Author Archives: Douglas Breeden

Every now and then, I have a couple of weeks when I am very short in money. This is not unusual if you are a student, I believe, and during most of my studies, I have worked part time, up to 100+ hours a month to earn what I need for my living, additional to the financial support I get from my parents. This way, I have done quite a lot of different jobs – at first, it was mainly private tutoring (maths, haha), then working 10 hours shifts as a waitress in a café for a couple of weeks, and later mainly research assistant and tutoring jobs at university. Especially the latter have been very helpful because I would love to go for an academic career after finishing my studies, and this way I get experience with teaching and research and have somewhat become part of the staff in the department of psychology I want to make my PhD. Currently, I am working 55 hours a month as a research assistant in the departments of social and personality psychology, and since last summer I also give piano lessons.

Usually, the money I have is sufficient to get me over the month, and while I am not able to save money yet, I do not have to tighten my belt. However, it regularly occurs that I am so short in money that I almost cannot sleep from worrying. This always happens when my working contract in not extended in time – often because it is sent to the wrong department, and then it takes a week too long until it appears somewhere and can be followed up – and the administration is so incredibly slooooooooooooooooow that it takes two months until the contract is valid again. During that time, I do not get paid and have to borrow money from my parents or friends to pay my bills and food, which I pay back as soon as I get the back pay from the university.

This happened again last month, and additionally, I could give almost no piano lessons at all, due to Easter vacations, school trips, and spring infections that made my students cancel their lessons. Another student (who is a researcher at the psychological institute where I study and also a friend of mine) is currently awaiting her first baby in July and very busy with moving and preparing everything, so she is taking a break for a couple of months now.

Recently, I talked with my mom about my financial misery on the phone (again) and told her how bad I feel bad because I spend so much money on food. Seriously, most of the money I have I spend on food, although I almost never eat out. This is because I like to eat well: I eat a lot of vegetables, meat, fish, and seafood, I buy special things at the Asian market, and also frequent the organic supermarket often when I can afford it. I could live on a fraction of the money I currently spend on food if I would mainly eat spaghetti and white rice, but I know that would result in my health declining and my eating issues getting worse again, due to the overload in carbs and the lack of protein and fiber.

My mom was very kind and appreciated that I was caring better for me now, and she also pointed out another fact I had not thought about so far. This has to do with the conversion to the Euro in 2001. Before, we had the Deutsche Mark (DM) in Germany, that was changed 2:1 into Euro. We soon noticed, though, that the actual value proportion was rather 1:1, because everything got more expensive. As much as I appreciate the common currency, it brought a noticeable decline in life standard during the past couple of years: The prices rised gradually after the conversion, resulting in a price increase of 200 or 300 %, or even more, compared to ten years ago. And it gets worse and worse.

For example, when I was still at school, I would go to the Turkish food market around the corner in the lunch break and buy apples for 1 DM/kg. Now I pay 2 or 3 €/kg at the supermarket. Carrots were 1 DM/kg before and are now 1.30 €/kg, and bell peppers were about 5 DM/kg and are now 5 or 6 €/kg. And nobody would have spent 8 DM for a kg of tomatoes, but it is not unusual now that they cost 4 €/kg. If you buy organic, you can easily take the regular prices times 1.5. Organic meat or fish is totally unavailable for me in my current situation because it costs up to 30 €/kg.

When I had used up all the money I still had during April and was so broke again that I knew by the beginning of this month that, even I did not spend a single cent from now on, I would not be able to pay my living costs (food excluded! – just apartment, electricity, telefone, and so on), it was time to take measures for damage containment. Usually, I try to eat healthily on a rather small budget, but in the past couple of months, I have bought rather expensive foods more often – also because I take so much more pleasure in eating now. So, my meals would look like this.

~ luxury lunch with asparagus and lamb’s lettuce ~

This had to change. I made the plan to buy as cheap as possible while still sticking to my high-fiber and rather high-protein diet. Vegetables, fruit, animal protein, and fresh herbs are the major expense factor in my diet, so I decided to buy no vegetables that cost more than 1.50 €/kg, no fruit that cost more than 2 €/kg, and no meat or seafood that cost more than 7 €/kg. Fresh herbs I would not buy at all, but use up my dried stuff instead. Cream, almonds, and brown rice are not so much a problem because I spend much less on them overall.

