Do I Look Fat In This?

I had a couple of days of extreme nostalgia, which was lovely.  I uploaded some older photos to Facebook and remembered how thin I used to be and how fat I thought I was.  I remembered the shame I felt at my size, a whopping, enormous 10/12, 12/14.  I can’t remember a time when I was not ashamed of my weight.  Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

I still have not found my mental meditation stone for weight loss.  I’ve done some meditating, some tapping, some praying about it and it’s as though I have no foundation on which to stand to do it (and I am really, really good at it).  I still go through the motions.  I take my beloved Mila every day.  I watch what I eat every day.  I drink my water every day.  I still do not exercise, even though I know I should.  It’s coming and it’s real.  If not before, I know when the kids start school, I will exercise daily.  I can’t help but feel self-conscious working out in front of people, even my children.  When they are gone, I will have the house to myself and can focus.

I don’t feel bad about that.  There can’t be any shame in losing 30 pounds, taking a short break and then getting back to it again.  

The Mila still helps tremendously on so many levels, even after all of these months.  While I was on vacation, Kathy and I would order a small glass of chocolate milk with an extra glass, divide the milk and chug our Mila.  Of course, that meant we had to hand a really nasty, crusty glass back to the waitress and say, “Um, you might want to get that washed right away.”  Kathy had been out of Mila for a few days and said she noticed a change in her sleep quality right away.  To me, that and the absence of any stomach acid or sourness are the best results.  

When Delena and I were working out with the Sports Active before, we did not incorporate the balance board because we were working out together, at the same time, and we only have the one.  For my next exercise stint, I want to use the balance board because I know that there are a lot of different exercises you can do when you tell the game to include its availability.  My goal is to get in at least an hour a day of exercise, plus maybe take a walk.  I will also be using the Wii Fit because I really do miss using it.

Historically, when I am cutting calories as far as I am now plus working out, I see immediate and impressive results.  I have just rarely done both at the same time because I have a knee-jerk resistance to the sacrifice of the comfort eating (a necessity for me if I’m going to stay below 1200-1500 calories a day) added to the exercise, which I’d truly prefer not to do.  I do realize that not exercising right now is a luxury I am giving to myself and one I can ill afford.  On the other hand, I tell myself that I am not under any kind of obligation to go full force, producing a particular and consistent result all of the time.  This is my journey and my process.

Eric is the voice of reason, finally getting his say in last night on my recent lack of progress.  I knew it was boiling up in him and I had deliberately avoided discussing it with him on anything except the most shallow of levels.  He has a lot of ego and personal agenda wrapped up in this because, dammit, he wants a thin wife and that’s that.  It’s not that he doesn’t love me, but he wants what he wants and he has never been one to make any bones (no pun intended) about what he wants.  To his mind, this is something that would make him very happy that I could give to him, but I’m withholding because it’s hard to do.  

We’ve had the “Eric, it’s not about you” talk, and he does understand that, but for each of us, the things that happen to us and around us are, to a great degree, always about us.  He has something he wants.  There’s one person who can give it to him.  That one person isn’t delivering.  He sees me currently drifting along in a sea of basic apathy about something that is a very passionate and important cause to him.  His interest is not just personal in terms of what attracts him and what doesn’t, but because I am also older than he is, he worries that in a few years, the window for me to lose the weight will have closed and the health problems of obesity will take hold quickly.  It’s not an unreasonable prognosis and I don’t blame him for being concerned.  

He also takes this from a spiritual perspective, being that I planted this weight loss in March and harvest starts next week and I’m not out there “in the field” working on those crops, so to speak.  

