Category: The Voices in My Head

A Swing and a Miss

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

cute-marshmallows-unohana-the-fanpop-user-35316539-500-313In my mind, I’ve been much less active on JALC than is actually the case. I’ve done 4 posts in the last 7 days — which, although less frequent than I’d wish for under ideal circumstances, is perfectly respectful for the kind of bananas week I’ve had…

And the only reason I’m taking about any of this is to take note of the strong internal pattern I still have around score-keeping. Figuring out what the standard is, constantly calculating to see if I’m measuring up or, instead, if I am failing. Because part of my system still clings to the limiting belief that to fail is a deeply catastrophic thing to do.

This is all very front of mind because earlier today, everyone in my company had to take the marshmallow test. Not, not this marshmallow test, this one:

The experience definitely got my mental wheels turning about my fear of failure and the ways I let that suppress me and hold me back.

I’m certainly not alone in this challenge.  Since I follow Edutopia on Twitter, I remembered seeing this article last summer:

There is a major disconnect between schools and the real world on the notion of failure. School teaches us there is only one answer for every problem. And if we don’t get it, we are a failure. This dissuades students from trying — they fear failure. We need to teach students how to make friends with failure. . . . Schools have this failure-thing, the F-word, all wrong. They focus on getting the answer, but it is the questions and the mistakes that are actually more instructive. It’s in these spaces where we learn. . . . Education’s focus on the right answer and the grades has made students afraid to ask questions. Deborah Stipek, Dean of Stanford’s School of Education, writes in Science that schools incubate the fear of failure, which causes stress and anxiety to perform, which do not enhance learning.

And when looking for the Edutopia post, I also found an article advising teachers “How to Help Kids Overcome Fear of Failure,” and this excerpt from a new book, Fail Fast, Fail Often:

[S]uccessful people take action as quickly as possible, even though they may perform badly. . . . Instead of trying to avoid making mistakes and failing, they actively seek opportunities where they can face the limits of their skills and knowledge so that they can learn quickly. They understand that feeling afraid or underprepared is a sign of being in the space for optimal growth and is all the more reason to press ahead. In contrast, when unsuccessful people feel unprepared or afraid, they interpret it as a sign that it is time to stop, readdress their plans, question their motives, or spend more time preparing and planning.

So now I have a new book on my to-read list, and a line of internal questioning. Because for all the ways my fear of failure jams me up a lot of the time, it is also true that in some realms, I have a strong experimenter on board. I wouldn’t be doing my consciousness study, or my detox journey, or even the blogging, if I didn’t have that aspect to me.

In some things I can summon the freedom of exploration and expansion, and in some things I haven’t yet made that leap. Now the process is to try and shift more of the latter group into the former.

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Image credit: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/unohana-the-fanpop-user/images/35316539/title/cute-photo

My Fair Lady

On By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the Culture, Practicing in the Heart, Spirituality, The Voices in My Head, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking a bit about fairness the past few days, and the ways I value and desire a sense of fairness in things. My thoughts are a little scattered tonight, so I may just rocket through a few different angles on the topic, rather than pretending I have a cohesive essay to share.

standardizedanimalsOne of the most common adages that comes to my mind when I invoke the concept of fairness is that old saying: “Life isn’t fair!” And there are times that I do remind myself of that fact. Because sometimes my wishing for fairness does come from the a child’s magical-thinking place, where I’m wanting a “big daddy in the sky” sort of God to pave the way for me to have an easeful and trouble-free life.

So when I’m invoking the term fairness as code for “privilege,” it is something that deserves to have a question mark placed in there, with the reminder that fairness in one’s external circumstances is never guaranteed. And also, for whatever mishap might have me wishing life were more fair advantageous, the fact remains that I have received many gifts from life for which I ought to be grateful.

———-

One of the things we talk about at work is the way that “fair” does not necessarily mean “equal.” Since we spend some portion of our time working to serve students with learning differences or other special needs, it is likely unsurprising that we would resonate to the insights of Dr. Richard Curwin in this recent(ish) Edutopia post:

But what is fair? Many define it as treating everyone the same, but I would argue that doing so is the most unfair way to treat students. Students are not the same. They have different motivations for their choices, different needs, different causes for misbehavior and different goals. I think this is good, because wouldn’t the world be very boring if we were all the same?

