Changes are Happening

Affirmation: I go to bed at 10; I wake up at 6 rested and renewed

Slowly changes are happening. I am beginning to see them. In the way that I am not thinking about food so much. In the way that I am feeling satisfied with eating less. In the way that I choose for something fast and nutritious rather than sweet and salty for meals. In the way that there is more plate than food these days. Small changes, almost unnoticable to me muchless those around me. But they are hallmarks for permanent changes I think. Slowly these changes are becoming habit, a part of my daily, unthinking lifestyle. Something I can live with without fear of falling off the band wagon. (or diet wagon)

I am really seeing the benefit, for me at least to taking one small unhealthy habit and taking a whole month to work on replacing it with a healthy positive habit. Taking the whole 30 days to create a new habit. Not trying to make sweeping changes all at once. As I have looked back on my life, even though I gained almost 75 lbs inside the first 3 or 4 months of moving back home, I have also realized that many of these habits were solidly in place for years. I had been lucky that a relative busy and active job helped keep the lbs at bay; or rather on a slow increase. Moving home and being unemployed and underactive for a year just allowed those unhealthy habits to allow the weight to come on at an alarming accelerated rate. So the habits are really longstanding. War must be waged to change them. But separating them out one by one, looking at them individually, and giving myself a whole month (30 days to create a habit?) to incorporate them into my life. It is manageable. It also has helped me to see the truth in "it is not about food" in this journey. It is about a whole lifestyle.

It also breaks it down into manageable bits that are not overwhelming. I can commit to getting to bed at 10 and getting up at 6 for 30 days. By the end of that time, I am accustomed to it, it is not an effort, in fact I am all but falling asleep on my feet by 10 now-days. But what is overwhelming and what I have repeatedly been unable to do over my adult lifetime is make sweeping changes all at once; change eating choices, habits, portion sizes; add 1-2 hours of exercise a day; silence the internal negative talk; work on the emotional issues surrounding eating; cut out all "illegal" foods for the rest of my life; and hundreds of other life changing things.

I think that this thought process began to float to the top for me when I read the book "Portion Savvy" by Carrie Latt Wiatt. While this is not like most other diets, it still runs along the diet mentality for me, although I think she would disagree. But the light bulb for me was that she took a whole month to create change in your eating habits. The first week you concentrated on changing your breakfast and adding a bit of exercise, the second week lunch, more exercise, etc until the 4th week you put it all together. She concentrated on portion size rather than counting calories/carbs/fat, although she encouraged you to be aware of these in the foods you ate. So again it was more diet than what I ultimately know will work for me, but she was the first that I had read that stressed lifestyle change, taking time to create that change, and that it is something that has to permeate the rest of your life. What I took away from this was that you have to change habits, not just food choices.

And of course underlying all of this is the soul work of understanding how I use food to meet emotional needs. That is the toughest and most elusive for me. Many times I eat because I just plain like the taste of the food in my mouth. But as I call myself on it, I am also seeing that there is also an emotional element. But lately I have been realizing that it is also a deep seated habit. I'm bored; eat. I'm happy; eat. I'm successful; celebrate by eating. I'm tired; eat. It is autonomic, like the beating of my heart, the breathing of my lungs, the circulation of my blood. I don't think about it; I do it.

Habit:
1. A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.
2. An established disposition of the mind or character.
3. Customary manner or practice: a person of ascetic habits.
4. An addiction, especially to a narcotic drug.

It is habit, pure and simple. What started as a response of coping has now been transferred into habit as well. As I learn new coping techniques, I must also change the habits or they will continue even though I am no longer using them as coping mechanism's.

How do you break a habit? If it is unconscious, has become unconscious through frequent repetition, then the only way to break it is to become conscious. To become conscious. Isn't that why we eat, use drugs, escape? To become unconscious? Time to wake up. Become conscious. Change the habits. Become alive again

I am so tired of being locked inside all this weight. I do not want to live another moment of my life unconscious. You know it hurts all the same; using food to cope or just plain facing the stresses, pain, or what ever else is driving me to use food to cope. So just cope with life to begin with eh? Easier said than done. Easier, but not impossible. I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel...or the possibility that there really are numbers below 100 on the scale! Hope! Faith! They seem intertwined and dependent on each other.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

HOPE: To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.

