Digest: Breaking Down and Assimilating Eating Disorder Recovery, Popular Culture, Whatever

Query: Any Mandatory Coursework for Underweight Students?

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:00:00 +0000

"Pa. university students upset about fitness class" is an AP article reporting on Lincoln University's mandatory fitness class for undergraduates whose body mass index (BMI) is 30 or above.

Here's the lead:

A Pennsylvania university's requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees has raised the hackles of students and the eyebrows of health and legal experts. Officials at historically black Lincoln University said Friday that the school is simply concerned about high rates of obesity and diabetes, especially in the African-American community.

"We know we're in the midst of an obesity epidemic," said James L. DeBoy, chairman of Lincoln's department of health, physical education and recreation. "We have an obligation to address this head on, knowing full well there's going to be some fallout."

The fallout began this week on Lincoln's campus about 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia, where seniors - the first class affected by the mandate - began realizing their last chance to take the class would be this spring.

The article does provide counterpoint to the university's policy:

Also, students need more than exercise, said Marcia Costello, a registered dietitian in the Philadelphia area. The university should make sure its dining halls and vending machines offer healthy choices, she said. Costello, an assistant professor of nursing at Villanova University, also noted that body mass index can be misleading. Since muscle weighs more than fat, "it is possible to be overweight and still be physically fit," she said.

Totally irrelevant trivia: I lived in Lincoln University, PA when I was very young. Only slightly-less irrelevant fact: I attend (another) historically black university now. Considerably-less irrelevant fact: I would have qualified for this mandatory class at one point in my life.

My Present Plan

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:34:00 +0000

I'll continue to maintain Digest. I'll not restrict access to it. Ultra-personal content, however, needs a new home. A privacy-controlled one. If you are interested in an invitation to that home, such as it is, please contact me.

No, That Did Post Did Not Count

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:25:00 +0000

So much has been going on this semester . . . but it's thoroughly un-bloggable. So, what to do? Wait until writing publicly about my life becomes possible without anonymity? Set my blog to "private?" Start another blog, one with tighter privacy controls? I'm honestly unsure. (That should probably go without saying. If I was sure, I would have just opted definitively for one of the above already.)

Suffice to say, my personal journal has been pretty damned full lately.

Alanis Morissette Runs a Marathon for Eating Disorder Awareness

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:21:00 +0000

Read about it here.

An Uncertainty Principle

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:28:00 +0000

One way of articulating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is this: the position and the momentum of a given electron at a given point in time cannot be known; the more precisely one of those values is known, the less precisely the other is known.

The wildness of this statement of particle physics comes in large part because there is, according to the prevailing interpretation of the principle, no objective fact that is both of these precise values at a single point in time. There is but a probability cloud, so to speak. Useful, yes, but certain, no. The problem in our not-knowing is not an epistemic problem; it's an ontic one. There simply is no fact to know. It's not that we are unable to know it because of the failings of our perceptual faculties, the imprecision of our instruments, etc. Measure and measure and measure more, but there's nothing there to calculate with genuine precision. Not an epistemic problem. Rather, an ontic one.

I guess I've learned, so much as I've learned anything, that it's a waste of my own precious energy to try to figure out someone who hasn't figured out him- or herself. Trying to calculate what someone wants when he or she him- or herself does not know. Measure and measure and measure more, but there's nothing but a cloud of probabilities. The problem is not an epistemic one. It's an ontic one.

And what can I possibly do about that? How much less futile is it to fight that than it would be to shake my little fist in the air while railing against those damned electrons?

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:14:00 +0000

WTF?! I started menstruating today for the first time in years. No medical inducement. No rain dances.

So, apparently I'm a "real girl" again, all grown-up and a woman . . . at age 30. Even after the notorious OB/GYN appointment earlier in the summer. Evidently, not only does hope spring eternal, but so does the endometrial lining from a written-off, desiccated husk of a womb.

Honestly, I could tell that I was ovulating recently (I know my repro system pretty well, even though we've been well out-of-touch for a few years), so I knew that the red tide was bound to come in soon. And, honestly, I strongly suspect that this turn in my hormonal fortunes is directly related to the weight that I gained over the summer and have been able to--for a change--maintain so far this semester.

After dropping to a terrible low at the end of the last school year, and reflecting on my tendency to cyclically drop-then-gain-to-meet-a-short-term-treatment-goal-then-drop-again, I resolved to take better care of myself with the long term in mind. I knew that summer was an excellent opportunity to do that. I don't want to trigger anyone with numbers, but I gained close to twenty pounds over the break from school. More remarkably, though, I've maintained that weight gain for longer than I usually do, even when I've gained more modest amounts. I can only be humble about my future, but I'm feeling pretty damned pleased right now.

Yes, there have been moments these past few months when I've felt uncomfortably conscious about my increased size. A lot of clothes don't fit right, which is not only a forceful reminder of my lifestyle changes, but also a practical problem. And I can see the pointy edges disappearing from head to toe, and I like pointy edges. No, behaviors haven't always been above reproach. But I confess too that I kind of like having my, ahem, cups spilling over and my thighs and upper arms rounder. At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, I know that I look sexier. Less like a model, sure, but truly sexier and prettier. And though this period hurts like a bitch, I'm glad to have it too.

