Clothes, makeup and all the things

Our last podcast explored style- how we found our style, how it has changed, makeup or lack of makeup, why black clothes are really not serving you and many other things.

I listened to this episode and had so many things come up in my mind.  Interesting, or maybe not so interesting, asides and digressions popped up as we were traveling down the diverse roads the three of us are taking.

I discussed my disco days briefly, one of the most trendy and in-style parts of my life, weirdly until recently.  It seems that youth goes hand in hand with trendy, but some of us circle back to a little bit of trendy when we get old and gain all the confidence that we were missing when we were young.  It is an interesting journey, let me tell you. Anyway, I remember LOVING the shiny dark patterned shirts and the pants that went with them and the incredibly high platform shoes from the late 70's.  And to think I danced in those things.  Oh wow I loved those clothes.  They represented freedom to me.  I acquired them when I was in college, when I escaped from my fairly restrictive parents (sorry mom) and seriously cut loose in SO many ways.  I danced, I drank, I did some fairly risky things....  it is a wonder we survived.  But I did and found a husband who is incredibly along the lines of what my family was. Conservative, reserved, funny and lively all at the same time.  So, after moving to the north, I was again landed in a situation that restricted my movement, my freedom and in many ways the pleasures that I had found and reveled in.  Debi was reined in for a while.

I am not saying at all that I regret the life I have- you can't remain 21 forever and your priorities change.  But the fact remains that through geographical reasons, I was trapped in a  very small world.  My parents were 5 hours away, my friends at least as far, then I had kids and as life goes, you have to live with what is given to you.  This particular post has already veered wildly from my original intention, so apparently it needs to be said!

As I implied, I didn't have a lot of style, or even clothes for that matter.  Not compared to what I have now.  I didn't actually need them, I didn't go far and we didn't do a lot.  Mostly we needed WARM clothes because it is damn cold up here.  And the kids and the hubby got the most clothes.  He had a job, the kids grow....  you know the drill.  I didn't have a full time job for a number of years after I got married, so the wardrobe didn't matter in my case.  I remember feeling so excited to pick up some things to wear when I did get my teaching job.  To buy more than 2 or 3 things was just exhilarating.  But I didn't go over board, and I would not call myself stylish at that point.  My "style" was in all the crazy socks I wore- I was strictly utilitarian.  I remember looking at beautiful items of clothing in stores and being so sad that I didn't feel I could wear them.  i told myself it was because I taught art.  Or that they wouldn't fit me....  or that they wouldn't look good.  In reality I didn't think I was good enough to.

Fortunately, as I have mentioned before, when I turned 50 something clicked inside me.  I took back my life.  I had been traveling more by myself, I started doing things I wanted, and generally became more independent.  And during this time I began finding myself - at first by restricting myself until I almost disappeared- and then I found the authentic me somewhere in between.  With a little help from my coach!

In our makeup discussion, Anne-Sophie talked about how no one ever showed her how to put on makeup and so she feels strange when she wears it.  Like it doesn't quite seem right.  My first encounter with makeup was when I was about to enter 6th grade.  My cousin who is a few years older than me had indoctrinated me into the idea that makeup was something that I should have and I should wear.... and when I was up at my Grandma's on vacation ( I think she was there too) I bought some mascara.  It was the old fashioned kind where there was a separate brush thing and the actual product was a cake- sort of like eye shadow.  Anyway- my mom yelled at me and took it away. She and my aunt, and probably my extra conservative Grandma were so disappointed and distraught that I bought that mascara. I guess because I was so young.   I found it a few month later and used it!  Lol.  I wore all sorts of make up in high school, and college, so I am no novice.  I don't usually leave the house with out mascara on (LMAO) but I don't bother with a lot of other stuff.  My skin has changed and I don't want to deal with it.

I use a style service now, I actually began filling out the form for stitch-fix on a whim.  It was almost like my brain had planned it and I was doing it before I even understood what was happening.  And when you fill out the style form, then you have to finish the whole thing because- well, just because.  I have to say that I love the clothes that I have gotten through this company.  I think that they are a little off base on some of their cuts, the arms of their non-stretch clothing is pretty small.  Certainly I am not the only person in the world who has triceps??  I have sent back two kick ass jackets in the last year and a couple other things because of that.  Notice that I don't blame myself??  I happen to know enough about clothing construction to understand that it is the pattern makers fault, not mine.  Just sayin'!!  And you can try it on at home and have a few days to think about your purchase. Stitch fix has been instrumental in figuring out what I look good in now.  Because I have changed, just like we all change all the time. And that is what happens and it is good.  If you don't change, you remain stagnant.

So what is the take away from this podcast episode and I guess from this post....  beyond my usual random neuron firings.....?
Know that you are worthy of attention... you are worthy of spending some money and time to make yourself feel good.  You might be a full makeup face person or not.  You might be a dress and skirt girl, or maybe pants are better.  You might love to wear jewelry of all sorts, or you might break out from it all.  However you are, please don't hide yourself.  You don't have to wear baggy black clothes.  You should be able to feel comfortable and stylish.  Beautiful and at ease.  We have some pretty good choices these days, not perfect but it is getting better.  Don't forget that you are here to live your life, you are not here to please others.  You literally can wear what you like.

Oh yeah, that Karl Lagerfeld thing?  You know that the high fashion houses only make like 2 sizes because the are trying to remain exclusive.  By making themselves seem "ultra special" they are making themselves an ultra amount of money.  It is a way of the wealthy keeping themselves apart from others.  It is exclusion at its worst.  It is oppression in an insidious form.  Don't even get me started.

So start small and try something a little different.  You just never know how something will look unless you try it on.  Leila's advice and discussion about taking it home because dressing rooms are not safe places.  Life is hard enough without dressing room traumas.  You know that saying fake it u until you make it?  For all three of us, the confidence came second.  We basically worked our way to inner confidence by pretending at least some of the time. Because it works.  And we are more than good enough to deserve that confidence in our life.

In one weekend....

Hey there everyone- I haven't written much lately- but my routine is back- i.e.: I am back at school and so all my summer meandering is done.  sigh.

I listen to our podcasts when I am walking and I heard myself say something a few times now and I want to clarify something.  I talk about quitting dieting- and weighing myself as well- in one weekend.

Let me talk about that for a few minutes.......  it is sort of misleading.

I realize that it sounds like I got up one morning and just quit dieting without any effort.  Or at least that is what I perceived some folks might think, and by contrast might consider themselves unable to quit dieting or what have you.

The reality is that it took me several months to come to this decision.  This truly began when I hit my "goal weight" on the weight loss app that I had used.  That DAY, after the accolades died off, I began to already feel unsettled.  Where was the magic of being my dreamed of weight?  Why did I not feel light and free and without cares?  How in the HELL was I going to maintain that weight when the diet app said I could EAT all this food again???  This was crazy.

It took about 2 weeks to begin to gain weight, and then I fell down the rabbit hole of lowering my goal weight.  I could get the cheers and support again and I could follow that diet religion.  But I felt horrible.  I hated having to think about food all the time.  I apparently was obsessive, as I actually had a friend send me a link to smashing my scale!

I began to worry I would LOSE all my friends who I had found from the social aspect of the weight loss app, not to mention not being that "amazing role model" to all the people around me.  What good would I be if I went back to where I was before.  I sort of didn't realize I was never going to be the same person again.  I didn't know that weight really doesn't make or break friendships, or at least not the ones worth having.

Insert many weeks of thinking and reading and looking for something that could help me live without CONSTANTLY thinking about food.  There were blogs found and read, podcasts listened to,  and all the surfing of the web for ideas about this.  When I was feeling like I had no other way to go but forward down a totally different path- that is the weekend I put it all into place.  That was the time frame that found me floundering around trying to figure out what food I could eat- because nothing was off limits any more.  It took me a long time to eat Doritos again, because that food rule stayed with me.  I still don't drink much soda, but I don't like it any more.  I do eat cookies and chocolate and cake and pie when I want and sometimes I don't want because heartburn bothers me.  But I know I can have some later or tomorrow or next week.

