emotional charge today’s date with the scale held for me. I saw the numbers, saw all the possibilities for being negatively impacted emotionally, and just felt fine.

Almost like my weight is just another data point for me.

* And why did I even still have a scale? For the always-important job of checking to make sure my luggage is under the airplane weight limit.

** Oh who am I kidding? From a cultural messages standpoint, I’m still being brainwashed about the value of skinny. We all are.

———-

Image credit: http://simplykierste.com/2013/01/fit-friday-with-erica-the-scale-friend-or-foe.html (And yes, this was a very deliberate choice…)

Taking this Show On the Road

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

wheelsWell, the wheels kinda fell off the cart today. I had all sorts of ambitions — laundry, unpacking, Coursera, neatening up & getting organized, Epsom bath, and lots of precooking for the week ahead. And some of that got accomplished, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped.

After however-many days of self-neglect, I did decide to put the Epsom bath first on the priority list, and the bath segued into a nap — which is part of why my schedule got so off-course. After all of that, I did manage some unpacking and it will be easy-peasy to do a load of laundry tonight. So: partial success.

What concerns me most is that I haven’t done any cooking with all the food and spices I bought yesterday.

The challenge of taking the HCG regimen through the work week was greatly aided by all the food I’d been able to prepare with my coaches over the weekend. It only made sense to set myself similarly up for success during the coming week with a similar cooking spree, but I have completely dropped the ball.

And the funny thing is that this week, pre-cooking and pre-planning are even more important than they were last week. Because this week, I’m heading out of the familiar spaces of home and office.

I have two different AM networking/training events during the work week, and then Mr. Mezzo and I have concert tickets for Saturday night. Of course, there’s going to be “forbidden” food and drink at all these locales: I’m sure both networking breakfast buffets are going to be all about the bagels and Danishes currently off my list of allowables, and I think the concert venue is one of those “two drink minimum” kinds of places.*

So it would very much behoove me to make some preparations to help me get through these events. Instead, I’m having to look at the question of why, knowing this, I let my lazy child run the show and create a circumstance where I’ve stressed myself out in this fashion.

At least there’s a little more time left in the evening, so I guess I’m going to go do at least some cooking, so I can partially dig myself out of this hole.

* For the record, the tickets were bought many months ago, before I knew I’d be making the commitment to the HCG program. I’m not that much of a masochist.

———-

Image credit: https://theplastichippo.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/preparing-for-oblivion/

Breadcrumbs

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head4 Comments

I know there’s a certain irony to titling a post “breadcrumbs” when I’m in the midst of this no-carbs diet. But nevertheless, it seemed like the most fitting title for a collection of small observations: none of them significant enough to warrant a full post, but still pieces of the HCG experience I want to document.

———-

lane bryant starry nightI’m wondering if the hormone is making me a little bit more susceptible to the cold than I used to be. All this winter, I’ve been sleeping in my pajama pants and a tank top, because it gets too hot under the covers in my long-sleeved pajama top.

Unexpectedly, since I returned from the detox center, I’ve needed to keep the long-sleeved pajama top on if I didn’t want to be too cold to sleep. Go figure.

———-

This protocol does require a certain comfort level with medical-type tasks & procedures. Or at least, if you don’t have that comfort level going into things, the experience might just lead you to be more blasé about such things than you were before.

In addition to the almost-daily hormone shots, there’s a weekly B-12 shot. (I say “almost” daily because you do take one day off a week from the HCG. Of course, for me, my “day off” coincides with B-12 day, so my life is in an easy one-shot-a-day pattern.) Now, the needle size of the syringe is very small, so there’s little in the way of discomfort. Nonetheless, doing the injections has certainly been an acquired skill for me.

I’ve never been needle-phobic: I had so many inoculations as a kid when we moved to S. America that there was no choice but to get used to them. But all those inoculations left me in a place where I was used to needles but I didn’t much like them. So it’s been an interesting progression, having my mild dislike of injections segue into a real matter-of-fact attitude around them.

And then there’s the morning “pee-stick” to track whether your body is still in ketosis or not.

