Willingness made simple

Confession time:  I am not doing so well in this whole weight loss thing.

My clothes still FIT, they just don't fit the same way...and it's a constant reminder that I am failing at this.  "This" should be easy.  My plan is just listen to your body, eat when you're hungry, stop before you're full.  I eat plenty of "good" foods - fruits, veggies, protein, and complex carbs.  I don't eat many processed foods...so why am I ballooning like there is no tomorrow?

Oh yeah...it's because I'm eating when I'm not hungry and continuing to eat when I'm full.

It's the small things, right?

So today, I visited Crys' blog - and saw this quote at the top of the screen:

What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter. -Peter Drucker


Did it smack anyone else upside the head as it did me?

The whole mindful eating plan is simple - SO simple.  And yet, I'm just not doing it.  Why?  Well, I could say that I'm feeding other things, that I'm scared of shedding this fat suit sometimes, or that I'm being stubborn. I could say that since I lost my dog 6 weeks ago, I don't feel like I can regain my footing.  Those would all be true.

But the harsh truth is that I'm not doing it.  My actions indicate that I'm not willing to DO the work that comes with my plan.  Namely, I'm not pausing and following the guidelines that I've chosen to follow.

So I'm committing to you - readers that have been with me for a while and those that are new - I *WILL* follow the guidelines this week. 

This?  This post marks a changing moment in my life.  Seeing my WIDTH reasons yesterday helped me realize again just why I am doing this.  Being unhealthy only hurts me.  And it DOES hurt - my joints, my pride, my self esteem, and my body.  Sitting around feeling sad that I don't have my dog anymore won't bring her back.  I'm being self-indulgent and eating anything that might make me feel better.

I've got to be willing to change.
 
I've got to be willing to stand up for myself and say I don't want to hurt anymore...so I have to be willing to actually LISTEN to myself.
 
I AM worth something...and so are you.
 
I'm not going to give up - so please don't give up either.  We are in this together and I know that we can succeed together.
 
I've accomplished a lot in my life, I've persevered through many tough things. Listening to my body's cues to eat, stop eating, to move, and to stop moving should be easy.


So it's about time I get off my duff and do it.  Are you with me?

Trust Thyself

I know there have already been 10 Commandments given to the masses to live by.

But I think I'd like to add one:

Trust Thyself.

How many times do we have a plan, announce it to our families, our readers, or even just ourselves and then get told that that plan will never work? That we're concentrating too much on X when we should really be thinking about Y. Like, you're eating too many calories or you're not eating enough calories. You shouldn't be thinking about carbs, but about fat grams instead.

I don't know what's going around the blog-o-sphere, but from reading lots and lots of blogs, it seems like there are a lot of people who are simply not trusting themselves.

If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? When you doubt your own course of action, it's my belief that you're actually doubting you. Do it often enough and you'll end up doubting yourself at every turn. Or at least, that's what has happened to me in my life.

Here's what I know for sure: YOU ARE TRUSTWORTHY.

At the end of the day, commenters are usually random people over the world who don't know you. They don't know what it's like to be you. So, their opinion shouldn't count more than yours. I know...we all mean well (I've definitely dished out my share of advice in comments whether it was asked for or not). But really? Who would know what is good for you more than YOU do?

I challenge you to look inside yourself and ask yourself these three questions:

1) Do you honestly want to have a healthier lifestyle?
There are times in my life when I knew that I should have a healthier lifestyle, but when I was honest with myself I knew that that's not what I wanted right then. It does no good to continually recommit yourself to something when you have already internally decided that the benefits of being heavier/unhealthier outweigh the possibility of being healthy. If you don't REALLY want to change, all you're going to do is beat yourself up week after week, weigh in after weigh in when you don't achieve whatever goal you proclaimed you would. Who wants to live their life like that? Your life is worth more than that. YOU are worth more than that, no matter what your weight.

2) Do you have an idea of what has worked for you in the past?
Maybe what worked is weekly weigh ins at a program like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. Why did that work? Was it the support? Was it the accountability? Was it the money investment?
Maybe what worked was counting calories, fat grams, protein grams, or carbs. Why did that work? Because you felt great? Because you felt in control? Because you liked to track something?
Maybe you work best with just measuring everything you eat...you want to eat the same stuff, just less than what you have been eating. Why did that work? Because you didn't feel deprived? Because you felt in control? Because that fit better with your traveling lifestyle?

Whatever those reasons are, write them down and then try to plan something that incorporates those base reasons for success. For instance, if you know you like to have something where you have a weekly weigh in, there are many ways and programs that do that - ranging from free to pretty pricey. If you know that you feel better with a restrictive diet type situation, look for a plan that restricts things in a healthy way. Sketch out what that plan would be for YOU.

3) Look at your plan and ask yourself if it's doable for you right now...is it?
If not, tweak it until it is. You may know that you felt your best when you were running 10 miles a day...but can you do that now? If not, work your way up to that goal. If it feels like too much, it is a-okay to back down and do something that you can and will succeed with.

