As I blogged about yesterday, I have a lot of shame about food, weight and diets. I feel a lot of shame because I am overweight and have spent most of my life “failing” at diets. But I am starting to challenge that shame.

Let’s revisit the dictionary definition of “shame” :

“the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.”

Dictionary.com

I feel shame because I have failed at diets. But have I actually done anything dishonorable? Or improper? Or ridiculous? HELL NO.

This is how most diets work: (1) eat this, (2) don’t eat that, (3) follow our advice and you will lose weight. Sometimes, “eat this” is a type of food. Other times, it’s a certain number of calories or points. But all diets boil down to “Eat this, Not that, The End.”

I have tried a lot of diets. Some seemed reasonable. Some seemed crazy. But they were all built on a shaky myth of self-control. I had to have enough self-control to follow the rules and restrictions of the latest diet. If I had enough self-control, I would lose weight. If I did not have enough self-control, I would fail.

If I was good, I would lose weight. If I was bad, I would not.

Whether I failed or succeeded was on me. The diets were infallible. They trotted out their success stories with Before and After photos and promised that I would lose weight so long as I had the discipline to restrict carbs or stay within my points budget or only eat sweets on Saturdays. Then the diets would trot out some math or science to prove that eating a certain way would give me Super Cheetah Metabolism or would result in a calorie deficit. How could I argue with math and science? How could I argue with Before and After success stories?

Except popular diets only trot out selective math and selective science. In their books, pamphlets and commercials, they just show the math and science that makes them look good. Remember, diets have become an industry unto themselves. They want to sell you something. They are playing with our emotions to make money!

(Bastards.)

Popular diets are premised on the idea that if we follow their rules, we will lose weight. Therefore, if we do not lose weight, it’s because we were too weak to follow the rules. It’s not the diet’s fault that we are pathetic!

But as I talked about in this post, we are biologically programmed to EAT ALL THE SUGAR. We are denizens of the 21st century with the DNA of cave people. Our cave ancestors did not exercise self-control when they found a ripe fig tree, because that would have been counter-productive. They had to EAT ALL THE FIGS right away because by tomorrow, the baboons would have stripped the tree bare.

Self-control is no match against the ancient biological imperative to EAT ALL THE FIGS.

Diets fail, not because the dieter is weak, but because diets do not take into account our biological imperative to eat any and all sugar.

I have not failed at diets. The diets have failed me.

So let’s circle back to that definition of shame.

Have I done anything dishonorable? No, I have not. If anything, the diets have been dishonorable by leading me to believe that I could lose weight simply by following their advice. Their advice sucked. Their advice did not take my basic biology into account.

Have I done anything improper? Good Lord, no!

Have I done anything ridiculous? Absolutely not. Diets are pervasive. In the twenty-first century United States, we live in a pro-diet culture. Diets are seen as the solution to weight woes. I have not done anything ridiculous. I have just been very, very human.

The shame I feel in connection with food, diets and my weight arises from the belief that if I fail at diets, it’s because I am weak and pathetic.

I would like to take this opportunity to formally reject that belief. It’s a toxic belief and I am evicting it from my heart, mind and soul.

I am not weak or pathetic. I am awesome, powerful and fierce. I got misled by diet culture, but that’s okay. Millions and millions of people have been misled by diet culture. I’m in excellent company.

Diet culture has failed me, but am I doomed?

Hell, no! ! I’ll continue writing about this next week.

I have blogged about our biological imperative to EAT ALL THE SUGAR and the reasons that diets fail. Now I want to talk about shame.

I don’t know about you, but just the word “shame” makes me feel squirmy inside. I kind of want to hold down the Delete button and start a different, more pleasant post. Like I could tell you about the fish babies that recently hatched in our aquarium, or the amazing bread pudding I made yesterday, or the cute bird that has started frequenting the apple tree that I can see from my desk.

But I need to talk about shame.

