BelovedHeather
Cathlete
It is time for an update on my crazy life. A friend recently told me that reading my journal is always a wild ride. LOL! First, I want to thank everyone who responded to my prayer request (Memorial Day weekend) and sent hugs and prayers. (Allison, I know that you are not a woman of prayer, and I was deeply touched that you responded to my request and sent love and hugs. I believe in the healing power of love, and you know I am a hugger! You have been on my heart during my retreat, and I have been keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.) I was planning to start a 40-day detox to hopefully break a food addiction, and it was a disaster. I had the wisdom to break free from that extreme detox diet after 7 days, and I believe God answered all the prayers for me and led me to the right path. More on my food and fitness journey in a minute. I am taking a mental health break this month and spending time reading, praying, pondering, and having fun with friends instead of spending my free time online. I had a big adventure last night that ended with 3 hot men in a fire engine making a house call at 3:30 a.m. Kathy S. encouraged me to share this story with y’all, so I am taking a break from my forum retreat. This one’s for you, Kathy!
What a night! I worked my butt off and got a lot accomplished at the office Friday afternoon. I worked 2 hours late and really needed to go to the office today. I fell asleep around 9:00 p.m. I woke up hungry around midnight and went to the kitchen to fix a snack. I heard what sounded like rain in the laundry closet, and I was sprayed with water when I opened the door. The hot water hose sprung a leak. No problem, I thought. I would just shut off the water supply and call maintenance in the morning. Well, it was stuck. No amount of muscle power could budge it. The wetter it got, the harder it was to grip and turn. I tried with all my might. I even prayed. I left a message on the pager for emergency maintenance. The usually return my call right away even in the middle of the night. I was able to contain the water with a wet mop, but I had to continually mop. I decided to make an emergency run to HEB at 2:30 a.m. for duct tape. It was just a tiny leak, so I was hoping that would hold it until morning. By the time I got home, it was a huge leak. The closet was full of water, there was standing water in my kitchen, and a stream of water was spraying out faster than I could mop it up. It was like a fire hydrant by then with the hose split wide open, and I was soaking wet from head to toe. A guy friend who lives close enough to help is out of town this weekend. I tried to wake up my neighbor for help. His dog barked like crazy, but he did not stir.
Did y'all know that you can dial 9-1-1 in the middle of the night and order a man? “9-1-1, I need a man!” Yes, I made that call this morning. The water was seeping through the floor and pooling downstairs, and I was standing in water. I was desperate, so I called 9-1-1. The dispatcher was not sure what kind of man I needed. I needed a man with strong hands and a big wrench! LOL! She transferred me to the fire department, and a nice man promised to send help.
I had a dilemma. Men were on the way to my home at 3:30 a.m. What to do before they arrived? Put on a bra? Change my wet tee shirt? Fix my hair and put on lip gloss? No, no, no! I have my priorities straight. I had to drape a sheet over my bookshelf with Cathe DVDs and hide my Cathe calender and 25-pound weights. I would not want them to think a Cathe girl was too weak to turn off the water supply to a washing machine. LOL! I left out the cute little weights and a teddy bear to make my workout room look nice and girly (since they would have to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen.) The fire truck arrived in a matter of minutes, and it took 3 very fit and buff men with a large wrench to fix it for me. I did not feel like such a wimp after that. LOL! Needless to say, I got no sleep last night. No rest for the weary. I was up until the crack of dawn mopping up water. Why can't emergencies hit at a decent hour?
Apparently, I have demons in my plumbing because my bathroom flooded earlier this month. I will spare y’all the details of that story for now. I need the July Road Trippers to take up a collection and buy me a wet vac. I am tired of mopping up water in the middle of the night!