So, why is it all a bit different lately? Recently, I've been so especially engaged in my life, so preoccupied with meaning beyond my body, that weight has seemed like an afterthought (even if it's still a thought). I've felt so capable and purposeful in more important areas of my life, that I've found it so much less tempting to demonstrate my capability and purpose in manipulating my body size. The artificial sense of control that comes from restricting food and losing weight has just seemed a lot less . . . necessary. Frankly, it often feels lately like I just don't have time for it. I've got better shit to do. I may not do all that shit perfectly, but at least it's better shit. Or something.

In any case, I'll ask you, if you are so inclined, to lift a glass of your favorite red wine some time soon to hope, health, better things, and my reproductive system.

Lesson Learned This Past Week:

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:12:00 +0000

There will always be someone willing to do the seemingly impossible, to step up to unreasonable challenges, to meet unrealistically high expectations. The only question is whether that person will be you.

Thy Name Is H

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:27:00 +0000

If one theme could be fairly said to have dominated the past few weeks of my life, it would be summed up in a word, a name. It is the name of my former Criminal Law professor (and the name of my dog, whose namesake is that prof).

I'm taking Evidence with him this semester, an experience I find nearly every bit as challenging, frustrating, nerve-wracking, and exhilarating as I did Crim last year. I am fascinated by the material and in love with his (even if obtuse, opaque) method of teaching it.

I am TAing for his Crim Law class, an experience far more involved than one might expect if one did not know Prof. H. He expects me to attend all of the Crim classes, do all the Crim reading again, grade papers (two sets in a week this past week), present him with diagnostic metrics reports on those graded papers, hold office hours, teach weekly tutorial class sessions, operate, via a couple of educational software programs, all of the in- and out-of-class computer-assisted learning, assemble & distribute supplementary reading lists . . . pretty much everything just shy of picking up his dry-cleaning. Which, hell, I would do, since that would make it more likely that I'd get some of my own taken care of while I was at it.

He is now Dean H. This past week, he was officially named the new dean of our law school. Now if I disappoint him, I am not just disappointing a revered professor, I am disappointing the head dean.

Others--faculty and students alike--continually associate me with him. This seems true, whether that association is positive or negative. I don't know that I've gone more than a couple of hours on campus in the past few weeks without his name coming up. He--his persona or his reality--is a constant presence.

The 1Ls in Crim are frantic and discombobulated, of course, and are starving for any morsel of insight into how to survive the class.

Two of my old profs, each of whom had requested that I serve as their assistant, but to whom I politely said that my first loyalties were with H, ran into me in the hall at the same time. They teased me about how I "ditched" them for H, elbowing each other and joking about how they weren't erudite enough to compete with him for my affections.

Another prof offers me a research job for the Spring, but concedes that he knows that I will only do it if H doesn't have a project for me.

A new--and quickly beloved--professor, while describing his pedagogical method to me says, "I know my style is very different from Dean H's, but I hope that you will find it just as stimulating. Some of my colleagues have told me about your relationship with him."

Evidence classmates approach me for advice (as though I've taken the damned class before!). Classmates in Evidence who I don't even know approach me because other students recommended that they talk to me because I "understand how H's mind works."

And on it goes. He's everywhere, all the time.

Yet, H himself is as cool and impassive with me as ever. No matter how doggedly I work to meet his ever-growing expectations, he is stingy with praise. Hell, I wouldn't even know that he thinks well of me at all if it weren't for the facts that (a) he did offer me this Crim job, and (b) I hear from other faculty that he thinks I'm special, that he's "claimed me." I generally feel as though I am disappointing him.

I answer a question in Evidence that no one else is getting and afterwards he says to the class, "Yes, T is right, but does anyone know what the heck she is saying?" (Wait. Does that mean that I should be pleased that I got what he was asking, or does that mean that I can't articulate my ideas properly, that I string together indecipherable babble like the law school equivalent of a town drunk?)

I go to his office to talk about some intellectual worries, and he repeats his old refrain from last year: "Surprise, surprise. T is concerned about something she read. How about you tell me when you read a chapter and you don't find anything that concerns you or sets you off on an intellectual tangent? Now that would be news." (Wait. Does that mean that he identifies me with thinking critically, or does that mean that he's annoyed with my constant pestering?)

I do some extra research on an Evidence topic that intersects with some old decision theory and cognitive science stuff from my philosophy days. I bring it to him, asking whether he knows of any current legal scholarship in this particular area. He asks me probing questions, tells me that most law scholars don't have the necessary background to do the work with the necessary technical and theoretical precision, and tells me that "it's [my] job to create that scholarship." (Wait. Does this mean that I have significant potential as a legal scholar, or does this mean that I have a "job" to do that I should feel guilty about not having already done? Why do I walk out of his office actually feeling like I've somehow been blatantly remiss in my duties? Aren't I just a first-semester 2L who's encountering this area of law for the first time, who's struggling just to get the basic reading done in her classes?)

Even when I begin to feel like I'm on top of everything for both of his classes, when I start to think that I can actually begin to work on the other thirteen credit hours on my schedule, that I can begin to work on my law review assignments . . . he gives me more work to do. As blithely as if he'd never requested anything before.

And, of course, I love him dearly. As much as he sometimes irritates or angers me, as much as he robs me of precious sleep and peace of mind, I am deeply devoted to him. Of course, I want even more to please him simply because he is so emotionally reserved. I want even more to be the sort of person he respects because I know how high his standards are.

