07
Jul

The Body Image Project – “give me any lip”

Topic / The Body Image Project

July 7.

This is my beautiful Norah.  She is my first kid and my only daughter.

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Not to be all “mom” or whatever, but I think she’s gorgeous.

This is my beautiful sister.  I am older by two years.  She is prettier by two million light years.

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Do you see the resemblance between these two lovelies?

I do.  Every day.

Not only are these two ladies alike in temperament (spunky, charismatic, kind, intelligent, creative, funny, people-loving, extrovert socialites), they are alike in appearance as well.

Wide set eyes.  Dark lashes.  Pug noses, long legs, broad shoulders.

AND THE LIPS.Read More

06
Jul

The Body Image Project – “on the nose”

Topic / The Body Image Project

July 6.

So THESE are my siblings.  (That’s me in the purple hair.)  The other two lovelies are my brother and sister, both younger in age.

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We are half Japanese, and between the three of us we actually fill almost every Japanese stereotype.

Wicked smart. (Sean.)
Artistically creative.  (All three of us.)
Exotic looking.  (Kari.)
Wide feet.  (ALL OF US OMG.)
Cutthroat business acumen.  (Kari and me.)
Alabaster skin.  (Me.  No, I am not wearing white pantyhose.)
Thighs like a speed skater.  (Kari, Sean.)
Good with all things electronic.  (Sean.  Wrote computer code before age 10.)
Forehead like Mt. Fuji.  (All three of us, and that actually is a compliment.)

AND

Tiny, dainty, button noses.

THOSE TWO.  NOT ME.Read More

05
Jul

The Body Image Project – “thick skin”

Topic / The Body Image Project

July 5.

Deep down inside, I am a pimply fat girl.

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Although this revelation makes many (The Mr. included) roll their eyes with a deep sigh and “…um, whatever,” the pimply part is not without warrant.  From the ages of 15 through 17, and then again from 18 to 20, my skin was terrible.

Terrible, awful, no good, very bad, horrible.

I think that someone else looking at my face back then could have said “disgusting.”  I wouldn’t blame them.  It was kind of disgusting, especially if they weren’t a fan of pus or scabs.

[Ew and oh no, as I write that I cringe and shake my head.  Truth is hard sometimes.]

As life would have it, other people looking at my face back then DID say “disgusting.”Read More

05
Jul

The Body Image Project – “best foot forward”

Topic / The Body Image Project

July 4.

If I had to pick one body part that caused the very most mental grief over the longest period of time, it would have to be my feet.

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I’m sure that sounds silly to some.  “They’re just FEET.”  Everyone has them.  We usually don’t notice them.  They carry us where we want to go.  They smell sometimes.  They get dirty.  They’re all up in the mess of life, literally the “boots on the ground” of our life, stepping in the shit and pushing through anyways.

Still.

For a very, very long time, I held a huge amount of shame and disgust for my feet.

Looking at them now, as an adult, I appreciate things about them.  They match.  They match each other, and they match my hands.  They are large and wide.  (You’d think that would help me fall down less, but not so much.)  They are SENSIBLE and EFFICIENT, which are two qualities I hold in high regard.

When I was a kid, though, and a very young adult, I was so ashamed of my feet.Read More

03
Jul

The Body Image Project – “mommy tummy””

Topic / The Body Image Project

Day 1.

….well, actually it’s day 3.  July 3rd.

I had fully intended on starting this project on the first day in July, to run the whole month.  Then we went out of town for a family reunion, then my week was full of crazy catch up because I was gone from all three jobs for two days, then yesterday I was filling out a deposit slip for work, looked up the date (because I had no idea what day it was), and it said “July 2.”

[“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.”]

That’s usually how it is with me.  GREAT INTENTIONS.  Pretty great planning.  Moderately acceptable execution.

Frequently drops the ball.

As an OCD-control-freak-overachiever-perfectionist, that last part grieves me.

The perfectionist part of me wants to spend the day today writing THREE articles, not just one.  Take three pictures, post three blogs, back date the first two.  Six hours later, done and done.  I’d have started on the first (even if I hadn’t), I’d be COMPLETE, the project would be whole, and when it was all over I’d have one completely intact, just-right, no-holes, no missing parts blog project.  My FIRST blog project, and it would be a roaring success.

…but then I got to thinking.

“Isn’t that expectation of perfection the problem I’ve got with my body in the first place?”Read More

30
Jun

5 Tips to Setting Great Weight Loss Goals

Topic / mental health

I consider myself to be an expert-level goal setter.

This makes me sound arrogant and kind of like an asshole, but it’s true.

I’m not super good at a lot of stuff.  I can’t dance to save my life.  I can’t twerk (my kids groan when I try, and I threw my back out once).  I can’t sing well, so I make up for lack of pitch with volume.  I can’t lie without twitching and folding (horrible at poker), I don’t play a musical instrument, I don’t sit still long enough to tolerate knitting, cross stitch, or crochet.

GOALS, though.  I can do goals.

