It's Official: I'm Unchained From the Scale!

Attention, please: We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming of All Crazy All The Time to bring you an important announcement. This is not a test, I repeat, not a test.

TA-DA!

Those, my friends, are the batteries out of my scale, a.k.a. my Weight Watchers branded silver shackles! At first I was going to do something dramatic like take a video of me smashing my scale to bits or tossing it out of my window but the former seemed too wasteful for a frugal girl like me and the latter was simply too dangerous with as many children as I have running around my house. Oh, I'm not worried about hitting them - they move fast - but rather that they'd see mommy chucking things out the window and think all the appliances are fair game for defenestration. You may recall these are the same children that literally swung from my chandelier and ripped it right out of the ceiling.

So, the dramatic options exhausted, I went with practical. I took the batteries out and threw them away*. That way, if I ever want to weigh myself again I'll have to drive all the way to the store first and hopefully the ten intervening minutes will be enough for me to regain my senses.

Yes, I emptied out my garbage can before I took the pic - couldn't let you see the plethora of q-tips I use to clean out my earwax. I know you're not supposed to but it just feels so good! My friend Kacy on Facebook calls it an "eargasm".

What it boils down to is this: You guys were right. And I knew going in to it, writing that post about finding my "best" weight, that the first thing everyone would say to me is to chuck the scale. You've told me to do it before. So has my sister - hundreds of times, bless her heart. But you know how sometimes you don't really hear people until you're ready for their advice? I'm ready now. I can't obsess over a number I don't know, right?

This morning I did not weigh myself. At first I had a panic attack - yes, seriously - but I managed to calm down with yogic breathing and after about 10 minutes I felt fine. I think I'm finally figuring out that "fat" has everything to do with the state of my mind and very little to do with the state of my thighs.

Some of you suggested that I make a separate Great Fitness Experiment about ditching the scale but I think it's best to just roll it in with November and December's Rachel Cosgrove Experiment because 1) Got to keep going with this inertia - if I think about it too much I probably won't go through with it and 2) Rachel actually tells you not to weigh yourself while on her program. Yeah I know, I kinda forgot to mention that part when I was explaining all the "rules." Rachel's point is that this program is designed to build muscle and often people will gain weight (or not lose as much weight as they think they should be) as they gain muscle. In the book she asks if you would rather weigh 50 pounds more but fit into your dream jeans or weigh your dream weight but not fit into your jeans. You'd think it would be a no-brainer but she says you'd be amazed at how many women choose the latter option, their number is that important to them. I'm choosing the muscle option. (And I'd better be building some serious muscle because hoo-boy am I SORE. My butt is threatening to go on strike if I make it do any more lunges.)

In order to measure my lean mass, I had my body fat percentage taken at the beginning of the Experiment and I'll have it repeated at the end. I also took measurements of various body parts which I'll repeat at the end. I know these are still numbers but for some reason I don't get as attached to - or as emotionally involved with - these numbers. Probably because my biceps measurement doesn't fluctuate on a daily basis. I also have my jeans that I feel good in and can use as reality check when I need one. (Rachel calls those "thermometer jeans" - I suppose so you can measure your "hotness" by them.)

So thank you thank you thank you for your advice and your amazing patience with me as I worked through the mental stuff. This feels like the final big step I needed to take with Intuitive Eating. I'm free from the tyranny of the scale. And it feels good! (At least for now, I do anticipate some panic in the future, especially at that time of the month but I'll take it day by day.)

Have you ever been unable to do something that you knew you needed to - until one day the moment just arrived and suddenly it was fine? Do you have thermometer jeans? How would you answer the muscle vs. weight question?

*Okay, first I threw them in the garbage but then I remembered you are never supposed to throw batteries away because that's reallllyyyy bad for the environment and the last thing I need is an angry polar bear showing up at my door although that would help keep the kidlets from destroying various expensive household items but Child Services probably wouldn't appreciate the Wild Animal school of discipline so anyhow I fished the batteries back out of the garbage and instead put them in my husband's pile of paint cans and whatnot to take to the recycling center and then wrote the longest run-on sentence in the history of humankind just to make sure everyone knows that I did not, actually, add batteries to our landfill. The end.

The Problem With "Thinspiration"

Portia De Rossi was my thinspo crush. For those of you unacquainted with the '90s, before she was Ellen Degeneres' wife she was on a little show called Ally McBeal where she starred as a blond super skinny lawyer who liked to sleep around. No, not the main blond super skinny chick - that was Calista Flockhart. No, not the other blond super skinny chick - that was Courtney Thorne-Smith. Noooo, not the other blond super skinny chick - that was Jane Krakowski. The other other other other one, ok? Right, now I'm starting to remember why I hated that show. But while I hated the insipid plot lines and abundance of Barbie locks (seriously, was there even one female brunette on the whole show?), I loved Portia. I wanted to be her. Most importantly, I wanted to look like her. Which is where this came in:

Technically this isn't the exact pic in my journal - I couldn't find that one on the Internet, alas Google failed me - but it's close enough.

Thinspo is a term used mostly by girls with disordered eating - although it is becoming more mainstream these days - to describe a picture, usually of an actress or other super skinny woman, that shows the kind of body you covet. The kind of body you are working for. The kind of body worth starving yourself for. Back in the early hysterical days of the Internet, thinspo sites were everywhere, encouraging readers to pin up the pictures on their refrigerator or in their closet to remind them why they should like that feeling of their stomach turning in on itself and linking to each other in one long daisy chain of jutting hip bones and popping clavicles. You could click from link to link for hours staring at endless pictures of women with unattainable stick figures. And I did.

Being the obedient little disordered eater that I was, I took this thin ideal to heart and tacked up pictures of gorgeous models, actresses and singers and surrounded them with admonitions like "nothing tastes as good as thin feels!!" (so creative, I) and "Do 200 crunches every night before bed! No matter how tired you think you are!!" As the years went on and I imitated Portia's casual-yet-confident pose in the mirror only to be horrified how my stomach buckled and bulged and the bend where hers lay flat with the only crinkles being from her shirt, I added things like "I hate you!" and "You are ugly and fat and no one will ever love you!" I saw my stomach as failure.

This "thinspiration" journal - heavy on the thin, light on any actual inspiration - stayed with me far longer than I want to admit. But I know I am not alone in this exercise in self-loathing. It isn't just the eating disordered who tout thinspo as a great get-thin trick. Popular trainers, TV shows and women's magazines across the board parrot this. These tips run the gamut from telling you to tape a photo of you at your fattest to your refrigerator, to eating naked in front of a mirror, to posting pics of celebs you admire, to hanging the skinny jeans you're dying to fit into on your closet door, to having pictures of yourself digitally altered to give you a thinner you ideal to strive for. Heck, the entire premise of The Biggest Loser is based on this one concept. All of these things are supposed to inspire you to be better, to stick to your diet, to hone your willpower and perhaps they do work for some people. But all they ever taught me was how I don't measure up, how I'm not beautiful and why I should hate myself. Even if they did help me put down the candy, it was never out of a feeling of caring or loving for myself but out of punishment and denial. Every time I looked at those pictures I felt worse about myself.

Portia pre-Ally McBeal and post-Ally McBeal

My poster girl Portia was recently on Oprah talking about her new book, Unbearable Lightness, that just came out in which she discusses her long battle with anorexia and bulimia stemming from her days on Ally McBeal. While she'd long been rumored to be anorexic - all the girls on that show were - hearing the words from her own mouth ended up being more wrenching than I had expected. My first reaction was to want to scream at her, "How could you do this to me?! All those years! Wasted! Because I wanted to look like you! Like eating-disordered you! How could you let me think all this time that your standard of beauty was an achievable one?" I wanted to go find her picture (I still have that journal somewhere) and rip it into tiny pieces. I was so so angry at her.

And then I calmed down. Of course my eating disorders were not her fault. They were mine, built choice by choice and honed over many years. And honestly I should have known better; it's not like Hollywood is known for its meticulous honesty. But the feeling of betrayal is still there. It isn't that I want her to be silent and unhealthily skinny again. Nor do I want her to be naturally super skinny. I just wanted her to be honest then, when I was so vulnerable and really needed to hear it. But she couldn't do it then. She lost as much (more, probably) to her eating disorder as I did. So I'm grateful that she can do it now and I applaud her speaking out about it. But it still leaves the issue of thinspo in general.

What do you think about "thinspiration"? Does it motivate you in a positive way to live a healthier life or is it one more way to beat yourself up? Who was your thinspo? Anyone else love to hate the show Ally McBeal??

