Yes, I'm a Californian Now

It's official. I've crossed over. There's no going back now. I'm a true Californian. In addition to meditating, my therapist is a big fan of affirmations. If for no other reason, because they make you feel good. And hey, who doesn't want to feel good? I know I do!

Well, she recommended to me that I watch a video by Louise Hay and during the video, they kept showing a card with an affirmation on it and I found myself drawn to the image. As it turned out, you can buy that card. It's from a deck called Power Thought Cards, which contain 64 different affirmation cards on various subjects, and you can buy them just about anywhere.

I've read about and come up with affirmations before. Don't know whether they would have made a difference or not because, for the most part, I often promptly forgot about them and didn't put them to use. I like that I now have something very concrete and appealing to keep them in the forefront of my mind. I don't know whether affirmations will help me or not, but I know they can't hurt so I'm willing to give them a try. But I also find these cards very pretty. The images make me smile and if a $20 purchase makes me happy, then it's worth it for no other reason than that. I've already gotten my money's worth.

Quiet Mind? Hardly!

I am a massive failure at meditation. Though, to be fair, I can’t say that I’ve worked all that hard at mastering it. Once a year, or so, I give it a try, maybe two. But every time I try, my brain literally starts racing out of control and it frustrates me so much that I take it as a sign that mediation just isn’t for me and throw in the towel.

My therapist is a little new age-y, which doesn’t bother me (I do live in California, after all!). So she recommends a version of meditation that she calls quiet mind. It involves envisioning a running stream and every time an unwanted thought invades, you picture putting the thought on a leaf and putting it in the water and watching it rush away downstream. I’m not much of a nature person, but I do love the water, so I like that imagery.

I’ve tried the quiet mind exercise a couple of times now, and so far, the results are pretty much in line with the historical precedent. My mind is anything but quiet. It leaps and races about in complete non-sequiturs that often leave me baffled as to how I got from one thought to another and what the possible connection could be that led me there. And it’s still pretty frustrating, but I’m going to give meditation another try this year, and make it a real fighting chance this time. Given that calm and balance is a big key for me in getting and keeping my eating under control, I’ve got to try every tool in the arsenal to stay on an even keel. Because my brain doesn’t need any encouragement at all to have me stewing over every worst case scenario or real or imagined slight or aggravation until the only thing that makes me feel better is a super-sized value meal, topped off with some cake.

And perhaps as a bit of synchronicity, it just so happens that this month’s issue of Yoga Journal magazine has an article on how to deal with the racing thoughts that are apparently very common among meditators, even the most accomplished among them. If nothing else, it’s comforting to know that this is a really common problem. And hopefully, I’m going to get some good tips that help me achieve “quiet mind.” Because after two weeks of vacation, I’m feeling pretty good right now. And before work gets back to its usual level of chaos, I’d like to get some tools under my belt that help me manage that stress much better than I have in the past. So, quiet mind, get ready, because here I come.

2011 - The Year of Possibilities

Yes, I’m back, friends. Sorry for the long absence. Thanks for sticking with me. A crazy schedule at work, combined with the usual hectic nature of the holidays, resulted in me being completely fried by mid December. By the time vacation finally came around, I found myself needing to completely disconnect, not just from my virtual world, but from the real one, as well. Now, after a couple of weeks of lying low, I’m finally starting to feel myself again and am raring to get blogging.

Work with the therapist has been going well. She has a really positive outlook, which a natural pessimist like me can use. She says I’m so close to really getting the whole intuitive eating thing. I wish I felt close – some days I think I’ll never get there – but it’s good to hear that from her. Actually, I do have glimpses of what it can be like. When my life is calm, I can see it. When I have the time to be rested, to engage in activities I like, to cook, or in other words, to do things that are just good for my soul, my eating is SO much more intuitive. And so, not like this is any sort of revelation or anything, but I’ve got to do whatever I can to make my life more balanced in the new year. Not just so that I can wear smaller pants, but also so that I can improve the overall quality of my life.

So, what of the New Year? Well, I’m not making any resolutions, if that’s what you were thinking. I don’t believe in them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a vision of what I want the year to be like. Which is why I’ve declared this the year of possibilities. I want to just open myself to the possibility that:

• I can be an intuitive eater if I keep working on it
• I can get to a place where eating is not so emotionally charged and the answer to whatever is bothering me isn’t stuffing it down with food
• My life can be more balanced
• Movement can be joyful and something that I actually want to do
• Connecting with others can be easier
• I can learn to consistently treat myself well in the ways that really matter

How are all these things going to happen? Well, that’s the part I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I think I’ll get there. For now, I’m just putting it out to the universe and I’ll keep working on it in the meantime. And I think that’s pretty good for January 1^st.

Honeymoon's Over

Everything had been a little too easy in the first few weeks of working with the therapist, but now interesting stuff is coming up as I continue to work with her. Mostly annoyance and anger, which was something I hadn't really expected. Basically, I find myself getting really annoyed every time I have to make a choice about something I want because I know that having it all will make me too full or when I know that one of something is all I need to be satisfied but I really want two. The other day, after going out of my way to buy ingredients to make french toast, I got so annoyed at the idea that I would probably be satisfied by one slice, that I got in a snit when I burnt the first peace and tossed the lot rather than have to have just one piece. Weird.....

