It's a real nail-biter

So, Nervous Nellie doesn't like my nickname for her, huh? Why doesn't that surprise me? She's never been overly fond of nicknames, even those that weren't particularly offensive in any way. Names, as an issue, are a sensitive spot for Nellie. Yeah, she's weird. I've been telling you that all along, though, haven't I?

Nellie used to be a nail-biter, starting about the time she and her sisters were put into foster care (just before her 12th birthday). It got pretty bad at times to where she'd have bleeding fingers.

What finally cured her? Well, mostly it was piano lessons. She'd always wanted to play, and when her foster parents asked her "if you could play one musical instrument, what would it be?" she replied "piano or flute". In a stroke of genius, and one of the few nice things they did for her, they sent her to piano lessons for 2 years. While she didn't become a virtuoso or anything, the lessons allowed Nellie the basic knowledge to continue teaching herself for many years, and became an important emotional outlet for her in the years to come.

But how did Nellie stop biting her fingernails? Well, some days her fingers were so sore from biting them that she could not practice the piano. She had been given a key to the church next door to practice at her own will and she so desired the solitude and peace of the church (and the freedom to be there as long as she wished) that she spent countless hours practicing. And when her fingers hurt, she couldn't practice as long. In short, it became a simple choice. She chose music.

However, some things about Nellie's personality have not been so easy to banish. Recently, I overheard her and her oldest daughter having a conversation. They were talking about the daughter's father (Nellie's first husband). Leaving lots of unimportant details out, I will say that Nellie was explaining to her daughter that she needs to just understand that how her dad is is just how he is. It's a part of his personality and he likely isn't conscious of most of his behaviors that so alienate him from her.

The daughter shook her head as if she didn't want to believe it (it's always easier to blame someone than to try and understand them) . Nellie replied: "Well, look at me. There are things about my personality that I might not like but I can't really control them."

Daughter: what?

Nellie: for instance, in my brain, there's a hamster running on a little wheel and it never stops. Not when I sleep, not when I'm awake, not when I'm busy, happy, sad, bored, angry or working.
Daughter: a what?

Nellie: no matter what I'm doing, whether I like it or not, deep in my subconscious there's always something that my brain is worrying about. I can't control it, and it annoys the heck out of me, and no matter how irrational I know it is, it is there.

Daughter: what do you worry about?

Nellie: well, you know... there's the usual suspects: money, relationships, the economy, war, the health of my kids, and if there's nothing else to worry about, I go to bed at night and lay there awake, plotting out escape plans in case of a house fire and wondering if I locked all the doors or fed all the pets.

Daughter: oh [insert pause] so that's where I get it from.

It was a bit funny for Nellie to hear her daughter (who's now an adult) admit to having the same little hamster in the back of her mind, continuously ruminating on all the things there are to worry about in this world. Incidentally, Nellie has been trying for years to get this daughter not to bite her nails. Although she doesn't do it as much as chronic nail biters, she does nibble.

But on another level, it's also sad for Nellie to realize that her own inability to control her demons of worry have migrated to her daughter. Was this something genetic, or environmental, she wonders? If it was environmental--that is, growing up with a mother whose own nervousness and worry-wart mentality have impacted her, then Nellie feels somewhat to blame for passing it on.

It was a bit of an eye opener for Nellie, actually. She told her daughter how, more than a decade ago, she'd taken a low dose of anti-depressant for about a year after some particularly stressful events (sudden unemployment through no fault of her own, twice in one year, and mounting debt that eventually led to bankruptcy). Eventually the stressful events faded and she stopped taking the medications with her doctor's blessing.

However, now in looking back, the current stresses of life are mounting pretty heavily again and
perhaps it's not a bad thing to consider a little 'prescription boost' again. She's been considering a trip to her doctor, but hasn't yet made the call.

Her argument against the medication is that while it did indeed slow down the hamster, it also dulled her emotions such that she was mildly happy about things that previously made her very happy. Its as if she just existed in a world of pleasantness. Taking away the lows also took away the highs. It's not something Nellie looks forward to experiencing again, but it might be a trade off necessary to get her through the next year or so.

What does all this have to do with Nellie's eating and weight issues? Well, as you probably guess, they're all tied in together. When she worries a lot, she eats a lot. Obviously. Worry and stress are siblings of a twisted family that seems to branch ever so easily off Nellie's family tree.

I'll keep you posted on the status of Nellie's thinking on this. I rather think it might be a good idea for her. Anything that will reduce her reception to stress and slow down the hamster is fine by me!

Flo the archeologist

Yes, I am like an archaeologist on an important dig. I start out taking a shovel and hauling out a few good chunks of dirt. Then I move to the hand trowel. And finally, as I inch closer and closer to the item I'm seeking to uncover, I pull out the tiny brush and gently dab at my finding.

Nellie's been feeling the effects of my shoveling and troweling. In fact, she's trying very hard to get me to shut up. In the day since my last post, Nellie has consumed some pretty drastic servings of ice cream (not something she normally even likes a lot of), a horrible-tasting but no-doubt fattening brownie, larger helpings of every meal and today, a half-pound of chocolate covered peanuts.

