Thank heaven for my nail technician

Yesterday I had a pamper session with one of my favorite people - my nail/waxing friend.  She's sort of branched out on her own and works much closer to where I live, which is incredibly wonderful.  No more 30 minute commutes for a pampering session.

When I indulge and get a pedicure from K, I KNOW I'm going to get so much more than pretty feet that feel wonderful.  Oh, K does that part and does that part well.  What she does better is to listen and share her insights.  And boy howdy - she did that yesterday.

We were talking about some of my stresses and what is causing them.  One of the major stresses I can talk about on this blog is my having gained 15 lbs and feeling incredibly afraid I'm on my way to being obese again and that was one of the many things K and I talked about yesterday.  K talked about something that had happened in her life and how she had been advised that there's no 'getting over it', not 'letting go' - it would always be there and she could fight it or integrate it into her life.

Fight it or integrate it.  Fighting it is a never win proposition.  Integrate.  I like that sound of that.  And what is it that I need to integrate?  My loathing of my life when I was obese.  I journaled this morning and tried to think of aspects of my life that I liked during that period and only one came to mind - lack of structure.  And I realized I liked lack of structure because it gave me the freedom to continue to practice the bad habits that were so ingrained in my lifestyle.  So I struck that from the list and decided to tackle it from a different approach - what, specifically, didn't I like about my life:

Having no self-respect

Having no energy

Feeling helpless

Hating the way I felt

Hating the way I looked

That was enough.  So my assignment now is to turn this around. How can I integrate my fear of those five things into my life in a positive way?

1.  When I make a plan and stick to it - I feel self-respect.  That especially goes with food and exercise.

2.  When I eat healthfully and exercise moderately, I have tons of energy

3.  When I take care of myself, I don't feel helpless

4.  When I eat healthfully and exercise moderately, I generally feel good

5.  When I eat healthfully and exercise moderately, I generally like the way I look.

When I came off OPTIFAST, I was very structured.  My meals were always planned and packed.  I scheduled appointments around my exercise schedule.  There was little joy in my life though.  I was doing all these things out of fear rather than a mindset that I was capable of taking care of myself and deserved to do what I need to do to take care of myself.

Oh sheesh - it's more than the fear of being obese.  It's the fear of being found a fraud:  I'm still an obese woman disguised in a thin woman's body. That's it - I don't trust myself.  I've never really believed that I lost weight legitimately.   This is paralyzing me.

So that came out of left field and I need to process it.  

And now y'all know why I love K so much!  She spurs this level of thinking (and makes my feel feel great and look pretty!)

Eater's Remorse

First  - thanks to everyone who dropped by and left a comment.   I have to say, going quiet has helped me some. When I write for myself only, I can identify things that may  not necessarily come out when writing in a public forum.

Today, I was working on a task from Julia Cameron's The Writing Diet and the words Eater's Remorse popped in my head.  And this is the result:

Eater’s Remorse

I’ve experienced this so very often this past year because I ate without thinking, or sometimes willfully ignoring the little voice that said choose something else.  The without thinking part is the part I want to work on.  Remember the commercial “I could’ve had a V8”?  Well, too many times I’ve eaten something I didn’t really need or want just because I wanted to eat.  And afterwards I’d remember “Dammit – I could have gone for a walk, or had a cup of tea or anything else other than that cookie.”   I experienced Eater’s Remorse and while it usually feels worse than whatever I was trying to medicate with food, right now it doesn’t seem to feel worse enough for me to remember to do something else.

Right now, the substitute behavior is writing.  I like that behavior – I enjoy doing it.  And when things aren’t too busy at work, I can write to my hearts content.  But when they get busy, I tend to forget to take a few minutes to type out what I’m thinking/feeling about food.  Until AFTER I’ve had one (or two) of the leftover brownies or cookies from Jason’s Deli. 

I don’t know what the answer to this is, but to keep trying.  The more I try and the  more successes I do have- then that’s progress. 

For now my mantra is going to be “I choose to avoid Eater’s Remorse”

Deconstructive Criticism

One of the reasons I have somewhat curtailed blogging is that I felt very much like a hypocrite.   Here I was talking about weight management like I knew what I was doing - all the while slipping deeper into despair and denial about my own weight gain.

Another reason is I felt a bit exposed after I finally quit trying to rationalize away the constant upward creep of the number on the scales.   "I have gained weight and now the whole world knows I'm a failure at weight management."  My identity was wrapped up in being successful at weight management and the number on the scale showed my identity was fraudulent.

That's my mind at work.  Scary isn't, it?  And it's probably one of the reasons I gained up to 250 lbs at one point in my obese life.  It's all or none with me.  Nothing less than perfect counts.   This is is definitely deconstructive criticism at it's worse - the source is me and the result is tearing myself down.

I don't have to be perfect and writing about not being perfect here is probably the best medicine I can give myself.