New Jeans

A big, large and super huge step for me in dealing with my food and self-love issues now, as my therapist suggests, was to order two new pairs of jeans: one 1 size larger and one 2 sizes larger, which is the pair that fit me now.  Thankfully, skinny jeans are not the only option anymore! 

I'm so very familiar with working to "become better" and even though it can be very painful, the familiarity is oddly comforting. Working to love and accept what is now is in many ways so much harder as so many old thoughts and feelings must be examined and questioned on a daily, even hourly, basis. It's exhausting, right? But I think the hardest thing for me is that on this journey there is very little external validation, as there is when we are losing weight. No one comes up to you and says, "Well done, you didn't bang your head against the wall for having two scoops of ice cream instead of just one! Or "Yay you for feeling the pain instead of feeding it! High five!". For me, truly moving forward on this journey is dependant upon internal validation and THAT is dependant upon silencing the other voices in my head so my voice can actually get a thought in edgewise which is also exhausting.

The problem is I don't really know what it is I'm supposed to do. If I'm not supposed to be dieting and/or restricting the kind of food I eat, what do I do? Just allow myself to eat whatever/whenever I want? And it's all very well and good to acknowledge and validate my feelings and talk about when and why I started to feel this way (which I've done for years) and to KNOW everyone, including me, is worthy of love (which I've known for years) but how do I live it? 

I'm always Googling something about food and recovery and found a term I've never seen before, Disordered Eating.  In a nutshell Disordered Eating is catagorized as the following:

• weight and shape preoccupation
• excessive exercising
• striving for perfection
• compulsive overeating
• restricting food
• fasting
• purging
• yo-yo dieting
• steroid use (the only one I have not tried) 
• laxative use   

So, I used to have an eating disorder and now I regularily practice only 4-5 on the disordered eating list, I guess that's progress, right?  Still not going sleeveless but I am making strides; I bought new jeans and I'm wearing them. Never in my wildest nightmares did I think I'd be happy Mom Jeans are back in style, but if I am to work on healing while my jean size is not my ideal then wide-legged Mom Jeans it will be! 

Oh, so this is what I have to do: live and enjoy my life in the jeans that fit!  Huh, honestly, that thought just came to me, it must have got in edgewise while I was not preoccupied with my usual thoughts of weight, calories and carbs.  Well, I'll be. 

                             

                                                                                                                               

Comfortable in my own skin.

Moving into a new house is unsettling, even when it’s a really good move!  And we just came back from 5 days in New York, a trip we had planned before we even bought the house, where we attended the opera (apparently one does not “go” to the opera, one “attends”) at The Met and I finally saw “Wicked” at the Gershwin Theatre!   I love this house and love my life! So why am I 20 lbs over my goal? And, more importantly, why can’t I just be comfortable in the skin I’m in at any given moment?  After all, we all know that once we are happy staying thin is easy.  Or is it once we’re thin being happy is easy?

In prepping for the move, the one thing we two reasonably intelligent people totally forgot about was the need for drawers, dresser drawers to be exact, because in the previous house the drawers were built into the closet. So, we ordered dresser drawers and waited the 4 to 6 weeks for delivery. During that time my clothes were in suitcases, boxes and bags in the spare room. To prep for the arrival of dressers I went through my clothes, weeding out the ones that I never wear, or don’t really like anymore, to donate. What I didn’t do was remove the clothes that are too small.

Then last Friday I got the call, the dressers would be delivered Saturday!  Yay, we would finally be able to organize! But Sunday when I was putting everything away it started to sink in that maybe ¼ of my clothes actually fit me. I was filling up drawers and closet space with clothes that I can’t wear now and may never wear again. Feeling a melt down coming on (and yes, I know that’s a bit dramatic, but have you met me???) I decided to go to No Frills and get my weekly supply of fat free yogurt and cottage cheese.  As I was sorting through the yogurt because it’s so easy to pick up the wrong one, I heard this giggly little voice behind me say “I am having an awesome day!”  I turned and saw an adorable little 5 year old girl sitting in her Mom’s cart, and she was beaming up at me. I almost choked up but managed to say, “You are?  That’s great, and you just made my day!” And then I turned to a smiling Mom and said, “The store should hire her, lots of people need to hear about her awesome day.”.  I continued to the cereal aisle to try and see if there was a granola for Bob that wasn’t all sugar and fat.  In that aisle there was a Dad with 2 little ones in his cart and they were, of course, lobbying for their favourite sugar-laden cereals, but their Dad just calmly said, “I’m looking for a cereal you will like but is also good for you.”  And the little boy piped up and said, “That’s because you really love me!”. Next on my list was the laundry detergent aisle and there I saw a woman. I guessed she was about 45 years old and she was pushing a walker; both of her legs had been amputated from the knee down. Her friend was pushing the cart and they were discussing which detergent was best.