And, yes, I sheepishly confess: given how much of my energy I've given him over the past year (and still!), given how much admiration I have for him, I want other people to think that I am "his." I want others to think that I understand his peculiar way of thinking. I want others to think that I live up in the intellectual ether with him. I want others to think that he thinks that I am gifted. That I am his protege. I do not often enough feel that those things are true, but I want those things to be true.

"They Can't Steal My Joy"

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:37:00 +0000

First, I should say that, despite my blogging silence, I have been having a marvelous time lately. Remarkably so.

Second, though I hope to write about the experience in more detail in future, I can simply say now that witnessing the 1Ls in the Criminal Law class I'm assisting with this semester has been a fascinating thing to behold. Among all else, the experience drives me to reflect on what a strange, strange alternate reality law school culture is, especially at first.

Today, a 1L responded to my query about how he was feeling about his first couple of weeks. He laughed a tired laugh, shook his head, and said, "They can't steal my joy." I thought this was an excellent attitude to take, given the circumstances. (I, however, always gravitated toward my own version: "There's no corporal punishment in law school, so at least they can't physically beat me.") I encouraged him to hold fast to that mentality. With it, he will go much farther than he would without it.

Later, though, I thought more about the exchange. In some form or fashion, I've been intimately tied to three different graduate programs in philosophy. Never once do I recall anyone in any of those departments, after the first few days of class, uttering something akin to "They can't steal my joy." Surely this was not because the work was not challenging, nor was it because the ubiquitous "they" could, in fact, steal the joy of any of the new students. Nobody said shit like that because it wasn't an environment that seemed as though it was actually trying to steal anyone's joy. To make an assertion like the 1L today did would be wholly unnecessary, if not a statement of the obvious, at least a gross hyperbole. Yet here, in this place, this statement seemed like a bold and rare insight.

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:36:00 +0000

Remember when, in the comments on my last post, I mentioned the occasional shit of being human? Well, my claim that certain feelings buoy my will to live in the face of shit got quickly challenged recently. Happily, despite moments of significant distress, I am genuinely okay. Especially given my tendency toward domino-effect catastrophizing & general infantile melt-downs, this is significant.

I will try to minimize the details, for they don't matter at this point. I made some dumb choices in the morning this week. Dumb choices about plumbing ailments in my apartment. They were, in hindsight, just stupid. I'm not a stupid woman, but these were inarguably stupid choices. Around noon, my landlady left a voicmemail. I was in a meeting with a professor when the call came in, so I didn't answer. About an hour later, on my way to have lunch with two professors off-campus, I listened to the message. Water was leaking through my floor into the apartment below. Yes. I was that dreadful neighbor. Yes. I was the tenant lessors fear.

I was driving separately to the restaurant, and I didn't have the personal cell numbers for either prof, but I had to go home first. I tried calling my landlady but was funneled straight to her voicemail. So, I dashed home to find my landlady in my apartment, trying to take care of the situation. I apologized profusely and promised that I would do my best to clean up before her husband would have to come by in the evening to do the real work. Then I frantically drove to the restaurant, egregiously late for lunch. Of course, now I would not even be able to eat lunch, because I needed to mop up standing water in my apartment.

I had to arrange for someone to cover my afternoon sessions with 1Ls. And I had a leftover assignment from one of my summer jobs that really should have been in on Monday or Tuesday, that would now only be in on Thursday morning by the grace of God. And I had personal financial stuff of a very serious, time-sensitive nature that also required attention immediately. Stuff that, if I were a better person, would not have been a part of my life.

Later, I would have to tolerate another tongue-lashing from my landlord. He would chastise me, question my powers of critical thinking, argue that perhaps I was too pre-occupied with other matters to be "qualified" to live without supervision. I would have to quietly, respectfully take it. Because he was right. What I did was stupid and, yes, it could have caused far more damage than it did. I had to accept his anger, because it was justified, and he was entitled to communicate it to me.

I felt so small, so awful.

Yet, earlier even just that day, I was somehow in a very different spot. One of the deans of my law school, addressing the incoming 1L class in an orientation session, pointed to me as an upper-level student who 1Ls should "seek out and emulate." In front of hundreds of people, I was cited as a model of what other people should strive to be and to achieve. Meanwhile, water was flooding my apartment and the one below mine, because I forgot to turn off the fucking faucet when flushing a clogged drain. How does the even make sense?!

So, I don't do "average" much. When I do well, I tend to excel. When I err, I tend to fuck up dramatically. Even in a single day--much less a lifetime--I tend to live at the poles.

I am, indeed, all of these things. Success. Failure. Strength. Weakness. Model. Cautionary tale. I am no less one than the other. Developing a unified, cohesive self-concept can be hard.

Jesus. I guess that all that I can give to the world is myself, my humanity, my empathy. Confidence in my strengths, honesty about my weaknesses.

Please Allow Me to Curse Excessively to Express My Enthusiasm for My Return to School Today

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:35:00 +0000

I love the study of law. I am stoked beyond polite measure to be starting my second year this wee. Bring on this fucker. Constitutional Law, Evidence, Wills & Trusts, Professional Responsibility, Governmental Powers. Law Review. TAing for Crim Law. The highs. The lows. Everything. Bring it.

I love teaching. I had nearly forgotten until today how high I feel when talking to a large group of students. Quite simply, I feel in my element, like I am doing what comes most naturally to me. I don't think I am the best teacher, but I think that I am at my best while teaching.

This is my life, and it is good. It is not easy, but it is good. It will get brutal. I know. Yet, I am unspeakably fortunate. Fortunate to have the feeling that I am exactly where I should be right now. Fortunate to be alive and right fucking here.