Shame thrives on secrecy and silence. I know, from personal experience, that shame cannot last long if I writing and talk about it publicly. (Exhibit A, my memoir. Exhibit B, my first podcast.) I have a lot of shame wrapped up in food, my weight, body, and the ghosts of diets past. I am sick of carrying that shame around so here we go.

I am ashamed that I am overweight.

I am ashamed that I lose control and EAT ALL THE SUGAR.

I am ashamed that I lose weight and then regain it.

I am ashamed of my body.

I am ashamed of my food cravings.

I am ashamed about all the times I failed to stick to a diet.

I am ashamed that everyone else seems capable of losing weight except me.

I am ashamed about all my #dietfails.

I feel a sort of uncomfortable tingling in my head, neck and chest from writing those sentences. There’s some extra heat in my cheeks. My body is reacting physically to the idea of shame.

The dictionary defines “shame” as “the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.”

But have I actually done anything wrong?

I don’t think so. I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

As I blogged about yesterday, I have the same biological instincts as my cavewoman ancestors. These instincts are embedded in my DNA. One of those instincts is: EAT ALL THE SUGAR.

Sugar was a valuable but limited source of calories before the agricultural revolution (and that revolution only happened 10,000 years ago). Our ancestors only got to eat sugar when trees were loaded with ripe fruit. That’s why, when they found a ripe fig tree, they ATE ALL THE FIGS. They did not hem and haw and feel guilty about wanting to eat the figs because they ate some berries yesterday and were planning to have a big mammoth burger for dinner. They needed calories; they saw figs; figs have calories; so they ATE ALL THE FIGS.

I still have this biological instinct to eat all the figs. And all the Snickers. And all the cake. My biological instincts do not discriminate between sugars, and my biological instincts do not care that I can go to the grocery store whenever I want and buy all the ingredients and treats my heart desires. My body is just programmed with a simple mandate to EAT ALL THE SUGAR. I have a lot of thoughts about this, but today, I want to write about diets.

I have done a lot of diets. Diets that count calories or points. Diets that restrict the types of foods I can eat. Diets that sell prepackaged meals or smoothies. I have been dieting since high school, and every time, I was convinced that at last, I had found the diet that would help me lose all the weight forever. And yet here I am, forty-two years old, 5’5″ and 200.8 pounds.

(Look, we can talk about self-love, self-esteem and beauty some other time. I know that I weigh too much for my body and that it’s not healthy for me. I want to lose the excess weight that is keeping me from being my healthiest self.)

For years and years, actually decades, I have felt like a failure because I could not keep off the weight. Lose the weight? Yes, I can lose weight. I’ve probably lost several hundred pounds by now. I am an expert at losing weight. But I’m also an expert at regaining the weight.

But as I think about my biological instincts to EAT ALL THE SUGAR, I am starting to realize that I am not the one who has failed. The diets have failed me.

I would have kicked ass as a cavewoman. I would have been very accomplished at finding and devouring all the ripe fruit within a ten mile radius of my cave. I would have thrown rocks at any baboons who tried to interfere with my sugar lust. I would have been the cavewoman who survived during times of drought and famine. My ancestors passed on some ass-kicking EAT ALL THE SUGAR genes. Thanks to them, I get to be alive today in the 21st century in Pasadena, California with all sorts of grocery stores and restaurants.

I would like to take this opportunity to send out a big THANK YOU to my ancestors who ATE ALL THE FIGS and wooly mammoth burgers.

All the diets I have tried failed to take into account that I have the biology of a cavewoman while being a denizen of the 21st century in an affluent city. Their rules and restrictions – don’t eat carbs; don’t eat more than 1,200 calories; don’t exceed your weekly points; only eat these smoothies for breakfast and lunch; don’t eat after 7 p.m. – completely ignore my biological instincts.

The basic underlying premise of all the diets I have sampled is this: if you have enough willpower and self-control to follow these rules, then you will lose weight.