My fitness journey has taken an interesting and dramatic turn since my last update. I have not touched a Cathe workout this month. I have not worked out at all this month! I have planned recovery weeks in the past and hated them. I always had Cathe cardio withdrawals and got depressed. But I am enjoying this vacation. I desperately needed it physically and mentally. Exercise had become more of a duty than a delight, and I was starting to hate moving my body. It wasn’t Cathe who pushed me over the edge though. I decided to train for the Road Trip by signing up for an intense cardio boot camp class at the club. If I could survive that, I reasoned, sailing through 6 Cathe classes in 48 hours (including her Friday morning step class and the Friday night stretch class) would be a breeze. Only cardio boot camp turned out to be cardio hell. The instructor is more like Jillian Michaels than Cathe. If you have ever watched Jillian whip obese contestants into shape on The Biggest Loser, you can visualize Pit Bull’s training style. To quote Jillian, “Beatings, beatings, beatings.” (She is a friend. I love her personally, but her class is too much for me.) I said a lot of not Sunday school words, but I pushed myself to the limit and got through the 4 weeks. I paid the price for it though. After the last 2 classes, I crashed in my living room and woke up the next morning feeling like I had been run over by a steamroller. Running my first mile gave me a temporary endorphin high, but I crashed and burned a few days later. I fell into a deep pit of depression, experienced bouts of crying for no apparent reason, and thought about cancelling my Road Trip registration and leaving the forums for good. I could not stand to read about anything fitness-related. A month of overtraining left me suffering from serious burnout and starting to hate exercise for the first time since I started my fitness journey.
After reading so many messages that fitness is 80 percent diet, I decided to focus on my diet. I read Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live and ordered his new Eat for Health. I have food allergies (seafood, mushrooms, MSG, and soy), and a lot of the recipes include soy or tofu. The woman who worked as his assistant and was his personal chef when she lived in Jersey moved to Texas. She started teaching cooking classes and doing nutrition coaching/counseling. I had a chance to schedule a session with her for $30.00. I confess that I did not pray it through. I just jumped at it. I did not go to her for weight loss or nutrition advice. I simply wanted to ask her what to substitute for soy and tofu since many of the recipes in Dr. Fuhrman’s book are her recipes. Even though I did not ask her for a diet, I wear my weight like a “scarlet A” for the world to see. And many people give me advice whether I ask for it or not. (I have a clinical nutritionist for food allergies, so I was not looking to this woman for nutrition counseling. I simply wanted recipe makeovers.) She started talking about food addiction and was very convincing. She gave me a plan that she wanted me to follow until I got to my goal weight or for at least a year, but she compromised and told me to be strict with it for 6 weeks and promised that this would reset my brain chemistry similar to rebooting a computer, break the food addiction, level out my hormones, and end the monthly mood swings and battles with depression. I was hoping that this would be the answer to my prayers. Listening to her “sales pitch” for this detox was kind of like watching an infomercial for the latest diet or exercise gadget and feeling like this was the magic bullet. I do not usually fall for that stuff, but I caved this time. I would like to believe that food addiction is simply a brain chemistry problem, and avoiding certain foods will cure it. But I know in my heart that it is not that simple. She is very militant about clean eating. Her personal meal plan would make Tosco Rena seem indulgent.
I met with her Wednesday night, had a 72-hour last supper farewell feast to say goodbye to starchy carbs, and started the detox Memorial Day weekend after my reunion with the Texas Road Trip girls. It worked on Sunday and Memorial Day when I could sleep and rest all day. It was hell when I returned to a stressful week at work. I had a severe detoxification crisis with a fever, a mild headache, and chills. I was expecting that. But the dizzy spells and blurred vision alarmed me. I could not see to drive. I could not see to read or type for an hour at a time. Everything was spinning around. I was late to work twice that week after lunch because I had to pull into a parking lot until I recovered enough to safely drive. Her theory is that animal protein is like morphine, processed carbs are like crack, oil or fat or too many nuts will trigger a dopamine rush, and the way to break a food addiction is to abstain from everything I listed at least long enough to give the brain chemistry time to normalize. Dairy and sugar should never be tasted again in her opinion. She never eats cake on her birthday or pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Never.