FAITH: 1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence

I have hope that this is not a live sentence for me; being fat. Somedays I have faith also, other days I am not so sure. But I do know that years of hoping and not seeing it happen has made my heart sick (actually both physically and metaphorically). I have faith that this is something that can change. But I am not sure that this has been true before. I am not sure that I really believed that I could ever loose weight. I still struggle with it even now. I know that I gave up on loosing weight. I even know the time that I did. It was after reading "Fat is a Feminist Issue" by Suzie Orbach. I gave up, I lost hope that dieting would ever work. I still believe that dieting; diets will not work. But I also gave up on the whole thing, now I know that working on the underlying issues brings hope and change. Diets don't. They only deal with the symptom of overeating, not the underlying motivations and emotional issues.

Slow but sure; change is a fact of life. It is my choice to make that change a positive one. I have to be willing to do the work though. Finally I am.

Dodging the Too Much Turkey Trap

Affirmation: I go to sleep at 10 I awake at 6 feeling rested

Well I made it through Turkey day easily this year mainly because we didn't have a big feast. My brother and sister-in-law usually have Thanksgiving at their house with enough food to feed a small country. But she was not feeling well so her sister-in-law had the meal at her house and my mom and I stayed at home. Had a very quiet day and decided that neither of us wanted to make any kind of meal. So that was easy. It was such a relief to not have to fight that battle at this point right now. Slowly I am finding myself becoming just sick of dealing with food, food issues, and everything that goes around it. I am just ready to be on with it. Create the habits that I need to - let go of the destructive ones. And in ways that I don't really understand that is happening, slowly. It seems that the more I dwell on it, think about it, the more of an issue food becomes. But as I just concentrate on living my life, dealing with the problems, letting go of what I can't change and working with the things I can, filling my life up with God, art, and looking to the future, the eating and exercising just becomes a natural part of my life. Well right now the eating...Exercising is still NOT a naturally part.

I found out that I didn't qualify for the private health insurance, probably because of my weight. This means that I will be without health insurance come Thursday. What can I say? Nothing right now will change anything, so fretting over it will only cause an eating binge. I am not sure what it is God has in mind for me, but I have to believe that He is still in control of things. I have another possibility that I can check out with the state of IL. Will be doing that. Also redouble my job search for a permanent job with benefits. This is your life God, I give it to you, HELP! Teach me to continue to trust...in spite of all around me that seems to say doubt!

On another front, I am still trying to train my body to get to bed at 10. This 4 day holiday showed me that it will be requiring a diligent fight...it is still way too easy to stay up past 10. It is a productive time for me. But I know now that having enough sleep is a real gift and I feel so much better and able to cope. I may be revising the getting to bed by 10 to 10:30 and getting up at 6:30. I will evaluate that in January when I add exercise to the equation. But on the good side, when I do get to bed by 10 I am awake waiting for the alarm at 6. So it seems that a solid 8 hours is what my body requires. I am still committed to making that happen. I am so amazed at the difference in how I feel getting enough sleep. Who would have known something this simple would make such a difference?

