Rambling thoughts

I just need to write.  I need to create somehow.  I want to play music, but there's no piano.  I want to paint, but while no paints may seem my problem, lack of skill tops that one.  So without any other artistic mediums and not feeling like keeping my thoughts to myself, I turn to my old friend, the blog.

Just the thoughts tumbling forth from my mind.  Such deep thought of late, and I don't even know what it's all saying.  Such profound changes in my life around me, yet a grounding more solid than ever in the created me.  Not the masked me, but the me with a life worth living.  I only really re-found that mask a year ago.  Oh as a teenager I felt it, it crept all over my skin, and, the question-asker that I am, I asked all the questions, and I thought I had all the answers.

Those answers didn't all satisfy, and they led me down some dangerous pathways.  But here I am.  Re-peeling back the sickly covering over my soul.  It's a painful process, that pruning, that stripping away of the safety nets, shields, and walls of steel we place around ourselves.  Those walls that are supposed to keep the bad stuff out?  They end up just hurting.  They don't let the good things in, and they don't let the things inside shine.

I don't do well with stress.  It eats me up on the inside, and it makes it so much easier to act out.  It makes it easier to not take my meds.  It makes it easier to just hide.  But even that, I'm learning.  I'm learning how to deal with it.  I'm learning to open up.  To actually open up, not just with the safe things.  I'm learning who's truly safe.  I'm learning what it means to be listened to, completely, and I'm learning what it means to really listen.

Oh I don't know.  I'm trying.  I'm trying to be positive.  I'm trying to thrive.  There are moments when I'm totally thriving.  I'm succeeding, I'm fighting hard, I'm doing well.  In those moments it's easy to praise God.  It's easy to rejoice in the Lord!  Yet in the moments when I just can't bear it anymore, it's hard.  Finding voice to say "Oh Jesus, help!"  takes so much more effort than I ever knew possible.

But we're surviving, and there are such great things ahead!  I'm counting on that.  On the promises.

Even if you're fat, is calorie counting healthy?

Trigger warning:  Weight and calories

Hello world, here's another controversial post for you!  Hear me out though.

I know, I used the word 'fat' in the subject line.  That was to get your attention.  Also because it's the excuse used.

"Oh I know counting calories isn't healthy for you because you have an eating disorder, but I'm fat, so it's okay."

I beg to differ.  Two days ago, Michelle Obama (for whom I normally have great respect) unveiled the FDA's newest updates to the ubiquitous nutrition label, as described here (trigger warning for calories).  I'm seriously disturbed.  The one line that is the most highly triggering for millions of people, is now practically doubled in size.  I've trained myself to avoid looking at nutrition labels like the plague, because when I do, my mind spirals.  And I know others.

But is triggering the disordered really the main problem?  No, it isn't.  I recognize that even though there are a lot of us who have battled eating disorders past and present, we're still a minority.  We are still not the 'typical' population at large.  (Oh but there's an interesting discussion right there - minority visibility for the eating disordered!)

Still, as I've seen, even for those with significant weight to lose in order to be healthy, counting the numbers of stuff entering your body is not the healthiest way to get healthy.  Not by far.  Perhaps the concept of just eating healthy is a distant memory for many, but it a person gently reduces the processed foods and sugars they are consuming, weight comes off.  Calories in, calories out, is a horrible way to live.  So quickly it becomes an obsession, as I've seen in the daily lives of my fitbit-ing friends.

Get a dog and walk it.  Eat more salad.  Do your own baking.  Make treats a special occasion.  Live life fully, not enslaved to some step counter, bite counter, stair counter, life counter.  You are the only one with the job of living your life.  Don't let some machine buckled to your wrist or program of numbers destroy your spontaneity!

Besides - have you ever heard of diets turning into eating disorders?  Oh yes, it's far more common than you think.  I was a normal human with a normal relationship to food, and then I dieted.  And look at me now.  Years of recovery and fighting!

Your overweight friend might just be fighting that big, bold number on the new-and-improved nutrition label, and you don't even know it.  For goodness sake, buy big, bad, stickers, and cover up all that crap on your boxes.  Even better, don't buy boxed food.  Eat fresh.  Live active.  Buy local.

Just be responsible for your own life and don't let some government-issued label run your life.

Breaking the Silence

Shattering the noise.  Cracking the ice-cover.  Thawing the frost.  Opening my heart again.

It's been a particularly shadowy part of the mosaic, a deep and dark-ish time to wade through.  There has been, through it all, immense joy and relief, and peace in the chaos, but overall, it's been hellish.

Yet still, God is faithful.  He upholds.  He sustains.  He has given me the most incredible gift of love.  His love, and the love He created for us to pursue.

My eating disorder still invades my mind sometimes, creates a hardened shell around every wise thought, so I cannot think.  Yet that has become more rare.  I'd average maybe 2-4 times per month.  Which is far better, I'd say, than last summer!

So I'm working on it, just like all of us.  And I'm grateful to everyone.  And I'm processing, I'm learning, I'm growing - we all are.

Let's journey on.