I just realized, the fact of my hip density being higher than spine is common in connective tissue–related osteoporosis, where trabecular (spine) bone is more affected than cortical (hip) bone, that I wrote about here, could mean I have a problem with bone building, rather than with bone loss. In that case, a bisphosphonate will not be as effective for me, as it only stops bone loss. I am not a medical professional, but what feels deeply right for me, is I want to try this first. Then 8 months from now, I will get another Dexascan, and even if it is “not medically diagnostic,” the one I had done in June 2025 was pretty close to the bone density scan I had done at the hospital, so I will be able to compare apples to apples, Dexa to Dexa, for any improvements. If over the next 8 months I really try to see if I can build bone, (specific to my needs as someone with hEDS), then after my Dexa June 2026, if there are no changes, or a worsening problem, only then will I reconsider going on a prescription.
My self-talk is far more loving these days. I accept my “shrinkles” from my weight loss of more than 70 pounds (from 2023 to the end of 2024), and technically I am 90 pounds down if you count my absolute highest weight ever (2003).
But I have experienced a certain degree of body shaming, including at a young age. Some of it was not malicious, it was merely observation, (when puberty hit and I developed “saddle bags”). But when you are 12 years old, observation can sound like criticism.
And back in November, someone’s observation, in connection with those infamous “saddle bags” of mine, and the shape of my legs now, post-weight loss, was “that’s because you have an old lady butt.”
In the past, this would have bothered me. Now, I embrace my butt, my shape, everything leg about my legs, because they are incredible. My legs (thighs and butt included) carry me on hikes up hills. They carry me while walking a 15K back in March. They peddled my electric assist bicycle on a nearly 50K bike ride just one week ago. TMI alert, they allowed me to easily squat in the bush for a pee (twice).
Well, I survived last night cravings, despite getting flirtatious with a couple spoonful’s of peanut butter…
Maybe it was not emotional pain specifically last night, (I do NOT stuff down my emotions with food anymore), maybe it was my chronic physical pain that was pushing me into relief seeking behavior. I am currently dealing with daily arthritis (maybe it’s arthritis, I really don’t know what it is…) pain in my hands that I haven’t had to deal with before. (At least, I have not had pain that is daily like this is since going grain free).
I am better off petting my pets than grabbing a spoon, lol.
You know, part of me feels like these posts about “Look at me, I am in Maintenance!” come across as a little braggy, but I am just reminding myself lately that I do not want to go back up the scale to the old me. Yes, I have changed my identity that I spoke about here.
But…
I have been thinking (obsessing?) lately about the feelings I used to have when I simply would eat food for fun, for indulgence, the way I still see other people eating food. For example, go to a movie theatre. I will see people sitting all around me just eating—for the pure pleasure of eating. I mean, come on. No one is sitting there in a movie theatre eating, for example, a mixed vegetable dish as a meal to nourish their bodies. They are eating food (popcorn and candy, etc.) for fun. Absolutely, I used to do that too. And this week and last week in particular, I have been missing how it felt to escape into something (anything) to eat for the pure oblivion of a few moments of time while just eating. Because for those few moments of time, real life (with its real stresses) just disappears. Oh, real life comes rushing back in as soon as the food is done, and I must NEVER forget that, but for that little bit of time…
So, the “desire to overeat thoughts” have been hanging around again lately. They have been popping in and out of my head for almost 3 weeks now. This is why I did my last post here about feeling so comfortable in the body I have right this minute, so I don’t give it up. I was trying to remind myself why I say no every day to eating (overeating) foods I did not plan.
It seems that lately, when the same old life stresses (that come and go for everyone, I am not unique) are particularly intense, I notice that it feels the very same as in my past when similar stresses were also very intense, and I would overeat my way through the ebb and flow. It was at first an escape. Then, the misery of regaining weight was a distraction. It’s this old familiar pattern of response. Today, I must respond differently.
So, I’ve got to be willing to be someone for whom the food and the weight loss is solved, (now, in the present tense). Period. No more past patterns of behavior. Even when it seems hard to have given up that old version of myself, I am instead embracing that I am the new 2.0 version of myself. I remember the old version. I have even given her a big hug.