So I have tried to follow the various rules. I have tried to use self-control to limit my calories and avoid carbs, etc. etc. And when I have failed to lose weight, or regained weight I already lost, I have felt like a pathetic piece of crap.

I, however, am not a piece of pathetic crap. I just happen to live in a country with a diet culture that completely ignores my biological instincts.

Diets fail because they expect willpower and self-control to be enough.

Diets fail because they ignore biological instincts.

Diets fail because they do not take into account that we are basically cave people programmed to eat ALL THE FIGS except now the fig trees have an infinite supply of figs.

I am not a failure. I am not weak or pathetic. I have just placed too much faith in diet culture. Now I need to learn how to live in a world with infinite figs.

I am slowly listening to the audiobook Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harris and damn, it is all kinds of fascinating. In fact, I really want to be listening to it RIGHT NOW but I have a window available for writing, so I am going to seize it while I can.

This is the thing I have learned from Sapiens that I really want to drill into my head: I am a cavewoman living in the 21st century.

Okay, okay, I am not actually living in a cave. (THANK GOD.) But from an evolutionary perspective, I am no different from my ancestors who shivered in caves 200,000 years ago. Humanity has come a long way since the days of wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers, but evolution is slow. We have the same bodies, brains and biology as the Homo Sapiens who walked the earth many, many millennia ago.

The reason we now build skyscrapers and send people into space is not because of any evolutionary changes. It’s because of our magnificent imaginations.

But I’m not writing about humankind’s imagination today. I want to focus on my inner cavewoman.

In the not so distant past, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. The agricultural revolution happened 10,000 years ago but Homo Sapiens first appeared at least 200,000 years ago. Math is not my super power, but even I can tell you that for most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers. Farming is a very, very new innovation.

As hunter-gatherers, we had to eat what was available. If a cavewoman walked past a ripe fig tree, she did not pluck off a single fig, savor it’s flavor, and plan to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow was too late. By tomorrow, the local baboons would have stripped the tree bare! No, if a cavewoman walked past a ripe fig tree, she went into feeding frenzy mode and ate as many figs as possible. Then she carried home as many as she could.

The cavewoman was biologically programmed to EAT ALL THE FIGS because the figs were rarely available. And we still carry in our DNA the biological imperative to EAT ALL THE FIGS because 200,000 years is barely a minute from an evolutionary perspective.

Now let’s imagine my inner cavewoman at the grocery store:

Shit is about to go down. My inner cavewoman is seconds away from ripping open packages and gobbling up cookies, candies, and just about anything with the scent of sugar. Then she is going to guzzle soda until she is sick. When security tries to stop her, she will go into Saber Tooth Mode until everyone flees the store. She will barricade herself inside and refuse to leave voluntarily until she has eaten All The Sugar.

But I don’t go into Saber Tooth Mode when I go to the grocery store. I am actually going to the grocery store this afternoon and I am 99.999999% confident that I”ll be able to stroll down the aisles without tearing open bags of sugary treats. I have an inner cavewoman but she does not completely control me.

Yet she does heavily influence my relationship with food. I’ll write more about that tomorrow…

Have you heard about the 100 Day Project? It is a free, global art project where participants challenge themselves to do a creative project every day for 100 days in a row and share their process online. The next round starts January 31, 2021 and I am going to do it!

I attempted the 100 Day Project once, a few years ago, with a project to make art involving fish for 100 days. I cannot remember why I thought that was a good idea… The idea fizzled quickly so I decided to switch gears completely and declutter every day. But that fizzled as well.

Still, I am intrigued by the idea of working on a creative project for 100 days in a row and sharing my process online. I just did NaNoWriMo in November 2020 and that was a tremendous success. I finished the first draft of a novel in early December and I am currently deep into revisions. I love these sorts of projects and the 100 Day Project feels like something I should do.

I could write something for 100 days, but that does not feel right for me. I already have an ongoing writing practice. I want to use the 100 days to jumpstart a completely different creative practice.

