Knowing why I should eat good nutritious food is not always enough for me.

When I’m seeking comfort I often turn to food and not good healthy food but food that I developed an emotional attachment to years ago.  I have an emotional attachment to starchy-salty-sugary-fatty deliciousness. I have no emotional attachment to fruits and vegetables.  I’ve never drowned my sorrows in salmon or tofu.  I have attempted to comfort myself with quinoa but got nothing from it until I fried it in butter and cheese.

I believe in the power of healthy eating and have spent the better part of my life seeking to change my dysfunctional relationship with food; I developed an eating disorder at 12 years old.  Can you imagine trying to be vegetarian in Denbigh in the ‘70’s?  At that time my Mom’s idea of a salad was either chopped iceberg lettuce dripping in a mayonnaise and sugar dressing or cabbage suspended in Jello. I had a vegetarian cookbook with all of these “exotic” ingredients that no one in the Renfrew grocery store had ever heard of: Bulgur wheat? Never heard of it. My problem was not that I wanted to be a vegetarian, my problem was I wanted to lose weight and thought being a vegetarian would achieve that so all healthy foods were just a means to an end.  Starchy-salty-sugary-fatty deliciousness was still my love, my friend, my comforter. Until is wasn’t, of course, but I refused to let go because sometimes is was.

In week 3 of our 6-part series we look at “What happens in your body….When you eat healthier.”  We all know what we’re suppose to eat to be healthy and lose the weight, the hard part is doing it, especially during stressful, boring, even happy times.  We are emotional beings; every thought and action we take has an emotional component that can directly affect the food choices we make at the time.  Most of us try and eat well. We know we feel better when we eat healthy food, we know healthy food is medicine. So why don’t we always choose healthy food? For many of us our connection to healthy food is intellectual, we need to make it emotional as well.  How do we do that?

Think back to when, and how, you developed your emotional attachment starchy-salty-sugary-fatty deliciousness.  What was going on in your life?  Did it start as a distraction tactic in the form of a cookie to numb the pain from a skinned knee? A bribe to keep you quiet during church?  A promise of a reward for good behaviour at the dinner table? Or bravery at the dentist?  As we got older we continued to self-medicate with food based on those earlier habits.  And here we are all these years later still trying to manage those attachments and it’s hard, and sometimes fruitless, work!  How can we make it easier? Can we create an emotional attachment to high-fiber/protein/good-fats food?  Of course we can!  Like other healthy habits we work to build, we have the most success when we can connect them to feelings of pride, joy, happiness and self-love.  Recognizing how great we feel after a walk, swim or practice yoga, is what really gets us off of the couch and out the door, even though in the beginning all of those activities might have simply been a means to our weight loss end. 

Maybe it’s time to start listening to our bodies. When you have acid reflux after a high fat meal that your wolfed down after a stressful day, listen to what your body is trying to tell you.  It’s telling you that your go-to comfort food no longer makes it happy.  When you mow through a can of Betty Crocker icing before bed and you wake up with a sugar hangover, your body is trying to tell you to find another way to deal with the boredom or loneliness because it’s not feeling the love from the sugar.  Time to start building a loving and comforting attachment to healthy food by focusing and feeling how good our bodies feel and hum along when we nourish it and maybe, just maybe, the next time we have a stressful moment and we automatically decide a bucket of fried chicken or a gallon of ice cream is the only thing that will make us feel better, the attachment we’ve built to healthy and delicious food will give us time to pause and make a better choice, a healthier choice.

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”

Fight or flight: the instinctive physiological response to a threatening situation, which readies one either to resist forcibly or to run away. Psychologist Carl Jung contended that “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”  Does that then mean if we are not fighting and/or running away from a bear we must face our fear or it will just get bigger?

When I knew I had to sell my house and move to Cobourg I didn’t have any gut-wrenching fear because I had come to believe it was no longer in my best interest to live there.  That was another one of my tasks while in therapy: whenever I felt myself in a situation that made my gut clench I was to ask myself “is this in my best interest?”  I’ve come to accept that even if my head has another opinion, listening to my gut is what leads me to peace, which is my ultimate goal. Looking back, many of the wrong turns I took in my life came from not listening to my gut. That is not say wonderful and valuable life lessons and experiences did not come from making those decisions, it is to say however, those decisions lead me away from what was in the best interest of my goal.  My biggest fear these days is losing the me I’ve finally found because this me is not firmly rooted yet so I feel like she could disappear at any moment.  This is causing my gut and my brain to duke it out, which makes for stressful days and sleepless nights.  I sometimes feel like my brain makes the decisions and my gut pays the price.  A new, and kindred-spirit, friend assures me that I’m not in danger of losing myself this time because this time I’m not the person I was and to trust the solid foundation I’ve built because for the first time it is truly mine.  If that’s true, does that mean my gut is reacting to a future my brain has projected as a possible outcome based on the fear of repeating the past? Is this fear real or habitual? In this instance I guess it doesn’t matter, what matters, as we’ve been discussing this week, “our bodies have trouble differentiating these troubling thoughts from an actual threat (a bear coming at you in the woods!), our stress response kicks in.”  The next part will tick you off:

Fast Facts 1 & 2 from this week:

1. Stress hormones can increase our appetite, especially for foods higher in fat and sugar.

2. High levels of stress hormones, like cortisol, can lead our bodies to store more body fat, especially around our abdomens.