Below, I have listed what was my in-and-out shopping guide during the last weeks.

VEGETABLES

In

carrots (1.30 €/kg)
canned tomatoes (1 €/kg)
brown onions (1.30 €/kg)
leek (1.50 €/kg)
white cabbage (1.50 €/kg)
frozen soup vegetable mix (1 €/kg)
frozen cauliflower (1.50 €/kg)

Out

bell peppers / capsicums (6 €/kg)
asparagus (4-10 €/kg, depending on whether it is on sale)
spinach (4-6 €/kg)
lamb’s lettuce (7 €/kg)
arugula (12 €/kg)
kabocha squash (3 €/kg)
sweet potatoes (3-5 €/kg)
red onions (4 €/kg)
spring onions (5 €/kg)
green beans (4 €/kg)
mushrooms (5-25 €/kg, depending on the kind)

Fresh tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, and broccoli were possible on days when they were on sale.

FRUIT

In

apples (the kinds for 2 €/kg)
bananas (1-2 €/kg)

Out

nectarines (4 €/kg)
berries (4-15 €/kg, depending on the kind)
plums (4 €/kg)
uglis (4 €/kg)

Other fruits, like pineapples, mangoes, or melons, I do not like so much and thus do not eat, and they would have been too expensive anyway.

MEAT, FISH, AND SEAFOOD

In

chicken (7 €/kg)
turkey (6.50 €/kg)
minced beef (5 €/kg)

Out

beef steak (12-16 €/kg)
frozen white fish filets (8 €/kg)
frozen salmon (14 €/kg)
frozen shrimp / prawns (12 €/kg)
frozen octopus (8 €/kg)
frozen squid (8-10 €/kg)

Fresh fish and seafood is unavailable for me anyway, so I always buy frozen. Pork cutlet would have been available, but I am not used to it so much, so I did not buy it. Recently, I have also bought more eggs which are affordable.

By sticking to this plan, I managed to reduce my food costs by about 50 % and still eat a somewhat balanced, though limited, diet. I cheated three times and bought (1) some spinach (only for smoothies during these weeks), (2) a bunch of fresh coriander, because I am currently working on my appetite for coriander, and (3) two pots of basil and parsley that were on offer for 80 cent each and currently green on my kitchen window sill.

Also, I could use up the squash, green asparagus, fruit, and fresh herbs I still had, so I did not suffer so badly. Still, most of my meals were centered around poultry and either carrots or canned tomatoes.

~ chicken with canned tomatoes and my last red onions and fresh basil ~

~ turkey pot roast with carrots and my last two stalks of green asparagus ~

I still drank a green smoothie almost every day because they make me feel so good and are really something I want to allow myself to enjoy regularly.

~ the daily infusion ~

Taken together, these weeks were not so bad overall. It was not always easy, and especially the constant worrying was hard for my nerves, but I have learned a lot. I am much more aware of how much money I spend and on what. I asked myself if I really need a certain thing before I buy it. And I got more relaxed – for example, because I need to get my hair cut but could not afford it, and this would usually have made me freak out. But I beared it and became friends with hair clips.

Yesterday, my parents have sent me some money to get me over the month, so the worrying is better now, and I can loosen my shopping limitations a little. Still, I want to keep them as a basis and then buy something special on top of it only every now and then. I gradually get more sensible with money (I am not so good with that by disposition – I tend to spend money if I have it), so I only want to buy what I really need and rather put some money aside. Also, my piano needs tuning, and I need to buy a book for my Japanese language course, so these are things I will have to afford soon.

What relieves me is that the things that make me happy do not cost a lot of money. My piano is a source of constant happiness every single day, and I have also taken up my running-and-walking somethings again – which make me feel really good – so it is time to quit the gym now. And last night, I had my friend Nancy over for a visit, and we sat in the garden and shared a bottle of wine from the supermarket instead of going to a bar and spending 8 or 10 Euro on two glasses of wine each.