Lessons Learned - Get to Sleep on Time

Affirmation: I go to sleep at 10; I awake at 6 feeling rested and rejuvenate

OK. So, I have learned a little lesson this weekend. I succumbed to the temptation to stay up late on Friday - getting sucked into the creative process and doing art way to late. That made me want to sleep in - even though my alarm went off at 6. I was up and about by 7, well just barely about. But again I stayed up late Saturday night and found it even more difficult to get up at 6 on Sunday - slept till 8. So I was groggy and drug out most of the day yesterday, resisted taking a nap; knowing that if I did I would not be ready for bed at 10. I still was not ready so didn't get to sleep until 11:30 (even though I was in bed by 10). Today I am so sleepy and drug out. Unfortunately the days of living on 4-5 hours of sleep or even 6 are gone for now...getting older sucks! But I have discovered that I feel so much better and am much more productive when I do get to bed by 10 and up by 6. So this week I will try to be more diligent to that end and do so on the weekends as well. I have also discovered that I really do not eat as much when I am not so tired. Last week went pretty well in the eating arena. It feels so good to choose to not eat when I am not hungry. To learn to listen to my body not only in terms of if I am hungry, but what it is that I am hungry for. And I am finding, more often than not, that I am hungry for more healthy foods, less fast foods, less sweets, less meat, and less salty. Maybe there is an end to this, maybe you can change. Paul says to press onward to the prize. Now I know that in this context that prize is salvation, but I think it can apply also to the journey to health. He talks about our body as the temple of the Holy Spirit; taking care of your body is important, it is part of the discipline for living a healthy life, the prize to press onward to is health. For me the underlying reason is to be more active and able to do what God has called me to do in this life. Not be hindered by lack of health, energy, stamina or controlled by the desire to over-eat or use food to soothe.

Breaking Habits One at a Time

Affirmation: I go to sleep at 10, I awake at 6 feeling rested and rejuvenated

I have been thinking a lot about habits. More specifically breaking out of them. During most of September and all of October I concentrated on an affirmation (I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am satisfied). It made a huge difference for me in determining when and if I should eat. It transformed how and when and what I eat, particularly snacks. It has been much easier to say no, simply because I am telling myself the truth about hunger. If I am not hungry, and I felt like eating and asked myself the question "am I hungry?" it made the next logical step easier; "what is this wanting to eat really about". Am I perfect on this? No. I still eat sometimes when I am not hungry, but now I know why. And most of the time I counter it with dealing with what is going on instead of eating.

As I have been thinking about how this changed me, I have also been thinking about how it happened. Namely that I was persistent with this affirmation, changing my behavior until it has become second nature to ask myself these questions; Am I hungry? Am I satisfied? If I am not hungry, what is really going on? It took a little over a month to really become part of my automatic lifestyle.

So, most say that it takes 30 days to break a habit and/or create a new one. I have read a lot about how much easier it is to break a habit if you replace it with a new one. Not sure that is always a good thing, guess it would depend on what you replace the old one with. But I have also been thinking about why diets fail and when change succeeds. I think that, for me at least, all diets have failed because there is too much change too soon. Your body, mind and emotions can't handle all that change at once. You get discouraged, you quit. This past year has been about making small changes one at a time. The changes that I have concentrated on one at a time until they became part of my life have stayed with me. The times I have tried to make sweeping changes all at once didn't last. So I am wondering if it is more beneficial to think about making one change, concentrate on it until it becomes habit and then go on to another. All the while keeping each habit a part of my life until it really becomes ingrained in my very being.

So thinking about this, I have been thinking about the things in my life that are keeping me from successes in this journey to health. The first that was glaring has been that I have been extremely tired and fatigued for a very long time. Doc says that there is no medical reason. So I looked closely at my sleep habits. Doh!! I am a night person so find it annoying to go to bed, but I also work in an early morning world. I had been averaging 4-5 hours of sleep a night, trying to get up early to exercise (failing miserably at it) and fighting sleep at work all day long. So at the beginning of November I decided to chuck everything around getting rest, exercise, pushing myself to get up early, etc and make a promise to get to bed by 10, set my alarm to go off at 6 and let myself wake up on it's own after that (by 7 at least to get to work on time). I also have given up Sunday as a day of rest and rejunivation. I do not do anything stressful, exercise, or work related on this day. If I feel like napping the day away I do. I try to make this a day of self-care and cocooning.

