A big recurring theme in my life these days* is care versus control. It’s probably a product of having an ugly childhood, living in a culture that tells us to disregard our inner compasses for external “expert” opinions, and being a woman.
Whatever the reasons, I’ve spent most of my life believing I just needed more control. I needed to exercise more control in my food choices, my exercise, my housekeeping, my work life, my financial life. I needed discipline. Willpower. I needed to be tough and unyielding and whip myself into shape.
Sounds awesome, huh? I mean, whipping one’s self into shape has to lead to positive changes! Right?
Yeah. I know. It totally doesn’t.
What’s finally occurring to me is that when I let go of all that…when I drop “control” as the key concept in my life choices and instead pick up “care,” everything gets a lot easier.
I can’t “control” my food choices. Trying to do so makes me stubborn and hungry and ultimately, I act out with all kinds of food-related dramas. My weight fluctuates. I get obsessed with food and feel anxious about it constantly. But lately, I’ve been really trying to “care” for myself with food choices. By eating what I want. By not eating to the point of discomfort. By letting go of rules. By not freaking out about calories or Points or any of that. By thinking of myself as a treasured, loved person and feeding myself accordingly, much like I would feed that treasured, loved little boy of mine (though I do not cut my food into tiny toddler-sized pieces). It feels awesome. My weight is stable, below the weight that I struggled for years to maintain through vigilance and fear. That just blows my mind.
I’ve also applied the whole control v. care thing to my home life. I can either beat myself up for not being Homemaker Extraordinaire, or I can ask myself, how can I, as me and not as some awesome person on the internet, best care for my home and family? And when I ask that? It all falls into place. I do things because they feel good instead of not doing them because they feel punish-y. I take care of my little family because I care for them, not because I have to – and so I do a much better job.
There is one habit in my life I’m wrestling with a bit these days: my beloved cocktails. I don’t drink often or all that much, but I think I may do it for the wrong reason? To escape, or maybe relax is a better word – I like that slow, unspooling feeling I get after a drink. But I don’t like the feeling I get after two drinks, and lately, there always seems to be two (or three, on rare occasions) when there is one. So, old me would have said: No more! Just show some discipline, you hedonist! But instead, I’m trying to think about this in terms of care: how would drinking look in my life if I approached it from a place of self-care? What would I choose if I were really focused on taking the very best care of myself right now?
I don’t know the answer yet. But I’m glad to have it out there, to put into words this nagging concern I’ve been carrying around. A happy, joyful life doesn’t come without asking hard questions, right?
*It’s probably always been a theme, but I’ve really become aware of it in those terms recently.
This is an amazing post. I got distracted by life and forgot about so many things; I was so happy when I remembered your blog. I’ve been reading you since the GWC days and you really helped me think about my life in new ways.
I fell off this idea of self-care majorly these past two years when I was in grad school. Trying to think about it again and start living this way seems almost too scary sometimes, even though I feel a million times better when I do it. It’s almost easier (for me anyway) to find ways to blame myself than it is to look after myself. And Control might as well be my middle name.
Thank you for reminding me to ask myself the hard questions.
I am glad to read this because, as a long-time reader, I too have been working on intuitive eating principles, but I’m finding it such difficult going. It’s so hard to let go of the “better” or “worse” choices framework mentally, which creates all the food drama that you describe even when I’m not thinking of calories or points. Any advice on that front?
Jae, I think it *is* easier to be hard on ourselves – the world we live in sends us a million messages a day that we don’t measure up; if any crack in our self-concept happens (stress, major life change, grad school!), all that external stuff floods in and drowns our much quieter, less aggressive inner voice, you know? It’s easier to believe what the outside world says about us than to challenge it and remember who we are. But it doesn’t change the fact that who we are *is good enough*. It’s just about remembering that, and reminding ourselves when we don’t.
KL, I don’t think there’s a way to forget all those messages of good/bad that we’ve been taught about food. Ultimately, you just have to get radical about things and remember that the best food choice is the one that will satisfy you, be it broccoli or chocolate (but not together. Never together.
). And once you decide you’re really going to heed that notion, I swear it gets easier. Every time you make a choice that really satisfies you, you relax a little. You build some trust with yourself and food does lose its power. Are you reading any specific books re: intuitive eating? There’s lots of good stuff out there which really helped me in the first, well, years, of ending my dieting. If you need suggestions, let me know!