The cartoon above signals some of this, as does a quote I have up on my cubicle wall:

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.*

———-

The one place where I am most deeply studying fairness is the depth of my desire for people to emulate fairness in our dealings with each other. I know I am driven crazy by those petty sorts of individual inequities that arise during interactions — people changing the rules on each other, situations where I might hold myself to a looser standard of behavior than I ask of those around me (or vice versa). And then, more deeply, there is the heartbreaking injustice of systemic unfairness wrapped up in cultural ills and prejudices.

It is with these areas of human unfairness — whether on a personal or a systemic level — that the adage “life isn’t fair” rings hollow to me. Like it’s just a cop-out to spare ourselves the effort of practicing deeper levels of kindness and compassion with how we see each other and hold each other in regard.

* If you were to google this, most sources would cite this quote to Einstein, but that’s probably an apocryphal attribution.

———-

Image credit: http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/what-can-we-learn-from-honduruss.html

A Culture of Shame

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

What are all these military people going to do when they lose their jobs? And then I thought, well, hang on: we’ve got all these service industries now, things like psychotherapy, and the military approach to psychotherapy would really be kind of perfect. Really efficient and fast! You know, “Listen, you are nothing. You are a worm. And if you don’t get that mother complex solved by 0400 hours, you are dead meat!”

~~ Laurie Anderson, The Mysterious “J”

Gunnery seargent hartmannWhen I was writing about Fat Acceptance/HAES a couple nights ago and had to stop midstream, as it were, I was very aware that I hadn’t really said everything about fat shaming that I would want to. I mentioned the ways that fat shaming carries negative health effects for the target of such stigma, but I didn’t really unpack the general insanity of fat shaming. Or, to be more precise, the bananas nature of how fat shaming is usually justified as a means of informing/inspiring some poor fattie into losing weight and getting healthier.

Of course, those two concepts don’t even really go together, because weight /= health, but I’m using that phrasing to indicate the double level of bananas that’s going on here. First is the delusion that weight and health are equated, but even if that particular myth were true, I still trip over the insanity of the expectation that shaming and stigmatizing someone will inspire them to make positive change in their life.

Now, just in case you’re silly enough to think that engaging in fat-shaming will inspire some one to get on the healthy-eating-and-exercise train, let me give you a quick hit to a study from back in 2007:

We have seen over the years that it does not work to make people feel worse about their bodies. The data are striking — talking about weight, worrying too much about diet, focusing on it increases risk not only of eating disorders, but also of being overweight.

So, no: shaming not effective. (As Kate Harding once said: Special Delivery from the Duh Truck.)

One more thing: considering how steeped our culture is in anti-fat rhetoric, does a fat-shamer really think that his or her observation of my fatness is something that’s going to be news to me — or to any fat person?

So I’ll admit: considering that these two notions — 1)  fat people already know they’re fat; 2)  shaming doesn’t do anything to build positive choices, but instead just beats someone down — are so very common sense indeed, I’ve pretty much assumed that anyone who does indulge in fat shaming (no matter how prettily it’s couched in concern trolling language), is just kinda being an asshole.

Fat Heffalump pretty fully eviscerated that particular behavior pattern a few months ago when she pointed out that You’re not the First to Tell a Fat Person…  Taking direct aim at concern trolling and claims that “I’m just worried for your health!” she has this to say:

No you’re not.  If you were, you would be standing beside me fighting fat stigma and advocating for equitable health treatment for all.  You don’t give a damn about the health and wellbeing of fat people.  You don’t care that fat people can’t get treatment for everything from the common cold through to cancer because they are all blamed on their fatness and they’re just given a diet, not actual treatment.  You don’t care that the public vilification of fat people causes depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.  You don’t care that fat people are dying because they are so shamed by the medical profession that they can’t bring themselves to go back to the doctor when they are ill.  Claiming you care about our wellbeing is a lie.

And the inimitable Regan at Dances with Fat more recently pointed out that Being a Jerk is Not Actually Brave:

We are aware that you think “Fat bad, thin good, shame the fatties grunt grunt grunt”. We can hear this message  386,170 times every year.  I’ve been fat for 17 years, which means I’ve heard it around 6,564,890 times.  How can you possibly think that hearing it 6,564,891 times is going to improve my life?   Being 6,564,891 does not make you special or brave, it makes you one more doody in a big ole pile of poo.  It is an act of hubris that is almost beyond understanding to not only be a bully, but to ask for credit by claiming that your bullying is an act of bravery. […]

Or you could swim against the stream and treat fat people like the intelligent human beings we are- not like confused misguided sheep who need your strong guidance – and encourage others to do the same.  Let there be a fat person who only hears 386,169 messages about their body because you refused to pile on the shame and body hate.  That’s brave.

