Debra's Thanksgiving holiday blog

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and this can be a very stressful time of year when it comes to staying on track and eating healthy.  Food is usually in abundance and parties are frequent.

For me this a joyous and festive time with decorations, Christmas music, the spirit of joy and I just love seeing how excited the kids get knowing that Christmas is right around the corner. However, for some women it is a time of high anxiety because of overeating and binging. I remember those days and while I personally try to take it in stride I too can get overwhelmed and overeat, but many years ago I came up with a plan to  allow myself  no more than a 2 pound weight gain and for the past 15 years it has worked!

While Thanksgiving is considered the beginning of the holidays you do not have to binge and overeat or put on the 11-12 pounds that most experts say the average weight gain is at that time of year. Not only is that unhealthy physically, mentally and emotionally but that is a lot of weight to put on and it is so hard to take off.  Come January, when you mentally begin to get in the DIET mode, the shift will be to weight loss.” The DIET industry booms with people wanting to lose weight and that will most certainly lead to another year of disappointments for many.  Listen to me...DIETS DON’T WORK!

I truly believe that anyone can get through the holidays without eating till you cannot breathe or better yet cannot zipper your jeans. Yes, you can do this as I have done it for years and I am not different than anyone else. When I began to PACE MYSELF with holiday eating and thinking MINDFULLY about my choices I realized that anyone could do this. 

Here’s a tip to help you make it through the next 6 weeks without eating the kitchen sink. Again, I will say this, make sure you are exercising. When your fitness routine takes a back seat that sets up a roller coaster ride for a train wreck and that is when most good eating habits begin to go south. In other words, when one sinks they both go down.  Without exercise and eating sensibly, those pounds will start to pack on and you will probably experience a lack of energy, not enough sleep, feel bloated and feel miserable.

I have said this over and over, if you can make it through Thanksgiving Day half of the battle is won. That one day will most likely set you up for the next 4 or so weeks till Christmas is over and we are all running to get healthy once again. Do me a favor. Please eat one good meal on Thanksgiving Day like a good breakfast. Enjoy the day and celebrate you. You can make it, I know you can!

Julia's blog

Since my last blog in June, I’ve learned many things. I’ve learned about myself, my history, life lessons, and most importantly, to let go. Life has a funny way of working out if we let it run its course. All too many times however, we try to interfere, kicking and screaming. Why not just stop, listen, and learn?

One of the biggest lessons that I have learned is that I cannot change the outside until I accept what’s on the inside. We all have baggage that we carry with us throughout life. If you’re an emotional eater like I am, that internal baggage eventually catches up to us and our bodies. When we feel like crap on the inside, we look like crap on the outside. If we could care less, it shows. Our emotions are powerful and if we allow them to consume us, it takes over our lives completely, jean size and all. I realized that my problem wasn’t my weight. That’s right; it’s not about the weight or the food. It’s about how I dealt with my emotions and problems, which ultimately resulted in a larger waistline. I chose food to numb me. I chose to stop living and instead closed myself up only allowing the comfort of confections to soothe my broken heart and angry soul. I blamed everyone and everything for my food addiction and for my weight gain. How can I be the person I was destined to be if I’m depressed and using food to “heal” me? Well I can’t. Nor can I expect to lose weight and keep it off. I had to begin to deal with the hurt before I could deal with the weight and eventually, begin to lose it. I had to let the emotional baggage go before the physical baggage could disappear.

Being a perfectionist doesn’t help either. I have this “all or nothing” mentality and sometimes it does come in handy. However most of the time it doesn’t. Because I choose to view myself and my progress both internally and externally through this skewed lens, I never measured up. If you always feel like a failure, what really is the point? I didn’t see one after a while and it was a lot less frustrating to do nothing, then to “fail all of the time”. I had to change this destructive behavior. I had to force myself to Stop. Breathe. Think. Each time I felt myself heading in that direction, I quit, regrouped and I started again. Not over, but again. I kept a private journal to express my emotions and I allowed myself to cry, scream, and just have a cow if that’s what I needed. It was better than keeping it in, eating it, or throwing my hands up in the air to signal submission. I’m human, I make mistakes. As long as I learn from them, then that’s all I can ask. Hey, news flash, I’m not perfect! You know what, that’s ok!

