I am stuck in one of those binge-eating/overeating cycles that makes me crazy but that I feel helpless to stop.
Every day, I make resolutions to stop binging – to do ½ hour of exercise – and every day I fail. Or maybe I don’t fail because I just don’t try. I forfeit rather than get off the bench and play.
I hate this feeling of being out of control, knowing that looming ahead is massive weight gain, growing out of my clothes, feeling fat and ugly. Some of my jeans that i was so ecstatic to start wearing again a few months ago are growing uncomfortably tight and hard to fasten.
But when I reach that crucial moment when I’m feeling compelled to eat and eat NOW, equivocating about whether to eat, what to eat and how much, I shush that voice of reason that whispers, You don’t want to do this. You’re not hungry. Eating this just means feeding your fat.
Then I start eating and eating and eating. Feeling that if I stop for an instant that panic is going to pull me under and drown me.
When I wake up in the morning, my first thought is, What can I eat? What do I have stashed around that has lots of sugar in it?
What’s eating me? Anxiety about my job performance, anxiety about possible layoffs and pay cuts next fiscal year, anxiety about possible departmental reorganizations and eliminations, anxiety about finances, anxiety about marital discord, about the things on my to-do list – taxes, etc. – that I really want to keep procrastinating on, anxiety about my clothes becoming tighter and regaining the weight I worked so hard to lose, anxiety about father’s illness(es), anxiety that my mother seems to be headed toward some sort of breakdown or dementia, anxiety about my own health problems – and how they’ll proliferate if I don’t lose the weight and start exercising and eating better, depression because of this endless string of dreary cold days limping toward spring.
And perhaps it’s all exacerbated by the depo provera shot I had 2 months ago to help slow the progression of the endometriosis. I’ve read Web page after Web page about the hormones fucking with people who have depression and anxiety.
This out-of-control eating and emotional baggage feels like the cloud that follows in Pigpen’s wake in the Charlie Brown cartoons – a grey mass trailing after me everywhere I go.
I want to be back in control of my eating. Feeling out of control is to wallow in shame, despair and self-loathing. I want to feel that I’m living with integrity and purpose, and to continually binge and overeat is antithetical to that. It erodes my fragile self respect to live in denial, to lie to myself about my eating, when deep down I *know* the truth.
I eat but try to pretend that I didn’t eat or that I didn’t eat AS MUCH as I did. I think: Maybe I’ll be able to slip under the radar and not gain weight this time. If I don’t step on the scale, then I don’t have to face up to my weight gain. I can pretend I’m staying the same size, clothing be damned.
Why is it so hard to get back on track when I swerve out of control? When I’m in control, I still get those urges to binge and overeat, but I quash them, knowing that to act on those urges is a downward spiral that makes me feel BAD about myself, and it’s so much harder to get back in control than it is to stay the course.
Perhaps what makes it difficult to regain control is the knowing that when I do, I must face the consequences. As long as I keep my head firmly buried in the boxes and bags, I don’t have to face up to my weight, acknowledge that I’m obese or feel compelled to do anything about it.
Sometimes I feel like such a loser to still be struggling with these same issues for nearly 40 years. Yes, nearly half a century now (it all sprang up around age 8-10). Despite therapy, medication, dozens of self-help books, a retreat with Geneen Roth, I still flounder and flail.
Deep sigh.
Posted on March 9th, 2010 by shihtzux2
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Watching Wanda’s new special, Ima be me. And she’s talking about how she’s named the fat roll on her tummy “Esther Roll” and how Esther rolled down the top of Wanda’s Spanx and flopped out during a Tonight Show interview. HILARIOUS. Wanda, the Queen can so relate!
The Sugar Queen’s own “Esther” has clawed down her Spanx and vaulted over the lycra wall to freedom a few times in public. Oh, yes, Esther has.
Leaving the Queen sitting there, going, “Oh, shit,” and furtively looking around to see if there are any witnesses watching in rapt fascination or barely concealed hilarity as the blubber comes unleashed. Then the Queen’s shuffling off to the Ladies’ in that head down, hurried pace that signals there is a very personal problem afoot, that shouts “don’t talk to me and get the fuck outa my way if you don’t wannna be wearing some of this shit.”
