Your Almost Certain Future

At work, there was an interesting talk about changing ourselves for work and keeping the past from creating our future. It was more applicable for personal reasons than work reasons but the speaker had some good ideas. And, admittedly, some of this might fall into the hippy-dippy, karma-yoga kind of thinking but here at AFG, we like to embrace all kinds of do it yourself philosophies.

The past, present and future could be seen as a three drawer filing cabinet but with a twist. Things that happened in the past also filed away for the future. (Have you noticed you repeat yourself with the same activities, like eating when stressed out?) When it's time for the future, there's not a lot of space because it's filled up with things from the past.

So if we clear out some space in the future drawer, maybe we can create some new possibilities for the future.

We already know a lot about the future and what we're doing if you think about it. When we get up, we pretty much know what we going to be doing that day. Like walking into work and hearing the same kind of greetings from coworkers or our kids. Maybe we think today will be the day we'll do something to change our life but instead, we just come home, eat, and watch television.

Do you feel that you have an almost certain future based on the past and feel hopeless about it?

So what is YOUR almost certain future and how can we get rid of it? Some things we can't; getting older is pretty much our only option for example.

These were some steps to get some space from the past.

Step 1. Get really clear about your almost certain future. Our speaker asked, "What is the future that your past gives to you?" He said that life comes at you and your response is from the past. The response doesn't go away even when we attempt to deal with it. Be honest about what you see (right now) as your almost certain future.

Step 2. What is the payoff in persisting in these behaviors? What in it for us? We may say we don't want things to be a certain way. Yet we may have them because there's a payoff that we're not even aware. It's the kind of payoff that's big enough to keep around. There were four categories of payoffs he described:

• To be right or to avoid being wrong. What does one get from being right? Would you rather be right than to be happy?
• Validate or justifies the way we're being or it invalidates someone's else opinion.
• Dominate or avoid domination either by people or your environment.
• Looking good or not looking bad -- not losing face

Step 3. Something to consider: what are the costs incurred of keeping our almost certain future?

• Connection or relatedness to others
• The loss of vitality, the loss of a sense of well-being
• Diminished joy
• Diminished full self-expression
• Diminished performance

Step 4. Let it be.

He asked, "Can we accept our almost certain future just as it is?"

We were told not to go out and immediately work on ourselves; this would be a slow process and we should definitely keep Step 4 in mind to let it be. Maybe this time...

• We'll recognize the signs sooner
• The times to get out the tools is when we run into the road block
• Life will give us opportunities to work on this.
• It's a set of tools.

This whole set of tools may not be useful for now but it is something to think about and to consider when the time is right. It's not easy to suddenly shift your thinking when there's some history and payoff for continuing. On the other hand, some of these ideas can percolate in our heads and when we're ready, perhaps we can use them for our own benefit.

Cardinal vs. Deadly

I mean, really: how cool is the Internet?

When I first looked up the Cardinal Virtues, aware that there are some but what they are, I was fascinated to learn that the word cardinal is derived from the Latin, cardo, for "hinge". The online Catholic Encyclopedia goes on to remark that the four Cardinal Virtues (prudence, temperance, courage and justice) are the "hinges upon which the door of the moral life swings".

These "backbone" virtues are the mother of a plethora of other virtues. When combined with the three theological virtues (faith, hope and charity, so called because the Church Fathers did not believe they are inherent in human nature but are confirmed in baptism: go tell that to Gandhi), a new classification is formed of the Seven Cardinal Virtues, also known as the heavenly virtues.

There are, Jen would be happy to know in her reconsideration of the Deadlies, Seven Contrary Virtues, each countering one of the Deadlies (humility vs. pride, patience vs. anger, abstinence vs. gluttony, chastity vs. lust, envy vs. kindness, greed vs. liberality, and sloth vs. diligence).

So much good to perform, so little time.

It's a relief, then, to keep it simple with four, or seven, virtues upon which the capacity for all the others hinge. St. Augustine says that "Virtue is a good habit consonant with our nature." There is enormous generosity in that statement, and faith: we can become as virtuous as we are meant to be with the same determination it takes to stop biting our fingernails.

Maybe that's faith, hope and charity at work on the perfectability of humankind. Augustine was like that.

Naturally, once I started investigating the word "cardinal," I got interested in its other applications. The bird and the color mimic the Roman Catholic cardinals' vestments, but in the spirit of its origins, it has also been applied to the four simple directions, forming the "cardinal rose" we see on maps, and to the simple counting numbers starting with 0. A "cardinal mark" is a buoy used to warn of dangerous waters.

Aside from the scheming chauvinist neo-conservatives of the Curia, to be "cardinal," is to be basic, simple, at the beginning of more complicated matters.

I like that. I like it a lot. As Jen said, "Doing the right thing...[is] about trying to live from your center instead of being flung about by every impulse."