Are you often worried about money? What are the strategies you have evolved to cope with it and make it better? Which things do you allow yourself to enjoy?

On Monday, I had a piano lesson (myself), and while I always enjoy my piano lessons – I am blessed to have found a very good teacher – this time, it was particularly interesting. Contrary to one or two years ago, my lessons are about musical expression and higher-order structuring of musical pieces now, compared to rather basic technical stuff, and I gradually come to calling myself a somewhat semi-professional player. My teacher and I use to have a lot of almost philosophical discussions about how to accentuate and shape certain passages in a piece, and what that means to the music.

This monday, our discussion was about whether and how to put the different notes together to single melody and play the piece in a way that stresses the melody and subsumes the individual notes beneath a single and whole somestream of music. Actually, my point in the discussion was that I did not want to do that (at least not in every part of the piece I am currently playing – which still is Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor, op. 48-1, but I am on last page of the sheet music now). I realized that I had practiced the piece in a way that every single tone stands for itself and emerges from as well as disappears into the silence again. I consider every tone as unique and free, not subordinate to a collective structure.

While speaking about this, it dawned on me that the scope of this topic reaches much deeper, and it is not about music alone. Moreover, it affects the way I see myself, and therefore the way I perceive life as a whole. It made me understand that there is no right or wrong, just different liking and different agreeing with a certain view of the world. You cannot say that binding the tones together into a melody is superior to creating each tone as a separate entity, it is just a different kind of philosophy standing behind those perspectives each. There really is no final judgment at all, just relative preferences that have to be view in the context of culturally grounded perception styles and individual biography.

I see myself as an individual mostly (and this, I think, shows in that I prefer to accentuate the notes individually, compared to going for superior structures that subordinates them), yet I have remarkably few confidence into my individuality. In other words, I always doubt myself. (When I spoke with my therapist about these things today, he said that, more than an eating disorder, I had a doubting disorder.) I think this is due to years of constant invalidation of my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, not only by other people, but meanwhile by myself as well. It goes like this:

If I experience something in a certain way and somebody else experiences the same thing in another way and mentions it, I wonder why I experience it how I do.
If I see everybody around me eating wheat products (rolls, pasta), while I know that I do not feel well with wheat products, I wonder if something was wrong with me because everybody else seems to be fine.
If I get told that becoming a vegetarian was better with regards to ethics and health, I feel bad because I can understand the point and still eat chicken and fish (despite the fact that I know I will feel bad on a vegetarian diet – I have tried it).
If somebody approaches me with an inappropriate claim, it gives me a bad feeling if I turn it down, although I know the other person has no right to demand that from me, or is even impolite by doing so.
If I feel hurt by somebody and that somebody apologizes, I doubt that I still have the right to feel awkward about the situation, although the apology does not take back what has happened.
etc etc etc

The problem is that I feel like I do not have any point of reference that provides orientation. There is no stability inside of me, and as long as I can remember, I have always stood on shaky ground. Therefore, I tend to look to the outside for validation. Sometimes this works, mostly by objective proof of experience – and interestingly, I often find my initial and intuitive feelings to be confirmed by it. Too often, though, it is impossible to find a definite answer because you have to rely on the thoughts and opinions of other people that are deeply subjective by nature. What comes out of this endeavor on a higher level – many people validating their assumptions against each other – is very likely to be the hegemony of mainstream, and the majority then defines what is to be considered “normal”.

The word “normal” renders the very concept that has presumably vexed me the most in my whole life. More precisely, it was the concept of being “not normal” – that was often ascribed to me – as opposed to being agreeable, and functioning in the way I was expected to be by society and significant others. This was not limited to the level of behaviors, but also affected the level of thinking and feeling, i.e. the way my mind works or my emotions occur was often perceived as “out of place”. Looking back, this was the experience that defined my life as long as I can remember, starting with childhood when my dad did not allow that I was feeling the way I did when it differed from what he thought I should feel, continuing during school time when I was expelled because I understood things too quickly, until now, since I still feel that my personal needs are different from what other people need and can understand as needs, while what is common to other people often seems unfamiliar to me (so we have a double-sided situation, actually). In a nutshell, I do not fit in. I never did.