So far it has been amazing. It took about a week to get my body to stop at 10, but I still went to bed every night at that time. I am now able to fall asleep right away, sometimes even before if I am watching TV hehe. I sometimes am still having insomonia, waking in the middle of the night, but now I do not let myself get up and do things, I stay in bed. If I need to I listen to a relaxation tape. But that hasn't happened now for almost two weeks...I usually am able to do some deep breathing and get right back to sleep. Just this week I have been slowly waking up just before the alarm goes off and am usually out of bed by 6:15. And best of all I am feeling human and energized most of the day. I am no longer feeling like I am walking through mud, unless I do not get to bed before 10. I would never have believed that getting 8 hours of sleep would have made such a difference, I have always been able to function on 5-6 hours a night, even less. But I just can't believe the difference. I am finding that I don't feel like eating as much either. I think that I ate when I was sleepy in an effort to stay awake.

SO...I plan to finish off the month with concentrating on getting to bed at 10 and letting the alarm go off at 6 and getting out of bed when I feel awake, but by 7 for sure. Next month I will continue this, but get out of bed at 6. In January I plan to add exercise in the morning. I felt that before I added exercise I needed to create a healthy sleep pattern and make sure that I was rested. As it was, when I would exercise I would feel worse, more drug out than energized. Who would have thought something as simple as getting more sleep would change my whole world? And would anyone have thought that getting enough sleep would help you not eat? Well maybe some would, but I sure didn't.

I am going to continue this throughout the new year. I may even plan out the whole year from the beginning...but then again it may be better to take each month as it comes seeing what area needs to change. But I know that taking one step at a time fills me with hope and feels like it has taken a lot of pressure to change everything all at once. Maybe as some of the "biggies" of habits change I can do more than one a month, but I am not planning on it. I know that this means that the visual results (meaning actual poundage lost) may not be as fast as I would like, but I truly believe that the changes will be much more permanent.

I wonder once I get some of the big "physical changes" made into habits: (in no particular order)

1. eat when I am hungry; stop when I am full
2. get to be by 10 pm
3. get up and out of bed by 6 am
4. exercise 20 minutes 6 mornings a week
5. do evening yoga tape 6 evenings a week
6. keep a food log again for a whole year
7. eat only healthy choices (this may evolve into more specifics later)
8. stop junk food all together - including eating on the run
9. eat a healthy breakfast every morning (not MacD's)
10. add weight training into the mix
11. choose salads (ditch the extras that have NaCl & fat)for the nights of having to eat out
12. Pray and visualize and journal every day about this journey

I wonder if I can also work on some of the emotional aspects too. Replace them with healthy habits. This would be

1. affirmations,
2. replacing negative thinking with positive thinking (getting rid of the negative tapes)
3. doing the bible study on who I am in God...what God really thinks of me
4. a word study on food in the Bible
5. replacing self deprecation and criticism with positives
6. finally doing the time line of my life to see the weight issue in context and see the truths

Ok I am not sure what else needs to be on that list, but I am sure as I work through this year it will become apparent to me.

Feeling Emotions - Not Eating Them

Affirmation: I choose the outcome by the choices I make

In group Wednesday night we talked about core values. I shared a breakthrough I had the previous week that I talked about on one of my other blogs. In this entry I spoke about the revelation I had in the way that I sometimes use busy-ness and business to replace relationships, the breakthrough that related to food was just as mindboggling for me. That being that I allowed myself to feel the flood of emotions I felt when my friend had to cancel out on a meeting at the last minute, for the second time in a row. Normally I would just brush it off, stuff it down - and eat. This time, by making the choice to ask what the lesson was in this, it seemed to diffuse my emotions enough to not only see the lesson, but focus and feel the emotions - the actual emotions. Hurt feelings, rejection, fear, desire to withdraw and close myself off from people, pain, sadness. But feeling them brought me through them. Helped me to process the whole situation and see and believe that it wasn't about being rejected, it really was about her being busy.

When something like this happens, I immediately go to the place that I am being rejected; which brings up all kinds of emotions that I don't want to feel, but actually believe about myself, at least on some level. Inadequacy, less than, not good enough, outcast, different, unloveable, undeserving, difficult, talks too much, unlikable. Yes these are descriptive, but in a way they are also emotions. Well they bring out emotions like sadness, fear, self-hate, insecurity.

