Weighty Matters

I only just decided to do another post on Finding New Ways, hence the Part Two when there was nothing to designate the previous post as Part One.  I figure you’d all just roll with me on it. 🙂

Yesterday, I was thinking more along the lines of finding new ways to cope rather than running to food.  Tonight, I’m more focused on finding new ways to take care of myself.  These are probably flip sides of the same coin and I don’t mean to repeat myself, but I think there are some subtle differences, or at the very least, shaded nuances.

Yesterday, the massage helped me cope with the stress.  Today, I’m in need of some self care.  I have to choose whether to indulge in chocolate and pretend it’s a way of caring for myself or finding another way.  I’m choosing a good soak in the bathtub with the latest book written by one of my dearest friends.

Sometimes it really sucks that I have assigned so many roles to food in the past.   I started to write that thought as, “….sucks that food has played so many roles in my past”, but I decided it was necessary to take responsibility.  Honestly, it’s not like food auditioned to be my drug of choice, my reward for good behavior, my punishment, my consolation, and the club with which I beat myself.  I cast it in those parts and then directed its performance.

Now I need to keep food in one, appropriate, role — nutritional sustenance.   It’s allowed to taste good and be enjoyable to eat, but I need to not give it any more importance than being fuel for my body.  I can find other, healthier ways to reward or comfort myself or just make myself feel better.  Notice I’m leaving out the whole punishment and club aspects.  I’m done beating myself up for stuff.  I’m a good, human being with a human being’s normal amount of fallibility.  If I screw up sometimes, then I screw up sometimes.  I don’t ignore the messes and do my best to hold myself accountable.  This doesn’t mean I need to garb myself in sackcloth and replace cosmetics with ashes.

New days, new ways.  That’s the ticket.  How do you take care of yourself?

Motivation is a tricky thing sometimes.  It can be as powerful as a locomotive, as out of our control as the tide, energizing as lightning, and as elusive as an improbable wish.

If we could lock it down or coalesce it into something we could plug into our psyches and turn off and on with a switch, we’d be golden.  We could also license our product and make a gazillion bucks.

Alack, alas, that’s a ginormous “if”.

There’s no one-size-fits-all, unifying motivation.  Different things propel different goals.  Even when the goals are similar, what flicks your switch might not do a thing for mine and vice versa.  There isn’t even a common formula, or a common sense formula for that matter.  Five years ago, I wouldn’t even consider weight loss surgery.  I had to hit my tipping point which was surely not the same for what motivated my friends to choose surgery.

You know that sports shoe slogan, Just Do It?  I wonder if that actually worked for any significant number of people.I remember when I was a young teen, a colleague/friend of my parents suggested that when I really got a hard crush on a boy, I’d lose weight.  Care to guess how many crushes I experienced that didn’t lead to successful weight loss?

When I was a kid, I wanted a horse of my own more than anything in the whole wide world.  My father told me if I lost 50 pounds, he’d buy me one.  Even the promise of my heart’s desire wasn’t motivation enough.

There are some things that do involve an almost A plus B = C motivational equation.  For example, I love my job and want to keep it so I go to work every day and do my job to the best of my ability.  Easy, right?  I wonder if I would have been able to keep my job if losing weight had been a requirement.

Motivation feels like it should be more physically substantial than a wish, a want, a dream or a goal.   Unfortunately, in many cases, it feels like it is less tangible — that it really is a wish, a want, a dream, or a goal.  It’s powerful and can also be a power suck when it’s gone.  It can also be darned hard to locate when it takes a vacation from our lives.

I don’t know why I’m musing on this tonight.  I haven’t lost my motivation.

Yet.

That’s the crux of this.  I’m afraid of losing my motivation.  I had such a great weekend and now I’m second-guessing the positive juice out of fear.  Begone, fear.  I refuse to give you power.

I will continue on my weight loss and fitness journey.  I will not abandon myself and my determination.  I am going to keep on with the effort, reach my goals, and build on the success.  Healthy eating, regular exercise, and a pro-fitness lifestyle are my present and they damn well are also my future.

Recovering alcoholics are urged to keep “a dry house” which means that they need to not keep alcholic beverages in their homes.  That way if they get the compulsion to take a drink, their drug of choice is not readily at hand.  Perhaps instead of grabbing their keys and driving to a bar or a liquor store, their recovery practices will kick in and they’ll grab the phone to call an AA friend or sponsor or drive instead to a meeting.

I’ve needed to adapt this to my home.  It is ridiculous for me to think that I could have M&Ms or a batch of my own homemade brownies in the house and not eat them compulsively.  I wouldn’t have to be upset or hungry or sad or bored.  I’d want them just because they were present.   Over November and December, I wasn’t as careful with other tempting foods.  I had some things in here that I foolishly told myself I could handle or would be good for an emergency.  It doesn’t matter that I bought the 100% whole wheat English Muffins, for example, or that I only ate half a one at a time.  Because they were readily available, I found it too easy to justify smearing some peanut butter on that half and calling it a healthy choice.  Is it a horrible choice?  Not under the right conditions, but doing that twice in one day or grabbing one late at night when I wasn’t really hungry made it unhealthy.

Same thing with those packages of crackers and cheese product or crackers and peanut butter.  They were on sale at the supermarket and I thought that on those “rare” times when I needed something quick on the run, I could grab a package and have only a couple.

