Different Choices New Changes

28 Days - I Did It!!

2008-09-12T00:39:00.006-05:00

I did it! I have kept the food journal for 28 days. I can’t believe how fast the time went. And I can’t believe how much I hated keeping the journal. But I did find out a few things, and some were surprising.

I discovered I don’t eat as much as I think I did, but I do snack as much as I think I did. Mostly late at night while watching TV. Darn those commercials. Also late at night it is the most difficult time for me to manage the pain. It seems that night time makes things seem worse. Maybe because it is so quiet, everyone else is asleep, and it is just you and the pain demons. I can’t really get up and move around because I don’t want to wake up mom. So I lay in bed watching TV – and those darn commercials. Even though I know that the food they are showing don’t even come close to looking or tasting like the real thing!! Darn those food stylists!

So the solution for that is to save my netflix movies for later at night when I can’t sleep…no commercials. And, if I really can’t get to sleep to get up and write or journal at my desk (when I can sit long enough). But the netflix rentals are the best so far. I am in the middle of a wonderful TV series from Australia called “McLeod’s Daughters” What a wonderful series…makes me want to saddle up and take off for the Aussie Outback…only problem I am terrified of horses – ever since one took off across a field when I was about 10 years old…my first time on one of those beasts at a riding farm. But still….how much fun to be outdoors all day, and all that wonderful scenery…chaps, cowboy hats, cowboy boots…have you ever noticed that cowboys just walk more sexy than city guys??? Oh yeah, the nature scenery is amazing too.

Another thing I noticed is that when I don’t eat breakfast I fight hunger and munchies all day. Solution: Get out of bed early enough to eat breakfast! DOH!!

One of the surprising things I discovered is that as I am becoming better at stopping when I am satiated instead of overly full I am finding it a weird sensation to deal with. I am not hungry, but it is hard to not want to eat more because I don’t have that feeling, that kind of pain that tells you that you have absolutely eaten enough…you are miserable. I like that feeling of not hurting from eating so much, but it is a new feeling that I need to get used to. Kinda like letting go of an old friend and getting acquainted with a new one. I am not explaining it well, but it is there. And I want to get used to this. A new kind of normal. Just gotta keep up that inner dialogue telling myself that this is normal and good.

Now food journaling….I hate it. I always feel like someone is sitting on my shoulder and is going to grade me or judge me by what I am or am not eating. I struggle with not censoring my entries, wanting it to be right. I only show my journal to myself, and I really don’t pass judgment on what I eat anymore. I use the journaling as a way to reinforce good choices and change destructive choices. But just the act of writing it down feels like I am showing it to someone who will criticize what I eat. But I am going to keep up the journaling for a bit more. It has been good to be accountable to myself. And I find that I am much more selective in what I eat, especially when I munch. I don’t eat as much during the munching/snacking than when I am not journaling. I also find that it is easier to recognize when I am satisfied and stop.

Progress. New discoveries. That is what it is all about. Learning to eat in the real world, real life food, not diet food, not giving up things I like. It is about learning to eat to feed my body and my soul. It has taken many years, but slowly it is happening I think. And it feels good. I may not ever loose the amount of weight of my dreams, but it is wonderful to be feeling that I am progressing on the journey to making peace with food and with my body…as it is, where I am at.

Monday Menus

2008-09-07T23:55:00.006-05:00

MONDAY

LUNCH:
Tuna and crackers
Grapes

DINNER:
Tomato Sauced Pork Chops in Crockpot
Rice
Salad
Bread

TUESDAY

LUNCH
Greekish Orzo Tomato Salad

DINNER
Leftovers

WEDNESDAY

LUNCH
Leftover Orzo Salad

SUPPER
Layered Steak in crockpot
Salad
Bread

THURSDAY

LUNCH
falafel

Fixins

SUPPER
Crock pot Bar-b-qued Shrimp
Salad
Bread

FRIDAY

LUNCH
leftover falafel

SUPPER
Hosin Chicken
Vegs
Rice

SATURDAY

LUNCH
leftovers

SUPPER
mahi mahi w/ Aspargus, Broccioli, & Spinach in crock pot
Couscous

SUNDAY

LUNCH
tuna and crackers

SUPPER
cool cucumber noodle salad

Wednesday Web Finds: A Veggie Venture

2008-09-03T12:55:00.000-05:00

Affirmation:
I choose to view this journey to health not as a diet but as an opportunity to grow in knowledge and trust of God

On Wednesdays, more or less I want to share food and health related websites that I like or have found helpful for me. Today’s website is A Veggie Venture. I love Alanna’s recipes. I don’t think that any recipe I have tried of hers has not worked for me. This website, chocked full of veggie recipes is a go to website for inspiration for meals.

Alanna is a second generation food columnist, following in the footsteps of her mother. She also continues the food column her mother started called Kitchen Parade. Check it out too, lots of good recipes and information. My favorites are the ones on how to save money on groceries.

Alanna also includes WW information with her recipes and has several zero points soups in her recipe database. Those of you following the WW plan will love this website and mine a bunch of great tasting recipes there.

Make sure to read her about me section. She is one fascinating woman. This bog is a bookmarker for sure; one you will return to frequently. Also you can subscribe to receive her daily posts via email…which of course I do.
Thanks Alanna for such fun and yummy recipes and information and your dedication to share with all of us so generously.

Tuesday Tips, Traps, and Truths: Food Journaling

2008-09-02T10:12:00.003-05:00

Affirmation:
I choose to view this journey to health not as a diet but as an opportunity to grow in knowledge and trust of God

A friend sent me this article about food journaling. Since I am in the middle of a personal challenge to keep a food journal for 28 days I thought this would be a great article to share. Personally I still hate keeping a record of all I eat. Even though I keep the journal with in reach, I still forget to record things, I still play games with myself about not putting every single bite down, (like someone is reading over my shoulder???), and I just find it a nuisance.

But on the positive side, I do find myself more aware of how much I eat for other reasons than hunger. It does point out patterns to me that help me to change. I think the most important is that it help me to see that sometimes I get lazy with my food choices and choose easy rather than healthy.

Journaling can be as simple as just writing down the food you eat each day or as complicated as measuring, tracking cal/fat/carb/etc for everything you put into your mouth, and some even take pictures of what is on your plate.

For me the least complicated is the best. I have tried several ways of journaling and tracking my food. The simple writing down of your eating was by far the easiest. But there came a time that I needed to record and remember more about why and when I was eating so that I could look back periodically to see patterns and habits and find ways to break them.

That is why I wrote my own journal. It combines just listing what you eat at each meal and adding a few one – two word observations about what is happening with me and what my triggers to eat are. It is working for me now and has in the past. But I have to be careful that it doesn’t trigger that “diet mentality” in me which sends me spiraling into an eating frenzy out of rebellion. No not a binge, just days of eating what I want, when I want, and how much I want.

I usually don’t keep my journal for more that a month. I usually try to keep one about every 6 months or so. Or if I am feeling like I am using food for more than just fuel. Just as a check to see how I am doing. Sometimes it only takes a week or so to help me see where I am and get back to a better place. But the thing about doing it for a month is that it takes you beyond the “good behavior” phase of keeping a journal. You always do good that first week!
How about you, do you journal? What kind of journal do you keep? Is it working for you?

What's for Supper

2008-09-01T19:04:00.015-05:00

This was unbelievably good! Unfortunately the beans were the last of my crop and were tough as shoe leather. Maybe if I would have zapped steamed them a bit in the microwave it may have helped, but I doubt it. I followed Stephanie’s (over at A Year of CrockPotting) recipe as she wrote it. I cooked it in my mini pot – think it is about 1 ½ quarts – and it doesn’t have settings. It cooked in 2 ½ hours and could have come out a bit sooner. I used oranges for the citrus and sliced one up and put it on top of the beans, laid the salmon over it and then placed more slices over the top of the salmon. The sauce is so good, next time I won’t let mom talk me out of cooking rice or couscous to soak it up with. This one is a keeper!

Monday Menus

2008-09-01T02:38:00.005-05:00

On Mondays I am going to try to post my menu for the week. I am trying something new this month in an effort to save money at the grocery and to keep unwanted foods out of the house. It seems the more I go to the grocery, the more unwanted food I buy....and eat. Also with my back problems grocery shopping is a real challenge, so I want to do it as little as possible.

For breakfasts I usually have a bagel and low fat cream cheese and coffee, an egg with a piece of whole grain toast, or a slice of whole grain toast with some peanut butter on it. Add a cup of coffee and depending on how hungry I am in the mornings a piece of fruit. In the winter I have hot oatmeal frequently too. What can I say, I am a creature of habit. Also not too awake in the mornings and usually starved, so it is better to keep breakfasts simple and quick.
I use the Internet a lot to find recipes. This next month I am trying out planning a lot of CrockPot recipes. I am in a mood again where I don't want to cook or mess with food. Also by the end of the day I never seem to want to fix dinner anymore. So putting on the CrockPot in the mornings when I have more energy makes sense.

I will link back to the food blog or website where I got the recipe. Most likely I will change it or tweak it to make it healthier, fit what I have on hand or like, or just because. I will try to post my version of the recipe along with pictures and a review of how it tastes daily, or not, depending on the demands of the day.

MONDAY
Lunch: Chicken salad & crackers Peach
Dinner: Salmon & Green Beans

TUESAY
Lunch: Beef & roasted red pepper wrap Fruit
Dinner: Chicken Crock Pot Nachos Tortilla Chips - baked

WEDNESDAY
Lunch: Chicken & Roasted red pepper wrap Fruit
Dinner: Chinese Lemon Chicken in Crock Pot Vegies or salad

THURSDAY
Lunch: Chicken Salad & crackers Fruit
Dinner: Leftover Lemon Chicken

FRIDAY
Lunch: Beef & Roasted red pepper wrap Fruit
Dinner: Steak, baked potato, corn on cob

SATURDAY
Lunch: Chicken Wraps Fruit
Dinner: Chicken Teriyaki Wings Salad

SUNDAY
Lunch: Tuna & Crackers Fruit
Dinner: Leftover Chicken Teriyaki Salad

Sunday Summations

2008-08-31T23:25:00.003-05:00

Affirmation:
I choose to view this journey to health not as a diet but as an opportunity to grow in knowledge and trust of God

Sundays are when I look back over the past week and summarize the information I kept in my food journal and analyze and look for patterns and cues that I can work on or ways to create change.

Last week I almost always ate when I was hungry and my hunger lever was well below the ½ way mark. My mood was pretty good all week, I didn’t find myself eating out of emotions.

I have noticed that the difficult days correspond with days I have greater pain than other days. Maybe it is a way of self soothing or a way of distracting myself from the pain. Not sure, but also on the days I have more pain I am less able to work on anything and am in bed or on the couch and watch more TV or read, both of which can be triggers for me.

Exercise was non-existent except for the set given to my by the PT. But last week even those didn’t get done regularly. Too much pain this past week, gave me an excuse not to do them. Even though I do know that not doing them sets me up for stiffness and more pain.

My negative self talk was the “I’m hungry” check, hoping I am hungry enough to justify eating. But my positive self talk was to ask if that was truth, if I was really hungry enough that I NEEDED to eat. Particularly at night, I would ask and or talk myself into seeing if I could wait until morning.

I did struggle a lot with munchies this week. I know that is because I didn’t really plan or stick to a menu and ate kind of haphazardly. Many of my meals were not satisfying, although I was full. It left me with cravings more than hunger. Next week I have planned a menu that should take care of that.
I did find myself less hungry and getting full faster, which meant eating less at meals That is good. I think it will help to remember to use smaller plates to help keep portion sizes at a normal size.

Not One of my Better Days

2008-08-19T23:25:00.008-05:00

Today wasn’t a very good day for food or pain. I spent much of the day in bed laying on ice and drugged out by the pain pills. I needed to run out to get gas and mom wanted some pop so I ended up buying us pop, potato chips and dip and a candy bar. Ugh….

The meals went well today, and mostly I at the chips and dip and the candy bar as part of lunch,, but I did snack on a few handfuls of chips here and there through out the afternoon.

I have noticed a direct connection with giving myself permission for a food treat when the pain level gets too high for too many days in a row. Yes, I know the food doesn’t ease the pain, and yes I know that in the long run it really makes me feel worse. But there it is, I did it today. Now to redeem myself, or is it justifying? Don’t know, but it was a small container of dip. Ok…ya I know! But it is better than the food treats I gave myself permission to eat in the past years. And I still have over half of the bag of chips left in the kitchen tonight. I’ll take any small victory I can.
Tomorrow is another day. And I will soothe myself with watching the movies that should arrive from Netflix tomorrow. Not food.

But I did keep track in my journal...as much as I hated writing the junk food down.

SUNDAY SUMMATIONS

2008-08-17T23:15:00.006-05:00

Affirmation:
I am fearfully and wonderfully made

I have kept my journal every day so far. But I find that I really don’t like keeping track of the journal…both what I eat and keeping track of where the journal is. (grins) I always seems to be where I am not when I need to record something in it.

But it is showing me something. I do eat less when I keep track. I am more aware of my hunger levels. I am more able to tap into that self dialogue where I ask myself if I am really hungry or if I just want something else. Right now I am realizing that my pain level affects my desire to eat. I think that it will distract me from the pain, or maybe it is that I feel the need to soothe myself or that I deserve a little something something because I am hurting.

I have also realized that how important it is for me to make meal plans. It helps me so much with the “I don’t feel like cooking tonight, let’s order pizza” syndrome. I also am finding that using the crock pot to cook dinner in is also a lifesaver. Getting the dinner on first think in the morning, I feel like cooking more then. The trick is to find ways to make those recipes healthy. I have found a few that I have adapted.

Tonight’s crock pot recipe is Pasta Sauce with Meatballs. This is a really easy one. I get the Italian meatballs at Sam’s. But you could make your own. Cooking them long and slow in the pasta sauce makes them taste wonderful. I usually cook enough for 2 meals (for mom and me) and have enough meatballs and sauce left over for Meatball poorboy sandwichs at lunch one day.

Quickie Crock Pot Meatballs in Pasta Sauce

Ingredients:
1 large bottle of your favorite pasta sauce (I use the large bottles from sam’s of Clasico sweet basil)
10-15 meatballs, depending on size, thawed
½ cup water to wash out pasta sauce jar

Toss everything in crock pot on high until hot and turn to low and cook until supper. Because all the ingredients are already cooked you can cook this for as long as you want, but at least 2-3 hours to develop flavors.

NOTES: I have made this with cut up Italian Sausage and added sliced green pepper and onions to the sauce. Yummm.

Italian Poorboy Sandwiches

Ingredients:

Crusty hoagie buns
3-5 meatballs (or as many as you need to fill the size of your bun)
spoonful of sauce
sprinkling of mozzarella cheese
Warm meatballs and sauce in micro or on the stove top (if cold). Add the meatballs to the bun in a nice little row. Spoon some of the sauce over it and sprinkle with the cheese. Run under the broiler until cheese is melted. Serve…careful not to burn your mouth on the hot cheese!

SATURDAY SALADS

2008-08-16T12:26:00.003-05:00

On Saturdays I will share my favorite salad recipes. Most of these will be meals in themselves. Many will come from the many foodie blogs I read, but some will just be my own concoctions. I hope you will enjoy them.

Today I will share one of my own. It is a salad that I wait all summer to eat and eat it I do. Almost every day! Anyone who knows me knows how much I LOVE tomatoes. This year I had 7, yes count them 7 pots of tomatoes on my patio garden. I had one that was called black seaman, it was a brownish color blushed with red and sweet as sugar! I also grew sweet millions, brown babies, and a long yellow one that I have forgotten the name of. Not such a good one to eat out of hand but broke down nicely and quickly to make a quick and fresh tomato sauce for a summer veggie pasta dish.

I also grew a zebra tomato. Took me 2 years of growing them to figure out just the right time to pick them. They stay green you see. When the tops just get brushed with a sunlight yellow and they give slightly to the “Whipple Charmin squeeze” they are ripe and sweet.