Also discovered last night just how soothing food actually can be. Didn't fully buy into that concept before (or rather, wasn't fully convinced I that I was soothing with food), but have been dealing with some stuff and really wanted some junk food yesterday. After brooding on it all day, then getting angry (can't believe I have to deal with this crap and I can't even have a *#$@^%! cheeseburger!), I finally said screw it and went out and got a value meal and a frosty at Wendy's. On the plus side, I did at least wait until I was actually hungry, and I actually didn't eat to the point of discomfort. That's progress of a sort. But the interesting part was actually feeling the difference in my mood when I was done eating. I guess after spending several weeks not soothing with food, I really noticed the effect when I finally gave in and did it! Well, awareness is progress, so I'll take this as a good thing.

Self-Hatred is a Sneaky Bastard

Last week’s People Magazine featured Portia de Rossi on the cover and excerpts from her new book where she discusses her battle with anorexia. Toward the end of the article, I came across this quote:

“I didn’t decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Every time I restricted my calorie intake I would binge immediately after. I lived my life from day to day by weighing myself, and measuring my success or failure solely on weight lost or gained – just as I had done from the time I was 12. I’d measured my accomplishments and my self-worth on that scale for my entire life.”

I may not be anorexic (far from it!), but I know what she's talking about. Like Ms. de Rossi, I didn’t intend to become so screwed up when it came to food. This battle with my weight has been motivated by a lot of different things. Sometimes it was about being liked or loved, sometimes about trying to feel beautiful, sometimes about being successful, and sometimes it was even about being “healthy.” It seemed harmless enough, and at times, even like something that I was doing to make my life better. But in my head, all of those things became contingent on fitting into what society says I should look like, contingent on the number on the size label in my pants. And all the while, the self-hatred was sneaking in. And every time I squeezed into an airline seat, or walked out of a store in the mall knowing that there wasn’t a thing in there that fit me, or read an article about how some celebrity was fat because they’d gained 20 pounds and were now a size 2 instead of a size 0, it planted another seed that told me that I wasn’t ok the way I am. And those seeds have taken root and grown until they’re out of control, like the weeds in the overgrown vacant lot in your neighborhood that lowers your property values and invites people from all over to dump their dirty old mattresses in the middle of the night.

I’ve got a lot of overgrown plants and dirty old mattresses piled up in my head. It’s going to take a lot of work to clean them out. But hey, you know, sometimes people take old vacant lots and turn them into beautiful parks and community gardens. So, I may have my doubts, but I have hope that it can be done with enough effort.

Progress = Therapy Honeymoon?

Despite very high levels of stress over the last two weeks, I've been doing quite well with eating. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've eaten to the point of uncomfortable fullness. And, for the most part, I have only eaten when I was hungry. After feeling largely out of control over the last few months, I've felt very much in control for the last two weeks.

And somehow, that's kind of scary. Scary because it feels familiar. Because in the first couple weeks and occasionally even the first couple of months, I was almost always the model dieter. It was always so easy in those dieting honeymoon days. All the weighing and measuring and recording and what have you seemed effortless then. Until it didn't. And then I gradually started drifting back into old habits until I was right back to square one.

So, is this more of the same? Will I find myself, three months from today, complaining about how hard things are? Or will I be well on my way to IE success? I'm hoping it's the latter and not the former. But we'll see. For now, I'll just take pleasure in what's going well and not worry about what's coming tomorrow.

Your Stomach's Not Bigger Just Because You're REALLY Hungry

That should be obvious, right? And yet, amazingly, it wasn't. Not to me. This week, a long, exhausting day of work and a chain of events that was out of my control caused me to go too long without eating and ending up really hungry. No, we're talking REALLY hungry. I mean STAR - VING. Like, if you got between me and the food, I might have been forced to take you out, hungry.

And so, being tired and famished, I went out to eat and assumed it was fine for me to eat an entire bacon cheeseburger and serving of fries. I mean, I'm running on fumes. So surely a burger and fries would be the perfect amount to eat. Right?

Well, as I found out, the answer was wrong. Amazingly, I discovered that it really doesn't take that much more food to be satisfied when you're REALLY hungry than it does when you're merely just hungry. After wolfing down my burger and fries like I'd been lost in the woods for weeks, I could not believe how stuffed I was. Like uncomfortably full for hours! It was mind boggling. What's even more amazing to me is how many times in my life I've stuffed down not only a big old burger and fries, but also a huge soda, dessert, and sometimes even an appetizer, to boot. I'm starting to wonder if, aside from when I was dieting and starving myself, I've ever eaten a meal that wasn't way too large! No wonder I have a weight problem.

Well, I guess I'm glad for the realization. I think it's a sign of progress. Though, I have to admit that it's sort of annoying to recognize how little food it takes to be satisfied. Kind of seems like it will make eating out far less fun. But, then again, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable isn't all that much fun, if I'm honest. And I think that more often than not, that's the way the evening ends when I eat out. So, okay, it is a good thing.