Over on Pinterest and Instagram, I have been swooning over punch needle crafts. I love the fiber arts. I already knit, crochet, cross stitch, embroider and weave — and damn, that’s probably enough hobbies in the fiber arts arena for one busy stay at home mom who is also writing a novel, right? But no, my heart aches to do punch needle.

After pinning scores of punch needle projects, I finally bought myself this kit and gave it a try. It was love at first punch. That was early January.

With about an hour of punch needling another my belt, my intuition started to ping. This, this, this.

This is your 100 Day Project.

This! This! This!

I resisted, but my intuition persisted.

This! Punch needling! Do this for 100 days!

I have resisted my intuition many, many times but magic always happens when I cave in and honor my intuition. (Exhibit A, my memoir. Exhibit B, my activity book. Exhibit C, my podcast.) So I have decided to stop resisting and embrace 100 Days of Playful Punch Needling for my 2021 #100DayProject.

I am nervous I simply do not have the time to do this. I am still in the throes of distance learning with my second grader, and that just sucks up ridiculous amounts of time. And I’m revising a novel. And trying to blog every weekday. And exercising. And I could keep going, but hell, I just need to spend ten minutes a day on this project. If the day is really that crazy, I can punch needle for one minute and that’s enough.

I might not have the time to do this, but I also think I don’t have the time to NOT do this. My intuition is hollering, and I have to listen. I don’t know what I am going to learn from this endeavor, but I won’t know until I try.

#100DaysofPlayfulPunchNeedle

Yesterday Pippa broke her nose. Today, we had this conversation.

Me: Pippa, do you want some pain killers?

Pippa: No! [Then, suspiciously…} Why?

Me: [slowly] Because you broke your nose.

Pippa: [in her “parents can be such idiots” voice] That was yesterday.

I should have known not to ask. She did not receive any pain killers at the ER. Less than two hours after breaking her freaking nose, she was laughing and smiling. On the way home from the hospital, we got milkshakes. I called my mom while waiting in the car. Pippa happily reported the story of her injury. Not even three hours after breaking her nose, she was seeing the humor in the situation.

I keep forgetting how resilient kids are. I do not have to lecture them about resilience. They were born with it. Instead, I have to make sure I stay out of their way and not damage their resilience! I have to teach myself resilience so I do not model bad habits or toxic beliefs to them.

In my kids, I see how naturally resilient humans are. We used to live in caves for crap’s sake and deal with saber tooth tigers. Am I really going to let a little distance learning knock me on my ass? Well, maybe distance learning will knock me on my ass, but I want to get back up, again and again, and keep going. I don’t want to be bruised and battered by distance learning and sulk in a corner, licking my wounds. I want to be a bad ass like my daughter and recover from adversity quickly.

Did she break her nose? Yeah, but that was yesterday.

We were getting ready to leave for a “drive through dinosaur” event at the Rose Bowl when it happened. I told the kids to go to the bathroom and was pouring soy milk into my decaf coffee when I heard a crash and then a scream.

Screams happen all the time in the Novak house. There are screams of indignation when one child annoys the other. Then there are screams of frustration, often about something related to distance learning; pretend screams that are part of a make believe game; screams when someone is being chased by Daddy…

But this scream was different. I knew immediately that Pippa was hurt and that she was not overreacting. When I got to her, she looked fine. Then, a little blood trickled out of a nostril. And then, her nose started to change shape. I called for Nathan, but he was already there.

We mobilized quickly. We were already about to leave for the dinosaur event, so I just had to grab Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows so I could read it to Pippa at the ER. Nathan dropped us off and we were quickly checked in by several friendly and helpful staff members.

On the drive over, I wondered what the scene would be like at the ER. There have been a lot of gruesome headlines about Covid-19 in California. The media makes it sound like the hospitals are completely overwhelmed with the latest surge. Would we even be able to get inside the ER?

When we arrived, I immediately saw there would be no issue getting medical care for Pippa. There was only one patient in the ER’s waiting room, but we did not get the chance to join her. We were ushered into a triage area and a doctor met with us within a few minutes of our arrival. He thought Pippa’s nose was broken and sent us for an x-ray to confirm.