———-

Even with everything I’ve been looking at around my food cravings and my emotional hunger, I wonder if the thing that is most strongly going to tempt me to stray from the program is my desire for lip balm. I haven’t found a single one that doesn’t contain some sort of oil, and going through this last phase of winter without being able to tend to my poor dry lips ain’t no picnic.

Come on, spring!

———-

Between sautéing everything in lemon juice and eating lots of fresh citrus for my after-dinner treats, I have become aware of exactly how excruciatingly painful fresh lemon or grapefruit juice can be on the nail-bed and cuticle wounds of a chronic, hard-core nail-biter. (Raising hand.)

This has not yet inspired me to stop said habit, but I remain eternally hopeful.

———-

(If there’s any topic here that warrants further exploration in its own post, on another day, this would be it.)

I’ve been really noticing some of my limitations around self-care.

In addition to the more “hard-core” detox movements I have going on with the HCG and the Blessed Herbs packet I’m taking every morning, my coaches at the center encouraged me to layer in some other varieties of detoxing that would be gentler, and would help care for my system while these two more demanding processes were underway.

Foot baths, Epsom baths, castor packs, kinesi — all kinds of options, and I haven’t done any of them. Even today, with a whole day off from work, I was so busy with house-cleaning and grocery shopping and the dump run that I didn’t do any of these things to care for myself. Too many other “more important” things that I “ought” to prioritize higher than soaking in the bathtub “like a lazy person.”

At least I’ve managed to keep the sleep levels decent.

———-

Image credit: http://www.sonsiliving.com/blog/cathys-shopping-cart-cart-13-new-years-eve-favorites

Schoolhouse Rock characters

The Body Machine

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance4 Comments

(Quick hit: as predicted, I did get into the choir and rehearsal is indeed the kind of thing that takes sole focus and does not permit on-the-side blog-drafting.)

I’m a machine, you’re a machine
Everybody that you know
You know, they are machines
To keep your engine running you need energy
For your high-powered, revved-up body machine
Your high-powered, revved-up body machine
Your high-powered, revved-up body machine
High-powered, revved-up, complicated tune-up
Fascinating body machine!

~~ Schoolhouse Rock

One of the side effects effects of HCG I was warned about was the possibility of experiencing a bit of constipation. And, at the risk of TMI, that is something I’m dealing with right now.

Let me set a bit of a boundary here. I am not really looking for suggestions on how to deal with this. I have medical practitioners and coaches who have given me all sorts of resources and tips in case this circumstance arose. If you do have a resource you wish to share, please know that I will likely thank you but not tell you whether or not I tried it, and certainly not whether or not it worked.

I already feel a little odd about sharing this much detail about my digestive health.

Schoolhouse Rock charactersSo why am I sharing at all?

Because my level of puzzlement around how to deal with this unexpected condition has me thinking a little bit about all of the ways I take my body for granted.

I have gone through so many cycles of body hatred, self-loathing, self-judgment and through all of that the fact remains that I am remarkably fortunate to be remarkably healthy. So many conditions and concerns that people deal with on an everyday basis: blood pressure, migraines, back problems, and even constipation. And I’m pretty free of all of it. As Mr. Mezzo said right before I sat down to write this: hale and hearty.

Definitely worth giving some more thought and attention to the miracles my body enacts every day, and the incredible luck I have around my health status. Something, methinks, to be a bit more aware and grateful around.

———-

Image credit: http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1JZB0_c-s-u-puzzles-201?guid=63b11a7f-f600-42aa-a5a2-0ef958311c07

Sleeping moon

Knit the Ravell’d Sleeve

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, The Subtle Body2 Comments

It is entirely common knowledge that healthy sleep is a good thing, and that part of healthy sleep is simply getting enough of it.

Sleeping moon
Good night, moon….

It is also entirely common practice to skimp on sleep in these 21st-century over-scheduled times. Neither Mr. Mezzo or myself have been perfect in giving ourselves enough sleep-time, though Mr. Mezzo has a better track record of self-care on this score than I do. This may be because he’s better at disciplining himself to keep healthy routines — whereas I feel half the time as if I’m allowing my unruly inner 6-year-old to run the show.  Another contributing factor is he feels the pain of sleep deprivation more acutely than I do.