Maybe you feel like you did your best when you cooked every meal for yourself...but now that you're married and traveling all the time, it just isn't possible. Can you bring a cooler to each city to have your own food? Can you limit your food to certain restaurants? Can you stay at a place where you have access to a kitchenette? Can you take your clients out for drinks or ball games instead of dinners?

In the end, if you have a plan that works for you and is healthy, who cares what anyone else thinks, feels, or says? I'm not saying you should go out and do something absolutely crazy that no doctor would recommend. Be healthy. You're worth that too.

But as you blog (or read others blogs) and you see that someone else is doing something that is different than your approach, remember that you already went through an internal journey to help you decide the right thing for you. Remember that YOU know what is best for you. Remember that what you are experiencing or have experienced is valid, even if no one else seems to share your point of view.

Your opinion and thoughts are gifts - ones that are given to you to help decide what is right for you...just as you decide what color your hair should be or what shoes are most comfortable. You get to choose.

And if, by doing all of this, you reach a plateau eventually, it's okay to re-evaluate then too.

I guess what I'm saying is this: It's okay to change your mind.

Believe that you are trustworthy. KNOW that you are trustworthy. And you know what? I bet you'll start behaving like you're trustworthy.

I love this quote from Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

You don't have to live in fear of what others will say, write, or think about you or your journey to get healthier. You don't have to listen to what everyone else says is right.

Listen to yourself.
Learn from past experiences.
Trust yourself.

and if you can, love yourself.

I promise you, you're worth it.

You may stumble, you may fall. But if what you're learning to do is to trust yourself to take care of YOU, you will get back up.

Uh-oh

Yesterday I ate like complete crap pretty much all day.

I didn't feel good, but somehow wanted the extra food to decrease the pounding headache that I had had for three days straight.

It didn't fix it.

I knew it probably wouldn't.

But I still couldn't stop eating.

This roller-coaster of eating well and then not eating well is killing me. I feel like I just can't catch my breath - in one way or another.

I'm trying to figure out what feelings I was tampering down with the extra food, but I'm not coming up with anything.

So today, I start anew. Again.

I choose hope

The run that I wrote about in my last post was Saturday morning. It was organized by my Weight Watchers leader, Angela, and was...well...okay.

First, I didn't want to get out of bed because Joe was all cute, snuggly, and warm. Second, I didn't want to go because I didn't want to feel pressured to run either my fastest time (to win) or a 10K. Third (and in the TMI department so feel free to skip this), I was cramping. A lot. As in once every few months, I cramp so badly that I just want to curl up and wait it out with hot pads on my abdomen.

But, I went anyway. I got ready to run and then my leader asked those that were there (about 30 of us) which of us were running. I was the only one.

I was sluggish. Like feeling-like-I-was-running-through-marshmallow-creme sluggish. I just didn't have energy (which could be related to the mass exodus that my uterus was invoking OR could maybe possibly have something to do with the fact that I had more than a few Mini Butterfinger bars the day before).

Since I was the only runner, I finished first.

Yes, I could've forced myself to do it all over again and do a 10K, which was my original goal. But I was spent. It was HOT that morning and I was already feeling so sluggish that I really didn't think I had it in me. Even though I had taken Zyrtec AND my inhaler before running, I was still coughing up a ton of stuff and wheezing horribly (this has lasted all through the weekend - even still when I breathe I have a rattle in my lungs and I'm EXHAUSTED).

So instead of doing a 10K, I accepted the high fives and then ran back to the next group of people that I knew. I walked with them 'til the finish line. Then I ran back again to find another friend and finished with him. I didn't do a 10K, but I did much more than a 5K. And it's probably the only time in my life I'll actually WIN a "race." It felt strange but I'm proud nonetheless.

Technically, I'm a winner.

There was one down part during the day where I realized that this group was probably not for me any longer. I was standing at the finish line talking with some members of the meeting (and my leader) and someone asked about a gal that used to attend. Her name is Fi and she was running a lot and training for some sort of step climbing competition.

Anyway, about 6-8 weeks ago she stopped coming. People were asking our leader if she'd heard anything from her and my leader said that she hadn't. We remarked that that was too bad - since we really liked her.

AND THEN she said, "But you know, she'll be back. Maybe it will be a year, maybe it'll be two, but she'll be back. They always come back."

People around me nodded their heads in agreement but I shrank inwards.

I'm feeling a lot of things at that statement - fear that my approach of mindful/intuitive eating won't work, anger for encouraging the fear that our weight will come back if we don't do WW, as well as frustration of the insensitivity towards other people.

I believe that we can live intuitively. I believe that it is possible. It MUST be possible. I believe that we are worthy of our own trust.

I'm tired of mediating the war between what WW teaches paired with what my meeting talks about and what the knowledge that is inside me says.

I asked Joe for his advice and he asked three simple questions:

1) Does what you learn or experience at WW help you in your journey to lose weight the way that you are trying to lose weight now (intuitive/mindful eating)?
2) Do you feel like you can disregard the number on the scale COMPLETELY while still going to the meetings?
3) Is there another pressing reason you want to go OTHER than the fact that you don't want your leader to say the same stuff about you as what she did about Fi?