I grew another red and a yellow and an orange cherry variety…can’t remember the name off hand. But these were sweet and all of them add to making such a colorful confetti of a ‘mater salad. That is if I can keep my mom from eating the tiny ones long enough to get them made into a salad!

I don’t have pictures of the ‘mater salad I made for supper last night, it went way to fast and we were way to hungry to wait to snap pics. I will try to get a picture when I make it again.

As with most of my salad recipes the ingredient amounts are flexible and I don’t really measure. The more colors of tomatoes you can use the prettier it will be. And we all know I love pretty colorful food!

'Mater Salad

2-3 medium sized slicing tomatoes
handful or two of cherry, grape or smaller tomatoes
Onion, (to taste) chopped – can be red, yellow, scallions (or garden onions as we call them here in the Midwest) or heck even shallots will work
Garlic clove minced…or not
Cucumber-peeled, seeded, and cubed
Fresh Basil cut in chiffinade (can use dried)
Some good olive oil
A few splashed of balsamic vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Oregano (dried or fresh)

Mix all together and serve. If you want to let marinate don’t put in the ice box. Never put tomatoes in the ice box! They never taste the same after any time in the ice box. If you have leftovers I do put it in the icebox, of course, but the salad really changes in taste and texture. I try (notice I said try) to only make enough for one meal. But it is kinda like soup, hard to make only enough for one meal!

This salad can also be transformed by adding good black Italian olives, feta, mozzarella or shaved Parmesan cheese, or even marinated artichoke hearts. I have even added leftover steamed zucchinis, yellow squash or asparagus to it too. And of course by adding day old pan toasted Italian bread cubes, yellow, green and red peppers you have the yummy Italian bread and tomato salad Panzanella.

As you can see this salad recipe can be changed, added to and subtracted from to match your own tastes and what you have on hand. The only ingredient that you must have is great tasting fresh summer tomatoes. Please don’t try to make this with winter hothouse tomatoes. I have tried when my tomato cravings got the best of me, and um—well lets just say that it wasn’t pretty.

FRIDAY FOOD FINDS

2008-08-15T10:41:00.009-05:00

On Fridays I plan to talk about food finds. This is a broad category that can cover whatever catches my whimsy. I may talk about favorite foods, include a new recipe, a new cookbook, a new food I tried, someone else’s blog post about a food or cooking technique, whatever catches my eye. I hope you like it and find it useful.

Today I want to talk about one of my favorite herbs. Basil. I can’t say enough about fresh basil. And this summer my pot of basil outdid itself, I have enough to make tons of pesto to freeze for the winter. Which is good because the Japanese Beetles helped themselves to my basil this year gorging themselves. The little buggers!

Pesto, my most favorite thing to make out of basil is quick and easy to make and freezes well. I make big batches every summer and freeze them in the little snack sized ziplock baggies in about 1/3 cup portions. This is enough for a sauce for 2 servings of pasta or veggies.

Pesto is great as a sauce over pasta, veggies, boiled potatoes, and as a dollop in most soups. I even add it to my favorite jarred pasta sauce to freshen it up a bit. It is also great on crostini: oven toast slices of a good italian bread, rub with a clove of raw garlic while still hot, add a drizzle of olive oil, add a slice of tomato and top with a dollop of pesto.

Here is my favorite recipe, inspired by Ilva over at Lucullian Delights.

My recipe is very loose and depends on my mood. I do it by handfuls, don’t be afraid of this method, you just can’t screw up making pesto.

BASIL PESTO

In a food processor add:

A few generous handfuls of basil leaves
A couple cloves of garlic (depending on how strong the garlic is and how much you love garlic, you can use more or less)
A smallish handful of toasted pine nuts. (you can also use walnuts)
A generous handful of grated (or not, smallish chunks work too) parmesan cheese (you can also use pecorino or asagio)

Start the food processor and through the feeding tube add:

Olive Oil In a slow stream until it loosens up to your liking.

Add some Salt and pulse a few times to mix.

Done!!

Sometimes I like to add a fresh ripe tomato before I add the oil. You will use less oil and I love the flavor. Besides basil and tomatoes are a match made in heaven!

I have also been known to throw in a few pieces of roasted red pepper too.

Make sure you toast the pine nuts (in the oven or in a dry fry pan), it increases the flavor. Play with the ingredient ratios until you find the taste you love. Use good, no great olive oil for this recipe.
Yummm Pesto. Now I am off to harvest my crop and make some pesto. Maybe I can get one more growth in before winter. A girl can’t have enough pesto on hand.

Nightly Check In

2008-08-14T22:28:00.005-05:00

Today went pretty ok. Every night or so I will post my journal entry to keep myself honest.

I also added a new feature on the side bar, a photo of what I ate for one of my meals. I will also probably add recipes for anything interesting I may concoct too.

THANKFUL THURSDAY

2008-08-14T11:31:00.018-05:00

Affirmation: Thank you for the journey and the lessons learned along the way

Thankful Thursday. For years I have kept a thankful journal. Yes long before Oprah made them popular I have kept this journal. For me it was a secret place where I told God all the things I was grateful for in my life. Some days it was only one, some days it was a longer list. But it always helped me to focus the gratefulness to God, who after all is the source of everything good in my life.

So I was thinking, instead of concentrating on all the changes I need to make in this journey to health, I was wondering if there were things I could refocus and see as a positive, something to be thankful about. I truly believe that everything we go through in our lives is a chance to learn and allow God to change us. It occurred to me that most of the time in this journey to health I have focused on the negative….the things that need changing, the difficulties, the things I miss, the frustrations. But one thing I have learned with the challenges of the back illness is that especially in the tough times God can change you and that in the end the kind of good that can come from it will change you in ways that good times never can. So today is Thursday and this is what I am grateful for today.

Thank you God for

Having enough food to eat.
Having enough money to buy groceries.
How I am learning that I am more than a number on a scale.
How little you are concerned with outward appearances.
How much you care about refining my character.

Another aspect of this Thankful Thursdays is to be thankful for what I have learned so far in this journey.

What I have learned so far

That diets don’t work.
That I have to deal with the root causes of why I eat.
That I have to give myself grace and not judgment.

Today I am also starting a challenge for myself. This summer I have fallen into the habit of choosing easy rather than always healthful in creating meals. Since it is summer, this has not all been bad, many of the easy have also been healthful. But one of the changes I want to make a part of my life is to make conscious healthy choices a habit. So to that end I am going to use my food journal for 28 days to help keep me honest and see where I need some “tuning up” in the menu and food selection department.

Anyone else want to join me in this? If you don’t have a food journal of your own check mine out. There is a link on the journal image that will take you to my Etsy shop where you can purchase it.

Happy Thursday…What are you thankful for?

Jackie

Hello Stranger! I am baaaack

2008-08-12T22:30:00.003-05:00

Affirmation: Life is good!

I have been away from blogging for I can’t believe how long. I am sure that no one is even reading my blog anymore! I have been consumed for the past almost 2 years with recovering from 3 ruptured discs. I spent most of the end of 2006 and the beginning of ’07 in bed, unable to walk. After months and months of therapy, lots of rest and exercising at home and being off work since October 2007 I am now able to sit at the computer long enough to write some short entries.

So much about my life has changed. I wish that I could say that this illness has caused me to loose weight, but it hasn’t. Quite the opposite. While I have not had much of an appetite, and eat far less than I did before I got sick, without exercising I have gained about 35 pounds.

What has this taught me? Well something that I have known and not wanted to deal with for a long time. One must exercise to be healthy. I am finally coming to terms with the fact that, at least for me, I must exercise to loose this weight and to be healthy. After being so in active for so long, I also do not like how I feel. I am so out of shape physically. But I also have learned patients with myself. This was not an illness that was going to heal fast, and I still seem to have a ways to go. The past few weeks have been relatively good, but since the weekend the pain has come back and today I had trouble walking. I had started to try to walk outside. Thursday and Friday I walked to the end of the driveway and back…not very far, but a small victory for me.

On other fronts, other things have been happening in my life. I have begun to indulge in a lifelong passion of mine, making jewelry. I started over a year ago to help me keep my mind off the pain. It soon became clear to me that I had to do something with them as I couldn’t ever wear all the stuff I was creating. I began to show them to friends and family and got a lot of positive encouragement. Thus began Twin Angels Designs. Last month I began to sell on Etsy. Go check out my shop.

Another excitement in my life is that the food journal I wrote a while back has been steadily selling. I now have them available through my Etsy shop. Click on the image and it will take you to the shop. This is not your typical food journal. I created it because I didn’t want or need another journal that focuses on how many calories, carbs, or fats. That focuses on a diet – we all know that they don’t work. I needed something that helped me become aware of patterns, triggers, how food tied to my emotions, and portion sizes. I had had an inkling that I was eating a lot more frequently than I was aware of, and most of the time not out of true hunger, but out of being triggered by emotions, activities, or just plain boredom. This journal has been a huge tool for myself and many others. I have to say that it hasn’t necessarily made me loose weight, but it has made me more aware of when, why, how much, and what my triggers are. With that knowledge it has helped me to make different choices than food. It has helped me find the courage to say no. It has also helped me to see how much of my eating is habit. Finally it has helped me to realize how little physical activity I have in my life. With the knowledge I gain from this journal I feel that I am beginning to have the tools to find balance and peace in my life around food.

If you think you might like to try the journal and you have questions, just email me or go to Etsy and convo me.
Well It has been a hard day, it is time for a pain pill and beddy. Tomorrow is another day.

Controlled Binge

2007-09-20T10:59:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: Creating new habits do work

hey ya all,
I was sitting here at my desk journaling about yesterday and thought maybe I would share with you all too. After my doc's apt I had to go grocery shopping. Now I consistently in the past year have made sure that I didn't go with out a list on paper or hungry. Neither of which happened yesterday. I thought I was just going to pick up some bags of salad on the way home from the doc to have for lunches.

I guess I didn't really realise how upset and frustrating it was for me to have to say yes to the cortisone shots. Anyway I went into the store and got the lettuce, added some bananas then some watermelon.. .so far so good. Then on the way to the check out counter I passed the deli....didn't want to make salad for lunch, got some of their (logli's) ham salad and potato salad - "mom likes this...ya and so do I...ah the lies we can convince ourselves of! Then that was it...I got potato chips and dip to have with the sandwich.

That in itself is not so bad, I very occasionally will have a small bag of chips - the individual serving bag size and a small carton of dip (and throw away what is left over after the bag of chips is gone. and only if I am particularly craving it and know it is not "comfort food" or "celebration food".

But yesterday it was comfort food...and I knew it and bought it anyway. And I bought the BIG carton and the BIG bag.

But here is the interesting thing that happened.

Without consciously thinking about it I ate only until I was full, but the stuff away and didn't get it out again until I was hungry again. I did this several times throughout the day. And late in the eventing I went to the kitchen to snack before bed and wandered around the kitchen and said to myself...I am not hungry now I will just go to bed...it will be there tomorrow if I still want it.

Now I didn't realise the importance of what happened until I started to journal, I was in a fog yesterday... .I was frustrated and I gave into the pain too and just allowed myself to live with sinking into the pain rather than trying to distract my mind and body from it (which has been really helpful in pain management for me). So this morning I decided to journal first thing rather than eat. the exciting thing is that the whole body awareness; the full/hungry thing happened unconsciously, almost I guess by habit. So I called it in my journal a "controlled binge". I realised that the past two or three years of practicing "eating when hungry/stopping when full" dialogueing with my self and asking myself and my body if I am hungry/full has finally turned into a habit...something that seems to be happening on a deeper level than before.

When I started it all felt so fake and contrived, but thanks to all your encouragement to keep going I can finally say that it works!

O and by the way, because of it I don't feel "hung over" from overeating or guilty. I found myself taking it for what it was...a moment of having a pity party for myself...and now it is today and I am OK, I have journaled and worked through the emotions and have refocused.
Sorry it was so long...has anyone else experienced anything like this?

2006-07-25T12:41:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: Eat consciously

I have been using SparkPeople for two weeks now. Tracking calories/fat/carbs/protein I thought it would really send me spiraling into that diet mentality that has only meant failure for me. But it hasn’t. It has opened my eyes to some realities. While my portion sizes have become very normal in size, my food choices have still been amazing high caloric/high fat/high carb. I knew that I tended to be on the high carb side. I love my pasta and bread and eat more grains than animal proteins. It is ok with me – I choose whole grains and moderate both the portion and frequency during the course of a week. But I was blown away by the amount of calories I was consuming and fat was out of the ballpark, not to mention the silent things like sodium. I also have become aware at how much I don’t know about food nutritional values. Dedicated label reader that I am aside, I didn’t realize how much some foods had of some things and how low other counts were. I am amazed that I am way low on protein intake.

I think that I had suspended belief that if portion sizes were in a reasonable range so would the calories and everything else. Now I am not unaware that certain foods are really high in calories/fat/carbs…but I chose to believe that anything in moderation is ok. AND IT IS. But not everything is good as a steady diet. Breakfasts at McDonalds for instance…just a large English toffee cappuccino and an egg and cheese English muffin…ya right! It was easy, but I was horrified at the food counts in this breakfast…and they didn’t even list the cappuccino in their nutrition facts (wonder why?) No wonder I haven’t lost anything. Now I knew that these were high food count choices and low on the health-o-meter choice, but knowing HOW bad makes it easier to say no now. Ahhh ignorance is bliss isn’t it!

My eating habits, my emotional connection to food, and all the underlying emotional triggers, reasons, uses for food have really been looked at, acknowledged, and I think, healed, and are being brought into a more normal range. I am more aware of when, why, and how much I am eating. I am aware of physical hunger vs. emotional hunger and the difference between the two. I am learning ways to feed/deal/soothe the emotional hunger other than using food. And I am becoming consistent in recognizing and using these options rather than food…although I still slip into old habits more than I would like. I am doing better every day at eating only when hungry/stopping just before full. And yet I haven’t lost any weight. After almost two years of working through all this. No, I don’t think that the past two years were in vain. On the contrary, I think that it was essential to work on all this to come to the point of being able to look at counting food counts without spiraling into the black hole of “diet mentality”. I think that what has changed for me is that I am seeing this counting as just another tool to use to help along the way; to bring truth and accountability to the process. Just like mindful eating, eating when hungry/stopping just before full, food journaling (tracking when/where/why/portion size/what I eat), journaling, group, portion sizing, all the self talk/affirmations, facing the underlying issues, becoming aware have been tools too.

But I am realizing that there is still that aspect of physics: Energy in must be less than energy out if one wants to loose actually pounds. In the past, all the diets I have been on focused only on that equation. And they didn’t work…they actually made me fatter.

My group facilitator recently went to a conference on eating disorders and for the first time there were workshops on overeating/binge/compulsive eating. It is a new arena and as with all things new a vast differences of opinion on how to deal with this (because in reality, I think, no one really knows how to deal with it!). This comes as no surprise to me…I have known for most of my adult overweight life that the medical community, the counseling/psychiatric community/the religious community/society in general had no idea what to do with us, how to help us, or even what to say to us. For some loosing weight is truly just an issue of engaging your will and deciding to loose weight merely through self-control and self-discipline. But for those of us who are morbidly obese, compulsive, or binge eaters it is not just about making up your mind to loose weight and counting on discipline or self-control to work.

She indicated that there were two polar schools of thought: All acceptance all the time at any weight and the energy in/energy out equation control methods. It seemed that it was either or. I have been thinking about this a lot since hearing her talk about this. To try to decide which is right or which comes first is a lot like asking: “which comes first, the chicken or the egg”. I think both are true but not at the same time in recovery. I think that after years of warring with your body and mind, years of hearing those you love telling you, in what ever ways, that you would be “better” if you lost weight, years of you telling yourself that, years of hating how you look and finally coming to believe that how you looked reflected in some negative way on who you are at the most basic level you FIRST have to stop the war inside your brain and soul. You have to forgive yourself for getting to this place, learn to love yourself as you are at this point, to accept that you may always be this weight. You have to do all the hard work of understanding what is behind it all. And yes at the same time you begin to become conscious again about eating: portion sizes, tracking food – the what, when, where, why and how much- and learn to do it without judgment.

