It’s My Loss: Fear of “Real” Food

I was driving home from our cottage, about 100 miles north of home. The rolling fields with recent crew cuts and more cows than I could ever count made me realize that I’m missing out on one of the joys of life.

I don’t like fresh “real” food.   When a friend offers me a sun-ripened tomato from his garden and says how much he looks forward to eating them freshly picked, I can’t relate.  The only tomatoes I like are crushed beyond recognition in a smooth marinara sauce, hidden under a thick layer of cheese.

It’s my loss and I would love to just be able to get over it.  So many people really enjoy the art of a talented chef or fresh finds in a farmer’s market   I wish I could be one of them.

I am a picky eater. The history of this is detailed in an earlier post:  Secrets of a Picky Eater

Texture is a big part of the problem.    Real food is unpredictable and often has mixed textures of firm and mushy.  Fear of the unknown is another big issue.   I imagine taking a bite of something and being unable to swallow.  Real food could have worms in it or other hidden horrors.

I know these fears are unfounded, but it doesn’t help me to enjoy the fruits of nature’s bounty.

My husband wanted to stop at a restaurant.   I would much rather stop at a convenience store to pick up something quick.  Restaurant meals prolong the act of eating.  I suffered through many unpleasant restaurant meals in my childhood and the scars are still with me.  I’m happier to satisfy my hunger in the most-expedient way with predictable packaged, processed foods.   I know what to expect from them.

As you might imagine, I’m not much for home cooking either.  When one compares the preparation time with the time it takes to eat and clean up, it doesn’t seem worth it.  I can tolerate my own cooking, but dread an invitation to a dinner party or picnic.   Then there are restaurants that specialize in “home cookin’.” When they omit the g, I know they are serious about it.  Those places are picky eaters’ hell

So I was feeling a bit sad for myself last night. I realize that I am missing out on something wonderful.   I am denying myself one of life’s great pleasures.   I reject the banquet to eat garbage.

I have made some progress since childhood.  I eat bananas and berries and celery, but I would never choose those things over a protein bar or a bag of pretzels.  I want to try harder to make better food choices and to taste new things.   In slow, cautious steps, I hope to make changes one unpredictable bite at a time.   I want to know what I am missing.

#eater,#eatingdisorder,#picky,#freshfood

Flashback Friday – My Yoke is Easy? (7/18/2013)

This one is from my other blog: A Mary Soul in a Martha World.

A Mary Soul in a Martha World

This is from my journal on 7/18/2013.  It was a very difficult time.  My husband and I were moving to a smaller, more accessible home because of his Parkinson’s disease.  He was not able to help much with the move.  I was overwhelmed and also experiencing great stress at work since our company had been recently sold.  I made things harder than they were.

So yesterday’s gospel, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light,” was like a slap in the face.  How can that be true?  It doesn’t seem true for me.

If it is true that means that the yoke I’m in is not of God or that it doesn’t fit right, or that I’m struggling too much and causing chafing or that I’m not keeping pace with the other side.

My conclusion is that, YES things are hard right now, but I make them harder.  I don’t…

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Secrets of a Picky Eater

I developed an eating disorder when my youngest sister was born. I was just under three years old. My mom had to stay in the hospital for life-threatening hemorrhages. I am told that my dad’s mom came to stay with me and my two older sisters. I have no recollection of what or if anything happened, but that is when I am told that I became an extremely picky eater.

My diet was suddenly restricted to cereal, milk, toast, pancakes, waffles, peanut butter, saltines, grape jelly sandwiches, apples, carrots, french fries ( they’re a vegetable, right?), Lipton’s chicken noodle soup (the one WITHOUT the lumps of chicken) and bacon, which confused everyone except me! And of course, I like just about every kind of candy, chips and pretzels, my favorite. I could pass for “normal”at breakfast, but the rest of the day was the problem.

Being a picky eater affected affected every aspect of my early life, and the scars from that experience are never far away. Because so much of family life involves food, I avoided family dinners and thereby avoid my mother’s well-intentioned nagging. I tried to make myself scarce at gatherings of the my extended family. There was a particular aunt who made it her mission to call me out and to offer unsolicited advice to my mom. “If she was my daughter, she would eat what I made or starve!” Others would say, “Don’t worry; she will grow out of it.” Or “it’s just a stage.”