But, if I can come down off my own high horse for a moment, it’s worth mentioning that — however common sense it may feel to me that shaming has no positive effect on a person or situation — the fact remains that we do a lot of shaming in this culture.

And not just about fatness. Almost any aspect of life that comes up for judgement and it deemed to “need changing” comes up for that Nike drill sergeant (“Just do it!”) so beautifully satirized by Laurie Anderson, above. And maybe I’m right, sitting in my own little superiority-tower: maybe we’re all just assholes.

Or maybe there’s some deeper delusion we’re all trapped in, to honestly halfway think that the way to change a life’s path is to try and block off the “undesirable” option with a pile of shit and shame.

Something worth further examination.

———-

Image credit: http://rcoll-rorscharch.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-worst-kinds-of-fathers.html

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

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.

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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

Red-browed Amazonian parrot

Polly Wants A Cracker

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

On the first day of my HCG journey, I had a guide session and my coach asked me if I was having any fears or concerns going into the experience. And I told her: “I understand how the shots help the body detox and help tamp down your hunger so you can reset your dietary habits away from all the sugar and processed stuff. But I’m a little worried because for me, eating all the fat and sugar has never really been about physical hunger.”

I’ve been having some trial and error moments throughout the week, but for the most part I’ve been successful in figuring out how to pack lunch, snacks and supplements to get me through the work day and still adhere to the dietary structure of the HCG protocol.

But yesterday felt a bit like running the culinary gauntlet.

Red-browed Amazonian parrotIn my experience, every office has its own food culture. Where I work now, there’s a stack of take out menus at the front desk: every day someone picks a place and folks make a group lunch order there. It’s a pretty expensive way to eat lunch, so I only ever did it once or twice a week. But we have a standing Wednesday lunchtime meeting, so, if nothing else, Wednesday was always my day to join the group order.

But yesterday — the first Wednesday in my HCG experiment — I didn’t. And as I walked to my lunchtime meeting, I saw folks at the lunch table with their french fries and onion rings, and then I sat down at the meeting table next to someone who’d ordered pizza for himself.

And then later in the afternoon, once all the lunchtime stuff was done, someone decided to fire up the company popcorn machine to make a few batches.*

Man, was I crabby by the end of the work day.

To give credit where credit is due: the HCG held so that throughout yesterday I was absolutely feeling physically satisfied with the lean protein, vegetable and fruit regimen I’m building my meals out of.

Physical satiation levels were fine.

It was the emotional hook that rocked me back on my heels. The ways I participate in office food culture to feel like part of the team when I so often feel alienated and out-of-place in my office. The ways I use salty or sweet snacks to give myself a treat in the middle or at the end of a stressful work day.

It was those patterns that were harder to hold up against.

———-

And at one level, these are absolutely valid ways for food culture to function. Food can and should be a tool for people to bond and celebrate. My family has a whole culinary tradition of dishes for Christmas and Christmas Eve that I treasure dearly. And food can also be a source of comfort.

For me, the tricky part has been in how quickly “comfort” or “bonding” food moments can slip into the land of eating to numb out my feelings and suppress my awareness of life’s and Spirit’s energies. So the scoop of ice cream becomes the full pint, or the serving of mac & cheese becomes the whole box, and the move inevitably goes towards food instead of the myriad other self-soothing and self-caring mechanisms I could choose. Almost every time.

So being separate from the lunch order intensified my usual sense of office alienation, which only made my desire to be eating a BLT club with fries all the stronger. And it was a stressful day, so the popcorn was absolutely emotionally tempting.

———-

When all is said and done, I gutted through it and stayed on course. I mentally concocted an HCG-approved snack I would have after choir practice if I was still craving a salty treat. And by that time of night, I was so mentally entertained by having been singing again that I got home and didn’t even feel the craving for that treat.

So we live to crave another day.

I know ultimately a key way to unwind this emotional hook around eating will be to look more closely at the feelings I’m trying to smother with the food. I’m still skirting around mustering the courage to do that.

Yesterday was shocking enough just to really see how strong my emotional hook is to fat, sugar, and salt. That’s enough world-rocking insight for one day.