The Best Indicator of Your Overall Health [Hint: It's not what you think]

It's not your BMI. It's not your cholesterol. It's also not your resting heart rate, your back squat max, your weight, your body fat percentage, your BMR, your RMR, your AT or even your SDTG. (Okay, I made that last one up; some of the alphabet was feeling left out.) It's definitely not your shoe size (although that is important to know). So what is the number that researchers have found that is the single best indicator of your overall health? Your VO2 max.

Which is how I found myself awake in a puddle of cold sweat at three a.m. last night. I am not a person who normally dreads a workout but whether it was flashbacks of Middle School P.E. - my teacher used to chase me around the track throwing footballs at my head until I cried - or just my perfectionist nature, I was scared. See, first thing in the morning in Boot Camp, the Gym Buddies and I were taking the Cooper Fitness test, an assessment used to find your VO2 max. And would consequently tell me if I am a worthwhile human being. (Note to self: write post about how I give numbers too much power in my life.)

How To Get Yours (For Free!)
The most accurate way to measure your VO2 max is to do the Darth-Vader-masked-run-on-a-treadmill test but that's spendy - expect to pay 150$ - 300$ - and I am nothing if not cheap. Also, the last time I did that test I almost* mooned the whole gym because I was running so hard my pants were falling down and I didn't dare spare a hand to hold them up because I was too occupied trying to keep my hands from ripping that suffocating mask off my face and hurling it at the nearest trainer.

The Cooper Test goes like this: run as hard as you can for 12 minutes and then given the distance that you cover (in meters, naturally, we're being scientific here remember?) and your age you can get a fairly accurate approximation of your VO2 max. It was exactly as fun as it sounds. Which is not at all. It was horrible pain. Maximal effort is bad enough in 20 second increments during Tabata sprints; it's hellacious when you do it for 12 minutes. Upon finishing our run - in a heap, on the dirty gym floor - Gym Buddy Allison exclaimed, "My insides have never hurt so much before!" But our suffering was not in vain: I'm proud to say all the Gym Buddies scored in the highest rank for both the run and our VO2 maxes.

(We won't talk about how this wasn't good enough for me because it was lower than the last time I had my max measured even though that was to be expected as we lose about 1% of our VO2 max per year as we age. So I stewed about it all day until Allison told me to get a grip and learn to live with being "just superior". Seriously, self, get on that "numbers mean too much to you" post.)

So why would anyone do such a thing to themselves just to get a number?

Your VO2 Max is your maximal oxygen uptake and reflects how well your body takes in and uses oxygen while you exercise. VO2 max "is widely accepted as the single best measure of cardiovascular fitness and maximal aerobic power. Absolute values of VO₂ max are typically 40-60% higher in men than in women.” Your average man has a VO2 max of 45, while an average woman's is 38. Just for comparison purposes (because who doesn't like to compare suburban soccer moms with the world's most elite athletes?), Greg LeMond's is 92.5 and the highest ever recorded, belonging to a Scandinavian cross country skier for which my keyboard doesn't even have the ability to type his name, is 96 - in his off season.

The Research
Danish researchers examined 86 men and 115 women, all between the ages of 23 and 27. They tested their VO2 max. They then studied their physical activity, blood pressure, blood lipids, body fat and smoking habits. As expected, a greater VO2 max was significantly correlated with a better cardiovascular profile. (And for your surprising research finding of the day: Physical activity was not correlated with a better cardiovascular profile.) This means that the higher the VO2 max, the lower the LDL cholesterol, body fat, and blood pressure. They also found that a higher VO2 max a correlates with a decrease in symptoms of the scary metabolic syndrome and is an "excellent predictor" of heart attack risk.

The take-home message from today's workout is if you want to lower your cholesterol, blood pressure, body fat and bikini inhibitions, then your workouts need to be intense enough to increase your VO2 max. If better heart health is your goal, it isn't enough just to be physically active (although physical activity of any intensity has numerous other benefits). You have to keep pushing yourself. Never get comfortable! And also: Remember that numbers are just tools to help you understand yourself better, they are not value judgments. (Repeat three times every morning.)

So do you know your VO2 max? How important are numbers to you? Are you able to look at them as just information or do they pack an emotional wallop too? Have you ever mooned anyone accidentally or on purpose??

*Not to be confused with the time I DID actually moon the whole gym thanks to a heavy pager from the childcare center attached to my weakly elasticized yoga pants. Good times!

Intuitive Eating Dilemma: How To Eat What Your Body Wants

Intuitive Eating is a roller coaster. I'm not going to lie to you. In concept - eat what your body wants, it knows you best - it's elegantly simple. In practice it's, well, as messy as the stretching mats of ill repute right after our high-intensity bootcamp class finishes our 100 push-ups. (Seriously, we did over 100 push-ups today. My name is sore. My middle name is stupid.) I've been officially following Intuitive Eating principles for 4.5 months now and in addition to losing a few pounds, I've dialed the crazy down from a padded-room Mel Gibson to a lovably kooky Sharon Osborne. I'm aiming for a sassy and serene Kate Winslet. (Anyone else measure their mental health against the celebrity scale of insanity? Anyone??)

I cannot emphasize enough how life-changing this mental shift has been for me. It's the freedom to walk into a party with a buffet and not feel trapped between my desire to shovel in all the forbidden goodies and my panicky need to hide in another room for the whole party so I won't shovel in all the forbidden goodies. It's the freedom to go to a restaurant without checking the menu online first. It's the freedom to skip over all the diet tips in magazines because the majority of them make no sense to me any more. Why should I drink 16 ounces of water before every meal to "trick my body" into feeling full when I already know, without tricks, what full feels like? Indeed, I no longer hide treats from myself (did that ever work anyhow?) and ended up giving away half a bag of Godiva chocolates because I just didn't like them. I know.

So now that we've had the sunshine-and-roses portion of our program let's move on to the down and dirty. It's not like the above paragraph all the time. Maybe not even most of the time. I wish it was. But I get tired, cranky, PMS-y, bored and all the other foibles of our imperfect natures. (True story: One day I ate half a bag of butterscotch chips out of frustration that I couldn't get "If I Die Young" out of my head. Stupid catchy song - I dare you not to sing it for the rest of the day. And if that's not the worst reason ever to eat, I don't know what is.) And so my weight loss hasn't been picture perfect either. This is the real reason it's taken me so long to write this post. Despite numerous e-mails from you guys asking for an Intuitive Eating update, I've been afraid to write about it. The abbreviated version:

Good news: I finally hit my pre-pregnancy weight!
Bad news: for one day - the next day the scale jumped 2 pounds and hasn't come down since.
Good news: It didn't bother me as much as it would have six months ago!
Bad news: It still really bothered me.
Good news: I can still fit in 90% of my clothes!
Bad news: I still can't fit in 10% of my cute clothes.
Good news: I didn't cry in my closet!
Bad news: it still ruined my day.

All of which is to say I an not, in any way, the poster girl for Intuitive Eating (I'll leave that role to Geneen Roth and Ms. Oprah). So take the following advice with a grain of salt.

I got two interesting e-mails about IE recently and I think they sum up the main struggle most of us have with this program - knowing what our body wants versus what our mind wants.

Reader L writes, "How do you get past emotional eating? Do you have any tricks that get you through those moment when you "need" to eat an entire batch of cookies? And I mean literally, an entire batch! Its gotten really out of hand lately and though I feel like i have squared with the emotional causes, the pull to down large amounts of treats is really strong. Likely some of that is because sugar is like crack to me so maybe I should detox and go without for a while just to get it out of my system to reduce cravings, but with winter and its drearyness on its way , I am worried I will be diabetic by spring if I dont get a handle on this. Any thoughts?"

Reader C writes, "How did you decide what to eat? Did you eat anything and everything? Maybe I'm making this more difficult than possible but I just don't know. Maybe I should find a nutritionist or therapist with experience with IE. Who knows?"

My first suggestion would be to read Geneen Roth's books Breaking Free From Emotional Eating and When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair. (I know people love Women, Food and God right now and while it is an excellent read it isn't much of a how-to manual. These two books are.) She says it so much better than I can.

Second, I want you to know that it is difficult trying to figure out the difference between true bodily hunger and a craving. At the beginning it's very difficult. The first two weeks were agonizing for me as I questioned every.single.bite. But it gets easier! I thought that I'd so messed up my internal cues with decades of dieting that I'd never be able to know when my body was hungry and what it wants. But you know what? For the most part, I can now. And if I can learn to do it, you totally can learn to do it too!