That weekend was weird, it was summer I know, but I remember standing in front of the refrigerator and closing my eyes and feeling in my stomach and in my mind what would taste good.  Figuring out what my body actually wanted.  It was such an odd experience.  I hadn't trusted myself to choose my food in years.  not without guilt or altering it in some way.  Editing.  I edited my food choices constantly.  It was really hard to do, but I went with it.  I knew I "could" go back to dieting but I knew I would not.  Because it was just so wrong.  And the journey continues....

The real healing began when I found my life coach.  It sounds like a privileged thing to say, and it most likely is- but getting coaching, or in some cases people may need a therapist, was the best thing I ever did.  I found a way to initially get small group coaching that was modestly priced.  Right place at the right time.  I know now that every penny I spent and will continue to spend is well worth it. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have chosen to spend the money faster.....  We are definitely worth the time, energy, work and money to allow us to make a difference in this world with a rich life.  We are worth it!

Transitions

I have not written a lot here lately; I thought it was because I was too busy/not inspired/nothing worth talking about.  Turns out that I was changing.  Turns out that I was stressing out over things that I hadn't identified, actually things that hadn't yet happened and things that happened a lot time ago and affected me in ways that I didn't realize.

I experienced a couple of really intense coaching sessions in the last few weeks that allowed me to understand the transition that I am experiencing.  Without going into it specifically, I needed to talk about something that I absolutely did not want to discuss.  I had to talk about it when I was screaming inside that I want to hide and  not go there and pretend it isn't occurring.  I accidentally blurted it out to a friend of mine while I was doing a heart to heart exchange of crap going on in our lives.  And I felt the lift in my spirits immediately.

I had gone through an experience which prepped me for this, but I identified it as an off limits topic.  I grudgingly answered the questions on my coaching session last week- and it allowed a tiny little leak in my wall that was holding an ocean of troubles in.

The thing is that this experience that I am referring to was a total not fair/blind-side me situation that had me reeling for days.  I mean days and days of feeling in a funk and not feeling worthy and feeling like I must have done something wrong, even though I am only guilty of being an imperfect human who meant no harm.  It was one of those situations that when you tell a couple (2 to be exact) friends about it, they are totally supportive, but somewhere deep inside you don't believe it.  You relive a situation over and over and beat the crap out of yourself for reacting like you instead of like a different person.  You know deep inside that you are not worthy of love and respect and decency.

Anyway, I am one to look for something good to come out of every situation, no matter how unfair and obnoxious, but I can see it today.  Today I can see that I needed to face my fears and worries, that I was no longer the same person I was and I am transitioning.  Not into a new me or anything, just transitioning into a new phase of life.  The situation, as horrible as it was, released those little leaks in the wall and the flow has begun.  I am beginning to flow into another stage of my life.

I realize this moment that I have truly begun to divest myself of the residual effects of a lifetime of dieting.  I have quit using my exercise app, I never count calories or track my food.  I am understanding the lingering thought blockages from restriction and am reliving some of the ways I felt before I lost weight.  I have days when I feel horrible in my body, but I now understand that there is some emotional thing that I need to deal with to make that feeling go away. Though I don't consider dieting- I sometimes feel my brain want to grasp onto the safety of restriction and overexercising. Safety that came from diverting my attention to what was really bothering me to obsessing about how I looked.  And I did that for so many many years.  It is never too late.

After a really brutal coaching session yesterday, Anne-Sophie said to me- do  you realize that you are not dealing with all these feelings with food at all?  I got the biggest smile on my face.  It is true.  I just don't.  Wow, that is huge.  No hiding food from people, no arguing with myself over what and when to eat, no spending massive amounts of money on things to eat or items to use to exercise with. No supplements that seriously do nothing for you anyway.  This was a happy moment.

The flow that began during these latest coaching sessions has continued today.  I have identified two more HUGE memories of people that have abandoned/turned on me for a reason that is still not known.  And I may never know why these things happened, and the thing is that it doesn't matter anymore.  Now that I know that these things drive some very deep seated fears of mine, it is much easier to examine these painful memories.  It also makes it easier to see how I sometimes distance myself from people that young Debi sees as a danger.  A danger that they will leave me somehow and I won't have the pleasure of their friendship anymore.  That I am not worthy of them keeping in touch with me.  That I will be abandoned.

I am saying these things because I know that there are a lot of people who might read this  are at the beginning of their journey and you NEED to know that it is possible to change.  I had completed the first "successful" diet of my life 5 years ago, and felt just as horrible about myself as I had before.  I got to my goal weight and kept lowering it.  I got to my goal weight and all I could think of was I didn't want to do this all my life.  I just didn't want to DO this all the time.  And then I started looking around for some sort of guidance and Isabelle Foxen Duke said on a podcast with Anne-Sophie (first time I ever heard of my sweet coach A-SR) that she didn't want to think about food every god damn minute of her life.....  I grabbed that phrase and have held it tight because it spoke a basic truth that I knew was valid.

It is simple but it is not easy.  It isn't difficult, it is different.  And it is worth every penny, every tear, every page in a journal and meditation time and facing of fears and realizing how you can live an authentic life - a life that is large as you want....  a life where you don't have to shrink to meet the needs of someone else.

And we are all more than good enough for that.

summer time quick hits

Hello everyone!

It has been a LONG time since I wrote, the end of the school year is nutty and I have been mentally drained....

Anyway, I have had lots of plans for posts, but the length that they were bound to become made me defer it until "later".  Well apparently later became 6 weeks.

So, I thought I would write a little thing I thought of or dealt with lately- and something popped to my mind immediately.

Today was FINALLY the last day we were required to be at school and unfortunately it will be the last truly awesome day for a week, so I decided to ride my bike.  It is warm yet breezy, really good for riding.  I was going to just sit around, but I can do that tomorrow when it is supposed to get hot- relatively. Northern WI hot at least.

I decided to put on a tank top and leggings and when I looked in the mirror, I had a pause when I saw myself in that tank.  I do not have visible muscles anymore, I used to be quite sure that everyone thought that was the best thing about me.  As I was biking and I looked down at my arms that are more the "real me" - strong yes, but not starved into submission- I again had this little tiny moment of regret.  Today though, the Debi who is not in diet prison any more, who doesn't over exercise, the woman who values who she is inside, spoke up and assured me that those visible muscles were pretty meaningless.  That how I look in a tank is not the important thing in life and how we are so conditioned to think that if we look different from those people we see in the media  means we can't possibly be awesome or desirable or strong or happy.

HAHA!  Good point.  I am happy.  And I will wear what I want and I will not avert my eyes from the mirror because I don't look like I did 3 years ago.  It is something that still comes up, but my inner self is much more aggressive about calling out that disordered thinking.  And pretty soon I think those thoughts will just fade away.  And this is a good thing.

My walking companions

I use walking as a major source of stress relief, the movement to keep myself "in shape" (be able to climb every mountain and kayak every sea- now sing that to yourself in the "Sound of Music" song and see if that leaves your head anytime soon. :) ) and as an excuse to take pictures.  These may or may not be any particular order, and that can change on any given day.  Anyway, I usually listen to podcasts while I am walking.

The podcasts I listen to are the diet recovery type (because I don't know what else to listen to right now) - including the one that I am a part of   I sometimes listen to my music but regretfully my phone doesn't have my favorite playlists anymore---  an unfortunate occurrence when I had to replace my phone last summer.  I have to reload them from my Dropbox at some point, but you know- sometimes things like that just don't get done.

The problem with listening to podcasts while you are walking is that you forget what in the world you were inspired by whilst walking, and this is getting to be a real problem.  Am I going to have to take along a notepad??  I get distracted by many things- mostly my incredibly active imagination- and I indeed forget by the end of the hour or so.  sigh.  I will listen to them again soon, but I did retain a memory from the end of a different podcast than Escape Diet Prison.  The ones I listen to are really good, but today it was apparent to me how different I am, in many ways, than most of the people who participate in the body positive/anti-diet sort of media.