Well, isn’t that nice to know?  Once again what we think and what we believe have a huge impact not only on the quality of our life, but our efforts to lose weight.  And once again, what can we do?  Fast Fact 3. Studies show that practicing mindfulness regularly can help “quiet” the part of our brain that activates our stress response.  The 5-4-3-2-1 technique in the weekly is a great way mindful breathing practice. 

Most days I need to not only quiet my monkey mind but give it something different to focus on. I have an extensive mental library of questionable thoughts that require debunking so I often use Byron Katie’s 4 questions from her book, “Loving What Is”.  It’s a simple exercise but I find it very effective, even for the annoyingly relentless, and utterly childish “nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go to the garden and eat worms” thought. It’s childish because I was 5 or 6 years old and running away from home with just an arm full of socks and underwear….to my Aunt’s house, who lived next door.  But it is also how many people feel so a good example to demonstrate how the exercise might go.  To be clear, I truly don’t believe I’m unlovable but some days the 5 year old demands, and deserves, some attention.

Question 1: Is it true?  Answer: Yes, nobody loves me.

Question 2: Can you absolutely know it's true?  Answer: Well, I guess some people love me, like my family and friends.

Question 3: How do you react—what happens—when you believe that thought?  Answer:  When I believe I’m unlovable it causes me to suffer unnecessarily. I don’t sleep well, I eat more, my gut hurts and potato chips find their way into my grocery cart. Ultimately it interferes with my goal of living a peaceful existence. 

Question 4: Who would you be without the thought?  Answer:  This one can be difficult because we’ve had so many negative thoughts over the course of our lives that it never occurs to us to question them. The harder this one is to answer, the more it needs answering.  If I did not believe the thought I am unlovable I would not be so easily hurt by the actions of others.  The need to please would not rule my existence.  Fear of failure would not keep me from trying new things.  Feelings of happiness, joy and peacefulness would have a chance to grow.

Most of us are lucky we don’t actually have to fight, or take flight, but that doesn’t mean we don’t give our bodies reason to believe we do. If you’re in a constant state of inner turmoil you are in a constant state of stress causing a constant stream of stress hormones to be released.  What is chasing you? What are you resisting? What stressful situations are you growing in yourself by believing old thoughts?  Find ways to quiet your mind, challenge your negative thoughts and question your fears.  Why not, unless they’ve saved you from a bear, how have they helped or hindered your life? Change never happens overnight but even the smallest movement forward can bring you peace.

Careful with your self-talk if you’re prone to diving down a rabbit hole.

It amazes me how quickly, and so easily, I head off to Wonderland.  My therapist Paula used to marvel at my ability to project multi-layered, and totally unsupported, scenarios onto even the simplest of events, like someone not calling or texting me back.  I immediately ask my brain to send me all of the things I could have possibly done wrong and, of course, my brain does what it’s told and sends me endless possibilities…..and down the rabbit hole I go. The problem isn’t that reality doesn’t exist there, the problem is I react as if it does. The sad thing is I cause myself so much suffering by reacting to my thoughts: projections of what I imagine could be, might happen and possible outcomes.

In WW we work on changing unhelpful thoughts and habits and this week we’re starting a new six-part series, “What happens in your body…” and week 1 is ….”when you build a new habit.”  Perfect timing. The second Fast Fact for this weeks’ topic is: “Each time we repeat an action, our brain cells associated with that activity or thought become more connected, making it more likely that we will do it again.”.  Okay, so years and years of living in my emotional reality instead of logical reality has firmly cemented my pathway to the nearest rabbit hole.  Nice. The goal then for me is to change my habit of projecting and jumping to conclusions by forming a new pathway in my thought process when dealing with the actions, or inactions, of other people.

1.Think big-picture: identify long term goal. My long-term goal is stop causing myself unnecessary suffering with my self-talk and to live in a peaceful, non-gut-wrenching state.

2. Pinpoint an old path:  immediately assuming responsibility for why someone does, or does not, do something is a direct path to a rabbit hole

3. Choose new path:  recognize that my thoughts are not always based on fact and understand people do the things they do for many different reasons.

4. Make a plan: when the negative self-talk starts I can choose a new thought pathway, one that does not contain rabbit holes. How?  By taking a moment to pause and remind myself that if I constantly make decisions that have nothing to do with other people, doesn’t it stand to reason, other people do the same? I am not responsible for the actions of others.