Third: sometimes it's easier to know what you don't want than what you do and sometimes you can only learn that lesson after you eat too much and feel like crap. A couple of weeks ago I made biscuits (white flour, butter, sugar - the real, non-healthified version) and for whatever reason ate nearly the whole batch of dough. First I got the carb-rush euphoria. Then I got hit with a tidal wave of exhaustion, headaches, self-recrimination and, of course, guilt. But now I know. Healthy food makes my body feel happier, more energetic, and more calm. There's a world of difference between "knowing" that a food is bad for you and forcing yourself to avoid it and knowing that you can eat it if you want but you will have to deal with the inevitable sugar crash afterward. The end result may be the same (not eating the whole batch of biscuit dough) but the motivations are so opposite that it's the difference between diet rebellion/feelings of deprivation and taking gentle care of your body.

Fourth, a note on sugar: I still think the white granulated stuff is as addictive as the other white powder. I know I feel better when I don't eat sugar. And yet I still decide sometimes to take the accompanying icky feelings just to get that sugar high for a few moments. The idea of a sugar detox is a good one in theory. I think if you can do it without feeling deprived then you probably will find it helpful in managing your cravings. However, if you force yourself you're only going to end up face down in a plate of coconut cream pie at the end. Me, I can't go cold turkey for very long without feeling seriously pissy so my compromise (that I will emphasize works for me and may not necessarily be the solution for you) is to have a little bit every day. My only caveat is that it has to be what I really want to eat. No nibbling out of the bag of chocolate chips every time I walk past and pretending that I'm not really eating them because "it's just 1 chip". If I'm going to have a treat it's going to be coconut sorbet served in a bowl with hardshell fudge topping and I'm going to sit there and do nothing but enjoy it. (Ideally. Feel free to reference the butterscotch chips, biscuit dough above.)

How would you answer L & C? Do you have ways of knowing the difference between "mind hunger" and "body hunger"? What is your philosophy when it comes to sugar? Which celebrity are you as crazy as?

Meditations On a Wall Sit [Oh my burning quads]

Diana Vishneva, ballerina

Plank. Push-ups. Wall sits. This week, one of the trainers at my Y has been doing fitness challenges every day. It's nothing more sophisticated than a marker board, an "official" timer and a mat on the floor down by the front doors. Winners get no finisher's medal, no t-shirt, not even an "I'm SomeBUNNY Special" sticker like my preschooler - just bragging rights. And considering I workout at the Y conveniently located between two large nursing homes, I probably ought to keep any bragging to a self-effacing minimum. ("I can hold plank for four minutes!" "Yeah, well I served in both 'Nam and Korea, hiking 20 miles a day before you were even born. And I got jungle rot on every body part south of the Mason-Dixon." Nothing says fun like old person TMI.) Despite the lack of any reasonable incentives, I am still drawn to these challenges like body builders to chest waxing.

Why? Well, for one reason the word "challenge" is like the smell of freshly baked bread to me. I simply cannot walk by with it wafting in the air and not try a little. I've been that way my whole life. I'm as competitive as the Kardashian sisters extensions are long. But today whilst holding my wall sit I had a lot of time (3 minutes and 6 seconds to be exact, Gym Buddy Megan and I tied for first place*) to think about exactly why that is. See, I was already sore from grueling workouts over the past few days, had just completed a boot camp class that included wall sits (note to self: do challenges before regularly scheduled workout) and I had already taken first place on the previous two challenges so why put myself through the agony of toilet-sore quads?

Because I have to be good at everything.

Oh, I don't mean GOODgood at everything. I'm never going to win the Boston Marathon nor go to the Olympics in powerlifting nor will I study yoga under the most esteemed yogi in India while meditating in crow pose for 3 hours a day. I won't even kid myself that I'm the best at my Y. I mean that I want to be able to hold my own at everything (and after having 5 kids, I include my own urine in that). I want to be able to run fast and lift heavy. I want to be able to bend like Gumby and box like Laila. I also want to be well read and a decent computer programmer. I want to play the piano well enough to feel comfortable doing it in public (rather than dropping my head and mumbling something about "Uh, I used to" when friends ask who plays, like I do now.) I want to be a respected teacher. I want to be a successful author. Oh, and, I want to be a fun, efficient, beautiful, creative, spiritual mother who will be beloved by my progeny for decades after I'm dead. You know, just little things.

The problem with wanting to be good at everything? For one thing, it doesn't make me feel happy. After the initial high wears off, I realize I have to keep doing bigger/more things to get the next hit. The second problem? It is also impossible. Some things naturally preclude other things. For instance you don't generally see people who are speedy endurance runners that can also lift really heavy and being super flexible can be an invitation to injury in some sports. And believe me when I say the author and mom goals conflict on a regular basis.

I'm not saying it's wrong to have goals or even to want to be good at many things. The issue is that not every goal can be in the number 1 spot. You have to prioritize. Prioritize. I hate that word. See, whenever something new gets added to my to-do list, where a reasonable person would drop something of lesser importance I will insist loudly that I can do it all without dropping any balls. And then do you know what inevitably happens? I drop some balls. Or I manage to get everything done but not done well. Or, worst case scenario, my day explodes, nothing gets done right and other people have to step in to fix the mess I've created for myself. This last situation happens more than I'd like to admit. I've discovered that If I'm unwilling to prioritize my goals, life will do it for me and it won't be the order I would have picked.

It doesn't help that the media reinforces this attitude with headlines screaming "Get The Hottest Bod on the Beach in 2 Weeks!" (buy a private beach?) or "Throw a Holiday Party Your Guests Will Never Forget!" (my guests never forget my parties - food poisoning will do that to a person) or "Get Richer Than Your Wildest Dreams!" (this one should be easy - my wildest dream is to have clean carpets and doors that sit plumb on their hinges) or even "Live Your Best Life!" (sorry, Oprah - you know I love you like creme brulee).**

It's enough to make a girl want to stop trying all together. And that is the real problem with always wanting to be able to do everything. Black-and-white thinking leads to black-and-white solutions. When you fail - as we inevitably all will - it doesn't become a learning experience but rather an indictment of our character. I can't tell you how many times I've stomped my feet and said "If I can't do it perfect then I'm not even going to try." (Ahem, tennis.)

Thankfully old age has mellowed me a bit on this. Teaching teenagers will strip anyone of their pretensions. Children are uniquely humbling. As is this website: trying a new workout every month pretty much means I get really good at nothing. So can a perfectionsitic, black-and-white thinker let go of some of her competitiveness? My sore quads sure hope so.

Are you competitive? Can you not walk away from a challenge either? How do you prioritize your time?

* I just heard that Gym Buddy Jeni came later in the day and busted our record! Way to go, girl!!
** That may be my record for the longest run-on sentence ever! I win again!!

Sideswiped By Depression

Chalk it up to a loaded genetic gun, the shortening days, Jelly Bean's self-weaning (she was my oxytocin dealer, yo) or an illness in the family - How about d) all of the above? - but I've dove headlong back into the dumpster of depression. (I have not, however, lost my powers of alliteration. It's like the super power Wonder Woman would have if she wore glasses and had a slight overbite.)

Irritability. Over-sensitivity. Moodiness. Forgetfulness. Sleepiness. Despair-iness. My thoughts swirling like snowflakes through my brain, never settling, never coalescing except to form brief nightmarish pictures for me to obsess over. The bad thing about having prior depressive episodes is that I'm prone to having more of them but the good thing is that I'm really great at recognizing the signs of them. While all of the previous effects are very irritating - especially walking around feeling like my skin's on wrong ways out - the one that has really hamstrung me this time, as in times past, is the anxiety.

And the worst part is this time I didn't see it coming.

After each of my children have been born, I've had a bout with the post-partum "baby blues." They are pretty textbook in their arrival, albeit a little worse than their name belies. They've gotten more severe after each kid. After my third son was born, I was so consumed by obsessive worries over his and his brothers' safety that all I could do was pace back and forth carrying the baby while the other two trailed me like ducklings with PTSD.

But when Jelly Bean was born, we were prepared! My husband made sure that we had plans to go somewhere or that he was home every evening. When he couldn't be with me, he enlisted one of my friends to - and I am not making this up - babysit me until he came home. As long as I was out being busy or with someone older than 10, I could keep the crazy thoughts at bay but leave me alone and... Y'all, I have sundowners. My anxiety, for whatever bizarre reason, peaks at sundown every day and becomes almost unbearable. I know. If I'm this bad at 32, by the time I land in the old folk's home, I'm going to be running naked down the street screaming every evening.