A woman was chatting with the host about her history and what she does and she talked about how back several years ago she was just a child and so different--- and then she said she was 26. (All of my children are older than her)   hmmmm.  I am not saying that what this lovely person wasn't interesting or relevant or authentic.  She was- but when I heard her tell her age, I started thinking about how different things were "when I grew up".

Maybe the different isn't so much the when-I-grew-up sort of thing, but instead the how-long-I-have-been-doing-this sort of thing.  I don't mean at all to imply that younger people haven't gone through a lot of shit in their life.  People who have really suffered the physical and emotional effects of an eating disorder or disordered eating of any sort clearly have been through combat. And recovery from that is brutal.

I have been through that combat, and it is not fun, but it does lead to a much better life.  But beyond that, I have been around a while and I have probably never had a truly comfortable relationship with my body.  Until now.  I think back to my 20's and 30's and 40's and know that I was on a constant quest to change myself.

What began in my early teens with a casual comment that I would grow into my "baby fat", my mother admitting that she smoked to keep her weight down, the magazines that even then plugged different products that would guarantee weight loss.  It was hard to find cute clothes, or at least that was my perception at "my size".  We only had one car and we lived a distance from the mall and clothes stores....  and manufacturers really did not make stylish clothes in larger sizes.  If you think that you have a hard time now (it seems recently- in the last 2/3 years- that this is getting better: thank you internet) you should have been around then.

Forward to my 20's when I had my three boys.  I was cautioned over and over not to gain too much weight (while pregnant)- for no other reason that I could see than to keep my weight down.  I tested fine for everything including gestational diabetes and all the other lovely things that can happen.  While no one actively told me to lose my baby weight, that was expected.  In spite of no internet, there was pressure to regain your pre pregnancy body.  Ladies I knew complained about how they grew shoe sizes or how their waists were never the same.  Some hated that the boobs they grew during pregnancy then shrunk and then sagged.  You know because we want to stay the exact same from the age of 14 on until we are 85..... and those changes are so bad.  (sarcasm alert)

As the kids grew, I continued on my quest to lose weight, and was successful once or twice.  But as diets do, once you quit or are bingeing in response to the restrictions,  they fail. I was waiting for an art teaching job to open, so I was biding my time until I could begin a full time job.  All the while wishing for a different body.  Ignoring the fact that I was very frustrated and impatient to start a job I wanted. As we all have,  I was dealing with my own things in my life and all the while - so not happy.

I remember waking up for years thinking how I was going to "start today" to lose weight and then by the end of the day - I did things to make myself perceive that I failed.  I focused on my eating, I beat myself up if I didn't get the correct amount of exercise, I didn't feel like I had enough money to invest in the programs that were actually in our remote area- things like Weight Watchers or what have you. Instead I used the information that a friend had as she used it, and she shared.  I bought special food, restricted my calories, recorded everything and eventually got so sick of it all that I gave up.  Or I should say allowed myself to just drop it gradually.

I did this with a few programs, lost weight and then gained it back.  And then felt awful, all the while our culture encouraged that feeling of failure by always having a new program that was "sure to work when other things let you down".  Always a tone of- wow you loser, you can't even follow a simple diet.  I felt like I couldn't do anything right because I was always so hungry I caved.

Fast forward to the internet and me getting a smart phone and eventually a computer and WIFI.  And there was my"savior" a health and fitness app that helped me keep track of my food and exercise.  I had my phone with me always so I could fill in the form all the time and ALSO I had **friends** who helped support my quest.

I am not going to say that using the app and finding these friends was a bad thing because 2 or 3 of those people have become some of my closest friends.  I can not regret that time, as I actually came into my own - and most likely because of my age- I began doing things EVEN IF I was afraid.  My parents did not encourage doing unsafe things, my husband certainly does not, and I for the most part found "safe" friends.  But once online, I found not "safe" friends- not that they were creepy, but they did not encourage me to stay exactly the same and not break out of my shell.  My safe friends encouraged me to do things I didn't think I could do.  One of them constantly challenged me to do things I implied I couldn't.  And then I did.

Perhaps all these things happened because I grew up in a time when we were much less connected, and we lived on a farm far from our neighbors and I loved 10 miles from school.  My parents very much kept to themselves and we socialized with only a few families, most were relatives.  I understand how I am a product of my environment and of my own personality tendencies.

Anyway, I find I have a very different perspective on life these days, and it is frequently underscored when I am interacting with the many younger friends that I have.  Just because you are different doesn't mean you are wrong, and just because you are older doesn't mean your view is not important. We have a lot to share and a lot to teach, but it is very good to listen for alternative points of view as well.  But know that you have more wisdom than you can ever imagine and when you blossom and trust yourself and believe that you are worthy of sharing your thoughts.  You are more than good enough to contribute to this world.

Good enough

An interesting side effect of stopping restrictions, over-exercising and generally escaping the diet prison mentality is the fact that your mind is open to a whole lot more things.  Many of these things are positive, but sometimes what happens is your other insecurities pop up!

This is not exactly a pleasant experience, but it is a place from which personal growth can flourish.  I, like every other person in the world, am haunted by feelings of inadequacy.  Of course in an area that I get the most artistic and personal satisfaction, but yet I never feel like I can measure up to those I admire.  I imagine it is because I want to be "GOOD" at my personal passion of photography.

My issue is my perceptions of others.  I perceive that they have the way of thinking that is technical and mechanical and computer literate and they have extreme attention to detail and unlimited patience, knowledge, money and time- in other words: the ability to be a way better photographer than I am.  Lol.  I am exaggerating, but seriously, this is the path that I lead myself on when I look at the work of the people I admire the most.  It never occurs to my hyper-critical mind that perhaps they go through the same processes and struggles that I do.  Or the fact they all focus on one or two types of photography and don't do the same things I do.  And seriously how nice they are and how helpful they always seem to be if you ask for advice.

I doubt that these people would agree with my perceptions of them, and indeed I hamper my growth sometimes by getting distracted by all the stuff I like to do in addition to photography.  The saying goes- a jack of all trades, master of none.

As an art teacher, I definitely am a jackie of all trades- I can draw, paint, do clay, print making, etc, and I can hold the hand (figuratively) of my students as I go, helping them feel successful and teaching them about life and relationships and work ethic and creativity and perseverance.  They think I can do everything.  And if I can't, I can figure out how to fix it.

When I get out into the adult world, things are a little less full of admiration.  And I occasionally take this fact as rejection of any skills I actually do have....  oy.

Ok, so this isn't really all about photography, it is about the things I reflected on when this came up in my most recent coaching session.  I need to step back and think about things more realistically, less full of the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.  I went through these feeling about my art teaching a few years ago, and I have worked through that fairly satisfactorily.  

The good thing about not being in Diet Prison is that you have so many other things that you can do with your life other than plan, execute and regret the things that you eat.  Fun activities that you can participate in besides figuring out how to burn the most calories in the most efficient way.  Ways to keep yourself occupied that does not involve research on the latest food fads, exercise trends, and fitness apps and apparatus.

But we have, lying in wait, the real issues that bother us.  These issues are ready to pop up when we are not paying attention.  They make us doubt ourselves and our go to response is to turn inward and blame ourselves for things we never learned or interests that never served us.  We are face to face with a job we still hate, a relationship that is toxic for our mental health, or being overwhelmed with people taking advantage of our unwillingness to disappoint someone and therefore we end up doing things that we smile and say we are fine with, but underneath we are seething and resentful.  The true issues that are still there and bubble into our consciousness.