I made excuses to decline invitations to parties, didn’t go on school trips or to the prom or to my senior awards banquet. When I think about these times, I am still sad over all that I missed. At other times, I ate beforehand so I could honestly say I wasn’t hungry.

My family thought it was pure stubbornness. What they couldn’t understand is that I would have given anything to be able to sit down and eat dinner with them and eat whatever was being served. I would have loved to be able to order from the menu, rather than having my mom make special requests on my behalf. I spent lots of time in restaurant bathrooms just hiding out.
I didn’t know any other picky eaters when I was growing up, so I was an outcast. Mom had convinced me that I would die young from eating such an unhealthy diet. It made me overweight, but still I was healthy. In my family, I was “not normal.” Rather than making me want to conform, being labelled as different made me want to dig in my heels and embrace the fact that I was just weird even while I longed to be the “normal” child they wanted.
When I was a teenager, the media started to report about people, mostly girls who suffered with anorexia nervosa or bulimia. I could relate to their struggles, but there was still no name for what I had. Like them, my eating disorder was a secret. It was tied with some deep unrecognized wound. I couldn’t just suddenly start eating what everyone else did.

With extremely picky eaters, the texture of food is usually a problem. We like things smooth or crunchy. We like things plain so that all of the ingredients can be identified (and picked out if needed). I was an adult before I learned that Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder or Selective Eating Disorder (SED) was an actual psychiatric diagnosis.

This is how Wikipedia describes it:
“Sufferers of ARFID have an inability to eat certain foods. “Safe” foods may be limited to certain food types and even specific brands. In some cases, afflicted individuals will exclude whole food groups, such as fruits or vegetables. Sometimes excluded foods can be refused based on color. Some may only like very hot or very cold foods, very crunchy or hard-to-chew foods, or very soft foods, or avoid sauces.“

I eventually recovered through the help of a hypnotist who helped me to try pizza for the first time at 17 and through peer pressure as I entered college. I am still picky, but eat a wide variety of foods and can usually order from a restaurant menu without any special accommodations. Being a picky eater doesn’t keep me from things like it used to, but I still avoid some kinda of social gatherings where the available food choices would be difficult for me to fit in, like barbeques.

I am part of a closed facebook group where picky eaters can share theIr stories and not feel so alone or freakish. It would have been so wonderful given to have this sort of support when I was growing up.

If someone you know is a picky eater, please be kind. Unsolicited advice to the picky eater or their loved ones is generally not helpful. Actually calling great attention to it or ridiculing the picky eater can cause lasting scars. Suggesting that it is a phase (for some it is), or that the picky eater can just change overnight trivializes a painful situation. 

People struggle with all sort of social anxieties. Some are more obvious than others. If you or someone in your family is an extremely picky eater, know that you are not alone.
#eatingdisorder,#picky,#anxiety,#foodfears,#normal

It Never Happens the Way We Think It Will Happen

Imagining the worst; hoping for the best. Great post.

Teri Carter's Library

imagesI am walking my dog when it happens. The woman does not see me. The woman does not see my dog. The woman points her car my way and guns it, and when I see she doesn’t see me—doesn’t see my bright blue shirt nor my arm waving ‘hello neighbor’ in the air nor my big yellow lab standing at the side of her driveway—I dive to my right and the bumper of her car clips my hip and I tumble down and over the newly-mowed grass of her lawn and the next thing I know I’m lying there, just lying there, pushing to get up and looking at my dog looking down at me with her tail wagging, wagging wagging wagging. The dog licks my hand. We are alive, the dog seems to say. We are okay.

For the last decade I’ve been walking my dogs in a downtown…

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Sharing What Is Most Personal

I am shy.  I doubt myself.   Over the past 10 years, I’ve been journaling and writing poetry, songs, rants.    It’s therapeutic.    Some of it may be creative or inspiring.   Most of this work is hidden in notebooks and boxes, and of course in my head.

I went back and read some journals from years ago.  My handwriting was prettier then. Deep hurts have been amazingly easy to forget    I have greater compassion now for the person I used to be

What are these ideas for if not to be shared?    So I am moving past the fear of criticism and rejection and ridicule to share what I have written and who I am.   Please be kind.image