What's up with that, Nellie, I want to ask. Why is she punishing me...or is she punishing herself? Does she think that feeding me, granted except for that horrid brownie it was all pretty darn good, I'll stop my quest, stop excavating down to the last speck of dust?

Oh no, Nellie, don't you go thinking you can stop me that easily!! No sirree, I'm not going to stop, and unless you are going to forsake your computer, you won't likely get me to shut up anytime soon.

You see, Nellie knows what's coming. I promised you there was much more to her eating habits and sure, there are several topics I've been mulling. But there's one biggie to come. Nellie desperately doesn't want me to talk about this. She thinks it will do no good to bring it up; nothing will change. But still, it lurks under every decision about food that she makes.

I hadn't planned to really drop the L-Bomb --Nellie's BIG issue-- just yet but thought I'd deal more with the trivial matters of food and fat first.

But the past few days have really convinced me that we need to get this out into the open. Sooner is better than later. If Nellie has her way, I'll never talk about this, so out with it!

What, you are probably wondering, is the L-Bomb? Well, it's going to be my way of referring to the L's of Nellie's life. Love and Loneliness.

Nellie tries to poo-poo away the effects of these issues, but I know that it's literally eating away at her. And as these high-charged emotional issues eat at her, well, you already know what she does to shut it up (as if that works... come on Nellie, get real!).

Yeah, deep down she knows that it doesn't work. But it's all she knows to do to ease the emotions that arise in both of these situations.

Let's take a brief look at Nellie's education about, and experience with, both of these L-Bombs.

First, love. Nellie doesn't really recall any sense of love from her family as a child. She didn't have the supremely confident knowledge that her mother loved her no matter what. She didn't feel love from her older, bossy and acting-out older sibling, either. Her younger sister, nearly five years her junior, was pretty loving. That's one relationship that she's always maintained fairly easily. Without a stable father in the picture, where was a child to get love?

Nellie didn't really bond with most of her step-fathers or mother's boyfriends. They rarely lasted more than six months (even the marriages). She soon learned to live a solitary life within the bubble of her existence.

Nellie's mom talks about how much she always loved her kids and did what she felt was best for them, but Nellie doesn't remember things that way. Backing her up are the memories of her siblings, who also say they didn't feel that their mom was "all about her kids" like she claims.

So Nellie grew up not really feeling loved, and rather feeling that it wasn't terribly important. When you never know you're missing something, you tend not to feel neglected or at a loss. It's only when you have something and then lose it, that you realize what you are missing.

Nellie's teen years were spent in the foster care system. This is a whole other can of worms meant for another day. But as for lessons in love, there were scant few. Her foster parents' marriage was a strange one, indeed, and while they claimed to love each other, it seemed more like a marriage of convenience for the both of them.

One thing that she did observe and pick up on, however, was that two adults can live under the same roof and not be fighting and angry constantly. That was definitely a revelation for her. While she contributes most of this semi-peaceful existence to her foster-mother's religious beliefs (in that the man is the boss and the woman goes along with whatever), she does look back and realize that it was good for her to see *something* different than what she'd thus far observed in her mother's interactions with men.

So Nellie went into the world as an adult, with a boyfriend who was a year ahead of her and already in college. Here again, a story for another day. There weren't any real lessons she learned about Love from him or his family, except to say that there are some seriously twisted views of 'love' in the world.

Several years of dating long-distance led to marriage and Nellie's oldest daughter. The marriage itself was over within months of the wedding, in Nellie's view point. It dragged on for four and a half long years before she finally walked away from the situation.

But one thing that she definitely took out of that relationship was a sense that her marriage had been immensely lonely.

Ahhhh, so this leads us to Lonely, the other L-Bomb.

Suffice it to say, Nellie's growing up, and years in the foster home, were full of loneliness. She'd always been a bit shy and solitary as a child, and while she always had a few loyal friends, she's remained, to this day, a somewhat solitary adult. She's a home body and enjoys peace and quiet, a simple existence and a good book or a sewing project.

But one thing that Nellie insisted, when single, was that if she ever got into a long-term relationship again, she refused to be lonely.

That song by Dan Fogelberg "Lonely In Love" is what comes to mind. "Baby You're My One and Only, Why Must I be Lonely In Love?"... ahhh yes, Dan and Nellie must have been soul mates or something because so much of his music resonates the feelings and experiences of Nellie's life. In fact, I think that if her fictionalized account of her family ever were turned into an epic movie, the entire soundtrack could be easily found amongst the body of work by Dan Fogelberg. It was a sad day, indeed, when he was lost to the world earlier this year.

Okay, well, if you haven't ever heard the full song, you can read the lyrics in full on Dan Fogelberg's website: http://www.danfogelberg.com/alphalyrics3.html

So well, anyway, all my background has probably led you to the proper conclusion already. Yes, Nellie is, despite her determination never to be in this position again, lonely in love.

