Fork in the Road Outlet Wall

Rowdy golf claps to Personal Failure, who has a wonderful post up quantifying and qualifying her hatred for The Biggest Loser, that bastion of the Last Acceptable Prejudice in mainstream society: fat shaming.

I had a counselor who told a group with mixed ED diagnoses, "I'm always interested to have anorexic patients and obese patients in the same group, because they're each others' biggest fears." That's an oversimplification, but a good point. Anorexics (and most average- or underweight bulimics) are terrified of becoming fat (or chubby, for that matter, because chubby is Fat). Eating disorders and obesity are intrinsically related sociologically, which is why I have such a huge problem with things like the NYC calorie posting rules. Not only are you not going to change mass behavior by shaming people, you're going to exacerbate dangerous problems in a small but vulnerable portion of society.

This morning I was telling my doctor about my apprehension toward Thanksgiving. My distaste isn't due only to the fact that it's not My Family's Thanksgiving; the real stick in the spokes for me is that at every family gathering, no matter how large or small, my husband and his father will always, always end up talking about Good and Bad Foods and about Losing Weight. They both know about my history and they both know I don't like to hear the talk, and they both do it anyway, every time. The last time we were down at the husband's parents' place, at the end of dinner the husband's father told him, "You see? I could eat more right now, I'm not really full, but I'm stopping myself." The husband nodded, trying to learn the lesson in his never-ending saga of Am I Skinny Again Yet?, and I clenched my jaw and just about threw a fork at something. I haven't been back there with the husband since this incident in early October. I just can't take it right now. I just. can't.

Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is mandatory. Equally unfortunately, almost the entire family is like this, so there's not always the option to switch conversational partners to escape the topic. Most of the people who'll be there tomorrow are either unhappily overweight or smugly thin. Or they're my mother-in-law and me, wishing everyone would STFU about it, but too polite to say anything. Or to throw forks. Honestly, I kind of want to see what happens if I launch a salad fork right into one of the pastoral paintings on the wall. If nothing else, it would probably get my point across.

"I Thought I Had Mono Once for an Entire Year."*

Oh, you guys. I don't know why, but this is me lately:

Aren't I adorable?

I had a flurry of travel between one weekend Pittsburgh, seeing my grandparents up in the Hudson Valley region of New York the next weekend, and then D.C. with a group of kindred spirits the following weekend.

WWII Memorial

Capitol Dome

During those weekends of missing weekend cleaning time, dust, clutter, and general muck reproduced at bunny-like levels. The worse the cleanliness situation gets, the more insurmountable it seems. The worse it seems, the less drive I have to do anything about it. Sound familiar?

And since 2009: YHGTBFKM isn't quite over yet, it must have felt the need to get in another swift kick to my teeth and ribs. Unfortunately, these kicks fell into the category of "don't want them floating around on the Internet forever and ever, amen," so not processing them a bit here functioned as sort of an extra little kick. Maybe not a full-on kick, but a nice elbow, at the very least. With the low energy level, 2009 feeling the need to get in just one more was really not appreciated, and by the time I had my annual lady bits exam two weeks ago, my weight dropped more. I'm skimming the bottom of the "healthy weight range" for my now-official five foot four. I'm thinking eating a little more sensibly would probably help with the energy level, but... Eh. Not tonight, dear.

And now, the holidays are upon us.

For the record, we get off light since no one stays in our one-bedroom apartment.

We're doing Thanksgiving with the husband's family this year, here in the City, and while it's nice not to travel, I am terribly attached to My Family's Thanksgiving. We were in Georgia last year - my first time there for Thanksgiving since 2003. In contrast, this year... Well...

My parents will be up here for Hanukkah and Christmas, though they'll miss the Solstice. I'll be delving into my Swedish heritage again this year, and am planning to get positively inspired with blue and gold (Swedish flag) décor (read: will try to make a really simple centerpiece from Real Simple and probably fail miserably).