But the hard core of food counts, calories burned through exercise, planning and creating exercise programs, even changing and molding your life around workouts…those cannot come in the early phases of recovery, I believe. Why? Well I think you have to deal with root causes and issues first or it becomes about how I look, sticking to a diet, etc. Recover is about a lifestyle change…on all levels - emotional, physical, social, spiritual, nutritional, relational, and self-relational. And most important I think you need to come to the point of forgiveness and surrender. Forgiving yourself for getting to where you are, those forces/people in your life that conspired to help, even your genetic makeup that pre-disposed the possibility of becoming obese. You must also learn how to use forgiveness in a day-to-day way. Forgiving those who undermine you, including yourself. Forgiving yourself for each day’s failings. Forgiving the past, present, and future. Forgiving anything that gives you reason to remain in the state you are in. Surrender…your past, your present, and your future. Surrendering the idea that perfection is within reach. Surrendering that you will do this perfectly, or that you even have the right to judge whether you have done it perfectly. Surrendering those things that give you reason to remain in the state you are in. Oh and one more thing…acceptance. I think that before you can really go forward you have to come to terms with the limitations you have in your life…acknowledge them, accept them…even accept the possibility that recovery may not be that 125 or even the 150 weight goal. I don’t think you can really change until you acknowledge and accept the fact that these things are in and a part of your life.

Recovery is about health… the same emotional, physical, social, spiritual, nutritional, relational, and self-relational health that goes into lifestyle changes. I think that before you can move into using the traditional tools of tracking food counts, calories burned, etc you have to be more on the side of healthy on this continuum than not. That may be a different point for everyone…probably is. I also believe that knowing that point will be a very personal and individual decision fraught with trial and error / success and failure. Experimentation may be the key word…trying to use these tools while keeping close watch on the emotional reactions you will have for it. Having the courage, knowledge and probably also the accountability of a trusted group who will call you on it when you slip into that diet mentality that is so destructive to recovery. Leaning to know when to step away from focusing on these tools and going back to working with other tools because imbalance has been achieved.

This is hard for most people who prefer a nicely wrapped package to present to those seeking answers. But my experiences over the past 2 years in this journey…heck my whole lifetime really…has taught me that there are no easy answers wrapped up in pretty packages. If there were morbid obesity would not be a problem in our society today. Recovery is messy, fraught with successes and failures, wrong turns and going back over already learned lessons to relearn them. Covering new ground and capturing it only to find that you have somehow lost that ground and need to go back to the basics and cover that ground again and regain it. It is a bloody lonely battle that can only be won one bite at a time with the ammunition of forgiveness for failures, grace for the day, surrendering unhealthy thoughts, choices, and ideas. It is a life of trial and error. But I also think that it is a life of hope and health. Eventually you come to the point that making healthy choices are easier than making unhealthy choices. You want health more than anything else…ultimately you begin to choose life, but it doesn’t come in a nice pretty easily explained or obtained package.

Now…what have I learned in the past two weeks of tracking food counts at SparkPeople?

I have noticed that I am hungrier in the mornings than after lunch. I mean really hungry. In the past eating breakfast, even the thought of it, made my tummy queasy. Now that I am in the habit of eating in the mornings it seems that I am hungry all morning long. When I didn’t eat in the mornings it seemed I could go all day without eating.

Well anyway, what I am realizing is that I need to adjust my meal loads to accommodate this. I need to eat more substantial breakfasts heavier morning snack and smaller lunches and lighter dinners and a smaller more higher protein afternoon snack.

Normally I just eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich or some oatmeal or some yogurt and fruit for breakfast. I am very hungry an hour later, sometimes two hours. My morning snacks have just been a piece of fruit or some cheese and whole grain crackers.

I could eat a larger breakfast…but what? I can’t eat for 2 hours after I get up because of my thyroid medication. So I have to take my breakfast with me and eat while I work. It has to be easy and portable. I am not tied into breakfast food per se, so I can think outside the box. While the idea of bulk cooking on Sunday appeals to me on a practical level, in actuality I don’t want or like to spend that much time in the kitchen around food. I think that I may try to make a crock pot full of 7 grain cereal and pre-portion it out for the whole week…adding soy milk and fruit to it each morning and nuking it in the micro. I can also make my low fat healthy quiches in the large muffin tins too. Looking at the Yogurt breakfast I think I could increase it from ½ cup yogurt to a full cup and add more fruit (I usually only use about ¼ cup of berries)

Morning snacks: Need to look at low fat (cheese and crackers add too much fat to use on a daily basis) options. Need to add more protein in my diet all round. I like dips and spreads. Maybe add tofu to some of my favorite dips that adds quite a bit of protein. Also I could add some beans to some of the non-bean dips. Veggies add crunch and fiber. I am on a search for whole grain, low fat, low salt tasty crackers that aren’t extremely expensive. I could make them…they last for ever…the whole reason crackers were invented. I guess that I need to spend some time with my vast collection of cookbooks and see what I can adapt.

Lunches are pretty straightforward. I cook on Sunday and eat the same lunch all week. Usually I don’t mind it…I only have 4 days of lunches. In the winter when I do soups I can vary the soup and freeze some. But for summer I love to do cold salads/pasta salads kind of things for lunch…easy breezy to make and no fuss to pack.

Suppers for summer are usually cold – green salads with some protein. We will also do grilled fish, chicken, vegetables, etc. I have gotten into the habit of putting the animal protein in the salad rather than think about it as a main dish. This helps keep the portion size down and the crunch factor up.

So…this tracking food counts has been a map for me…a tool to look at how to make better choices…how to make food work for me not against me. I do know that a year ago this wouldn’t have worked for me (I tried at another similar site). It threw me into obsessive eating. I have a feeling that this is not something I will or can do for a prolonged period of time. I can see using it periodically as an accountability check…to see if I am actually eating what I think I am. Just like periodically I go back to measuring everything for a couple of days to check that my eyeballing portions are accurate. I don’t have the answer to the question of is this beneficial or not for everyone…not do I have the answer when to bring it into the mix of recovery tools. I think that is an individual question. But I think the question is not should I use this, but what will using this cause in my life? If it causes the mania that goes with “diet mentality” then it is not time. If you can use it as just another tool and leave it at that…then maybe it is a good tool to use. But it is not a tool to measure recovery: THAT I KNOW.

Neither is using the scale. But using the scale again has shown me the direct correlation between what I eat and my body’s reaction to it. Again I probably will not weigh myself as often as they suggest on SparkPeople…once or twice a month at most. But I could see directly that eating more conscious of food counts had a direct effect on weight loss. The secret is to hold that knowledge loosely and concentrate on healthy choices, not just the loss of poundage.

A Matter of Choice

2006-07-11T16:36:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: Change is choice; choose change

A matter of choice. Sounds great. We all love choice. But I have been thinking a lot about choice as it relates to my state of health and eating. I give myself too many choices, mainly I think that I frequently give myself both the choice and the permission to fail, to make unhealthy choices, both with food and with lifestyle and exercise.

I was reading a blog by a woman who was talking about her training for a marathon and how she gave herself no choice in training…Not when getting up at 4:30 in the morning was a pain, not when an employee at work quit making her workload heavier requiring her to work more hours, not when her responsibilities as a mom and wife called. She just gave herself no choice but to train. Failure was not an option.

I have begun to realize that perhaps I have flirted with failure too much. Given myself too much choice in the matter. Do I really believe that it is even possible to make healthy eating a permanent part of my life, an unconscious choice every time I eat? Do I really believe that I can loose half my body weight to become healthy and eliminate my high B/P? Do I? Do I really believe that I can begin to choose to exercise every day…every day with out fail? Then I have to ask myself do I even want to? If I do, then why am I not choosing it?

Is it at all possible that I am going around this the wrong way? Honestly at this point in my life there really is no choice, well yes there is…it is a matter of choosing life or death. So why am I choosing death? I think that maybe a paradigm shift is needed here. I need, want to allow no choice but to succeed. I have no choice but to succeed. I have no choice. Failure is not an option. Why is this so hard? I worked off of this premise during Grad school when things got really tough. Failure was just not an option for me, I wanted that degree, I wanted what needed those professors to teach me, whether they wanted to or not. So how do I apprehend that to this part of my life? Well I think that removing the choice to fail is a start. To keep my eye on the prize of health. To live with the end in mind. This statement is something I live by in many other areas in my life…it is time to incorporate it into this area.

What is the end I have in mind?

To be healthy (1 Cor. 6:18-20)
To have the energy and strength to do the work God has called me to do.
To not be ruled by food but by the Holy Spirit (Deut. 8:3; Matt 4:14)

This is not about looking good for me, although in the end it will be nice to wear fun comfortable clothes again. The is about living, feeling full of energy, having my life back.

Sunday's Planning and Cooking

2006-07-10T12:01:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: Change is a choice, and planning facillitates change

Another Monday. I learned something again this weekend that seemed very profound the first time it occurred to me and reinforced it and convinced me of it this time around. Funny how you can learn something, and have to learn it all over again on another level later. What did I learn? That sometimes when I think I am hungry, all I am is thirsty. I was busy doing things on Saturday and didn’t get the amount of water in that I usually do and when I got home I was really hungry and thirsty. Or I thought I was hungry, in spite of the fact that I had a good breakfast before leaving the house and a large, healthy salad for lunch. As I looked around for what sounded good to eat, nothing really answered the question “Do I really want this to eat?” so I poured a new water jug of cold fresh water and gulped quite a bit down. Well I didn’t feel hungry anymore. No not in the way you try to convince yourself you aren’t hungry after you drink some water because you feel a fullness in your stomach from the water, but really still are hungry for food. I was just not hungry. So now I have a new question to ask myself when I am rambling around asking myself if I am really hungry….I will ask myself if I am hungry or if I am really thirsty…when was the last time I had water and how much had I had for the day. Try water first.

I decided to plan out breakfast and lunches this week and prepare ahead and pre-pack everything that I could so that I had lunches and breakfast ready each day. No choice means no wondering what I “feel” like eating. That usually leads to unhealthy choices. So this is what I made.

For breakfasts:

I made yogurt parfaits. Using the small ½ cup Glad Bowls I layered Mountain High organic plain no-fat vanilla yogurt with blueberries and raspberries drizzling just a touch of organic honey on the fruit.

Tonight (I ran out of time yesterday) I will make High Protein chocolate chip pumpkin loaf from Molly Katzen’s “Sunlight Café” cookbook. Here is an online version that uses bananas instead of pumpkin.

For lunch:

I adapted a Salad Nicoise from Bob Greene’s book “Get with the Program Guide to Good Eating”.

Salad Nicoise - my version
Basically roast some new potatoes – I cubed them up or you can just halve them. Sparingly sprinkle some EEOV and salt and pepper and paprika on them and put them on a cookie sheet covered with the non-stick aluminum foil (don’t need more oil if you use this). You can also dust with some cayenne pepper if you like heat

Steam some green beans until still crunchy and shock with ice water to stop the cooking.

Let these cool a bit and put in a large bowl and then add some (depends on how big a batch you are making) of Low Fat Italian dressing (I like Paul Newman’) use about half of the total amount you will ultimately use in the recipe. Adding it while the potatoes are still warm makes it all taste better.
Add a few nicoise black olives, pitted and chopped and some capers, rinsed and cherry or grape tomatoes. Use the cherry/grape and don't cut them so that the salad doesn't get soggy...which will happen if you use larger tomatoes and cut them up.

Boil a few eggs (depending on how many servings you make of the salad) (vegetarians leave these out; high cholestrol? just use the whites)

Have on hand either the tuna filets or salmon in the foil pouch that you can now get in the foil packets. Vegetarians could easily substitute a can of well rinsed beans (garbanzos would be terriffic) for the fish protein.

Now…for the week (yes I will be eating the same thing for all 4 days this week…don’t mind doing it this way) I used about 8 new potatoes and about a pound of green beans, 10 olives, a tablespoon or so of capers and 4 eggs…this made about 4 decent sized servings.

To pre-pack for lunches divide up the bean-potato salad mixture and put into a 2 cup glad bowl. Add the boiled egg and put the lid on. Have 4 packets of either the tuna or the salmon steak or both. Put a little of the Italian dressing in a small container to add at lunchtime. Pack this all in your lunch box and you have lunch for 4 days.

To assemble this you just peel your egg and crumble or slice it over your salad, put your tuna/salmon on top and add the rest of the dressing. Yummmm

Salad nicoise is usually what they call a composed salad…each ingredient is artfully arranged on a plate in pie shaped wedges. But this is impractical for brown bagging it. This “tossed” version isn’t as pretty, but tastes just as good.

For Morning snacks:
Small handful of cherries, 1 oz lower fat cheese, and a few whole grain lower fat crackers

For Afternoon snacks:
Raw veggies and a low fat ranch/yogurt dip. (I haven’t found any low fat ranch dressing I like yet so I use the full fat version of the Hidden Valley and thin it a bit with FF plain yogurt…it is ok. I like to dip things so I have a whole arsenal of healthy dip recipes that I use with raw veggies, whole grain toasted pita wedges (I toast them myself), baked whole grain corn chips, etc.

For suppers
I will either do pasta, salads, or roll-ups…or what ever else is on hand. Suppers aren’t as hard for me as I am not usually as hungry at supper as I am at breakfast and lunch. I am trying not to do evening snacks because I want to do yoga and the tape I use says that the last food should be 2 hours before doing the yoga…so that means no snacking in the evening as supper doesn’t happen until around 7.

Oh and a small note on a late (for us Americans) supper. Waiting until 7 or later for supper really has helped with the evening munchies. Think about it. If you don’t get to bed until 10 but you eat supper at 5…that is a loooong time until supper, much less breakfast. So I have pushed lunch until after 1 and supper until 7. This is where the morning and afternoon snacks help a lot.

Well I am off for now. Off to a good start on a good week.

For an excellent view on motivation go read Sara’s post on her blog.

Made it Through!

2006-07-05T13:21:00.002-05:00

Affirmation: Change is a Choice

Well I made it through a holiday without going bonkers. Now, mind you I didn't do the party thing, no family picknic's this year, just a quiet 4 days off home puttering with mom. But many times being off work with nothing planned can mean a lot of snacking and munching. But I didn't. I ate pretty healthy even. Tomatoes are starting to trickle in from the south - real tomatoes. So I had my fill of all things tomato...I am sooo glad that they are so good for you!

I thought I would post a recipe that I have tweeked from I don't know where...it no longer looks like the original much and the original is long gone. I think the original had chicken or something in it. But I adapted it to make it a quick throw together rather than make all the stuff from scratch. I don't have a name for it, so I will make one up just for you all.

Poletna with Black Bean and Corn Salsa

For the salsa:

1 jar of your favorite fat free, low sodium salsa
1 can fat free low soduim black beans, rinsed well
1 1/2 - 2 cups frozen corn (to your taste)

Mix above together well. Chill. This is also good over a baked potatoe

For the Polenta

Your favorite Polenta recipe (or if you really want fast, get the pre-prepared stuff from the market)
Use soy milk instead of water (makes it creamier)
some garlic (to your taste)
cayene ground pepper (to your taste - if you are using a hot salsa you might skip this unless you love it hot!)
a bay leaf
Parmesean cheese (I make only 2 servings at a time so I use about 1/4 cup shreaded, less if it is ground)

Toast garlic in about a teaspoon of olive oil. Add the milk, cayene pepper and bay leaf and bring milk to boil. Add the amount of polenta grains called for in your recipe and stir constantly until thickens...about 5 minutes or more. Remove bay leave, take off heat and stir in parm cheese.

Now since this is a lunch bag standby I pour my polent into the little glad bowls (1 cup). Let cool and store in fridge for lunches. In another glad bowl put about a cup of salsa. Store in fridge for lunches. Warm up polenta and top with cold salsa. If you are serving it right away, pour the polenta into shallow bowl or pasta bowls. Top with about a cup of the salsa. MMM and so healthy for you. Easy breasy!