I have been avoiding feeling these emotions for years. Although I know they are there, feeling them is another story. Sometimes I fear that if I let the dam open and feel these emotions I will be destroyed in the rush of feeling them. But in actuality, I think that even if you don't allow yourself to feel them, your body still takes the toll and deals with them one way or another. For me that is eating. Stuffing down the emotion. I have often wondered why I can't stop when I am satisfied (although getting much better at that) instead of stopping when I am uncomfortably full. Could it be that the resulting too-full pain in my gut, my body distracts me from the pain in my heart? Exactly! (this is what I love about journaling...the answers are always within reach if you just take the time to ask and listen!) I no longer have to feel the emotion or think about that pain. I can feel a much safer and more familiar pain - that of a too full gut. While that is no less comfortable, it must be much less threatening for me.

So, in light of that little revelation in group, that processing emotion can circumvent a binnge or even just eating, that it is important to feel the emotions so that you can process them, I have been trying to feel the emotions coming up in my life the past few days. Can I say filled up and brimming over. Too much too soon but also like a watershed. I am feeling on the verge of tears most of the time and then on the verge of hysterical laughter. Now, I know that this sounds like I am manic/depressive, I am not. I am also in a good place with this, for the first time in a long time. Just allowing myself to feel, both joy and sadness, anger and everything that goes into a normal day for most people is bringing freedom in eating. When you begin to shield yourself from pain, I think that for some reason your body eventually also shields yourself from joy and laughter and the less painful emotions. So while I have been feeling sad to the point of tears, I have also been laughing a lot too - out loud - at the silliest things.

It feels good. I am not sure the people around me will survive this phase of my journey, but I think I am...and coming out the other side will be worth it.

Understanding Who I am

Affirmation: I am a treasured child of the most high God

Somewhere since last week I have sensed an inward shift. A slight loosening of the bonds that tie me to food. Last night while I was eating supper, I became full, got up and scraped the rest of my salad in the garbage and quit eating. My mom pointed out to me that I had been doing this more and more frequently...fixing more food than I can eat and throwing it out because I was full. Now I need to point out, I am making my normal portions. I hadn't noticed, but I am getting satisfied on less, and it is getting easier to throw out what is left over with out feeling guilt about being wasteful. And this has been unconscious on my part. Not till mom pointed it out to me did I notice. This is huge for me. All the earlier work about eating only when I am hungry, stopping when I am satisfied, the question asking each time I wanted to eat, the saying over and over of the affirmation: "I eat when I am hungry, I stop when I am satisfied". It is beginning to be a truth for me - finally. Now, do I think that there is magic in saying affirmation and answering question? Do I think it will work for everyone, or even anyone else? I don't know. What it did for me was to make me aware of hunger and satiety or satisfaction. I just looked up the word satiety and discovered that it means full beyond the point of satisfaction, unable to take any more. That is not what I thought it meant. So the word I am looking for is satisfaction/satisfied. Being full to the point of satisfaction, but not overly full. This has helped me identify when I was actually physicall hungry or when I was wanting to use food for another reason.