I also stopped allowing others and the numbers to bog me down. I had to; it was hurting me and me alone. I have since begun to set boundaries in my life for myself and for others. I have learned to stop being a doormat and that it’s ok to say “no” and to not allow the mom-guilt to get to me. I have stopped defining myself and my worth according to the number that flashes on the scale. I owned up to my weight and can admit it. I was 216 lbs this summer and wore a tight 18. I’m now 208.4 and wearing almost a 16. Sharing that no longer causes anxiety because it’s just a small fraction of who I am. Those numbers may be scary to some, but they are just numbers. If I loathe them, then I loathe myself, which I don’t.  I am learning to take people’s opinions of me with a grain of salt but also learning to appreciate my personal value as a strong, vibrant woman. I am who I am, no need for shame anymore. My new favorite saying, “It is what it is”.

I guess when it all boils down; I’m just rediscovering who I really am. I’ve spent so many years living according to someone else’s rules and never really my own. I have been afraid to express myself for fear of how others might accept it or not. I’ve spent a lifetime it seems trying to live up to a standard that no one is capable of achieving, ever. That doesn’t make me weak, that makes me mortal. I’m able to recognize the distorted beliefs that I had and can change them. I can take the venom out of my words, my behaviors, and my thoughts before they cause me pain in one form or another. I’m finally able to sit with the anxiety and stresses of life and can deal with my past without food or running away. It’s not easy, nor pretty, but it’s necessary. Honesty is the best policy and that holds true for all aspects of life. I’ve learned to be honest with myself and others. More importantly, I’ve learned that before I can be happy with my physical being, I have to love, honor, and cherish my eternal self.  “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result”. Break the cycle and move on!

Fitchic_2010@yahoo.com

Calming the Inner Critic

Last week in my HEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS group we discussed CALMING THE INNER CRITIC...that very negative little voice that many women hear the minute they begin to eat foods that they think are forbidden. These foods might include any high carbohydrate foods such as high sugar, high calorie or fattening foods like cookies, cakes and candy. Once eaten, the inner voice tells them that they are horrible and should be ashamed of themselves…"YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO EAT THIS!" From there it is all downhill with SELF-LOATHING, SELF-CRITICIZING and SELF–HATRED. Sound familiar?

For some it only takes a bite of the forbidden food while for others the damage begins after hundreds of calories are consumed. Where did we learn such hatred towards ourselves and who taught us that even a morsel of any food could create such havoc? This comes from a place where the message of thinness and skinny is loud and clear; from Hollywood and the Diet industry.

Today, no matter where you are in your life or journey I want you to know that I understand. If you are struggling and fighting with food it is important to understand that there is a positive alternative to looking at food in a healthy way. That ALL or NOTHING mentality has to be stopped. Allowing yourself something of the so called forbidden foods is OK….enjoy it and eventually you might not even want it.

Hugs,
Debra

Planning my days for better eating

I usually start my day with some motivational reading and a power walk with my favorite girl, my yellow lab, Hannah. This is how I get my “Me time” in. I use this time alone to get my day started, think about what I need to get done and how to balance my life, but more importantly on what I will eat because I need  to make sure that 90 percent of my daily intake is good nutritious foods and this only happens for me when it is planned out and prepared.

As I started out on my hour power walk today I began to think about what the term NORMAL EATING means to me. Growing up as a fat kid, obese teen and then as an adult, normal eating for me was eating the junkie, fattening high calorie foods, as that was a steady diet on a daily basis. My weight was never normal and neither was my eating. Healthy foods were limited and my taste buds craved sugar and fats every meal.

Eating was what I lived for and as I escalated from eating so poorly it was only natural that Dieting/Diets were part of my life at an early age. Diets taught me  how to restrict my food, not to eat certain foods. Diets taught me that certain  foods were taboo and that if I every ate them again I was a sinner. Dieting then became a normal way of eating.  So, I really had a good grasp on healthy eating and I really never learned how to eat NORMAL.

As I got fatter and my weight escalated to over 300 pounds I was so far removed from eating normal that I never knew such a lifestyle existed and that some people actually ate balanced foods on a daily basis.  I went from eating thousands of calories a day as a binge eater to a serial dieter starving most of the time. So, I pose the question to all of you....what is NORMAL EATING? For me, today, normal eating is understanding and realizing that first and foremost FOOD is FUEL for my body. There are no foods off limit, only the amounts I eat. I have a rule that 90 percent of my daily calorie intake is GOOD/HEALTHTY/NUTRITIOUS FOOD.

I have come to terms with my body, size and shape and I actually like the way I look. I realize that I am not perfect  and for me that works, I no longer let  food and un-normal eating control me, I have the power to control what I eat, when I eat it and how much I eat.