Your food, your food, your food is my drug.

I saw a film called 'Thanks For Sharing' a few nights ago that focused on sex addiction. I thought it would be some puff piece where they lightly attempted to inject some sort of message into the storyline but filled the rest up with a shit-ton of puns about sex. I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of the film and even more surprised that I felt a real connection to the pain of their stories.

I became keenly aware of the addict crossover world years ago when I fessed up to myself that I had a compulsive binge eating problem. At the time I was navigating myself through the minefield of baggage that was entangled up in the shizzle of my bipolar mess, so my therapist and I decided to focus on keeping me alive and deal with the eating issues later. This often happens when someone has more than one major issue (such as smoking and drinking), the focus goes on the addiction/mental health issue that is more dire and the lesser evil is swept under the rug for a bit. Many addicts have more than one addiction, as do many people with mental health bullshit, in fact I'm yet to meet someone who has collected just one. Often you're just not that aware of the others until the black hole sized one is more manageable or drug dulled.

The odd thing for me was realising that compulsive binge eating was very much an addiction and how similar my experiences with it were to my friend who was a recovering alcoholic. I'm sure people would love to think that they're not and I'm definitely not saying there aren't plenty of differences (I haven't heard of any binge induced comas for instance). But the lies, deception, shame, guilt, complete lack of control whilst actioning said addiction, those are good friends for all addicts. No matter what substance we're abusing, we're trying to drown and numb something fucking dark that's located deep inside us.

In many ways I'm lucky, my addictions haven't killed me yet. I say yet because I may develop diabetes, have a stroke or heart attack due to my addiction to food. I managed to be a recovering OE for a few years but I recently figured out that I've managed to justify my inner addict for months now due to other health issues. So it came creeping back, stifled slightly by my late bastard of a gallbladder which attacked me for six months before I was able to get it removed, I was unable to eat anything high in fat, spice or with any alcohol content without having a severe gallstone attack. Much like my late grandfather who survived a double aneurism and was thus unable to drink, not drinking didn't make him any less of an addict and not eating shit food hasn't made me less of one either.

I'm not sure where to go from here but I think I might search out my old OA book again and see where it leads me. I tend to follow paths like this to avoid impending doom problems that are closer to home, so perhaps if I just dealt with those I'd binge less anyway. Sounds so simple, if only self happiness was as easy as it deceptively sounds.

YouTube

Yellow you,

Hope all is well in your world?

Here is my short and shameless plug for my vlog channel. If you've known me awhile then you'll know I used to do this on the regular about um... too many years ago and I decided I'd like to start it again. I'm enjoying the sharing and the creative process so we'll see where it goes from here.

If you'd like a geeze, here it is.

Nun night :)

A Handful of Ginger-nuts and Fear.

I often come on here to vent or process something I've been pondering for awhile and can't seem to get out of my head. So this might be a little mish-mashy but if you normally read this then that's probably not going to phase you.

I did two vlogs last week which have gotten no support vs plenty of angry comments. It's hard not to feel a little bummed about the feedback but then again I wasn't under any illusions that posting a vlog on body hair and women's choices was going to get many pats on the back. Emer O'Toole (the woman who brought about that conversation for me) showed her gloriously hairy pits on TV quite some time ago and my comments were based on that. She's an incredibly brave woman (although it saddens me that she'd have to be, to simply stop shaving her armpits publicly) and even responded to a tweet of mine. It was well worth it to hear her on my side and supporting me, with all the crap she gets, my YouTube abuse is merely a spec in comparison with what she has to deal with.

My other vlog was one for a channel I'm hoping to start about parenting (not judging or advising, just discussing) and the issues that I feel would have/still would help my partner and I as parents. I feel like there are so many things that aren't talked about and I'd really like to open a conversation up about them. I have a long way to go before I manage to make videos that are getting it right though, as I'm a rambler and need to learn how to edit right down to the point. So that's a work in progress.

Something else I've been thinking a lot about, which is a recurring theme for me in my blogs is self-sabotage. I am incredibly guilty of this type of thing, not consciously (most of the time) and it took me a really long time to stop doing it in my relationships. The thing is though, as I've been peeling back the layers and working on myself and everything that makes me messed up, each layer gets harder and harder to get through. My first one was probably being unable to be alone, I learnt how to enjoy my own company through months of solitude when I was 15, by myself, in France, unable to speak or understand any French, for a year. Steep but important learning curves. Actually what real learning isn't steep or dangerous or somewhat traumatising?