Doing the right thing is the first step toward doing the next right thing. Practicing a virtue -- say, burying your credit cards, or going to the gym when you think everyone else is going to be buff-with-a-capital-B -- makes a door swing open on another virtue -- baby-sitting to make money to lower your Master Card balance or not buying ice cream on the way home from your work-out.

Doesn't each of us have cardinals in our daily lives? My days go better when I'm eat abstinent food, write, taking the time it takes to do a job properly, get enough rest. I have to take my meds and I brush my teeth and do the dishes -- these, too, are cardinal actions that make me feel as though I might get to above-and-beyond the calls of duty.

What are your cardinal points in your day? What do you need to do in order to do something else well? When do you act from your center where virtue, the saints tell us, is innate, making us, in short, open to perfectability?

A lot to think about from one little bird...

On Virtue

Frances (who took this lovely photo) says that it's been almost two years since we started our series of posts on the Seven Deadly Sins: Envy, Pride, Sloth, Lust, Anger, Greed, and Gluttony.

We never did seriously consider a post on The Four Cardinal Virtues, at least until now. Frances suggested it, since she is an old-school Catholic schoolgirl and knows about all these catechism things. I went to Catholic school in the post-Vatican II era, and my school didn't even have uniforms.

Everyone, even non-Catholics, has heard about the Seven Deadlies, but not many of us would be able to name the Four Cardinal Virtues: Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude, and Justice. I think that Sin hired a smarter PR department than Virtue. In most of our minds, Sin is the glamorous blonde with a mean streak, while Virtue is that sweet girl who visits her grandmother every Sunday. Sin is "fun," and Virtue is "boring."

But review those Seven Deadly Sins posts, or even just the names of the Deadlies for a moment. Do any of them, with maybe the exception of Lust, sound like much fun? And if you think about all these Deadlies as taking something enjoyable past the point of pleasure to a sickening excess, even Lust brings up the image of desperately chasing the guy you want desperately when you know he doesn't care much about you.

I think that Virtue gets a bad rap because it's sold to us as a "should" thing, not a "want" thing. We should be good but we'd rather be bad. It really seems like a drag to be virtuous. There is even something a little smug and self-righteous about the word "virtue" itself.

I recently took a silly "What Jane Austen Heroine Are You?" quiz on Facebook and resisted the urge to throw it to make sure I'd be Lizzy. I was disappointed that I got stuck with Fanny Price, the virtuous heroine of Mansfield Park. Among Austen readers, she's almost universally the least favorite, and at first reading she does come across as a dishrag of a little martyr.

But I recently saw an updated movie based on the novel and it helped me to see Fanny a little differently. She turns out to be a real Cinderella of a character. A poor relation who is brought to live with wealthier relatives, she is never quite treated as a member of the family. Her smart and beautiful cousins ignore and outshine her, and her horrible Aunt Norris abuses her. Through all of it, Fanny continues to live according to her own internal values, even as she sees the man she loves entranced by the deliciously wicked Mary Crawford. For any Austen fans, I'm not spoiling it by saying that our heroine ends up winning out. She manages this by living according to what she believes is right, all the while remaining humble and patient. She both gets to have what she wants -- the love of her family and the unfortunately clueless hero Edmund -- and feel good about her own actions.

I know that Austen stacked the deck, but doing the right thing isn't about being a goody-two-shoes in the end. It's about trying to live from your center instead of being flung about by every impulse. We always think about virtue as something we do to feel good in the long run -- be good and someday you will get your reward. It's like eating your broccoli so you can have ice cream. But at least for me, acting out any of the Seven Deadlies feels bad in the short run and the long run. On the days I put off working on my dissertation to watch bad TV (sloth), I heard a constant drumbeat of "stupid, stupid, stupid," in my head. Most days that I actually made myself start working, I found that I enjoyed the doing work much more than I enjoyed thinking about it. When I enjoy that first cookie so much that I reach for the second, third, and fourth (gluttony), I both have the sinking feeling that I'm hurting myself and the physical discomfort of a too-full belly to contend with. Maybe instead of conjuring up images of nuns with rulers when we think of virtue, we should think of Buddhism's "Middle Way," or just about protecting our own hearts from the feeling of doing wrong.

In the end, I'm not sure I can pretty up Virtue. She looks silly in lipstick and doesn't want me to put her hair up. Maybe it's just part of her charm, after all, to be humble and not flashy. She doesn't like to wear stilettos because sneakers are so much more comfortable. She likes to get out into the fresh air on a spring day instead of posing in the window of the coffee shop, trying to figure out the perfect expression of ennui. She's at her best when she's not self-conscious, I think. The nice thing is, no matter how much you flirt with her prettier rival, Virtue will still be there for you. She'll still be just the girl next door who reminds you it's good to be home.

