Finding Sweetness on Halloween

For a long time now I’ve boycotted Halloween. Back when I was losing weight, I didn’t keep candy around for trick-or-treaters because I would be tempted to eat it myself. As I lost weight, I no longer found candy as much of a temptation, but I didn’t want to deal with l leftovers. Not buying treats to begin with made it easier.

This year, though, I started thinking about how this ritual of handing out candy has its roots in the concept of feeding ghosts. The Day of the Dead at beginning of November also focuses on feeding those we’ve lost.

Why is this? Why do we want to give food to those who can no longer eat? Or, in the case of Halloween, eat only by proxy?

Then it occurred to me that, as with many rituals, we do this because it also feeds us, and our own inner ghosts and memories.

When I see kids out in costumes, or hear about Halloween parties, it reminds me of my own trick-or-treating, of hanging out with friends, listening to “Monster Mash,” eating candy and having fun. Handing out candy is a way to feed the ghost of the younger me, bringing that earlier self back for a short while.

Similarly, when I’ve put chocolate on a Day of the Dead altar for my beloved dead, or made a dish that my mom loved, I more clearly remember those who are gone.

We connect so much with food, sharing it with family and friends, that it makes sense to still feel those connections and memories even after we’ve lost someone. It allows me to revive, if only for a moment or two, the sense of being with that person.

When I think about it that way, the idea of having candy on-hand is suddenly appealing. Maybe I’ll get to give some to an enthusiastic child, filled with the excitement of pretending to be someone else. Or maybe I’ll just end up with a bag of leftover treats, since people seem to have trouble finding their way to my door, but that’s okay. I know that if I focus on the memories that I’m feeding rather than the sugar, I don’t have to eat the candy to have a taste of sweetness. 

Body Regret

“Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse.”

This idea appealed to me as an angst-ridden teen. At the time, with the threat of destruction from the Cold War, increasing concerns about the environment, and my personal misery about my weight, I couldn’t imagine the point of living to any great age. I toyed with the idea of suicide, but I had one major problem.

I would never have a good-looking corpse.

This is the sad truth: part of the reason I never took the idea of suicide seriously is because it would have meant having someone see my fat, naked body in all its grotesque enormity. I simply couldn’t handle that.

Those memories came painfully to mind when I read the recent CNN.com article “What the dying really regret”. Hospice chaplain and author Kerry Egan wrote that of all the unfulfilled wishes people have shortly before dying, “the stories about the time they waste hating their bodies, abusing it or letting it be abused -- the years people spend not appreciating their body until they are close to leaving it -- are some of the saddest.”

I had never considered it that way before, although one of my main regrets does relate to my body: I was never able to climb Mt. Katahdin with my mom after my one trip at age ten. I always meant to. I just didn’t expect to run out of time so quickly, to lose that chance by age twenty-four.

I also remember seeing how my mom struggled with her body as she battled cancer, trying to get back to health and ability. It struck me that had I been in her place, I wouldn’t have known what that goal felt like, having no real memory of a time when I didn’t war with and hate my body.

That’s why, when I decided to lose weight and get in better shape, I had this as one of my goals: to know what being physically able and comfortable with my health would be like. I wanted to feel good about myself for at least some part of my life.

Since then, I have achieved that better health and so many other goals. While I wish I had not spent all that time and energy hating my body, I can rest easy knowing that’s no longer my truth.

And maybe I can help others get to the same place, where that is at least one regret they don’t carry to the end, or even to the middle, and instead spend whatever life is left enjoying the body they have.

Damaging Diet Mentality

I recently watched Katie Couric’s documentary Fed Up. I learned some things, but what brought it to life for me were the interviews with the obese teens. Some of them weighed about what I did in my younger years, which, for the record, was 200 pounds by the time I was 16. Some weighed considerably more. None wanted to be that way, and they talked about everything they did to try to lose weight.

Watching those interviews, my heart broke. I didn’t have to hear them to know much of what they’d say. I remembered. I especially ached for the girl who did everything she was “supposed” to – and still she didn’t lose weight. Having had the same experience while on Weight Watchers (in fact, sometimes even gaining weight while doing all the “right” things), I could empathize all too well.

Diet mentality tells us that deprivation, eating fewer calories, and burning more calories, is all that it takes to lose weight. Simple. So if you can’t do it, then it’s your fault.

The kids interviewed believed that. Some wept as they spoke into the camera, and I cried with them. I wanted to reach through the screen and give them a big hug, tell them they’re good and lovable and this isn’t their fault. I wanted to applaud their bravery for speaking out about something so deeply personal and heart wrenching, because I never did at that age.