So anyway, after that it was probably about five years of therapy, pain, tons of medication, mistakes, mess, relationships, draining my parents, sadness, numbness, adventures, manic, debt accruing, madness that were my early twenties/Bipolar out-of-control-ness-ness. When I was somewhat stable it was relationship learning (that never really ends though) with my first real partnership with someone who was able to see me outside of my mental illness and not be scared. Then learning how to fit into a family that was already there before me as a Step-Mum, falling in love with a gorgeous three year old and creating a relationship with her. Then I was able to attempt to tackle my binge eating with a lot of therapy and nutrition education (I definitely still struggle with this but much like most of these lessons, I think it's one that will always be there, evolving as I get older).

Currently I'm trying to get through my deeply ingrained fear of exercise (so far I've managed to start enjoying going to the gym), but at the same time I'm finding it so frustrating. My relationship with food has gotten very strange, when I'm alone I want to eat and the self-sabotage is so crazy because I'm well aware of it. Perhaps I need to go back to the 15 year old lesson and learn how to enjoy being by myself again but without food to comfort me. I have to find things that I enjoy that don't include stuffing things into my face, because whilst I've managed to mostly keep out of binge eating territory, I'm eating for the wrong reasons. Yes I could just make sure there was only healthy food in the fridge but I don't think that's particularly fair to my partner and Step-Daughter (I already keep ice cream out for that reason) and it's not the what, it's the WHY.

After that many years of therapy I still can't quite get down to the why properly. I'm not normally scared of this type of thing but for some reason I'm scared of what I will have to deal with emotionally if my partner goes to work and I don't pick up that muesli bar, handful of ginger-nut biscuits and terrible romantic comedy.

I Refused Cake Today.

I refused cake today.

I refused lollies today.

I didn't add sugar to my coffee today.

I ate breakfast today.

I ate an apple when I was still hungry after lunch today.

I am 102.8 kilos (226.635 pounds) - kilos make me sound thinner - today.

I will probably be the same weight tomorrow, is what I'm thinking today.

I don't want this blog to become a weight-loss journey but I did want to write about this because it forces me to make it something concrete, today.

I will be posting my weight every so often, like today.

I don't think I have the guts (ha!) to post a photo yet today.

I may do that if I think it might help me or other people like me, another day other than today.

I'm done for today.

My Thoughts On Marriage.

I was/am one of the lucky few people in my generation to grow up with parents who were (and still are) in-love. They don't just love each other as companions, they didn't stay together "for the kids" (I know because they told me it wouldn't have been enough of a reason to), and somehow their love managed to stick around. I was always aware that it took work, that it wasn't magic, so I grew up knowing that it was possible but not always easy to find and keep love and that even some nights of a mainly happy marriage are spent sleeping on the couch.

In the last year or so I've begun to question what I believe marriage to be, more often questioning whether the ideals of marriage and in particular weddings actually suit me and if it is something I want to be a part of. I think it's often easier to figure out what you don't want to be a part of first, sort of like crossing out the options to narrow down and discover the ones you actually want. So my list is as follows:

1. I don't want to be a part of an institution that would have excluded me if the person I had eventually wanted to spend my life with was a woman. 
2. Or one that my friends and family are automatically excluded from if they love someone of the same sex. 
3. I don't want to carry on the sexist traditions which still symbolise that my female ancestors were once the property of their fathers and husbands. 
4. I also know that I don't want to spend the tidy sum of a house deposit on a glorified party (or just the dress). 
5. Nor do I expect my parents or partner's parents to pay for it. 
6. I don't want to plan said party to thinly disguise itself with claims about our commitment to our relationship but which rarely actually includes the person who makes it ours and not just mine.
7. I don't want to invite people who haven't actively taken part in our lives but who still expect that we will invite them simply because of genetics. 

All these reasons are logical but my feelings very rarely are. It's odd how you can grow up thinking that there are certain milestones you have to pass at certain ages otherwise you're a failure. I don't like the feeling that I might be missing out on something or regret having not taken part but I'm also not sure how relevant these milestones are to my life or how I want to live it anymore. The beautiful wedding with the flowers, the cake and the perfection isn't important to me as an adult as it was when I was a child. Maybe it's time to let those dreams go in order to be happy with my decisions now. 