I expected the depression and anxiety after my children were born. I did not expect it to hit again after Jelly Bean weaned. I've never had post-weaning depression before, nor even heard of it! So, other than fist-shaking (see? I am 80!) what can I do? I can feel myself slipping into full-on crazy so I've alerted the appropriate people: my doctor, my husband, my long-suffering sister, my mother, the gym buddies, all 300+ of my friends on Facebook. Oh and now all the thousands of you who read my blog. (I know, I know, if I could just open up, talk to people, stop keeping everything inside already...)

All joking aside, I hate feeling like this. I hate being powerless in the tidal wave of these emotions. I hate sitting for hours in the corner of my kitchen, literally vibrating with anxiety as I will myself to not obsess over not obsessing (how's that for some tautological naval gazing!). I hate snapping at my children every time they make a loud noise (which would be 23 hours of the day). I hate feeling guilty for all my self pity in this world where so many have it much, much worse. I hate feeling like the angsty teen I once was and am so glad to have left behind. I hate knowing what I need to do to help mitigate this - prayer, meditation, walking outdoors, basking in front of my Happy S.A.D. light - and not having enough energy to do it. I hate sitting at the computer to write and having nothing come out. I hate this hate this hate this.

I am smarter than I used to be. I've learned: this is just a waiting game. Give it time. Let the hormones settle out. This will pass. It always does.

Do you ever struggle with depression? What do you do to help yourself? Anyone else's depression manifest in anxiety? Anyone got a good joke for me??

PS> I am not opposed to medication. I've certainly done my time with the happy pills. But I am reticent to go on SSRI's again because I'm very sensitive to medication and I find the side effects to be detrimental to my health and happiness. However, if you have a good meds story I'm willing to hear you out.

Can Exercise Hurt Your Breast Milk? [A Study in Mother Guilt]

A mother's love - they say that nothing is more powerful. (At least if you believe Harry Potter, which of course I do. I'm a sucker for green eyes.) So if this is true then I know the second most powerful force on the planet: A mother's guilt.

Whether they hand it to you as you exit the hospital, a neat little package of the shame you carry for sending your precious infant to the nursery to spend his first night on the planet alone amongst the bright lights and loud noises or whether you don't discover the little box hidden like a pipe bomb under the baby seat that you realize you've installed incorrectly and yet have been using it to tote your fragile baby around for months, it is an inevitability. It hits you like a knife to the stomach twisting your innards as your mind races to all the what-could-haves and thank-God-it-didn'ts as you repeat the Happiest Baby on the Block like so many nursery rhyme Hail Marys in an effort to prevent the worst by imagining all incarnations of it. Once the guilt has finished consuming you from the gut upward in its fiendish flames, it settles in quietly, rock-like, deep inside your person. Some mothers carry their neutron-star guilt in their stomachs perpetually churning with acid, others in their heads in the migraine spot right behind their eyes, but I, I carry mine in my heart. With every beat of my own I can feel the pulse, like an echo, of the hearts of each of my children. From their utmost beginning their hearts have beat inside me - how could I not still be swayed by their rhythm?

I shall tell you all the facts. There aren't many, it won't take long. Indeed, on the grand scale of parental mistakes this one is perhaps minor. But it is the thing that it represents that so wounds me: my ability to hurt my children even while doing my best to protect them. But I am ahead of myself.

Anyone who has had a baby, seen a baby, read about a baby or just happens to have breasts will know what a contentious topic breast feeding is. Breast is best! The zeal imbued into this cannot be overstated. It's healthier for both mom and baby - it is a magic elixir that prevents health problems now and in the future! Plus, it's free. And yet, knowing this as all of us breast-endowed women (and most men too, I'd wager) do, how is that the vast majority do not breast feed? Or if they do, they don't do it for long?

I'll tell you why. It's hard. It may be a natural process but it sure doesn't come naturally. At least it didn't for me. Nobody told me how much it would hurt - like rug burns with the scabs getting ripped off every 2-3 hours around the clock - until the baby's suckling finally turned my nipples into pencil erasers. Nobody told me of the yeast infections passed back and forth like some insane game of hot potato but where the winner gets their mouth painted purple with gentian violet. Nobody told me of the stage where infants turn piranha and, literally, bite the one that feeds them. Nobody warned me of the nursing strikes, the engorgement, the clogged ducts, the cumbersome nursing bras, the mastitis, the banning of all medicine except worthless Tylenol, the double pump milking machine that is so similar to the ones they use on cows that you can't help but moo, the spontaneous public let downs at the mere thought of my baby's cry. (On an airplane, wetting a stranger's head no less! The only thing that could have made that flight more perfect was if my last name were Joad.)

I don't tell you this to discourage you from ever nursing but rather, having been through all of this multiple times, to explain to you why nursing means so much to me. I have fought so hard to do this simplest of things. To be the mother who can feed her baby.

But now for the facts I promised you. The Jelly Bean was born hale and hearty at 8 1/2 pounds, by far my smallest baby but fairly large as babies in general go. She took to nursing right away and at first all seemed to go well. She was back up to her birth weight by two weeks, just as expected. She pooped and peed like a champ. But along about 3 months, something changed. She stopped gaining weight. The doctor wasn't overly concerned. "Bring her back in a month for another weigh-in." I did. But at that check-up and every check-up that has followed, her weight percentile has continued to drop. Eventually the doctor suggested a lactation consultant who in turn suggested a number things of which I all tried. While she still didn't gain any weight, I comforted myself that she was meeting all of her milestones and seemed happy and healthy in every other measurable way.

And then she weaned herself. Or perhaps my milk gave out. I think the problem might have started with my breasts. I began to notice her fussing when it came time to nurse and despite her frantic sucking, the milk would not let down. Eventually she stopped trying to suck all together, straight-arming me and crying whenever I laid her down to nurse. I, always stubborn, refused to let the nursing go. I went for days trying to keep feeding her only to continue to be rejected. Finally, after a particularly teary session on both our parts, I gave up and made her a bottle of formula. She didn't like that either. At my wit's end, I called the beleaguered pediatrician again who said I either had to get her nurse again or to take the formula and it had to be done now. My milk was finished. I enticed her to drink the bottle by adding a sprinkling of Strawberry Quik powder to it (desperate times call for artificially flavored measures!).

I am happy to say that Jelly Bean loves her formula now (and we no longer have to spike it with Quik to get her to drink it). I am also happy to report that in the few weeks she's been on formula her weight bounced up to the appropriate percentile quite quickly. All's well that ends well. Right?

Those are the facts. Now for the questions. Was my milk compromised because of my obsession with losing the baby weight? Was her failure to gain weight due to my early and intense return to exercise? Or because of my very restrictive diet? It was during those middle months of my being a no-wheat, no-dairy calorie-counting vegetarian that she lost the most ground. Was my tumble into sane eating too late? The question that haunts me: Did I sacrifice my daughter's health on the altar of my own vanity?

My guilt may be misplaced. There are other explanations, other narratives I could tell for this story. (At the very least, the process of weaning has called down a hellstorm of hormones that alone could account for my angst.) And yet the guilt gnaws at me. I carry their very lives in my hands - how could it not?

If you're a mom - how did nursing go for you? Were you able to nurse and exercise with no problems? If you aren't a mom, what do you have irrational guilt about? Or are you one of those rare women (whom I envy) that is impervious to guilt?

The Art of Saying No

"No." Jelly Bean, 9 months old, said her very first word a few days ago! It was very clear (and very much a product of having three older brothers who like to scream that word incessantly) - said in the context of me taking away the graham cracker she was powdering the floor with. You do not get between that girl and her food. She was still her pleasant adorable self but a steely look came into her eye as she said it again, this time with more force. "NO." And then she spitup blueberries down the front of her clean dress.

I could learn a few things from Little Sister. And not just how to barf with class. I'm terrible at saying no. It's the curse of the people pleaser - if someone deigns to ask you to do something for them, you say yes and thank them for the privilege. If I were perfect at this, I would be sainted by now and Mother Theresa and I would be swapping tips over whatever it is people drink in heaven. As you should know by now though, I am a case study of Imperfect.

