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My meal plan

I had my first meeting with a nutritionist on Wednesday. She specializes in eating disorders and was recommended by the eating disorder treatment center that originally gave me my diagnosis. I had never been to a nutritionist before, although I’d worked with personal trainers and had done dieting apps. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, even though I’d done tons and tons of research into my eating disorder.

I basically gushed for the first 45 minutes to an hour, telling her everything about my history with food and how I had come to this diagnosis. It was just like going to a therapist, except we were talking about food. We discussed my history with antidepressants, my current medications, my eating habits, how food was offered in my childhood, and what I’d come to believe about food.

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I have an eating disorder

This past month, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder.

It’s probably not the one you think, and if you know me, you probably don’t think I “look” like someone with an eating disorder. You probably would also tell me it doesn’t sound like something clinical if you heard what it was.

It took me 37 years to figure out what my eating disorder was, and now that I have the diagnosis, I feel a great sense of relief. The only thing now is to get to work.

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A meditation on pain

I started a 10K training program a few weeks ago that included running, weight lifting, and strength training. I was excited to be devoted to a program with an end-date (10 weeks) and a goal (getting my mile time back down). I was hoping to tone up and lose a bit of weight before heading to the beach for a Memorial Day wedding in Mexico, although those weren’t my specific goals for the training.

Lo and behold, at the end of the first week I tweaked my back doing a core workout. My sacrum bone hurt a lot. It hurt to bend over or sit down. I figured it was muscle soreness and pushed through, taking my rest days as prescribed and stretching more.

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5 ways to reduce stress in wedding planning as a bad bride

I am currently in the midst of planning a wedding. This was not ever something I aspired to do with my life, and so I’m not necessarily taking it as seriously as many women in my situation would. I’m 36 (37 in a month!) and have a pretty good idea of who I am, as does the groom. Neither of us has any misgivings about what the wedding is going to be — a great party to celebrate our love for our friends and family. 

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Cherries

Growing Up

We had a sour pie cherry tree in the backyard. The cherries would ripen in the summer, alongside Frank’s, our neighbor on the back fence. His were bing cherries. He had to put nets up to keep the birds out. We didn’t really have to do that, although sometimes there were worms. They were too tart to eat right off the tree.

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The Gift of Recognizing and Living in a Natural Sleep Cycle

I have had trouble with sleep for my entire life. As a little girl, I can remember lying in bed awake, listening to my twin sister’s tinny clock radio playing the local radio station’s nighttime programming for the full hour she’d set for the sleep timer as she slept peacefully next to me, knocked out within minutes of closing her eyes. It was the loneliest feeling in the world for me. My older sister and I both had issues falling asleep as early as the rest of the family, and would spend hours reading in the bathroom or sometimes closet when we were on family vacations in single hotel rooms.

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Back on the med wagon

When I was 20 years old I was diagnosed with depression and given Zoloft. I was in college and it seemed like every woman I knew (and some of the men, too) were on various mind-altering medications to fix their moods. It was the year after 9/11, we were in DC, and I lived in a basement room that got little to no light, like a cave. Job prospects were bleak. Things were dark. There was no point to anything. I slept a lot and watched the Independent Film Channel between naps.

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My (spoiler: NEGATIVE) review of weight loss app Noom

In the past couple of years, I’ve gained a chunk of weight that has made most of my wardrobe obsolete. I’m uncomfortable in my skin and have lost a lot of muscle tone, which is not something I want as I edge closer to 40. I’ve been working to change this, especially with my impending wedding fast approaching, and have been searching for ways to get fitter. So a few months ago, thanks to a ton of effective Facebook advertising, I decided to try the weight loss app “Noom”, which touts itself as Weight Watchers but updated for millennials (more or less).

Spoiler alert: I did not love the app, although I can see why people might find it useful. Below is is my honest review of it.
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In defense of those damn dockless devices

Man on Scooter

I recently ran for and was elected as an alternate member of the Austin Pedestrian Advisory Council, a volunteer group that makes recommendations to the municipal government regarding pedestrian issues, like sidewalks, mobility access, public transportation, and, of course, walking safety in the city. We meet at City Hall once a week and discuss a publicly-posted agenda that members of the community are invited to comment on, either during meetings or via email.

Last night’s meeting included a discussion of the city’s proposed rules on dockless mobility, aka the rules the DOT is hoping to impose on companies like Lime, Bird, and Uber for the regulation of those electric scooters that have taken over Austin and other tech-forward U.S. cities. The City passed an emergency ruling last spring to allow the companies to operate on a provisional basis.

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Girls should gossip

A few months ago I watched with interest as a woman unfolded a bit of drama on Facebook. “Who else knew?” an acquaintance posted, and her comments filled with, “Knew what?” A few rows down she exposed that her long-term boyfriend had been cheating on her, for a long time. She felt betrayed, obviously, by friends and family who may have known about his actions and never told her.

I watched another woman friend lament that she had a bad picker and had her heart broken by a jerk. “Dogs are the only creatures worthy of my love,” she said, and her friends told her not to throw out all men just because of one bad apple.

I didn’t know they were talking about the same cheating jerk until talking with another friend who had fallen under his spell several years ago. This third girlfriend had had a hunch when they were seeing each other that he hadn’t broken up with his serious girlfriend, in spite of his insistence that it was over, consensually, and he wasn’t seeing her anymore. It ends up he was lying to everyone.

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