The other day the Queen mentioned to the husband that at some point she wanted to buy a bicycle, start taking bike rides again. And after he picks her up from work he’s all pumped about wanting to go to a store and look at bikes. Now, the Queen’s in a long-ish skirt, with Esther imprisoned not only by the Super-Maxi-Ultra-Titanium-Spanx, but for added reinforcement, control top pantyhose. And the Queen tries to tell the husband that now is not the optimum time for this fool’s errand, but he is pumped, he is determined, bless his heart, and wants to go RIGHT THIS MINUTE so she can “try on” some bikes to see what size she wants to buy - some other time.
So they go.
And it’s late in the day, and after walking across a parking lot the size of Texas, and through the vast megastore to the nether regions where the bikes are racked, the crotches of the Queen’s Spanx and the pantyhose are well into a southward migration that has left the Queen with the lower-body mobility and approximate gait of an Emperor Penguin.
The oblivious husband asks the Queen to pick a bike she likes. She points one out, and he pulls it off the rack and presents it to her. And, then, silly man, he asks her to sit on it - to throw a leg up and over–and straddle the damned thing.
Oh, she tried. She did. Straining, tottering dangerously on one leg while she tried to lift the other to the proper height and angle without revealing her naughties to all of fishing, automotive and paint. But the Queen could only get that right leg hiked about a foot up off the floor - nowhere near high enough to swing over or step over the bike. Which would’ve been FINE if she’d been wanting to ride one of those cute little “Hello Kitty” bikes with streamers, a little basket on the front and training wheels.
But hike her double-lycra encased hip and leg up over a 26-inch big-girl bike? Even one with the low-slung pubic-bone-bustin’ bar? No f’in way that was happening, girlfrien’.
And finally the Queen said, “I can’t. I can’t.” And backed away from the bike like it was a hissing cobra.
The husband, of course, still in lost in Clueless-Man-Land is standing there staring at her with that puzzled, dim-bulb look that men get when these problems unique to the wife - and a few cross-dressing relatives - come barreling right at them, and the man just has no frame of reference, no comprehension what could possibly be the matter.
And he’s saying, “Why not? Come on! Just get on it. Let’s see if it’s the right size.”
And the Queen’s saying, “No, I can’t.”
And he, like some Lance Armstrong/Barack Obama bicycle salesman is insisting Yes, she CAN.
Oh, no, she can’t!
And the Queen begins getting a little testy because she’s embarrassed by her undergarment malfunctions, and tries to explain her physical limitations as imposed by industrial-strength Spandex. “I CAN’T! I have a dress on, and pantyhose, and a Spanx - ”
“A WHAT?!!”
Of course, he says this loud enough for everyone in the store to hear, including the hard-of-hearing elderly couple that have been holding up the line at the pharmacy pick-up window for the past 3 1/2 years.
And now there’s another shopper wandering into the bicycle area, and the Queen is trying to keep her voice low while explaining to the clueless husband in general terms what a Spanx is and why it makes mounting a bicycle a physical impossibility at this particular time.
Eventually, the husband begins to see that the Queen won’t be mounting any trusty steed today, so he re-racks the bicycle in sullen-man what-the-hell-is-the-deal-with-women, anyway style, and they skulk away.
Despite this unfortunate incident, the Queen has noticed that when she wears said Spanx or Iron-Maiden pantyhose she no longer hears that loud Whoosk-whoosk noise when she walks! The thigh blubberage has receded somewhat, enough so that she is no longer self-conscious walking the halls at work, thinking that the noise from her thighs is like one of those warning beepers on large trucks operating in reverse.
Posted on October 14th, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
The Sugar Queen has been musing on the injustices of Life.
A teen-age nephew found out that he has cancer, has had a whirlwind of tests and surgery within a week’s time of discovering a suspicious lump, and faces who-knows-what from here.