Polenta is quick and easy to make and really good for you. It stores pretty good in the fridge, so you can make up several servings ahead. It is good to lightly toast either in the oven or in a pan with a very small amount of olive oil (it sucks up the oil like a sponge) I also use a grill pan to toast them. When you make the polenta, pour it out on a cookie sheet and after it cools you can cut them into cute little triangles to toast. It makes a great base for putting other things over it. I will post some more recipes later. As you can see, making a pot of polenta is a great cook once morph into several meals food.

Eating and Food Update

2006-06-27T12:54:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: To Exercise is to Choose Health and Life

Eating and Food

Last winter I talked about how handling food for me was getting on my nerves and making me want to eat more. Also how I was just sick of all the preparations that seem to go along with healthy eating. In the past 6 months I have experimented with different solutions, some work, some not, some only to varying degrees. It still comes down to discipline. Oh how we hate that word don’t we? But for me to become disciplined it has to become easy. Complication doesn’t work for me. In this eating/exercise/road to health or in any other area of my life it seems.

So what didn’t work:

Eating the same thing all the time.
Easy and suprisingly as tasty as they are to just eat the TV dinners, they got old after a time.
Buying a bunch of fresh produce thinking I would make the time to clean, cut and such.
Going to the grocery every week. (Too much time and I tended to over buy and ended throwing out fresh produce that went bad)

What did work:

Taking breakfast to work to eat.
Using TV dinners for lunches.
Making big batches of salad for lunches and suppers and storing it in individual Glad containers for quick salad makings.
Spending a bit extra for pre-washed salad, pre shredded veggies, and those fruit and veggie party trays instead of thinking I will clean and chop veggies and melons.
Allowing myself the treat of eating lunch out a couple of times a month.
But most important was a deep cleansing of my kitchen to make it a “clean healthy” place. I got rid of all white flour and sugar, processed foods, high fat and sodium foods etc. To help it along I donated sealed and canned foods to a food pantry.

Over all, changing how I cook has helped tremendously. The important thing is to have stuff on hand for quick fixing. I have developed a list of regular things I have on hand to make quick meals that are healthy. I will try to post my pantry list later this week.

Update

2006-06-26T11:13:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: To Exercise is to choose life and health

Well it has been quite some time since I have posted. This spring has been a whirlwind of activity and changes for me. I have been gently reminded (thanks Kirsten) that there are people who read my blog and have missed me. I find that surprising and am touched that people whom I don’t even know worry when I don’t show up for a while. Thank you so much for your concern and for reading my blog.

First, I am fine. I have been busy finishing up the last of my requirements for becoming a Life Purpose Coach and Life Plan Facilitator through Pathway to Purpose Ministries. I was in Laguna Beach, CA in March for the final leg of training. I love doing this. I am also teaching a small group book study on the book written by the founder of this Ministry. This has kept me busy and focused. I will write more about how this has impacted my journey to health in a later post.

Second I have had problems with back and knee problems. I was in quite a bit of pain most of March through May, unable to really walk or stand for any amount of time, even sitting at work all day proved to be a challenge to my stamina and patients. But thanks to a really great Chiropractor and many prayers I am almost back to normal.

I have learned a lot from this little experience of incapacitation. First I don’t make a good patient! Second I hate having to depend on others! Third I am a lot more self-conscious about my weight when I am unable to be as active and self-sufficient as usual. The last surprised me a lot (the first two I already pretty much knew or suspected about myself). I am not all that self-conscious about my weight. It is what it is and if someone doesn’t like it then that is their problem. I don’t like it, not as much because of the way I look, but because of the way I feel and the limitations it puts on living my life in the way that I need and want to.

I think that the most important lesson I have learned is the importance of exercise. I am fully convinced that much of this was brought on by inactivity and letting go of what exercise I did do. From about Thanksgiving on I quit exercising – no excuses, I just didn’t do it. The trainer I had been going to dropped his Saturday clients in early summer, I quit my membership at the Y (financial reasons), and purchased a great recumbent bike on sale. I thought that I had enough momentum going from working with a trainer and the training I had done for the ½ marathon I had planned to enter in the spring, but alas winter hit and I quit. I wish I had a more glamorous excuse, but no….just laziness and a dislike of exercising.

Everyone says that if you do it long enough you will love it and crave it. Well after a year of training, not loosing much weight, I still didn’t crave it. I dreaded every day going to the Y or the trainer. I will admit to liking, no loving how I felt while I was exercising…no not during the actual exercise, but in the day-to-day way that I felt overall. I do miss that and am craving that feeling. I liked how my body moved easily, how I felt less heavy (in a way not associated to actual poundage) and how much energy I had. You would think that would be incentive enough eh? Wrong!!

So now with summer here, I am still struggling with exercise. I have been trying to incorporate yoga into my day. I am using a great set of tapes from living arts: Yoga AM and Yoga PM. Both are about 15-20 minutes. I am also trying to get back into the routine of using the bike. Walking any constructive amount of time is still out of the question because of my back and knees. I know that will improve as I loose more weight.

Well I need to go get ready for work. More later…I promise.

Weekend Successes

2006-01-23T10:28:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: I love my body and trust its wisdom

The weekend went pretty good for a change. Weekends can be my downfall. This is when I find myself eating out of boredom or stress, depending on mom's needs and moods. I know that I shouldn't allow someone else's moods and needs dictate my stress level, but I am still learning how to cope with the reversing of roles as my mother becomes progressively inactive and frustrated with her health.

This weekend I was gentle with myself and took many naps...I was tired. I love naps on cold wintery days. I also spent time in the studio. Creating helps to forget about food. I came up for air when I was aware that I was so hungry that I was shaking! I rarely forget about food and eating to get to that point. It was such a relief to come upstairs and choose quick/easy fix foods and not have to spend time cooking. It allowed me to just feed my true body hunger and get back to the studio and go on with my day. For the inquiring minds this is what I ate on Saturday:

Breakfast

LF cheese omelet

hash browns

2 slices whole grain toast

Lunch

Frozen Chinese stir fry

rice

Dinner

pizza

(it was mom's birthday, she wanted pizza)

Sunday

Breakfast

Slice of toast w/peanut butter

Lunch

Ummm I forgot, TV dinner I think

Dinner

cheese

pear

crusty sourdough bagette (indiv. serv. size)

dilly beans

ff veg. cream cheese

Snack

popcorn

This is so much different than how I usually snack my way through the weekend...even though the snacking is mostly healthy choices, I still eat out of boredom. It took less than 5 minutes to prepare the meals this weekend and it was such a joy to not have to have time eaten up (no pun intended) around the food prep/eat/thinking/etc. Somehow I feel such a liberation in this. Easy eating, calm eating, eating out of hunger and need for nourishment rather than an emotional response. For the most part the past 2 weeks have been like this. Last weekend I was so busy running around and not at home I didn't think it would be a good test of whether my paradigm shift would survive weekends. This weekend was a quiet weekend at home, and it did. Now, I did find myself thinking and wanting to munch in the evenings, but it was much easier to choose not to. Could it be that this truly is the breakthrough I have been struggling for, praying for, working for, almost have given up on? It is quite early to really say so, but in small and big ways I am finding that change in thought and actions are taking place.

I am finding it much easier to say no to the beginnings of hunger and wait until it gets to a true hunger, not just those little nudges from the hunger monster, you know the kind, hey...you haven't eaten for oh say 5 minutes!! whaddya trying to do...starve!!! To wait until I am well and truly hungry. I am getting more consistent in asking myself the questions too...am I really hungry or has something just triggered my old desire to use food for what ever reason. What is really going on here? And to talk myself through to a conscious answer - even if it is to eat, at least I am doing it consciously and with full knowledge of why.

I am also full of plans for the immediate future, my training and certification as a life purpose coach, creating art, looking for opportunities to sell it and designing and making jewelry...and thinking about selling it too.

Now...time to tackle the exercise demon!

Ready to Move On?

2006-01-19T10:12:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: There is more to life than food; choose life.

Last night in group I commented that I just want food to not be the focus of my life. I was challenged that I sounded angry at food and perhaps I was not really wanting change because recovery takes a lot of thinking and focus on food. I understand what was being said, but it doesn't change the fact that I am ready for food to not be the center focus of my life anymore. I still feel that somehow all the focus I have put on food and eating issues that past year is no different, really than the previous years of over-eating. The focus of my life was still on food and eating. I don't think that I was able to explain my point so that anyone could understand what I was - am feeling...maybe because it is not completely clear to me either. But I keep thinking about this quote that was on Kerstin's blogg

"Naturally slim people have lots of goals and things going on in their lives that they focus on, e.g. their careers, family life, hobbies, faith etc. They eat because their bodies need the fuel, and because they enjoy eating. Overweight people on the other hand know only one goal: to lose weight. They think that their 'real' life only begins once they have dealt with that weight issue.." --Doris Wolf "Abnehmen und dabei geniessen"

This really explains what I am struggling with right now. I am ready to live life, to go back to the time when I was concentrating on living a life not centered around food; making goals, going after them, running hard after God, having a circle (tribe) of friends and food was something to be enjoyed, not obsessed over.

This past year has been about confronting the issues, both emotional and physical, surrounding this eating disorder. To learn about hunger, to feel hunger, to eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. To learn other ways of coping with life than using food. To learn portion sizes and teach my eyes and body to believe that this amount of food will satisfy me. To reteach my tastebuds to desire whole and healthy food and not junk food, sugars, and soda. I haven't quite taught my body to love exercise yet! But hope springs eternal.

But I am ready to let go of that as a focus of my life. This is not to say that I am going to quit working on or monitoring my actions, choices, and thought life around food. But I do believe that recovery, for me, looks like being normal. Perhaps it is because of my in God and the scriptural promises he offers like "Those whom the Son has set free are free indeed" I believe that at some point, after doing the deep work, I can be free from this eating disorder.

It is vital to do the work, the emotional, the spiritual work, the deep work. To resolve the issues behind the reasons for an eating disorder, but does it really have to be the focal point of my life forever? I am convinced not. That speaks too much to the victim mentality to me, of being tied to this disorder for life; it controlling me rather than me being free of it. Perhaps I will always have to be on guard that it will not return to consume me again, I can live with that, even scripture speaks to this with the description of putting on the whole armor as means of resisting temptation and sin.

Perhaps I am asking too much too soon. But I also think that this anger, this readiness to move beyond all the focusing my life on this issue speaks to me of being ready to move on. And oh baby am I ready to move on. I am tired of food being the sole focus of my life.

I am particularly talking about all that surrounds the physical act of eating; planning, shopping, cooking, eating, thinking about what exactly to eat next. It is exhausting and taking time away from all the things I really want to do. (Of course this begs the question of whether I am using this as an excuse for not doing what I really want to do is a valid question and my whine-fest on my morning pages will attest to that.) What I am talking about is all the time and effort surrounding planning menus, looking through cook books, going shopping, making sure you have all the right things on hand, cooking and cooking and more cooking, thinking almost incessantly about food, when you will eat next, what you will be eating, if you will be able to choose the healthy choices and not eat too much, will I have enough food with me during a long day so that I will not get hungry - all of it. It is like only half my brain is focused on anything else at any given time during the day. I do not think that this the way recovery will look. I am ready to move into a different place...a more normal place.

For instance. I was in line at the grocery store behind a woman who only had 1 loaf of bread in her cart, exactly 7 TV dinners, 3 baked potatoes, some fresh fruit, some cheese, a bottle of wine, some chicken breasts and a box of crackers and a few other fresh veggies. We were talking and she said something like "I hate doing my big weekly shopping". I looked at my cart (for two weeks for two people) that was almost filled with healthy choices of food that would take hours of thought and preparation. It was a light bulb moment for me. Eating healthy was not synonymous with eating simply or normaly for me. But it could be. I started to watch what people were eating at work - normal people - and saw that even the men were eating simple things; sandwiches and a piece of fruit, a frozen dinner, a can of soup. They were eating to provide fuel for their body, not making it a major production. So I have been trying to incorporate this into my life. Eating foods that are easy and don't take a lot of prep time. Foods that taste good. Foods that are uncomplicated. It has liberated me and my life. Now this is only about 2 weeks old, but it has been a major paradigm shift for me. And I think it is going to revolutionize my life. It makes me nervous to not have a lot of food in the kitchen (just in case), but it is wonderful to not have to touch food, cook food, think about food so much. The frozen dinners are working for me. Perhaps I will one day become tired of them and be ready to go back to more conventional ways of cooking, but for now it is freeing me up from being chained to all that surrounds food for me.

Next frontier: exercise!

I'm Hungry - Really? Or am I Feeling?

2006-01-09T11:31:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: I'm stressed: don't eat don't eat don't eat

Ok..I am at work, I am hating - no that is not even a strong enough word - what I am doing. I am hating it because I am terrible at it, I don't know what I am doing, and it is way outside of my comfort zone, not to mention that I plain don't really care about this particular bit of busy-ness. Help, I can only do left brain for so long. So...Now I am hungry, all I can think about is food. Well I am not that hungry, I can wait for 25 more minutes until lunch, but all I want to do is eat. So...I am bored, that triggers the eating monster (nods to Kerstin), but just this once I am determined to not give in to this beast! But the more I try to figure out this little assignment the more frustrated and bored I become and the more I want to eat. So I have gotten up and walked down the hall...I still want to eat; I have closed my eyes and breathed; that hasn't helped; I have drank almost a glass of water; no help; so now I am writing here.

Forgive my rant and rage. I know that this is just me throwing a temper tantrum. I don't want to be here at this job (any office job for that matter) doing this kind of thing. I want to be in my studio creating, and soon I want to be talking with clients helping them discover their purpose for their lives. But for now I have to wait, wait for god's timing in all of this, for the groundwork to be done. for the financial aspects to be finished with...Namely paying off my debts. It is not so much that I feel stuck and can't go forward. I feel mired in the day to day responsibilities and minutiae of my life and it detracts from what I really want to do and accomplish. and that makes me want to eat; to take away the stress, sadness, frustration, and all those other emotions that go along with this being stuck. But I also know that this is just for a season. Soon, probably sooner than I can imagine, I know this will change. There have been too many indicators of it, too many people praying, too many serendipity happening. So patience and not food is what I need right now.

don't sacrifice the long term for a short term moment of misguided stress relief

So why is it so important to not give into this? It is not about food. Why does not eating now, not using food to soothe myself become important to the rest of my life and obtaining my dreams. Because making the hard decisions impacts the rest of my life. Seeing that it is not food that will change my circumstances will help me to more clearly see what will. Removing the intoxicating and numbing effects that eating has will leave me with no option but to face what it is that is bringing up these emotions. Facing them, identifying them will help me to cope with them in healthy ways. Facing them and identifying them will help me to choose other options with my life that will be more beneficial and productive to doing what God has called me to do; life coaching and art.

wow this little brain dump and tirade has helped. And look at what I discovered, eating doesn't really help change things. I can decide to not eat, I can decide to change the way I feel by choosing to act not eat.

breathe! yes now breathing helps.

Answering the Hard Questions

2006-01-04T14:43:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: YES! I CAN!!

Ok...so December was an utter failure. But don't ya just love the new year? It is so full of promise and hope. This year looks to promise a lot of change in my life; good changes in my life if not in my weight. I have to admit that I am a little discouraged in the lack of physical results in the last year. I have honestly put a lot of effort and done a lot of internal work on this. Yet at the same time I know that ultimately there is the physical equation of:

"calories in must be less than energy expended"

I eventually must begin to decrease the amount of calories I eat and increase the exercise I do. But that isn't happening right now. And the question is why? Why do I resist exercise? I don't have the answer for that yet, but I am continuing to ask and listen.

Last time in group I was complaining about not loosing any weight this last year. A asked the question of what would happen if you never lost the weight you wanted to? I have not liked to think about this question, even though it has been in the back of my mind for a while before she asked it and almost constantly the past two weeks. My first reaction was "then what is the use?" I mean, why work so hard to deal with the underlying issues, become aware of need vs. want, hunger levels, other calming/coping methods besides food, all the stuff that has occupied my mind this past year. Why deprive myself if I will never loose weight?