How did this happen? Well, I have to say that it's kind of Nellie's own fault. She suspected that things might end up this way, but she didn't back out of the relationship anyway. Why?

Well, it wasn't because she was desperate to stop being single. Nellie had dated a handful of men in the eight years since her divorce. Nobody lasted much longer than six months; half didn't last that long! She'd pretty much been burnt out by dating. If it wasn't a man cheating on her (egads, let's see...of the five she dated in those years, three cheated!), it was a man who was trying to turn her into something she wasn't (yes a story for another day) or a man who was still in love with another woman. Yeah, she picked some winners!

Which is exactly why she didn't back out of the relationship with her current husband, whom I'll call Ned. Ned is as faithful as the family dog. Ned wasn't still in love with his ex and had no agenda to turn Nellie into something that she wasn't.

Ned had a lot of great qualities going for him. Those were mighty attractive to Nellie. He's funny--he's the kind of guy that everybody likes. He's easy-going, not a hot-headed control freak like her first husband.

He's hard-working. He's been putting in as much overtime as he can for all these past five-plus years so that Nellie could be home with the kids.

He loves his kids and is proud of them. He's sweet and considerate far more often than any other man Nellie dated.

Oh, and did I mention that he's an excellent cook? Nellie started packing on the pounds almost immediately after they began dating!

So what on earth does Nellie have to complain about, you may ask.

Well, perhaps Nellie has unrealistic expectations of relationships, but it is what it is: she's lonely!

Ned is a blue-collar worker with a physically laborious job. He's been working 10-hour days for five years now. And on and off for months on end, sometimes it's 6 days a week. It's been 6 days a week for five months now.

Ned is pretty typical of Midwestern blue-collar workers in many ways. His life is very predictable and he likes it that way. He goes to work early in the morning, works all day, comes home and eats a big meal, then promptly retires to the recliner where he sits with the dog in his lap, snoozes on and off all evening, and eventually collapses into bed when he wakes at some point in the night.

Nellie feels guilty expecting more out of him, but most nights she has the vague sense that except for his brief appearance at the dinner table (he eats quickly and leaves her and the kids alone to finish a lot of nights), she may as well be a single parent. But unlike being a true single parent, she's not free to seek out any other man for emotional companionship. That would be considered either cheating, or nearly-cheating (as the rules for relationships have become more complex with the addition of the internet).

And even though you didn't ask, no doubt you can guess about how much of a sex life this evening routine gives the couple. In short...not much.

Ned gets defensive and makes excuses if Nellie tries to voice her feelings about the situation to him. Doesn't she realize his job is physically demanding? Doesn't she realize that he's working as much as he can for the family? It all boils down to: don't you appreciate me?

Ned needs to feel appreciated, and for sure Nellie does her part to make sure he's appreciated. She tries very hard not to nag him about helping out with the house, the kids, the pets. If he's sound asleep when the kids need putting to bed, she does it herself. If he cooks and leaves a mess, she cleans it up. If he washes laundry and leaves it in a wrinkled mess, she folds it.

Not to say she's a saint; she does her share of bitching at him for things he does that annoy her. But when it comes to her real feelings about the quality of their emotional relationship, she pretty much keeps quiet these days.

Nellie has some pretty specific ideas on what things could improve this situation, but Ned will have no part of it. First off, she'd like to banish the TV. When Nellie was single, she and her daughter spent most of those years without a working TV at all. They never, ever had cable or satellite TV. If they watched TV, it was usually a movie they owned or rented. When they were done watching the movie or show, the TV went off. It was never on for 'background noise' and instead they spent time reading, working puzzles, playing games or being active.

Ned knew that Nellie's life was like this, and when the pair first began to talk about living together (as Nellie absolutely refused to consider marriage until knowing if she could live peacefully under the same roof as Ned), Nellie brought up her concerns about Ned's level of TV watching.

He assured her that it was simply because he lived alone and had nothing else to occupy his evenings. While skeptical, Nellie accepted his answer. When they moved to the house they still live in, Nellie suggested choosing at least 2 days per week when the TV would not be turned on at all. Ned initially agreed, but never really stuck to it. Nellie at first objected, but she didn't put her foot down.

And so now seven years later, the TV is on seven days a week, from the moment Ned finishes his supper to the moment she turns it off sometime after he's fallen asleep.

More TV time has taken its toll on Nellie, too, by the way. She used to ride bike a lot, walk in the evenings. In order to spend any time at all with Ned, she's learned that she must sit in front of the TV with him, most likely munching on something as well.

So Nellie most definitely feels that the TV is a large culprit in the whole fat-battle. And I have to agree. It is much easier for me to beef up if the TV keeps her sendentary.

However, there are many evenings when Nellie just can't stomach the thought of sitting and watching TV. These are times when she either reads a book in another room, works on her solitary hobbies (sewing, crochet), plays with the kids elsewhere (although they, too, have come to realize that getting ANY time with Daddy in the evening means sitting with him to watch TV) or spending time at the computer. All of which leave her feeling lonely when she realizes that there in the next room is a man she really loves, but who takes no interest in her whatsoever.