I left No Frills feeling ungrateful and frankly ashamed that, yet again, I went down my personal rabbit-hole of self-loathing because my clothes don’t fit. I know what my on-going life assignment is but I keep procrastinating and shove it to the back of my mind, much like I shove the clothes that don’t fit to the back of my closet.  And what have I learned?  I’ve learned that when I’m at my goal and my clothes fit, I can ignore the feelings of unworthiness, because the tag in my “at goal” jeans tells me that right now I’m good enough.  But that’s not our assignment, is it?  Our assignment is to be comfortable in the skin we are in at ANY given moment, and I can only learn that in the moments when my clothes don’t fit.

I’m back in therapy, which I love, but so far I have skirted the issues that lead me there again.  Am I ready to do the work this time? I don’t know.  It's messy and uncomfortable. I’m messy and uncomfortable right now but at least it’s familiar, right? But it’s also a cage.  So, I will try again because I have felt the freedom for short bits of time and I want more. “On the other side of fear lies freedom.”

 

Who were you before the world got its hands on you?

I recently posted an Emily McDowell quote called "Finding Yourself". The last 2 lines are "Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.".  Enter the Lao Tzu quote, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear....

Honestly, I'm kinda of tired of working on myself, I just want to be done! To be clear, I am a big believer in self-discovery and therapy but over the years it has taken up so much of my time and a ridiculous amount of space in my head! But, said Carl Jung, "What you resist persists..." so a student I will be. Again.

"a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you,"  When was that, in the birth canal??  Of course we were "buried under cultural conditioning" and "other people's opinions" the moment we were born. And very soon "the inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are" helped shape us into who we turned out to be.  That's the real kicker because, for some of us, when the world got its hands on us, we were shaped into beings who believed we had to accept everything it dished out. Why?  Well, maybe it's because some of the inaccurate conclusions we drew as kids lead us to believe we needed to become something other than who we were, that who we were was not enough. I cannot read that last sentence out loud without tearing up. 

So who were we before the world got its hands on us?  How can we ever know? I believe I get a glimpse of who I was more often now and it usually starts with a gut feeling. I believe that gut feeling is who I was reminding me of who I still am. It is me every time I stick up for my choices by saying, "My way is not wrong, it's just different.". It is me refusing to be treated as if I don't matter. It is me asking for what I need and actually believing I deserve it. It is me that gently reminds me again, and again, that even though I can't control what others say or do to me, I can control how I react to it.  And yes, it often takes a good bit of self-talk.

I am so grateful to have remembered at least some of who I am, and as painful as it can be and has been, to process it all, in the end it has lead to a more peaceful existence and less suffering.   

Do you see glimpses of who you were before the world got its hands on you?  What are you now doing that seems like the true you?  What is your gut saying to you? Become a student!

"When the student is truly ready....the teacher will disappear." My gut has been my greatest teacher. so thankfully as long as I keep paying attention to her, she will never disappear. That shouldn't be a problem, she's pretty forceful with my insides and only backs off when I listen.

Some are angry, some are sad and some are anxious. What are you feeling?

During these final meetings many members have expressed in one way or another how they felt and let's just say that not one member said "I'm totally fine with it."  Understandably people are angry and sad, and that's what most shared with me but one member, who before the meeting said she was angry, after the meeting said that she has been anxious and nervous since the news.  The next layer down: fear.  She's anxious because she fears she's going to lose control without her "weekly accountability". Even after all of the success she has had "this time around", she is anxious and afraid that all she has learned and all of the healthy new habits she has developed will all go away.  I get it because I feel the same way. I get it because first and foremost, I am a Weight Watcher. 

I don't know about you but when I feel anxious or nervous it usually stems from fear.  I was brought up by fear-driven parents and I must say I excel in the fear department. Why are we afraid it will all go away? What do the people who are able to take the weight off and keep it off have that we don't?  That's the question I have asked at goal members over and over again during the past 10 years.  In Belleville during the non-meeting store hours there was often time to chat with an at-goal member coming in for their monthly weigh in and when I first started coaching I would ask them "How have you kept the weight of for 2, 5, 10 , 30 yrs???"  And it hit me one day what these members have: acceptance.