We did not have to wait very long for the x-ray. The technician looked at the x-ray and thought the nose might not be broken. I did not tell Pippa this. She was very upset at the idea of breaking her nose and I did not want to get her hopes up.

We were taken to a private room with a bed. Pippa enjoyed getting to use the remote control to adjust the bed’s position. I read a chapter of Harry Potter and then a physician assistant arrived. He announced that the nose was broken but there’s just a hairline fracture. It should heal on its own just fine.

From the moment Pippa broke her nose until the moment we were discharged, I felt a few strong surges of emotions – mostly, heartbreak because my daughter was in pain – but I stayed calm. I did not panic. I did not feel angry at the unexpected chaos. I did not rail against the inhumanity of the Universe for adding another woe to my daughter’s life.

I remember the last time I had to take Julian to urgent care. That was before the pandemic, before life went upside down. I felt so overwhelmed and helpless because he needed stitches. I called my parents and had them watch Pippa so Nathan could help me at urgent care.

Today, I knew that because of Covid-19, only one parent could accompany Pippa into ER, and I knew that parent would be me. I did not feel stranded or panicked or overwhelmed or annoyed. I just felt calm.

2020 was a shit show, but thanks to its challenges, I have become more resilient and flexible. My daughter broke her freaking nose, and I did not freak out.

Well, it took 244 years, but we finally have a woman as Vice President of the United States.

I watched the Inauguration with Pippa. Her teacher gave special asynchronous time for the kids to watch the coverage at home, but if he had not, I would have let her miss school. I wanted her to witness history as Kamala Harris took the oath of office.

I teared up as Kamala Harris spoke the words. The phrase “chills going down my spine” gets a bit overused BUT that was what happened to me. Chills. Down my spine. In the best possible way.

I told Pippa that I had waited forty-two years for this moment. She was appalled. “I only had to wait seven!”

Thank god. I am so glad my daughter gets to grow up in a world where a woman is finally the Vice President of the United States.

And when a woman is elected President of the United States? My head might just explode with joy.

I have noticed the past couple of months that I feel my best when I am living in the space between hope and despair. Now, what the hell does that mean? Well, I tried my best in Episode 20 of Adventures With My Forties to explain myself. And I’ll attempt that again here…

“Despair” is the loss of hope. The feeling that all is lost. Nothing will ever improve. Woe is me! I will always be miserable. When I had postpartum depression, after about three months of progressively feeling worse and worse, I succumbed to despair. I believed that I was broken and no one could ever fix me. I would feel like a zombie for the rest of my life. I wished I could die.

That’s despair.

Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. It’s a belief that the future will be better. If you rely on dictionary definitions, hope and despair seem to be opposites.

I think they are actually the same thing.

Yes, despair is pessimistic and hope is optimistic, but they are both a type of mindset that looks to the future. Both despair and hope place contingencies and conditions on our future happiness. Both mindsets take us out of the present moment and place our wellbeing in the future.

Let’s take a look at distance learning through the lens of hope and despair. Pippa has not been to school since mid-March 2020. To date, second grade has happened entirely on the computer. Our school district claims they are ready to start hybrid school in February if the numbers allow. Now, how do I react to that possibility?

From a despair perspective, I would think, Schools are never reopening, not in the foreseeable future, everything is fucked, we will be stuck in this distance learning hell forever.

From a hope perspective, I might think, It could happen! Pippa could have hybrid school in February! That would be amazing! I would be so happy if that happens!

From both perspectives, hope and despair, I’m living for the future and deciding, I will be happy or I will be totally fucked depending on whether Pippa gets to start hybrid school in February.

But what if I live in the space between hope and despair?

From that space, I learn that our school district is preparing for hybrid learning in February, and I think, It would be nice if Pippa could go to school in person, but we have everything we need to be happy right now. We’ll be fine if hybrid does not happen.