Ned has occasionally made note of Nellie's computer time and how he feels that she spends more time with the computer than him. What a twist of irony! haha! What he can't seem to understand, no matter how many times Nellie tells him this, is that she'd rather spend time with the computer (where at least she can create and communicate with friends online) than with the TV. Spending time with Ned in front of the TV equates basically spending time with the TV. He just doesn't get it. Or maybe he's setting her up to "take the blame" here by acting like Nellie is ignoring him. Hard to say how that will pan out.

But I do know that if Ned said "let's take a walk" or "let's play a game" or "let's just chat about our lives" she'd be flipping the monitor off so fast his head would spin! Try telling him that, though. It becomes a handy excuse for him: well, Nellie is always on the computer... why shouldn't I watch TV & be comfortable??

So what does Nellie do in response to all of Ned's TV time and lack of any emotional time for their relationship? All together now (you should know this by now): she eats.

In her own twisted logic, Nellie feels that since Ned doesn't seem to notice or care, she rarely puts on makeup (in fact, tells her he doesn't care if she wears makeup or not). She doesn't bother to dress up, preferring sweats or yoga pants that stretch and baggy tee shirts. She doesn't fix her hair, because no matter how she looks, Ned will say 'you look fine' to her.

He thinks that by being 'accepting' of whatever, he's showing Nellie that he loves her. But all he's really showing her is that he doesn't care. That's not love. That's apathy.

Now, don't get me wrong. Nellie does believe that Ned loves her. But she also believes (and has believed since early in the relationship) that Ned is somehow emotionally stunted in terms of being able to be truly present in this relationship. Was it something in the nature of the relationship between his parents that gave him these strange notions of how to behave in marriage? Is it some leftover baggage from his first marriage? I tend to think it was the first. His parents, while they loved their kids and (presumably) each other, were only peripherally involved in each other's lives. He seems to think that the status quo he grew up with is acceptable, or maybe that breaking out of that mold would mean having to examine the dysfunction that was his parents' marriage (both are deceased now, so it's easier to just remember the good & forget the bad).

Either way, Ned almost subconsciously builds up walls between himself and Nellie, and being too tired, too engrossed in a TV show, too sore to be involved, have become easy walls indeed.

Another oldie but goodie in terms of songs comes to mind. Barry Manilow, singing a song about father and son: we're two ships that pass in the night. But we smile and we say it's all right. We're still here, it's just that we're out of sight, like those ships that pass in the night.

Nellie feels like she and Ned are ships that pass in the night. They love each other, there's no doubt about that. But Ned's choices, whether conscious or subconscious, are causing Nellie to live a life of loneliness. She wants a husband who will spend time with her in the evening, not time in front of the TV.

She wants a husband who will read to the kids (and not just one quick book so as to ease his conscience so he can hurry up and get to his TV). She wants someone who has enough energy after a day of work to go for a walk (Ned always says his feet hurt) and will be awake for a while so that she can chat with him or just have someone to say to her 'how was your day?'.

It's those things: taking time to be with her and talking to her, that indicate to her that she's loved. Sure, Ned does {in his own way} show love to Nellie, but he also needs to understand that she needs to have it shown in ways that mean something to her, too! Sometimes she thinks Ned really doesn't even know her. It's like they stopped talking the minute they started having sex, or the minute they moved in together. The talking, the sharing, the getting to know each other should not stop after the initial phase of the relationship. Yet, for Ned, it was sufficient. It wasn't for Nellie.

And lastly, she wants someone who cares about her health. Ned thinks that by being 'accepting' of her no matter what she weighs, that he's showing he cares. Actually, Nellie feels just the opposite about it. It's almost like she's purposely not losing weight, just to see if she can force Ned to care about something...anything! What if she got to be 300 pounds? Would he care? What if she ends up diabetic, housebound, incapable of caring for herself? Would he care?

See, in order for Ned to care about how Nellie treats her own body, he'd have to become conscious of and learn to care about how he treats his body. Ned has been a smoker since high school. In eight years with Nellie, he's attempted to quit, actually quit for a couple years, but started again in secret, and now smokes those evil small cigars. He smokes maybe one in the evening at home. Sometimes two. Always outside, in any weather, so the kids won't see. He won't be able to hide this forever, but he still tries. So he's not a chain smoker. But he knows he shouldn't smoke; he knows that Nellie hates it. But she accepts it.

Ned also has high cholesterol (very bad, in fact) and yet continues to pander to his equally bad eating habits. Before Ned came along, Nellie helped curb her eating by simply not buying and having junk food in the house. If she needed something that badly, she'd go out, buy one serving (mini half pint of ice cream, single-serve bag of chips, one can of soda) and be done with it. But Ned, well, he works hard and he feels that he deserves to have ice cream, soda, chips and dip and all that stuff handy for his evening snacking (which incidentally hasn't gone down since he started up smoking again). He thinks that Nellie, if she feels those things are bad for her, simply shouldn't eat them. More for him. He feels that she should not punish him by refusing to allow those foods in the house. She should have the self-control not to eat them.