I couldn’t tell them any of that, of course, but I did cheer inside when others talked about the enormous impact of the diet mentality on our children, how damaging it is to them emotionally to be told it’s their fault, they have no willpower, they’re lazy and stupid.

At 38, I still carry the scars from those messages, and some of them are fragile enough that even now they sometimes bleed. Over twenty years, and for more than ten of those years I haven’t been heavy, but this is still where I am.

Is this what we want for our youth? This constant, helpless feeling of not being good enough, no matter what else you do, whether or not you lose weight? I hope not, but unfortunately I think most people simply don’t know how those messages are perceived and internalized, and they continue to think that way.

Maybe others who see this will start to recognize that nothing is quite as simple as the diets make us think, and that blaming our young people for their size can damage them for life. Then, just maybe, we can ditch the diet mentality for good.

Why Do I Write What I Do?

Since starting this blog in October 2009, I’ve made over 250 posts, totaling over 140,000 words. And that doesn’t even include all the writing for my memoir or anything else. Clearly, writing is important to me, but why do I write what I do?

That’s one of the questions I’ll be answering as part of the Writing Blog Hop, which Allison invited me to do in her own post on her blog Eclectic Alli.

1. What am I working on/writing?

Currently my main project is my memoir about my experience with food and weight: gaining weight as a teen and young adult; losing 130 pounds by changing my relationship to food and my body; and maintaining that relationship and weight since 2003. But I do a lot of other side writing as well. I keep a journal (came in very handy for the memoir), post weekly to a blog, have blogs posted on the Am I Hungry?® Mindful Eating website, write reflections for lay-led services at my church, and write poetry, prose, and fantasy and sci-fi stories when inspired.

2. How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?

I’ve read a number of other weight-related memoirs, and mine differs in two primary ways.

One, as much as possible, I’ve written it as a story. I do have excerpts from my journal, but I also have lots of scenes and dialogue to make it more of a narrative flow. My hope for this is to make it accessible and interesting to a young adult audience, as well as older readers.

Two, I’ve covered the whole span of my weight experience, not just the process of losing weight with occasional references to being heavy. I have not read anything else that put any focus on the “after” or maintaining phase, but it’s something I consider critically important. Life, after all, does not turn into “happily ever after” simply because of numbers on a scale.

3. Why do I write what I do?

For the memoir, quite simply I wrote the book I wish I’d been able to read as an overweight teen. I felt so alone and rejected at the time, and I would have loved to know that others struggled with food and weight as I did, that it did not mean I was broken in some way.

And in general, I’d say of my writing that I use it as a way to connect with others and learn more about myself. Plus, if I didn’t write, I’d be miserable.

4. How does my writing process work?

With most things, I start off with a draft written by hand, because my mind works differently with pen and paper than sitting in front of a keyboard. Occasionally I’ll do blog posts just on the computer, but it’s not often.

Sometimes I get lucky and what I first write flows so smoothly that it doesn’t take long to polish. More often, it’s just a brain-dump of everything even remotely connected to what I want to say.

Then I take a break from it before going back and pulling it into a more cohesive form. Once I have the essence of the piece together, I sit down to edit and polish, which almost always involves reading it aloud.

A little about Allison, who tagged me for this:

 Allison Gammons is finding her way on the meandering, twisting path of life, constantly surprised by what’s around the next bend. Working to embrace and face the challenges inherent with following your dreams, she is writing the journey. Allison is a writer and dreamer, historian and theologian, academic and fantasy-world-creator, genealogist and gluten-free baker, crafter and reader, poet and life-long learner, who is constantly questioning.

In turn, I’m tagging two others.

Mainstream author Roger Pepper withdrew from a successful career in science to follow his lifelong ambition of becoming a novelist. His memoir, My Father The Viking, won 3rd Prize in the 2006 Linda Joy Myers Memoir Competition of the National League of American Pen Women, a competition open to published and unpublished works. He received an Honorable Mention for an earlier version of the first 50 pages of the The Brothers Cro-Magnon from a contest run by the Speculative Literature Foundation. Roger is a member of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and the New Hampshire Writers Project. He is a co-organizer of the Portland Writers Group (350 members), and the host of their monthly evening writing workshops. He now writes full time and lives in Maine. For more information, visit rogerpepper.com or check out his blog.

Edmund Davis-Quinn keeps a blog about his ramblings. When it was most successful, he blogged every day and had daily themes. Writing gets better as you make it a practice and do it more often.