Assuming I can work up the energy.

*"It turned out I was just really bored."

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

If you're interested.

I shudder to think what happens if the blogots (that's bloggers + bigots, and no, I didn't come up with it) take note of this anniversary recognition. They already take enough issue with The Laramie Project. :P

It's Hard to Be a Saint In the City

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is often utilized in eating disorder treatment. CBT's younger sibling, DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) is more rarely employed, but certainly isn't unheard of, especially with the accompanying diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, or a mood disorder (DBT came about to treat BPD, in fact). CBT can be individual- or group-based, but DBT is almost always both. Their shared main focuses are mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance. DBT works with these four ideas from a philosophical standpoint as much as a therapeutic one, drawing from Buddhist teachings as well as from Hegel (whence the "D"). A major difference, aside from the philosophical focus of DBT, is that DBT tends to be very. very. structured. The structure shows itself most in the group work; CBT group work can bleed into more generalized group therapy. I've done both CBT and DBT work. I found the CBT overlap of skills and talk therapy helpful at the time; and I carry with me the almost-drilled-into-me reflexes of DBT (when I can't be bothered to stifle the reflex, anyway). I have no idea what only one or only the other would impart to an eating disorder patient, but I'm glad I've had exposure to both.

This acronym-riddled, rambling paragraph is me saying, "I think structure is good. Yay for structure. But contextless structure is bad. Boo for contextless structure." DBT of course is not without context, so I exaggerate, but I can't see that DBT (the way I learned it) would have done me, as an eating disorder patient, as much good without a foundation of CBT...

... Sort of like it won't do you much good to slap the calories up on a fast food menu and then wait for the public to suddenly Get! It! about food choices. (Yes, that's really where I was going with the CBT vs. DBT thing.) (What? It's 1:00 a.m. You write something concise and relevant.) You can't shame people into eating healthier foods. But you can teach them about nutrition from the get-go, and you can retrain in adulthood to some extent. You can't solve body image issues by shaming everyone into eating fewer calories (which they don't do, anyway, according to this study). But you can promote respect and education, and so build a foundation for personal worth that isn't based on appearance. You can't toss someone a few arbitrary numbers (calories in a slice of Sbarro pizza) and expect them to suddenly and against all other logic start ignoring a set of NOT arbitrary numbers ($1.50 for a slice of pizza; $13.50 for a salad with grilled chicken at the place next door, as an example from my neighborhood). (And don't you dare get any dressing with that salad. The low-fat stuff has too much sodium, and we won't even discuss the full-fat stuff. Balsamic vinegar for you!) But shame on you if you eat that pizza slice, or that cheeseburger, or that Taco Bell burrito. Shame on you for being too lazy to work a second job so you can comfortably afford fresh produce at every meal (and snacks - processed snacks give you cancer!!1!). And shame on you for buying the 80% lean chuck instead of the 95% lean organic bison. Shame, shame, shame. What's that? How are you supposed to afford the more expensive stuff if you're already scraping by? Don't ask the City; it's not our problem.

This menu rule makes me ANGRY. It makes me DISTRESSED. So it's a damn good thing I have my CBT workbook all marked up under the bed. (What? You can't shell out for a CBT workbook because you're paying for daycare for your kid? Shame on you!! If you can't help yourself, nobody will help you!*)

Ugh. I'm going to bed. (Or, I will as soon as the drunk kid stops singing "Helena" at the top of his lungs out on the street. Ah, New York, New York.)

* They start for about $15 on Amazon. :-/

Guess How Shocked I Am (Scale of 1-10)

Gee. You mean public shaming isn't a viable technique of behavior modification? You mean choice is about more than slapping some numbers up on a board and expecting people to feel guilty and live by that guilt? You mean there might be more to this, like say, making healthful foods more affordable? I'm so shocked. This is my shocked face:

._.

That's how shocked I am.