Yet his own double-standard (i.e., expecting Nellie to have the self-control not to eat the junk while he himself doesn't have the self-control to stop smoking completely) escapes him. Conveniently.

Ned also shuns exercise of any sort and conveniently blames his slothful behavior on his job and a back injury he suffered some years ago. But Nellie doesn't buy it any more. He wasn't like this for several months when they dated before living together. He managed to stay awake and do things in the evening with her and even said he'd like to bike or walk in the evenings. And even more telling, when Ned has a week of vacation, is well-rested and not laboring physically day in and out, he still maintains the same routine--exhausted by 7:00 p.m. and insisting that he must be in his recliner in front of the TV. When he's home on a weekend, after sleeping in in the morning, he falls asleep at 10:00 a.m. in the recliner, in front of the TV.

Nellie believes very strongly that "being tired/sleepy/sore feet/aching back" while they may have some basis in reality, have become a convenient way for Ned not to be present emotionally in their relationship.

Whether it's because he doesn't know how to have a truly emotional relationship, or he's afraid to do so, she doesn't know. And she doesn't know how to determine which it is. She's considered demanding that they seek the assistance of a specialist, but she knows that while Ned will go along with it, he won't easily do the introspective work required to come to any real conclusions about himself and act accordingly.

What are her other options? To go have an affair? Hardly Nellie's style at all. However, the temptation to find a male friend for some emotional bonding is present. Considering her lack of social life however, it's hardly going to be happening.

Should she try to shake Ned from his complacency by demanding he change...or else? Since she has no real intentions of breaking up the family over this issue, that seems a rather ineffective way to proceed.

Should she tell Ned how she feels? Well, believe me, she's been down that route before. Several times. And what has been the result? Do you really have to ask? Yes, Ned has made efforts to change. For a day or two. Maybe a week.

But since Ned really doesn't understand the root of the issue: that until he makes permanent changes in his behavior that result in him being able to spend more quality time with his wife and children and result in him truly caring about the health of the entire family, Nellie will forever be languishing in love and filling her emptiness with chocolate covered peanuts and brownies.

But mostly, unless he cares enough to change for his own sake, nothing is going to change.

However, that being said, don't think I'm going to let Nellie off the hook on the eating thing. Understanding why she's eating like this is one thing. Letting it continue unchecked for another...no way girl.

I don't know how just yet, but I'm going to find some way to get through to her. Maybe I should just beat Ned upside the head with a two-by-four and tell him his wife is eating herself to an early grave because she's lonely in love.

Don't suppose that would work, though. So back to the drawing board for me.

Not sure what our next topic will be. This is going to take some getting used to for Nellie--now that the words are down there in black and white and read all over (lol, old joke... in another generation no kid will have a clue what a newspaper even is!). So expect my next report to include all sorts of junk she's stuffing in her face, insecure in the knowledge that her big secret with the L-Bombs is out there in cyberspace for all to see!!

Because she *can*, that's why!

Hello again. It's me, Flo, after a weekend absence. Not to say I wasn't busy taking notes on Nellie's behavior, but simply that Nellie didn't spend much time at the computer. Other duties (carpenter's assistant, plumber's assistant) called.

Nellie's house is a disaster, literally. Last summer there were floods and part of the basement wall broke through. So now the family is in the midst of construction. Cost overruns, weather delays, a house swaying in the breeze during a thunderstorm (it's up on steel beams right now). All these things cause stress. Not to mention years of carefully planned flowerbeds and bushes ripped up by the construction equipment! Egads! In an effort to do a lot on a shoestring budget (something Nellie is good at), the family has been doing a lot of the work themselves. So most weekends and spare time are spent on these projects. This weekend, it was hooking up the house's sewer to the new pipes run from the new basement. Oh boy, was that a crappy job, for sure! (haha, I crack myself up!)

But the stress of this project, while overwhelming at times, hasn't been a major contributor to Nellie's poor eating habits. Don't get me wrong--she's been eating like there's no tomorrow lately! The current situation did not cause her bad eating habits; it's merely become an easy way to pass the buck about it.

So last time we talked about how Nellie is a somewhat nervous individual. Indeed. Today I'd like to tell you about another deep-seated reason why I suspect Nellie eats the wrong things and too much of them. To be as simple and straight-forward as possible, let me just say this: because she can.

Without going into elaborate detail, let me reminisce about a few things from Nellie's childhood. In addition to the absentee father and dictator-mother, there was instability in the home due to financial problems. Mostly in that Nellie's mother rarely ever worked, and only did so just long enough to get caught up on bills, while relying on social security (from a deceased husband) to support the family. Once a month payments from the government never lasted very long, as they weren't intended to be the sole support of a family of four. But so long as she could manage, Nellie's mom never tried to rise above that paradigm. Frequent changes of boyfriend/husband also left the family displaced on more than one occasion, dependent on the charity of friends or other government and religious programs.

