Avoiding anxious overeating

I am so anxious right now, I can barely sit still. And I can feel my anxiety churning right in the pit of my stomach, which is where I seem to feel most negative emotions.

The way I usually deal with anxiety is to eat. Although it's totally subconscious, I think my reasoning goes something like this:

My stomach feels funny.

I don't like the way it feels, not at all.

Maybe if I eat something, it'll feel better.

No, that didn't really work. Maybe I should eat something else.

That didn't work, either. Let me try eating something else.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Yuck. I'm so full. I'm such a pig. I hate myself.

In other words, I replace one negative emotion—anxiety—with another—self-loathing. But unlike my anxiety, which makes me feel out of control, my self-loathing feels familiar and manageable. The anxiety comes from an external source that I can't control, but the self-loathing comes from overeating. It's like re-routing a river: the river still flows, but at least it's flowing down a pathway that I've chosen.

I know, I know: that is some seriously crazy shit! And so self-defeating! What can I say, it's been a very effective coping mechanism for a good chunk of my life.

But today I'm trying something different. My stomach is churning like crazy, but I'm desperately resisting the urge to run to the fridge. If I start eating, I know what the outcome will be: I'll end up feeling sick (but in a familiar way) and unhappy with myself. But what if I don't start eating? I have to confess, that is a very scary thought.

Okay. It's scary. But this is supposed to be an adventure, right? So let's explore that scariness a little. I'm not going to run to the fridge, but this churning in my stomach is unbearable! I can't stand feeling like this! What's the alternative to trying to stuff down this feeling? Well...maybe I should...explore it.

And this is where I run into a brick wall. How the hell am I supposed to explore my anxiety? Since I'm a writer, the obvious answer is to write about it...but I'm not sure I can. It feels too big for that, too big to encompass with words.

But maybe that's the answer: if I can put my anxiety into words, maybe it won't be so big any more. And if it's no longer so big...well, then maybe it's something I can manage.

Agh, I'm just going around in circles here. I'm going to take a break—step outside and draw in a few lungfuls of fresh air—and see if that helps clear my mind a little. Then maybe I'll come back and see if I can put my feelings into words instead of stuffing them.

Resolute.

I don’t believe in making New Year’s resolutions. The concept is too clichéd, the resolutions themselves too fragile. Really, I stopped making New Year’s resolutions as part of my recovery from my eating disorder; inevitably, my resolutions were about losing weight. Giving that up was like throwing away my scale: liberating and absolutely necessary.

But this year I’m making an exception to my rule. There’s just something so fresh and new about January 1^st, I find it hard to resist freighting this arbitrary date with special meaning.

And so here I am, resolving something for 2011: this year, I will begin my adventures in mindfulness anew.

My forays last year were interrupted by…well, my life. My 2010 was filled with both sorrow and joy in equal measure, but those highs and lows were at times so overwhelming it was all I could do to just batten down my emotional hatches and let it all wash over me. I quite often didn’t have the strength to do more than just make it through the day, so trying to work on my relationship with food seemed impossible.

But just last week it hit me like a bolt from the blue: I remembered that the reason I decided to explore mindfulness in the first place was to learn to be more present in my life. Whatever is happening in my life, be it joyful or tragic, I want to be there for it. I do think there is a certain utility to checking out when events are particularly overwhelming, but I have spent too many precious years stuffing down my emotions. That seemed like a reasonable coping mechanism when I was 18, but now that I’m 42? It seems like a shameful fucking waste of something terribly precious.

What does this resolution actually mean, in concrete terms? I wish I knew. I guess figuring that part out is part of this journey, and that’s the whole purpose of this blog: exploring, documenting, journeying, and figuring shit out along the way. If I had a road map or a protocol, I wouldn’t need all this…but then again, that would be quite beside the point. This is my life to figure out, after all, and I'm afraid I'm the only one who can figure out how to figure it out. (Agh!)

So. Here I go, again.

Image: nlmAdestiny under CC BY 3.0.

Yoga: mindfulness in motion

Since writing yesterday's post, I've been thinking about my purported disdain for all things New Age. The truth is that I have wholeheartedly embraced one mindfulness practice: yoga. Not only have I tried yoga, I've been practicing devotedly for 10+ years.