It seems that these thing like to happen when you are innocently washing dishes, driving your car or when someone makes comments to you that alarm you.  You don't have the distraction of hating your body, but that might still be the go to reaction.  I find I have STILL times when I get unhappy with the way I freaking look in reaction to a great amount of stress in some aspect of my personal life.  We must deal with the underlying things that really, REALLY are there and causing us pain.  (Photography isn't a real painful topic, but it is important enough to me, and deeply personal, that it makes a good example)

SO, self care:   self coaching..... paid coaching....  meditation.... deep breathing..... journaling.....
this is my arsenal of tools that help me get ahold of myself.  So I can get back to feeling light and easy again.  So I can take another step down the path of true healing.  If you are in this place, know that it is normal.  Know that you can do this, you can face your life without the shield of dieting.  You can deal with your problems past and present and not blame your body for them.  You don't have to restrict your food and make yourself smaller to please those around you.   You, like me- we are more than good enough to take up our space.

The last couple of weeks...

I have had a very busy and sort of stressful couple of weeks here, I am presently on a break from school- as short one, but still- and I just listened to our latest podcasts.  There seems to be some issues with ITunes and the podcast library, which is disturbing.  Hopefully I will be able to link this up soon.

It is interesting how little things pop out at you when you are least expecting it- this happened to me just recently, and I am so happy to say I had the tools to deal with it.

In short, I had an exchange with a person who talked in great detail on how they restrict and what foods they do and don't eat and then went on to do some minor size shaming as well.  I just don't hear that very often anymore.  I also did not manage to get "into it" because it was just not worth it and wasn't the time or place.

Immediately before this event, I had some big body acceptance moments- as in, I was feeling bad about parts of me and it manifested itself while I was putting on an outfit....  which made me really edgy and cranky. The next day while getting ready in the morning I suddenly understood what was going on.  I don't want to make it seem like my entire interaction with this person was horrible, I love this friend so much, but that aspect of her makes my eye twitch.

I found I was able to step back from the whole situation and look at my reactions with curiosity and interest.  I was able to redirect my brain and feelings- I had a real hard time the next day, but I was able to synthesize the whole thing and come to a satisfactory conclusion....

People are truly afraid of fat.  They are afraid to have it, to experience it and to look at it.  They make judgements that are not at all based on true authentic science, as related to health and I think they are just afraid to see it. I might be way off base, but maybe not so much.

It is a pervasive idea that being heavy is unhealthy, as previously discussed in my Bob v. Oprah post. So, lets turn inward and look at this. Is there any person in the world who MATTERS that will love you less because of weight?  As Anne-Sophie said, she never looked at her mother and thought I would love my mother more if she lost x number of pounds.  It just doesn't matter.  My grandchildren won't enjoy being with me less or more based on weight.  It's a battle some days.

Yeah, that's all I have today.  :)

Bob and Oprah

The Escape Diet Prison podcast has had 2 celebrities as points of discussion lately, here and here, and apparently they have been pretty popular.  And shockingly (no really- I am surprised) one of them was actually controversial.

People who know me in real life do understand that I am not a person who goes in for controversy.  I don't like conflict, I even get a little antsy during something that is supposed to be "fun" like a football game.  I just don't like it.  

So it was a surprise to me when I found out that MANY people messaged Anne-Sophie about our Bob Harper discussion.  Some people felt we were being unkind, thin-shaming and the like.  **needlescratchmoment**

Seriously??

Let's step back to the Oprah episode for a moment.  It was a very popular episode apparently- I want you to know that I have no knowledge of numbers or comments because I am not in any form an owner of the podcast.  Which is a-ok, dandy and fine with me!  I just know that was one a lot of people listened to.  We discussed ideas about whether Oprah should be trying to become something she is not, why the wealthiest woman in the US and a talented entrepreneur should try to be changing her body and most of all why she is using her popularity for financial gain.  None of us are particular Oprah fans, but we have no overt problem with her, in fact have varying degrees of admiration for her success in business, etc.  We did talk about why someone who is as successful as she is feels the need to change herself- could be construed possibly as somewhat controversial, but as far as I know there were few or no people saying we were picking on Oprah.

Fast forward to Bob Harper.  Here we discussed how different it would be (and Oprah's name was  brought up) if someone heavy would have had this heart attack, how the media and others would not have blamed genetics, how this man- as he makes his living to look a certain way as a trainer- most likely over exercises and (as Leila discussed- a man as tall as he is to only weigh what he does) this guy restricts his food.  He is not a teenager anymore(52?), people tend to put on natural weight as they age, their hormones are not the same...... There was little to no discussion in the media reports that thin at any cost might have been partially responsible for his health issues.  HIS ACTIONS MIGHT HAVE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT!!  And we are scolded for possible thin-shaming and other more mysterious things that are not easily identifiable.  We were being mean.  Um, no.

I (and I assume we) have no bad feelings for the person that is Bob.  He is most likely a nice person, but Bob is on a bad tv show.  A tv show that fat shames others.  A tv show that starved and over-exercised contestants, one that encouraged them to eat less food than the calories they burned....  a tv show that one blogger pointed out- if the producers did this to animals they would have been shut down by animal rights activists so fast their heads would have spun. (this was paraphrasing but the spirit is the same).  How is it that its ok to in essence torture people and it is ok for our entertainment?

So it is ok that we called out Oprah but not Bob?  Why is that?  Could it be that we were destroying ideas (that are LIES )so deeply embedded in our culture that people feel threatened by it?  Were we discussing things that hit so close to home in a person's journey that they lashed out so they didn't have to do that body image work, or feel that feeling, or know that what is presented as the truth in our culture is one of the biggest fallacies in our world??  If you feel uncomfortable about this- think about why?  Oprah is heavy, a woman, a woman of color, and beloved by many.  Bob Harper is thin, a male, a white male, and is probably seen as an authority figure of some sort.  It challenges much of what we believe in our core to be correct.  That a guy who looks like he does- he cannot be held accountable for his genetics, and yet it is just fine for Oprah to "fix" the one thing that to some peoples eyes needs fixing.  That it is fine for Bob to diet and over exercise however he deems necessary to look a certain way, and yet, by the lack of response to our discussion, people feel that it is ok for Oprah to adhere to wanting to attain a certain look. STILL!!!  She STILL isn't quite right?!?! These are some of the deepest issues of our western world and it pisses people off when those "truths" are challenged. Thin privilege does not like to be questioned. And when it comes to it- how they look are not what is important about either of these two people.

We are better than this.  

Time to realize how our culture judges people- by the most shallow of requirements.  Time to really improve the quality of your life in meaningful ways- how our bodies look is not meaningful.  What is in your heart and soul, what you do to enrich your life and that of your loved ones, your service to others and what you stand for are far more deep and authentic.  Step out of your comfort zone for a moment and do that hard thing.  Believing what most people find unbelievable- that you are not  your body.  You are so much more than your shell.  You are already more than good enough.

Daffodils and waterbottles- self care and balance

Self-care and balance was the subject of the last podcast that we (Leila had to miss this one- *sadness*) recorded and it is something that I have been thinking about ever since.  I was fortunate to have a little time to listen to us while I actually went for a walk- outside!  and in the SUN today and I wanted to develop the ideas I was trying to say in this episode.

Balance in life is "possible" but what exactly is that?  What does this- in the present day's popular vernacular- even look like? I think the answer to that is an individual's idea of balance.  For me- being an optimist that I am- balance means that I am happy, that the irritations of the day leave me immediately after the situation has resolved itself, that I am happy to talk to people when I see them and I am happy to be alone when I get home as well.  I think happy is at my center of balance.

What could this look like to other people?  Could your balance mean literally that the bad times during the day are balanced by things going sort of ok- that your generally pessimistic outlook on life is balanced by a few things that don't suck?  I know people like that.  Are you an introvert and your balance in life is being largely left alone because you work in a somewhat solitary job, and you have a small family and limited social life, but enjoy being out and about in a limited fashion?  Perhaps you are fairly extroverted and you are on the phone with your friends frequently, and have a public workplace, then need to spend time with others in the evening and chit chat on text until you go to bed? What does balance mean to you?  I am not criticizing these ways of looking at life, merely thinking of people I know and trying to see from their point of view and imagining what could be a balanced life.  I, of course, only barely touched the surface of this, but the amazing differences in people would lead to different definitions of what balance is.