Although the occasions that Nellie recalls most vividly aren't numerous, she has a sense that there were many other times when the same situations arose that simply were not drastic enough to lodge a permanent complaint in her memory bank.

There were many times in the family's life where they lacked the most basic of items. Food, clothing, toothpaste, toilet paper, medical care when ill. Especially during Nellie's pre-teen years, from age nine to eleven, there were several shocking incidents that I won't detail here. But let me say, they're the types of stories that make people say "how did you ever survive and become as successful as you are?"

(as a side note, Nellie has written a fiction book that is based loosely on her life. If it ever gets published, I'll let you know and you can get the scoop!)

And even as a child, Nellie just knew that there was no way that she would live her adult life in deprivation.

Amazingly, for the most part Nellie hasn't ever lived in poverty as an adult. There were a couple of lean years after her first marriage and some slim years during the time after she graduated by college, but by age 35 she'd obtained 2 college degrees and had bought her own house. Not bad huh?

Nellie has never been a clothes-horse. She isn't particularly concerned about fashion and tends to buy and wear more classic clothing that doesn't need to be replaced every year. She doesn't feel the need to take fancy vacations (although that's a topic for another day) and doesn't replace her vehicles until actually necessary.

In general, I'd say that Nellie lives a moderate life. She's done well considering.

So what am I leading to? Well, Nellie's determination to do better for herself than her mother did has led her to a sort of mantra that isn't always healthy: because I'm an adult, and I can, and you can't tell me otherwise!

There were so many people telling Nellie 'no' all her growing up, she more or less decided that an an adult, she'd do whatever she damn well pleased, and nobody would say otherwise.

And herein lies our problem. When Nellie has too many things that she must tell herself 'no' to all the time, ultimately she must say 'yes' to something. To not say 'yes' to SOMEthing would mean that her world view isn't accurate. That she doesn't ultimately control her destiny, and that even as an adult, she can not do whatever she chooses.

For the most part she chooses wisely. She chooses what's best for others (such as by staying home with her kids) over herself. But by telling herself 'no' (as in no, it's not a good idea to put 2 infants into daycare and work just because you are bored being home), she's setting herself up for a sense of failure. So she must say 'yes' to something.

So hence, when it comes to food, she has not been choosing wisely for quite some time now. She eats because it's there, and she wants to eat it. She eats without thought (or mere fleeting thought) of the consequences.

If she thought about the consequences, she might not eat it. But if she has to tell herself 'no' yet again, she'll lose her delusions of control. If she can't eat what she wants, then she has to face the fact that (by having more children) she can't do what she wants either (in terms of having a job, saving money, etc).

So, in a way it sounds like Nellie is blaming her kids, or perhaps her husband, for her issues? No, don't think of it that way. Nellie's situation merely is highlighting to her the fact that she's lived in a little bubble for more than twenty years now, wherein she plays the part of the capable adult who can juggle everything, be all she wants to be, and never have to tell herself 'no'. It's been a nice fantasy, hasn't it?

Eating is about the last thing Nellie feels she has in her life right now that she can really 'control' 100%. The kids' needs come first. The house repairs need doing first. Her husband's job (which supports the family) takes priority now. If she has to tell herself 'no' to food a thousand times a day, she believes that she'll feel very out of control.

Ahhh, irony is an amazing thing, is it not? What Nellie doesn't seem to understand is that by eating so much, she really is out of control. Try telling her that, though! Some people just don't want to listen to reason, nor see the obvious right under their nose! That's Nellie in a nutshell. Living in her little bubble. Insisting she has everything under control, and that she is the master of her own destiny.

In order to keep up this facade, then, what choice does she have but to allow herself the indulgence that food brings. It's not really her fault, she concludes. She gives up so much to please those she loves. All she is asking for is a little bit of happiness for herself. A chocolate brownie here, a soda there. A handful of chips, a sneaked second helping. Food tastes so good, and by being as hard working as she's been, she's earned the right to eat it. Because she's an adult and by God nobody's going to tell her otherwise!!

Do you get the idea that Nellie is a bit resistant to the notion of cutting back on food? Yes, friends, this is going to be a long haul I suspect. How do you argue with "because I'm an adult and I can, that's why!" ???

Now, let me clue you in on a little-known fact. Nellie, despite her belief to the contrary, does have choices available to her that she chooses to ignore and push them aside. Choices that, if she seriously pursued them, might give her something else to say 'yes' to and thus allow her to say 'no' to food without sacrificing her little bubbley-facade of control she chooses to live in.

What are these choices, you ask? Well, Nellie has a world of opportunity available to her to continue her writing. A way for her to have a life outside the family, earn money and even acquire that elusive but oft dreamed of fame.

Well, you might ask, why doesn't she quit stuffing her face and focus all that energy on something positive???? Well, that's tomorrow's expose'. You'll have to wait until then to find out.