There are many reasons we might want to build a new habit but I think for most of us the desire to change comes from wanting to end some sort of suffering and that can be a very powerful motivator. For me the desire to build a new way to deal with what does, or does not happen, in my personal life, has become my primary focus because I know the positive ripple effect it will have on everything else in my life will be huge!  The thought of releasing myself from something I’ve never had control over (the actions of others) but took responsibility for, is exciting and freeing.  Imagine the space that will free up in my brain!

What habits of yours walk you away from your long-term goals?  What is one small, or not so small, path you could choose to take that would walk you towards that goal?  What kind of suffering motivates you to want to change?  How might your life be better with healthier habits? What are you waiting for…if not now, when?

“….and the wisdom to know the difference.”

This is the part of The Serenity Prayer I’ve been missing or, more accurately, not taking into consideration. But in order to take something seriously I have to make the connection of how it will affect me, and up until recently, last week actually, I didn’t get that “accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can” aren’t really going to effect positive change in my life until I know the difference between what I can control and what I can’t…. “and the wisdom to know the difference.”

When a blog entry takes longer than usual to write it generally means one of two things: I can’t relate to my topic or the topic hits too close to home.  The first one is much easier on my gut and the second one won’t leave my gut alone until I resolve it.  My gut is the barometer for everything in my life, it’s an inconvenient family trait.  For the past 2 months my gut has been on high alert and is trying to tell me something, unfortunately not with words so I’m left feeling sick to my stomach while trying to decode its’ messages.  The good news, to a WW member anyway, is that I can’t eat so I’m losing weight (that twisted bit of joy will have to be dealt with in another blog).  The bad news is it’s a painful process, which for me can only mean one thing: the topic is tied to self-worth.  Man, I cannot tell you how sick and bad-swear-word tired I am of writing about self-worth, enough all-freakin’-ready!  But, apparently not, and from talking and listening to many of you, self-worth rules your life too.  And so, once again, I must put my Super Power (never giving up) to work. Frank Sonnenberg: “Lessons in life will be repeated, until they are learned.”  Yeah, blah, blah, blah…sometimes life is like a never-ending quantum physics class for me.

Back to “….and the wisdom to know the difference.” Things I would tell a friend cannot be changed: the way life is right now, how other people think, what other people think of you, how other people act, the past.  Things I now realize I’ve tried my whole life to change:  the way life is right now, how other people think, what other people think of me, how other people act, the past.  Of course, logically I always known that’s impossible but on some level I must believe it, right? Otherwise why do I, sadly, continue to spend so much time trying to change/control them?  Do I believe if I work hard enough that anything is possible?  Yes, because that’s what I was told as a child by my Dad (and yes, I’m aware of the Dad thread through most of my writing) and I believed it. I decide the difference between what I accept I cannot change, and what I have the courage to try and change, by what I believe I can change. The problem with that is not all of my beliefs are based on fact, and most of them are not even mine, they were given to me as a child. Now that, in itself, is not bad, it’s just the way societies work, the elders hand down their beliefs based on their experiences.  It’s the way a child with no sense of self-worth will weave those beliefs into their personal story that is problematic.

In my family, public perception was everything.  We owned the grocery store in the village and from the moment we walked from our kitchen into the store what others thought of us was all that mattered.  It was important we were well thought of in the community. And, as I sit here struggling to write this piece, I’m ashamed, stunned and embarrassed to say how often that is still true for me.  I care too much about what other people think of me and that fact greatly affects my “wisdom to know the difference.” How does it affect me?  It affects me because I believe what other people think of me is more important than what I think of myself.  I was never taught to value my own opinion and even though, thanks to a lot of therapy, I’ve come a long way in self discovery and healing, in my core I’m still the little girl who was to be seen and not heard.  A child cannot develop self-worth if no one listens to them and then leads them to believe what they have to say matters. And once again, as I write the words that describe my experience, so many of your faces are coming to mind because I know I’m describing your experience too.

How long have you accepted the things you believe you cannot change because of your beliefs?  How long have you believed it was courageous to change who and what you are into what you were told was acceptable?  Are you a WW member because you believe your health is worth looking after or because you believe only by losing weight will you become lovable and worthy?  Is your self-worth based on what you believe others think of you?  Do you know the difference between what you can and cannot change?

“….and the wisdom to know the difference.”  From the time I was 10 I’ve been constantly trying to change myself into someone I believed was worth loving.  I often ask myself the question I’m so fond of asking you: so what have you learned? Here is what I’ve learned:  I’ve learned to question my beliefs; are they really mine and are they really true?  I’ve learned my opinion does matter, at least to me. I’ve learned I can be vulnerable and not die. I’ve learned, like everyone else, I am worthy of being loved.  I’ve learned I may think this is all rubbish tomorrow.  Could this be the beginning of wisdom at work?  Maybe.