So, A Philosopher and A Rocket Scientist Get on a Plane...

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:40:00 +0000

It's a strange, delicate thing to write about a tender memory of an ex-lover, but flying to and from New Orleans this week prompted a recollection of my ex-husband that fits into that category.

Many, many years ago, before, as I recall, my now-ex-husband and I were married, we shared our first commercial flight as a couple. I think we were going to visit my parents in the northeast. After we boarded and were seated on the plane, shortly before it took off, my ex turned to me. I was sitting by the window, near the wing of the plane. "So, do you want to know how airplanes fly?" he asked.

My ex-husband, then an aerospace engineer who worked for NASA, proceeded to spend the next two hours or so explaining the answer to me. Time was no real obstacle since we were stuck on the flight anyhow. I knew the basics of lift, wing shape, etc., of course. I'd taken enough elementary physics to get all that. But he went much further, scribbling diagrams and formulas on scraps of paper, quizzing me on what he had already explained.

I find the scenario even now, while happily divorced, touching. I'm territorial about the precious memories from that ultimately-doomed relationship (as well as those from others). Its joy and simple sweetness are no less mine just because I decided years later that I didn't want to be this man's wife. Here was this beautiful little exchange. I loved that he knew things that I didn't. I loved that he wanted to share with me some of what he knew that I didn't. I loved that he respected my intelligence enough to describe the concepts in more than five minutes' worth of detail. I loved that we could relate to one another that way. I loved that my ordinarily phlegmatic, impassive partner's affect brightened so noticeably while he talked about this topic. I loved that we were this blissful, egg-headed duo who each relished our turns at teacher and student.

I thought of this memory as I flew this week, as I often think of it when I'm about to take off in an airplane. I've never regretted my divorce; this memory does nothing to change that fact. Yet, I'm sure that I was smiling as my plane taxied down the runway.

"Coming Home" by Robin Maynard Dobbs

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:23:00 +0000

Sisters, within each one of you is a yearning,
a longing, a restless hunger,
compelling you to always search for satisfaction...
maybe in the next bite of chocolate?
Surely this time, heaven lies inside this cream puff.
You swallow the sweet goo but still remain empty.
The voice grows ever more insistent,
"Hear me, I have a hunger!"
You crunch on celery/carrot sticks to subdue that voice
but still, it refuses to go away.
You bury it in yet another bowl of ice cream
sighing: "If only I could force myself to have more self discipline, more
willpower, more control..."
Yet this hated voice will not be silenced and shouts louder and louder
until, with the wild frenzy of a whirling tornado,
you consume everything in sight.
After the storm settles,
with the belch of a stuffed, beachedwhale, comes a moment of relief.
Then dark clouds of guilt descend
hurling lightening bolts of self accusation
and the cycle begins again.
Exhausted by endless effort
trying to beat that voice into submission...
still it haunts you,
for it speaks of a hunger that no amount of chocolate eclairs can fill.

What is this voice that calls so urgently?
what is this hunger...
a hunger for wholeness,
a longing to come home.
"Where is home?" you ask
"I've been away for so long looking for it everywhere,
how do I find my way back?
Home is inside here.
Inside this round, sensuous woman's body
inside your precious belly
home is as close as your breath.

God dwells here, curled up inside a tiny, tender seed
lying dormant waiting for the time
when you finally give up the restless search outside yourself
and say: "I'm ready to come home."
"I don't know how but I'm willing to look inside,
please show me..."

Sisters, Answers will not be found in glossy pictures of hard bellies
that have no room to breathe.
Our bellies will never be flat enough.
We will waste our lives, forever waiting for someone else to say we're o.k.
Come home.
Be still long enough to hear where the only real answers can be found
here in the dark.
This sacred dark place inside our own bellies
will always speak the truth
a singular, inconvenient truth that may upset the status quo.
Dare we listen, dare we begin to feed our own hungers
with the only nourishment that will ever sustain us...
self love
self trust
self honoring.
Unless we care for ourselves
starting right here with our own bodies,
we cannot begin to care for anyone else.
Let us start now to do the most important work we will ever do.
Next time you feel hunger, listen to your belly, let it speak.
If the voice is too soft to hear,
then act on what you think it might be saying.
You and your belly need practice in trusting one another,
The more you listen, the clearer its messages will become.
This body you inhabit is a living miracle...
treat it with reverence by honoring its wisdom.

As women, we were given the power to create life inside of our bodies.
As humans, we were given the power of choice.
Will you choose to keep searching endlessly for answers outside yourself?
Or will you begin to trust the truth which can only be found within?
Let us be as fierce on our own behalf.
Let not anyone take away the most precious part of us,
our center point,
our own truth.

Only when we find our authentic voices and live from there
will we satisfy our restless hunger.
Only then will we come home.

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:04:00 +0000

It is sometimes much easier to understand, even accept, when people are hard on others when you get a glimpse of how hard those individuals often are on themselves. At the very least, compassion is possible in a way that it might not otherwise be.

It is not always so, of course, but more and more I see that those among us who are most fiercely critical and uncompromising with others are no less self-critical. It doesn't change everything, but it does cast a slightly different light on the world.

