Affirmation: I choose the outcome by the choices I make
A frustrating week. This is going to be a post of rants and ramblings. Many thought swirling in my head and I just need to write to get them out. You are warned...cohesion, coherency, or shoot, can't think of another "c" word...anyway...this post may ramble.
My COBRA insurance is running out. I am temping. So I have to find private health insurance. Do you know what that is like for a 290 lb almost 50 year old female? Ya...I am tired of the insurance agents stumbling, mumbling that I can't get insured because of um well you know, your height and weight don't match. What...am I suppose to not KNOW I am fat??? Hey I have a mirror. You are not letting out the national secrets by saying I am denied because of excess weight. Ok, I know that many people are sensitive about the issue. But at some time do you ever think that the world will come to terms that most of the population (well at least in the US) are obese. It is only the women (and men to a lesser extent) in the mags or on the screens that are thin, no emaciated. Balance...what happened to balance??? Where is Ruben when you need him? But out of curiosity I asked the last insurance agent what my weight (for my height) would need to be to be insurable. He told me the range would be 130 - 140. Now this may be reasonable...but I haven't been there since high school. I am not sure I will ever be there again. The goal weight my doctor and I set is more like somewhere between 170 - 180. Well he said he would be happy with anything just under 200. According to him loosing the almost 100 lbs would be fantastic, get me off my b/p meds and make him a happy puppy. So by these standards I will never get insured. How is that fair when someone who is skinny, smoking one or two packs a day gets insured with out a problem? Ok...much of this post is in the vein of sarcasm, I know and to an extent understand the whole insurance guidelines thing...but it still just isn't right!
Phew! Now that that is off my chest, on to other things. This week has been one of enlightenment and lightbulb moments for me. The biggest one I wrote about earlier. That being of it being down to breaking old habits and creating new habits. Sometimes, after all the insight is seen and received all that is left is the work. Knowing the why is very important, but in the end, the work is still left. Only knowing why you use food will not automatically guarantee you becoming healthy and fit. BUT it will help you to understand and see the habits, and as they say, seeing is believing. Now if I can get this knowledge to motivate me to do the work. It still remains that the work of it is still as hard as the soul work, the emotional excavations...maybe harder...because all excuses are removed and you stand naked and transparent before yourself an excuse or reason to blameshift. If I choose not to exercise, or to eat ribs and fries smothered in bar-b-que sauce, or even binge on something healthy, I do it in full knowledge that it is me choosing to do this...with full knowledge that it may still be motivated by emotional baggage, but it is still my choice and choosing that choice allows me to remain in the prison of fat I am in now. So the question remains: Do I want to change more that I want to remain the same? Do I want health more than I want to use food as a crutch? What do I really want more? Of course I say I want change...but my actions belie that point.
I am not beating up on myself. I am trying to sort through all the thoughts, trying to see where I am at this point. It has been a year since I have begun this journey to health that has not been motivated by the diet mentality, but motivated to look at what lies beneath my actions and choices...to see how and why I use food. It has not been easy, certainly it has been enlightening. But I think that the biggest light bulb moment is that by doing this I have removed all excuses to remain this way. By "this way", I don't just mean fat. I mean using food to comfort, distract, soothe, celebrate, be companionship, all the things I have used food for. Now I know, I know 2 things: that I have been using food to meet needs beyond nutritional and that knowing this no longer gives me entre' the world of excuse making anymore. No longer can I say I am fat because...... Now I know I am fat because I am choosing to eat, make unhealthy choices, and choosing to not exercise. In a way this is freeing. In the past I have felt so out of control, I didn't really know or understand why I did the things I did. I most of the time felt like I didn't have control of my choices. Which was extremely disconcerting to me as in every other area of my life I did. In fact it is one of the creeds I live by...take responsibility for my choices. If things go wrong, don't blame others, look and learn from it, make better choices next time. But in the area of food and weight, not so much.
Another light bulb moment (well this was maybe a fluorescent light bulb...it has been flickering on in my brain for months now) is that I have to find a way to meld my seriously busy lifestyle with eating healthy foods fast. Much of the time I have to eat out or on the run. Eating out does not mean restaurant eating - too expensive and too much time - it means literally eating on the run, in the car, on the way from work to evening meetings. I don't have answers to this yet. I have not successfully figured out how to do this when I HATE packing lunches. I am never that organized in the mornings and usually too tired at night when I get home. Now the obvious would be to slow down. But I love what I am doing right now so that is not an option, although for a while it will be a bit slower than it has been the past 6 weeks. But my life has always been one of going 90 miles into the wind...don't think that will change much now. I know that there is an answer, I just need to take some time this weekend and realistically think about ways to do this. Again I think that it will need to be a mind shift about how much and what kind of food I need through the day. One of the habits I am seeing that I need to break is how much I need to eat. I am not eating all that I plan for each day. But if I don't plan and bring "enough" I get those fear feelings that I am going to starve by the end of the day. How annoying is that??? See feelings are not rational! But you have to get them out of the head to see that.
So I think that this weekend I will spend some time brainstorming. I may take a walk around the grocery store and see with new eyes what the healthy choices are that are also "fast foods" kinds of things. One thing comes to mind...you can get baby carrots individually packaged in serving sizes. Now I could do that myself with a whole big bag and zip lock snack size bags. But the truth is for me that I haven't. I don't want to take the time, but more important I have realized that handling food (ie cooking, food prep, etc) is an eating trigger for me. So I try not to do that as much as possible. I need to do what I can to choose healthy things that don't need a lot of prep or can be made once and last for a few days to be eaten over the span of a few days.
Gotta run...gotta start this day
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