The problems started because I wanted to fit in. My mom thinks of me as a “good child” that wants to behave well and be agreeable, and she is right with this. So, whenever I “naturally” (this is how I do spontaneously) did something in a certain way, and somebody else disagreed or was surprised by that and asked me why I did not do it another way, I would take that question to my heart and secretly breed about it. This way, I have collected an array of question marks throughout the path of my life. Many of these are concerned with my eating disorder because in that regard I especially differed from everybody else. Until now, I feel very insecure, and when somebody asks me, “Would it not be a great thing to just eat everything again”, although I know I have intolerance and have tried certain foods that make me feel bad over and over again (because I feel a need for outside validation by objective criteria ) before decisively cutting them out, it makes me think that something was wrong with me – every single time. When it then goes on and I am told that I was responsible for the miserable state I am in now – due to my years of bad and unbalanced eating and not caring for myself – it just makes me feel like crying. I know it is my fault! I wish I had done better! I wish I could turn back time and do everything again without all these mistakes I have made! But I cannot. And I feel very bad about it already, so please do not tell me again on top of what I am already aware of all the time. And still, deep inside myself, I know I am not totally responsible. I have also suffered from bad luck and unhappy coincidence. I have tried as much as I could. I just could not handle it perfectly. I am sorry.

The very point I want to make is that ill fit is never just an issue of a person alone, but an effect that emerges from the interaction of an individual person and the social surrounding. The concept of “disorder” only makes sense within a social context that defines certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving as “disordered”, i.e., deviating from the established order and from what is considered “normal”. My therapist made that clear to me by telling me that, if you lived as a monk in a Tibetan monastery, it would be perfectly normal to have just tsampa and a small bowl of vegetables two or three times a day, and nobody would make a deal about it if you ate just that, while the people around me frown on my picking on vegetables, a little rice, and chicken or fish. They do not understand that I do not want for dessert after just having a sufficient meal. They feel sorry for me because I cannot eat or do not want to eat an array of things. But I do not miss anything. To the contrary, I feel better this way.

The western societies of modern times – and I assume most of you who read this live in a society like that – have fallen for the concepts of constant expansion and plurality of options. They have a lot of understanding for people who want for everything and even more, but they lack understanding for people who do not, and want for limitation and scantiness and simplicity instead. People who have a rather ascetic and “monkish” temperament and feel overwhelmed by too much stimulation and too many options do not fit well into a society like that.

The way eating disorders are usually treated mirrors the values of western societies. Eating disordered patients are made to eat everything again and fed up to a certain weight that meets the criteria of a “healthy” weight. Please do not get me wrong, I do not at all want to state that it was bad to do so. There are people who are starving themselves and need support to get out of their life-threatening routines. But still, this approach may not apply to everybody who is treated for eating disorders. It only does when the underlying philosophy – expansion and choice – fit the values of the individual. It is one way to go that definitely has benefits for some people, but there are others that cannot be treated successfully this way – people who quit their therapies or return from inpatient treatment and fall back into their old patterns because they have not learned what works for them.

My therapist recommended to me (being an example of the latter category, since I have failed to recover for years) to find out exactly that: what works for me individually, regardless of what everybody else is saying. He wants to help me to develop trust into myself, into my body that it will tell me what it needs, and into my intuition what does me good and what not. He said that all his therapist colleagues would throw their hands up in horror if they knew what he was doing because it runs totally counter the established opinion as well as common sense how “treatment” should look like. During the course of the therapy, it has become clear that I will not fall back into starving myself because there are things in my life I want to live (and eat) for, that I am able to read the signs of my body and to distinguish between “real” hunger (due to bodily needs) and “fake” hunger (due to blood sugar instability), and that I do not eat certain things not because I am afraid of them but because they just disgust me.

What he does is helping me to find my way to get along, a way that does not apply to anybody else but perfectly applies to me – a kind of personal philosophy. Therefore, it does not matter what I eat, what I do not eat, how I eat, or how much I weight, as long as I am physically healthy and feel well with what I do. Those are the only criteria that count, and there is no need to apology or to legitimate, to feel ashamed or guilty. Because in the end, I am the one who has to live (with it).

