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!

“I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed, get along with the voices inside of my head…” Eminem

At our Roundtable last night one of the members talked about the thoughts (voices?) she’s had going around in her head these days and it reminded me of this piece I’ve been working on but haven’t been able to finish…until now.

One of the voices in my head has been singing this lyric for a couple of weeks now, which usually means a blog topic is coming to me, but this time nothing.  Well, that’s not exactly true, there are ideas but the voices in my head can’t decide on just one.  That’s the trouble with the voices in my head, which one do I listen to?  For that matter, why should I listen to any of them if many of the voices (thoughts) are not mine, but were given to me?  Which voice is really me?  All of them? None of them? I think the answer is yes: all of them and none of them.  So, in the interest of self-preservation, I’ve decided to take a “keep your friends close and your enemies even closer” approach.  If I can’t banish the monster under my bed, then maybe it’s time to befriend it, or at least try to understand it.  After all, how hard can it be to make friends with an imaginary life threatening being?

When I was little and I had a nightmare, my Mom would come in, turn the light on, and prove to me there was nothing to be afraid of and that I was safe.  She shone a light on the monster who was not under my bed but in my head.  That’s what I’ve decided to do with the voices in my head, bring them into light and let them be heard.  I try not to be judgemental, just curious: where did you come from, are you mine or did someone give you to me, why have you popped up now and is it in my best interest to believe what you say?  In the past when an upsetting thought came up my habit was to just accept it, but now I try to observe the thought and question it: is that true, is that really true?  I can imagine we all have many of the same negative thoughts, like “I’m always letting people down” or “I’m a failure.”  Ask yourself, is that true?  Are you always letting people down?  Really, always??? Making choices that are in your best interest is not the same as letting people down, you matter too.  And failing?  None of us succeed at every single we do but that does not make us failures.  It makes us human.

Every time we shine a light on the voices, and question them, we move towards making peace with them which really is in our best interest, after all, we do have to share head space with them. So, when your negative voices start to sound off and threaten to disturb your inner peace, try questioning them.  I’ve found mine don’t like it, and it’s the best way to shut them up!  After all, their power comes from you believing they are true.

 

 

 

“Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening.” Lisa M. Hayes

In WW we’ve been addressing this topic for years.  I remember using the quote above in one of my first workshops 8 years ago and I know many of you have been WW members for far longer.  So, how’s the self-talk going for you?  Have you changed your inner dialogue?  A lot?  Very little?  Not at all?  Why?

Self-talk, whether it’s positive or negative, is like any other habit in our lives: at some point we developed a behaviour and just kept doing it.  As with any other habit we want to change, understanding when and why we began the habit can give us insight into our behaviour.  Obviously, I can’t speak for anyone else but I do know my negative self talk was given to me as a child by the adults in my life.  To be clear, this is not an exercise in laying blame. As a child, and young adult, I often laid blame on my adults but once I started making my own mistakes in life, I started to realize, like everyone else I was just doing the best I could based on what I knew and had been taught.  We do not come into this world thinking we are unworthy; we may own that feeling like we did but our sense of self-worth, positive or negative, was born out the actions and words used by our adults. The purpose of reflection in this instance is to establish when and how those feelings started so we can understand what we believe to be true about ourselves.

Whenever I talk smack to myself, or about myself, it all stems back to the comments made by my adults: you can’t do that, that will never work, don’t talk so much, sit down and be quiet..etc, etc, etc.  But here’s the thing; there were times when I couldn’t do something or something would not work as I planned to do it, or I did talk too much at certain times and needed to sit down and be quiet.  The problem was I rarely (in my mind, never) got the flip side: you can do that, that will work, tell us more, we want to hear what you have to say.  If we had been given lots of positive reinforcement, then perhaps the negative comments we did receive would not have become the foundation of what we believe to be true about ourselves.  After a while, we didn’t need others to reinforce those beliefs, we did it ourselves.