I Go On a Field Trip; Holley Goes to Camp

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:16:00 +0000

I'm going to New Orleans for work this week. So, my beloved greyhound will be staying with two generous friends (three, if I count their kid). Though my trip will be brief, it will be the longest that Holley and I have been apart since I adopted him in January. I'm more anxious about the separation than I care to admit, like a queasy parent shipping her grade-schooler off to summer camp for the first time.

Holley knows and likes the friends who will be caring for him. He often accompanies me when I hang out at their apartment. Plus, he's a generally a rather adaptable dog. For all of his clingy-ness in some ways--following me from room to room--he's not much of a fretter. And the dog's a trooper: he goes with me to run errands, to visit others' homes, to bars, to coffee shops, etc.

But I will miss him, I know. Like that anxious parent, I've found myself projecting my own feelings onto him, translating my own apprehensions into concern for how he will handle the separation.

My therapist, a dog owner, spoke with me this past weekend, and she pointed out that dogs lack the capacity to miss people in the way that people miss people. Dogs, to a large extent, live in a perpetual present. They may notice your absence and, in that moment, wish you were there. But they don't contemplate the implications of your absence. If, in the next moment, they are satisfied--someone is feeding them or petting them or walking them, they have a soft place to sleep, whatever--the missing is gone. It's the contemplation, and the obsessiveness of those thoughts, that causes the real ache of missing someone. Will she come back? If so, when? Did I do something to make her go away? Would I be okay if she never came back? What if I'm not okay? What would I do then? That's the soreness. Yet, blessedly, by and large, canine brains don't seem to work that way. It's why distraction/redirection of attention works so well in dog behavior management and training.

If only I could say the same for me.

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:35:00 +0000

I am sorry that I've not been blogging lately. I frequently think about potential posts, but the topics tend to be either (a) related to my work in the law this summer (hence, confidential) or (b) related to subject matter to which I don't think I could do justice given the amount of time I've got to blog. I should probably add that many topics fall into both (a) and (b), which probably means that there should be a "c" category, viz. "all of the above."

More soon, I promise . . . .

Whatever You Do, For the Love of God, Don't Relax

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:22:00 +0000

These sorts of popular articles drive me fucking nuts, yet I can't seem to avoid reading them.

30 Worst Foods in America warns that even a monthly indulgence is not safe:

It doesn’t matter how religiously you diet. It doesn’t matter how intensely you exercise. And even if you try to make the smartest choices, pick the healthiest foods, and watch what you eat at every meal, all it takes to sabotage your weight loss goals is one simple mistake. That’s why we’re here to help you – a little bit of awareness can make those mistakes never happen.

Today’s food marketers have loaded many of their offerings with so much fat, sugar, and sodium that any single food in this slideshow can destroy all your hard work and best intentions. Welcome any one of these nutritional neutron bombs into your diet just once a month, and you could add nearly 7 pounds of flab to your frame in the coming year.

Why Calorie-Counting Makes You Fat warns us that even relying on nutrition labels might cause us to over-estimate:

The first thing most of us do when we pick up food is look at its calorie count. Whether dieting or simply keeping an eye on our intake, we rely on this number to help us make the right choice.

But, according to some experts, these calorie counts could be making us fatter.

That's because the current way of calculating calorie counts is deeply flawed - as a result, the calorie counts on food labels and in diet books may be inaccurate by up to 25 per cent.

Even eating an extra 20 calories a day could make you put on more than 2lb of weight in a year. Eat several foods with the 'wrong' calories a day and this effect is multiplied.

How is anyone supposed to stay (much less become) remotely sane about food or weight when messages like this permeate popular culture?!? How is anyone supposed to relax? How is anyone supposed to be anything less than hypervigilant, anxious, and suspicious?

Is "journalism" like this normatively neutral dissemination of information? Calculated sabotage? Plainly, as an eating-disordered woman, I am more susceptible to the madness these articles can trigger. Yet, I can't imagine that "normal" people aren't affected.

Comic Con

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:02:00 +0000

I spent a summer in San Diego a few years ago. I happened to live in an SRO very close to the convention center where Comic Con was held. That summer, I was an auslander in a strange city, by myself. I had a bit of free time, so after some dithering, I decided to pay the Con a visit. Now, every summer, when SD's Comic Con makes national news (like now), I think back to my summer in SoCal and my own modest pilgrimage to that peculiar holy site of the comic world.

I'm no full-time denizen of comic culture, but I'd guess that I've been a regular comic tourist for a while. I know the artists & writers whose work I tend to like, but I'm no fan girl. I don't need to be convinced that comics are a legit art form, but I don't follow that form with more attention or enthusiasm than others. I like some comics the way I like some paintings--I think I know enough to have a marginally astute critical eye, but it's not as though painting per se is a special interest of mine.

Appreciating comics is a strange gift from a couple of men who used to figure prominently in my life. Unlike a lot of semi-obscure interests I've shared with them, ones that people have perpetually assumed I absorbed by association with men, but in fact I did not, any more than they did from me . . . my interest in and knowledge of comics DOES come largely because of my association with those men. No, my ex-husband or ex-boyfriend did not teach me what I know about analog synthesizers or tube amps. No, I did not simply begin parroting an ex-lover's scripts about Austrian economics. No, I wasn't introduced to Japanese cult cinema by anyone with whom I've shared a bed. But liking Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Ivan Brunetti, Chris Ware, et.al.? Well, yes, I got that in significant part from an ex-husband and, later, an ex-boyfriend.