My problem is that I often say "yes" when I know I should say "no" and then passive-aggressively take it out on the asker. Consider my ex-boyfriend Julian. He wanted to get married. I wanted to be 19 and unencumbered. So when the time came to move him into the "ex" category, did I just (wo)man up and tell him no, I would not marry him? Of course not! I made up an elaborate lie about how my dad (I'm sorry dad!) had gotten cancer (I'm sorry cancer sufferers!) and I had to drop out of school to go home to Chicago (I'm sorry Windy City!) to care for him. I even managed to eke out a few tears as I explained why our love could never be.

The lie worked brilliantly for about a week. Until he called to ask my roommate for a forwarding address to which he could send a card and she said, "Charlotte's right here. Why don't you ask her yourself?" and handed me the phone. Um, awkward. Talk about the worst way ever to break up with someone. A simple no would have been better all around.

Fortunately I'm thirteen years past that atrocity and can laugh about it now. (Hopefully he's somewhere laughing about it too and not throwing darts at my face.) But I still have a ridiculously hard time saying no. So you will be very proud of me when I tell you that I got an e-mail to try out a super duper cool new fitness gadget that tracks your calories and energy expended and sleep patterns and everything... and I turned it down. While it made me sad to turn my back on a cutting edge fitness gadget, I knew in my heart of hearts that using it would undo all the hard work I've done these past few months. I've finally broken that cycle of tracking every bit of food in and every drop of sweat out. And I can't go back to that again and keep my sanity.

I said no.

It didn't feel good. I'm one of those chronic second-guessers. When I'm bored waiting in lines, for fun I'll go over all my past mistakes and try out different scenarios until I find one that would have been better or until my number at the pharmacy comes up. And so the second after I sent the e-mail I panicked. What if it turns out to be the next IT thing and I missed the boat? What if all the other cool bloggers try it out and rave about it and I look lame and out of touch? What if it would have given me the body of my dreams??

But then today I felt good about it. Because saying no to this one thing is actually saying yes to taking care of myself. Yes to listening to and trusting my body. Yes to eating ice cream, sometimes. Yes to skipping a workout, sometimes.

Possibly related to the Yes: This morning I stepped on the scale and it was up two pounds. Instead of my usual closet-crying and day of mourning routine, I looked in the mirror and thought, "It's wrong. I feel awesome. I look great!"

Do you have a hard time saying no too? What do you say no to in order to say yes to your health? Anyone else ever broke up with an ex in a really cruel way?

Adderall Makes You Crazy (The Lindsay Lohan Cautionary Tale)

Normal. It's not a word I'm used to using in regards to Lindsay Lohan. From the very beginning she has been many things - oh how I adored her as the red-haired imp on The Parent Trap, Culottes Edition - but she has never been normal. Currently, for those of you keeping tabs on the fallen princess, she just finished serving jail time for missing her alcohol classes and went directly to rehab (do not pass Hollywood & Vine, do not snort $200). She was supposed to spend 90 days in rehab but doctors at the UCLA center have decided that she might not be an addict after all, despite all the photographic and textual evidence of her looking inebriated and/or high as she gets DUIs and has raging public fights with her exes on Twitter. (Not that I'm judging - had Twitter been around during my break-up/make-up years I have no doubt I would have leveraged it to it's maximum cringe-inducing potential. I love me a good public scene.) No, it appears her problems with manic behavior, impulsivity, sleep disturbances and even alcoholism, are all symptoms of a psychosis brought on by addiction to the AD/HD drug Adderall. And in this, Lindsay may be more normal than we'd like her to be.

It is estimated that about 25% of college students take Adderall or Ritalin for non-medical purposes. No one really knows for sure because students are understandably reluctant to 'fess up to their amphetamine use although ask any college student you know and they'll likely tell you it's easier to get an Adderall than a beer. Prescriptions of the drug are up 3100% over the past several years which only increases the black-market viability. Even in my un-hip over-30 demographic, I run out of hands to count on before I run out of people I know who have used it.

A while ago, I wrote about an experience where a friend at the gym approached me about taking Adderall to lose weight. She called it "the perfect life in a pill" and was so persuasive in her efforts (and descriptive in her how-to's) that I was sorely tempted to give it a try myself. Although it's not mentioned in any of my pregnancy manuals, being that I'm a nursing mom and we're not even allowed to eat unpasteurized cheese I'm pretty sure that recreational prescription drug abuse is a no-no. I wrote the post in an effort to cleanse myself of thoughts of magically fitting skinny jeans and brilliant articles that write themselves. But it was all the comments you guys left me detailing your horrific experiences with it and the many detrimental (and potentially life threatening) side effects that really sealed it for me. I never tried it. Seriously, anyone contemplating non-medical Adderall use should go read through that comment thread.

For those people truly afflicted with AD/HD, the drug can be a lifesaver but for people wrongly diagnosed, the fallout can be severe. According to doctors, Lindsay is not AD/HD and should never have been prescribed the drug - small comfort, I'm sure, as she roasts on the spit of public condemnation. But in a world where achievement is everything and our public figures are only as good as their last interview, it doesn't take much imagination to figure out how she would end up with her very own golden ticket on a Rx pad.

What happens to Lindsay Lohan now that she's been taken off the meds is anyone's guess. Perhaps she'll metamorphose overnight back into the moppet we all loved and start being a reliable actress again. Or maybe she'll go on a coke bender and all our speculation about whether her symptoms were "cocaine-like" or just "cocaine" will be ended. For the record, I hope it's the former. As much as I love a good train wreck, I prefer the ones where everyone walks out alive.

Either way though we now have conclusive proof, walking around in padded-knee "Presidential" leggings, that Adderall can make you crazy. To this end, Lindsay may end up being a more powerful cautionary tale about the risks of abusing prescription stimulants than any D.A.R.E. campaign college boards could imagine. At the very least I suppose I owe her a thank-you card.

Have you ever used Adderall or another stimulant for an off-label purpose? Do you really think Lindsay's problems are all the result of a bad ADHD diagnosis?

Oprah Stole My Moment: Intuitive Eating Works For Both of Us

This pretty much sums up my life - except the boogers are generally from someone else's nose.

Oprah beat me to it. As if it isn't bad enough that the woman rules all media outlets, now she has stolen my own epiphany right out from under me! It was my very own "A-Ha" moment! Oh wait... that is hers too. Crap. This whole time I've been thinking that I discovered Geneen Roth all on my own (read: a zillion e-mails from you guys recommending her finally sunk in) when lo and behold the Queen of Everything not only already read and loves Geneen but Oprah also started her own Experiment based on the books.

According to June's issue of O magazine (which I'm just getting around to reading because I'm way too cheap to subscribe to it and I found an old copy at the gym), Oprah has given up dieting and is working on eating intuitively. Just like me! Thankfully it is going swimmingly for the both of us. Hence, I will share my epiphany with Oprah. I'm big like that.

The Truth: I feel like I've been let out of jail.

Rereading my farewell post from a month ago, I'm struck now how depressing it was. I didn't see it at the time because it was just the place that I was in. I'd come to a crossroads: either I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to willpower myself through every new diet/exercise regime that comes along and then crying in my closet when I inevitably failed or I could just... give it up. Just eat and be happy.

It shouldn't be that simple but it is.

I'm delirious with relief and happiness and, honestly, a little nervous that this euphoria won't last. This past month has been so freeing. I worked hard (and it is hard work, at least at first) to stay focused while I ate and to pay attention to what my body was telling me and it works. I'm not broken after all! And if I'm not then I can say with confidence that you are not either.

Here's the proof: two solid months of eating following Geneen's food "guidelines" and my weight (yes, I'm still weighing myself - baby steps, people!) has remained within 1/2 pound the entire time. For a girl that is used to going up and down 3 or more pounds in a single week, this is huge for me. I ate peanut butter cookies for dinner (the recipe: 1 egg, 1 c peanut butter, 1 c sugar. Bake at 350 for 8 min. Do it. You will thank me.) and my weight stayed the same! I had salmon on salad with dressing and didn't resent it for not being the peanut butter cookies and my weight stayed the same! I ate beef ribs. White bread. Homemade strawberry ice cream. And my weight stayed the same. What this all means is that my body does in fact know how to run itself.

While I do still wish that the weight I have stabilized at is about 7 pounds lighter, I have finally come to accept that what I need to work on fixing is not my weight but my head. I can't say that everything is all fixed in my brain - decades of dieting programming will take time to unlearn - but for the first time in a really long time I am hopeful that this will not be the thing that defines me.