The Door of Perception

I found a bag that I brought with me from my mother's house. It had my report cards from first grade up until I was a senior in high school among other things.

There were many things that I found fascinating about these old cards. One was remembering the names of my teachers and which grades they taught and another was seeing my parents' signature and little comments they made back to the teachers. (And yes, even in the first grade, I was receiving comments like, "She could do better if she slowed down and paid attention" and "She talks too much in class.")

And, of course the grades. In my mind, I was an idiot savant with language and just a plain idiot in mathematics. For the most part, this wasn't entirely true (except for 8th grade algebra). I was slightly better in language and English than I was in math but not by leaps and bounds. I didn't even suck as badly as I thought I did in gym.

Then I found the weights. I thought I was really fat but the truth was -- my weight wasn't that much out of the range even when I got to the 8th grade. (The Years of Misery pretty much started in the 7th grade.) It's funny how our perception is undeterred by puny little things such as facts. On the other hand, being two pounds over the suggested range did not necessarily make me overweight as my teacher checked off for that year.

But some things DO remain the same. I do remember gaining massive amounts of weight and the report cards do show that I jumped something like 20 pounds in one school year. So that's not my imagination.

I know the reverse can happen. You can be extremely overweight and still see yourself as the thinner version of you until one day, a two by four hits you between the eyes and reminds you, "ahem, you are overweight."

It's just odd how our perceptions make us see ourselves as skinnier when we are fat and fatter when we are not that big. It's just so hard to see ourselves in a way that's logical, sympathetic but realistic without using mean words. I know that I identified with the one girl from "The Biggest Loser" who didn't want to go out in a sleeveless top. She felt her upper arms were fat. They weren't; she's extremely toned. But if you look at her before photo, I could understand why she felt like they were still flapping in the wind. Some people on a website thought she was just angling for compliments -- I don't think they understood as I did -- it's hard not to distort how you see yourself.

Can I Make Myself Thin?

Beula asked me if we were going to tackle the tv show, "I Can Make You Thin" and/or intuitive eating. To be honest, I missed the second show (it's taped) but I sat and watched the first show and took notes. It seems "I Can Make You Thin" is using a lot of the same ideas for intuitive eating. Paul McKenna is the host and he has quite a following in the U.K. Here's the TLC website link to the show.

It seems certainly "easy" to follow. (Of course, I have lost my notes so I'm trying to remember from scratch.) He had four basic rules:

1. Don't starve yourself.

2. Eat when you're hungry.

3. Eat what you like.

4. Eat consciously.

I watched this with a friend who has food issues of his own. He said, "Well, suppose you want to eat nothing but Oreos?" I said, "I think the premise is that IF you ate the Oreos the way Paul suggests, you will not eat as many as you may think."

The key word though is IF.

Do we really eat when we're hungry or do we eat when we're upset or when both hands are on the twelve spot on the clock?

Eating what we like seems like a no-brainer but how often do we judge ourselves by what we eat? (As in, "oh, I should have a salad now.").

But I watched this and thought, I could do this. I could eat consciously. Ha! In less than 24 hours, I had eaten at work, while reading, while driving, while watching TV, etc. And I did not put down the fork (what fork?) between bites. I did eat slower so I could feel fuller and stop sooner except I got sucked into, "But gee, I'd be throwing away half of this food because I'm at work and there's no way to save it." So I ate it.

I think this could work for the right people. Like anything else, you want to want it. By wanting it, I mean, wanting to stop compulsive eating so much that you will slow down and be more conscious of what you're eating and how you're eating it. I should point out that I did recently get a book on Intuitive Eating and I am interested in it.

Right now, for me, I can't be that person. I want to be thinner and I do appreciate what I've accomplished so far in the past two years both with the weight and the exercise. I've been debating on quitting Weight Watchers and going even more solo. I was interested in this show because I wanted an answer. Maybe not a quick answer but an answer that would be easier. I'm not sure it is easier. It takes a lot of work to be conscious about what you're eating and if you have poor impulse control (example: me), it may not work. It might be a license to eat a bag of Oreos in one setting. Then again, it might be something that works.

The bottom line for me is that I will always have some food issues. In some ways, it's improved but in other ways, it will be a part of me. If there's a new way to learn how to eat better and healthier, I'm all for it and all ears. So what do you think? Did you see this show and/or do you follow intuitive eating?

Friendship, noun

Once upon a time, we had lots of friends. Whoever wanted to play cops-n-robbers on the monkey bars or didn't mind being Ken was our friend. Not much later, by third or fourth grade, factions broke out. There were desks with more valentines on them than others, there were sleepovers some girls weren't invited to. From there, friendship became political. The popular girls, the studious girls, the biker girls, the artsy girls, the sorority girls, the Henry Hudson Fourth Floor Dorm girls.