1. They kept tracking because they had accepted that tracking was a key component that got them to goal and so tracking would keep them at goal.

2.  They continued to weigh themselves regularily, even during the holidays and other stressful/busy times, because they accepted how easy it is to gain 1, 2 or 10 pounds. Weighing themselves helped keep them mindful and make changes after 1 or 2 pounds gained.  Much easier to lose 2 pounds than 10!

3. They accepted their relationship with food.  Most of us have an emotional relationship with food, one that was probably given to us when we were children by the adults in our life.  No blame here, the adults in our lives were likely given theirs too.  I have accepted that even though my full-blown eating disorder is in the past, the emotions that started it all at 10 years old are still part of me. I've accepted that some things about me I can change and others I've just learned to manage.  I do a lot of managing.

4. They accepted that they alone are responsible for their health. The accountability of the weigh-in and the meetings helped them learn new the habits, but they put those habits into action the moment they left the meeting.       

5. They accepted the changes they had made must become part of their lifestyle, AND they did it, and continue to do it willingly and with gratitude.  Why?  Because they never forgot how they felt before losing the weight and getting healthier, and they are grateful every day for how they feel now.

6. And finally, they accepted they had to believe not only in their ability to change but truly believe they are worth the effort.

So going forward I hope you accept what it is you need to do to become your healthiest self and, most importantly, I hope you believe you are worth it.

If you would like to join my Facebook group, If not now, when? as a way to stay connected to others here's the page link and just request to join.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/594855227714542

It's like I'm losing a friend....

While my blog is not always about weight and body image issues....wait, I'd have to go back and look to see if there is one that is not at least connected to weight and body image issues, many of them are because my weight and body image issues go back to some of my very first memories, certainly some of my most vivid ones. 

At 51, the menopause pounds had got the better of me and I joined Weight Watchers. From the moment I went to my first meeting I knew I wanted to be a leader/coach.  I had found my people and I wanted to work with them while they worked on their own weight and body image issues. And then I decided I had more to say (don't I always???) so I started this blog to "keep the conversation going".  And bit by bit, meeting by meeting, blog by blog, I started to heal. Every meeting I take away something that affected me and helped a peice of me heal. Sometimes it was what someone shared, sometimes it happened before the meeting during a one on one chat, sometimes it was just seeing one of you walk through the door after you had been away, sometimes it was just the energy of the collective. Oh, I will miss the energy!

It's like I'm losing a friend because the Weight Watcher staff and groups have helped me so much. They helped me rebuild my life when I moved to Cobourg, and when I moved to Kingston to be with my partner, I knew once again Weight Watchers was going to help me find a whole group of new friends, ones I just hadn't met yet!  From the first meetings I felt at home, because we are all the same. So yes, our Weight Watcher collective is my friend and I will miss it terribly. Yes, we are still friends but our collective challenge of weight and body image issues brought us together every week and reminded us that we are understood, we are seen, we are heard and most importantly, we matter and we are not alone. And I think we will all miss those reminders. 

Not sure how many times I've written about this topic: nothing ever goes away until it's taught us what we need to know. But here I go again!

I started writing my blog, "If not now, when?", in 2014 because I had been coaching for Weight Watchers for a couple of years and had personal opinions that I wanted to share but not in a workshop simply because they were my opinions and not neccessarily WW's.  I just re-read my first blog from March 15, 2014 and my reason for writing today remains the same as it was on that day: I want to continue the conversation and maybe some of you do too.  If not, journaling is great therapy!

I was quite prolific the first couple of years but life happened and I stopped writing for a while.  It's interesting now to look back on a few of them and see how my approach to losing weight, aka "my life" has evolved. I've become less rigid with myself and more forgiving.  However, I have not advanced much in the self-acceptance department, I really just kinda fake that one.  Oh, I have moments but not true self-acceptance because the Google dictionary says self-acceptance is "the state of complete acceptance of oneself".  "Complete", that's the part I get hung up on. 