And I daresay I’ve become quite good at pretending I can get by on a regular dose of 6, 6.5 hours of sleep nightly. But I’m rethinking that right about now.

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast,–

~~ Macbeth, 2.2

One of the gifts of being away at the detox center was I was able to allow myself a full night’s sleep every night. The first night was a “minimal” 8 hours and the rest of the time I managed to schedule even more. Which is, of course, one of the benefits of having some time off from work.

But last night, I followed through on the pattern established while I was away and went lights-out when there were still 8 hours between me and the morning alarm. Shocking!

I don’t know for sure whether last night had its own effect,  but I do think I felt the effects of being well-rested while I was at the office today. Obviously, a big part of that was the accumulated stretch of fully-rested nights preceding last night’s 8-hour miracle. (Plus the benefits of the other detoxing.)

But if 5 nights’ good sleep on vacation can add up to something special, there’s no reason that a similar — or longer — stretch of good sleep can’t add up for my benefit, even when that sleep is in my own wee bed.

Sounds like a simply enough plan, right? But I’m actually feeling some challenge around it.

I always have so many things I want to do with my evenings. Some of it is entirely frivolous — my TV/DVR obsession runs deep as the ocean, plus there’s my iPad gaming habit and the eternal time suck that the Facebook/YouTube rabbit hole can create in an evening. Those habits could use some inquiry, and I might do well for myself to release some of those calls on my time and attention. Some of them, mind you, but not all. I have too much love for the honest joy of frivolity to run some perfection/purity of life movement where I scorn all fun and foolish things.

And even if I were living some perfection movement where I’d purged all frivolity from my life, I would still be looking at a long list of interests and aspirations. Kinesi sessions, detoxing practices (footbaths, castor packs), joining a choir, reading books, taking classes, writing regularly here (and beyond?)….

I’m not quite clear on how to interweave all these interests and aspirations with a 9-to-6 job and a shiny new resolution to sleep more.

There is room to find some creative options here and there.

On days I get a lunch break, I could start writing my night’s post then. I already know how easy it is to run a kinesi session in the footbath and/or in front of my favorite shows, so I could cash in on that knowledge more frequently. I can watch my Coursera lectures or read the assigned articles on my iPad while I’m doing a castor oil pack. (Choir rehearsal, if I get in, might be something I have to do sole-focus rather than multi-tasked.*)

So, as with so many things: a work in progress. But also a realm of possibilities.

* I don’t know which is the larger sin: false modesty or arrogance. For the first, see above. For the latter: I’m real sure I’m gonna get in.

———-

Image credit: http://www.annholm.net/2013/01/uncover-your-potential-sleep-sleep-well/

Back in My Yoga Pants

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Don't you want to be thin?, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

Today’s schedule is entirely in the care of my detox/consciousness center. Since I’m with family today, I am garbed in my usual course weekend ensemble of yoga pants, layers and a light sweatshirt. Very different from yesterday’s ensemble.

The doctors’ office down here we used to get my HCG prescription markets HCG through the weight loss lens. Despite that, I give them much honor for being energetically cleaner about it than the places I researched in Boston. To my perception, the tone on the Boston places was all about glamour and enhancing women’s attractiveness to the patriarchy — which is why HCG was bundled in with Botox and laser peels. The doctor here in Atlanta seems more to speaking from a place of saying “this is really good for your body and it’ll help you lose weight!”

Now, there are lots of problematics with any line of discourse that draws a strong connective line between “healthy behaviors” and “weight loss.”  This was pretty brilliantly deconstructed over at Dances With Fat back in January, so rather than rehashing the subject tonight, I’ll content myself to providing a link and a brief quote from Ragen’s insightful analysis:

There is so much confusion about weight and health.  That causes people to confuse weight loss behaviors with healthy behaviors and that, in turn,  causes people to do unhealthy things under the false belief that they will be healthier when they get thinner no matter what they have to do to make it happen.  The next thing you know someone’s doctor has convinced them that the healthiest thing that they can do is have their stomach amputated.

