Lady Shanny Says

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.” ~ Robert Fritz

Wow!  Twice in two days I needed a quote to get me going.  Looking to someone wiser is never a bad idea though.

So, what does this quote mean to me, weight-loss wise?  Over the last year I came close to calling it quits for good and deciding that whatever would be would be as far as my physical appearance went.  But it seemed like too easy of a path.  You can always tell whether it’s the right or wrong choice, based on how much (or little) effort has to be put in.  And the reason, ultimately, that I didn’t ever really give up was that I realized that I have to live with me for the rest of my life.  I would have to look in the mirror every day and know that I chose not to do anything.  I would be reminded every day that I chose to disrespect myself to such a degree that I would be unhealthy and unattractive for the rest of my life.  I just couldn’t do it.  At the same time though, I couldn’t see how on earth I would go about making a change.  I couldn’t visualize a thinner me.  I couldn’t believe that I would ever have the inner strength to make the commitment.  In that way, I was limiting my choices to what seemed “possible or reasonable”.  And then I thought, if I was listening to someone else, I wouldn’t think for one second that they couldn’t do it.  If they wanted to.  If they were willing to put the effort in.  If they followed the plan.  So why should the counsel that I give myself be any different?  It shouldn’t.  I should be more positive, give myself more encouragement.  Believe in myself more!

And so, I am not willing to compromise.  I am not willing to only go for that which seems like it might be possible.  I am determined to go for what I actually want.  Not what I think I might be able to get. 

What do you want?  What are you going for that seems more than just “possible or reasonable”?  What are you not willing to compromise on?  Just so you know, I actually do want to know the answers.  I want to know….I need to know…..I MUST know!

PERSISTENCE NOT PERFECTION

Tonight is one of those nights that I was at a loss for something to write about.  I had a rough week at work and my mind is going in a million different directions right now.  I thought about just going to bed and not posting today, but I figured I’d have more of a chance of falling asleep if I could just focus some of my random thoughts; align them in some way.  So I went looking for a quote to give me some direction and I found this one: 

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…and you give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you up and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” ~ Neil Gaiman

That quote is very much one of the reasons that I am the way I am.  It is one of the biggest reasons that I overeat and why I let myself get to this point.  Love and all the stuff that goes with it is just too much.  It feels too good when it’s good and then hurts too bad when it’s over.  I chose at some point to just avoid the possibility altogether.  But it didn’t work.  Oh no!  It didn’t work at all and then I was blind-sided.  The phrase “nature abhors a vacuum” fits quite well, because as much as you try to eclipse something as important as being loved from your life, that is not the way that God intended it to be and the missing element attempts to find its way back.  In my case, for whatever reason, I fell for someone who did not reciprocate, but did exploit my feelings to his own end for a long time.  It took a long time for me to catch up to what was going on, and when I did I felt like an idiot.  I felt like everyone else knew long ago what I had only just figured out.  I felt like people were laughing at me and how naive I was.  I felt like a fool.  

“…and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up…” And someone did and now I have to sort out how to not let that happen again.  But this time I will do it without the food and without the fat.  So I am at a bit of an impass.  I don’t want to go forward because I can’t deal with the pain and the heartache again.  But I can’t go back to where I was because I wasn’t happy.  So what do I do?  I continue to take care of me.  First!  Foremost!  ME!  I make sure that I am living my best life (Oh Lord, I sound like Oprah!) and treating myself with the best care I can.  I will treat me the way that I hope, one day, that I will be able to let someone else treat me.  I will treat me with respect and admiration because I am worth the attention and the time and the love.  Because if I don’t believe it and act it and show it, how on earth can I expect someone else to?  How can I expect someone else to treat me better than I treat myself?   I will teach people how to treat me and I will do it by example.  So that maybe next time it won’t kill me inside. 

Learn and live.  Do you have any major issues that you have to find a way around?  Anything that has been a roadblock for you every other time you’ve tried to lose weight?  Have you made your way around a big pothole and finally have the map?  I know that those are probably very sensitive questions for most people.  If you can be brave and comment, please do.  And if you can’t right now, I totally understand.  It can take a long time before you can be honest with yourself, let alone the Internet!

PERSISTENCE NOT PERFECTION 

…..for the shoe to drop.  Really.  I can take it.  Oh, the shoe isn’t coming?  Really?

OK, I’m being silly, but the truth is, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I’m waiting for someone to jump out of the bushes and yell “Ha-ha, we tricked you!  It’s going to get really hard now!”.  Because so far this is not hard.  Sure, it’s a bit of a pain in the arse to measure and weigh everything, but I chalk that up to learning a new skill called Portion Control. 

I’m actually sad because if I had known years ago that this isn’t a torturous way of eating and living, I could have spent a lot less time being fat.  I don’t know why it seems so easy now.  Why it seems so obvious, when every other time it was not obvious and certainly not easy.  Is it because I’m ready now?  Am I that different of a person now?  I know that personal struggle and trauma make us stronger and teach us lessons that we would otherwise not have learned.  But couldn’t I have had personal struggle and trauma as a skinny person?  No?  Dammit!