We discussed the situation in a very heart-to-heart way last night and toward the end, he was talking and I was just processing.  His presentation was so insistent, so absolute, that I had to stop making excuses, stop thinking about it in my head, stop trying to figure anything out about it and just do it.  I can accept that he was in a spiritual place, speaking his heart and honestly trying to motivate me out of what he views as complacency.  What I wanted, of course, was for him to tell me, “You know, it’s wonderful that you’re doing this and I think our lives will benefit from it greatly, but if you don’t or you can’t, it’s OK.  I’ll love you and want to be with you and think you’re sexy whether you’re 90 pounds or 500 pounds.”  In a perfect world, that would have happened, but in the real world, that’s not my husband.  In that moment of listening to him talk at length about how important this is and that I have to do this before I get older, I felt the resistance coming up in me.  Because we were in our spiritual space, I let it flow through me and out of me; not in words, but just in a release and grounding of energy.  I even had a momentary flash of anger thinking, “I will lose this weight and then find someone who would have loved me even if I was still fat and let them benefit from my efforts.”  It was a horrible, dark moment, but it was there.  

In the end, I allowed myself to focus on the part he said about not thinking about it or meditating on it, but just doing it.  The reason it resonated for me is that I had not told him about losing my mental meditation stone and he didn’t know I’d been struggling with that part.  I know his intent, although partially selfish in nature, comes from love.  

I also know that part of my reaction to what he says comes from the frustration of feeling I need to change to be accepted.  One of the reasons I am overweight is because I do not enjoy doing active things.  I like to play softball and volleyball and badminton, but beyond that, there is very little I like to do that keeps people fit.  I don’t swim or roller blade.  I don’t enjoy hiking or skiing or running.  Even when I was fit, it wasn’t my thing.  I ran every morning as a means to an end and I hated every step.  I’ve never been a “get out there and do things” person.  I’ve always been a “watch a movie, read a book” kind of person.  There is a part of me that does not want to become a different person than I am just so he or anyone else will feel better about me, prouder of me or “like” me more.  I feel the resistance in me to that change as well.  I’m not afraid that if I lose weight, I’ll turn into a different person.   I’ve been thin before and I was of the exact same mindset (which is, again, why I am now overweight). What bothers me is that I could (and likely will) lose the weight and then still be what Eric describes as a “reticent” person and that will likely be disappointing to me.  Because he has never known me as anything but a fat person, he doesn’t take me seriously when I tell him that I have never been different in my interests.  I think he believes that it has just been so long, that I’ve forgotten that I was so much more active.

This is a struggle, to be sure.  There are so many hard-wired, built in reactions in place that are like beasts to be fought and bested.  There is the challenge to decide what battles to fight and which ones to let go.  There is the balancing of this as a mental, emotional, sacred and physical quest.  There is the focus on smaller goals while still realizing this is a long, long, difficult process full of pitfalls and false gods and personal sacrifice for a greater good.

Right here, at this point, is where I normally give up completely and get busy putting back on any weight I have lost and then some.  To get different, I have to be different and do different.  I have to see this pivotal point as a sacred moment where all things are possible and then move forward rather than retreat into what is easier and safer.

Thirty pounds is a lot to lose and I’ve dumped most of that since April.  If I can do that 3 more times, I’ll be golden.  I gave birth 6 times.  I’ve moved to a new house countless times.  I’ve been divorced twice (from the same man).  I have released 3 beloved children to go forth into that scary, dark night of “the real world” to begin their lives away from me with another tiny bird poised to fly from the next in the next few years.  I have buried both of my parents.  I have sent a fiance and a son off to war, even though the son did not actually end up going.  All of those things were infinitely harder than doing this.  

I have been given, as gifts from both God and man, all of the tools I need to make this happen.  It has already begun to happen.  Now, I have to move into the next phase and make it happen some more.

I was very surprised and delighted today to find that I have lost two more pounds and I’m now really a few ounces away from having lost 30 pounds this year.  It’s going slow, but I also have not been doing traditional exercise much, which always speeds it up considerably for me.  There’s not good reason.  I just haven’t.  I still take my Mila every day and plan to continue doing so for the long haul.  The health benefits are too profound to not do so. 

It feels wonderful to now be a solid 3 months away from food addiction.  I no longer crave it for comfort.  I no longer crave sweets or high fat foods.  That doesn’t mean I never eat them, but that I don’t long for them or fight my way through the impulse buy aisle at the stores.

I still crave fresh fruit and salads, which never was the case before.  I can feel them giving my body what it needs.  I still drink a lot more water than I did before Mila, which is good.  I still sleep much, much better at night with wonderful, vivid dream time.  My blood pressure and blood sugar levels have stayed completely within normal range.  Still zero acid reflux or sour stomach.  All of the positive results I have felt from that first scoop are in effect.  