After a week of scary side effects (including dizziness, weakness, and blurred vision), I ended the detox. She had me eating nothing but an ounce of raw nuts, a cup of unsalted pinto beans, 5 small fruits, and unlimited raw or steamed veggies a day. No starchy veggies like corn or potatoes. No whole grains like brown rice or oatmeal. No dairy. No eggs. No meat. I was eating 600-900 calories a day, and her plan was making me more obsessed with food. I was tired, weak, and hungry. I could not focus on anything because I kept dreaming about food. I had a flashback to my eating disorder days. I was free to eat more calories in leafy greens, but a pound of leafy greens only has around 100 calories. I do not have time to chew plants all day at work. Not to mention, salads are not appetizing for my taste buds without an ounce of cheese or a boiled egg or my favorite lite raspberry vinaigrette that has a tiny bit of sugar in it. I was compulsively eating veggies and still hungry no matter how much I ate.
The only thing I lost that week was my peace of mind because my weight did not budge. I did not lose an ounce. Plan B according to her was for me to drop down to 400 calories of raw veggies, 100 calories of protein, and daily injections of some hormone from the urine of pregnant women for 40 days at a cost of $1,200.00 in addition to paying her to review my food logs. Hello! I was starving and losing my mind on 600-900 calories a day, and that was the best option she could come up with?! Needless to say, I “fired” her after 7 days of detox hell, and I have been in full anti-diet rebellion all month. Within 72 hours of ending the detox, I was digging the coupon for the free Southern chicken biscuit from McDonald’s out of the recycle bin. Yes, I went there. It tasted nasty. I hate McDonald’s. I am not a big meat eater. But dieting makes me nuts.
A month of over the top cardio boot camp classes at the club and an extremely strict detox diet pushed me over the edge and left me weary, worn, and tired of trying to starve myself or beat my body into submission. I cannot mentally or emotionally deal with another diet ever again. I am sure I will miss Cathe enough to start working out again soon. I am already starting to miss her fun workouts. I just needed a vacation to recover from a month of extreme exercise and deprivation. I am happy and at peace with food and my body for a change. I am eating what I want in moderation and not obsessing over perfectly clean eating or the number on the scale. This is a happy place for me, and I do not want to get back on the diet roller coaster. When I return to my favorite workouts, I want exercise to be a joy and delight again. When I start looking at the clock 2 minutes into a workout and counting the minutes until it is over, it is not worth it. Fitness should be fun! If it is not fun, I am begging God to deliver me from it!
I needed a mental health break. I played with some easier workouts in my collection, got bored, and decided to take a break from formal exercise. I hope I do not regret this when I get to the Road Trip. LOL!
I am treating this as a disordered relationship with food as opposed to a classic addiction. Abstaining works with alcohol. I had my last drunken binge 14 years ago next month. But breaking free from the bondage of destructive eating is more complex. God has answered my prayers. I promise to share more details soon. I am making progress with an approach advocated by the highly respected Remuda Ranch (a Christian treatment center for eating disorders). I started riding the diet roller coaster when I was 8 years old. I have battled chronic yo-yo dieting, anorexia, binge eating, emotional eating, stress eating, purging, and everything in between for almost 30 years. In the years since high school, I have weighed anywhere from 88 pounds to 260 pounds. Even sensible “clean eating” diets are not beneficial or good for me and quickly lead me back into bondage. It is vital for me to fully embrace this new way of relating to food and my body before I spend too much time reading all the forum talk about diets, cheat days, clean food, weight, size, etc. I miss y’all like crazy, and I want to start posting on a regular basis again soon. I just need to wait until I have peace that reading some of the topics that are regularly discussed here will not be detrimental to my recovery.
I am also waiting to see what direction the new website takes. If it is all about logging, calorie counting, comparing myself with everyone else, etc., I will sadly leave this place behind for the sake of my health and sanity. With a history of eating disorders, it is not beneficial or wise for me to get caught up in the numbers and comparison game. I am hoping that Cathe's forums will remain a safe place for those of us who want fitness to be a passion, but not an obsession. I personally do not care how I compare with the average Catheite. I just want to be the best Heather God created me to be. I am also giving up the pursuit of thinness. Freedom is my goal. Fitness is about freedom, not a size. I may be fat today, but I will be free someday! Somewhere between obesity and society’s standard of beauty is a happy and healthy place for me. That is where I want to be. Not fat. Not thin. Healthy and fit and free. This is a big leap of faith for me. I have been eating for comfort since preschool and obsessed with dieting, food, and my weight for 30 years. I still need love and prayers. If you are not a prayer warrior, hugs and encouragement are always appreciated. I am looking forward to starting my fitness journey afresh and anew soon. This month, I am learning to rest instead of striving so hard. Instead of trying to do, do, do all the time, I am discovering the joy of simply being. It is a beautiful place to be.