Then I became angry; at myself, at God, at food, at life, at anyone who happened to say hi to me....well almost! But as I continued to think about this, I realized that it still has to be about more than loosing weight. And that is the hard part. Because deep down it is still about how I look and the insecurity of being unacceptable at almost 300 lbs. Of still struggling to look at myself in the mirror with gentleness, love and kind thoughts. Of still struggling to find beauty in the person, yes even the physicality of that person standing there looking back at me. Of assuming (many times rightly so) that people don't take the time to see beyond the mass of body into who I am. And, really, am I doing any more? If I can't do it for myself, can I even expect anyone else to do it for me? Which shows me that this isn't about food.

It shows me that it is still about learning to loving myself enough to accept myself. Will I love myself any more if I am thin? I mean really? Will I really be any different, at the core of who I am, when I am thin? Of course not, I am who I am. Being fat has nothing to really do with who I am at my core, only the way that I feel about myself. And food is only a tool I use to numb the pain, distract me, entertain me, calm the nerves, celebrate, commiserate and compensate with. It is a reason to have a party in my mouth because I am not allowing myself to have a party in life! So back to the question about what I would do if I didn't loose any weight. Well I guess this little tirade has helped me see that I need to come to a place that I will continue this process irregardless of loosing weight, because it is more about how I choose to live my life than what I do or don't choose to eat. It is about how I continue to choose to believe a lie and how I choose to think and feel about myself rather than believing the truth about who God says I am. (A treasured child of the most high God! Psalms 139:1-18) That is a tough one, but I do want to get there.

I also have been thinking a lot about the quote Kerstin left in my comments (see sidebar at bottom for quote). I think that this capsulates where I want to go this year with this journey. I have done a lot of the soul and internal work this past year. This past year was all about focusing on the issues behind the food. I am ready to move on to other things in my life. I am ready to let go of food. Now I know that there will still be a lot of ups and downs, but I am ready to concentrate on the other areas of my life, the areas that will fill me up, rather than using food. This year looks to be a year of new opportunities and new beginnings. Tomorrow I will start training to be a PWTP life coach. I have been asked to become a group leader in women's ministry at our church. And can I tell you that our women's ministry leader rocks! This is not "church ladies" women's ministry! These woman rock! I also sense that my role as caretaker for mom may increase this year. As I watch her do less and less, she is able to do less and less. I don't know how much longer she can stay relatively immobile and retain her health. (But that is for a future blog I think). And there is my art. I want this year to be about making art, about making time to make art, and finally taking the risk to exhibit and sell my art...even if it is on eBay! And finally this year is going to be about de-cluttering, thinning out, lightening the load, simplifying - no celebrating simplicity, letting go if all my stuff both emotional and the physical - especially the physical! Not just the fat, but all the stuff I have collected and sits in boxes because I don't have anyplace to put it. When I finally am able to have my own home, will I even like any of that "stuff" anymore? hmmm I wonder if "lightening the load" of my stuff will have an effect on my emotional/bodily physical/emotional lightening the load journey? heheh

Stuffed to the Gills

2005-12-27T23:00:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: Do overs count - even on the road to health

Ugh! I am so full and stuffed and I can't believe that I have eaten so much. But amazingly it is far less than years past, so that is progress right? But I do not like the way that I feel right now. And the sad part of it - I could continue to eat more. That is what scares me. I don't want to loose all the ground that I have gained. Now this is only emotional ground and breaking habits, I haven't really lost any weight to speak of. But I am convinced that changing the habits, confronting the issues behind why I eat and how I use food will result in eventually making the kinds of decisions around food that will result in weight loss.

This month has been terrible in terms of trying to get up at 6. I am finding it very difficult to get to bed by 10. It is more comfortable to get to bed by 10:30 or 11. And getting up at 6:30 or 7. But that doesn't leave time for exercise or any of the other stuff I do in the mornings. Getting up at 6 is ok, but moving and exercising is just not in the cards. Sometimes you just have to accept the body clock you are given. I am disappointed and feel like I am giving up, but this exercising in the mornings I don't think will work. The good news is that I have backed out of some of the evening commitments that I have so I think that I can exercise in the evenings. I am going to try doing it while I watch one TV program. I am trying to give up on TV, it sucks me in and encourages me to be a couch potato. But if I make a deal with myself to only watch my one TV program a night if I do it while exercising it will work. Besides after feeling so icky this week after eating so much I am ready to start moving again. I really don't like the way that I feel. Heavy on my feet, achy, and dull.

A new year and 365 days full of possibility. My prayer is that this will be the last year that I have to deal with this issue. I am so ready to let go of it. I really like what Kerstin said in the comments from my last post about the difference between the goals of thin and heavy people being that the only goal being to loose weight. I think that is so true. Kerstin I may have to have the name of that book you are reading. (Please tell me that it isn't in German - my German is not that good anymore!) In fact as I have been thinking about my intentions for next year I had been thinking that it would be better to not put loosing weight on that list at all. To only put the things on the list that I want to live and achieve. This doesn't mean that I am giving up, just not putting it at the forefront and focus of my life. This past year has been all about that, and in many ways I have made a lot of progress, but in many ways I am still where I was when I started this journey last October. My weight is the same, I fight the same food/eating battles, I am back on my B/P med. Maybe it is about putting more effort and concentration on finding my way to a new career that brings fulfillment and the flexibility to do what I will soon have to do for my mom. Making more time to create art and taking the risk and next step of trying to sell it. To learn more about and to create more jewelry and sell it. To connect with people here in the city I live and create a social life. I have been so disconnected socially since moving back here I have lived almost a solitary life.

And all of this goes back to the quote Kerstin made about overweight people feeling that life doesn't start until after they loose weight. For me that has and hasn't been true. In the past I have had a social life, it has been harder to meet and connect with people since moving back here. But I have to say that energy level has made it so much easier to just stay home evenings after work. I don't have the energy or in some cases the physical strength to do things that I used to do. All this weight to lug around limits what I can do physically. It is kind of a vicious circle. The heavier you are the less you want to move the less you want to move the heavier you become. So break the cycle. Focus on other things.

At group this past week I said that I am so ready for food to not be the center point of my life, my thoughts, my time and energy. This past year it has; planning menus, shopping, cooking, exercising, reading about nutrition and food disorders, going to group, the message board, almost constantly thinking about food. And it has been good and necessary - to a point. Now I really do think that it is time to just live a normal life. To let go of all the focus being only on this issue of my life, to accept that the decisions on food, exercise, etc. must just become the fabric of my life, not the focus. It is time to create the rest of my life, for it to be healthy and balanced.

In light of this I am seriously contemplating how to change how I cook and eat. I have got to get out of the kitchen, and the grocery store. Eating healthy, using fresh produce, cooking nightly, shopping weekly (minimum) takes hours. There is no way around it. And I think that I have found and used every short cut that I can find and still do the healthy food bit. I don't know if I have answers yet. I have been looking at some of the newer healthier TV dinner choices. Some look ok, although they have a lot of unpronounceable ingredients. But to come home from work, put a frozen dinner in the oven or micro and make a salad and in 10 minutes have supper....not having to handle food. Sounds like heaven to me right now. I have also thought about keeping supper very simple. Good bread, a bit of cheese, fruit and a salad or soup. Lunches at work are a challenge. I don't do well in the mornings and I have to bring my lunch or do fast food drive through. Well all of this is just excuses. I could, and have just planned and fixed a whole weeks worth of lunches on Sunday so that all I did was grab out of the fridge as I rushed out the door. Well I am just rambling on and on...I know that when all is said and done I have the answers inside and just have to accept that I have admit that in the end discipline figures into it too.

Well off to bed to dream up solutions.

Merry Food-mas!!

2005-12-22T12:22:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: Just get through the season of too much food with as little damage as possible!!

Ok...be gentle with yourself, I keep repeating this over and over. This too will pass. Too much food, to many temptations, and I am eating too much. Who's idea was it to have food brought into work every day the month of December?? Not I, she says, but partaking in the eat-fest anyway. Well I have to say that I haven't done as bad as I have in years past. I have, for the most part kept the eating to only eating when hungry and stopping when full...but with so many tastes, aromas, sights, I am not sure that I could trust my body enough to even know when it was hungry or full. On the day's when fruit and veggie platters were available I chose those, but most days it was full of cheese, sausage, candy, cookies, pie, cheesecakes, and a whole variety of various yummy dips for crackers, breads and potato chips. Sigh, it is almost over...she says waddling down the hall, wondering if her clothes will fit in a day or two!

Seriously though, I did learn something from all this. Seeing, smelling food is a huge trigger for me. And I am not using food during stress and comfort as much lately, but I am eating because I just like the taste of it all. So there you go...back to breaking habits. I am so sick of food I don't even want to be around it, cook, or eat for a while. I am looking at options in the new year to simplify my food prep/eating. I am seriously even looking at some of the new healthy frozen food options. I just don't want to spend my time in the kitchen around food, chopping, cooking, storing, eating, planning; everything is still about food, even though it is about choosing healthy options. I just want food to not be the center point of my life. And I can see that, in a way, it is getting to that. The more time I spend in the art studio, the more time I am involved with people at church, the closer I get to actually living the life I have dreamed of for most of my life, the less interested I am in food. I can see glimmers of the "I eat to live, not live to eat"...for brief seconds at a time.

It does work to deal with my inner demons to help battle my issues with food. Well, actually as I deal with how I use food to cope with those, and realize that it really doesn't work anyway and begin to deal with those little devils, food begins to hold less interest for me. And I find that freedom is within reach. Thank you God for the miracles you are working in my life. Here it is, it is yours, take it (again) and give me strength to fight this battle.

Bleeech...Holiday food fest at work

2005-12-12T15:29:00.000-06:00

Affirmation: I go to bed at 10; I get up at 6

Oh the joys of office unity. Someone decided that every day between December 1 and the 24th someone should bring food to work. And what good food it has been. But I am miserable! I have been allowing myself to eat, but I have been attempting to wait until I am hungry and stop when I am full. Doing pretty well, and have been amazed at how fast full happens. Also am surprised that I feel find just tasting things and not eating a lot. But it has brought up all those "eat eat eat" feelings. I feel like I am in a food induced coma, but it has taken waaay less food to make that happen. But with all that said, I am still eating way to much. And it is making me feel icky (yes that is a word). This is a good thing I guess. Now if I can just use it to help not eat as much the rest of the month.

Getting out of bed in December at 6 am. Not doing so well. Weekends especially. But that is because I stayed up too late. I have about decided to start "going - moving in the direction of" bed around 9. I seem to not really be able to actual do toes up at 10 with out doing some reading and/or journaling. If I "go to bed" at 10 it is 11 before lights go out. But doing so at 9 makes me feel so much like I have no evening. Especially since I don't get off of work until 5:30. And on nights I have meetings it is worse. But I know that this is something I need to do so I will.

I have decided to try to give up TV watching this month. I have so much to do, and truth be told it is why I don't get to going to bed until 10...I am usually watching something that started at 9.

Monthly Progress Report:

No inches lost
1 lb lost
successfully eating when hungry/stopping when full
generally successful food choices
Successful at getting to bed by 10 - most nights.

Not much to celebrate in the weight loss, but until I get back to the exercise I know that it will be slow going. But changes are happening. And as Ms. Maatha says...That's a good thing

"Inch by Inch life's a cinch;Yard by yard life is hard"

Changes are Happening

2005-11-29T10:48:00.000-06:00

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

2005-11-28T11:18:00.000-06:00

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

2005-11-21T17:20:00.000-06:00

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

2005-11-17T07:33:00.000-06:00

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)

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

affirmations,
replacing negative thinking with positive thinking (getting rid of the negative tapes)
doing the bible study on who I am in God...what God really thinks of me
a word study on food in the Bible
replacing self deprecation and criticism with positives
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

2005-11-11T11:09:00.000-06:00

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

2005-11-08T12:34:00.000-06:00

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

2005-11-03T17:14:00.000-06:00

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!!

2005-11-02T22:54:00.000-06:00

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.

Renewing my Mind

2005-10-28T22:40:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: Change happens one choice at a time

Last night I chose to have ribs. I haven't had ribs for many months. I was craving them. So I chose to have them for supper. Of course I over ate - waaay beyond saitey - waaay beyond full. I didn't care, I wanted my ribs. I knew that I wouldn't make that choice again for many more months. But I paid for it. I slept terrible last night. I still was overfull and uncomfortable at bedtime. Made for a restless night. All day I have felt heavy, bloated, and just plain yuckky. I want to remember this feeling. Now I don't necessarily feel guilty for eating the ribs, nor am I beating myself up, but I want to remember this feeling that is the result of the choice to not only eat ribs, but to eat waaaay too many of them. To think that I will go through my life never eating ribs again is ridiculous. But to get to the point where I can choose to have ribs for a meal, eat only until satisfied (not full) and stop. That is my goal here with my relationship with food. Eat when I am hungry; stop when I am satisified. So I want to remember the way that I feel right now, the way that I felt last night so that next time I can remind myself of the consequence of eating to overfull. I don't like this feeling of overfull. I want to be present to this feeling so that it will be easily called up next time I am thinking I want to eat beyond fullness. This feeling is not worth that choice.

In other news I had a Dr.'s apt. this afternoon. I lost 2.5 lbs this month...and my b/p is coming down. Not fast enough for his liking so I am back on a higher dose of the enalipril. But that will change as I continue to loose and continue to get back in the groove of exercizing.

I have been thinking all day about what I wrote this morning about now it is down to breaking the old habits. I keep remembering the verse in Romans 12:2 about renewing your mind.

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

Now I know that this verse is not specifically talking about weight loss or choosing to live and eat in a more healthy way. But it is talking about making changes in your life that are permenant. It talks about not conforming to patterns that you have previously been conformed to - changing your habits. The way to do that is to renew your mind...or change the way that you think. If it will work for your spiritual life, it will also work for other areas. What does renewing your mind mean? If that is how you change your habits, then how do you go about renewing your mind? To apply it to making the healthy choices in my life, I think that it is to be viligiant about how and what I am thinking about in relation to food and the choices I do or do not make for health. I think it means to activly guard your thought life...How much of my time do I spend thinking about food? Make the choice to change your thoughts.

re·new
v. re·newed, re·new·ing, re·news v. tr.
To make new or as if new again;
restore: renewed the antique chair.
To take up again; resume: renew an old friendship; renewed the argument.
To repeat so as to reaffirm: renew a promise.
To regain or restore the physical or mental vigor of; revive: I renewed my spirits in the country air.
To arrange for the extension of: renew a contract; renew a magazine subscription. To arrange to extend the loan of: renewed the library books before they were overdue.
To replenish: renewed the water in the humidifier.
To bring into being again; reestablish.
v. intr.
To become new again.
To start over.

The definition of renew. I like "To become new again" and "to start over". But I really love "to bring into being again" I think that we all, at one time knew how to make healthy choices in our lives. To go on this journey to health is to renew that knowledge. To consciously make the choices on a daily basis until my body begins to trust me again and I begin to trust my body to know when, how much, and what to eat. To know and want exercise and movement in my life again. Our bodies were made for movement. Remember how we were as children? How we moved, ran, jumped, twirled, walked, skiped? Our bodies love movement. It was created for movement. I just have to remind it of that by making new choices everyday to include movement in my life again.

To not conform to the patterns of life as I have known it in the past - to renew my mind, my thinking - actively choosing to think new thoughts and make new choices so that I may be transformed into a person who chooses health...life over death.