The reason I'm writing this one now is because I'm going to St. Lucia in 10 days and I have decided NOT to try and starve off the 20 pounds I've put on in the last year before I go! That means there will be no skipping meals and no excessive exercsing.  But this is where it gets real since I've also decided I AM going to wear a bathing suit every day that I'm there which means I have to buy a bathing suit. The buying might be relatively easy but the wearing will not. The truth is I don't want my partner Bob to see me in a bathing suit. Dumb I know, because of course he's seen me naked but not in the harsh light of day with sunlight bouncing off my lumps and bumps! I know people think don't worry, you'll be fine, just enjoy yourself but I was on holiday in Cuba, by myself, and I still had a hard time walking around in front of strangers at the beach or pool in a bathing suit! In 2 weeks I maybe did it 2 or 3 times.  Logically I know no one cares what I look like because they are obsessing about their own stuff. But it doesn't matter, this is an old, deeply rooted fear of mine that I've never overcome. Wonder if I could get Bob to wear extremely dark sunglasses?  Will be checking Amazon later. 

But seriously, if Bob read this, he would be so sad to know I feel this way. Why can't we love ourselves the way the people that matter to us do? My guess is at one time a person who did matter to us said, or did, something and the seed of feeling not good enough was planted.

Pema Chodron's quote "nothing ever goes away until it's taught us what we need to know" has been going through my head a lot lately.  I don't know how I will learn self-acceptance but I do know I'm tired of caring what others, even strangers, think of my body. And I'm so very tired of caring about what I think of my body, it's exhausting!

So, I may not be ready, but I am open to learning what I need to know in order to uproot that fear of mine and move towards complete self-acceptance. If not now, when, right?  Ummm, wonder if I can do it in 10 days??

Feel like quitting?

 Do you ever feel like you want to quit WW?  Haha…silly question right??  I think most of us have wanted to quit (or have quit) at one time or another. When we feel like we’re struggling and “nothing is happening”, we want to quit.  When we’re sick of always thinking about food and activity, we want to quit. When going to a workshop is painful because the number on the scale is not the one we want to see, we want to quit. If you feel like quitting, ask yourself this question: how would my life be better if I quit?  (Would it be better if you quit giving your body nutritious food? Would it be better if you quit walking, swimming, yoga or going to the gym?  Would it be better if you quit meeting up with like-minded people who understand exactly what you’re going through?) Only you can answer that question. 

We all get tired of “being on a diet” but do we get tired of reaping the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle? No, we don’t, so once again this is a mindset adjustment. Perhaps we should take a rest and quit thinking we're on a diet.

Lost our anchor.

Covid has taken many things for us all but for me, one of the greatest losses I'm feeling is my motivation and inspiration to write.  In 2015 my motivation to start blogging was my WW peeps and my inspirations came to me through coaching the workshops or having private conversations with members.  I always marvelled at the fact that in the space of a few days I would hear the same challenges from different members and the more I thought about what one member had said, the more other members said the same thing; law of attraction at work!  I would scribble lines on bits of paper and finally a clear (or at least to clear to me...haha) message came through; and now, I scribble, I sit and stare at my laptop and nothing. 

And then a few days ago a member sent me a message, "You got me thinking in the middle of the night about my WW journey and I compared it to rowing a boat out into a body of water.  I started rowing 4 1/2 years ago and when Covid hit my boat fell apart. I feel I have been treading water since with no land in sight."  That hit me like a tons of bricks; some days we all feel like we're treading water with no land in sight.  And for many us, our workshop was our boat.  And not only was the workshop our boat, what we heard and learned in those workshops anchored us, so not only do we feel like we're treading water but we also feel like we're drifting farther and farther from shore.

So what do we do?  As this member wrote: "Do I continue to tread water and save myself or do I give up and disappear?"  Such powerful words, they gave me goosebumps!  I've heard the same from other members who feel at times like they don't have the strength to continue but then something inside them reminds them why they started or that if they quit they will end right back up where they started or worse.  So they keep treading water.  And in WW what can treading water mean?  It can mean you track breakfast, go for a walk, call a friend, prep and freeze food, make a plan friendly recipe, attend a virtual workshop, go on Connect, make a gratitude list, drink your water, take a nap, take a shower, measure yourself if you're afraid to step on the scale, journal your feelings, meditate, wear something other than yoga pants, engage on our FB page, pause the TV while you eat, write inspirational messages to yourself, reach out and help someone, reach out ask for help.  All of these things will help anchor you.

And what of the member who wrote to me?  That member decided (at 2 am!) she had come too far to give up so she set her intention to reconnect with her "why" of getting healthier and set about to put her actions in alignment with that goal. So, if you feel you're just treading water right now, remember, treading water is what keeps you from disappearing.

Why do we get stuck? How can we be going along just fine and hit a bump or two and then find ourselves stuck?