I caught myself this morning, 5.8lbs lighter than I was yesterday morning, second guessing myself.  I mean, how silly is that?  Obviously what I’m doing is working.  5.8lbs in one week!  And yet I couldn’t help but think that I was somehow doing it wrong, that next week the 5.8lbs would be back and each one of them would bring a friend.  I kept thinking that somehow it was a fluke.  And thinking like that is so disrespectful to myself.  I put forth a lot of effort to get that 5.8lbs off and I owe it to myself to be proud of what I did and what I am continuing to do.  I guess because I have failed so many times before that I am expecting myself to fail.  But I won’t!  I know that.  I know that I am following a proven food-lifestyle.  I think though, it has to do with suffering.  How many TV shows and movies and talk shows and magazine articles and books have we all absorbed that outline losing weight and following a healthy diet as something that you have to suffer through?  The fact is, on Weight Watchers, there is no suffering.  You don’t have to eat cardboard diet food.  You don’t have to eat anything that you don’t like.  If you knew me, you would know that I do not believe celery and olives should share the same planet as me.  They are disgusting, revolting, unappetizing, smelly excuses for a food product.  Honestly.  I could not hate them more!  And to me, in the pop-culture sense of the word, a ‘diet’ should be horrible and hard to follow and strenuous and time consuming and include the requirement of eating things that you don’t like.  I’m waiting for the WW meeting that I go to where they tell me “OK, you had an easy couple of weeks.  Now it’s time for the olive-celery portion of the program.” and then I run screaming from the building and chalk this up as another failure.  I know that’s not going to happen.  Because this time is different.  I don’t know how, I just know in my heart, my mind and my gut, that THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT!

Do you have any preconcieved notions of what losing weight should be like?  A particular food that would make you quit a program if you had to eat it?  Anything that you want to know or to talk about here?  As you can see, I’m quite wordy and if I have any experience in the area, I will expound on it to no end. 

And lastly, a lovely woman, Hueyea, put a note in my comments today.  It was a phrase that I had never heard before but have taken to heart:

PERSISTENCE NOT PERFECTION

I had no intention of posting again today, but I’m having a rough evening.  Tomorrow is weigh-in day.  The first one in my journey and I really want to be successful.  I really want to know that this is working.  I’ve put alot of effort into this past week and yet the fear that I will not have lost this week is overwhelming!  So much so that I started to consider (subconciously) self-sabotage.  I ate all my points today and then when I was relaxing on the sofa, all I wanted to do was eat.  So I ate 3 points over and above what I normally get in a day.  Not a huge deal, but it feels a bit like a failure.  I know logically that they give you 35 weekly bonus points specifically for that, but I used them in the effort of self-sabotage, so now all I feel is guilt.  Subconciously (is it subconcious after you’ve figured out you’re doing it?) I figure that if I’m not down tomorrow, I can blame it on tonight.  I know it’s silly.  I want to win.  I want to rock this journey.  So why do I do things like this?  It’s very frustrating and disheartening, and to be quite honest, it makes me feel like a giant loser (and not in the good way).

ERG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cigarettes, heroin, alcohol, cocaine.  In the recovery for all these addictions, you stay away from the object in question.  Far, far away.  That is the only way to overcome it.  But what about food addiction?  Don’t kid yourself, if you overeat for emotional reasons, even if you don’t know what they are, you probably are food addicted.  But how does a person ‘recover’ from an addiction when you have to be in direct contact with the offender every single day?

Although I’ve only just started WW, I have some experience in the diet, eat, diet, eat way of life.  You have to get to know yourself.  You have to learn what your triggers are, what feeling you have inside just before you overeat.  You have to know what foods you really do need to avoid at all costs. 

My pre-overeat feeling is sort of an itchy one.  I get sort of an itchy feeling in my chest area.  A feeling that needs to be ‘quieted’ with food.  If I don’t have a little self-talk, I get bitchy with myself.  Bitchy that I am being deprived, that this isn’t fair, that I should just accept that I am and will always be a fat person.  The self-talk that works the quickest for me is “Move.”  Go online, look at pictures, wash the floor, sort the laundry.  Do ANYTHING else.  Because if I just stay sitting there, the urge will overcome me. 

My trigger foods are anything sweet.  Tarable found some KozyShack puddings that are only 1 point each, but I can’t even go there.  I will eat them all.  Then I will go to the store and buy regular pudding and eat it all.  Sugar kills me.  I even stopped putting it in my coffee on the weekends because I’m a little afraid of what will happen.  People say that you can’t live your whole life totally avoiding something, but I think you can.  What about people with allergies?  They don’t even consider their allergy food when making menu choices.  And I am emotionally allergic to sugar. 

And my trigger emotions are….well…all emotions.  Seriously.  Happy?  Let’s celebrate with pizza.  Sad?  Let’s console me with cake.  Depressed?  Let’s comfort me with melty, delicious cheese.  Angry?  Let’s fly off the handle, write a scathing blog post, yell at the bird and then eat everything in the house.  This is why the WW points system is working for me.  I am good with structure.  As long as I plan and track and follow the points, there is no room for overeating and I have to find some other way to cope. 

This leads me to the next couple of posts:  Set goals that aren’t food related and When you cheat, who is winning?  But those are for next time.

I’ll pose my end-of-post-questions now, even though many of you don’t comment (maybe one day you’ll get brave).  What food do you have to avoid like the plague?  What self-talk phrase works for you when you’re having a moment?