Along the way, we picked friends up who stayed in our lives, letting others go. We made friends out of convenience. Co-workers, neighbors, fellow moms, our husbands' colleagues.

At some point, in our 30's or 40's, friends became harder to make. We were busy. Potential friends were busy. We had families or had learned to rely on ourselves (or food or booze or eBay). Our characters were becoming more codified and, hence, some behaviors drove us apart. The heavy drinking pal was lost, we were found to be too caustic or gossipy.

Women with sisters in any close proximity of age, I have noticed, are not usually in need of friends.

The Fat Friend has her place as confident to the pretty friends or the gay friends. This, too, is political.

I have experienced all of this. I suspect you have, as well.

I have also watched my very elderly mother go through a renaissance in friendships, made in her quilting group in the retirement city where she lives. Lately, I've witnessed her over-using them because she has a broken knee. They have become wary of what she will ask for next.

When I think of girl friendships, I think of Carrie Fisher pulling out her rolodex in When Harry Met Sally or all the ladies piled on a bed confessing stories of depression in An Unmarried Woman. These moments don't happen very often, or they don't to me.

Definitions of "friendship" are sparse. Encarta gives three; its secondary meaning is "the mutual feelings of trust and affection and the behavior that typify relationships between friends". Interestingly, Microsoft Bookshelf has no definition of "friendship". Its thesaurus, however, gives some nice parallels. Amity, concord, chumminess, companionship, togetherness, belonging, alignment, sisterhood, support, cooperation, familiarity, intimacy, knowledge.

Only in the word "alignment," of the many synonyms I pulled out of Microsoft, demands having the same opinions, beliefs, paths. It's clumped with such words as "sorority" and "association," intimating that it is, in fact, another political spin on the phenom.

These days, my friends are mostly scattered around the country. My friendships, however, are in our hearts & speed dials & email address books. Our friendships are in Christmas cards and reactions of "Of course you are!" when I announce I'm dropping my dogs and book to go to clown school. They're in photos and memories of when she wanted to become a nun.

Friendship might better qualify as a verb. I'm not sure that "association" or even "marriage" is so verb-oriented, so tactile, present-tense and effort-oriented as both of these social constructs are.

I'm ruminating because I'm trying write about how we have added a third response to our hypothalamus or whatever it is that controls reactions: fight, flight or blog.

A year ago, three of the Angry Fat Girls congregated in Brooklyn with me. Lori remembers that no one said, "It's nice to meet you". The greeting was, "It's nice to see you". I think I could say that of many responders to our blogs.

To write for each other and to each other is an act of courage, generosity, openness. Even the occasional mean person has put him/herself out there to dare the brunt of our reactions.

A friend is a platitude. A friendship is a grace.

I have a little lump in my throat as I ponder those last two sentences. I miss my friends, my family, Montana, my thin body. But I am graced with many friendships, kinship, and a body that works and houses the heart and mind behind these words. Had I not gained weight, I would not be writing this, or thanking you, or thinking of you. If I had no hope of a new recovery, I would also be absent. Or dead, maybe. Our friendships have brought us the grace of listeners, confirmation, forgiveness, sympathy, information, approval, identity.

In the act of friendship we are angels.

Still Angry?

The name of this blog is "Angry Fat Girlz" but to be honest, I don't think most of us are particularly angry these days. At least not the way we were when we started. I know I'm not, though I didn't survey my colleagues to see where they stand on it.

Back in the beginning, we were angry about dozens of things - life in general, medical care for fat people, problems finding clothes, exercise, food plans, media depictions, blah blah blah. It seems to me that it boiled down to a lot of self-loathing, embarrassment, shame, fear, and anger at ourselves for being in the position of being fat girlz in the first place.

Now several of our AFG community, beyond the AFG team, are posting on blogs about being burned out, running out of words, tired of it all. Although there certainly are exceptions, many of Us are writing less frequently as Life takes us in different directions. It's harder to keep up with all of the blogs so some of Us have given up and only read a more manageable few, and may not comment as often as we did a year ago.

This isn't a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it's perfectly healthy. Many of Us have talked about wanting to live normal lives, to integrate family and work, chores and hobbies, exercise and eating into one fabric instead of beating ourselves over the head because we ate one cookie or didn't workout one day. We all follow (theoretically at least) food plans that may differ but they generally involve eating less of stuff that our body has problems utilizing or that sets off addictive bingeing. But we are more than our food plans and exercise programs and our energy is and rightly should be going to other activities.

Your AFG blog team members are busy living our lives, too, and each of us has her own blog; some of the creative ideas and energy go there as well as the more personal stuff. The AFG blog will keep plugging away but we're trying to figure out a new identity for ourselves that matches who we are now and the energy we have to put into this project. Bear with us and give us suggestions for topics.

How angry are you these days?