I have noticed that I get considerably hungrier as I get close to time for my period to start.  I don’t crave anything in particular, but my appetite goes up a good bit and I pretty much want to eat the whole world, so I just keep careful track of what I am eating and make good choices.

I had a fairly profound moment yesterday and I am still figuring out what to make of it.  I posted it on my Facebook account just as it came from my head and it seemed like it bothered or disappointed some folks.  The thought was, “I don’t care if I lose weight or not.”  I guess it sounded more flip than what it actually was, which is one of the detriments of the written word, damnable lack of inflection. 

One of the things I do to help my process is that every day, I meditate/pray on what I’m doing.  Sometimes, I do the EFT tapping along with it.  Sometimes, I visualize a console in my head and I turn down the dials for appetite, cravings and such and turn up the dials for motivation, metabolism and positive weight loss.  Sometimes, I see myself standing in front of a mirror, getting more and more fit.  I have a whole portfolio of mental images and prompts I use for focus.  It only takes a few minutes and gives me a good touch point on the process.

Yesterday, I took my quiet moment and started looking around in my head for my usual tools and they were just not there.  This is one place where I don’t fake it because you’re really only fooling yourself if you do.  I re-centered and tried again and … nothing.  I could force myself to pull up the necessary images in my head, but again, that’s just going through the motions rather than feeling any kind of Divine connection to what I’m doing.

 After trying several times, I realized it just wasn’t happening for the first time in forever.  I am really, really good at this and for me, this is like getting up one morning and finding I can’t walk.  It’s just what I do.  I tried focusing on other things like prosperity and good health and patience and the connection was immediate.  It was only on the weight loss that I was blocked.   

That being the case, I started meditating/praying on the blockage and asking why I couldn’t get through to it and all I could get was that it didn’t matter and that I should just let it (the weight loss focus) go.  Far be it from me to disobey a Divine order, so I tried out just not caring if I actually lost weight or not and I realized that it felt pretty damned good.  

After a lifetime of struggling with my weight and going though cycles of either feeling successful or like a failure because of my weight, it was strange to feel completely neutral about it.  So many times that I have once again tackled the weight loss issue have been motivated because of other people, either what they’ve said or what they think or what they might think and that is a position of fear and intimidation.  There have been several times that I tackled it just for myself, but like always, I would soon end up fatter than I was before and then again, that prevailing sense of failure.  I wore the cloud of failure around me in a literal fat suit for all to see.  No matter what else I accomplished in my life, that was always the, “Yeah, but…” failure.

I remember being in GRADE SCHOOL hauling a little calorie counting book around to make sure I didn’t go over 1000 calories.  During the times in my life when I was thin, I still obsessed on my weight, got terrified if I gained a pound or two and exercised obsessively.  I have spent a solid 40 years focusing on fat and where has it gotten me?  Fat.

I think that definitely proves the theory that what we fear, we create and what gets are attention grows…like my ass.  

I do not intend to change anything in terms of how I eat or exercise because of this experience.  My eating habits, the new ones at least, are now a part of me and I don’t feel a need to shift them.  I don’t crave the foods I used to eat and sometimes, still eat them in moderation, so there is nothing to grieve from the old, fat-producing days.  I enjoy the water I drink now and don’t resent it at all.  Exercise, when I do it, feels good and natural.  

If I regret this shift later, as some have speculated I will, then so be it.  It’s what feels right for me at this point and it is where I feel I have been led, so I am going with it.  

On Sunday, I saw a couple who I have not seen in several months.  I stopped to talk to her and he was loading some things onto a truck.  He came over and said, “Wow.  You have really lost weight!”  That felt really nice.

There’s still a long way to go before I am what would be considered to be a “normal” or “healthy” size, but I feel 100 times better with the weight I’ve lost so far and I trust that the changes I have made in my life will sustain me through that process.

This is the time of the year when we see our harvests out in the field and know that they are assured, so in the planting process, this change in mindset seems very timely.