In our case, we were discussing the balance between real life and healing and I have to imagine that everyone processes this differently as well. I have to imagine not everyone can do this, but,  I personally went cold turkey when I began my healing and escaping from diet prison.  I quit weighing, dieting, and embracing diet culture really quickly, in literally a day.  I decided to stop and I did.  This does mean that I floundered around for quite a while, because after more than a couple decades of thinking that following diets and shrinking myself was the only way to self fulfillment, it took a lot of time and a lot of self care and body image work to change the way I saw myself.  There was not a lot of balance during the first few years of healing, there was a lot more feeling free, though.  It was outstanding to just eat what I wanted.  It took a lot longer to come to terms with the exercise component but I did.  It is so nice to really not care what I have for any given meal.  I don't care what my macros look like, don't think about if I have had more than 2 pieces of bread in a day, feel no concerns when I pick up a second cookie if it will feel good in my tummy.

Freedom gave me the space in my mind to work on my body image and my self worth.  I said in the podcast that I still have feelings that I am not doing enough, that I don't deserve to take rest time, or have down days.  (The self worth work goes on, but it is much easier to identify that there is something that needs to be turned and examined.)  So there surely was not a lot of balance during my early recovery period, there was just a lot of time given to my inner work.  I did a lot of guided meditations, I journaled, I had group and private coaching.  The meditations included visualizations and breathing work. I was religious in working on these things, doing the assignments and writing prompts from the group coaching, listening to the "tapes", finding new things to read and people to follow on social feeds.  And then I found I didn't have the NEED to listen to my morning meditation.  Didn't HAVE to journal for pages and pages every day....  that is when the balance began to happen.

I was trying to convey in the podcast that I think the balance of healing and real life happen in ebbs and flow.  We have cycles of nature, cycles of energy, and I think cycles of balance and imbalance.  I think the balance in our life happen when we can handle the things that are bringing us to our knees or making us not sleep at night or rest like a giant ball in your chest that take up all the space you usually have for patience, and breath, and love, and compassion.  When we know what authentic self-care tools we have to use and where we can go when we are in crisis.  The balance comes in knowing that we can find our way out of this and it does not involve trying to control life and people and situations and love by making ourself LOOK different or a certain way or a eat a different way because if I lose weight everything will be right again, because it is sort of magical because all the people on tv and the internet say our life will be perfect if we shrink and take up less space and become less than what we are.  whew.  No- that won't work at all, dieting won't work at all.

Self-care tools at their finest frequently don't cost anything.  They don't involve having someone do something fancy or luxurious for you.  While having the pedicure or massage or buying the shoes or the daffodils or taking that bath in the good bubbles might be momentarily amazing, these are the lesser self care practices.  These don't bring to your mind the things that affected your outlook on life from your childhood, or the friends that betrayed your, or the trauma you suffered, nor really do they help you see them from where you are living now, from your present point of view.  They don't let you really decide that the mean girl in your mind is really not speaking the truth.  The lesser self care practices don't cause the sublimation of healing happen in your mind and change your go to responses to stress.

Writing in  journal/notebook/scrap paper, meditation in whatever form works for you, movement that is healing and not punishing, breathing purposefully and rhythmically are things that are authentic forms of self care.  Moments that you find during your day- only 30 seconds or a minute- to truly give yourself positive reinforcement in some way are incredibly effective.  In my case, the water bottle filling, when I breathe slowly to relax myself is far superior to the beautiful little bouquet of daffodils I bought myself last week.  The flowers were lovely and I adore them, but they didn't quite do the trick to rescue me from my acute distress.  Coaching, visualization, time to actually relax and giving myself permission to be put aside things that just didn't need doing are what got me out of my funk.  I never could write out a sentence that said the last two weeks I have felt like a total disaster, a failure, a shipwreck and I can't sleep or relax  because.......  I kind of don't really know.  I do know that facing all the issues that were adding up and making myself stop several times a day to hold my hand on my heart and breathe into it was the thing that broke the cycle and has me back in balance.  Every time I face the demons and can bring myself back to balance without being on a diet or blaming my body for the situation brings me another day of peace.  

Take the time to find your own authentic self care and think about what balance means to you.  We are more than worth it.

Feeding our real hungers

I have had a really hard few weeks here, and fortunately for me I have tools that I can use to get me through those times.  I have really good friends that I can talk to,  I have self care practices that I know will make me feel better and thank heaven I have coaching that will help me when I know that I need more support than usual.

Self care comes in many forms

Fortunately for me, I am able to "go there"when I am asked to speak- as part of a recovery technique- as a different part of me.  Not from my brain, but from a body part or something that lives inside of me, or the younger me or the scared me, etc.  You get the picture- I am totally able to immerse myself in another reality to get at thoughts or feelings or perceptions that are holding me back or making me, frankly, feel really bad about myself.

Today I had a very effective coaching session- I know they are effective when I feel drained and exhausted, though peaceful afterwards- that helped me identify what my stressors are at this point in time.  Funny thing, when you no longer use food and dieting to sublimate your internal problems, they like to bubble up to the surface like lava from a volcano.  Sometimes maybe not that dramatic, but sometimes it is.

And it really is that way- I have no diet to keep my mind occupied, no calorie counting to be preoccupied with, hours of exercise that would be distracting me from the issues at hand.  I may also be less adept at rolling with the crap that life throws at me (ahem, we will just pretend that age has nothing to do with it) for one reason or another.   It could be I am overwhelmed- see the next post that will be coming out soon- or it could be that I am not honoring my hungers.

I am definitely not talking about my food hunger, because seriously, I don't mess with that anymore.  If I am hungry I figure out what I want and have it.  I am talking about my other hungers....  My needs for creativity, for rest, for purposefully meeting my own needs.  And that has been neglected a bit lately.

I have become overwhelmed with feelings of literally running just ahead of a beast that wants to envelop me in its grasp.  At work I zoom from one task to another, from one student to another, from one building to another- all the while feeling like I am not serving any of them to my ability.  I never feel like I am doing enough. After work I go to the stage and do play things, and again, I never feel like we are getting enough done.   At home, I sit in paralysis.  Literally I, some nights, plop on the couch and barely get up.

I have been really feeling the need to do art- I can picture things that I want to create in my head. I am absolutely itching to oil paint again, I need to get my hands into subject matter and media that I want to do, not what I want my kids at school to do.  When you are an art teacher you rarely do your own work because you just don't have the time when you are teaching and you do not have the will when you are home.  But the feeling is there- I need to honor my need for creativity soon.  I need to purposefully and intentionally walk outside for a little while every day for my own sanity.  I need to let myself rest when I feel I need it.  And I really need to find a way to be in the moment, in my body and not in my head through out the day.

These things are my self care, my genuine modes of providing myself with the things I need to be able to be my best self.  I know I need them to do my best at my life's work.  I have bought myself daffodils, I had a pedicure, I made some brownies- all of which make me happy and brighten my day, but they are not the soul satisfying things that I need to be better.  Creativity energizes me, walking calms me and rest restores my mind.  I will be honoring my true needs- I know that I need to satisfy these hungers as much as I need to satisfy my students', friend's and family's needs. Or more.

Controlling my body's size and shape will not help fill these needs.  Restricting or bingeing on food will not truly make me feel like a whole person again.... Honoring my true needs is the most authentic thing I can do- I am more than worth it.  And so are you.

I didn't recover right....

I just finished recording a magnificent podcast with Anne-Sophie and Leila.  This coming week is National Eating Disorders awareness week, and we all shared our stories.  When the podcast goes live I will try to remember to link it up here.  The podcast is UP!!