In one of the comments I got, I was asked to write more about what I eat and what a typical day of eating looked like for me. So here is the answer.

I must admit this is quite a difficult post for me. The reasons for that are varied, but somewhat tied together, and in great part stem from the fact that I have had problems with eating for a very long time now – almost 15 years, or even longer. With “problems” I mean food intolerance and sensitivity towards certain foods on the one hand, and disordered eating thoughts and behaviors on the other hand. Eating was always an issue for me for the greater part of my life, because I often felt so bad afterwards and struggled with a wide range of health problems that stemmed from wrong eating (although I did not know that until recently), and I was very concerned about planning and controlling my eating. I cannot remember the time anymore when eating was easy for me and something I did intuitively, because it is just too long ago.

My eating issues go back to the time when I was in elementary school, and the other girls in my class told me I was fat and ugly. (Lame excuse, I know, but that is how it was.) It deeply hurt me because I was overly sensitive and never blessed with self-esteem. I was about 10 or 11 years old when I started to develop an unhealthy awareness of how much I eat and what, and how much I weighed. I just observed then, and did not change my behavior yet, but the initial seed was planted.

This is me as a child. When I look at those pictures today, I cannot see I was fat or ugly then. I was a normal, rather thin child.

The only thing I have always had was a chubby face. (I still have it and do not like it, it makes me look like I carried a pumpkin around on top of my skinny frame.)

Back to eating. During adolescence, my freaky thinking about food gradually started to show in my eating behavior, and it got worse with the years. I was unhappy and felt alone and not understood, and at some point I decided to retreat into myself. I have lived in my mind since then. At the end of school, I had an abusive relationship that finally kicked me out of line. I remember I situated myself in front of the mirror and looked at myself, and I saw nothing I liked. At that moment, I decided to get an eating disorder. Sounds weird, but it was a clear and deliberate decision I made in that moment, full awareness of all consequences included. Consequences were actually wished back then. I thought an eating disorder was quite an elegant way to take me out, without having to actively lay my hand on myself. Very clever, and at the same time the most foolish thing I have ever done.

When I moved out for studying, everything got out of control. I lived on my own for the first time, and all the challenges coming from organizing my studies and every day life somewhat overwhelmed me, so I controlling my eating became my sanctuary. I lived on nothing else than apples, lots of coffee with milk, toast, some vegetables, and candy then. (I do not recommend to try it.) Within a year, I had become incredibly thin, and I had caught a salivary gland infection that vexed me for almost two years. I could hardly eat anymore, and my salivary gland was always swollen to the size of an egg, so I felt like drowning from it because it almost sealed my throat, and I was in constant pain all day. Sometimes I would have loved to tear it out of my neck with my bare hands. I was very low and could not go on with my studies anymore, and none of the various treatments I got actually worked. I ended up getting surgery, and the whole salivary gland was taken out. After that, I hoped to get better, but I got worse, because I remained with a skew cervical spine and could almost not stand upright anymore. Worst of all (for my vanity, especially) was that the lymph channels in my cervical had been cut through during the surgery, so I had painful and – gah! – very apparent water retentions in my face on top of my natural chubbiness. I felt so awkward I could not set a foot out of the door on some days.

By that time, I started to work on my eating behavior. With the support of my Mom, especially, I somehow managed to get 20 pounds back, and I visited an alternative practitioner to get treatment and nutritional advice. I learned that my salivary gland infection was due to hyperacidity, caused by too much sugar, coffee and flour, and also that I was lactose-intolerant. When I switched to whole grains and lactose-free milk afterwards, I felt a little better, and my energy levels restored, but I was still far away from feeling well. I suffered from irrational hunger, but felt often so bloated at the same time that I had a hard time putting food into my belly. (Gah, too much whining so far …)