Of course, the interest--such as it is--has become my own. It's been more than a decade since, at my then-husband's urging, "Sandman" became my gateway to comic appreciation. Even by the time I got round to the now-ex-boyfriend, I knew enough about the medium to not totally embarrass myself while in a conversation with a comic enthusiast. In latter years, my comic-reading is often limited to the Best American Comics series of annual collections and some selected works here & there. But, you know, when boys at a bar start pontificating about "Watchmen," I'm not going to assume that we're just talking about a movie. My comic knowledge has probably earned me a few gratis drinks and second looks over the years too. (This is probably a lot like what women who know a modicum about popular sports experience with less-nerdy men-folk.)

And, hell, I've been to Comic Con.

Are You There God? It's Me, TST.

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Lordy, I loved that book when I was a girl. I recall, in fact, writing out lists of the ways that Margaret and I resembled one another--grand similarities like growing up without religion as well as niggling details like the ages at which our respective mothers got their first periods--as if I could make our outcomes similarly pleasant if I could prove that our starting circumstances were alike. (Prove to whom?!)

I, like Margaret, fretted terribly about when I would get my first period. I wanted it so badly. Ironically, those damned periods were horrid when they arrived. From the start, my periods were monthly disasters. They were so bad, in fact, that I was whisked off to a gynecologist before many of my friends were in training bras. (I got my first period when I was 11 years old.) I was prescribed birth control pills--in an attempt to regulate my over-active hormones--before I knew that birth control pills were typically used for contraception.

My period arrived for the first time during Thanksgiving vacation, when my family was visiting Williamsburg, Virginia. I was in sixth grade.

"If I were raped now, I might get pregnant." I said those words to myself, sitting on my bedroom floor once my family had returned home from the trip to Virginia. It was the first time I was really alone to reflect on what my body was now doing. I had never really thought much about rape or pregnancy before, so I'm not sure why that thought popped into my mind. When it did, though, I started crying. It was as though I had been obsessing over this sign of maturity for so long, yet I had never really considered its negative implications. I had been begging for my first period, but somehow I felt wholly unprepared to be a woman when my period finally came.

I bled so heavily in those early days that I couldn't sleep through the night when I was menstruating. No conventional feminine hygiene product could handle my flow for more than a couple of hours, so invariably, if I let myself fall to sleep, I would wake up drenched in menstrual fluid. (How many readers will click away from this page at the phrase 'drenched in menstrual fluid,' I wonder . . . .) I was too embarrassed to describe this problem in too much detail to my parents, open though our relationship generally was. So, I suffered alone throughout the night for 25% of those months. Finally, I figured out a solution in the middle of the night one night. I was sobbing because I was so terribly tired--and tired of this recurring situation. I just wanted to sleep like a normal person, sleep like all the other members of my household were sleeping. So, I wrapped myself in plastic garbage bags secured with masking tape. I didn't care if my underwear got completely saturated. I didn't care if it was gross to unpeel myself in the morning. I just wanted to be able to go to sleep.

The cramping was incapacitating. The sort of pain that leaves you rocking back and forth, blind, deaf, and dumb. I've had a lot of health issues in my life, and I've blithely tattooed and pierced all sorts of places on my body (in the latter case, often by myself) and stretched several of those piercings out with low-gauge jewelry. I would sooner describe myself as a masochist than as someone with a low pain threshhold. But those cramps? Those fuckers hurt. And when they stopped hurting, I knew that they would be back again in a few weeks. I don't remember experiencing any physical pain in my life prior to menstrual cramps. Obviously, I must have felt pain, but nothing that made an impression on me like those damned cramps.

Yet, as an adolescent & young woman, I didn't begrudge my reproductive system or my sexuality. Far from it. I felt like I was earning my womanhood through the suffering, I think. I felt proud of what I endured because of what it meant to me. I wanted to be a woman. I wanted it so badly that I would gladly hurt for it.

But with age, "womanhood" becomes far more complex than Margaret ever imagined. At least for me. A reproductive system that made me hurt each month, but wouldn't make or keep babies when I wanted it to do so. Breasts that brought the longed-for male attention but also invited harassment and assault. Some culturally-inherited notion of femininity--of beauty & behavior--that often felt like an imperfect fit. Like a pair of sky-scraping heels that pinched my toes and blistered my ankles, yet were so pretty that I wanted to wear them anyway. So pretty yet so painful that I resented their existence as much as I longed to wear them comfortably. What to do with it all?

So, are you there, God? It's me. And it's not any easier nor any clearer now than it was for Margaret back then.

"If You Start Menstruating Again, I Think You'll Be Sorry"

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:58:00 +0000

After too many years, I finally had a visit today with a gynecologist. (If the post's title didn't already give you, dear reader, enough warning of the topic of the post, that first line surely did. Squeamish readers beware.) I needed a pelvic exam, a PAP smear, the usual. Also, this office checks blood-iron levels as a standard part of a "well woman visit." And, yeah, I wanted to discuss that whole bit about me not menstruating for the past two and half years.

I was pleased to learn that I am not currently anemic, and that my inside lady parts, um, passed the pelvic exam. (No word on whether there was a curve.) The PAP test takes time to process, of course, but I'm hoping that I'm all-clear on that front too.

I was surprised, though, that the OB/GYN did NOT want to put me on estrogen--birth control pills, shots, etc.--in order to induce menstruation.