Light Bulb Moments

2005-10-28T10:54:00.000-05:00

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

Plans, Hope and a Future

2005-10-26T23:33:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I choose the outcome by the choices I make

It has been a year since CHIP. And phycially nothing has changed. I have gained back the weight I have lost...and I am back on my medication for my b/p as welll as another for my water retention. I know that I have spent the past year working on the deep issues, the inside work. And there has been progress there - Group has helped. But I am still frustrated that I am not seeing phyciacal evidence of it. Somehow the two have to meld and I have to start seeing changes in my willingness to change eating habits. I know that I am dealing with how and why I use food. But I am also coming to the conclusion that in many ways I am down to habit. I have a habit of eating too much. I like to eat, I like the taste of certain foods. I don't like to exercise. I am beginning to see that the next step is to begin to create new habits and let go of the old habits. They are not serving me anymore. Many of the old wounds are healed, long time ago. But I got used to feeling hurt, that I haven't really let go of the idea of the hurt. And in some wacked out way I think that some of the issues provide a backdoor for me in case I fail...i always have something besides my own choices to blame my failure on. It is just time to begin creating new choices. To begin to create a new history for me...a history of wholeness and healling...a history of good choices...a history of accepting that the way that I think about myself and see myself is so different from how God sees me. That even what I want for myself is nowhere near what God wants for me. Jeremiah 29:11 says:

"For I know the plans I have for you" declares the Lord, "Plans to prosper you
and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a futrue."

This verse has been rumbling around in my heart and brain for a few months. I keep asking how does this apply to this journey to health and wholeness. God does not see me as broken and needing fixing. He sees the possibility and potential in me. Enough to have already made plans for my life. He has plans for a prosperous life. Money? maybe, but I think it goes deeper...prosperity of spirit. Prosperity of realising the successes I am able to have. Prosperity of doing what is so deep in my heart that I am afraid to speak it out loud? These are what produces hope in a soul doesn't it? For me, much of what is holding me back from doing what I really want to do, at least in my mind is my weight. The physicality of it. I get tired, I can't stand on my feet, I can't physically keep up with the life I would like to have. God knows this frustration. His plan is to give me hope and a future.

Pain in the Back

2005-10-24T00:07:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I exercise every morning

My back is still bothering me. Muscle spasms, what agony. And the hard part of it is that you just want to find that position where there is no pain and stay that way forever, but that only really makes things worse. You have to move, you have to stretch, you have to not give in to the pain. But this weekend I pretty much did. I had no choice. I have been going 90 miles into the wind for the past two weeks in spite of the pain. This weekend was a small window of nothingness so I took advantage of it. Our cable went out, which meant no internet access. So the whole weekend I had planned spending doing research on the internet sitting in a chair (oh so good for the back) didn't happen. I ended up getting a couple of videos and crawling into my flannel jammies and laying on a heating pad and watching movies. It was cold and rainy today and cool and windy yesterday so it felt good to just snuggle. Tonight my back is better. The best part of this is that I haven't had much of an appetite. I am going to try to get back on the bike tomorrow morning...Even if it is only for a few minutes. I have to keep moving.

On another note, I had my first comment posted to my blog! Thanks Sarah! Her blog has been both an inspiration and a motivation since I discovered it a few weeks ago. Check her out.

I did spend part of the time while watching the movies collecting the last of the quotes for my food journal book I am creating/writing. I also spent a few minutes at a time at the computer (as long as I could sit) plugging them into the spots where the needed to go in the proof version of the journal. I am almost finished with this project. I have a few more quotes and a final proof read to do. Time is running out, I need to finish it by the end of the week so I can show it to some printers and get estimates on printing costs. A. wants to use them in her next eating disorders group session and the CHIP sessions end at the end of the month. I am quite excited about getting this project printed. There is also a possibility that the bookstore at church may want to sell it as well. I am also toying with the idea of selling it on e-bay or at cafe-press. Not sure yet though. I would have to check out the copyright issues first.

I just recently finished this book "Passing for Thin Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self" by Frances Kuffel. Listen to this quote from the book:

""Because I'm afraid. I eat when I'm afraid..."

I heard this. It was the truest thing I had ever said. This was my heart and my guts talking, every blood cell in my body condensed into five words.
I heart but I didn't listen. I wasn't ready. It would be ten years before I listened and acted.
But I knew." (pg 19)

Well I am off to dreamland. Another week begins now, another chance to do it right!

Changing

2005-10-20T16:38:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I choose the outcome by the choices I make

So today has been crazy busy at work. I didn't get a chance to stop for lunch, so I scavenged leftovers that they had set out from a luncheon meeting (usually good food). Bar-b-q beef and baked beans. It tasted ok...Or rather I think I would have thought so a year ago, but I have so lost my taste for these kinds of things. It was too salty (me, who used to add salt to McD's fries, ms. Salt shaker will travel), and too greasy. Who would have "thunk it" that my tastes would truly change...So now I sit here at my desk smelling the awful smell of half a plate of beans and bar-b-q in my trash can. Remind me next time to dump the rejected food somewhere else...Like the break room one floor below me. Who would have thought that the smell of any food would nauseate me. Hmm maybe there is progress after all!

I find myself surprised by the small victories and changes I come across each day. Surely this is a sign that the deep soul work I have been working on is creating change, the areas of healings are taking place, and the mind shift and paradigm shift from a diet mentality is happening. The work is hard, painful even. But I am more and more convinced that without this work loosing weight on a diet is only a temporary measure and not taking care of the issues that got me here at almost 300 lbs. I am also convinced that as the deep work I have been doing and continues begins to create changes in the way I think, feel, and look and do life, the other elements will catch up and begin to happen in my life. You know; those things that look like a diet, exercising, weight loss, and yes even a more consistent way of eating. But I have gone far enough that I am beginning to see how these changes are beginning to transform my life and my thinking.

I am getting ready to do a study on how God sees us and feels about us/me...And how it relates to self-esteem. I am thinking that this is a crucial part of the puzzle for me. One that I haven't really known how to go about looking at. But it is stirring deep in my heart. For so many years when I have tried to talk about this seed of an idea people misunderstood what I was trying to explain. Many people believe that people really do love themselves as is shown by the fact that we eat, don't do harm (mostly) to our selves, etc. And on a certain level I suppose that is true. But on a deeper level, I am sure that many people who struggle with weight/eating disorder issues (at least the many I have had conversations with) also struggle with self contempt/low self esteem/self hatred. Yes we live life, care for the basic needs, even are successful, but deep down where even we don't want to look most of the times we do not like ourselves. We do not think we are worthy. And this is where I think that to understand how much God loves me (us) and esteems me (us) and is for me (us); that knowledge can transform lives.

Why Do I Not Do What I Want to Do?

2005-10-19T13:04:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I create the outcome by the choices I make

Why do I struggle so with exercise? Why can't I just choose to do it everyday? It is no secret that I hate doing it, but I also feel so much better after it is over. Shouldn't that be incentive enough? Apparently not! So what is at work here? Is it just a plain issue of discipline? Obediance? Or am I trying to sabotauge myself? Or do I not love myself to push myself in this last huge step to becoming healthy and creating a healthy life? Probably all the above. So what to do about it?

But I am having small victories. Today I had chinese food for lunch - been craving it for ages and decided that today was the day. I am full and satisfied and have only eaten about a 1/4 of a lunch portion. Not so long ago I would have eaten the whole portion plus an egg roll and soup. I even am able to throw it out because I don't want to eat it two days in a row, and it was easy to throw it out. Now I know that may sound like a crazy kind of thing to you, but wasting food, not eating it has been a difficult thing for me to overcome.

Another small victory...well this is actually a huge victory. I have really lost my taste for fast food. In my hectic pace I am finding myself continuing to check with my body to see if it is actually hungry and choosing to not eat when I am not - even if it is meal time and I am going into a meeting or something where food may not be available for a while. I am learning to live with the feeling of hunger with out getting too panicky. I do try to keep a bag of nuts, dried fruit and kashi mix or something in my purse for those times when the blood sugar drops and I get the shakes. But that is happening less and less lately as well. I suppose that my body is getting used to not being fed constantly and learning to keep a more balanced level for a longer period of time...don't know, but sounds good eh?

I love this having the conversation with your body to check if you are really hungry. I am learning to trust my body and it's responses and it is learning to trust me to feed it when it is really hungry and not over feed it 24/7.

Small victories. Today on the bike for 10 minutes this morning.

Struggling

2005-10-18T15:55:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I choose the outcome by the choices I make

Today I am struggling with keeping focused. Well not just today, but the past couple of weeks. My back is having muscle spasms. I am tired and draggy all day. No, I am not exercizing. One would think that based on how much better I feel when I exercise regularly it would be motivation enough to keep doing it, to make it a habit. But nooooooo, somehow I wonder if I like feeling icky and sluggish. One could assume that based on my choices of not exercising and not eating lately.

But I am not giving in, nor giving up hope. I am convinced that I am on to something here. My ladies in my group keep telling me that the work and changes are happening on the inside and are visible on the outside and soon my body, choices and actions will eventually catch up and truly become a lifestyle. I know this is true, but not today. Tomorrow maybe, but not at this moment in time. But I have hope.

I am feeling more and more convinced lately that the peice that is missing for me is the spiritual one. Specifically to understand and believe how God sees me. To see the extent of his love for me, the plans he has for me, and the future he desires for me. The group, not being based in spiritual things can only address spiritual issues in a general manner. I know that at the root of my "stuff" (and many women's issues related to weight and body image) is and unhealthy or lack of self-esteem - even a self-hatred. Many women struggle with this. For me, I know that I do not have a real understanding of how God sees me or the depth of his love for me. It is hard for me to personalise the love that is spoken about in the Bible. I know it is true, I believe it even, but not on a personal or gut level. More and more I am beginning to think about the ramifications in my life if I truly took God at his word about how much he loves me. It is not that I need proof of this love...how much more could he prove it than to die for my sins? It is that somehow I have not taken it into my system at the cellular level. I know he loves me, I believe he loves me, but it has not really impacted my life on the depest levels. Yes, His love has changed my life, but yet, there is this part of my life that is unaffected by it. Or perhaps it is that I don't feel worthy enough? Well of course I don't, that is the issue here. And of course none of us are worthy of his love or sacrifice...that is what makes it so awsome. But perhaps the secret of truly accepting myself and loving myself is to accept and understand the vast extent of His love for me.

To this end, I am beginning a study on looking at what God says about his love for us.

Finding New Ways to Be Successful

2005-09-26T15:33:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I can do this

I spent the weekend looking at the areas I am failing in and why. I have come up with a plan that I think may ease some of the pressure for me and bring more successes too.

As my life has heated up and become more busy (NOT a complaint, I am enjoying the involvement and social life that I have lacked since coming to Rockford) I have had less time to cook and pack lunches and fix breakfasts. Actually I have lost interest in cooking...which is a real supprise to me...but as I am trying to shift my focus from food and eating in my life, the time I was spending on cooking and planning and thinking about food has been replaced by other things. Sooooo here is my plan.

Breakfasts

grab a piece of fruit,
a carton of low sugar yogurt (btw...any recommendations for brands? I am devistated to realise that the new yoplait low fat chocolate whips has 20 grams of sugar per serving! they are SO good)
a muffin from natural ovens

Lunches

a salad from somewhere...McD's, Dairy Queen, Arby's and occasionally Taco Bell are my choices near where I work

Suppers
If I am home:

probably a soup of some kind
easy cook: pastas, baked potatoes, rices, grains with veggies
side salads with veggies
veggies and healthy dips (I love to dip and crunch. Dips: healthy humous, healthy guac., salsas, healthy onion dip, healthy sun-dried tomato dip or various healthy bean dips)
tuna or salamon with crackers and vegies
basically anything that can be quickly and easily cooked. Pantry meals.

If I go straight to a meeting after work:

salad or a veggie wrap from Arbies or veggie sandwich from subway or from the church cafe

Snacks will be fruit or veggies and dips.

I am just resisting spending lots of time planning, shopping, cooking and thinking about foods. Having the things in the pantry to make fast quick dinners and giving myself permission to eat out rather than cook will help I think. I figure that I would spend about $20 a week eating out (4 lunches and 1 or 2 wraps for supper). I have been so busy that I probably have been throwing away at lest $20 of bad produce that I don't get eaten anyhow.

Doing this will also allow me to sleep in about a half hour in the morning too!! Gotta love that! I just can't seem to get it together at night to make the lunch at night.

How does this sound to you guys?

jackie

Exercise and Choices

2005-09-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I exercise

Exercise! Oh how I hate it! But Oh how I love how I feel when I do it. I did it. I went and purchased a recumbent bike and it was delivered on Friday. I had gotten out of the routine of going to the Y and with my new job and other new things in my life, I was finding it hard to make the time to get to the Y to exercise. I knew that I could do it in less time at home, but for now walking was a challenge with my knee pain so I decided to get a bike. I found a great deal and mom says that she will use it as well...we will see on that one! But this morning I got up and rode for a whole 5 minutes. How discouraging was that!!! I had been up to 40 minutes on the treadmill with 15 minutes on each end of that on the bike. Well it will take working up to that, but I will.

I am still without my journal and am seeing what a huge accountability tool it is for me. I am almost finished with the revisions and hope to have it ready to print by the end of the week. I am just about at the point in my recovery that I am thinking that I might be ok with setting some goals. Goal setting usually doesn't do anything but trigger my rebelliousness in me and I end up self defeating. I know that this is a core issue that I want to work on...rebelliousness. It goes back so far to my childhood...food was the only thing I felt that I could control about my life. But that isn't true anymore. I am in control of my life now, well as far as I choose to be. Of course I am submitted to God, but that is something different than feeling that others are in control of my life and my choices. But then again maybe not. If I truly believe that God is in control, even when I feel I am not in control of the choices others make for me, I can find comfort in the fact that God can make everything work for the good.

But being in control...knowing that I am in control of my choices makes me responsible for those choices I make. I have no one now to blame on my weight. I have made all the choices that have brought me to this point. I understand that there are circumstances, explainations, reasons, but ultimately I have chosen to be this way. It is interesting that as I have allowed the truth of that to sink into my core being, instead of feeling guilt, despair, or anger I have felt hope. An incrediable amount of hope. Because if I made the choices that resulted in my being obese, then I also have the ability to make the choices to stop makeing choices that make me obese. Ok that is a mouthful. Let me see if I can say it better. They were my choices...the end result is obesity. I have the same power of choice to decide to make choices that the end result is health. Healthy eating, healthy exercising, healthy weight level, healthy life. Now I know that it isn't really as simple as that, but it is as simple as that. It is choice. One choice at a time. I didn't start out to choose to become 100 lbs obese...I made the choice to have that extra helping, I made the choice to not exercise, I made the choice to eat when I wasn't hungry, I made the choice to soothe myself with food rather than deal with a problem. I have the same power to make different choices. I am beginning to realise that it isn't about looking at the totallity of what has to be accomplished, but to look at it broken down into the simplest form. Choice. Specifically one choice at a time.

That being said, I had a weekend of bad choices. Not one meal was a good choice. Why? I didn't feel like cooking, I didn't feel like eating healthy, I didn't feel like going to the grocery store. There are always reasons. But the simple matter is that it is all about choice. Do I make the choice for life or death? Simple eh?

Sans Jounal

2005-08-23T09:12:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I do not eat when I am bored

This week I am without my journal. The trial one that I created was only for one month and I do not have the new changes ready to print out the new one. I can tell the difference with out it. As much as I have resisted keeping a food journal - not having the time, not wanting the hassle of writing everything that goes into my mouth, what ever the excuses were - I am now convinced that it is really a great tool for healing and recovery. Aside from the obvious of keeping me honest about what and how much I actually eat - it helps to keep my focus, helps me to see patterns of when and why I eat, and to see the excuses I have for not moving more. And it is from these that I make decisions on what to focus on each week and create my affirmations.