The result of all this has been a remarkable freeing of my soul. All the energy, both mental and physical, that I've been devoting to remembering food plans, research, calories and so forth I've been able to devote to other pursuits. I just finished reading 21 books in 21 days and not a single one was a diet book! I play the piano for an hour a day! I meditate, pray, do yoga and snuggle the Jelly Bean on a much more frequent basis! (Did you know Jelly Bean gets pit sweat? She does and it even stinks! I don't know why that cracks me up but I adore that about her. She's already so like her mama!) I finally signed up to take that aerial dancing/circus class I've been dreaming about for so long! And a power yoga class in a real yoga studio! And a dinner cruise with my hot husband!

I had to share this with you guys because you have been so integral in my progress. You have no idea how much each of your comments/blog posts/e-mails/texts/FB messages/tweets and so forth have meant to me. You all have had me in tears (beautiful, happy, cleansing tears) and then in hysterical laughter so many times, just when I needed it. I am so blessed. And so very grateful! I love you!!

So now that I've exceeded my monthly quotient for inappropriate exclamation marks, I will leave you with this:

Get your underage teen bikini pics, hot off the presses!! Seriously, I blogged about the Kendall Jenner (of Kardashian notoriety) scandal for HuffPo - check out how I work Lindsay Lohan into it! (You cannot write a pop culture article these days without referencing Lindsay Lohan. It's like in the rule book and everything.)

How Thin is Too Thin?

Photo Credit

Our society is warped. Twisted. A veritable fun-house of fat and thin mirrors when it comes to body image. One on hand we have Kim Kardashian, queen of curves, compelled to exclaim in an interview, "I look a lot bigger on TV. When I meet people, the first thing they say is, 'Wow, you're so much smaller than I thought'. I look about 15 lbs heavier. I'm only 115 lbs, and everyone thinks I'm like 130 or 140. It's bizarre. I'm a US size 2!"

On the other hand we have Kai Hibbard, a finalist on Season 3 of The Biggest Loser, interviewing about how the show gave her an eating disorder to the point where she was eating 1,000 calories while working out 5-8 hours a day. Says Kai about the consequences of her experience, "It gave me a really fun eating disorder that I battle every day, and it also messed up my mental body image because the lighter I got during that T.V. show, the more I hated my body. And I tell you what, at 144 and at 262 and at 280, I had never hated my body before that show."

Kim Kardashian and Kai Hibbard I am not (and not just because my name doesn't start with K) but I really sympathize with their feelings about being on TV and dealing with the resultant body image woes.

I've gotten a lot of interesting feedback from my 20/20 piece but one of the most common comments I've got is some incarnation of "But you never looked that skinny." The implication of course is that I wasn't skinny enough to have an eating disorder. I first encountered this during my pre-interview process with Fox News. The producer kept asking me for my "skinniest skinniest pics, the ones that show the most bones." I knew what they wanted. They wanted to see a 64-lb walking skeleton with a nasogastric tube and furry arms. Because that's good television. From the very beginning I told them I never got that thin but sent them some pictures from that time period. They weren't satisfied and kept phoning, texting and e-mailing me for better pics all the way until I'd boarded my airplane. If I were more technically savvy it would have driven me to Photoshop, I swear.

The Skinny Pics Debacle Take 2 happened after the 20/20 interview taped, but before it aired. The producer for the segment e-mailed me many times asking for better shots with the implication being skinnier shots. But it wasn't limited to just TV people with their characteristic penchant for extremism. My own family joined the chorus. In an e-mail to my uncle about the piece, my father wrote, " I saw her frequently through the whole time period in question and yes, she was slim, but she was healthy, energetic, and happy (as far as I could see), and so I was never worried. I admit freely that she cares about food in ways I don’t, but hey, different strokes for different folks."

I love my dad dearly and consider him a great friend as well as a great father but his seeming dismissal of my illness stung. Friends and acquaintances jumped on the bandwagon as well - some by comparing me to the super-skinny Johnny of the 20/20 piece and others by comparing me to popular TV or movie stars. "Well, you were thin but not like Angelina Jolie thin. And she doesn't have an eating disorder." To my crazy mind all of these comments came out sounding like "You weren't thin enough as a normal girl and you certainly weren't skinny enough as an anorexic/orthorexic. Even when you're bad you're not good enough!" How skinny would I have to get before people thought I was actually sick?

Here's the thing: I had a BMI of 17. According the World Health Organization anything under 18.5 is considered unhealthy. But in a world where Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham subsist at about a 16, I do look kind of porky. And it wasn't just low weight. I lose my period when my BMI dips below 19 - a fact I've discovered on several occasions in my post-pubescent life. Amenorrhea is indicative of such poor nutrition that the body feels like it cannot support a baby. I had low iron, whacked-out electrolytes, vitamin deficiencies, a suppressed thyroid, heart arrhythmias and hair loss. But worst of all was the mental damage. I was depressed, neurotic and withdrawn.

It's true that I didn't break any bones, lose teeth or end up in the hospital with a tube up my nose - a fact for which I am deeply grateful. But I did hurt. It's just most of the hurt was emotional. And that's the wound I'm still working on healing.

At my thinnest - and most fragile mentally - I got tons of compliments. Everywhere I went people commented on my physique. One woman at the gym even told me I had "the perfect body" (as if there is such a thing). I loved how I looked in clothes, even while I was secretly horrified at how I looked naked - since I lose weight in my upper body first, my chest looked like a xylophone while my legs still kept their fatty bits. My therapist maintains that the compliments came because of my increased self confidence - and she may be right - but I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we are conditioned to appreciate only extremely thin women.

A lot of women with eating disorders look "normal" to us.

My dirty little not-so-secret is that I would love to be that weight again, ribs and all. But I can't do it and remain healthy. Some women probably can weigh what I did and keep their periods and their sanity. Not me. Not my body. And so I choose to maintain a weight higher than what is comfortable for me and waffle back and forth between self -hatred and -love because I know where the alternative leads and I can't pay that price anymore. Even if that makes me look 15 pounds too fat on camera.

What about you - does the weight you personally like yourself best at correspond with the weight other people think you look good at? Have you, like Kai, ever felt worse about yourself at a lower weight?

Why Do You Exercise?

Mostly I exercise so I can make faces like this. Gets me my own treadmill any time of day.

Librarians love me. Having cultivated a lifelong belief that everyone knows how to run my life better than I do, one of my favorite activities is begging people more knowledgeable than I am to tell me what to do. Which is how the venerable MizFit found herself on the receiving end of an emotional e-mail asking her why it is so hard for me to take a rest from exercise. She, not wanting another life to run in addition to her own, returned my question with a question asking me "First, why do you exercise?"

It hadn't even occurred to me to consider that I'd be doing it for any other reason than the obvious: to get healthy. Or that people might exercise for reasons different than mine. So then, list lover that I am, I set out to enumerate my reasons for exercising. I surprised myself. (Not unlike that time I drank a full bottle of water and then realized I was wearing tights, a leotard, bike shorts, a skirt AND suspenders. And my competition was in 5 minutes. If you're really nice to me, one day I will post the pic.)

Why I Exercise
The short, brutally honest answer: Working out is the only time I truly feel good about myself.

Low self-esteem duly noted and need for continuing therapy acknowledged, I'm moving on to the more nuanced answer.

1. It makes me feel safer. After being sexually assaulted and the ensuing court case, I went on a mission to get stronger, tougher and look as least victim-like as is possible for a girl of my proportions. I think it works. After beefing up my bi's with pull-ups and taking up kick boxing, instead of repeat nightmares of the assault now I have repeat fantasies of head strikes and throat crushing. And in a parking lot the other night, when a man jumped in the passenger side of my door my first instinct was to scream an obscenity and throw my book at him. (Note to all of my now-panicked family and friends: it was a total accident. There were two dark colored Honda Accords parked side by side and it was quite dark. I scared the little green apples out of him. And his wife - sitting in the almost identical car next to me - was laughing so hard she almost fell out of her car. There was much apologizing and no harm done on either side.)

2. It makes me feel saner. I am a girl of very intense emotions. (*gasp* No!) I have a lot of both anxiety and exuberance and I use my workouts as a way to temper them. Cheaper than therapy!

3. It makes me feel like a better mom. Mothering does not come naturally to me. I don't know why. Many things in life that I wish I were really good at (hip hop dancing, rock climbing, bread baking, toe painting) do not come naturally to me. But one thing I can do is set a healthy example for my kids and show them how make eating right and exercising a priority. Hopefully I won't go too far the other way and teach them how to be compulsive but that's another worry for another day.