Yeah, right.  If I grab and open a package, the contents will be eaten.  Maybe not all at once, but within an hour for sure.   For me, having these things around all the time is not keeping a dry house.  It does not set me up for success but, instead, gives me easy access to failing.  If I think I can keep them in stock, I am not taking good care of myself.  Bottom line, someday I will be able to eat more carbs in a day but right now is not that day.

Yesterday I mentioned cleaning out my pantry cabinet.  I tossed some things that were past their expiration or “Best if used by” dates.  I also found a few things that I knew would be better off out of my house completely.  I packed those up and took them into work today to palm off on my co-workers.   I haven’t brought in any inappropriate carbs to keep in stock since I got back from my Christmas vacation.  I knew that I’d gotten complacent and sloppy in my food plan and I’d promised myself that I’d get back on track.  I’ve kept that promise.  So far I’ve lost another ten pounds since New Year’s Day.  This picked up the pace that had slowed and I attribute it to being more vigilant with the carbs.  To keeping a dry house.  Instead, I get most of my carbs from the healthy foods that I eat like fruit, some veggies and the like — and not so much from breads, potatoes, crackers and cookies.  If I eat any of those, it’s in very small portions on an occasional basis.  They are not incorporated into the majority of my meals.

After my pantry clear out yesterday and my kayak trip, I needed to stop at the supermarket to pick up some greens and goat cheese.  At each entrance to the store, Girls Scouts had staked out some territory and were selling cookies.  I love Girl Scout cookies.  Peanut Butter Sandwiches, the chocolate covered peanut butter ones, thin mints and shortbread varieties are all favorites.  I have absolutely no will power around these cookies.  Not one speck of will power, I tell you.

Walking from my car toward the store, my mind tried to sabotage me.  I heard it saying, “Buy a box.  You can limit yourself just like you do with the Weight Watchers products.  You’ll be fine.”  Thankfully by the time I stepped up on the curb, I’d silently cried, “Bullshit” on myself.  I bypassed the table and went in to complete my shopping.

I have to admit that I felt guilty.  I was a Girl Scout.  I know how hard girls work to sell these products and raise money for their troops.  It made me feel awful that I wasn’t supporting their effort.  I got to the register and, just before completing the transaction, asked the cashier to break a $20 into smaller bills.  On my way out, I asked a Scout if I could please make a donation instead of buying cookies.  Of course the answer was yes.  Dilemma resolved!

From now until I transition to maintenance, I will continue to maintain my dry house.  If I have friends over or need to bake brownies for an occasion outside of my house, the carbs that aren’t good for me will come in only temporarily and will exit as soon as possible — and not by me consuming them.  Outside the home, a few carbs sometimes are consumed, but I’m able to keep them at a minimum.

The bottom line is that it’s easier for me to “Just Say No” to my drug of choice if I don’t have it calling to me from my own kitchen.

This time last year I was at the beginning of the liquid diet required for two weeks before my surgery.   Full liquids meant protein shakes of a certain number of calories, carbs and protein, plus cream soups, Greek yogurt, broths, sugar free Jell-O, and soupy hot cereal.  The goal was to lose weight and, hopefully, shrink down the size of my fatty liver.   Yep, it was pretty much a given that my liver would be fatty and bigger than normal.  The doctor explained to me that reducing the size of the liver would help the doctor move it out of the way when he went in to cut my stomach.

I remember at the time that I envisioned him standing over me, manipulating instruments that he’d slid in through little slices in my body (laparascopic surgery).  I couldn’t imagine what they’d use to move the liver. The surgical equivalent of a spatula or tongs?  The day before my operation, I found out that they would do the surgery robotically so the doctor wouldn’t actually stand over me.  He’d sit at the robot controls looking at my insides transmitted from an internal camera to a screen.  Overall, I thought this was kind of cool, as long as I didn’t think of it totally in terms of myself.

But I digress.

When it was time to start the liquid diet, I went overboard preparing.  I think I had three or four different varieties of protein shakes in the house because I wasn’t sure if I’d like all of them.  I stocked up on a variety of appropriate soups and yogurts, both here at home and at work.  I was determined to do this absolutely perfectly.

I was also kind of terrified that I’d screw it up.  My biggest fear was that I’d do the first ten days as well as they could be done and then lose control.  I lost sleep worrying that my compulsive eating disorder would reassert itself, I’d eat something solid a few days before my surgery and sabotage my entire effort of the previous several months.  It was definitely gut check time.  There was no room for doubt.

I psyched myself up.  Instead of staying in the space of doubt, I told myself over and over again how far I’d come, how ready I was, how excited I was to be taking this positive step to restore my health and, ultimately, save my life.  If I caught myself asking, “Can I do this?” or “How can I do this?”, I rewired the thought process.  I stopped questioning and made declarations like, “I’m doing this!” and “I’m on my way!”  It worked.   I filled up my head and heart with positive statements and shored up my self-confidence.  The good literally took over and doubt had no chance to take hold.

This turned out to be a very successful technique.  I didn’t have much difficulty after all.  I meticulously stuck to the plan and was completely ready on the day of my surgery.

There’s a saying that faith and fear cannot exist in the same place.  Faith is akin to believing in oneself and relying on self-confidence.  Fear engenders doubt.  I’m glad that I’m remembering this now because I can use this same practice any time I face a challenge where I’m possibly not quite as confident as I’d like.  I’ll nurture the confidence and determination and, literally, leave no room for doubt.