This is the crucial part of the space between hope and despair: we have everything we need to be happy right now.

We have everything we need.

Right now.

When I manage to live in the place between hope and despair, I feel like my best most authentic self. I live in the present moment and sure, I acknowledge the difficulties of the present, but I also see the blessings and magic.

When I live in the space between hope and despair, I do not place contingencies and contingencies on my future happiness because I am already happy.

If I am living with hope, that means I have said, If X happens, then I’ll be happy. That means I can’t be happy until X happens, which means I am not happy now.

If I am living with despair, then I think, X will never happen, so I’ll never be happy. That means I’ve already decided I’m miserable.

Hope might seem more optimistic than despair, but with both hope and despair, I’ve already decided that I’m not happy. I’ve rejected the present moment. I’ve rejected my present happiness.

I am trying my best these days to live in the space between hope and despair, but I’ll tell you, it’s not easy. Not with the pandemic and distance learning. It is so easy for me to get lost in thinking about the end of distance learning and the pandemic and the return of “normal” life. That happened to me last week on my birthday! I was grumpy AF and had most definitely placed conditions on my happiness. I kept thinking that I couldn’t have a good birthday unless I could go to a nice restaurant with Nathan, send my kids to school, get a massage, and celebrate in person with loved ones. I thought hopefully to my next birthday – but that made me feel worse about the birthday I was having. Then I flipped over to despair. When I go to hope, it’s so easy to slip into despair. And when I’m in despair, it’s so easy to rely on hope to get out of that darkness. – which sends me tumbling back into despair. It’s a vicious cycle!

But in the space between hope and despair, I shake away contingencies and conditions and embrace the present moment with all its imperfections. That’s where I want to live. It’s not easy. But I’m trying my damnedest to live in the space between hope and despair.

I have been the room mom for Pippa’s class since kindergarten. During my first months as room mom, I sent dry, sterile messages to the class about potlucks and volunteering opportunities. I was trying to write the way I imagined a wholesome room mom would write.

But that’s not my style.

After a few months, my messages became a little more … authentic. In fact, one could say they became snarky. A lot of parents have thanked me for sending funny emails. They are my target audience. Some of the parents probably think I’m a crackpot, but I have stopped caring about what any haters might be thinking. (No one has actually complained to me about the tone of my emails yet, but if they do, at least it will be good material for my fiction.)

This is the email I sent today regarding our distance learning Valentine festivities:

First order of business: Happy New Year! Or, since we are still stuck in distance learning, I should probably just say, Mediocre New Year!

Valentine’s Day is coming, and in the darkness that is distance learning, our kids deserve a little light. So we are going to do our best to have a Valentine’s Party! (Because let’s face it, in a few years, when hormones kick in, Valentine’s Day will become a sordid source of drama, so let’s enjoy it when it is still hormone-free.)

Here’s how it will go:

• Please drop off cards at my house by Friday, February 5. Cards should be addressed to “my friend” and then From “your kid’s name.” 
• There are 26 kids in the class, plus two teachers, so each child should drop off 27 cards. 
• Please drop off cards in some sort of bag, so they are easy to sort. If I get a big heap of loose cards, and all the cards get mixed up, that might break my spirit. 
• Cards will be sorted into bags for each kid.  Bags will be provided. Susan* and I have this under control. 
• Goody bags can then be picked up between February 9-11. (I’ll let you know when they are ready!) 
• There will also be a “Valentine’s Day Party” in a bag. There will be a Bingo card, some treats, maybe a craft project or two, etc. If you have ideas for the Party Bag, or would like to help with that, please let me know! What did I forget to tell you? I know I must be forgetting something because my brain is so depleted by distance learning … sorry in advance for anything that is confusing! I am open to questions, concerns, and interesting bribes.

I will send reminders because we all have a lot on our plates! 

Cheers,

Courtney

* name changed in case she does not want to be associated with my snarkiness. Which I totally get.