The food journal has become a sort of saftey net for me this past month. I can see that I will need to continue using it for a while yet. I think that the most important thing that it helped me realize is that this is going to be a long term journey for me and that it is ok. It helps me to hold on to the long term goals, but keeps me focused on the day to day choices that will bring that long term success. That long term success seems so huge and so far away, the journal, breaking it down into as small blocks of time as I want help me to recognize and celebrate the smaller victories along the way, the marking of progress that gets lost when only focusing on the final long term goal. And really these daily, even choice by choice victories are, in many ways, more important because they are what will become the habits of my life that will sustain me in the permancy of recover and health. It helps me to remember that my focus is not just the final goal of loosing x-amount of weight, but of creating a new lifestyle that is centered on health and the permenacy of that change has to be made at the lowest level, the beginning, the minute by minute choice that I make each day about how I choose to live my life. I love this quote from Oprah:

"The commitment to do well and be well is a lifetime of choices that you make daily" --Oprah Winfrey

So, I have become convinced that a food journal is a valuable tool that not only keeps one honest about what one eats, but for me it helps to see, plan and facilitate change.

Affirmations

2005-08-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I do not eat when I am bored

Affirmations...now these are something I have reisited working with for almost two years. At first I wasn't sure if it just wasn't so much wishful thinking. But as I began to do some research, I discovered that even though they seem new, they have been around for ever. The Bible, particularly Psalms is full of them; my favorite is in Psalms 139:14, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made". As I have begun to work with them, I have seen that they can be a valuable tool. There is no secret or magical power in them. Picking ones that resonate in your spirit may make it easier to work with. But I am also convinced that using ones that you don't quite believe yet, particularly about yourself, especially if they are grounded in scripture as is the Ps. 139:14 one can be even more powerful and potentially life changeing. Why, well in my experience it is about telling yourself the truth over and over again; eventually you believe it and can use that truth to then begin to make the changes in your life to make it happen. Mabye it is the positive side of a negative self-fulllfilling prophesy. I don't know exactly. But I do know that they can be helpful tools

Last month I worked with the affirmation "I eat when I am hungry; I stop when I am satisfied". Along with that last month my focus was on only eating when I was hungry and stopping when I reached saiety. I said this affirmation numerous times a day. Everytime I reached out to eat I asked myself the question "where am I on the hunger scale?" At first it felt awkward and silly, but as the month wore on, I found that my thinking was changing. By the end of the month I now feel that I am choosing to eat rather than just eating when the thought strikes. When I think I want to eat the question comes automatically and it is getting easier and easier to know if hunger or something else is driving me to food. It has also helped me to believe that this is a truth in my life. This is how most the rest of the world live - eating only when hungry. I have also been able to see what many triggers to eat are as a result of this - because the next obvious question when no is the answer to the hunger question is that I am no hungry is "What is this really about then?" The various answers have given me insight on other affirmations to work with, areas to confront and find other coping tools than food, even ways to see how to change the day to day minutia of the way I live my life to facilitate this journey to recover and health

Weekend Roundup

2005-08-21T22:05:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I do not eat when I am bored.

This weekend has been pretty good. I got a lot of the major changes finished on the food journal I am working on to publish. I left a galley copy off for A. to look at, she is considering using them in the new groups that will start in the fall and I think with some of her other patients as well. It is exciting. I know that using this journal for the past month has really helped me see things that I haven't ever seen before.

Today has been a really "feel like normal" day for me. Really a first. I haven't thought about food most of the day, in fact I had breakfast and didn't eat again until supper - I just wasn't hungry. This reinforces that fact that I eat when I am bored. What this is tellling me is that I need to keep busy doing things I love to do, rather than sit around after work and veg and get bored and then think about eating. I have so many projects that should be no problem.

Although, this weekend has not been good as far as planing for the next week and getting lunches and stuff ready. I will have to be dilligent tomorrow night and make lunches and muffins for breakfast. It went so good the past few weeks to pre-bag raw veggies, fruit, and prep lunches for the whole week. Then all I have to do is throw everything in my lunch bag and it is done...no muss, no fuss. But I find that sometimes I am so resistant to that. Self-sabotage...a word that I have not been willing to explore...must do it soon though I think.

A note about the journal page I posted. This is from an old visual journal from Feb.2000. As much as most of my life has centered around getting a handle on this weight gain since moving back to my home town, not much has changed since then. Until now. This jounal entry was so much about picking up myself by my bootstraps and trying to convince myself that change could happen.; I don't think I believed that anything could change. It didn't, I didn't have the tools then, dieting didn't work, neither did any amount of trying to give myself pep talks either.

So what has changed? I am not sure that I can put that into words. Something has changed on a very deep spiritual level for me. For the first time I think I have truly understood how continuing to live this way dishonors God, and at the root of it all is lack of faith...I have put my love for food higher than my love for God, I made food an idol. I would go to food to solve problems, ease lonliness, ease boredom, comfort, what ever. The deeper my relationship with God has gone, the more I have understood how very much He loves me and how much He desires to be the touchstone and focus of my complete life; how He want's me to come to Him for all those kinds of things. What He thinks of me, desires for me are so completely different that what I believe about myself. Understanding who I am in Him brings such a different perspective into my life and the way that I see myself. Now, this doesn't mean that I don't have to do the work to change the way I relate to and use food. I have to face the issues behind why I use food, I have to take the steps to change...but the differnce this time is that there is a deep sadness in my heart for not understanding how destructive these choices I have made have been to me, on all levels, spiritually, physically, emotionally, metally, even socially. These are my choices, and I have the consequences of my choices to prove it; I no longer want to live in the consequences of those choices, I want to live a new and healthy life; a life that is within reach one decision at a time.

Breakthroughs & Celebrations

2005-08-18T22:35:00.000-05:00

Affirmation: I eat when I am hungry; I stop when I am satisfied

Tonight at group I realized that the past month, working on this affirmation has created a real breakthrough for me. I am actually beginning to listen to my body and recognize real hunger and choose to only eat when I am actually hungry. I am getting better and better each day to stop eating when I reach saiety and not going past that to full or stuffed. And today I realized that my body is beginning to trust me again to feed it when I am truly hungry and that if I get hungry again, I will feed it, instead of starving it because of some diet. Today I wasn't even hungry enough to eat my snacks. I only ate at meals and actually I didn't think about food much today at all. Small progresses, but victories to celebrate!

I think it is about time that I begin to look for and celebrate the small victories. I am so quick to notice and point out my stumbles, mistakes, and falls from plan each day, but there are still many victories, both large AND small to celebrate too. It is so important to mark the positive milestones, something I don't do enough on this journey...in fact in most of my life.

So!! tonight it is about small victories. You Go Girlfriend! Today's small victory is not eating snacks because I wasn't hungry or just because I had packed them in my lunch bag. It was perfectly ok to tote them back home and put them in the fridge for tomorrow.

Random Musings

2005-08-17T08:21:00.000-05:00

I am tired this morning. I woke up starving this morning so ate breakfast at 7 am. Usually I have such a hard time eating that early. My other vitamins came yesterday so I will get back on those. I also ordered some iron (my iron was waaaay low with this last blood screen) and a bottle of glucosamine. I am currious to see if that will help the knees and hips and the pain there. I am hoping that the iron is the reason I have been so fatigued and sleepy these past few months.

I have decided to go ahead and purchase a recumbant bike for home. I know I will exercise more at home than trying to fit time in to go to the Y...and mom says that she will use it too. I think that it will go in what will eventually be my bedroom, after we get all the rearranging finished. I am so anxious to get all the moving and shuffling around done so I can spend some quality time in the studio. A side benefit is that I don't eat or want to eat when I am in the studio working. All I have been able to do lately is the soul cards...which really aren't true soul cards in the way Seena Frost describes them and how to use them in her book Soul Collage. For me, they are a visual record of what is going on in my soul at the time I created them.

I am getting pretty much in the habit of recognizing hunger, eating when I am hungry (level 2-3) and stoping when I am satisfied (level 5-6). It is getting easier and easier to choose to wait until I am hungry, but I still am eating too fast to let my body catch up and recognize saiety. My additional goal this week has been to slow down eating. I am doing that by trying to only eat when I am eating (rather than read, surf the web, watch TV, etc) and eat at the table. I think that I may have to stop eating at my desk at work...I tend to find something in email or on the web to read.

Why do this - eating at the table, not doing anything else while eating? Well double tasking while eating contributes to a lot of things.

Not being in the moment and engaged in eating, tasting, and most important listening to my body
Begins to create the habit of doing something while eating, which that activity then will become a trigger for eating
Contributes to my not paying attention and then I tend to eat faster, which allows me to eat more; not be engaged

Hmmm most of them actually reflect not being engaged in the moment of eating...why do I do that, I wonder? I have reallized that it has not been exactly enjoyable for me to only eat while I am eating...I don't enjoy the process of eating nearly as much. So...what is that telling me about how I use food? Just the fact that I am resisting eating only when I am eating indicates that this is something to work on, to dig beneath.

At any rate I am celebrating that I am beginning to see my hunger/saiety come back into balance and that I am actually able to recognize and respond to them in a normal way.

Jackie

I eat when I am hungry, I stop when I am satisfied

Perseverance

2005-08-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

per·se·ver·ance n. 1. Steady persistence in adhering to a course of action, a belief, or a purpose; steadfastness. 2. persistent determination. 3. the act of persisting or persevering; continuing or repeating behavior.

This is the word that I am working off today. Perseverance. Keeping on when I don't feel like keeping on. Doing it when I don't want to, when I am discouraged, when I am too tired to, when I forgot the reason I am doing this in the first place, and most of all doing it when it gets too hard and the old ways are calling and seem so much easier. What is the result of perseverance? Habit.

hab·it: noun 1 : bodily appearance or makeup especially as indicative of one's capacities and condition 2 : a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior 3 a : a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiological exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance b : an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary c : addiction 4 : characteristic mode of growth or occurrence

Habit is what I can fall back on when I "don't want to" Habit is what will take me through, will over-ride the thought processes of wanting to go backwards. Habit will take me through all the justifications and temptations...if I let it.

All my motivation and energies seemed drained today. My concentration levels are nill. It is so easy to go back into old habits. This is week 3, they say it takes 3 months (12 weeks) to create a habit (some say 21 days, but I find that is really not true for me)...that is a lot of perseverance. For me, week 3 of anything is always the make or break week, whether it is a new job, new art project, or trying to create change in my life. So this is make or break week for me, but I also have to remember that I have only 9 more weeks before the changes become habits. This makes me wonder how many things at a time to change. It feels that if I don't change everything at once then it will take years to get to my goals. But trying to change everything at once seems overwhelming when you put it into the light of trying to break old habits and create new ones. How many can I actually concentrate on at the same time and actually be successful at? Because so much of my eating is based also in emotional issues to the point of it being an eating disorder, I also find that I am needing to deal with the issues behind the eating as well. How much can one work on at the same time and actually not become overwhelmed to the point of giving up?

This is what Ellie Rogers over at Yahoo Health says about creating a habit of exercise
http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/ug1857

Making fitness a habit
Until physical activity becomes a habit for you, the effort to remain active may seem difficult.
When you first start an exercise program, try to exercise at the same time every day.
Consider your physical activity efforts a scheduled part of your day
Do your physical activity regularly for at least 3 months.
Experts say that it takes about 3 months of repetition to form a habit. For some people, 3 months is not long enough to form the habit. Changing seasons and weather may interfere with establishing a habit. Keep it up until you don't think about it as an extra part of your day.I know that this is about exercise, but it is also about creating habit.

Of course I want to make exercise a habit in my life, bur right now I am concentrating on recognizing hunger and only eating when I am hungry. In essence I am retraining my body, mind and emotions, to create a new habit of only expecting food, thus wanting food only when I am hungry. I also, over the years have trained my body to expect food during certain activities, whether I am hungry or not. Like reading, watching TV, or when I am bored, lonely, unhappy, happy, angry, alive, awake, …you get it…anytime, except when I am hungry. But maybe that is because I have always put food in my body at a constant rate and have never actually felt the sensation of hunger…well at least not for many years.

Paige Waehner over at About.com also has some great things to say about creating the habit of exercise, which can be translated into other applications of forming new healthy habits.

Successful Weight LossFrom Paige Waehner,Your Guide to Exercise. http://exercise.about.com/cs/weightloss/a/weightsuccess.htm

Ingredients for Success
Commitment
· Plan and Prepare
· Motivate
Yourself
· Hold Yourself Accountable.
· Remember Your Goals
Discipline
· Make Exercise a Habit
· Know the Consequences
· Get Some Help
· Make a Deal With Yourself
Honesty
· How much time will you really spend exercising?
· Are you willing to do what it takes to reach your goals
· Can you accept failure?
Flexibility
· Change your workouts when necessary
· Do shorter workouts
· Be creative
Consistency

I know all this, of course, but having to actually put this in action in my life has me seeing it all in a different way. I like Steven Covey's definition of habit:

Covey defines a “habit” as the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire.
Knowledge is the what to do and why
Desire is the motivation
Skill is the how to do.
http://www.psychicsahar.com/artman/publish/article_59.shtml

Small Victories

2005-08-13T23:17:00.000-05:00

Victories, such a positive word, but such a hard thing to obtain in the journey. So I will take the small victories; they are just as hard won and milestones none the less. Tonight on the way home from church I wanted to stop and get a blizzard, but all the way home I talked myself out of it, knowing that I will be going to the movies with my two nieces tomorrow and will have popcorn. I kept telling myself that I could wait until tomorrow, I didn't need the ice cream tonight. Mabye this self talk works after all. I didn't stop and I really didn't crave or think about it again for the rest of the evening. I also has decided to stop for ribs since church went later than usual and it was after 8pm before I got home and didn't really feel like cooking and didn't want to eat as late as it would have been if I did cook. Well that is the rationale that I used and told myself. I was saved by the fact that I had forgotten to put my checkbook in my purse and the rib joint doesn't do credit cards. But that jolted me enough that I decided that I could say no to the ribs (I could have gone next door to the gas station's ATM machine and got some cash). But just that amount of distraction and disrubtion of the crave/justification process was enough for me to regain sanity and strenght and say now.

In all actuality it only took as long at it takes to cook pasta to make a tasty, healthy mixed veg and pasta dish seasoned with a bit of gorgonzola cheese and broth to make a great sauce. Cooking with fresh foods and whole grains - healthy actually takes less time than preparing meats and traditional meals. I keep forgeting that.

Another thing that I am realizing that I am forgetting is that I get fuller on less. My mind and emotions have not caught up with my body yet. I have to consciously remind myself that I can't eat as much now as I used to. Tonight, for instance; I usually cook a 3oz serving of pasta when it is a main part of the meal. But tonight I cooked only 2 oz and it was enough. And yesterday when mom and I went to Beef-a-roo, out of habit, without even thinking about it I "supersized" our order when they asked. I was only able to eat half of the onion rings and the soda, throwing the rest away. Which in itself is a victory, throwing away food, especially Beef-a-roo onion rings is not something I have ever done or been able to do. It is nice that I am moving away from the physical need to eat so much, or at least the ability to eat so much. Now my reality and automatic choices have to catch up. I guess that is why it is so good to concentrate on being in the moment while I am eating.

But I will take these small victories along the way. Small victories add up to big changes and eventually the final victory of a changed life. What is the saying? Take care of the little things and the big thing will take care of itself. Well right now that is all I have the strenght to do is to take care of the little things. The over all picture is too great to feel that it can ever be achieved. So I do what I can do, make the small changes and celebrate the small victories and wait until I can see that they have added up to larger victories, larger, permenant changes.

Getting Ready for Exercise

2005-08-12T23:44:00.000-05:00

Today I went to look at recumbant bikes to buy. Boy, they are pricey. But compared to a hospital stay or even ongoing dues at the Y, not so much. And mom says she will use it too, and that will be worth it alone. I found one that he will give me a discount on that will be 499...the next step up in this store is then 1200. Sunday we are going to go to Sears and another place that has home equiptment to see what they have and to price it. I need mom to try out the bike before I actually buy it to make sure she can get onto it.

I know that I have to face getting back into the schedule of exercise again. I hate the way I feel since I quit. I don't know if I will ever get to the point that I love it, but I do like how I feel when I get a good workout in on a daily basis. Tomorrow after I get back from the farmer's market Mom and I am going to finish emptying out my old studio room and get it ready to convert back into a bedroom again. That is where the bike will go. I know if I put it downstairs in the studio, she won't use it as much...she doesn't do the stairs so well anymore. Actually I thihk I would do it more in the mornings if it was in what will eventually be my bedroom rather than downstairs.