I saw this quote when I was prepping for our Roundtable, “To get unstuck, first stop doing the things that got you stuck.” This is so simple, it made me laugh. If your head hurts when you bang it up against the wall, stop banging it up against the wall! So, if thinking negative things about ourselves hurts and keeps us stuck, why do we keep doing it? Habit.

“Before something you want can become a fact, it must first be imagined.” I heard this in one of the many podcasts I listen to, I think it was Michael Bernard Beckworth.

I find this concept very interesting and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve had it happen in my own life I might slough it off. When I was younger I made things I imagined happen all the time. I was the biggest daydreamer. I would sit on the hill across from our family store and dream! Mostly, I dreamed about leaving Denbigh haha, but also about being a singer and travelling the world and yes, buying into the sappy Harlequin Romance books. Romance novels should come with a warning label! I would imagine it all in great detail, often right down to what I was wearing or the conversations I would have with the people I would meet…like Johnny Carson. At night I would daydream myself to sleep, a habit I kept up until just a couple of years ago. I would imagine ways to live/work in other countries. I imagined how I would feel! And even through crippling self doubt I made a lot of things happen. Travel for example, when I post a destination on my vision board, I never for a single second think it might not happen. Why? Because I have the proof of many of the many trips that did happen, so I believe. But first, I imagined it. And not just thought of it, I LIVED it in my imagination. I lived it so much, and so often, that my subconscious took it to be fact.

But the parts of my life where I’m stuck?? I now see that I wish for something different BUT I don’t imagine it. I don’t imagine success in these areas and what that would feel like. I don’t envision myself being THAT person with THAT life! Instead, I think about how bad I feel or how unsuccessful I feel and accept it all as truth. Why? Because that is my habit, to believe that certain goals will not happen; I imagined it, LIVED it, so often, that my subconscious took it to be fact. I now know that without exception that every time I’m stuck with a part of my life my thoughts about it stem from a place of lack and disbelief. Even when I’m watching TV I notice how I feel when I watch a scene that depicts something I want for my life. If the show takes place in Europe I get pumped up and as soon as the show is over I go online and search out houses to rent, or buy, yes BUY! (It could happen! haha) Or a place to go and volunteer: NEVER does it cross my mind that it would be impossible for me to volunteer helping women in Tanzania or teach English to kids in Italy. NEVER!! And, other times watching TV, I feel sad and think I will never have that in my life. Why? Habit. We all have scenarios of a life that we believe are possible and so they are. And we have scenarios we believe are not possible and so they are not.

Some of you have a weight goal and cannot, or do not, imagine yourself there, and you’re having a hard time getting to that number or you reach it but have a hard time staying there. Why? Because you don’t really believe you belong there. And why don’t you believe it? Habit.

When it comes to your thoughts about weight loss what is your habit? What are you really thinking, imagining and cementing into your subconscious as fact? “To get unstuck, first stop doing the things that got you stuck.” Aren’t you tired of banging your head up against the wall?

What do I still need to learn?

When I think back on 2020 and try to arrange my thoughts, I am once again reminded of Pema Chödrön’s words “nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know…”.  And the fact that I have used that quote several times in my writings points to the fact that I know I have much to learn.  As a Global community we still have much to learn too, as the events of 2020 have so glaringly pointed out, but we need to look inward first. With so many of my personal distractions unavailable to me I’ve been forced to look inward for comfort to soothe the feelings of cracking up and the result has been mentally cracking open and starting to see so much in a new light.  For a long time I’ve asked myself “what have I learned?” but perhaps I should also ask “what do I still need to learn?”

Yesterday I had a great video chat with a friend, who is also a WW member.  I always marvel at her sense of self, something she says she has always had and attributes to her parents. I’m so curious about people with great self-esteem and how that affects their lives; these are the people who love themselves through all points in their journey. Really, they are like rare and exotic birds to me! 

I recently received an email that made me feel so wonderful and worthy.  As I read it I felt such joy and validation!  What a gift! Not just because it made me feel good, which is great, but because I was able to observe it still so often takes an external source to bring up those feelings.  So, this is obviously one thing I still need to learn to do for myself. This continues to be the piece of my WW puzzle I have yet to solve.

I’m not a fan of setting resolutions but I am a fan of setting intentions.  So, my intention is to build my sense of self by focusing on a daily practice of purposeful and affirming meditation, observing old thought patterns and recognizing/revising unhelpful thoughts. AND, I am definitely going to study the rare birds that I know! 

What are your intentions for 2021?  What have you learned?  What do you still need to learn?  Write it down!