Both Leila and Anne-Sophie had diagnosed eating disorders and were in official treatments for them. They had some serious issues and I am one of the most grateful people in the world that their treatment has brought them into my life.  They went through a lot of seriously dangerous - health-wise- times in their lives and fortunately found the places, people and techniques to overcome and continue to recover from these illnesses.

My story is different than theirs, as I had no official diagnosis.  I want it to be known that I neither think this is better or worse- it is just different.  This is a huge moment of self realization #1  for me this week.

When I was at the beginning of my search for another way to live other than dieting, I didn't feel worthy.  Even though I was thin enough to fit into the accepted social standards of "she looks good" I didn't feel that I was thin enough.  Though I had extremely disordered eating- to the point of cutting my calories to the point that my exercise zeroed out my intake for the day and I thought that was  not only ok, but admirable- I didn't think I did it well enough.  When I began to recover from this, through a life coaching program that had me writing my way through the different aspects of my life- I didn't think I was "sick enough" to spend the money to get through it and recover.

And now, even though I don't believe it, there are some who probably believe i didn't recover right.  And maybe juuuuuusssssst a tiny bit of myself may have believed that for a moment, too.  (HMOSR #2)

Since there is still the underlying message in society that being thinner is inherently better than being heavier, it seems to my warped-up mind that ultimately you should be able to eat what you want, not restrict and stay on the lighter side.  That, if you are honoring your body, the least your body can do is pay attention to all the ads and beauty sites and become or stay visually in alignment with what they are showing.  That you need to have visible muscles to be strong. That if you gain weight and no longer look like a 12 year old, and if not,  you have some how failed.  blah blah blah..... bullshit.

This interesting bit of news occurred to me during the podcast and I quickly wanted to call myself out on said bullshit.

I know that I have recovered right.  I recovered right because I can have a half of a pb sandwich and a brownie for breakfast and it was good and I didn't even think about it.  I can choose to skip the gym and a long walk this weekend because I need down time and it is ok.  I can immerse myself in another good book instead of "accomplishing something" because it is what I need to do.  Debi has recovered in her own unique Debi way.

And most important is that I KNOW I needed TO recover.  It doesn't matter if I had a diagnosis, because I was trying to alter my body in unnecessary ways: by restricting my food and viewing myself as good or bad on any given day or in any given moment based on what I have eaten,  to choose forms of movement  **or not moving** that are right and good for me regardless of the should that are swirling in my head, or to participate in activities that have nothing to do with my exterior body.  I am good enough to make my life better by concentrating on friends, family and activities that give me true and honest joy.  Not because they are subtracting something from my body, but because they are adding things to my actual life.

And damn it, I am good enough to do that.  And so are all of us!  You do you- you are entitled- and you are good enough to recover.

Release

I woke up quite innocently today, sort of ready for whatever was going to come.  I had tentative plans to go to the gym, probably walk and putter around and something in the house that wouldn't happen during the work week because of pure exhaustion.  One step outside informed me that I most likely won't walk, as it is ridiculously windy and it just won't be that much fun.

So off I go to the gym, and I start off with a fast bike sprint to warm up my incredibly sore hamstrings from yesterday's session.  I found myself trying to get to a particular time/distance combo for no other reason than competitiveness with myself....  As I was pedaling like a mad woman I started thinking about the post I wrote yesterday and also some other things that had been said in our podcast and another one that I listen to as well.  I know it was Anne-Sophie who said we are  in different places in our recovery all the time.  We are not going to be finished- something to that effect.  And as I am finishing up the first sprint I thought about how I was going to run over to my phone and record the stats before I forget them.  It suddenly seemed so wrong and inauthentic.

I have given up using my diet app for well over 3 years- it took me a long time to delete it from my phone, but I did.  The exercise app I have kept because "I want to keep track of my adventures".  Actually I am going to keep the app for my adventures- mostly to see what I did when and a few accompanying photos, but I realized today that going up to the gym and working out is not an adventure.  Nor do I need to keep track of what I have done when, because I know darn well what I have done.  

Earlier in the morning, I had opened today's journaling prompt from Anne-Sophie: it was titled "Release".  I haven't actually written about anything yet (lol, well I guess I am now!) but I knew I could cobble something together about things I may need to release from the last 3 weeks of journaling---  (If this sounds like something for you--------- go to this link------->  journaling prompts  I get absolutely nothing for this shout out, and I don't need it. It is an amazing program- and definitely will be worth every penny.)  So release was in my mind today.

As I was working out, the idea about not entering my weightlifting into the app came up again and again, and I realize that I finally do NOT NEED TO DO THIS any more.  I have divested myself of another part of my orthorexia, and I can't believe how good it feels, and also slightly scary.  My one thought was- what about all my fitness friends on Runkeeper??  Then I understood- those people aren't my actual friends.  I don't even know them. This is not a valid reason for continuing to passively be aware of the calories that I burn and the amount of exercise that I am getting.  I do not need to quantify it at all.

So, I get home and there on the Escape Diet Prison Page, as most of you know- was "Sensual Sunday" and the message today is to think less about exercise and more about moving.  Seriously I was so uplifted and validated by the universe throwing this at me along with the other things.  I have for the most part dropped the "I have to exercise *insert a number* of minutes or calories each week, but I had a little snippet of an idea because of the app.  I definitely have dropped all mind numbing exercise like the treadmill and the godforsaken elliptical (apologies to fans of these machines, but I just can't with them).  I do hop on the exercise bike because I plan to get on my bike as early in the spring as I can, because I like it! I like to bike, I love to hike and walk, I adore kayaking and weight-lifting.  These are activities I do not have to track, they are things I love to do.  If I go somewhere new- I am talking to you Rocky Mountains- I can use the app for seeing how far we went on what day and take a few photos.  But I am done tracking my walks and my weightlifting.  wow.

This is huge for me.

So back to the original topic- release.  I was primed to release another part of my disordered eating and exercising.  I have been doing this for over 3 years now, and I really did think I was done.  Just a few thoughts to realign-  nothing much.  Nothing to see here any more.  Like usual, I was so wrong. I am releasing the hold that exercise tracking had on me.  I am releasing the idea of needing to burn calories every day.  I am releasing the fact that when I work out, the work out counts in a way that is meaningful for me, even when I don't know how many calories I am in fact burning- what counts is that I am getting my body ready for life's adventures.  My weight doesn't matter, it will not keep me from embracing my life, conquering my fears and finding my joy.

I hope you can find a little thing that needs releasing today too.  We are all more than good enough to live without those things- throw them up to the wind and out of your life.

It always comes back to the food

Hello everyone!

I just got done with a walk and it was just wonderful to be outside- clouds or no clouds.  No photos today, but thats ok- I have a lot left from last weekend to edit anyway.

When I walk, I listen sometimes to music, but much of the time to podcasts.  It all depends on my mood, sometimes I have to not think about diet recovery and stuff like that, but on Podcast recording day my synapses are fired up and I want to listen.  I queued up the last episode of Escape Diet Prison, as I was not there (see above reference to last weekend!!  :) ) and began my walk.  Leila and Anne-Sophie had such a good conversation and I was inspired to get my walk done and get myself home to write about it.

The particular part that caught my attention was when Leila said her nutritionist told her that her eating disorder had evolved and was saying something different.  This rang so true to me.

I have found in my life lately I have been a bit down- you will hear about it a little on the podcast that we recorded today.  I chalked it up to winter-seasonal-lack-of-light-and-wishing-for-summer-sunshine (yes this is a thing, I say so).  I have been pretty unmotivated and out of sorts, I internalized all of the things bothering me and it has manifested itself in some weird little habits and tics in my daily life.  I have chewed the heck out of my cuticles, jingle my Island of Capri bell necklace incessantly, fiddle with my sunshine ring and even have rubbed a couple little sore spots just under my hairline.  At night I had been coming home, throwing everything in a pile and do almost nothing except play stupid games online and when I found I wasn't sleeping, I made myself read to relax. I had to force myself to be active at all, and I just was blah.

