The Warrior Diet.

I love testing exciting diets. The Warrior Diet definitely is exciting. I am not really sure if it will work, but I'll find out, as I am following the basic principles since monday.

Before that, I had a diet-break in which my emotional eating faded away. Somehow life changed, so did my problems. Sometimes I even start wondering who I am - without my problems. I'm used to perceiving myself as someone who is constantly "fixing" herself.

It's almost a year since I started practicing karate and we had our first demonstration three weeks ago and I am now a fifth kyu karate-ka, which means five stages away from the first dan. But we are not doing regular sport-karate and I don't know how well our belts are to be translated into the regular system. There is only one other zen-karate-dojo in Germany. We trained the whole weekend before the demonstration, hours and hours of drilling. I thought I knew what physical exhaustion meant, but I had no idea. :-)

It made me very happy.

I really do not care for cookies anymore.

Somehow I "slipped" into the whole thing. It is not a workout, it is a pathway. The combination of endless repetitions, atmosphere, yelling, meditating, kicking and boxing, all while staying centered, peels off the layers not truly belonging to me. We forge our personalities. I think our master is a so called "taoist", whatever "tao" might be, he represents it. After christmas I noticed that I don't indentify with christianity anymore. A year ago, I didn't have the slightest idea, where this might lead me to. And I only walked my first baby-step!

Back to the diet-thing: I love playing with my cron-o-meter, reading about diets, testing my reactions to different foods. The WD attracts me, because it is best combined with intense workout. I like the idea of controlled fatigue, training as in combat. (And I think that Ori is quite sexy... functional muscles, instead of bulk...)
By the way, I completly gave up on the CR-idea. I don't think CR + martial arts are a great combination. Although high class fighters usually do not eat a lot, they eat healthy, sufficiently, but not much. Lean bodies, highly functional and incredibly strong.
I need to lose fat and improve muscle function, not for cosmetic reasons, but for strength and agility. I'm curious if the WD is the way to go.

To diet or not to diet, that's the question.

Six weeks ago, when I heard that my chosen one already has a girlfriend, I stood there in the dressing room and thought: "Well I might even become fat now." Don't get me wrong, it is not my belief that women have to be thin to be attractive and concerns about my body-size are not focused primalily on pleasing the other sex. But the thought didn't leave me.
Everybody is talking about skinny girls not being able to cope with their feminity, nobody talks about all the slightly overweight women refusing to be attractive. There are advantages to believing the real, the thin, the beautiful you is hidden in there, only for yourself to see.
I gained about 15 pounds and I will not lament. Not that I don't feel like it - but it was my choice, wasn't it? If I really wouldn't have wanted it, I wouldn't have done it. This is not easy to accept.

And never again will I half-heartedly believe that the body "wants" to store as much fat as possible. I can tell you something: the body "wants" to function optimally. My body thinks it's a burden carrying more weight around on my morning run. It feels as if someone put a bag full of boulder on my back.

By the way - I got compliments for my new looks, but only from women. Some close friends are relieved. Reconnection in the habit of "we both don't like our this and thats, let's have a dessert" with people you really like is horribly difficult. Because obviously I am a lot more conscious about my body and my looks than most other women. I think I suffer more than my dessert-girl-friends, when I don't feel comfortable. To me there is hardly anything worse and more dissatisfying than shopping for jeans, not liking what you see in the mirror, going home feeling hopeless. This has to stop. I mean, so many woman consider it "normal" not to like their body! And a lot ot them act as if the solution is stopping to have a close look. I feel a bit helpless, because I don't fit in there, but I also am not like the disciplined women who simply know their priorities and act accordingly.

So, what to do? Right now I am caught between two stools. Another diet? No. Not loving my body? Absoltely no. Carrying around useless fat, making me slower than I need to be? Not an option.

Why not another diet? Because of the rules. They immediately make me long for exact these things. I feel deprived the very instant I set the rules.

I don't know what to do, because I don't know what I want. Apart from being at ease with myself and this includes my body.
In a silent minute I have considered the size-acceptance approach and came to the conclusion that this is the biggest bullshit ever. Talk youself into a mood of "I'm beautiful" in spite of the fact you feel ugly? Heavy? Ungraceful? Continue eating more than your body wants and call it personal growth? This is brainwashing.
I am all for accepting the choices, honoring the struggles and the pain we go through trying to live our life. But in the context of body-size the "acceptance"-approach is, in my opinion, merely a veiled resignation. I am not talking about wrinkles here, or sagging bodyparts, that follow gravitation. I am talking about the very, very bad habit of living in the face of bad conscience. This is very self-destructive. It means you don't respect your wishes. The wish for an athlectic, healthy body is also to be respected. It is not bad. It is not an expression of an unhealthy, media-induced beauty ideal. It's normal.