Nevertheless, during the last four years, things have been looking up again. I quit cultural studies and started studying psychology, and with doing so, I finally found what I really wanted to do. (No need to worry, though – I want to become a researcher, not a therapist. ) A year later, I started to play the piano. This helped me to improve a lot mentally, because it provided an outlet for my emotions and allowed me to recreate, and it sustained my self-esteem by showing me that I actually can accomplish what I want if I am just committed to it. By the beginning of this year, I have started therapy again, and working on my eating issues (finally). I also started to practice mindfulness meditation to handle hypersensitivity and stress. And now I have ended up with a food blog. Scary thing. I have thought about whether this was another outcome of being concerned with food and eating too much, but this time it feels different. It feels like another step into the right direction, an attempt to have a closer look at what went wrong, and to try better from now on.

What definitely helped me with my disordered eating was to read about nutrition and the neurochemistry of eating disorders. I have come to the conclusion that eating disorders are not just mental issues, but rather a kind of substance addiction – with sugar being the dependence causing substance – and thus mentally and physiologically based. When I cut down on sugar and grains, I finally got off the blood sugar rollercoaster I had been on for years (due to eating a low fat, low protein, and high carbohydrate diet for a very long time, that messed up my tolerance for carbohydrates), and started to feel normal hunger and satiety again. I also dropped all (lactose-free, anyway) dairy products (except ghee) because they tend to impair my chronic sinus infection. (I do not think dairy products are bad in general, though.) So I ended up with a Paleo-style diet, not for ideological reasons, but rather because the foods that remain happen to be the foods that are to be eaten on such a diet.

But – to get back to the initial question: What and how much do I eat? – I am still figuring it out! I am learning to eat fat again, and to get in more protein. Especially fat is tightly entangled with anxiety, and I am taking it step by step. I am trying to find a balance, and I know I am in danger to fall back into my old control obsessions if I want to do too much at a time and fail with that. It was a long way down, and it is a long way up again.

~ this is me now – hello! ~

All this stuff was very private. Hm. But I think the time has come to not run away from it and be ashamed anymore. Mind monsters tend to grow big in the shadows, you need to pull them out to the light to make them go away. I cannot make undone what has happened, but it belongs to me, so I have to accept it and make the best out of it.

Since the lovely friend is currently facing an abundance of venison meat and asked for ideas what to do with it, I thought this would be the perfect timing to post the recipe for the venison stew I recently made. And no, I will not insert a Bambi video into this post! Instead, please enjoy this lovely piece of music from one of my favorite Disney movies.

~ this little piece features the most groovy saxophone ~

On to the stew! I like game meat a lot, especially venison and wild boar, and I still think back with pleasure to the venison pot roast my Mom made for Christmas last year … So I was happy to find frozen venison meat from New Zealand at the supermarket lately, and used it to make this stew.

I flavored the stew with a lot of spices and herbs that I like with game meat: bay, juniper, thyme, marjoram, sage, cloves, and parsley. It was easy to make and yummy to eat.

VENISON, CARROT, AND TOMATO STEW

4 servings

Ingredients

butter or oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
600 g (21 oz) venison, cut into bite-sized pieces
6 carrots, cut into slices
1/4 knob of celeriac, chopped
8oo g (28 oz) canned tomatoes
250 ml (1 cup) water
salt to taste
pepper to taste
4 bay leaves
1/2 tbsp juniper berries
6 cloves
4 sage leaves, finely chopped (or 1/2 tsp dried sage)
1/2 tbsp dried thyme
1/2 tbsp dried marjoram
1 handful of fresh parsley for serving

Directions

Heat some fat in a big pot and roast the onions and garlic until slightly brown, then add the venison and roast for a minute or two while constantly stirring. Add carrots, celeriac, tomatoes, and water. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the bay leaves, juniper berries, and cloves into a bag for loose leaf tea and close it with a clip, so they will not get lost somewhere in the stew during cooking.

Add the bag with the spices to the stew, as well as the remaining herbs – sage, thyme, and marjoram. Bring every to boil, then reduce the heat to low and cook covered for up to an hour, but at least 40 minutes. When the cooking time is over, remove the spice bag, serve with fresh parsley, and enjoy. Leftovers can be frozen or kept in the fridge for a few days.