The Source of the Fear

Some time ago I had a bit of an epiphany, one that has really made a difference in my way of thinking (except for those days that I forget to remember it). At the time, I was listening to a lecture in which the speaker pointed out that it is crazy that we as a society judge the worth of a person by what they look like on the outside. The more I thought about that, the more I realized how true that is. Why does how much I weigh or how attractive I am have anything to do with who I am or how worthy of love I am? It doesn't really, but if I spend my life thinking that it is true, then I live in constant fear--fear of what other people think of me, fear of being too fat for people to like me, fear of gaining weight when I am thin, fear of never being able to lose weight when I am not thin, fear that I will never be worthy of love. But the truth is, that is all in my mind. Now don't get me wrong. These beliefs are a big deal and can create walls and limit the progress of anybody who gets stuck believing those things. But they are all in our mind; they're not real.

After listening to that lecture, I pondered on it for some time. I realized that my whole life, every choice I make, is based on fear of something. I wanted to be done living in fear and doing everything I do only because I'm afraid of what other people will think of me if I don't or because I feel obligated to do it. And I wanted to be done beating myself up because my body is not perfect.

So I imagined myself living in a vacuum where nobody else existed besides me--there was nobody around to judge me or to give me reason to worry or fear. And what I was able to see in that space was a completely different me than I normally see. Instead of noticing every blemish and flaw that I am constantly fearing will cause others to look down on me, I saw an absolutely amazing, miraculous body that does miraculous things. Instead of being frustrated and disgusted because of the stretch marks on my abdomen, I felt tremendous gratitude for this amazing body that grew four perfect little people inside of it and was able to stretch to accommodate each rapidly growing life! Instead of seeing love handles or the muffin top that are typically a source of ongoing stress and embarrassment for me, I saw a beautiful body, full of life and health, that has supported me all these years with only minor ailments and injuries in all that time.

I realized that all of the negativity that I feel for my body and thus for myself is a direct result of my fear or belief of what others might be thinking of me. And the kicker is that no matter what anybody thinks of me, it has nothing to do with me. It does not in any way affect my worth or my value or my beauty. I am a child of God and thus am a being of infinite worth and beauty and potential. Nothing they say or do or think will change that. Furthermore, I would venture to guess that 9 times out of 10, nobody is thinking the things I am worrying that they are thinking. As I said before, it is all in my head.

So what can I take from this experience? The next time I catch myself trying to camouflage the size of my belly or worrying about what somebody will think if I haven't lost more weight before I see them again, I'm going to stop and return to that vacuum momentarily and allow myself to feel love and amazement and gratitude for this miracle of a body that I have been blessed with. I am going to give myself a hug and tell myself how wonderful and awesome and beautiful I am. And I'm going to acknowledge to myself that I'm doing a good job in this life.

My Scale Broke

Early last week my scale stopped working. This has caused some interesting and unexpected emotions in me. I mentioned in a previous blog post how surprisingly helpful weighing myself every day has turned out to be, but I guess I didn't realize until now how much it is holding me accountable. Since my scale broke, I have felt a lot less concern about what I eat or when I eat or how much I eat because I knew there would be no accountability the next morning at weigh-in time since there wouldn't be any weigh-in time. I'm hoping one day to get to a place where my motivation for making good choices is entirely instrinsic, but for now I'm suddenly seeing the value of weighing myself every day. As a result, part of me feels the need to rush out and buy a new scale immediately; and part of me wants to hold off in case I've done a lot of damage this week so that I have a chance to remedy that before having to step on a scale again. One way or another, I will definitely be buying a new scale soon so that I have that continuing accountability and feedback, and so there are no excuses to start getting lazy in my habits. Hopefully when I weigh myself for the first time on that new scale, whether it be in 2 days or 2 weeks, the feedback on how I've spent my time in the interim will be positive.

