I Won't Do That

I find it easy to eat my way through any situation. Mildly depressed:
Time for food. Celebrating: Time for food. Sick: Let's eat! Tired:
Just a nightcap.

But the one time I find I simply can't eat is when I'm crying or on
the verge of tears. I've done it before, but there's something about
that kind of multitasking that clashes in my brain. Perhaps it's a
sense of pathos derived from the desperation that comes from a
complete lack of control -- when I've lost control of my emotions,
losing control of my consumption drives me over the edge of reason.
Disembodied, I can see myself as the fat girl crying as she stuffs her
face, chomping through gasps of breath while the tears roll down her
cheeks, and I feel so pathetic that whatever was bothering me in the
first place just gets that much worse.

So whenever I'm crying, I don't eat.

This is why I lost weight when my heart was broken in summer of 2003.

Five and a half years later, and I'm staring at my unopened yogurt.
Maybe I'll give it another try in an hour.

Transformation

I woke up this morning feeling gross after consuming half a serving of chocolate chip cookie dough pancakes at my hometown diner last night. The pancakes were delicious, don't get me wrong. They were simply highly unnecessary, and horribly bad for me in every way.

Earlier I'd eaten delicious, relatively healthy hibachi while dining out with an old friend. Even though my meal was simply rice and vegetables, I ate until nothing remained on my plate, though I'd reached fullness well earlier on.

I've been going through a cycle during the last few months--well, years, actually: I'll eat myself to oblivion, get disgusted, and swear that I'm turning a new leaf. I'll follow Weight Watchers for a week, maybe two, get more exercise, lose a few pounds, and feel like I'm on my way towards permanent control over how I consume. Then I'll waver; I'll go overboard with free donut holes at the office, or eat the entire pot of pasta when I meant to have leftovers. I'll gain weight, feel disgusted with myself, and the cycle starts all over again.

Even my vegetarianism has wavered lately. It's never been about not eating cute, fuzzy animals to me. It's been about protesting inefficient land use for meat when plant-based foods feed so many more people using far fewer resources. I also prefer to place restrictions on myself in my own personal Kashrut: Though I am top of the food chain, I also have consciousness, and this consciousness leads me to believe that I do not, in spite of my superior intellect, have the right to run about Earth eating up whatever strikes my fancy. Since eating is the ultimate form of conquest (eating something turns that thing into more of you), I am not presuming to be lord over all living things. This is something that makes sense to me intellectually, and, I feel, is healthily humbling. But lately I want fish. I occasionally eat a piece of shrimp or two out of my partner's dish. And then I feel disgusted for something entirely different -- not just that I can't control how much I eat, but that I can't even control the kinds of things I eat when it really, seriously matters to me.

(Also, is eating more vegetable-based food than I need really an efficient way to protest grossly unequal food provision? Grabbing far more than my one body-machine needs?)

It occurs to me this morning that I really do need to transform the status quo -- it was more than a cute superheroine/blog name. The times in which I am in control of my consumption, in which food does not control me, and my body moves into a comfortable state, have been when I was either exceedingly happy (e.g. in 2006 when I had just moved into an amazing job and an amazing apartment and knew what I had and what I needed beyond what was on my dinner plate) or exceedingly sad (e.g. following a horrific breakup, after which I basically only ate dinner every day for a whole summer). Status quo is different.

Status quo is when I am not particularly happy but not particularly sad. They're the long, in-between stretches that I am old enough to realize will probably be the norm for life. A person can't maintain mania or depression for the long haul -- nor should they. Status quo for me is eating until there is nothing left to eat. It is eating until I feel a fullness that imitates the fulfillment that I know, intellectually, is the real thing I'm craving.

I still realize that I am not a huge woman. I realize that people have much bigger difficulties with food than I do. But that does not change the fact that, in this national moment of change, I crave my own. I want my status quo to be stability, even in the face of ennui. I want to find a way to separate myself from food so that, while it necessarily remains an important part of my life, it is not the starring role in every blessed performance of my normal, daily life.

There has to be a way, but right now I can't seem to see it. And in the meantime, I'm sick and tired of oblivion. I miss clarity, but keep forcing it down with excess.

Getting Active

Saturday night was my local contradancing group's annual Fall Fling, and I decided to go this year for the full five hours of dancing (from 4 to 6 for experienced dancers, and from 8 to 11 for all levels). I popped two Aleve, pulled on my knee brace and a tattered skirt*, and gave it a whirl.

After all that whirling, I am aching in muscles I didn't even know I had. My dear partner, who has better knowledge of human physiology, indulged me by naming each muscle or muscle group when I pointed to a spot that hurt.

I had a very strange reaction the actual night of the fling. After feeling like I hadn't really pushed myself to the limit, and actually being somewhat disappointed in myself for that, I boarded the subway and immediately fell into what felt like a giant, full-on, rushingflu. My throat was aggressively sore, my body ached and felt like it weighed a ton, my head hurt, and my steps dragged. I almost fell asleep walking home. I collapsed into a restless sleep that did not feel satisfying even by noon the next day, which was when I finally hauled my aching body out of bed.

I'm not sure what caused this, but it certainly can't hurt that this was the first extended exercise I've done in months. Possibly even a year, since it's been exactly a year since I hiked Breakneck Ridge with some friends and came to the realization that I was truly an adult (if being an adult means not being able to just up and do physically challenging things without adequate preparation). That also corresponded to my knee problem showing up, so I guess happy one year of knee pain, mazal tov to me. I really want to change this, because I know that one of the things I loved best about myself two years and thirty pounds ago was the feeling of strength, agility, and readiness that came with being physically fit. I was working out at the gym at least three times a week, walking to and from work each day, doing yoga 2 to 4 times a week, jogging a few times a week, and contradancing every few weeks or so.