When I was in the throes of a complete nervous breakdown during treatment for my eating disorder, I spent a couple of months in a day program at our local psychiatric hospital. I didn't require 24-hour care, but I didn't feel safe being by myself while my husband was at work. It was an incredibly humbling experience, and it literally saved my life. As I became stronger, I dropped to just a couple of days a week. I had decided not to return to my corporate nightmare of a job as a marketing writer; instead, I was planning to strike out on my own as a freelancer. But I was worried about not having much structure to my day, and I wasn't sure how to deal with being alone for hours at a time.

I'd become close with a neighbor who was opening a yoga studio just a few blocks away, and one day she suggested that I come and work for her. It was the perfect solution to my dilemma: for four hours each morning, I worked behind the desk, checking in the yoga students and selling merchandise. My friend wasn't able to pay me much, so most of my compensation was in trade: a weekly massage and unlimited yoga classes.

At the time I was barely able to stand being in my own body, let alone let somebody touch it, so the massage was out of the question; I offered it up to my husband instead. And I resisted yoga at least as strongly as I've been resisting the idea of eating mindfully; I viewed the whole thing with great suspicion, and I was horribly self-conscious about my inflexibility and complete lack of coordination.

But within a few weeks, I came to know all the yoga instructors, and their continued invitations and warmth wore down my resistance. I took one class, then another...and slowly my self-consciousness began to fade away. I learned to focus on my own practice, to not measure myself against all the other students. I found that being present and accepting my body's limitations was incredibly freeing, and within a few months I realized that yoga had become as big a part of my recovery as therapy had been.

I still practice yoga regularly, both at home and at a nearby studio. And it's one of the only times I've been able to be present in my own body. After years of trying to obliterate that part of myself through starving myself, bingeing, and purging, that feels like a fucking miracle. It doesn't happen every time I practice, but sometimes I find myself completely there: I'm aware of the beating of my heart, the soft susurration of my breath, the clenching and release of my muscles. And within all of that, there's a lull; the usual frenetic spinning of my thoughts is quiet. It's like the eye within a storm, and it's beautiful.

I'm quite sure that eating mindfully will be very different than moving mindfully, but we shall see.

Image: lululemon athletica under CC BY 3.0.

What the hell is mindfulness, anyway?

You know that hippie-dippy saying "Be Here Now"? Oh, sure you do: you've seen it on bumper stickers and t-shirts. Well, that saying pretty much sums up what mindfulness is: experiencing the present moment in a state of awareness of your thoughts, sensations, and emotions. And although it may have the ring of New Age blather, the concept of mindfulness dates back many centuries to Buddhist meditation practices...

Oh shit, did I lose you with the Buddhist meditation business? If you're still reading, let me make one thing perfectly clear: the mere whiff of magic voodoo bullshit makes me cringe so hard I'm afraid I might turn inside-out. And believe me, trying to type while cringing ain't easy.

See, I'm a scientist by training, a health writer by trade, and a confirmed atheist who's never felt the need for any kind of spiritual outlet. I don't generally truck with hand-wavy stuff that flies in the face of my rational mind. Moreover, sometimes the here and now just sucks, and being present for it is the last thing any sane person would want to do.

With all those disclaimers, you're probably wondering WHY I would want to explore the concept of mindfulness, let alone blog about it. The answer is simple: I want to change my relationship with food and with my body, and nothing else I've tried has worked. Dieting sent me hurtling down into the vortex of anorexia, bulimia, overexercising, and self-hatred; ignoring what I eat has resulted in a gradual creeping up of my weight and blood pressure. In short, I'm stuck. I've been stuck for about 5 years, and I'm sick of it.

My brilliant psychiatrist R, who helped me stop restricting and purging, has for years been gently nudging me towards trying a mindfulness approach to eating. And for years, I have been resisting her suggestions with all my might. I'm pretty sure my disdain for New Age woo-woo is only a small part of that; the main reason I've been resisting is that I'm utterly terrified of completely giving up my drug of choice. It's true that I no longer starve myself or throw up, but I still use food to numb myself, to stuff down painful feelings. And although part of me wants to become healthier, another part is kicking and screaming at the thought of no longer having that ability to comfort myself.

So here I am: on the verge of embarking on something new and very scary, at least to me. I'm writing about it because writing is what I do; I'm blogging about it because I desperately need some company on this leg of my journey. I have no idea whether these adventures in mindfulness will be successful—hell, I'm not even sure how I would define "success." What I do know is that my relationship with food needs to change, and I've a feeling that this path will lead me to all sorts of interesting places.

Thanks for being my traveling companion. Let's hit the road, shall we?

Image: Jasmic under CC BY-ND 3.0.