Month: March 2010

Do you like Mars?

Mars

Friday, I had a session with Zermati.

Each time, it starts the same way, with the same question: “How are you?” Harmless, we all agree, except that of course, the answer generally relates with how I am food wise. Well, in fact, I always start by telling my life a little bit as over the sessions, we are not very far from something like a therapy.

The thing is that inevitably my qualms bring me back rather quickly to the kitchen table.

And that time, more than any other day, it didn’t fail.

— I’m rather good, except that I’m preoccupied by rather stressing news. (Tearful eyes, noisy tears swallowing, silence and talk resumption). And thus… I feel like eating.

Of course, this good doctor, far from loading me with reproaches or coaching me as Cohen and Dukon would do, I guess, like: “you are stronger than the Twix call”, seemed almost happy. Wait, he was sorry for me and listening, but rather satisfied with my confession.

“I was starting to find the whole process too smooth”, he explained.

Like he was wondering if I hadn’t swallowed a Buddhist monk or interiorized so much our discussions that I became more Zermatist than Zermati. He shouldn’t worry, the little voice that is telling me daily that my issues can dissolve in a slab of Milka is still there, ready to sound the bugle for the slightest complains.

— And then what do you do towards this eating desire?

Then, the good student I’ll always make sure I am, I think, lifted her head proudly and bragged:

—Well very surprisingly, I think I manage it quite well. I mean, I treat myself but I wait to be really hungry to do so. Exactly as you said.

I think I looked like a dog standing on its back legs, convinced its exercise deserves a sugar lump. I haven’t been disappointed, instead of a sugar lump, I got a Mars.

But before, though, from the frustrated look of doctor Z, I felt that my brown-noser side didn’t hit the bull’s eye. Even that, basically, I didn’t understand anything.

— You must absolutely know AS WELL how to eat without hunger and feeling guilty. Yes, in some instances, food IS comforting. You eat to feed yourself, to answer nutritional needs but to comfort yourself as it is a pleasure. And just like you sometimes take care of one children more than of the other because she is sick, you can also favor one function over the other, punctually.  So if you feel that your stress can be calmed down by a treat, you have the right to do so.

— Yes but I’m too scared that one thing leading to another…

— That it would be a compulsion?

— There you go. I know myself and I know I can rapidly go back to the other side.

— Except that we have worked together and all is not exactly like before. You must trust yourself. Compulsion will come from this restriction you are forcing on yourself during this difficult period.

— Yes but how do I know I’m not giving in to a compulsion? How can I be sure a piece of chocolate will be enough and will do me good? How can I be sure I won’t end up eating the whole biscuit packet with all guilty feelings that go with it?

— By listening to your desire. By analyzing it. By asking yourself why you feel like eating , by thinking of another possible solution. Sometimes, you find one. Sometimes… you don’t, it happens that the piece of chocolate IS a solution, or at least the best available one. And in that case, you CHOOSE to indulge with that piece of chocolate. Yet a compulsion is forcing its way, it is not decided. When making that decision this is not compulsion. Then you take the time to eat that piece of chocolate. You stop and savour it. Do you like Mars?

“Do you like Mars?” What a question? Do cats like mice? Can tea go without milk? Can David spend holidays without Jonathan? Does Peter need Sloan? Does…

The answer is yes, Doc, I like Mars.

—Thus you’ll savour one now.

I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow if you’re in, I feel it has been a bit long and also, I like creating episodes. I mean, in case it is boring at one point…

Edit: On the picture it’s me wondering if I prefer Mars or Twix. What a hassle…

I wish I were an objectified woman

IMG00359-20100310-1707

So, this idea of liking and loving yourself. I will try to report the fruit of our discussion with doctor Zermati on the question, without being sure I’ll make myself clear.

The problem is actually easier if you state it in the following way: do you like the people you love? Be careful, ‘like’ is to be taken in a broad sense, not necessarily in its ‘physical’ meaning. For you to ‘like’ someone, that person must correspond with norms which we think are personal but are in reality obliged by our communities (basically, is beautiful what everyone finds beautiful, apparently it can be verified if you show pictures of individuals to a panel group, there is unanimity on who’s handsome and who’s ugly). In short, the fact that you like someone is subject to several conditions.

That is not the case for love.

For example, our kids. Do we like them 100%? Is our love subject to their weight, their eyes color, their joyful, sweet and docile character? Do we need to explain why we would go through fire for them when these vermin deprived us from sleep during the first three years of their lives? (Ok, it’s not the subject but we are not out of the wood yet for that matter, I wanted to mention it too)

As far as I’m concerned, the answer is no. My thingies I love them unconditionally and somehow, doctor Z pointed out, luckily, as the entire human species is at stake, we don’t need to find our children beautiful to cherish them. Especially as, of course, ours are magnificent but it’s not the case for all children, right. Hum.