But I am happy to report that I am blessed with an astonishing metabolism. I spent the holidays at my parents, returned a week ago and took up my jogging routine. I lose fat even at approximately 3000. This is unbelievable. True, I work out hard, winter break at the karate-dojo is also over (I feel human again! I need, need, need the feeling of almost breaking down and pushing further. Best drug ever.) But 3000? Come on. I'm heavier now, so I burn more, but still it makes me wonder if my 1800 (that were really more like 2000 in the end) were perhaps a bit too ambitious.

Fat & ugly attack, homesickness and finding out that HE has a girl friend.

All in one day. Black monday. Do I have to say more?


Here the good news: --------------------------------------------------

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No, I'm not a lunatic.

Seven years ago I was in danger of losing myself. Today I can articulate what had happened to my life back then and it is relieving. Today I am a completely different person. Small relicts of my negative self-image still accompany my way and stand in the way of living like I yearn to. The symptoms of these relicts call on my attention and I am glad they do, they are the markers I need to become who I am, to never stop seeking for liveliness.

The most horrible experience is not darkness or grief, but its repression.

Successful dieting.

Is there such a thing?

I used to believe that dieting causes bingeing. I still do, in parts.

But in fact, I have never been less likely to binge than right now, after a few month of averaging around 1900, with optimal nutrition. Remember, I am quite tall and pretty active, yet still - 1900 is considered a high calorie number for someone who "diets". And only because I feel alright about my body size and well nourished I am ready to face the "eat-what-you-want-diet". (That doesn't mean I am not afraid of gaining.)

I also have new fears: for example feeling like crap all the time. Espescially now that karate training is becoming more intense. Another downside: my body adjusted to the zone and can't process sugar anymore. This really spoils the fun of acting out my ice cream visions. I do not even try to give him any kind of flour or grains.

And how about this - if I feel like crap long enough, will it start to believe that this is "normal"? Oh, I want a perfect solution. Right now. I don't want to have this past of depriving myself, resulting in a feeling of having to catch up. I simply don't want to *want* all those sweets. The regular food isn't a problem - I still eat the same things I ate on the zone, a bit more cottage cheese, more almonds, more fruits. I find them to be satisfying and usually I prefer the taste of unsaturated fat over the taste of the saturated fat. The latter has to be drowned in sugar, otherwise it tastes so - uhm - fatty?

If I hadn't made the experience of weighing, optimizing nutrition, losing weight slowly on a sensible calorie level, never going ridiculously low after eating too much, then I would still believe that dieting leads to bingeing or at least doesn't solve weight-, eating- or body image problems. Now I have to say that I made to biggest improvement ever while using, in April's words, the "CR-toolbox".

Unfortunately, I never entered the CR-mode and I am still very curious how it feels like. If I didn't have my emotional food issues I would still pursue this path and I hope that this is just an adjournement. As I never aimed at more than moderate CR I could work in everything that's important to me, like an occasional dessert. Actually there wasn't anything else I missed.

The forbidden cupboard.

[Note: My parents are loving, wonderful, warmhearted people with a great sense of responsibility who had their children's best interests in mind . This is not about blaming them.]

Remembering things I had forgotten:

When I was very small I rarely thought of sweets, because we rarely had some. My mother is a fine baker, so sometimes we would all have big pieces of cake. But everything that was not homemade was served in extremly small portions: if we ate chocolate, my sisters and I were allowed to eat exactly one small piece, about 5 or 10 gramm. It was horrible. It was high sugar and we had to fight the urge to ask for more.

Later, when I was older we had more sweets in the house and they were stored in the so called "forbidden cupboard". Forbidden means - forbidden for us children. Around the age of sixteen I started to sneak food. Regularly. I had terrible fights with my mother about it. I was deeply ashamed of my behaviour and didn't understand. My mother didn't either. I also started to eat leftovers from dinner, so if she had planned to use it for next day's meal she would find it gone. Of course, this annoys the cook. It also annoyed her that I did it although she repeatedly forbid me to do so. I wished I could stop and found I couldn't. Back then it never asked myself why I didn't just buy some sweets? All for myself?