Nervous Nellie

It's me, Flo, here again. Since yesterday, I've been doing some thinking about my person. Since I gave myself a new name, I think I should also give her a name. You know, this could get really strange referring to her as "my person" all the time. So, after a night wherein she didn't sleep so hot, I've decided to call her Nellie. As in 'Nervous Nellie'.

Most of how Nellie lives life is just going along doing her thing day after day. She doesn't spend considerable amounts of time psycho-analyzing herself and asking 'why' she's doing this or that. Very few people do. But since I just lay around all day waiting to transform her next meal into pockets of stored *you-know-what*, I have time to think about 'why' she does what she does.

The answer to 'why' is not a simple one, believe me. After forty years with Nellie, I probably know her best. But where to begin? Today, let me just explain her new nickname.

Nellie has been nervous since the day she was born. Of course, nobody really noticed it until she was three or four years old, I suppose, but I always knew it was there. What started it? Well, I'm not medical doctor or psychologist, so I can't say with ultimate authority, but some obvious facts come to mind.

Even before Nellie's birth, her parents split up. Long story, full of he-said, she-said, but the bottom line is, Nellie's mom had a very unhappy, depressed, heart-breaking pregnancy. I believe that there is something to it, and even a few scientific studies have addressed this topic. Being very unhappy and depressed emotionally during pregnancy does have an effect on the fetus.

But go back even another generation, to Nellie's grandmother. Not that I ever knew her, mind you, but from what I've heard, now there was one nervous woman.

So right off the bat, Nellie had two strikes against her. Nervous genes and an unhappy gestation.
Nellie lived in relative bliss, unaware of her father's absence, during her infancy, but when by the age of five she'd been through two step-fathers and was on the verge of getting a third, you can just about imagine her insecurity and stress levels.

A stable childhood is the most important thing that parents can give their children. Nellie, to put it mildly, didn't have much of that.

Nellie's mom is someone who, both then and even now, still fights her own demons (we'll get to those another day), was also a rather strict disciplinarian with her children. I remember Nellie hiding in a corner of a room, dabbing a mosquito bite that she'd scratched till it bled. She was petrified that she'd be spanked for having scratched it. Hello? A mosquito bite?

But you get the idea. Nellie lived in a world of fear, uncertainty and confusion. And as a result of her genes, her environment and her history, she is by nature, a rather nervous individual. In her childhood, her mother always called her a "worry wart" because she worried incessantly about the smallest things. Will the storm blow our little trailer away? Will there be enough food? Will you come home tonight, Mommy?

As a teen, she turned to chewing her fingernails. Only sheer willpower allowed her to overcome that, but then she merely began chewing the insides of her lips (another surefire way to know if she's nervous even to this day). She worried herself into sickness on more than one occasion throughout her teens and for some years, survived on (then Rx) Tagamet and allergy shots.

An early, and failed, marriage set off every worry-wart tendency she had, leaving her overweight and stressed to the max again. Getting away from that situation helped immensely, but as anybody who's lived life knows, there's always another challenge right around the corner. Her peace was soon shattered by any number of challenges, and now is no exception.

So I think it should come as no surprise to you or me that she has taken to eating as a way to calm her nerves. What has she got to be 'nervous' about at this time in her life??

Well, things have been rough for Nellie. After leaving her first husband and being a single parent for many years, during which time she had to overcome quite a few emotional issues and grow as a person, she hooked up with her current husband.

Nice guy, he is. But in his own way, he contributes to Nellie's nervousness (more on that another day). And then they had children. Nellie only wanted one child more, so she could go back to work in 6 months. She hadn't been happy at home with her oldest child (now an adult) and wanted to avoid the emotional and creative slump she knew would come.

Unexpectedly, a second child followed almost immediately thereafter. Wow! Two babies in 2 years? Not only was that hard on her, physically, but it made it all the more difficult for her to work herself back out of the lovely layer of *you-know-what* that she gained during two pregnancies.

And here we are, more than five years later. Nellie, despite some attempts otherwise, is still home full-time with the children. She hasn't been without any creative outlets, having written two books that have been published, one of which was quite popular. She lives what many women wish they could live: the ideal life.

But still, she's nervous. Nervous about not being the main bread-winner any longer. This is a role she assumed for many years and was not comfortable giving up. She's nervous about money issues in the slumping economy. The children are about ready for school, but will she get a job? What if she doesn't?

And worst of all, her nervous eating has pretty much put her back, weight-wise, to where she was at the end of the last pregnancy.

NOW comes the revelation that I had in the middle of the night, when Nervous Nellie could not sleep. I, FLO, actually serve a very necessary purpose for Nellie. I help her stay *happy* to be home. Because she's self-conscious now about her weight, she's less inclined to avidly seek a job. And by not avidly pursuing job opportunities, she's resigning herself to staying home, which despite her revulsion of the idea (continuing to stay home indefinitely), it's comfortable and safe.

So you see, I am not the culprit here. She is purposely feeding me, making me store all those unnecessary calories.