My sister said to me awhile ago that she likes the romance of making the decision to be with her partner, the person she wakes up next to. I like that idea, because even when he pisses me off or has kept me awake snoring I choose to be with my partner every single morning. I feel lucky to have met and have him in my life every day. 

So, I suppose my final word on the subject for now is that if it was possible to remove the archaic traditions, extravagance, societal pressure, ridiculous expectations and general bullshit around marriage and weddings then I'd be keen as mustard. But as I'm not sure if it is, I'm not. 

Please Note: If you know me well enough then I won't have to say that the weddings I have been to and will continue to go to in the future have nothing to do with my thoughts on this subject. My love and support for those relationships and people goes far beyond the reasons I myself have against marriage, because it's about my reasons for me, not for them.

I Ran For Three Minutes Today.

Four days ago I was set to run, then I didn't. Today however, I ran for a total of three minutes and walked for twenty. I bought a holder for my iPhone, planned a route for where I would go and downloaded an App called C25K (which btw is way too much for me, so maybe it's 'Couch-2-5ks-If-You've-Been-Sitting-On-The-Couch-In-Between-Running-Around-The-Living-Room') and started down the drive this morning. Then I got this weird pain in the sides of my lower legs and ankles which decided to radiate and in the end I could barely walk back let alone keep running.

It's quite probable that running with this much weight was too much for my poor little tendons. I'm assuming that that's it since google keeps telling me that those symptoms mean I've been pushing myself too hard and too often, laughable since it began about thirty seconds into jogging. So foiled by my fat suit once again I've decided that for the first time in my life, that's not going to stop me. I'm going to change my shoes to something more supportive and begin 'power-walking' on Thursday and see where that takes me. God I hate power-walkers... So in spite of my head telling me I should take it 'as a sign' and just eat those vanilla cupcakes instead I'm going to choose to become one of those people, those silly looking power-walkers.

Maybe I'll have to buy a whole new running outfit to make myself feel better...

I Am Fat (if you try to tell me otherwise I will sit on you to death).

Instead of telling you my weight I'll tell you my BMI is 30.5 (clinically obese). I'm a very tall person, with big boobs, no arse and no hips but a large belly in-between. I also have PCOS (Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome), am Insulin Resistant (pre-diabetic) and am a recovering Compulsive Binge Eater.

So those are the stats that I'm working with here, not that they actually mean a lot when put them in a list like that. It's a lot like the total of your student loan, it's there, you're aware of it, you fear it's wrath but it's not actually sitting next to you on the bus. Or if it is then it's that smelly guy with the beanie who you hope won't talk to you. 

I always thought that my Bipolar would be my 'undoing' but it turns out that my weight is the lurking threat that I have only recently had the courage to look at. Before I was able to be drug-free and mostly mentally stable, I was in survival mode and often my biggest real goal of the day was getting out of bed and into the shower. 

I feel like I wake up every day of my life inside a fat suit. I'll take this opportunity to say that, yes I know I'm not massive (I've been told most of my life that I'm not "that big", thanks to genetics I look okay but feel heavy and sluggish) and plenty of people have it much, much worse. However, I'm still going to complain and that is my right. Once you tip the scale to 'obesity' on the BMI I think the one thing you do get to do is label yourself as fat without people telling you you're not "that big". They mean well but honestly, the only thing it makes me feel is guilty for expressing how I feel, which as far as I'm concerned is the most important part. 

Tomorrow I am starting the 'Couch to 5k' program. Partly because I like the idea of commiting to just three days a week but mostly because I don't want to die of diabetes or whatever horror my Doctor wants to warn me about next.

I am terrified. Not of the health warnings but of the running part. I take quiet pride in my successful attempts to avert P.E in school (the best one was my manipulation of the heart scan I had to get when I was 15 for a heart murmur, that I turned into a full year of not being 'able' to run). Any exercise freaks me out, I feel like everyone is staring at me but most of all I fear failing myself once again in an attempt to create a healthier version of me. 

Wish me luck. I'm not kidding myself, I wrote this mainly so I don't have the gaul to chicken out tomorrow.