Oh, for the love of condiments...

I'm a lover of toppings.  I like pizzas with all the toppings.  Veggie lovers, meat lovers, supreme... if they had a pizza that was called "toppings lovers" it would probably be perfect for me.  It's almost like my brain is on board because hey, more calories and more taste varieties!  What's not to love?  

Salad is the same.  I don't care for lettuce, but I frequently ordered salads when I was fat Mary just for the toppings.  Each forkful would be one small piece of lettuce and a stack of toppings.  Somehow I convinced myself that ordering a salad with fried chicken, bacon, cheese, and croutons on top was somehow a better choice than a burger.  Because: lettuce.

Which brings me to a recent revelation I've had about my current eating plan (keto).  When I first started, I was logging everything in My Fitness Pal so that I could make sure my macros were on track for my daily goals: 70% fat, 20% protein, 10% carbs.  I was making recipes directly from keto websites exactly as they were written and I was losing weight pretty quickly.

Then I arrived at the inevitable plateau.  I hovered around the same weight for about 17 days.  Up a pound, down a pound, up a pound, down a pound.  It is incredibly frustrating when this happens even though (if you have tried and stuck with any diet over any period of time) you know it eventually will.

But by the time my plateau arrived, I already felt pretty comfortable with estimating the carbs I was eating as well as just winging it with recipes to make keto friendly food.  I had stopped logging everything in My Fitness Pal and had even discovered some sugar-free chocolates I could have (because apparently sugar alcohols don't count as part of carb intake - who knew).  And then, no more weight loss progress.

So this past week, I started logging my food again in an attempt to try to figure out what I was doing wrong and why I was not losing weight anymore.  And behold!  I say unto you brothers and sisters, the revelation of my findings should not be a surprise: CONDIMENTS. 

When I first started keto, I bought low sugar ketchup and made a mental log of all of the condiments that are low in carbs.  Note that I said LOW in carbs, not carb FREE.  I got comfortable eating low carb and was at a place of thinking I knew what I was eating.  I started just making up recipes based on my loose (very loose) recollections of the ones I saw on the keto websites.

So as I was logging everything this week, I realized that my brain had converted the idea of low carb into SAFE FOOD.  And I particularly started paying attention to the portions on the bottles of my condiment toppings.  You know, it's only 2 carbs if you actually only eat ONE serving.  One serving on most of these items is 2 tablespoons.  2 TABLESPOONS?  I can assure everyone that I have never only used 2 tablespoons of anything before or after gastric surgery.

So.  My conclusion was this: girlfriend, you can eat foods without toppings.  Because if adding ranch dressing, or ketchup, or sour cream, or salsa, or pickles, or cool whip to every damn thing you eat is going to push you over the carb limit every single day, maybe no toppings is a better path?  Just a thought.

I actually lost a new pound as of today, so maybe I have passed the plateau.  But I feel like this is just another example of how mental I am about food.  The simple idea that any one particular food is "safe" for my diet easily translates in my mind to: EAT ALL OF THAT ALL THE TIME IN AS BIG A QUANTITY AS YOU CAN STOMACH.  Lord help.

My most recent work with my therapist was in relation to how I have always used food as a coping mechanism; a rescuer to whatever anxiety life was throwing at me.  Having the gastric sleeve surgery eliminated my capacity for overeating.  But it did not change the way I think about food, or the way I still expect it to be my rescuer.  "It's not brain surgery."  

I am still hopeful that someday it will "click" with me and my relationship with food will change.  But as I travel this path in life, I have to continuously be mindful of the tricks I can play on myself about food.  Particularly the lies I can tell myself about what I can or should eat and what quantity.  I'm not there yet, but the process of identifying the source of my setbacks seems to be coming more easily.



As an aside: I went to my group therapy last week and there was a woman in the group I thought about adding on Facebook.  I have connected outside of group with one other person and the mutual support in between our monthly group meetings has definitely been beneficial for me (and I hope for them as well).  Anyways, I looked her up and realized immediately that she is married to someone I used to date 10-12 years ago.  Can I just say what are the fucking odds of that?  I am somehow in a small therapy group (less than 8 people) with a woman who had the same gastric surgery I did, with the same surgeon, who ended up in therapy with the same therapist, who struggles with binge eating disorder, and she is married to someone I have seen naked?  WTF kind of shit is that?  Obviously, I am going to have to take her aside and talk to her about it, but seriously WTF.

ED

I have a little voice in my head.  I call him ED.  It was a name my therapist mentioned and it is pretty fitting.  You see ED stands for Eating Disorder.  He talks a lot.  Sometimes more loudly than usual.  Sometimes he yells.  No matter the suggestion, ED is hard to ignore.

One day last week on my lunch hour, I talked to my husband about this mid-life, existential crisis I seem to be trudging through.  It was an emotional conversation for a variety of reasons and when I left the house to go back to work, ED was yelling.  He was listing off all of the fast food restaurants on the 1.9 mile drive from my house to my office.

"I literally just ate lunch, ED.  I am full.  It would physically hurt if I ate more."

That didn't stop ED.  He just kept right on talking about which restaurants were on the way, what things they had that would possibly fit into my keto diet, and how I could just buy the food and take it back with me to eat later.  Or you know what?  Just fuck that keto business, there is always room for a frosty.  That would just melt over the food I just ate.  And wouldn't the sugar taste so delicious since I haven't had any?

I drove back to work in outward silence and inner noise.  I sat down at my desk wondering how I was going to make it through the afternoon without going to the snack machine and hiding in a corner stuffing chocolate in my face.  I drank some coffee.  I went back to working.  I ignored ED.  But he didn't stop talking.