My answers to all of those questions were "No."

So I'm not going to go.

I sort of want to go to say good-bye. This is a group that I've spent almost 2 years with. But, like Joe said, I can stop by in a few months if I want - just to say hi.

I'm a little sad. I'm more than a little scared.

Maybe Angela is right. Maybe I will come back in a year or sooner.

But in the back of my head a voice is asking, what if I'M right? What if I CAN be trusted? What if this plan CAN work?

I want to be the person who chooses hope over fear.

And so I will.

Double Yippee!

Hello there! :)

So, first of all, I'm busting with excitement to tell you that after less than 7 days on the market, my house was officially under contract. I came away from it making a little money - even after commissions.

I'm ecstatic!

This decreases so much pressure on me, it's not even funny. I mean, my place is TINY. 744 square feet of tiny. So really, it's itty bitty. To give you an example, the following shot shows basically my whole place.

The picture is taken with the person standing at the front door. To the left is my bedroom. Behind the daisy paintings is the bathroom. The second bedroom (which is bout 8' x 8') is on the left behind my bedroom - and the room with the red wall in the back? Yes. That's the kitchen. The light at the back of the house is the light that comes through the back door.

That's my WHOLE place - in basically one shot.

And oh, the kitchen. THIS is the entire counter top space I have:

Not exactly conducive to cooking or baking. Things I actually like to do.

So I'm excited about my new place...wherever that might be. My buyer of this place is a single female and I hope that she loves it as much as she seems to. I hope she'll be happy in it. I hope it's good to her.

As for where I'll be moving to, well, that's a tricky question with a surprisingly not-so tricky answer. See, the buyer wants to close on April 20th...which is just 4 weeks away. And while that's exciting, it also doesn't leave much time for me to find a place that I love.

When I moved into my current place, it was because I was downsizing. I didn't know where to move, really. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought I'd be okay in a place that small. I thought I could make it work. I thought I could change me. I mean, it's super cute and in a trendy part of town. Who wouldn't love it? Why shouldn't I not love it?

But I didn't love it. Not really. And since I've been in it, I've made excuses for it. I've only had two people over to my house for dinner. That's it. Every time my mom, sister, or best friend has come in, we've fought because the place is SO small. With my 160 pound Great Dane added to the mix, we literally trip over one another.

I remember the first night I spent in that place, talking to my mom on the phone. I told her that I thought I had made a big mistake. I was worried.

And if I'm being honest with myself, I've been beating up myself for buying it. The place, without the light that I crave, depresses me. I apologize for my place - it's smallness, it's shared walls, and it's lack of light. I make excuses to not have people over.

My place and I are not a good fit.

This time around, I'm determined to not settle. I'm determined to be proud of where I live. I'm determined to love it.

I'm going to find a place of my own - one that has two real bedrooms, where the second one has enough space to put a guest. I'm going to find a place that has quirky character, but has good light (don't let the above pictures fool you, this place is DARK - it only has four small windows in the whole place).

Because I want to have the house that I want, I know I'll be moving to a much less trendy and chic part of Denver. I'm okay with that - as long as it's safe enough to run outside.

But that place, in the price range I can afford, might take a while to find. So what to do in the meantime?

I'll be living with Joe. He offered and I accepted. It may be for a few weeks and it may be for a few months. I don't know. But I know we'll figure it out.

During the past week and a half, I've only spent 2 nights at my house anyway. We're in his 1000 square foot loft in downtown Denver, sharing a bathroom, and we are still in love. Still happy.

Granted, it's only been a week and a half, but we've enjoyed it. And I'm confident that we'll enjoy it in the same way when I need to stay with him.

At the end of that time, when I find a place of my own? Well, if the living with him goes as well as I believe it will? Well, I'll ask HIM to move in with ME.

I feel at peace with this decision.

The future...I can't wait to see what it brings...

Hello New Day! :)

Like I wrote yesterday, I love this time of year.

It's a great time to take stock of who you are, think about what you want to be, and then go about changing whatever you want.

It's a time to wipe the slate clean of past mistakes, muck-ups, and failures. It's a time to start dreaming of what you can accomplish and putting a plan into action of how to get there.

I love this time of year.

This year, my goals are to continue in my quest to be healthier: mind, body, and spirit.

Specifically, I want to:
* continue my therapy sessions so that I can find closure for the traumas that I have let plague my life for too long
* complete a 10K in May
* complete a half marathon by the end of the year
* get to where I can run a 10 minute mile average during a 5K
* continue to find positive ways to treat myself, other than food
* try one new sport or activity
* get to my goal weight by 2011
* be more consistent about posting here

Lofty goals? Maybe. But they're specific, achievable, within my control, and a good fit for my life.

How about you - any goals or dreams you want to share?

And, as a parting thought, here is a song by one of my favorite positive artists, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers, titled "Hello New Day!"

Hello New Day - Roger Clyne & ...