At 17, his biggest worries body-wise should be bad skin, having the “right” hair, the embarrassment of popping boners at inopportune times and whether he’s depraved and abnormal because he pleasures himself frequently (more frequently than he suspects others do) - not disfiguring surgery; chemo or radiation and whether he’ll end up bald or sterile; not whether he’s going to live to graduate or to see his toddler brother reach the age that he is now.
He should be worrying about homecoming and football, keeping gas in his car, upcoming tests that he slacked off on studying for and papers that he doesn’t want to write, boring books that he has to read for English, and college applications - not whether he’s going to “pass” or “fail” blood tests, scans and biopsies, and whether he caught that lump in time to save his life.
He’s a pretty good kid, in an age when news reports are brimming with stories of kids who attack and kill each other with little provocation, who bully and torment their peers into suicide and into striking back with incomprehensible violence, create children they can’t support or take care of properly, party like there’re no consequences… and on and on.
It just makes the Queen sad. And grateful.
You think that you’re well aware of Life’s caprice - but every now and then it slaps you into real consciousness.
And you appreciate more your own good health and feel quite lucky that with all the abuse you’ve heaped on your own body in various ways - obesity being a significant one - over the more than four decades of your life that your body is still holding up pretty well, considering. And that isn’t fair either.
The Queen is…
weighing: 233 lbs.
listening to: “I got my mojo working” (Tina Turner); “Time to get a gun” (Miranda Lambert); “Breakin’ at the cracks” (Colbie Caillat)
Posted on September 29th, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: Uncategorized, self-esteem | 2 Comments »
I’ve been at the same weight - around 239-240 - for 2 weeks. I was willing to be patient the first week because of TOM fluctuations.
I stuck to my plan, have been exercising, but the scale isn’t budging. And I’m getting impatient.
GRRRR.
When I step on the scale and I’m disappointed, I get pissed. And I want to revenge-eat. I want to say, screw it, I didn’t lose weight after all that effort, then I might as well eat what I want.
That attitude IS SO WRONG.
I’ve stayed the course so far. I’m telling myself that going off the rails is just going to move my goal that much further way.
But it’s so hard to be patient and wait for my efforts to show up on the scale.
I know - I won’t lose it as quickly as I want to, the scale is a fickle fellow and not to be trusted, my clothes are fitting looser even if the scale isn’t moving, so that’s progress yadda yadda yadda
But I want this weight to come off!
Do you hear that, fat? The Queen commands you: Get off my ass. BE GONE. Now.
(pretty please???)
Posted on September 1st, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
no one knows the monumental battles that i fight with food when i’m alone. what a godawful struggle it is and how it drains me mentally and emotionally, how much it consumes of my mental and emotional life — what i ate, how many calories it was, what i’ll eat next and when, how many calories will that be and does that fit within my plan. what i’ll buy next and when and where, what i’ll cook next, where i’ll find a recipe or two or ten, what i weigh and is that more or less than the last time i weighed myself and by how much…
the donuts, candy, chips or cookies that are just snacks, just food to normal people to eat when they want a treat or are a bit hungry are crack-cocaine, meth or heroin to me. i crave them. i obsess about them.
i am obsessing about binge-eating right now. i don’t want anything in particular. just food and more food.
no, it’s not the food, really that i want. i want the feeling of that binge-trance that engulfs me during a binge. the rest of the world fades away, and all that exists is the motion of eating–putting it in my mouth, tasting, chewing, swallowing, reaching for more.
that calm, non-feeling trance state where all the anxiety, depression and boredom of my life cannot reach me. gone, all gone, as long as i keep eating and eating, and stay in that “zone.”
if this is what it’s like to be a drug addict, i so understand why addicts keep chasing the dragon, and why it’s so hard to break out of the cycle of addiction.
several years ago, after Carnie Wilson had her gastric bypass, i saw her on 20/20 or one of those news-zines talking about the 150-or so pounds she’d lost and how happy she was to be slim.
then they showed her home, and her enormous cookbook collection. hundreds of cookbooks, stashed all over her house.