4. It makes me happy. I get a huge kick out of my experiments. I love to get really sweaty. I love the camaraderie of doing something really difficult with a bunch of other people and everyone coming out stronger for it. Plus, in the winter, I swear I get SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and exercise ameliorates mild depression.

5. My gym has free child care. If that isn't reason enough to work out, I don't know what is!

And of course mixed in to all that is a smidgen of post-anorexia "must work out to have permission to eat" nonsense. But thankfully those voices are getting quieter these days.

The Surprise Ending
I didn't even notice, until MizFit pointed it out to me (not only is she a darned good personal trainer but she's a stellar therapist as well), that everything on my list has to do with mental reasons. Not one item in my top five has to do with looking smokin' in a bikini or even anything particularly physical (not that I would mind being a hot mama!). All of which might explain my proclivities for over exercising. After a certain point, if you are working out to look good you reach a point of diminishing returns. A less-is-more approach makes sense. You want to do the least amount of work to get the result you desire. But when you depend on exercise for psychological reasons then less-is-more only feels like crazy. The trick for me is to find other outlets that meet those needs that don't wear my body down so much.

I'm thinking synchronized treadmill dancing. You think the gym buddies would be up for it?


You? So tell me, why do you work out? Do you work out mainly for physical reasons or for emotional/mental ones? Anyone else convinced that everyone else knows them better than they know themselves?

Models Falling From the Sky: Thin is Not the New Black

Suicide is in the air. Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova dove to her death from her New York balcony. Canadian model Hayley Kohle leapt to a similar fate from a balcony in Milan. On the same day as Kohle, model Randy Johnston died of a drug overdose. Columbian model Lina Marulinda also chose a free fall from a balcony. But there are other ways to die in the air besides jumping. Models Lucy Gordon, Daul Kim and Ambrose Olsen all recently hanged themselves, Olsen just last month. And of course, the inimitable designer Alexander McQueen ended his fashion juggernaut along with himself by hanging last February. Death is not yet in the ground. Just a few days ago model Noemie Lenoir was found in a forest, nearly succumbed to an intentional drug overdose. Mercifully she is recovering. [Source]

These deaths should not have happened.

By all accounts each of these young models and McQueen were at the height of their careers. Not only were they young and impossibly beautiful in a world that values nothing more but they had also achieved a degree of success in a highly competitive, fickle field. Why they would want to end their lives is a personal and, most likely, unanswerable question. And yet if anyone would have a reason to live, you'd think it would be these who were living the very definition of the dream.

Tragically many people every year choose to end their own lives and so I am not sure if this recent spate of model suicides (that looks funny every time I type that, as if they are modelling the proper way to die - setting the fashion to the very end) is disproportionate to that of the general population. But I do know this: if you ever needed proof that being thin and beautiful is not the secret to happiness than this is it.

Most of us can say when confronted with such an obvious example that of course being skinny, young and hot doesn't automatically make you happy- Pamela Anderson alone should be cautionary tale enough - and yet we are sold this exact message in hundreds of insidious ways every day. Many of us buy into it. I buy into it. It's so pervasive that I'm amazed whenever I run into a woman who doesn't believe it. I want to grab her buy the shoulders and ask her where she gets her incredible self confidence, why she hasn't been been beaten down by the relentless message that she isn't enough, but she could be if she just lost weight/erased wrinkles/got bigger boobs/lightened her hair/got a better wardrobe/colored her eyes/toned her tummy (in 10 days! See page 54!)

There isn't anything wrong with trying to be beautiful, to be healthy, to be your best self. And yet this drive to improve - or "addiction to fixing" oneself as one astute e-mailer put it - is a problem when it engenders self hatred. How is anything beautiful supposed to come out of hate? Ironically this tactic of self-hate is often one of the first weapons we employ, turning self improvement into self warfare. It does work. Sort of. You can hate yourself thin. I've done it before. But then you are just thin and unhappy, like so many falling models.

We live in an era where a diet - a diet! - is unironically called "Live Your Best Life." (You can even buy your "Best Life" at your local grocery store, just look for the little green labels on your favorite brands! It doesn't say but I'm assuming if you collect enough of the Best Label boxtops and mail them to Oprah then your Best Life will arrive by mail 4-6 weeks later.) Where losing weight is the fastest way to gain instant celebrity, or if you are already a celebrity to get a magazine cover. Where despite the highest unemployment rate in recent history, cosmetic sales and plastic surgery are increasing at an unprecedented rate. An era where models rain from the sky.

It's sheer craziness. It's jumping-off-a-balcony madness. I know all this and yet, deep down, I still believe if I could just lose these last 10 pounds I'd be happy. But thanks in no small part to you all, I think I'm finally willing to give that belief up. It feels scary to me. For one, I've believed this as long as I can remember. I may have outgrown Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy but I still cling with child-like devotion to the Beauty Bunny. And also, I'm convinced that this perpetual war with myself, this intense hatred, is the only thing between me and weighing 1,000 pounds and being housebound for the rest of my life. I'm afraid that if I give up fighting then I'll lose everything. But I think that too is a myth. By fighting myself how can I do anything but lose? The key to my freedom is to give up the fight. Can I trust my body that it wants to be healthy? I hope I can. Because nobody should be falling; we should be flying.

Anyone else buy into the myth that thinness equates to happiness? Anyone else addicted to fixing themselves? Anybody else convinced that fighting yourself is the only thing keeping you from oblivion? Anybody totally sick of reading about this still?? (Anyone? Bueller? Bueller??)

Inside a Residential Eating Disorder Facility

The first thing you notice about The Anna Westin House in rural Minnesota, named for one of the saddest stories in eating disorder lore, is that you don't notice it at all. Two light brick townhouses joined at the kitchen, it blends seamlessly in with the surrounding upper middle class neighborhood. From the green and white porch chairs to the single car in the driveway, nothing sets it apart. There is nothing to tell you that this is where girls who are actively courting death come to live. For many it is their last grab at life.

Passing the unobtrusive shrubbery, I step through the door to find myself standing in an open great room. This is how it must be for the girls who live here, I think. No transition. One moment you are in your own life and then you walk through a door and everything's changed. This is a house of rules, you see.

Rule number one: You cannot come and go as you please. Nor can your friends and family. A soft-spoken older woman, the house matron, smiles and asks me to sign in. I do so, the only person on the fresh sheet. My friend Emily, whom I have come to see, stands awkwardly in front of me, hugging a thick sweatshirt around her despite the moderate 74 degrees the thermostat is set to.

Rule number two: There is a time for everything. And I have come at the end of Seminar Time, just before Visiting Time. As the guest speaker for the evening talks about being "recovered" - a word that causes almost unanimous eye rolling; one girl tells me that her highest hope is to be "recovering" for the rest of her life - I glance around the homey living room. The walls are painted in Model Home colors accented with tasteful furnishings and wall hangings. Flowing uninterrupted from the living room, the kitchen carries on the same post-modern Pottery Barn feeling. The most prominent decoration in the kitchen however is a wall-size antique looking chalkboard. White lines split it into a calendar of sorts. I squint and realize I'm looking at a menu complete with chore assignments. Tonight's dinner was apparently seafood salad with lemon bars for dessert although it smells like spaghetti.

Nobody seems to think it strange that the dominant feature of the first room you see in a house for eating disordered girls is a wall-sized menu. Daily Special: Anxiety on a plate.

"I didn't know how much food they were going to make me eat," Emily says plaintively, her knees tucked up under her chin. We're now sitting outside, on the porch, to let Emily warm up. As she readjusts, I notice how much thinner she is even though I just saw her 2 days ago. Her eyes narrow as she notices the gum in my mouth. "If you have gum, you have to give me a piece."

I hem and haw. Rule number three: Caffeine and gum are specifically banned at the beginning of the program and thereafter meted out on an earned basis only. It makes sense as anorexics typically abuse both. (How does one abuse gum? When you use it to occupy your mouth so you don't eat.) I look down at Emily's cute shoes. "Don't you think your first day is a little early to be breaking the rules? I mean, if you're going to be here you should try and be committed..."

"Oh, I'm committed all right," she says wryly and after a pause we both giggle.

We move on to discuss other things, mostly light-hearted gossipy banter, and my hour passes quickly. The flash in her eyes returns as I sigh and stand. Don't go. She doesn't say it but I can see it in her eyes. She is scared. And alone. And so so tiny. Her fragility overwhelms me. I am loathe to leave her like this.