Honestly, no wonder I dropped nearly forty pounds. That's a shit ton** of exercise.

I want to get back to that place of feeling fit and comfortable and powerful, but I just don't see myself going back to a gym regimen, and until my knee recovers I don't think I'll be jogging much until I have less weight pounding on it with every other step. I went jogging recently, and while it felt good to get that kind of movement again, my convalescing knee relapsed into popping and pain immediately afterwards. The deal is, I want to be able to set and keep a goal of an exercise regimen that works for me as my body is right now, and that will ease me into an active life again without falling into the kind of near-coma I experienced on Saturday night.

So, here is my current plan for Easing Into Activity Without Breaking My Back/Bank, written up as a weekly regimen, and measured in terms of Weight Watchers activity points.***

Swimming, slow - 1 hour: 4
Morris dancing, 1 hour: 4
Walking during lunch 5 days per week, 40 minutes, leisurely pace: 10
Contradancing, 2 hours: 8
Brisk walks to the subway, 5 times per week: 5

This would put me at 31 activity points per week, and Weight Watchers advises at least 28 per week. On weeks that I do not contradance, I will have to make up for it in other ways. I would also like to start going to yoga on Fridays, since after 6 months of no yoga at all I'm
feeling a loss of flexibility and balance. 1 hour of yoga nets 3 activity points.

The things that I will need to succeed on this:

Buddies for swimming: Check. Except that we have to figure out a good day of the week for us to go, which is looking like Mondays, but which won't start until after Thanksgiving.
Morris dancing: I'm hoping that we'll start running dances more regularly here so I can get the most out of those nights.
Walking during lunch: Must self-motivate. Especially during winter, this could get difficult. But even 40 minutes of leisurely walking nets me 2 APs, and also gets me the benefit of removing ass from chair and eyes from screen.
Contradancing: Wish it wasn't so expensive, but I suppose $14 for two hours of cardio isn't so bad.
Brisk walks to/from subway: Sometimes I get a ride one or both ways, so possibly could be variable depending on the day. I should probably start asking myself to walk regardless of the hour or the state of my knee.

If I can keep this up for a month, I can't imagine things won't begin to change. And of course, the longer I do this, and if I start losing weight, I will have to adjust my regimen accordingly. But for now, this seems like something I can do.

Moving forward.

* Said tattered skirt is no longer in one piece following an unfortunate attempt at standing up while standing on the hem.
** Shit ton is the colloquial standard equivalent of four metric tonnes. Or just a lot of something.
*** This may not be the most scientific way to measure how much exercise I'm getting, but I do appreciate that Weight Watchers takes into account your current weight in determining how much exercise will result in a certain level of benefit.

11/4/08

On Monday night I sang "If I Had a Hammer" with Peter Yarrow at a phone bank in Midtown.

On Tuesday night I reveled and raved with thousands of other proud Americans in Times Square.

On Wednesday night I listened to the Decemberists play "Sons and Daughters" at Terminal 5, and realized for the first time that our generation finally has a chance at redemption -- we no longer have to be the 9/11 Generation, or the George W. Bush Generation.

We can be Generation Obama.

It's Thursday night. I'm at my desk in Astoria, Queens. My country has changed. The world has changed.

And I cannot stop smiling.

Coincidence?

While editing a passage about rivers, I noticed a strange correlation between seasons and river structure.

Spring moves through summer into fall.

Some rivers start with a spring and move into a fall.

This hippie-dippy realization brought to you by my incessant worry about whether terms are properly introduced before use (I was concerned that "fall" had not yet been defined, when in this case they were talking about the season, not a river structure. And quite obviously, I might add.)

Grateful am I

I've had an interesting opportunity arise recently, one that is both a
long shot and a sure bet at the same time. I've gone for it with
gusto, and in the process shared my plans with several friends who are
more religious than I, in different religious faiths. A few of them
offered to pray for me.

I haven't regularly prayed in a long time, but when people offer to do
it for me I remember how important it actually is in many ways beyond
the obvious method of having a direct dialog with G-d, which, because
I do not have a strongly formed idea of who G-d is, can be a bit
difficult for me to build into my life in a meaningful way.

At Yom Kippur services, the rabbi in residence talked about the
morning prayer we are meant to say immediately upon waking up, which
starts with "modeh ani" ("modah ani" for women), which translates
directly to "Grateful am I." He noted that it's not "I am grateful,"
not putting yourself first as the first word you utter with the start
of a new day, but by starting the day with an expression of pure
gratitude through that first word. I could go into a lengthy
discussion of semiotics here, but that would probably just be
redundant.

Though I don't have much of a prayer life, I think that having that
kind of tradition, starting each day with gratitude for simply having
that day, can only be a good thing regardless of one's level of
religious observance. I typically don't have time to meditate in the
morning as I'd like, or stretch, or do yoga, or even sometimes pack a
lunch or shower (I'm not too proud to admit that last one). But if I
can take a few seconds after floating--or jarring, as the case may
be--into consciousness to say those few words of recognition that each
day is something worth being thankful to have...well, I can't see
anything but positives in favor of that.

Generational Tones

The Baby Boomers are known for some of the slang to come out of their youth, such as "groovy," "far out," and "dig it."

Our generation will be known for "squee."

And maybe "omg."

The sad truth is, our children will think we are even more hopelessly lame than *we* think we are.