Love and Heather hugs to y’all! July Road Trippers, see y’all in 5 weeks! Yippee!
Blessings,
Heather B.
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31 NIV).
What a night! I worked my butt off and got a lot accomplished at the office Friday afternoon. I worked 2 hours late and really needed to go to the office today. I fell asleep around 9:00 p.m. I woke up hungry around midnight and went to the kitchen to fix a snack. I heard what sounded like rain in the laundry closet, and I was sprayed with water when I opened the door. The hot water hose sprung a leak. No problem, I thought. I would just shut off the water supply and call maintenance in the morning. Well, it was stuck. No amount of muscle power could budge it. The wetter it got, the harder it was to grip and turn. I tried with all my might. I even prayed. I left a message on the pager for emergency maintenance. The usually return my call right away even in the middle of the night. I was able to contain the water with a wet mop, but I had to continually mop. I decided to make an emergency run to HEB at 2:30 a.m. for duct tape. It was just a tiny leak, so I was hoping that would hold it until morning. By the time I got home, it was a huge leak. The closet was full of water, there was standing water in my kitchen, and a stream of water was spraying out faster than I could mop it up. It was like a fire hydrant by then with the hose split wide open, and I was soaking wet from head to toe. A guy friend who lives close enough to help is out of town this weekend. I tried to wake up my neighbor for help. His dog barked like crazy, but he did not stir.
Did y'all know that you can dial 9-1-1 in the middle of the night and order a man? “9-1-1, I need a man!” Yes, I made that call this morning. The water was seeping through the floor and pooling downstairs, and I was standing in water. I was desperate, so I called 9-1-1. The dispatcher was not sure what kind of man I needed. I needed a man with strong hands and a big wrench! LOL! She transferred me to the fire department, and a nice man promised to send help.
I had a dilemma. Men were on the way to my home at 3:30 a.m. What to do before they arrived? Put on a bra? Change my wet tee shirt? Fix my hair and put on lip gloss? No, no, no! I have my priorities straight. I had to drape a sheet over my bookshelf with Cathe DVDs and hide my Cathe calender and 25-pound weights. I would not want them to think a Cathe girl was too weak to turn off the water supply to a washing machine. LOL! I left out the cute little weights and a teddy bear to make my workout room look nice and girly (since they would have to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen.) The fire truck arrived in a matter of minutes, and it took 3 very fit and buff men with a large wrench to fix it for me. I did not feel like such a wimp after that. LOL! Needless to say, I got no sleep last night. No rest for the weary. I was up until the crack of dawn mopping up water. Why can't emergencies hit at a decent hour?
Apparently, I have demons in my plumbing because my bathroom flooded earlier this month. I will spare y’all the details of that story for now. I need the July Road Trippers to take up a collection and buy me a wet vac. I am tired of mopping up water in the middle of the night!
My fitness journey has taken an interesting and dramatic turn since my last update. I have not touched a Cathe workout this month. I have not worked out at all this month! I have planned recovery weeks in the past and hated them. I always had Cathe cardio withdrawals and got depressed. But I am enjoying this vacation. I desperately needed it physically and mentally. Exercise had become more of a duty than a delight, and I was starting to hate moving my body. It wasn’t Cathe who pushed me over the edge though. I decided to train for the Road Trip by signing up for an intense cardio boot camp class at the club. If I could survive that, I reasoned, sailing through 6 Cathe classes in 48 hours (including her Friday morning step class and the Friday night stretch class) would be a breeze. Only cardio boot camp turned out to be cardio hell. The instructor is more like Jillian Michaels than Cathe. If you have ever watched Jillian whip obese contestants into shape on The Biggest Loser, you can visualize Pit Bull’s training style. To quote Jillian, “Beatings, beatings, beatings.” (She is a friend. I love her personally, but her class is too much for me.) I said a lot of not Sunday school words, but I pushed myself to the limit and got through the 4 weeks. I paid the price for it though. After the last 2 classes, I crashed in my living room and woke up the next morning feeling like I had been run over by a steamroller. Running my first mile gave me a temporary endorphin high, but I crashed and burned a few days later. I fell into a deep pit of depression, experienced bouts of crying for no apparent reason, and thought about cancelling my Road Trip registration and leaving the forums for good. I could not stand to read about anything fitness-related. A month of overtraining left me suffering from serious burnout and starting to hate exercise for the first time since I started my fitness journey.