and i recognized a kindred spirit. a sister sufferer, and i thought, oh, girl, that does not bode well for your keeping that weight off. the surgical restriction of your stomach may physically constrict the volume of your eating, but the obsession with food, the craving, remains inside you like a cancer.
i have flirted occasionally with the idea of lap-banding or other surgery when feeling depressed and desperate, but i have no major physical health problems - diabetes or heart disease, for example - that would qualify me for it other than the fact that i’m 100 pounds overweight. my health insurer wouldn’t pay for it because my life isn’t in immediate danger, and i certainly couldn’t afford to pay cash.
but i know, deep down, that unless they surgically lap-band or bypass those areas of my mind and soul that crave that binge-trance, the surgery would be only a temporary solution. like the many diets i’ve gone on, only to regain everything i’ve lost.
writing (again) about this urge to binge-eat has diminished the urge somewhat. it’s lost some of its urgency and driving power.
i’ve crossed to the other side now, but i still feel vulnerable and fragile. the urge will return. it always does.
until i find ways to sedate that screaming, clattering demon that don’t involve thousands of calories of salt, fat and sugar, i will continue to struggle.
© 2009 All Rights Reserved
Posted on August 30th, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
This just in:
The Queen is down to a single chin! Hip Hooray!
That embarrassing double chin that was wobbling like a turkey’s wattle has disappeared. Gone! I look so much younger. Less tired and saggy.
There seems to be a little less junk in the trunk too, although it’s hard to crane my neck around that far to get a good look. The husband has made several comments to that effect; he is a self-proclaimed “ass man,” so he devotes a fair amount of time to observing and … well, let’s leave it at that.
Funny how I always lose weight off my ass first, so my paunchy gut looks all the paunchier until the weight begins to drop off up in front too. Still got that saggin’ apron of tummy fat and loose skin that I have to move out of the way in order to shave the tops of my legs, though. And still have those underarm flaps, too, that make me look like Batwoman. Must start hitting the triceps machines at the gym.
Can’t wait to reduce The Girls from the 40s to the high 30s. I miss having sexy 38-ish cleavage. Yes, I’ll admit, I always loved to show off The Girls when we were younger and of normal weight. I miss my beautiful Girls.
When I’m fat, I feel like The Girls are flabby, ridiculously huge and just unsexy. Yuck. Look like somebody’s big mama-cow. There is such a thing as too much, Dolly dear.
Case in point: With a blond wig, fake nails and the right tacky Dominatrix-cum-island-ho wardrobe, The Girls and I could be stunt triplets for Dog the Bounty Hunter’s wife and her big, bobbin’ unholstered buzooms.
The Girls are clamoring to go shopping for some sexy new bras and low-cut tops when they reduce to a manageable size–that is, a size commonly carried by Victoria’s and other underwear merchants. Yesterday The Girls were quite proud to wear one of our prettier 42D bras that they hadn’t been able to squeeze into for many months without embarrassing overflow.
Of course, after two major weight gains and losses The Girls are riven with stretch marks and are swinging in loose skin like they’re in grocery sacks, so they’ll never regain their former glory without surgical intervention.
But just having two reasonable sized breasts - instead of these two enormous shelves jutting out in front ahead of me everywhere I go - will be divine. I could live peacefully with the extra tummy skin/paunch (that only a tummy-tuck would rectify, and which I could never afford) hanging out on the porch below if I had attractive decolletage upstairs again.
Then it’s adios, plain white grandma-esque boulder-holders with four or five tow hooks and “comfort straps.”
A few evenings ago, I tried to break into a jog while walking my Yorkie because he was wanting so badly to run, but without an industrial-strength sports bra to constrain the wildly flapping and flailing boobage, it became clear after a few yards that running at this size was absolutely ridiculous … and potentially dangerous to innocent bystanders (who just might piss themselves laughing, then slip and bust a hip).
Mrs. Dog the Bounty Hunter may break out in a jog and go bouncin’ and jouncin’ after those bad guys; me and The Girls, we’ll be strollin’ for now.