As kids, of course, we couldn’t have known that perhaps our adults were simply passing on what they had been told or what they believed about themselves.  In this case, even when we have discovered why and how we started our pattern, it doesn’t matter what we now know, what matters is what we still believe. We can’t change our beliefs until we change what we know, or what we think/believe we know.  How might your life have been different had you grown up with a positive personal belief system?  How might your WW plan be different?  Reflection doesn’t change what happened in the past but often when we understand something, we are able to let it go and start to make the changes we want within ourselves. My reflection has led me to believe so many of the comments I heard as a child probably had nothing to do with me.  Even as I write it, the thought still stuns me.  Imagine a comment that hurt you as a child. Now imagine the person who made it and what might have been going on in their mind.  Have you ever made a comment that upon reflection realized it had more to do with how you felt about yourself than the person you said it to? I often think about mean old Bertha, the lady who always just called me Chubby.  How did she really feel about herself?  What was said to her as a child? Doesn't make what she said right, but it does offer me another way of looking at it: maybe it was not about me.

Every time this topic comes up in WW you are being handed an opportunity, an opportunity to take back the worthiness you were born with but never got a chance to know.  Maybe last time we talked about it you weren’t in the headspace to hear it, or maybe your age-old beliefs were still too strong.  Maybe now you’re tired of your negative self-talk and really want to change. Maybe now you’re ready to start believing how great, wonderful and fabulous your friends say you are!  Why not, what have you got to lose, other than some pain and self-loathing?   Nothing. But, if you find it hard to start talking to yourself the way your good friends do, why not start by talking to yourself the way you talk to your animals, kids or grandkids?  That will tell you what to say!

Has Covid become a justifiable excuse for us to put our lives on hold?

Here’s an absolutely hypothetical example, this is not about a real person and she does not sometimes have straight, and sometimes wavy, red hair. We’ll call her J.  When Covid hit in March and it sunk in that it was here to stay, J. decided it was the perfect time to try online dating.  That’s what I like about J., she’s such a deep thinker with lofty goals.  Her friends had been after her to get “back out there” and since the thought of dating made her want to throw up, she thought online dating with the wall of Covid around it would be safe and less scary.  A way to move forward while standing still. Poor deluded J., thankfully an actual person would not think this way. 😏

To say the beast that is online dating is cruel with the ability to disembowel its’ victims might be overstating it, but it’s not!  Sometimes, that is how it feels, or at least that’s how J. describes it.  And now, after more than a few bad outcomes, J. has met someone she would like to get to know but she finds herself halted with the fear of Covid. Just when she was finally willing to go outside of her deeply entrenched comfort zone there is a pandemic!  Can’t a girl catch a break?  Even hypothetically? Apparently not in 2020.

Even though logically J. knew she had weighed the risks of getting to know Bachelor #17 and they were minimal, still the fear of Covid put the kibosh on all plans to meet.  Or did it? Overthinker J. searched and searched her brain for the answer.  The more she searched for reasons not to meet up, the more her brain gave her because that’s what search engines do.  So, just like we do when we can’t remember a specific name or place, she let it go so the real answer could reveal itself. “Life doesn’t cause how we feel, it reveals how we feel.” Carol Howe   

Is Covid causing how J. feels, or revealing how she feels?  Is J. using Covid as an excuse to not meet Bachelor #17?  Is the fear something other than what she is convincing herself it is?  Through meditation, letting go and allowing the answer to come to her, J. realizes she is really using Covid as an excuse to not feel vulnerable by opening herself up for rejection and loss.  Her original intention of using Covid as a wall of safety has now become a barrier to living.  J. knows she does not want to put her life on hold until Covid is over. She also knows life is not going to knock on her door without her first extending an invitation.  Yes, during a pandemic the invitation to life looks a lot different but it can still be extended. Of course, J.’s story is just a hypothetical example of how one could allow fear to cripple them, but it could happen. 😏

The pandemic has forced us all to live differently but it’s still our job to always try and live our best life.  How might you be putting your life on hold?  Are you always saying, and thinking, “when the pandemic is over and things are back to normal I’ll…...”?  What feelings are coming up for you now?  Is Covid causing how you feel, or revealing how you feel?