For everyone keeping score: After my (third) miscarriage in 2005, I stopped menstruating. I was extremely invested in my eating disorder then, so it was not much of a shock that Aunt Flow quit stopping by. However, in August of 2006, after several months of intensive ED treatment and weight gain, I got my period again. (I even made friends celebrate with me with red wine . . . which demonstrates how tolerant my friends tend to be.) The period only stuck around for five or six cycles, though. My weight had not dropped to pre-menstruating levels, but still my body has not felt like doing what it is supposed to do since then.

I've been worried, naturally, that I've been irresponsible with my health by not addressing this issue with a physician. My nutritionist has urged me to do so. I've entertained dark daydreams about how my bones are turning to chalk. After all, it can hardly be good not to have periods, right?

Well, maybe so. The gynecologist I saw today, though, insisted that it would probably be worse for me if I DID have periods.

Before my dangerous dance with anorexia, I was diagnosed with stage IV endometriosis. I learned this while my ex-husband and I were undergoing infertility treatment. My endo was pernicious stuff. I had to have several surgeries, I had to go on Lupron shots, and I had to deal with the fact that I would likely have to keep doing such things for the rest of pre-menopausal life. It gave me digestive problems and nausea. And the planet stopped spinning on its axis (as far as I was concerned) every time I got my periods. They were heavy enough that I was virtually home-bound, and the cramps left me curled up in the fetal position.

Endometriosis is fueled by estrogen. (That's why Lupron--which creates a temporary, artificial menopause by suppressing the production of the hormone in question--is used to treat the condition.) So, if my OB/GYN gave me estrogen to re-start my period, she reasoned, she would almost surely trigger the endometriosis.

The doc confirmed that I am not trying to have children. Given that I'm not fighting that fight any more, she essentially said that I was probably better off not menstruating. While it's true that low estrogen levels correlate with certain increases in health risks such as osteoporosis, she told me that she recommended dealing with those risks as opposed to inducing menstruation and facing the endometriosis. After all, many methods of hormonal contraception now prevent periods for three months at a time or longer.

"Menstruation is like sneezing," she said. "It's a normal, healthy cleansing mechanism. But if there's nothing to cleanse from your nostrils, there's no reason to make you sneeze." This, I think, was the first time my uterus has been compared to my nose.

It felt strange walking away from this conversation. My situation is not the same as getting a hysterectomy or otherwise putting some final, irreversible closure on my fertile life, of course. The gynecologist assured me that, if I changed my mind about wanting to conceive a child, I could always pursue my medical options at that time. (She did warn me, however, that estrogen replacement was only indicated up to the age of 35, so my window is admittedly slim.) Also, given how finicky hormones can be, my period might come back some day on its own. But still.

Still.

I'm not even quite sure yet why I feel so strange.

Homeless People Pee on the Street, But You Probably Get Persnickety With Them Too

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:11:00 +0000

A short while ago, I was chastised by a neighbor for letting my dog pee on the grassy median between the sidewalk and the street.

Fine: I live in a neighborhood that demands that dog-walkers scoop up the poop that gets inevitably dropped. This makes sense. People around here have lovely, precisely manicured landscaping. Who wants those horticultural artworks fouled? Moreover, even on the plain grassy spaces, feces would pile up quickly if every dog's waste was left behind. It's a city. Too many dogs live in too little space for anyone to fairly treat themselves as an exception to the rule. Biodegradable though it may be, dog feces accumulates in an urban environment more quickly than it disappears.

But urine? I understand why someone would take issue with a dog emptying his bladder on a person's prize-winning petunia. The chemical effects of dog piss could surely damage such delicate plant. Pee in the exact same spot of grass could probably wreak some havoc too. I'm not arguing that urine of any sort is an especially salubrious contribution to ground water. And it's not as though I am letting my greyhound take a leak on some kid's lollipop.

But my dog has to pee somewhere. Moreover, how could I clean it up? Are doggie diapers the only choice for the responsible city-dwelling dog owner?

Freya Stark

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:09:00 +0000

Has anyone ever heard of Freya Stark? Am I the only one whose attention this remarkable woman has escaped up until now? A trail-blazing explorer of the Middle East, an incisive travel writer, she deserves to be far better-known than I think she is. At the least, she deserves a quick Googling.

A few select quotes:

"One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism."

"The tourist travels like a snail in his own shell, and stands on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents. But if you sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind there is no knowing what may happen to you."

“Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.”

"The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised."

At 93, as she was planning a trip to Spain, Dame Freya was asked about death. She replied, "I feel about it as about the first ball, or the first meet of hounds, anxious as to whether one will get it right, and timid and inexperienced -- all the feelings of youth."

Now You See Me; Now You Don't

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:57:00 +0000

This summer, I've experienced something curious. (Okay. Plenty curious things--but one I'll talk about now.) As I described during last school year, the first-year class at my law school, like those at many, was divided into four sections. Each section shared the same 1L schedule all year, every day, all day. Our days were very regimented, unlike the average undergrad or graduate schedule. We had assigned seats in each class, so we even sat in the same damned seats all day long, every day. Though each section was large enough to fill an auditorium, each section did develop a certain cohesion, a certain group identity. Even with a crowd that big, one is bound to feel connected to the unit of people that one sees for the majority of one's waking hours for ten months. Plus, no one else in the whole world knows as well as these people do what exactly one is experiencing in the alternate reality that is one's 1L year. The experience is not unlike high school or summer camp or the military: you may not like these people, you may not interact with these people outside of this context, but you've been thrust into a certain forced intimacy because inhabit the same microcosm, that microcosm is an intense one, and that shared, intense experience draws you together, whether you like it or not. At least so long as it lasts.