I also was eating with no real rhyme or reason.  I would eat to the point of uncomfortable fullness, compulsively eat whatever food that I saw or thought of- even if I KNEW that it would make me feel sick (and I am really good at reading my body and knowing if something will make me feel good or not). Generally, I was thinking that if I was denying myself something, I was restricting and I should "NEVER" do that.  And I won't enter into that rabbit hole ever again.  However, there was something different about this.

Something was off and wrong.  I realize, though, I didn't and don't have a diagnosed eating disorder, I definitely had disordered eating/orthorexia.  Definitely.  And as Leila put it,  and I am putting into my own words- my little ex-bestfriend was chatting to me in a different voice.  Disordered eating showed up in disguise.  It was pulling some strings and taking advantage of my slight depression and has triggered a bunch of behaviors that had been long gone.  I was eating in ways that didn't serve me at all.

Recovery from any sort of condition- mental, physical, emotional requires time and healing.  And if you are at all like me, you are an impatient sort who wants to be better now, damn it.  I didn't really understand that even if I had mostly recovered, there are always going to be a few steps back at times.  I don't like steps back- they bother me.  (this is called the head in the sand syndrome, lol)

As they discussed on the podcast, when you take away the thrills, time, and attention that chronic dieting uses and gives you- man, you have to figure out something to replace it.  For me, I have to find a self soothing method that is quick easy and always available.  I can understand how a couple of my students end up twirling their hair and giving themselves little bald spots.  I am about 3 cloudy days from becoming that myself- well not now because I have identified the issue and now I will deal with it.

When you are removing yourself from dieting you do indeed need to figure out things that will take up some time.  Because you will have a lot more time when you aren't cooking, and planning and counting calories and hiding from your troubles by doing all those things.  I am not sure what I am going to do- but I need to figure something out.

I know that in a more long term way, photography gives me a lot of the thrills and fills my need to constantly learn more and more.  That is definitely something that dieting fulfilled- my desire to constantly learn new things.  I have also begun reading a lot again- I have read more books in the last 3 years than I did in the previous 10- because I wasn't either depressed because I couldn't lose weight, or because I was so busy losing it.  I also am planning a few truly scary adventures- which is the most fulfilling way to tick several boxes for me.  I truly love the anticipation of events almost as much as the actual activity.

Fear of leaving diet culture is fear of change- stepping out of the familiar into the unknown.  But, do you want to get to the end of your life having spent the whole thing dieting and hating  yourself?  Embrace your fear and live your life.  Experiment and find your right adventure.  You are more than capable and more than good enough.

Exercise is the hard part- for me

Lest y'all think that I am off the struggle bus completely, in light of recent rants and opinions that I have espoused, I am not.  I do manage to get through the day pretty happy with life in general.  Of course everyday has its irritations but as a rule, I do not fuss about my internal workings.

The last several weeks I have not been myself exactly.  I really have been sort of irritable and at times short and more than a little down.  We are all entitled to these out of the ordinary feelings, as human are an unpredictable and sometimes unstable sort.  I just had a super duper coaching call today that helped me discover a lot- a lotta, lot of things that I realize were coloring my outlook and bringing me down.  Coaching calls are what keep me growing and realizing how many things that I hear myself thinking are skewed, off-base or simply untrue. Thoughts are really messed up sometimes.

One of the main things that I continually try to make peace with and find true freedom in is my activity and exercise.  The thing is that I was identified in my childhood as the reader of the family.  I really preferred to just be reading thank you very much.  So therefore when my more active sister came along, she was deemed the athletic one- and the boys- well "boys will be boys".  She could do the cartwheels and the flips and all that stuff- which is cool.  They all dragged me unwillingly into baseball games.... So, when one is labeled something like that one tends to believe it.

When I hit college I discovered (notice how we skipped the horror of high school gym??  I will say I sort of loved doing gymnastics- the easy stuff as I sucked at it, and tennis which I didn't suck at) that I loved doing dance aerobics.  I found a class - which was shocking- when I moved to the northwoods after I got married, and did different forms of it for years.  Combine that and walking, and that is what I did, sporadically, until about the time I turned 50.

During my time of dieting with a capital D, I was fortunate enough to have a very nice little gym open up in our time, and I bought into the gym culture big time.  I felt included and loved and I definitely was told I was good at weight lifting- which was a shocker!!  I have never been good at anything athletic - I was the reader, remember??  But as I did with the dieting, I took it to the extreme, to a place where I was basically doing nothing with my life except cooking, eating, making food, thinking about food, planning my food and exercising- and I slept a few hours a day.  I rarely took a rest day, and I worked out up to 4 hours on some days.

One of my biggest difficulties has been finding balance in my exercise.  Stopping dieting and weighing myself was relatively easy.  Dialing back my exercise obsession proved to be much harder.  One really good thing that happened when I was on the diet thing was that I found myself and my joys.  I found my courage and I have had many experiences that scared me to DEATH  that have made me what I am today. Turns out I sort of like being scared on my adventures.  I do not regret my past, but I am very glad to not be restricting and overexercising myself to injury and exhaustion.

So my goal- my eye on the prize- has become moving and doing things that give me joy, give me pleasure and support my adventures.  I became an adventurer and  am doing things that I never considered doing before.  I need to be strong to have my particular flavor of adventures. But finding balance and peace took a long time and then there were the continued notices from the universe that I am not in charge of everything.  I wrote in my main blog** about my broken elbows that really turned my life into something different.  With that one fall, I quit over-exercising.  I couldn't any more. And my mind was apparently relieved.

One of the things that bothered me over the last few weeks was the fact that I had a HEAVY mirror fall on my foot and I am pretty sure that my toe was broken- before Thanksgiving.  My toe stayed and indeed stays a bit sore even now, a long time.  It bummed me out- that and the ridiculous weather of either way below zero or then the crazy slippery roads that happened from the big thaw we had- kept me off the road for anything more than only a 2 mile walk once in a while.  I have the need to be outside and take pictures and walk and find my peace and my joy.  It is definitely a therapy and a meditation.

It made me question if I was still that person who could go on adventures and be strong and able to enjoy my life as I want to live it.  Thanks to my coaching, I know I will be ready to do the next thing.  I KNOW I will be heading out into the kayak early in the spring with my camera- go hiking on big hills again, and generally be who I want to be.  Sometimes I need to be reminded that I actually do know what I am doing and I can trust myself, in spite of the voices in my head.

The key to my sanity is doing what I enjoy- I love to walk, kayak, lift, hike, bike...... fun stuff like that.  I should get a tennis racket and a partner- I actually forgot how much I liked doing that!  What I hate doing and for the most part is avoided- ellipticals and treadmills (running in any form)  and stationary bikes (though I do the stationary bike to train for real bike riding- though it is deadly boring.  I am looking for someone to hire to talk me through that 30 min. twice a week- any takers?) Why should I do an activity that I detest?  What is the point of that?  I would rather go for a short walk in nasty weather than spend an hour on a machine looking at a wall.

I am not exercising to change my body's look- I am exercising to make my life easier to get through every day.  I can lift the 50lb clay boxes, the 50 lb horse feed bags, lift my grandkids, do my gardening, kayak for  hours, climb ever mountain.....  you get the picture.  I don't do it to fit into the image of what we see on TV or movies or ads or anything else.  It took some time to get here, but here I am and I am happy.

Don't let anyone- no trainer or tv personality or seller of snake oil or unpleasant exercise programs tell you what is right for you- you actually know.  You know deep inside, when you are not kidding yourself, what makes you feel more than good enough.

Peas and carrots.  :)
 

**This is the first post of my elbow injuries, you can see a slow awakening of reality in this and the following 15 or so posts.

Yelling at the TV - again.....