Listening to… “The Self Esteem Movement” (George Carlin), “Big booty” (Willie Nelson)
© 2009 All Rights Reserved
Posted on August 28th, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: TV, Uncategorized, self-esteem, shame, shopping | 2 Comments »
On Sunday’s episode, Ruby had a meltdown when she discovered that the scale she’d been using at home was 25 or 30 pounds lower than the scale in her doctor’s office. Ouch!
The show ended with Ruby and her housemates destroying the defective scale with hammers and concrete blocks.
Oh, yeah. You go, girl. The Queen has to brace herself for trips to the doctor’s office, knowing that she’s going to weigh several pounds more on the doctor’s scale than at home what with the added weight of clothing, shoes, food and drinks, jewelry…heavy mascara, air in her lungs, hairspray...
But 25-30 pounds more? Whew. She doesn’t even want to contemplate her shock, rage, despair and humiliation in that scenario.
However, it also came out that Ruby had been slacking off — hadn’t been food journaling, had been skipping workouts and had been eating out more instead of eating the diet meals.
Oh, yeah, the Sugar Queen can name that tune in two notes. “Screwin’ up,” it’s called.
Every so often the Sugar Queen needs a gentle reminder (okay, more like a whack up side the head with Denise Austen and a truckload of lettuce) about accountability: the importance of painstakingly writing down every morsel that passes her lips, of moving her royal ass on a semi-regular basis a little farther than from the refrigerator to the couch and back, and of staying somewhere in the general neighborhood of “on plan.”
And she needs to realize now and forever that she can’t go back to her 272-pound lifestyle if she wants to have a 150-pound body.
Many a time has the Queen wanted to hurl the scale across the room into the throne when it gave her the results she’d earned, not the results she wanted.
Thankfully, that’s not been recently.
But thanks for the reminder, Ruby.
If you want to be somebody else, If you’re tired of losing battles, baby, with yourself, If you want to be somebody else, Just change your mind.
(”Change your mind” - Sister Hazel)
The Queen is…
Relishing the NSVs of wearing three new pair of slacks and a top that she bought last year and could not fit into before now, and being told often by her sweet, loving husband that she looks great.
© 2009 All Rights Reserved
Posted on August 26th, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: TV, denial | No Comments »
There are some days that the Sugar Queen breezes through serenely, almost effortlessly, unfazed by the phantasmagoria of food around her, happily eating her berries and diet shakes, oblivious to the glistening doughnuts in the break room, confident that she will reach her goal and stand proudly one day as one of the former fatties who “made it.”
She could be locked overnight, alone in the Lindt Chocolate Factory, and emerge at morning’s light with not a wisp of cocoa on her lips or fingertips, on those days.
Today is not one of those days.
Today is one of those horrible days when her food addiction claws to get out, where she is hanging on by her fingernails obsessing about eating and every type of food in the house.
She is consumed by thoughts of Eating More. Eating Something else. Eating Anything else. Now. Now. Now.
It’s not about hunger. It’s about a damned frantic urgency of needing to escape. Of wanting to dive into the mind-numbing, soul-deadening dark abyss of a binge where nothing exists but the tasting, the chewing, the swallowing, the continual hand-to-bag-to-mouth motion over and over and over, eating past the point of enoughness.
Eating past the point of fullness, of too-fullness, of not wanting to stop eating when she’s feeling stuffed and sick.
Just eating and eating and eating. Oh, if she could just continue eating, unconsciously forever!
But eventually she will stop, will have to come back up from the cavernous dark, blinking in the blinding light, and survey the battlefield, see with horror what she has wrought–again–the terrible ruins of empty wrappers and bags that surround her.
The shame. And the sadness and despair. Hopelessness and defeat.
It’s almost unbearable.
Despite all the food that’s been thrown at it, the clamoring desperation to escape … something … is still lurking there, but it’s a little duller now, weighted down by thousands of empty, unneeded calories and drowned out by the hissing and screaming voices in her head.
“Sick!”
“Disgusting!”
“Fat!”
“Loser!”
Then comes the desperation to hide the evidence, the empty containers and aftermath of her excess, so that she can pretend it never happened and likewise hope that no one else will uncover the depths of her gluttony and depravity.