Since keto is pretty dependent upon maintaining ketosis by not consuming over 20 grams of carbs per day, it has kept me more accountable than most of the other eating plans I have tried.  ED and I could easily justify a cheat meal, or a cheat snack, or a cheat day with any number of excuses and lies.  But since it takes several days to get into ketosis in the first place, it isn't worth the cheat if it means I have to put in days and days of effort with no real results to get back to ketosis.  Cheating and ruining one day: worth it.  Cheating and ruining several days that still require effort for no results in return: not worth it.

The last year (plus) has been a transitional period in my life.  Almost killing over puts things in a different perspective for a person.  For me, it has made me question a lot about myself, what I want, my purpose in life, who I am, what I'm doing.  I have to sit with the anxiety of not having a whole lot of answers.  That's when ED starts chatting in my ear about the one thing that always rescued me from my emotions (good or bad): food.

While I was working from home, I didn't ignore ED.  I justified eating what I wanted with the fact that I lost 25 pounds in two weeks from being so ill and I looked bad.  I looked bad because I almost died.  I did not look bad because I was too thin.  It's easy to tell yourself you deserve to eat what you want because you can't do all of the other things you would like to do instead.

Can't go to yoga?  Have some Lays chips.  They're your favorite: Sweet Southern Heat Barbecue.  And they taste even better if you dip them in sour cream.  Sad you can't take a bubble bath?  Here, have a cupcake.  It's the good ones from Kroger: Kimberly's Triple Chocolate with the yummy filling.  It's too bad you aren't physically able to work on the project house like you want.  Here is some ice cream to make you feel better about it: Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie.  I mean, you can't eat the whole pint like you used to anyhow, what will it hurt?  Stop at Taco Bell, the sauce on that chicken quesadilla is delicious.  Melted cheese, and chicken, and sauce.  That will make up for not being able to go swimming this summer.  It's just breakfast.  Have an Egg McMuffin.  You're only going to be out of the house for a few hours anyhow since you can't do much these days.

I gained back that 25 pounds and then some.  I justified all of it in my mind because I didn't want to "look sick".  The round shape of my cheeks missing from my face wasn't the thing making me look sick.  It was the hollow bit around my eyes.  It was the sadness in my voice.  It was the hunch of my shoulders, balling up protectively around the hole in my gut.  Food didn't fix that.  Gaining weight didn't fix that.  My surgeon fixed that.  Nearly a year later.

So, here I am.  Back to trying to be a healthier person again.  Trying to get my body back into the shape I was in before all of this happened.  I wasn't at my goal weight or even outside of the obese section of the BMI chart.  But I was physically able to do more than I ever had been able to do before.  I was sort of happy with myself and my body.  I lost that.

I realize I am a very lucky person.  Septic shock has a 50% mortality rate.  Abdominal sepsis exhibits an even higher chance of death.  Long term organ damage is not uncommon.  Amputations are not uncommon.  I didn't die.  And although I am still working on building my strength and stamina to exercise and in general do the things I was doing before, I only seem to have a few long term complications.

But I have lost a bit of sense of self in the process.  I was forced (kicking and screaming) into depending on other people.  That is not a place of comfort for me.  I lost control of my eating and staying on track post gastric sleeve and gained weight I didn't need to gain.  It manifests as a sense of failure on my part.  And I wasn't able to continue doing the things that previously defined who I was.  If I am not this independent, in control, hardworking woman who handles her shit, and builds houses, and creates things out of nothing, and travels, and takes care of everybody... who am I exactly?

It all comes from a place of finding self worth outside of myself.  I convinced myself I am worthy because I am a good daughter, or a devoted wife, or a hardworking employee, or because of the things I outwardly do for other people.  But all of that is false sense of self love.  If you are only worthy because of what you can do for other people, what happens when you cannot do those things?  And that's where I am stuck.  

ED tells me I need food to fix it, or at least to shove into the void where my self worth should reside.  So when something good happens, ED says I should reward myself with food.  When I am sad, ED says food always made me happiest.  When I get bad news, ED says food will make me feel better about it.  And when ED is screaming the loudest, I almost have a manic sense of searching for food to stuff in my mouth and cover whatever feeling it is.  I find myself standing in the kitchen for no reason.  Or listing off all of the fast food restaurants in my mind along a two mile drive when I've just eaten.

I honestly don't believe I will never be accompanied by ED everywhere I go.  But I am getting better at telling him to shut up.  As much as food may have been his go-to solution for me in the past, it actually didn't solve anything.  If anything, it made things worse for me, stealing away years of my youth and happiness as an obese person.  I want to be healthier and live longer with my love since I finally found him.  ED can't steal that from me.  Not again.




As a postscript, I think I write this from a place of uncertainty due mostly to recent events in my family.  My mom is battling breast cancer.  She had a lumpectomy in January and started chemo this week.  We laughed as I taped plastic over her port for her to take a shower last Saturday.  A year ago, she was taping me up in saran wrap over incisions, and the shit bag, and the picc line so that I could shower.  I couldn't even hold my arms up to wash my hair.  I remember then that she said to me someday we would laugh about all of that.  About how we fumbled through it.  About how I lost my shit that first night when the antibiotic IV wouldn't unscrew from my line.  About how I balled my eyes out throughout the first time I had to change the shit bag myself because I was home alone for the first (and really only) time.  About how I thought I could just go back to life as normal and lay a floor in the project house two months after almost dying.  A year from now, we will be laughing about this too.  But it's hard to see that from the present.  I am going to shave my head when her hair falls out.  I am sure most people would think it is just from a place of support and solidarity.  But it really isn't about that.  I want people to ask me about it.  Because I want to say to them, "My mom has breast cancer and she could really use whatever good mojo or love or light or prayers or magick or positivity or whatever you believe in right now."