With an outstretched arm...

Chana Miriam S

Mon, Apr 08 2019, 11:04 am

This is a re-post, updated since last year.

'So we cried out to the Lord, God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out from Egypt with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, with great awe, and with signs and wonders.'

I've been thinking about this phrase a lot in the months and weeks leading up to Passover. It's a big thing that we are supposed to feel as though we personally left Egypt, every single year. At the risk of sounding like a terrible Jew, I never really did feel it all that much. Honestly coming from a family that was finished coming to Canada by 1905, it's not as though I have personally experienced persecution, or even any particular prejudice as a Jew. Most of the people I know personally are like me. Open, Accepting. Don't judge books by their covers. What would I know about being a slave? Being hurt for what and not who I am? Forced to do things I don't want to? Not really. This is Canada. I'm pretty free and so have been my family members since the last immigrants to Canada in 1905.

Never really did I connect with the whole idea of being a slave and brought out of Egypt personally. Of deliverance. I'd never thought of myself as particularly held in thrall....
And then, May 14, 2017 happened. Boom. Retinopathy. Here I am, a 315 pound, heavy duty compulsive eater, five foot two, fifty year old woman, who while only pre diabetic (AIC 6.4) is diagnosed with Retinopathy. Having lost hope years before about ever gaining control over my relationship with food, and having been relentlessly triggered to eat compulsively every single time I tried to get it under control. Once, a non-descript trip to the dietician sent me spinning. And all she asked me to do was be mindful.

As the almost 2 years that passed between May 2017 and now went by, and things became much more controlled for me, the idea that I really do understand deliverance and freedom and indeed, slavery, became a fairly pronounced trope in my head. As Passover preparations started in 2018 (and I had to think about how I would handle Matzah and wine/grape juice at seders) the idea that I really had won my freedom from the compulsions that enslaved me, tortured me, gave me misery and indeed oppressed me really started me thinking.

I cannot tell you how many times I prayed for a reprieve from the tyranny of eating compulsively in my life. The darkness that I experienced throughout my life around my body image, my lack of control, the shi**y committee in my head, external negativity about my size (Mama! look at that fat lady!) and the hopelessness that I might ever be able to solve the problem was grim.

Sometimes, I came close to an answer- but always missing some component that would have made it sustainable for me. For example, in Grade 9, I ate one meal a day and about 500 calories a day. Sure I lost weight, but it was truly unsustainable. I was fasting but not feasting. Eating too few calories daily. Starvation mode. Totally un-sustainable.
I did Opti-fast. That was seriously unsustainable the second I started eating again. I regained like 30 of my sixty pounds lost almost overnight. Never cheated once on the shakes but could not live as soon as the food started. No amount of teaching or learning was going to help my maniacal eating.

Weight watchers, Diet Centre, Jenny Craig (ask me about their hilarious kosher food plan at the time) and god only knows how many starts at my own desperate attempts to somehow get my food addictions and compulsions under control. I wanted to keep eating the way I was and lose weight too. Knew that doing the same thing over and over again was just keeping me where I was and because of the nature of addiction, making me worse.

I'll add a special mention of Overeater's Anonymous. I think the 12 steps are awesome. I wish, I'd realized that despite my decided preference for savoury food, any carbs that I ate made it virtually impossible for me ever to recover physically. As long as I was eating carbs and processed food of any description, beyond very low levels, I was going to suffer from cravings. So yeah, that apple on grey sheet? Not gonna let me recover. Weighing and measuring was incredibly triggering to me. The attitude that if it wasn't done perfectly, it was going to ruin everything? WHY EVEN TRY? I would never really ever have tried gray sheet for that reason alone...Even when I achieved 'abstinence' 20/24 hours a day working on programme- I was a crappy wife, mother, daughter and sister.

In May 2017, it turned out the cure to fix my Retinopathy was also the key to my disordered eating. Taking all the carbs except 20g a day out of my daily food really made a shocking difference to me. Cravings were relieved- in the beginning, my need to overeat was assuaged by eating as much as I wanted of protein, fat and vegetables- thus was the carbohydrate addiction broken. Over time, I was able to eat less and while the first fifty pounds just sort of fell off, the past 40, have been a challenge. STILL, while actively losing weight or not, I have maintained an 80 pound weight loss since the end of March 2018. I no longer experience cravings.

I am LIVING with the food that I need to sustain me now. I am no longer a slave to it. The past 23 months have given me the confidence to reduce the amount I eat actively to help continue losing weight. I have come to face the reality that I cannot eat indiscriminately just because I am so low carb. I am no longer hungry. I am not thinking about food all the time any more.

Yeah, I know I talk about my way of eating a lot- mainly because I get a lot of questions from people about what I did and how to do it and also because when I talk about it, it reinforces what I've learned and accomplished- It also makes me accountable because I KNOW there are people watching me (because you tell me, thank you!) Talking about it is not unlike how we perform the Passover Seder year after year, so we remember. And now, thanks to Retinopathy, I really understand being released from slavery.

I love eating how we eat. For the seder, Marc will again make us charoset out of jicama with no sugar (usually apples with sweet wine and sugar). We will all enjoy ground chicken balls in the soup (Instead of matzah balls) as well as roast vegetables, broccoli and cauliflower mash along with the traditional celery, horseradish and eggs. We will eat prime rib, brisket, chicken and fish. Sumptous food, as befits the occasion! No suffering here!

The 'signs and wonders', are no doubt my normal blood tests, and my numerous non scale victories. I am so grateful to have learned how to treat the scale as only one tool in an arsenal of other tools...the 90 pounds lost don't hurt either, but its in the significance of those pounds lost (vis-a-vis Non scale victories) that I find true meaning!
So, this year, I again, really feel like I left Egypt. I might still be in the desert- I might be there forever, but now that I have left Egypt, I never want to go back. I want to continue to learn to live in freedom, for all the days of my life. Amen.