After reading so many messages that fitness is 80 percent diet, I decided to focus on my diet. I read Dr. Fuhrman’s Eat to Live and ordered his new Eat for Health. I have food allergies (seafood, mushrooms, MSG, and soy), and a lot of the recipes include soy or tofu. The woman who worked as his assistant and was his personal chef when she lived in Jersey moved to Texas. She started teaching cooking classes and doing nutrition coaching/counseling. I had a chance to schedule a session with her for $30.00. I confess that I did not pray it through. I just jumped at it. I did not go to her for weight loss or nutrition advice. I simply wanted to ask her what to substitute for soy and tofu since many of the recipes in Dr. Fuhrman’s book are her recipes. Even though I did not ask her for a diet, I wear my weight like a “scarlet A” for the world to see. And many people give me advice whether I ask for it or not. (I have a clinical nutritionist for food allergies, so I was not looking to this woman for nutrition counseling. I simply wanted recipe makeovers.) She started talking about food addiction and was very convincing. She gave me a plan that she wanted me to follow until I got to my goal weight or for at least a year, but she compromised and told me to be strict with it for 6 weeks and promised that this would reset my brain chemistry similar to rebooting a computer, break the food addiction, level out my hormones, and end the monthly mood swings and battles with depression. I was hoping that this would be the answer to my prayers. Listening to her “sales pitch” for this detox was kind of like watching an infomercial for the latest diet or exercise gadget and feeling like this was the magic bullet. I do not usually fall for that stuff, but I caved this time. I would like to believe that food addiction is simply a brain chemistry problem, and avoiding certain foods will cure it. But I know in my heart that it is not that simple. She is very militant about clean eating. Her personal meal plan would make Tosco Rena seem indulgent.
I met with her Wednesday night, had a 72-hour last supper farewell feast to say goodbye to starchy carbs, and started the detox Memorial Day weekend after my reunion with the Texas Road Trip girls. It worked on Sunday and Memorial Day when I could sleep and rest all day. It was hell when I returned to a stressful week at work. I had a severe detoxification crisis with a fever, a mild headache, and chills. I was expecting that. But the dizzy spells and blurred vision alarmed me. I could not see to drive. I could not see to read or type for an hour at a time. Everything was spinning around. I was late to work twice that week after lunch because I had to pull into a parking lot until I recovered enough to safely drive. Her theory is that animal protein is like morphine, processed carbs are like crack, oil or fat or too many nuts will trigger a dopamine rush, and the way to break a food addiction is to abstain from everything I listed at least long enough to give the brain chemistry time to normalize. Dairy and sugar should never be tasted again in her opinion. She never eats cake on her birthday or pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Never.
After a week of scary side effects (including dizziness, weakness, and blurred vision), I ended the detox. She had me eating nothing but an ounce of raw nuts, a cup of unsalted pinto beans, 5 small fruits, and unlimited raw or steamed veggies a day. No starchy veggies like corn or potatoes. No whole grains like brown rice or oatmeal. No dairy. No eggs. No meat. I was eating 600-900 calories a day, and her plan was making me more obsessed with food. I was tired, weak, and hungry. I could not focus on anything because I kept dreaming about food. I had a flashback to my eating disorder days. I was free to eat more calories in leafy greens, but a pound of leafy greens only has around 100 calories. I do not have time to chew plants all day at work. Not to mention, salads are not appetizing for my taste buds without an ounce of cheese or a boiled egg or my favorite lite raspberry vinaigrette that has a tiny bit of sugar in it. I was compulsively eating veggies and still hungry no matter how much I ate.