"Here," I whisper, holding out the pack of gum. "You can have one piece." She takes two, pocketing one and chewing the other. I silently curse myself for not remembering to spit out my gum before coming. For not being strong enough to resist her anorexia-fueled manipulations.

We join the rest of the girls out in front of the house. They are watching a Midwestern thunder storm roll in with all its fury - a row of upturned faces searching for funnel clouds. I notice they are all wearing sweatshirts and pants to ward off the chill of a perfect summer night. I feel fat. A small swell of panic rises in my throat as I look down at my adult-sized jeans completing the row of childish denim. I am not immune. Rule number four: Do not talk about body size. Not yours. Not theirs. Not Angelina Jolie's. I swallow my fear.

An attractive young man sans shirt jogs by. I smile and comment, "Well you guys certainly have nice scenery!" The girls glance briefly at him, confusion playing across their faces.

"What I wouldn't give to run," Emily sighs.

"No cardio until you earn it back," a brunette says curtly and then adds, "You'd better hide that gum too." Emily nods, the shirtless man remembered only in the context of lost exercise.

I don't know how to end this. It seems too abrupt to just toss a casual wave over my shoulder as I head down the driveway, as I would at another friend's house. I know it will get easier after future visits but for now it is awkward. Stepping lightly, I hug Emily - so careful, she is so breakable - but she doesn't hug me back.

"What?" I say urgently. "Are you going to be okay?" What a stupid question.

She shrugs and chews at her nails. "Just something you said..."

"What??" I demand. "What did I say?"

"It's nothing," she turns away, trying to draw me back in.

I won't be played this time. "You'll be fine. Really. I'm proud of you for doing this. I know you can do this."

My resolution affects her. She stands straighter. "Can I?"

"Yes. You are a survivor." I don't add that it's her last chance. Her parents have said if she fails this round of therapy - her third in so many years - then she can't come home again. Meaningless threat? Tough love? Parents simply unable to watch their daughter kill herself by inches as they watch? I don't know.

Emily's eyes cloud over and she chews her lip as if she too is considering her alternatives. Or lack thereof.

I walk away to my car and drive into the night, keenly aware of my freedom. Keenly aware of how very little separates us.

Have you ever had a friend or loved one with an eating disorder? How did you support them? How did it change your relationship?

This post sound familiar? It originally ran in August 2008. Copyrighted by Charlotte Hilton Andersen and The Great Fitness Experiment. Not to be used or republished without permission.

Who Would I Be If I Weren't Broken?

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I'm broken. In so many ways: PTSD from my sexual assault (is that weird that I claim it as "my" sexual assault?), anxiety, OCD, depression, SAD and even extreme PMS. Oh and don't forget to add every permutation of eating disorders known to mankind; I've been anorexic, exercise-purging bulimic/compulsive overexerciser, orthorexic, ED-NOS. I'm a veritable alphabet soup of crazy. (Somewhere people with real problems are laughing. And then craving soup.) But it isn't enough for me to do crazy things. If I just acted crazy then that would be fixable. No, for my whole life I have felt intrinsically flawed. Deeply broken. My very essence a divine mistake.

This, as you can imagine, made for some very poor decisions. (But great dinner party conversations! Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I thought doing acrobatics hanging 70 feet over a canyon with no safety net was a good idea? No??) In all honesty, that's why I stayed with my Very Bad Boyfriend as long as I did. I thought I didn't deserve better. Thankfully other people, like my mom who threatened to send me to another country to get me away from him, did. This belief in my innate wrongness has also informed my general outlook on life. How do I trust a God who screwed up so badly making me? I mean, this is the same Guy who created sea cucumbers after all. Obviously He has a sense of humor - hey, who pooped in the ocean again?! - but how could I follow Him and help other people when I can't even fix myself?

I know I'm getting deep here but I want you to understand how very seriously I have taken my brokenness. It's generally the first thing I tell people about me. "Hi, I'm Charlotte! Lovely to meet you! Oh and by the way I'm crazy."

Years ago, when I first started this blog - and I had like 2 readers which to this day amazes me considering I was still posting under my Goth persona (seriously, I know) with a terrible white-text-on-black-background site to match - Andrew, who has long since disappeared into the Internet ether, left me a very thought provoking comment on a post I wrote about metabolic testing. Essentially he wrote, "Why would I want to mess with my metabolism? It's not broken." He advocated a style of eating and working out that hinged primarily on listening to oneself - trusting your body to tell you when it needs to eat and when it needs to exercise and when it needs to rest. He's not the first person to tell me this but my response has always been the same: "I can't trust myself! I'm BROKEN!" And then, because I wear my deficiencies like a name tag, "duh."

The thing is, it's not true.

So why would I hold so tightly onto a belief that lacerated me every day with its cruelty? This weekend I read - nay, devoured - Geneeen Roth's new book Women, Food and God (recommended to me by about 100 of you astute folks). In it, she tells an anecdote of a woman who exclaims that she is afraid people won't love her anymore if she's healed from her emotional issues. The woman uses compulsive overeating as a way to stay broken. She didn't want to make others feel diminished in her presence, despite the fact that one's successes do not take away from another's. Despite the fact that any time a single person is truly great it lifts all of humanity.

It had never occurred to me before to consider that my self-flagellating belief served a vital purpose in my life. It saved me from failing. From not living up to my potential. See, if I'm broken then I have no potential so anything good I do is just gravy.

Who would I be if I weren't so busy being broken all the time?

Would I be the mom who forgets one of her children for 2 hours? (True story: I forgot son #3 at his preschool a few weeks ago. I finished volunteering as Reading Mom in son #2's classroom, took Jelly Bean and went home. I put her down for a nap, took a shower and got some work done. Never once did it occur to me that the house was so peaceful because I was short one child. I didn't realize my error until his teacher called to ask me when I planned on coming to get him. What kind of mother does that? Not a good one, I tell you.) Or, would I discover that I have it in me to be a good mom? A great mom, even? If I weren't so obsessed over my food issues and control issues and issue-y issues, would I have the mental space to come up with creative crafts and polish my floors and make egg rolls (son #1's favorite food) from scratch? Perhaps not. Mothering has never come naturally or easily to me - nor has egg roll rolling - but maybe God could take this unnatural mother and make up for her deficiencies. If I let Him. My brokenness is really faithlessness.

Would I be the friend who automatically sees another's need and takes action to fill it? The other day I was at a friend's house for a birthday party and after all the kids in attendance inhaled the cake like so many tiny vultures, another guest quietly got out the broom and swept up the crumbs before all those little feet could track green frosting onto the white carpet. It was so simple and yet it hadn't even occurred to me to do it. Perhaps if I hadn't been so busy avoiding the cake and all the other party food, I would have looked outside myself and found the crumbs and then the broom and then the dustpan. Naturally. My brokenness is really selfishness.

Would I be the writer who has the courage to pursue the craft that I love, to tell editors that I'm really good and then prove it to them? Would I be the wife who not only packs the lunch but thinks to put a love note in it too? Would I be the body who knows when too much exercise is too much, who knows what it needs to eat and when? Without any person, diet or book telling me? Would I be the soul who takes time to meditate and and pray and be still and breathe when all I want to do is run from one manufactured crisis to the next? (I'm good in a crisis, by golly!) My brokenness is really fear.

I'm afraid of trying and not being good enough.

Sitting with Jelly Bean today after nursing and changing her, I realized something that felt important. To her I am not just enough, I'm everything. I'm food. I'm safety. I'm rest. I'm shelter. I'm entertainment. I'm love. And if I can be that for her, I owe it to myself - and to the God who made me, the God who "don't make no junk" - to be that for me. I need to stop pretending to be broken - I am no more flawed than any other human - and get to work. It starts with learning how to trust myself, to know that my body will want what is best for it. It starts with learning how to forgive myself for all the mistakes that I do make without resorting to making it a spiritual failing. These things are hard; I'm not good at trusting or forgiving. Especially not when it comes to myself. But, like several of you have told me, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. It starts with faith.

Who would you be if you were not broken? Anyone else feel that being broken is an intrinsic part of their personality? Anyone else ever forgotten a child somewhere???

Addendum: It seems that a few readers have interpreted this post to mean that I'm not okay with me - or others - making mistakes, being broken. Truly that is not what I meant. What I wished to have said that didn't come through very clear is that it's okay to make mistakes, to be broken - everyone is broken in their own way - but that I was wrong to make my brokenness a global aspect of my personality. Sometimes I do good things, sometimes I make mistakes but, as a human being, I am not broken.