* Yes, the company has a popcorn machine. No, I don’t know why.

———-

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Psittaciformes_by_population

Infrared sauna

Sweat it Out

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, The Subtle Body, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

“I come from a northern people.”

I’ve said this a few times in the last couple of days. And it’s true — not just looking through the Boston/New England lens, but also taking the longer ancestral view. Half Scots, half Lithuanian. Not quite so far north that my great-great-ancestors were riding reindeer to school, but close enough.

And why has this been a relevant declaration for me to make? Because one of the techniques often used to help address the body discomfort that sometimes arises during a detox is to sweat it out. Which means I’ve been spending a little bit of sauna time in past few days.

Infrared saunaI know that the sauna experience is often thought of as a pleasurable one, maybe even luxurious. It’s never really operated that way for me. Heat hasn’t ever really been my thing — hot weather, hot tubs, hot showers, saunas — all of then pretty low down my list of personal preferences. After all: I come from northern people.

———-

I remember once Mr. Mezzo and I were on a beach resort vacation together. Our first evening after arriving, we enjoyed the sunset together holding hands and sipping drinks across the Moroccan tile divider between the hot tub (where he was) and the regular pool (where I was). Ever since then, we’ve had a way of joking about the differences in our internal climates. He’s a hot water duck, while I’m a cold water one.

This detail actually puts a bit of a question mark in my claim that my discomfort with heat is part if my DNA. ‘Cos Mr. Mezzo is half-Lithuanian, half-Irish. Not a whole lot of difference in the ancestral geography, but quite a significant one in personal climate. Kinda makes me want to run a couple cheek swabs through a DNA test to see what else is going on in our ancestral trees.

———-

Anyhow, question marks or no, I’ve referenced my ancestry a lot as I’ve stepped into the sauna movement this weekend. I’ve had a strong enough “no” around them in the past that it felt like I was stretching beyond my comfort zone — in a good way, but a stretch nonetheless — even to be stepping into one. So I think calling out my ancestry was an easy way to give myself permission to cut a session short if I needed to.

So far, there hasn’t been the need. I still don’t think I’m the world’s number one fan of the experience of sweating while I’m in the middle of it.* But I do know the experience has helped ease some of the headaches and body pains I’ve been experiencing — so even if I don’t feel all rainbows and joyous inside the sauna, I’m definitely feeling good because of it.

And my biggest fear about it? The one that has nothing whatsoever to do with my northern lineage? The fear of how excruciating it would be to be trapped in a small, hot box with nothing to entertain myself but the chorus of poisonous inner voices that so often run my mind?

Not the problem I had feared it would be. The voices weren’t really running all that much today.

That’s supposedly one of the detox benefits of the HCG journey, and I’m encouraged to see this small sign that this sort of internal silence might actually be kind of possible.

I am definitely curious to see if that particular trend continues. Because if it does, that would be huge in bringing my life forward.

* I’m sure there’s all kinds of body hatred wrapped up in my distaste for a natural process like sweating. However, tonight is not the time to unwind that particular piece of knottiness.

———-

Image credit: http://www.pdcspaworld.com/Saunas-Infrared.htm

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.

Fuel gauge on empty

Running on Empty

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Meta-Blogging, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

Fuel gauge on empty(Just to continue the car metaphors from yesterday, plus bonus points for the 70’s rock call-out.)

When I came back to JALC, I was very deliberate in not setting myself an explicit “I’m going to post every day!” kind of goal. It’s another reflection of that practice/pressure dichotomy: even if, in my heart of hearts, I was kind of hoping I could post every day (or, at least, almost every day), I didn’t want to put that out there as a super-strong goal, for fear of the beat-up I’d inflict on myself when life happened and I missed a day or two.

Now, I’m not entirely missing out on posting today, but this is definitely one in the “quick hit” variety.

‘Cos life, it certainly is happening.

I head out to the center tomorrow afternoon. I am excited. I am nervous. I have a fair piece of packing, travel logistics and generally getting my sh!t together to accomplish tonight. And in the midst of all of that, I’m not really having two coherent or insightful thoughts to string together into a more substantive post.

So: I’m off to get myself ready for travel.

Not even time left over for another castor oil pack. (Which, for the record, have gotten easier to do after the first couple tries. Just like I predicted. *grin*)

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Image credit: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=8422