But now I step back and hold the old me at arms length. I am not her anymore. I don’t stuff down my feelings with food. I do not replace those feelings instead with feelings of misery about regaining weight. I used to know all about how to feel about regaining weight, I was comfortable with that negative place. In that old place, instead of hugging the old me, I’d be slapping her around and hurting her even worse than it felt that real life was hurting me at the time. I was an expert at that behavior.
So, maybe I am not exactly an expert at dealing with my emotions as this new version of myself (which is why suddenly the old me is standing just off stage. I can see her out of the corner of my eye). But what an unproductive and self-destructive state of existing it would be to go backwards at this point. And I do not want to simply exist like that (in emotional pain and trying to stuff it down with food) anymore.
I am the new me, and I am living my life feeling what I need to feel, instead of stuffing it down.
Everyday, because I maintain my current weight, I get to wear clothes I love. In the past, I wore clothes that were sometimes tight and uncomfortable. Or even if they fit my body perfectly, I never allowed myself to feel “comfortable.” Instead, many times I found myself hyper-aware of my clothing, and therefore self-conscious of my larger size.
Even if it is not “good” to label my body as “large,” (we do not have to accept any labels we do not want, and can instead love ourselves at any size), my body was simply larger in the past than it is today. And good or bad, clothing comes with its own labels as to their size. I believe there is nothing wrong with any size, 4 or 16, small or large, but if we do not feel “right-sized” for who we want to be, then we may find ourselves moving through life with a feeling of not being comfortable in our current size. I definitely experienced this in the past.
Now I move through life feeling comfortable in my current size.
So, maintenance is not glamorous. It is not as exciting as being in a weight loss phase, with new lower numbers on the scale to track each week, or month, or lower measurements, or new clothing sizes that now fit, (and new clothes to buy!). But I must never let myself forget that I am comfortable everyday, in all my clothes. I can go to my own clothes closet and select to wear my own version of the ever elusive—before which would be from the depths of the back of the closet—skinny jeans. And I get to wear them any day I want, not just in some future picture in my mind, “I’ll wear those when I weigh X.”
Of course, it’s not just clothes. It’s also the daily exercise and activity I can do each day, while feeling strong, able, and most of all—comfortable.
I heard something on YouTube the other day that really resonated with me.
“I live with my food black and white, so that I can live my life in brilliant color.”
This is what I do. My food is black and white. I simply plan each morning what I will eat today, and then I go about my day eating what I planned. And I plan good food I will enjoy eating, (which helps a lot!). I measure it all out, and keep track of what I am eating on an app on my phone, so the scale stays exactly the same (within a pound or 2). This “black and white” behavior keeps my thoughts about food calm and quiet, instead of lit up by variable reward, that I wrote about here.
People just have to live their own lives and do what they need to do. I see it on social media a lot, people struggling in so many different ways. And whenever I want to jump in with a comment, even just a “Me too, I know how you feel,” most of the time I instead think to myself, “Don’t try to insert yourself into their story.”
All I can do is just continue to live my own story, and I try to write it better this year than I have written it in the past. 2022 and 2023 (before my accident) were not the best story I could have written for myself. I am writing a better story this year, for sure, and today I want to remember that.
This cartoon illustrates what has been my thoughts in the past, (or could be my thoughts, if I let them), that I wrote about here.
It hit me just last night: eating for fun is simply that = fun. Not eating for comfort or stress or distraction, I am talking about eating just for fun, for the pure sensation, for enjoyment.
I don’t eat for fun anymore.
Although I love the meals I plan, I love the food I eat, (I make sure I exclusively eat foods I really like, that are particular to my own tastes), I no longer eat just because it would be fun to eat something. And that is something I used to do. Really, that is normal in our society, it is something that many people do. Normal, as in not necessarily something society would say I should not do, (versus society would say, for example, you should not smoke cigarettes, they are bad for you). And that is why it just hit me last night. I guess I will never eat for fun ever again.
Wow. I will never again just start eating because food is simply there, and it would be fun to eat it.