Still, the cultural delusion equating healthy behavior with weight loss is really strong, and there’s a deep deep assumption that almost any woman in this culture wants to lose weight — and, statistically speaking, that assumption isn’t all that far off. So, given the desire of the doctor’s office to stay in business, I get why their marketing plays into the weight loss thing. Honestly, it would be naive of me to expect anything else.

Coming straight out of that cultural construct, it’s not real surprising that my intake form asked various questions about my history as a fatty: highest weight, lowest weight, past techniques attempted  in the inevitable quest to be skinny*, when and how my “weight problems” began, and what my current weight loss goal is for the HCG.

When I got my intake form on Wednesday to fill out, I wasn’t especially surprised to see this line of questioning. Okay, let’s be blunter: I wasn’t surprised one iota.

Despite my utter lack of surprise, it was fascinating to watch how hair-trigger my defensiveness and anger was around that section of the form. There’s the one in me that bitterly knows the pain of being fat-shamed and all the subtle destructiveness of fat microagressions. As my eyes took in the start of these questions and as my mind processed the reality that yes, we were coming up against THAT section, I could literally feel that one armoring up. “Here it comes,” she said, steeling herself. Steeling myself.

I left most of that section blank when I filled out the form Wednesday night.

So yesterday morning, as I was getting dressed, I was super conscious of how I was deliberately costuming or armoring myself for the doctor’s visit. Great sweater, skinny jeans, rockin’ boots. A indisputably Good Look for me.

Nope, my clothes were saying. I am not your self-hating fatty caricature. I am a woman learning to love herself who knows exactly how to dress so I feel confident and centered in my skin.

And with that extra bit of protection, I was able to be calm and matter-of-fact when the doctor and I went over my intake form with all its lacuna in my “history of fatness.” I was absolutely plain-spoken and honest about having a focus on health and detoxing, and not caring what my number on the scale is (or what it’ll be 4 weeks from now). And the medical staff acknowledged that they have clients before coming from a similar place.

I’m doing a lot in this journey to let connection and care in, to practice where and how I can be vulnerable, rather than staying perpetually turtled up in the psychic armor I so often try to wear.

Yesterday was an fascinating reminder that sometimes a little bit of protection is the perfect dose of self-care: something that allowed me to face an unfamiliar and somewhat triggering circumstance for the purpose of starting this detox movement. In other words: allowing myself the armoring movement around the little thing (my distaste for the culture’s weight loss obsession) gave me the space to remain open to the BIG thing (the HCG journey and the larger detox exploration).

That’s a tradeoff I’m entirely at peace with.

* Because as I’ve observed before, to not want to be skinny is pretty damned inconceivable.

I am a rock. I am an island.

Letting Go of the Steering Wheel

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head3 Comments

One of the things that intrigues me about the HCG protocol I’m about to start is the fact that HCG is a hormone created in a woman’s body when she’s pregnant.

(Nota bene: nothing of what I say next is grounded in medical knowledge, nor is it intended to claim medical knowledge or scientific accuracy. I’m dancing with metaphors here.)

I’m having a hard time putting it precisely into words, but there’s a resonance for me both in the imagined process of a mother’s body producing HCG as part of the protection and nurturance being created for the fetus, and also in the image of the fetus being nurtured and cared for during gestation.

I see myself and this detox journey on both sides of this coin. Certainly a big piece of the journey is to learn to care for myself in different — one might even say “more mature” — ways. To be a stronger mother to myself, in a manner of speaking. (I’m bookmarking that side of the coin for another day.)

Another area of practice and growth for me — which is what’s noodling around my brain tonight — is around receiving support and nurturance, and maybe rewiring some of my old patterns around that.

Let me own this up front: I am not so good at receiving help, support, love or affection. I don’t need to do the detailed forensic autopsy on why that’s so. Take a sensitive girl child, raise her in a patriarchal system with an average life’s share of bumps and bruises and into-every-life-a-little-rain-must-fall, add a dash of intelligence and ambition and you might get someone who decides that her version of strength should be of the “I am Lobo. I hunt alone” variety.