I certainly made friends. Several classmates I began hanging out with outside of school. Many more I cultivated warm, ongoing in-class relationships with. But most people--just by sheer force of numbers--I didn't talk to much, even if I saw them all the time on the other side of the lecture hall, knew their names, etc.

Still, I've been surprised by the number of e-mails and messages I've received from former section-mates. No shock to hear from some individuals, of course. If my friends suddenly stopped communicating with me, that would be the greater shock. But, wow: the number of people who I didn't even realize paid much attention to me at all, who have made friendly contact this summer. Wow: the number of people in that category who seem to know things about me, remember things I said, think of me when they see something, etc.

This is a lovely, unexpected revelation. But, again, wow. I often assume that no one sees me at all, no one is paying attention to me. Sometimes this thinking comforts me. To reassure myself that no one notices my fuck-ups can be soothing. Frequently, though, I am saddened to think that I am pretty invisible in this world, totally forgettable. Wallpaper with a pulse. You know the thinking: nobody would even notice, much less care, if I were gone, if I never existed at all. Not suicidal ideation, mind you, but rather just a persistent sense that I am not the sort of person who people pay attention to. But, God, maybe people do see me more than I usually think.

As you know, I am a racial minority at my school. So, just being the (very pale, blonde) white woman in the mix does make me stand out, I know. But to have people notice more about me than that, to know me from a distance as something more substantive than that, jars me.

Again, I've got some tender spots when it comes to invisibility. Some of those issues spring from my early childhood; some of them stick with me because of long stretches of my life when I was virtually invisible to many of those around me. I felt like some creepy watcher: I quietly observed, yet people I met many times barely remembered my name or anything more about me than, perhaps, who I was dating or married to at the time.

What to do with evidence that challenges a long-held pattern of cognition?

Kafka: The Servant of a God Not Believed In

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:22:00 +0000

I adored this mini-bio of Franz Kafka from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac so much, I just had to share it below. I wish my own neuroses resulted something half so meaningful as Kafka's did . . . .

It's the birthday of Franz Kafka, (books by this author) born in Prague (1883). At the time, Prague was part of the Hapsburg Empire of Bohemia. He grew up in a Jewish ghetto in Prague, speaking German, in a family that identified themselves as Czech. He lived almost his entire life with his parents, even after graduating from law school and holding a steady job at the government-run Workman's Accident Institute — a place where he oversaw the implementing of safety measures. His work helped prevent lumber workers from losing their limbs.

His family's apartment in the Jewish ghetto in Prague was tiny, noisy, and subject to the rule and whims of his tyrannical father. Kafka once noted, "I want to write and there's a constant trembling in my forehead. I'm sitting in my room which is the noise headquarters of the whole apartment, doors are slamming everywhere. … Father breaks down the door of my room and marches through with the bottom of his bathrobe dragging behind him. Valli shouts through the foyers as if across a Parisian street, asking if father's hat has been brushed. The front door makes a noise like a sore throat … Finally, father is gone, and all that remains is the more tender, hopeless peeping of the two canaries."

In that noisy claustrophobic apartment with his parents and three sisters, Kafka would hypnotize himself to get in a frame of mind to write. He said, "Writing … is a deeper sleep than death … just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night."

Kafka was terrified of his father, who convinced his son early on and again and again that he was a failure in life and would never amount to anything. Kafka stuttered around his father, but no one else.

Kafka spent his life steeped in self-loathing, and he had a number of psychosomatic illnesses. To cure his perceived illnesses, he tried all sorts of herbal and natural healing remedies. He went through a phase where he chewed each bite he put into his mouth a minimum of 10 chews. And he became vegetarian, eating mostly nuts and fruits, and followed a regimen of doing aerobics in front of an open window. He was actually a physically robust and healthy young man, but he was neurotic in a number of ways. He confessed that he had "a boundless sense of guilt," and one of his friends wrote that Kafka was "the servant of a God not believed in."

He was engaged to a woman in Berlin for five years, then broke it off with her. He wrote to her, "After all, you are a girl, and you want a man, not an earthworm." They were engaged a second time, and broke it off again. Their distant relationship was carried on almost entirely by writing letters. He once said: "Letter writing is an intercourse with ghosts, not only with the ghost of the receiver, but with one's own, which emerges between the lines of the letter being written. … Written kisses never reach their destination, but are drunk en route by these ghosts."

Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924, a month shy of his 41st birthday. All of his sisters later died at concentration camps in the Holocaust. Not much of Kafka's work was published during his lifetime. Kafka had instructed his friend Max Brod to set his manuscripts on fire upon his death, but Brod refused, and instead edited and published Kafka's work.

Kafka's best-known work is The Metamorphosis, which begins, "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous bug."

His book The Trial begins, "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning."

Kafka has been made into an adjective, "Kafkaesque," a literary allusion dropped into conversation from time to time by people who may or may not be familiar with his work, which is actually full of humor. "Kafkaesque" has come to be used to describe things of a gloomy, bizarre, eerie, nightmarish, or doomed nature, and is often applied to bureaucratic or institutional situations.

Kafka once wrote in a letter to a friend: "The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation — a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."

If I Has $180 To Spare...

digestiondujour@gmail.com (T.S.T.) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:11:00 +0000

. . . I would probably own this.

Oh, Mark Ryden, how I love you.