A big part of this is because I know that planning my meals really works for me. And I know that planning a special occasion indulgence (Thanksgiving, Christmas) is also fine and works for me. But just that realization that I will never just start eating something (snack food=chips, nuts, candy) for fun, for the sensation of chewing, for pure enjoyment, ever again, wow, that really hit me last night.
Of course, it does not end up fun or enjoyable in the end. I may start itching all over, (many nuts are contaminated with gluten during the bagging process, a light dusting of flour prevents nuts from sticking to conveyor belts and each other). I may start feeling intestinal pressure and bloating because chips made with corn flour state gluten free but also contain…I just went and looked at my husband’s bag of mini pizza rounds that he occasionally likes to eat with salsa…calcium hydroxide, which is used to soak corn to make it more digestible, (which will give me gas and bloating for 24 hours). I may end up waking up drenched in sweat from the sugar in candy, (as if occasional menopause hot flashes were not bad enough, nothing brings on the worst nights sweats like sugar will).
So, all in all in the end, no fun, no enjoyment.
Admittedly, I am sensitive (really sensitive) probably because as a Celiac I went undiagnosed for the first 40 years of my life. And even though going gluten free stopped my body’s immune response to gluten, the gluten free substitutes (and many other grains) eventually made me feel just as sick as if I had eaten gluten, because most of them are processed and ultra processed. The suspicion is I have some intestinal permeability that lets through more of these chemicals than average, (and as an eczema sufferer, I also have skin permeability that makes my skin “sensitive” also), which are in most ultra processed foods.
But I could still eat snacks, if I wanted to, and just put up with the discomfort. People do it all the time.
In addition to not eating excess foods for comfort, stress, or distraction, I have to choose every day not to eat foods that will eventually hurt, no matter how good they taste, or how much simply enjoyment or fun I would feel in the moment.
I have shrinkles. Really, it’s mostly my thighs, and interestingly, one thigh is worse than the other, (which happens to be the side on which I went down the day of my accident).
But I have never had “smooth” thighs, because I have always dealt with the good old cellulite, even as a teenager. When I was 28 years old, I travelled to the sunny south part of my province on a holiday, which was a break from living in the rainforest of the northwest and spending five days a week at an office job (and therefore I had zero tan on my legs). It wasn’t just the lack of a tan that led me to walk around (in the heat) wearing a pair of control top panty hose under my shorts, it was my bumpy thighs that I was worried about.
28 years old, healthy on the body mass index, and I did not want to show my bare legs in a pair of shorts.
In the past, I have used poor self-esteem and being self critical of things, (like pale skin and cellulite, which I cannot control no matter how much exercise I do), as an excuse to give up healthy eating and instead overeat to soothe the bad feelings those thoughts created in me.
Recently, the temptation is to follow the same pattern with my thigh shrinkles. I just cannot do that anymore.
My health, the health I have right this minute for which I am working to maintain, is just too important.
I have been working at defining what constitutes and can then satisfy my specific biological chemistry of:
Pleasure
Reward
Contentment
Soothing, and
Gratitude
I want to have a list of healthy behaviors to use instead of my past habit of overeating.
At Christmastime, 2023, I realized there was a big difference indulging in food and overindulging in food. A really big difference between planning an indulgence and just giving in and overindulging. A huge difference!
Planning an indulgence is no problem at all. You make a decision, you make a plan, you indulge in some specialty items because it’s a special occasion. You pick a few favorites and eat them. That is, if you want to. Then you totally own your decision, you own the choices you made, and afterward you feel satisfied. All is well.
On the flip side is some dialogue (that I have had in the past) that may sound like this: I shouldn’t eat that, but maybe I will? Will I or won’t I, can I resist? Maybe just a little. Maybe not. Okay, I had a little, and maybe just a little more. Why can I not control myself? This is dumb to try and resist, everyone else is eating this like it is no big deal. I can just eat a little. Okay, that was not enough. Then: All bets are off, what the heck am I resisting for? I am eating everything until I hurt.
Wow, I do not want to ever be that person again. I will continue to work on my list of healthy activities that will speak to these emotional desires for:
The Bio Joy Diet 