I am a rock. I am an island.So, obviously, some of the sessions I have scheduled for this week’s trip have very precisely to do with the doctor’s consult around the HCG prescription, learning how to administer the injections, all that stuff. But the center I’m working with has a whole team assembled to help give me lots of other layers of support. Tips for grocery shopping and cooking, both within the immediate dietary restrictions of the HCG protocol and beyond it. Other sorts of bodywork and energy work. I’m even staying at the Center’s “guest house,” and the house manager (and/or other center staff) will be helping drive me around to my different sessions and appointments.

I know these folks. I absolutely trust them, and I know for certain that they are going to take good care of me.

And yet. My inner control freak is not entirely happy with the idea of letting go of the steering wheel, both literally and figuratively. And the fact that I am so strongly feeling the limitations of my capacity to receive and to accept — even in something as simple as accepting car rides instead of taking care of myself through a rental car — well, that’s as clear a sign as any  as to why it’s a good thing for me to try and  unwind some of these old habits around false independence and isolation.

Time to try letting the care in.

———-

Image credit: http://www.pixton.com/schools/embed/uneyvcdq

The Fine Line Between Practice and Pressure

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head4 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I saw a sudden flurry of Facebook activity talking about the “40 bags in 40 days” Lenten challenge. Even though I’ve not been aware of the movement till now, I guess it’s been going on for a couple years or so?*

Anyhow, the challenge is concisely summarized over at White House Black Shutters:

A forty day period in the spring (coinciding with the 40 days of Lent) where you focus on cleaning one area per day. In this one area you challenge yourself to declutter, simplify, decrapify, and get rid of things you don’t need. The goal is one bag a day but you can have more or less.

The 2014 challenge officially goes from Wednesday, March 5th to Saturday, April 19th. Sundays are your day off.

Even though this tradition seems to have started among Christian bloggers, the discussions I saw this year included individuals of other faith traditions also taking up the idea as a way to bring inspiration and structure to a spring cleaning/decluttering effort.

I can absolutely see the appeal, and I gave the idea a long think for myself. After all, I’m betting we still have 40 or 50 boxes left to unpack,** and a lot of the unpacking process is about sorting through all the clutter I didn’t get rid of in Philadelphia and determining what’s going straight from a moving box to the Goodwill pile.

But ultimately, I opted out of the 40 bags/40 days challenge for 2014.

I have a well-developed skill of setting high bars for myself. I can take just about any structure that is meant to help in goal-setting and supporting regular practice of a thing — meditation, exercise, decluttering, what-have-you — and I will use it as a club to beat myself with when I inevitably fall short. ‘Cos I’m human, and sooner or later I’m gonna miss a day’s practice. But I’m not yet all that good at forgiving my human foibles, dusting off the day’s “failure,” and getting back into the practice tomorrow.

So it just didn’t sense like I had the internal capacity this year to be kind to myself within a set structure like the “40 bags” challenge. I’ll be curious to see if I’m in a different place when Lent and spring roll around in 2015.

Till then, I’m doing what I am able to do within the boundaries of my limitations. Work weeks are tougher for me to do any unpacking/decluttering, but I’m building better Monday-Friday habits than I had in Philly about simple things like washing the dishes, putting my clothes away (or in the hamper) rather than leaving them on the bathroom floor, and making the bed.*** And then, each weekend day, I try to get at least one more box unpacked.

At some level, these are very much like goals for a daily practice, but there’s just enough softness and looseness around them that I’m better able to let go any sense of “failure” if there’s a weekend where I don’t unpack any boxes, and instead of immobilizing myself in the beat-up, I just get back to it next weekend and keep chipping away.

In my system, there can be something of a razor’s edge between “practice” and “pressure,” but I seem to be managing to keep myself on the right side of that fine, fine line.

* Considering that last year at Lenten time, I was finishing one job, starting another, and doing phase one of the “3 moves, 2 houses and 1 apartment in 6 months” relocation odyssey, I think I can be forgiven for my ignorance of this tradition.

** Small boxes (file box size, for the most part), so it’s slightly less terrifying than it sounds. Slightly.

*** Yes, the fact that these are victories says a lot about the dire straights we lived in back in Philly.

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.

———-

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…