I am also finding that I am not thinking about food so much. I am finding it easier to change this lifestyle away from food obsession by not transferring it into an obsession about making healthy choices, planning meals, etc. As I have been living this lifestyle for over a year now, I am finding a stride in things like grocery shopping. I am finding that I buy the same things at the grocery, I actually eat similar things day after day. I love to cook, but I have found that the less time in the kitchen the better for me. And I have found that I don't miss the flurry of cooking everyday. I keep the saying: "Eat foods as close to the way God made them" close at hand as I choose my meals. Salads, soups, whole grains and cereals, fruit and vegs. Pretty much the same every week. I find that as I have done this I have begun to eat more seasonally too. More simply. Simplicity. Something I have been craving and battleing for in most areas of my life. I do scour the grocery for the few healthy "fast cook" options. Some of the Far East boxed foods, some of the canned soups, pre-washed and cut vegs for nibbling...many of the fast cook things are high in sodium so that is out for me, but I have discovered a way for some of the oriental noodley things to be incorporated. Make 2 meals out of one by adding frozen vegs while you cook the noodles. I usually add some black beans or soybeans to pump up the protien too. Makes a good fast lunch or dinner. I have realized that I need a few things around that are fast and microwaveable dinners. Some nights I don't feel like cooking and having fast available helps to not choose delivery options...Also some nights I just need to not be in the kitchen, even cooking a healthy meal will trigger overeating...those nights it is important to be in and out of the kitchen as quickly as possible. So creating a safe kitchen, with good options, ways to keep me from handling food too often...this seems to be helping.

I am feeling that I am changing the way that I am feeling and believing about myself as well. I have been studying about what God thinks of us, how he thinks of us. It is really rocking my world. There is so much more references in the Bible about how precious we are to God than there are references to his wrath and anger and condemnation. Begining to understand who I am to God has totally broken open my heart and has had a huge impact on this whole area of my life - well my whole life. I am not sure that I can put it into words yet exactly. But it has really begun to free me to love myself, accept myself, and revel in the freedom that brings. God loves me just as I am. He created me...he knew the battles I would face in this life because of the choices I make daily. But he loves me anyway. He totally accepts me, without reservation or condemnation. Not only that, but he has plans for me, plans for a hope and a future, plans to prosper me and not harm me. This is quite freeing and amazing to me

Breaking out of the Ruts

Affirmation: Change happens one choice at a time

There is this blog I read regularly; A Life in Whales. She has a picture on it that I just love. Her photography is amazing. When I saw this particular picture it mesmerized me. I seemed that this was a physical portrayal of the result of habits in my life; particularly around food. Now the "ruts" in this picture - or are they gorges or valleys? It's hard to tell scale from the picture. I choose to think of them as deep gorges. Anyway the ruts are cut deep, well worn over years of water runoff. There is even grass grown over them, not raw mud as if new. But time worn, grass, beautiful grass has grown over the ruts, softening the scaring of the earth by the water runoff. If you were walking in one of these ruts you would naturally just follow the course that the water had taken when it formed the rut. You wouldn't see much besides what was in the rut. You could see what is ahead, what was behind, and the walls of the rut, but it all looks pretty much the same. It also looks to me to be some slow going, lots of things to stumble over. Or you could choose to climb out of the rut. That would take some doing. Expend a lot of energy climbing out. You can't see what is outside of the rut, so you would be taking a chance that life would be any different outside the rut. But IF you took the chance, made the effort, look at what it above the rut! Expansive spaces, beautiful scenery, more choices, more directions to choose to go. And seems that the traveling might be a bit smoother, if not still uphill.

That is what I think breaking out of lifelong habits must be like. Stuck in a rut, stumbling, everything seems the same, feels like there is no choice to make but the one you made before. Climbing out of the habit, takes incredible work, perseverance, and determination. But the effort is so worth it, isn't it?

Candy, Candy, Everywhere!!

Affirmation: I choose the outcome by the choices I make

EVERYONE had leftover candy sitting around in the office today and yesterday!! I did pretty good pre-halloween, but yesterday and today not so much. And the worst part about it is that once I eat too much sugar, the craving starts all over again. But I have to say I have done better this year than any other year, so there is progress. I am posting a piece I did in my sketchbook for AEM - Art everyday Month created by Kat...you create a piece of art everyday for the month of November. Tonight the battle/journey I have been on came out in the piece I did for my art journal. The quote is by George Lucas; "You have to find something that you love enough to be abel to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you" I added at the bottom; "that something ahs to be me!"

It has been a long week, I am tired so I am going off to bed. Seems I do better with maintaining focus if I get enough sleep. But I so hate going to bed at night. Wish I could figure out how to live on no sleep...more time to create.