As a go-big-or-go-home kind of person, I LIKE goals.  Goals get me efficiently where I want to go.  I like BIG goals.  I like setting a goal that makes me a little bit afraid, because I know I’m going to have to dig deep to crush it.  I have a pretty active and brilliant imagination, so the goals I come up with in my head are quite detailed.

And, as far as execution goes, I almost always hit the goals I set for myself.  I can’t remember the last time I set a goal and didn’t accomplish it.  My cycle of success is (finally) established, and I don’t fail often.

EXCEPT WITH WEIGHT LOSS.Read More

05
May

How to Avoid a Binge – Willpower isn’t Enough, but Intelligence Can Be

Topic / disordered eating

Today I was at the grocery store, tasked with the purchase of candy for my kids’ candy bucket.  We don’t keep a lot of sugar in the house, just a small, 2 quart container full of their favorite treats, but it is where they go to pick their dessert and the occasional sweet reward.  The bucket holds caramels, mints, tootsie rolls, and random, fun size bars.  (Although my idea of fun is way, way, one million times bigger, it works for the kids’ tiny bodies.)

Our candy bucket was getting low, and so I promised them some more variety.  “Next time I’m at the store I’ll check.”

As I entered the candy aisle at the grocery store, I was feeling pretty good.  In fact, I felt almost nothing.  I was strong and sound of mind and spirit, I wasn’t hungry (always a plus), and I looked for a bag of candy like it was a carton of eggs.  No emotion, no dilemma, no chaos.

Then I saw the stupid cinnamon bears.

DAMNIT.

Read More

18
Apr

Children and Discipline – If You Love Them, You Break Them

Topic / parenting and leadership

My middle kid is kind of a bully.

This grieves me greatly.

The victims of my son’s “I take amusement in cruelty” episodes are generally his brother and sister.  They tell on him and complain, but they don’t really fight back.  I don’t condone fistfights or violence as a first or second resort, and they really are good kids, so they try keep calm.

As a (mostly) peaceful parent, an experience-er of child abuse, and a mom that would kill-or-die for her kids, I have tried EVERYTHING to make this behavior stop.  Every single thing.  ALL THE THINGS.  From talking to restricting privileges to time out to spanking to toy removal to everything you can think of, I’ve tried it.  All of it, and more than once, and for at least a month at a time.

Nothing makes a dent.

Yesterday just after I arrived to pick up my kids from school,  Kid 1 and Kid 3 told me “Today, Kid 2 punched Sister in the face, then tripped Brother on the blacktop.”  All of this happened just as they arrived, three minutes after I’d dropped them off that morning, and before they were even in the building to start their day.

I sighed.

My heart said, “uugh.”Read More

07
Apr

How to Eat to Live, not Live to Eat – 5 Tips to Eat Without Emotion

Topic / disordered eating

Someone once told me, “You binge and starve because you don’t understand food.  Food is fuel, it is not emotional.  You can’t feel food.  Stop making it more than what it is.  Stop making it harder than it needs to be.  Just eat what your body needs and leave the rest.”

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.  My ears caught fire.  Even now as I write this, I rage.  Outwardly I replied with “….um okay, whatever,” but in my head I was stabbing this person in the neck with a sharp cookie.  “CAN YOU FEEL THE FOOD NOW?!”

I can.  I always can.

Those in the WLR community know the rule.  Weight loss and healthy living are 20% exercise, 80% diet and nutrition.  Pretty simple.  The rule is not based in observation or opinion, but in scientific fact.  No matter how you feel about it, food makes up 80% of your weight loss success or failure.

No matter how you feel about it.

As a disordered eater, therein lies the struggle.

I can work out.  I lift heavy free weights with the big boys.  I am happy to play pickup games in the gym all day long, ride a bike, crank a jagged rock face.  I can work and sweat until Niagara Falls runs off my face, darkens my shirt, and soaks my underpants.  I can run lines, run intervals, use the stair mill until I can’t lift my feet off the floor.  I grew up doing farm work – cross fit and the content of Spartan races are what we called “weekend chores.”

Working out is easy.

Eating right is hard.Read More

06
Apr

When the Bad Stuff Keeps Coming Back – PTSD and Survival

Topic / mental health

Last night, I had a bad dream.

It was a lucid dream.  It was a dream that was so real, I woke up in a daze.  The lines between sleep and reality were blurred for a long while after the alarm went off, and even after I was up and walking around, the dream clung to me like sticky, wet fog.  It clogged up my brain like cotton wool, and stuck behind my eyes like the brightness-burn you get after staring at your computer for too long, when every blink illuminates against the inside of your eyelids a perfect, colorless, reverse image of real life.

The dream I had was about real life, and it still burns.

The life and the dream.

When I was six or seven, I was the target of sexual assault.  The abuse lasted almost three years.  I don’t think of it often, and until I had a daughter that hit the age I was when it happened, I never thought of it at all.  Those memories were dark and ugly, denied and decidedly irrelevant, tucked away in the back-most corners of my head.  I didn’t drag them out, I didn’t talk about them, and the armed guard in front of the closet door where they lived knew to not let anyone inside.

There they sat.Read More

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