The question is now... how to get her to change?

Well, that's no easy task, I'm sure. First thing to do is to keep identifying the reasons why Nellie does what she does. Nervousness, I suspect, is just one piece of the puzzle.

Stay tuned!

How do you begin?

My fat is a muse. Well, perhaps it hasn't been before, but for this exercise, I'm going to let my fat do the talking. My fat no doubt has many things to tell me. I just haven't been listening. I'm not entirely sure what my fat is going to say to me in the coming weeks, and to be honest, I'm a bit nervous about it. It is going to lecture me? Demean me? Or beg me to keep it around for a lifetime?

This blog, as you may have guessed, is about fat. Fat in the food we eat, becoming fat in our veins, clogging our arteries, layering our gray matter with cells that will give us dementia sooner and heart disease for sure. So say the doctors.

And yet, despite all the potential risks to our frail bodies, we gorge on fat. We eat recklessly, because it is so easily available, and mostly inexpensive. What's a small order of golden loveliness at McD's cost? A mere dollar! A fraction of the cost of a gallon of gasoline any more! Even things that should be healthy carry hidden fats to our bodies. Foods that have NO fat in them can magically turn into fat once they enter our system!

Who is to blame? Where does it all end? We see newcast after newscast about obesity, read articles in magazines promising us that we can bust fat in fourteen days! But yet on average, we get fatter every year.

Maybe we're asking the wrong questions. Maybe instead of asking scientists to give us the reasons why we're fat, we should be asking our fat its reasons for sticking around. Maybe, just maybe, there's a good reason. A reason we've never thought of or, if we have, never accepted. Just maybe.

As for me, I'm in that classification of 'obese' based on my body's weight and height. I'm five foot, six-point-something inches and at age forty, weigh in at 205 pounds. Most people don't quite 'get' that number based on appearances; they tell me I don't look that heavy. Maybe they're just being nice?

Very few doctors differentiate the fact that not all people are built alike. My friend Gloria has teeny, tiny, lightweight bones like a bird. I have the bones of a heifer (proving that Darwin had it all wrong... we didn't descent from apes but cows and birds)! So, if per chance Gloria and I were the same height and were to each have the same measurements (waist, hips, etc), I would still step on the scale and weigh in at a good 20+ pounds more than she would.

So right up front, I'm annoyed by all the charts and BMI calculations that tell me that *I* should weigh 150 pounds or less. The last time I weighed in less than 150 pounds, my friends started to wonder if I'd become anorexic!

Because I feel the numbers are all skewed based on a body type that isn't realistic, I'm going to avoid numbers for now. So what? I'm 205 pounds. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that I can't zip any of my jeans, and have resorted to sweat pants. Summer is coming. This is not good!

So, I'm aiming for what Queen Latifah touts in her commercials for Jenny Craig (I have my own feelings about her doing those, but her message is spot on). I'm going for a "size healthier".

But if you *insist* on having a number here it is: 35 pounds. That what I need to lose. 35 pounds of back-breaking fat.

The hows and wherefores of weight loss are about as mystifying as trying to guess the winning lottery numbers. I haven't traditionally been one of those people who tries every fad diet or who reads every thing there is to read about dieting. I simply don't have time. This isn't to say that I don't spend a lot of small bytes of time assessing my weight and reminding myself that I must do something about it --- someday. Every time I shower, dress, change clothes and do laundry, I am reminded of the fact that my body has simply grown larger than is comfortable or healthy.

A friend of mine recently emailed a link to an article she read in Good Housekeeping. I'd never heard of the author before, Geneen Roth. The article was about emotional eating and why we do it. Of course, everybody in America has heard of binge eating. But not many of us have stopped to think of the real reasons why we do it. Here's a link to the article: http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/advice/stop-binge-eating

This article talked about how the author had started writing (as writing was her livelihood) about her fat and the relationship she had with her fat and why her fat, though repulsive and despised as it was, served a useful function in her life. While that sounds preposterous and a bit sadistic in a way, it makes perfect sense to me.

So I've thought about it a week and have decided to blog about my fat and in fact, I'm taking it a step further by handing over the reigns to my fat. Let the fat speak!. All 35 pounds of roly-poly, round the belly (thanks to two pregnancies late in my 30's), swaying listlessly under the arms (thanks to flavored coffee creamers), flopping over my kneecaps (thanks to Schwann's chocolate chip cookie dough) and squishing helplessly between my thighs (thanks to strawberry pop tarts) FAT.

Do I expect that this blogging will have a miracle effect on my food choices? Not really. Then why do it? Because expressing oneself on paper (here, on screen) can often bring to light thoughts and revelations that merely sitting around bemoaning ones flaws never will. I may not become thin again (seriously, I doubt I'll ever be thin again) but I may know myself better. And that, friends, is always a good thing.

So join me, if you wish, and share your thoughts about the same things that I'm thinking about. If you are journaling online about your fat's musings, then share your location!

Having had my say, I now turn the mic over to my closest companion; my fat!