There were split-seconds during that frenzied eating where she wanted to stop, but chose not to, where she could have put the food down, and said, “no more,” but then that frantic feeling welled up inside her again, and she took another bite, and another, hoping that it would silence whatever was screaming to come out.
Feeling sluggish, drugged and bloated, she lumbers to bed, wondering why she didn’t stop. Again.
© 2009 All Rights Reserved
Posted on August 23rd, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: binge, self-esteem, shame | 4 Comments »
After about a week of nonstop pain, not excruciating but nuisancy keep-it-at-bay-with-Excedrin-lower-abdominal-pain, I hesitantly called the ob-gyn. Hesitantly, I say, because I don’t like to go to that particular doc anymore on the grounds that (a) I’m middle-aged and figure if I complain too much about malfunctions in the southern hemisphere she’ll want to rip out all my geriatric plumbing, and, just as awful, (b) she hassles me about my weight.
I put our relationship on hold for about 2 years (yes, naughty, I know) because I was ashamed of my weight. There, I said it.
This visit, I was going in after 3 weeks on my new weight-loss program, having lost 12 pounds since I had seen her last and down a total of 30 pounds since Jan. 1. So that’s progress, right? And since they force me at gunpoint onto the scale at every visit they should be aware of the change, right?
Twice - yes, twice - she brings up my obesity, as if I’m sitting there in flagrant disregard with bonbons on my breath and creme brulee stains on my shirt.
“Well, if you were thinner…”
“Well, they have been done on people way bigger than you…”
Well, doc, much as I’d like to lose the last 100 lbs. by Tuesday, I just don’t think it’s gonna happen, even if I drink my entire supply of diet shakes tonight and exercise nonstop. So what are our options, given my ungodly, shameful 240 lbs.? I weighed 270 lbs. in January, BTW, which you’d know if you actually read the chart that you’re holding in your hand. Not stellar progress by “The Biggest Loser” lose 20-pounds-a-week standard, certainly, but obviously the digits on your scale are moving in a decidedly downward direction, just as mine are at home! Now get off my freakin’ fat back already!
AARRRGH!!!!
Breathe… breathe…focus…
On the plus side, some NSVs this week: I finally got to wear a brand-new pair of size 20 slacks I bought a year ago and had not a prayer of fastening and zipping until now. Wore them comfortably today and felt great!
And I went down from 4x to 3x in JMS pantyhose. Yes, still mega-queen-sized, but a small victory nonetheless.
Hey, the Sugar Queen has to savor these little NSVs or she’d sink into a dark pit of despair, hopelessness and homicidal rage.
The Sugar Queen is,
Weighing: 240 (-30 since Jan., -12 since beginning HMR 3 weeks ago)
Listening to: “Never Gonna Change” (Drive-by Truckers), “Bat Out of Hell” (Meat Loaf), “No More Mr. Nice Guy” (Alice Cooper), “I Guess You Had to Be There (Craig Morgan)
Posted on August 21st, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: doctors, shame | 5 Comments »
On an impulse, and excited about having lost another couple of pounds, I went clothes shopping yesterday, shopping in actual stores, which requires putting on OTHER clothes and leaving the house instead of settling into a comfy overstuffed chair with the laptop and zipping through cyberspace to virtual stores with a few mouse clicks.
Perhaps it’s the dressing-room mirrors that I’m trying to avoid by shopping online. I hate looking at myself in the mirror when I’m obese. The lumps, bumps, and bulges that I have managed to live in blissful denial of are magnified and multiplied in dressing room mirrors.
The blouse or dress or skirt that I LOVE LOVE LOVE on the hanger morphs into an ugly set of grandma’s draperies when wrapped around my protruding gut and big thighs.
Dressing-room mirrors make me look like the Michelin man, just shorter and rounder. I hate that.
The Sugar Queen is:
weighing: 242 lbs. (-10 pounds; BMI down from 45 to 40.3 - Hurray! I’m bordering on being “obese” only)
Posted on August 16th, 2009 by shihtzux2
Filed under: Uncategorized, denial, shopping | 2 Comments »