Exercise is just a part of what I know I have to incorporate into my new lifestyle. Lately I have been concentrating on the emotional part of eating and food, but in all reality I know that my body will not loose as well without physical exercise. I have to face that apart and aside from the eating disorder, exercise will have to become a part of my daily routine if I am to become healthy and get off my medication. I can do it, I just have to make the committment and find a way to fit it into my life in a way that works for me. Ok...I know that you will make the time for the things that are important to you, but sometimes something can be important, but if you don't like doing it, then it becomes a challenge to make it a priority. So I guess Death would be a good enough reason for me to make exercising a priority wouldn't it?

So a new layer to add over the next few weeks is exercise. Lord help me! Help me to see that this is important enough to make it a priority in my life, to commmit to it, to actually do it for more than a few weeks or months. Help me to make it as much a part of my daily routine as showering or brushing my teeth, or even talking to you!

So off to bed, early morning tomorrow...gonna go to the Farmers market for some REAL 'maters!

'night
jackie

Cravings

2005-08-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

Tonight has been about cravings. So...this is cravings. I wanted to EAT. First chocolate, then chips, then anything. I didn't, I waited until I could feel hunger, and know that it was hunger, then I chose to have a bagel. I was out of fruit; that would have been the logical choice to satisfy the sweet tooth, but a bagel did the trick...of course I sprinkled a little cinnamon on it, and it helped satisfy both the hunger and the craving. Maybe I am beginning to get the hang of knowing the difference between hunger, cravings and just plain wanting to eat because I am bored.

This week is almost at an end, I have learned something about hunger/fullness....and that much of the time I eat not out of hunger. I think that next week may be more of a challenge, the novelty of fighting to be aware of this hunger/fullness, living in the moment of eating and being present in it will have worn off, I am sure. Next week I think that I want to be more dilligent of only eating when I am eating. Not double tasking, reading, surfing, whatever...but to just sit with the food, taste it, enjoy it acknowledge it.

Thursday Morning Check In

2005-08-11T11:52:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it is not morning, it is almost, but not quite noon. But I am writing on my lunch hour, morning was rushed and I didn't get a chance to post before I left for work. Today I am still focusing on hunger - recognizing true hunger vs craving or just wanting to eat, waiting utnil I am at a 3 on the hunger meter, and stopping at a 5 or 6. What I am fighting with today is just plain wanting to eat. I know that the food is there in my lunch sack - I am not really hungry, but I want to eat. Some of it is boredom. I am pretty bored with this job right now...can't wait untill they start giving me more projects to keep me busier. But some of it is --- I don't know what. Is my world so completely engulfed by thoughts of food? I don't remember thinking this much about food when I wasn't trying to loose weight, get healthy and eat healthy. And I don't think that I ate all that frequently, I ate ALL the wrong things, mostly living on fast food and convience food and resturant food as well as eating late at night and never exercizing. I am hoping that as I sit with this exercise of being aware of hunger that this wanting to eat all the time will end; that it is just a result of focusing on the hunger levels. A.M. says that eventually you will learn to respond to hunger naturally with out thinking about it...but to do so you must first spent the time learning what it is, how it feels like and what it takes to make you satisfied. It is a really uncomfortable feeling for me right, which tells me that it is what I should be doing right now.

I am convinced that one of the things I am learning through this is how bored I am with my life right now and that I am/have used food to entertain myself, to fight boredom...in other words I eat when I don't know what else to do with myself.

So...solutions:

Keep at getting my studio set up so that I can be creating.
Finish washing walls and ceilings upstairs
Clear out old studio and set up as bedroom
Continue to cultivate new friendships and get out of the house
In otherwords get a life!!

I have gotten into the habit of coming home after work and vegging out. It is not even that I am tired it is just an easy choice to make at night. Since moving home I feel like I have lost some of my focus and energy in life. I know I have, I am at loose ends living in my mother's house. I miss having my things around me, my home, I miss living alone. For now, though, this is where I know I am to be, and I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else in spite of the little difficulties. Who knew how much having "things" around me would be so important!?

It is also bringing up some awarness of irrational fear of not having enough food. Now I know that I won't starve to death, but I worry that if I allow myself to get hungry I won't be somewhere where I can easily get food to eat. I find myself checking before I leave to go somewhere..."am I hungry, should I eat, will I get hungry before I get back home, will there be somewhere I can get food if I do get hungry???" Now I know that this is not normal for most people, it reminds me of when older people go out somewhere and they have to check that they go to the bathroom before they leave, wheather they need to pee or not! But I am trusting that this is a process that I will need to go through to re-train and re-teach my body to trust that there will be enough food to live on and for me to learn to trust my body for correct signals about hunger and food. Baby steps, baby steps.

Gotta go

Jackie

Hunger

2005-08-10T16:19:00.000-05:00

I have been hungry all day. I waited for lunch until I knew I was really hungry, I probably waited too long, but it was good to actually see and feel the difference between honest hunger and what I think is hunger - cravings, just the desire to eat something; have a party in my mouth, or just eating because I saw it or was bored. I have been thinking about hunger and how I feed my hunger. I eat at the first sign of hunger, I get worried if I don't feed myself. What am I worried about, surely I am not going to die of starvation! I have enough fat on my body for it to feed on itself for years to come!! So what is it my hunger is telling me or showing me. That I am bored with life right now is becoming apparent to me. But this is a new thing, boredom so it doesn't explain the long term of my weight battles. I am not sure what it is my hunger is trying to tell me, all I know is that it is like a newborn baby's cry, annoying and insistent that I do something about it. But that is the problem isn't it. Food isn't really going to solve the problem. So what is it I am suppose to do with this hunger? If I can't feed it, what? Somedays I feel that if I feed the hunger till it is gone I will eat until I pop! Like the blueberry girl in Willie Wonka (the old one). Unfortunately I know that I will not just float away...It will keep me firmly planted, stuck, solidly, on the ground...To heavy to float away.

I have been staying in the moment with the hunger. When I have eaten, I have made excellent choices, listened to my body and stopped eating the minute I am satisfied. I am eating slowly - to give my body time to know it is satisfied.

Now there is another word that goes with hunger...Satisfied....Full. I don't want to necessarily eat until full...That is that uncomfortable feeling that goes beyond meeting your nutritional needs. Satisfied, I am learning how that feels, for the first time in a long time. Satisfied feels like I am no longer hungry, but I don't have that uncomfortable, pushing, stretching feeling in my stomach. It is hard to describe it as no longer wanting anymore to eat, I always want more to eat. Someday that will change. But satisfied means that there is really no feeling in my stomach, not hunger, not full. Hmmm that is a revelation for me. (stream of conscious writing sometimes really works at showing you what you need to know).

Another thing I have noticed since I have tried to be present in the moment while I am eating is the taste of food, and how good it really tastes. Who knew - I always have thought part of why I ate is because I liked the taste of food. But I am wondering if it is more the texture, the crunch, the smmmooth? But I am realizing that a lot of it was unconscious.

gotta run
jackie

Wednesday Morning Check In

2005-08-10T08:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday ended up being a so so day. I did pretty well with food, except for the bag of Mrs. Fishers chips that jumped from the vending machine into my hands...funny I went down for coffee, I was sleepy and freezing and ended up with salt and crunch. I haven't wanted Mrs. Fisher's chips for years!

Today I am sleepy. I didn't wake up starving like I have for the past several weeks so I didn't eat breakky yet. Brought some homemade gronola to eat later. I didn't make luch last night either, I was just a slug and didn't feel like doing much. Read a bit and watched tv with mom, paid bills and went to bed early...maybe I got too much sleep.

I am still trying to get into the book I am reading "It is not about food", but having a hard time doing so. I think that what she is saying is right spot on, but maybe a lot of what I have read so far I came to the same conclusions years ago so am having a hard time concentrating on it. I will continue to read it as Annette highly recommended it for group. It just goes to show you that knowing, even believing things about how you relate to food is not enough to get you to make the hard decisions it takes to be healthy. I keep waiting for some magic revelation to sweep me away and change everything about how I think, feel, relate to, and use food. But, like Dorothy, I am beginning to realize that everything I think I need to know is inside me already.

Glenda: “You've always had the power to go back to Kansas.”

Dorothy: “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard because, if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

And like Dorothy, I just need to learn for myself to trust myself. I know that others can help in this process.Group,The Journey Girls, Annette, but ultimately it is me who has to be willing to face the hard truths about how and whyI use food. To face the deamons inside. To ulitmately trust God and his power for healing. And to trust his Love, to believe His love for me. To hear a verse like "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" I automatically thinkg, ok, this isn't about me. But of course I know it is about me, I AM fearfully and wonderfully made. So why isn't that a reality in my though process and manifested in my life? Why is it so hard for me to believe this about myself? So the answer for the meantime is to believe God's opinion about myself, not mine. Truth is that God says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, so I am, period, end of discussion. This is not a truth for me to try to reason out. It just IS. Hey!! I AM fearfully and wonderfully made! That means that God knew that I would have these struggles, and while he didn't create them, I did, by my choices, He is here to help me with them, and it doesn't change the fact that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. This fearfully and wonderfully made thing goes way beyond and much deeper than physical appearance, it has to; it applies to all humanity.

Well gotta get to work

jackie

Tuesday Morning Check In

2005-08-09T08:16:00.001-05:00

I am feeling better this morning. Not hungry so I am not eating breakfast until I get hungry. This eating only when I am hungry is a scary thing. It is weird to go against years of eating at certain times of the day just because it is breakfast-time or lunchtime. It brings up feelings of "not enough". If I don't eat now, will I have enough later, will I even be able to eat later? Honestly, how can someone who had lived all her life in the midst of such plenty worry about food like someone who has starved all her life? Perhaps I have been starving...but not for food.

Last night I was reading in the book "It's not about Food" and the author suggested that an eating disorder should be honored because it was our body's way of surviving. That, honoring my eating disorder, is something I will have a bit of trouble wrapping my brain around. I have been at war with both my eating and my body for I don't know how many years; I am having a hard time thinking of honoring it. Maybe it is like any other fight, if one stops and disengages, then there can be no more fight. I know that I am more than ready to have my life be about more than food, weight, fat, people's well intentioned but hurtful comments, feeling so shitty physically all the time.... I am ready to live my life again. I know that this is a process, and I intend to try to not to get ahead of or discouraged with the process.

Lately I have been looking for and reading other's blogs on their weight loss journeys, mostly hoping for insight and encouragement. It is sad how many of them started out full of enthusiasm and hope and yet, so many have not been written in for months, years in some cases. Most had experienced some success in the beginnings only to have hit a bump and gained and tried to get back on track and ultimately quit writing in the blog. I know the feeling, I have, am still sometimes, there - fighting those bumps in the road that call out to me saying it is easier to quit, to stay defeated, fat, that it is just too hard to change my life. How many times have I tried, do I have to try before change happens? But I am convinced that it is not how many times you stumble, fall, fail that counts, it is how many times you get up. I am coming up on almost a year of concentrated effort in changing my life style. For almost 20 years I had given up on diets and loosing weight, I had lost hope. But since going through CHIP, and more importantly since becoming part of group - there has been in some ways, tremendous progress, some ways you can't tell any difference - especially if you only count outward appearances. But inside, in my heart, mind and emotions I am changing. And I have always believed that if I could find the courage and the help to face the WHY of eating and food, then the how would take care of itself. I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are days that I can see a mind shift in how I am thinking about food and how I am choosing to handle stress. There are moments when it is not about food. There are even moments when I can visualize a life where it is not consumed by this disorder, and all that means...there are even minutes, sometimes hours where I am actually living it out. And there have been times when I have actually been able to not use food to comfort or handle stress. I am finding my voice and speaking out. I am beginning to put myself first and choosing not to be so influenced by worrying about what others are thinking. Moments. And if moments can happen so can hours, days, months, years and finally a lifetime of living free.Well off to work and a victorious day.jackie

Monday Morning Check In

2005-08-08T11:39:00.000-05:00

I have a headache this morning that is driving me crazy. I am also vaguely hungry and craving food, any food. I had a LARGE Georgia mud fudge blizzard last night and am wondering if this is all due to the excessive amount of sugar that put into my body. I am going to tough it out and eat healthy today and drink plenty of water. I am finding that my physical craving for things like blizzards are lagging behind the mental and emotional cravings. I spent yesterday being a vegetable and incrediably boared. It was great, but as the day wore on I found my thoughts going to food, mostly because I was bored and needed to entertain myslelf. Not that I didn't have any thing at all in the world I could have been doing! Just didn't want to!

Friday night I went to the theater to see Man of LaMancha. It was so uncomfortable sitting in those chairs, tiny to begin with, miserable for me. It is dreadful not fitting, being uncomfortable. So much lately I have decided not to do because of my size, my physical state, or lack of it. This is a new state for me. I have never been self-conscious about my size or uncomfortable physically about it. But now I am. I don't like how I am feeling these days. Why now after 5 years of being this heavy am I feeling so bad? I guess that time has just been taking its toll. But I am also grateful for these feelings, they help me stay motivated. It is so not about how I want to look as much as how much I want to feel healthy, energetic and able to do the things I have always done.

I am finding that I am going to food out of habit now more than need...although there are days that belie that! Today seems like it will be one of them. But I feel pretty strong and the Journey Girls are there to help me through it too. Each day that I make sound healthy choices makes making those choices easier and more unconscious...like breathing. Soon that day will come where food will not be the centerpiece of my life. I can see that day, somethign that a year ago I was resigned would never happen. It is soooo not about food! But as I deal with the issues, right now it feels like it is all about food.

Today I decide to chose health

jackie

Monday! Urghhh August 8, 2005

2005-08-08T07:33:00.000-05:00

Since this is my first blog I should tell you something about myself and my journey to health. I began this journey almost a year ago when I went through a program called CHIP (Cardio Health improvement Project). Since I have come off of one of my high blood pressure medications and lost a bit of weight. I am now involved in a support group for eating disorder and am fighting to become healthy. My main motivation is health, not necessarily weight loss, or at least not for the sake of looking like one of the emaciated fashion models one sees in the mags.
I want to feel better, to be able to be as active as I can be, to not have my feet and knees be cranky if I am standing or walking on them for too long a period of time, not to say anything about my aching back. Ok...all this whining I sound ancient, I am not; soon to be turning 50. But that is not old, it is only middle age as I fully intend to live to at least 100 and be active to boot.
I want to have a life that is not obsessed by food, eating or not eating. I want to find a way of living with food that is not a diet, one that is a way of life that I can live with for the rest of my life. Diets don't work. Normalicy does. I just need to learn what that is. And, slowly I am.
About me: I have spent most of my life as a professional costume designer, leaving the career in 2001 to move home to care for my elderly mom. Now I am finding how hard it is to find a job when your job skills consist of being able to make clothes for imaginary people. All I need is a job for someone who has a highly active imagination, likes to play with fabric and anything that glitters, and can deal with actors, directors, and stitchers all at the same time...and sometimes even make them happy.
I am now persuing other areas of creativity, something that working full time in theatre never allowed me time to do. Oh and I work at a 9-5 job, that I don't take home every night, has no deadlines and I have weekends and holidays off. Who knew that there was a thing called life!
I am happily single (and no, I am absolutely NOT looking), with no kids, human or four footed. But am a proud auntie who spoiles 2 neices and 2 nephews...or tries at least. They all have now entered the teen years and auntie jackie is getting to be too old for them! Who knew!
So enough about me, my least fav subject. This blog is to allow me to journal online, anywhere i am. To talk about what I am experiencing, thinking, feeling in a way that gets it outside my head. Doing it online opens up the possibity for risk, something I think will be helpful for me. Feel free to comment on entries.
So this is part of me, what I am about in this particular blog, and what I hope to use it for.
jackie

Monday, Aug 8, 2005 - 07:33am