The comparison works for our days and nights lover, who, let’s admit it, have a dog’s breath in the morning, snores like a pig at night and doesn’t necessarily looks like Brad or George. Not to mention his steady habit of leaving the toilet seat up or of throwing away our personal belonging exclusively, on the pretext of ‘it was lying around’ when not at all I left it here intentionally (yes, ok, I’m deviating from the subject)

Nevertheless, even if you turn your head slightly when he starts talking to you in the morning, you love him. Yes yes. You can’t really tell how or why, it’s just there, you have him under your skin, this jerk.

Let me stop here, you get me, it’s the same with Bénédicte, whom you met in high school, who has a whole lot of habits that drive you mad, but whom you couldn’t do without for more than three weeks and it has lasted for 15 years. You find her pretty of course, except, if you really consider it, ok, her pores are dilated, her breasts are not so firm and she has a slight squint. Nevertheless, you love her, that goose.

In short, I think I’ve made my point, we don’t like everything about people we love but something happened, something was built, a bond was created and it’s like that.

So why would we need to like ourselves to love ourselves? Who, frankly, looks at himself or herself in the mirror in the morning and screams damn I’m hot, and brilliant as well? Well very few people. Or not every day. Nevertheless you have to accept yourself because, a priori, except if Rael and his visionary friends are right, you have only one life and one physical body. And loving yourself is a good start for the trip.

Except that our thoughts are upside down or even crooked, doctor Zermati was telling me. And the messages sent from all over won’t help us see more clearly. Then we interiorize that not liking yourself implies not loving yourself. And that, as a consequence, other won’t love us either.

— “Yes but I, I believe I wish I were liked. I’m a bit ashamed to say so, but I wish I were, once in my life, an objectified woman, a pure object of desire, not because I’m been appreciated or found funny or nice, simply because people turn round for me. I know, it’s foolish and stupid, but I never got this.”

Instead of making fun of me, doctor Zermati replied that indeed, during teenage hood, you need that thing, to be desired, displayed like a trophy. And thus sometimes you look all your life for that thing you didn’t get. Except that, let’s be clear, I’d be really embarrassed if, right now, Stan, good looking kid from grade 10, on whom I’ve drooled for hours in vain, were to propose a French kiss behind the toilets.

Or maybe not.

Edit: Picture taken with my phone, not very high quality, but I love her, what can I do…

My ten food commandments

Tuniqueàpois

Six months. I’ve been following doctor Zermati’s advice for six months. Without meaning to do an appraisal, because I think it’s too soon and mainly because I’ve integrated the fact that featuring my weight loss could, at the end, causes another loss, I keep in mind the below ten commandments which are not really commandments but which have become, over the weeks, my own mantras, my crutches when chocolate is calling…

#1 – What you eat when you are hungry doesn’t make you gain weight.

#2 – It’s eating beyond your hunger that causes weight gain.

#3 – A balance diet is obtained in the long term never over one day, nor over one week.

#4 – I’m not more responsible for being fat that I am for being small, short sighted or stammerer.

#5 – Losing weight won’t make me kinder.

#6 – It’s fear of gaining weight again that nine times of ten makes you put on weight again.

#7 – My value doesn’t depend on the weight my scale displays.

#8 – After an excess, the only thing to do is to wait for the feeling of hunger to come back before eating, without feeling guilty for the pleasure taken.

#9 – Eating without hunger is as dumb as charging an already full cell phone battery.

#10 – You can lose weight while eating chocolate daily or any other so called taboo food.

That’s it for today, I’ll come back soon on the “do you need to like yourself to love yourself?” subject, after discussing it in length with doctor Z., I believe I’ve understood his point and, at the same time, made a giant step forward, when it comes to what I think of me and also of my relationships with lovers, friends and family.

What is funny in this regard, it’s that Jaenada’s book I’ve just finished ends in particular with this sentence (as I recall it): “You don’t love someone for a particular reason, you love him or her and that’s it”. That’s, in substance, the conclusion of my exchange with Zermati: we love in general unconditionally people, whether they are our parents, children, partner or friends. Why aren’t we capable of doing so for ourselves?

Edit: I’ve chosen the picture because I believe I haven’t dared such a pose for ten years and because, even if it is indeed there, this muffin top, modest but present, strangely, doesn’t bother me.