6-Week Update

I have now completed 6 weeks of regular exercise and healthy eating. Hooray for me! I have been seeing some good things happening. The weight is coming off; I'm out of the habit of late-night binges or treats; I'm no longer craving many of the treats I used to want daily; and I drove by a restaurant the other day that I used to stop at several times a week and realized that it has been a really long time since I've been there. My habits are changing for the better. 

But despite the fact that I'm seeing progress--or perhaps because of it--I have been feeling less motivated lately to make good choices as far as lifestyle is concerned. I've been going to bed late, only doing partial workouts some days, and not being quite as careful about what I eat. I have thankfully established some pretty good patterns by now that are keeping me from straying too far from the path, so the end result is that I'm still working out, but I'm so exhausted that I feel like a zombie most of the time; I have no energy because I'm so tired; and I'm not happy. It's really hard for me to feel joy when all I'm trying to do is get through the day so I can finally go to bed.

This type of thing always happens to me when I start into a new workout plan, but usually it hits sooner. This time I feel like I'm handling things a little better because I have actually been able to see some progress and because the exercising and eating better have become habits. I know that won't work for long, though, if I don't get back to a place of enjoying what I am doing. Here is another one of those times when I need to address the emotional side of things. Why am I losing motivation? What about being healthy feels unsafe or scary? If I want to reach my optimal level of health, I cannot ignore these questions. I must address them as I go so that when I finally get to a point of great physical health, I will be able to easily maintain it because the rest of me will be healthy as well.

January's Results Are In!

This month has had a lot of ups and downs for me. And while I was not very good about posting regularly, and it may even have seemed that I had given up completely after my last pathetic post written on a very down day, I didn't. I kept going, never letting a day go by without exercising (except for rest days, of course, which are a very important part of any exercise program). And I did surprisingly well with my nutrition to the tune of 5 lbs. lost over the month! Yes, you read that right. I lost 5 lbs. in January! And I'm even happier to report that I shrunk 1.5 inches around my waist! So while I definitely had my setbacks over the course of the month and felt some days like for every step forward I was moving 2 steps backward, the persistence paid off. What a great lesson for me this has been. In the past I have gotten discouraged after 2 or 3 weeks when it didn't appear that I was making any progress, and with the discouragement came a huge hit to my motivation to the point that I stopped exercising or eating right or both. So what has made the difference this time? Well, I think there are a lot of factors involved, but here are just a few things I have recognized as making a difference this time around.

1) Weighing myself every day. I have always been strongly against this in the past because people tend to get too emotionally attached to the number on the scale. But what I found with myself is that weighing every day has actually helped me to decrease my emotional attachment to that number. Instead it serves to provide me with information about what/how/when I ate the previous day, and I no longer fear what number might appear when I step on that scale each morning.

2) Eating 3 meals a day with no snacking in between. I know this seems counter-intuitive because of what every personal trainer out there seems to be teaching, but this has helped me tremendously. I don't think we realize how many calories we are actually consuming in those in-between-meal snacks. Even though I definitely eat bigger meals now, my total caloric intake is lower, and my weight is dropping as a result.

3) A strong support system. Notice the word "strong." I love my twin sister dearly, and we have made dozens of goals together in the past several years. But despite how much we love each other, I would not necessarily say that we have been a strong support for each other--until now, that is. This time we have stopped having binges together when one of us is down, and we have set up small reward systems to help motivate us to keep going. We share our triumphs and setbacks with each other on a regular basis. I'm sure I would not have made it this far without my sis. So thank you, dear Sis.

4)Reviewing my goals. While I have set a million and one goals in the past, I often completely forget about them within a few weeks. But this time I have been reviewing them every single day, deciding what I can do each day to progress toward each goal, and finding small ways to reward myself every time I make a little bit of progress.

I can't say this is the formula for everybody out there, but for me these have made the difference. Will it make a permanent difference? I can't answer that yet, but I can say that I am optimistic about my future.