We had endless food fights. At the age of 19 I still sneaked food from the forbidden cupboard! I thought I was hopeless, crazy. My little sister hated me for continuing this habit, because she thought I was just being mean or greedy or something. It would have been so easy to avoid at least these conflicts, wouldn't it? I thought she was right and joined in hating myself.

We also had other problems, I had other problems. I went to see a shrink. He asked for examples of my parent-conflicts. I told him that I ate what was in the forbidden cupboard and couldn't understand myself for doing so. He laughed. Then I understood. He also thought it a strange name, "the forbidden cupboard". I knew this term for so long, it never occured to me that it sounds weird when I start talking about forbidden cupboards.

I couldn't express my feelings. So I ate. And it even worked, in parts. I destroyed myself, I hurt my parents, but at least we couldn't go on pretending that everythings smooth.

My parents taught us that we aren't entitled to anything in this world. I don't know why. I often asked myself if I have the right to exist. If I have the right to breath, to take up space on this earth. They overshoot the mark, I think. And I started to fight. I fought them, felt guilty about it and therefore fought me. I am MsBadConscience. I rebeled against them. I temporarily moved out, stoped going to school, screamed, painted my nails black, dyed my hair black, wore only black. My inside was black. I felt so worthless that I became arrogant as hell. Everyone around my age was stupid, knew nothing and was completly beneath me. I wasn't exactly a nice person and I think my classmates were relieved when I stoped coming to school. Before this I had always been shy, I felt ugly, wore the wrong clothes, was afraid that nobody would like me. Now I didn't have to be afraid, I took matters in my own hands. I gave them every reason to dislike me. I read a lot and became a mean know-it-all. It became a specialty of mine to point out to others why they were wrong and I was right.

At 17 I wasn't sure if I still wanted to live. Living was so painful and I wanted the pain to go away. I lived with my then best-best-friend in her divorced parents's empty house. It was a very beautiful, old house. I remember the leaves falling from the old trees in the garden, sunshine on the parquet and us drifting away into a dream world. I didn't mind when electricity was turned off, I thought it made everything even more adventurous. We listened to goth music and each of us drank about one or two bottles of wine in the evening, wishing to cross over into another world.

I wanted my parents to pay me an appartment, they said they wanted the housekey I still had. This hurt me deeply. Something inside me broke and I came back. I told them that I just don't know how to go on anymore and we found that my only option was to go to a psychiatrie for children and adolecents. It was okay for me, because I figured at least I wouldn't have to face the world there anymore. And I always hoped that there still might be a way out.

I didn't like my therapist. I felt bored. I asked if I may proceed taking violin lessons, start sewing clothes. I even wanted to go to school, I really was that bored. They wanted me to participate in endless parlour games first. They said I had to stop running away first. (Sometimes I couldn't stand it any longer to be robbed of my freedom and climbed the fence, which was a bit painful but defenitely worth it. I think this longing for freedom and my rebellious parts saved from truly going insane.) I didn't have food issues there, instead I started to cut my arms open. This is very fashionable amongst the young girls in psychiatrie. I hid my arms, because I didn't want to seem like a copycat, but was glad that I had found a sweet, new way of self-destruction.

I may not have the "survival-button" but I have an emergency break. After three month I left the hospital and found a very, very good therapist. He taught me that how insane my actions might seem, it is always an attempt to care for myself. Under his guidance I dared to take a closer look and set my foot down the long and stony path of healing.

Now I see that I still have a long way to go. Change my beliefs about myself, change my life in order to solve my food issues. It is a concotion of never getting enough, of not deserving anything, revolting against these feelings, a need for privacy, fear of my strength. (I do not binge daily, not even weekly, most of the time my disordered eating is latent. But I consider it a problem that I am afraid of overeating the moment I fail to control myself.)

Hardly anyone knows this part of my personality. Most people would be taken aback. They see someone self-confident (erm), assertive, smart, strong and elegant. It is not even my wish to communicate this image. I sometimes am all this, but it isn't the whole story.

Excuse me, but I need it.

Currently I am pouring all my deep fears and my frustration, actually everything that bothers me in my blog. This is my catharsis. I don't think I have many readers, but I just want to say: I hope I don't bother anyone else with all this negativity. Sometimes I have to write down the same things several times to convince myself that they are true. Often I have to write about high calorie food, but I don't mean to trigger anyones appetite this way. I know I could do all of this privately. I write a parallel old fashioned paper diary. But it's not the same. I hide my diary. I don't hide my blog.