Self Pity

Is gross.  It feels gross, it looks gross, it is gross.  Especially when you don’t even realize how encased you are with its veil.

I went away a week ago to train with my coach in California.  I had gone full tilt at work leading up to the plane ride out and commenced work as soon as I was functional that Monday I returned at 2AM.  While in California, I did not chill.  We were pushed to the max both mentally and physically, and the trip out and back took a toll.  I was surrounded by amazing people honing their craft.  I was surrounded by people that take their nutrition and health very seriously.   I was surrounded by people embracing failure, embracing weakness and there to get better. 

Despite being one of, I felt apart.  I felt slow, overwhelmed by the introduction of new methods and tactics, and fat.  I felt sloppy – in my nutrition practices I had developed over the last year and a half, and in my ability to pick up the tools laid down and unable to immediately put them to perfect practice.

What I did not realize, upon my return and amidst tiredness and jet lag, was that I had begun feeling really fucking sorry for myself.  I felt sorry for myself that I was tired and depleted and not perfect.  I felt sorry for myself that because of my consistent and persistent daily efforts to maintain my career, going away and playing get ahead and catch-up caught up to me.  I forget that it was my choice to go away and learn something new, at all.  I forget that it is my choice to be consistent and persistent in my affairs, professionally and the like.  I forget that it is my choice to participate in this incredibly abundant and diversified life I have become so acquainted and this week, ungrateful for.

The part that really got me entwined with my self-pitywas the nutrition.  It’s no secret that I deal with food in a different way than many of the people around me.  It is also not a secret that I am not alone, despite the tune I want to sing that I am.  While away we changed some things around what I had been doing with food.  After testing me metabolically both at rest and at work, we (the nutritionist and I) decided that I should return to counting more specifically and measuring in a way that gives cleaner numbers and a more prescribed balance toward performance.  This will also ultimately dial my aesthetics back again too.  At first, I was enormously overjoyed at the prospect of looking differently. 

I had once believed that to recover from an eating disorder, one must stop exercising completely, get fat and throw all nutritional rules out the window.  Some may subscribe to that.  However, that shit doesn’t work for me.  I derive tremendous pleasure by being physically fit, strong, and constantly upping the challenges to see what my body can do.  I derive incredible gratitude by being alone in the woods with my body, running and moving and getting still.  I derive enormous joy by knowing I can carry all the groceries (and yours), lift heavy shit and put it back down, and run from the zombies when the need presents itself.  Fitness is my jam.  If you know me, you know that this is true, and you know that it is not a substitute for what I did or did not eat the day before. 

I also believed, and still kind of do, that to be in recovery one must stop caring how they look.  I believe(d) that one must embrace being bigger than they are comfortable, looser than they are able and less committed with their food.  I believe(d) that recovery meant the removal of regard for aesthetics and calculated eating.  I believe(d) that recovery meant eating things that don’t always make you feel good about yourself but embracing the discomfort because it meant that you were on your way to flexibility and freedom.

I prefer smaller, leaner, more muscular and tighter, both on myself and on you.  The way I’ve been eating for the past year and a half has been looser than I’ve eaten in a very long time and thus produced similar aesthetic results.  This flexibility has allowed me to heal.  It has allowed me to live and to breathe and to get past a lot of the old stories I had attached about not being lovable if I didn’t eat like everybody else, not being normal enough because I can’t go on ice cream dates with my boyfriend, etc.  It has allowed me to practice mindfulness and to learn what really does work, and what really doesn’t.  It has allowed me to keep moving and to stop the “all or nothing” practice of occasional fruit and vegetable cleanses to “reset”, only to celebrate a week or two later when the pendulum inevitably stops swinging from the deprivation side.

It has also allowed me to know that rigidity with food is safe for me.  It is comfortable.  It is familiar, and it forces me to drop the story that I am fat because I eat a certain way, because I know the way I am eating cannot produce those results.  I was afraid to go back to this place.  I was afraid that it would separate me from my boyfriend, disable us from dining out as often and separate me from my friends.  I was afraid I would become obsessive, staring at the numbers and anxiously waiting for the mirror to change.  I was afraid that the disease would come back and start stomping on my heart, convincing me that smaller is better and that happiness is just on the other side of that pound.  I was afraid that all my freedom I have gathered knowing that my body is not my worth, would be gone.

This fear leaves no room for God.  This fear leaves no room for the work I’ve done on myself over the past few years.  This fear leaves no room for the people in my life to support me because of me, not because of my eating habits.  This fear leaves no room to pursue my physical wants and to feel sexy in my own right because I prefer to look and feel a certain way.  This fear leaves no room for me to expand on what I used to know, and what I know now.  Just because I am measuring more accurately, doesn’t mean I will stop living.  Just because I am going to try something different, doesn’t mean I will ignore my spiritual and emotional practice of being in this skin no matter what I think it looks like.  Just because I am paying more attention to what goes into my mouth and onto my plate, doesn’t mean that I am not doing this thing.

That is the disease.  That is the disease, speaking to me in my own voice, convincing me that no matter what choice I make that it is wrong.  That is the disease alienating me from the people that love me because of who I am, not because of what I look like.  That is the disease dissing my own recovery, not allowing me to take it somewhere new.  That is the old story, the story that claims recovery looks a certain way and that so do the bodies that pursue it.  That is the disease discrediting God’s work and the opportunity to step it up and go for it.

My purpose is to shed light.  My purpose is to bring truth.  My purpose is to honor myself, so that I can honor you.  My thoughts about my body have been in the way of that.  They have been harboring dust in the corner, waiting for me to clean.  This may not work for me, or it may be another bolt unlocked in the pursuit to more awareness.  Either way, I have more experience on my side to urge me forward in trust, not fear.  I have more experience on my side to know that this, too, is a choice and that because it is a choice, I can change it at any time.

There is nothing to feel pity about.  The plethora of foods that stabbed my eyes yesterday at my friend’s birthday weren’t there to make me angry or feel deprived.  I chose not to eat any of those foods because I am committed to trying something new.  I chose not to eat any of those foods because I have yet to attend a house party and eat, without feeling like I overdid it or did myself injustice.  And yesterday, despite my wanting to throw the sausage dip into the hot tub and stomp on the cake, I chose to pack my food and eat it in a way that allowed me to stay in my bikini all day, enjoy the chill energy of the water on my paddleboard and leave without feeling like I just polluted myself with too much food.

And that, despite the pity that was veiling my joy yesterday, is in the trash can today in pursuit of my greater self, macros and all.

Feel free to join me.