I mentioned that I was using this blog as a companion to the Escape Diet Prison Podcast, and I want to do a short postscript on the "Oprah" episode.

People, I've been yelling at her again.  This time Oprah and her pretend best friend that she is "interviewing" ostensibly,  are chatting about how the friend feeling since she has restricted her food and artificially changed her body to suit the needs of other and by extension, lined the pockets of Oprah and the other shareholders of Weight Watchers.  You can not accuse me of being unbiased here- HA! Anyway, these two are so delighted that they can eat all sorts of foods!!

This lovely, blonde, fair skinned lady is being all yippee skippy about her weight loss and how she can now eat CHIPS!!  CHIPS!!  Isn't that special, she "gets to" eat chips because Oprah and WW says it is ok- in moderation and balance!?!  And Oprah LOVES them too!

As was discussed in the Podcast the idea that one of the most powerful, successful and wealthy woman in the WORLD feels the need to diet is absolutely crazy.  She has everything.  As she sings in her commercial (slightly altered) (she's) having it all....  Of course we cannot know what goes on in her mind, we are  not her, and we do not know what her demons are, but using that power and influence that she has on the general public- to sell a diet product for a company she owns a controlling portion of- is so so wrong.  It is close to amoral in my humble little ol' opinion. People are crazy about her, and will follow her anywhere.  I do not get that, but that is ok.  I used to admire her a lot for her story, but that shine has dulled.

BUT in this commercial, perhaps with the implication that she is "just like us", she gets all giddy over eating chips- I LOVE THEM TOO!!!  she says.  For the love of God, stop it.  WHY are you making yourself look foolish and trite with the squee-fest over potato chips.   And then to say you will live a fuller life because you have lost weight???  ARE you fucking kidding me?  sigh.  Live your full life now, without waiting. LIVE IT!!!! People don't care how much you weigh, and if they do then that is their problem- not yours.

Oprah, honey, I have a hot tip for you, if you let yourself eat potato chips when you want them i.e.: quit fighting with the chips-  the chips don't hold any more power over you.  And since it is a deep fried piece of potato, that seems like it should be completely doable.  Think about it- its a potato.  They really aren't all that powerful.  They are food.

Anyway, that is my mini-rant about Oprah, I am using my mute button on her as I have been for the "news" these days because I can't stand that either.  I'm done with Oprah- for now.  Lol.

The take away here is I hope so hard that you will look at these WW commercials for what they are- a company that is banking on the hope that you trust Oprah, and the company's reputation and name recognition, to guide you to a world where you get to restrict your food and feel bad about yourself over and over when the diet fails you, because you know it will.
Diets don't work- Live your life now- you are definitely MORE than enough to live a full life at this moment/day/week/year/lifetime.

Love and smooches!

Down to the nitty gritty- no diets

No diets- huh, how does that even work?  I have heard that from more than one person. It really is a complex subject, but it is as simple as that too.  Just don't diet.   Just don't be restricting your calories.  Now that is the easiest and hardest thing in the world.

We are constantly told that we can't be trusted to feed ourselves.  There are books, commercials, tv shows, blogs, apps and food companies that tell us that we have no idea what we are doing.  If we eat what we want- we will gain all the weight.

A few basic issues with this premise and our belief of this premise:  first- you are a freaking grown up and you really can eat what you want.  Seriously, you really can.  Your mom is not in charge any more (ok, that is a loaded statement, but you know what I mean).  Second the "if"- this industry is blackmailing and sabotaging you.  It is using its visual influence to make you think that you are not worthy of having a fulfilling life at the weight and shape you are right now.  Next- what business is it of anyone if you gain, lose or stay the same?  You, my dear, are not put on this earth for someone else's viewing pleasure.

But we will stay with the idea of not dieting here.  About 3 years ago,  I still struggled with my weight- meaning, I was struggling to stay at an artificially low weight, at which I had no business being.  I literally was starving myself for what??  Any way, I was very low weight and on the one hand I wanted to lose even more.  But on the other hand I was panicked and dissatisfied.  I did NOT want to keep doing this same thing all the time: cooking all weekend for the week, prepackaging all the lunches, planning my foods, buying ridiculously expensive things.  It was exhausting and drained my checkbook and between that and going on 2 hour walks or hitting the gym for hours, I literally had no time for anything or anyone unless they accompanied me in someway on the above mentioned activities.  These are not bad in and of themselves, but it was to the exclusion of almost everything else in my life.  Except of course getting on the scale about 10 times a day.

So through the process that I outlined in a previous post, I discovered the blogs and podcasts that recommended throwing away the scale and quit dieting.  So one weekend I did.  I didn't throw the scale away, because the hubs thought he needed it.  (note: he doesn't anymore- broke him of that habit by never replacing the batteries.  lol)  But I put it out of my sight.  And mostly I refused to get ON IT.  I apparently am the sort of person who can just suddenly do something like never weigh myself again when I FINALLY decide to.  It takes a while but I am like that.  There is no weaning myself of something- I just do it.  And I quit dieting in one swoop as well.  Soon after that I joined the Body Love Writing Circles that Anne-Sophie hosted, so I had some consistent support.  But for about a month I read as much as I could and sort of just "did it".

By "did it", I mean I quit dieting.  I quit following a food plan, filling in the diet app, counting my calories in and my calories out.  It was a little scary and really confusing.  When you literally can eat what you want, where do you start?  You tentatively go and make yourself a big peanut butter sandwich on yummy, smushy, white bread, that before would have had to be almond butter on heavy whole grain whatever.  You have yourself an ice-cream sundae for supper because you have given yourself permission- full fat ice-cream from the freezer (and nary a banana in sight!) that you always have there for the hubs and he just would willy-nilly enjoy when he felt like it at night!!  (Remember the grown up comment from up above?  He has no problem eating something he wants, because he doesn't diet or care what he eats, really) While I never actually binged out on chocolate, because I had been giving myself permission to eat chocolate- with some guilt, mind you- for several months, a fair share was consumed during this time period.   I had been giving this technique the side eye for a while;  it felt good to jump in.

I actually stood (and sometimes still do) by the refrigerator and imagined a variety of foods in my belly.  I imagined what I would feel like if I ate it.  I want what I eat to make me feel good, now. When you quit dieting, you can literally eat anything you want- seriously anything.  I mean it!!  It was immensely freeing and a bit frightening.  You go through a refeed period where your body demands you to eat without restriction the things that you were afraid to eat the most.  But you have to trust the process and just go with it.  Honey, you won't eat chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and supper for the rest of your life.  Chocolate will become just chocolate.  You will discover things that you were freaking CRAVING- like OMG GIVE ME ALL THE COOL RANCH DORITOS RIGHT NOW!!!!  and discover that they just don't taste all that good. Neither do Oreos---  Now Cheetos, they continue to taste amazing to me- a bit salty but sometimes that is what I want.  And I have them in the house most of the time, and they last for several days or a week.  Because I know I can eat them if I want and I can buy more if I run out.  Cheetos have no power over me anymore.  None.  Eat things that feel right to you, regardless of what anyone else says.

Food is no longer my hero, my savior, my enemy, my nemesis or my friend.  It is just food.  To get to this point you have to stop dieting.  That is the first thing.  Then stop weighing yourself, because for this to all work, you have to stop measuring and knowing a thing that is truly meaningless in your life and that is your weight.  BMI, weight, etc, etc.  You don't need to know those things- especially when you give them the power to make or break your day, your mood, your life.

This is the first step and having a tribe helps.  Having people who are escaping diets and are rebels of the most awesome kind are essential.  There are many people who are body positive coaches and bloggers who can help- I recommend going to Facebook and request to join Escape Diet Prison page. Don't be afraid- ask a question, people will give their thoughts and ideas.  Read the things going on- consider buying Anne-Sophie's 365 journaling prompts- it is stellar and just the right thing to continue on this journey to become the best person you can be without worrying about your weight.  You are far more than good enough to succeed.