The only thing I lost that week was my peace of mind because my weight did not budge. I did not lose an ounce. Plan B according to her was for me to drop down to 400 calories of raw veggies, 100 calories of protein, and daily injections of some hormone from the urine of pregnant women for 40 days at a cost of $1,200.00 in addition to paying her to review my food logs. Hello! I was starving and losing my mind on 600-900 calories a day, and that was the best option she could come up with?! Needless to say, I “fired” her after 7 days of detox hell, and I have been in full anti-diet rebellion all month. Within 72 hours of ending the detox, I was digging the coupon for the free Southern chicken biscuit from McDonald’s out of the recycle bin. Yes, I went there. It tasted nasty. I hate McDonald’s. I am not a big meat eater. But dieting makes me nuts.
A month of over the top cardio boot camp classes at the club and an extremely strict detox diet pushed me over the edge and left me weary, worn, and tired of trying to starve myself or beat my body into submission. I cannot mentally or emotionally deal with another diet ever again. I am sure I will miss Cathe enough to start working out again soon. I am already starting to miss her fun workouts. I just needed a vacation to recover from a month of extreme exercise and deprivation. I am happy and at peace with food and my body for a change. I am eating what I want in moderation and not obsessing over perfectly clean eating or the number on the scale. This is a happy place for me, and I do not want to get back on the diet roller coaster. When I return to my favorite workouts, I want exercise to be a joy and delight again. When I start looking at the clock 2 minutes into a workout and counting the minutes until it is over, it is not worth it. Fitness should be fun! If it is not fun, I am begging God to deliver me from it!
I needed a mental health break. I played with some easier workouts in my collection, got bored, and decided to take a break from formal exercise. I hope I do not regret this when I get to the Road Trip. LOL!
I am treating this as a disordered relationship with food as opposed to a classic addiction. Abstaining works with alcohol. I had my last drunken binge 14 years ago next month. But breaking free from the bondage of destructive eating is more complex. God has answered my prayers. I promise to share more details soon. I am making progress with an approach advocated by the highly respected Remuda Ranch (a Christian treatment center for eating disorders). I started riding the diet roller coaster when I was 8 years old. I have battled chronic yo-yo dieting, anorexia, binge eating, emotional eating, stress eating, purging, and everything in between for almost 30 years. In the years since high school, I have weighed anywhere from 88 pounds to 260 pounds. Even sensible “clean eating” diets are not beneficial or good for me and quickly lead me back into bondage. It is vital for me to fully embrace this new way of relating to food and my body before I spend too much time reading all the forum talk about diets, cheat days, clean food, weight, size, etc. I miss y’all like crazy, and I want to start posting on a regular basis again soon. I just need to wait until I have peace that reading some of the topics that are regularly discussed here will not be detrimental to my recovery.
I am also waiting to see what direction the new website takes. If it is all about logging, calorie counting, comparing myself with everyone else, etc., I will sadly leave this place behind for the sake of my health and sanity. With a history of eating disorders, it is not beneficial or wise for me to get caught up in the numbers and comparison game. I am hoping that Cathe's forums will remain a safe place for those of us who want fitness to be a passion, but not an obsession. I personally do not care how I compare with the average Catheite. I just want to be the best Heather God created me to be. I am also giving up the pursuit of thinness. Freedom is my goal. Fitness is about freedom, not a size. I may be fat today, but I will be free someday! Somewhere between obesity and society’s standard of beauty is a happy and healthy place for me. That is where I want to be. Not fat. Not thin. Healthy and fit and free. This is a big leap of faith for me. I have been eating for comfort since preschool and obsessed with dieting, food, and my weight for 30 years. I still need love and prayers. If you are not a prayer warrior, hugs and encouragement are always appreciated. I am looking forward to starting my fitness journey afresh and anew soon. This month, I am learning to rest instead of striving so hard. Instead of trying to do, do, do all the time, I am discovering the joy of simply being. It is a beautiful place to be.
Love and Heather hugs to y’all! July Road Trippers, see y’all in 5 weeks! Yippee!
Blessings,
Heather B.
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31 NIV).
You are awesome -- you are fearfully and wonderfully made, and you bless us all by sharing so honestly and authentically!
