You know how you wish you could go back in time to tell the 10-year-old-you some bit of advice that would make your life much easier--something you've learned since then that you wish you knew back then. Well, just looking at my blog posts from last year I wish I could go back and tell myself a few things.
Two months ago I rejoined CalorieKing. It's a great website for tracking calories and exercise, for chatting with a community of people in the same boat, and learning about nutrition and exercise. I knew that I wanted to lose weight and that was an intention I had set for myself for 2008 but I was still feeling the resistance of "I can't live happily on 1500 calories".
I prayed for willingness and decided that I'd get started trying and let the issues of resistance work themselves out.
The first month wasn't so good. I lost no weight.
Somewhere around the middle of January there was a weekly ezine from the Kabbalah center that talked about ego. It really hit home. I also got a newsletter from Louise Hay thanks to SBF Donna that listed the 12 Commandments of Loving Yourself. They were all great, but one in particular said to love even the negatives in your life because they came into your life to teach you something. So I began to see my weight as something that came to teach me something and not as the unfair "curse" that had fall upon me. For the past few years in the RLTWF program Kathy has said to try to love my body as it is now. I tried hard to do that and sometimes I could. This gave me a reason to love my body. Seems so simple, I know. I guess I was ready to truly "hear" it this time. The other thing that hit home from her newsletter was the negative self-talk that I do to myself. I didn't know how to stop it though. I decided to start scheduling in positive self-talk to help drown out the voice of that negative stuff. Everyday at 3pm my cell phone alarm goes off and reminds me to affirm that I am losing weight, that I eat healthy portions, and that my past (i.e. having been overweight my whole life) doesn't dictate my future.
I continued to pray for some sort of divine knowledge that would make this all easier. It came to me in the form of "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle. "I have several books on my night stand to read" is what I kept telling myself. But the message was loud and clear "They'll still be there. Read this now." I'm glad I did. I can't even put into words very easily the awareness I came to by reading it. I realized that all that negative self-talk was my ego. The ego likes to keep things at status quo. Ego didn't want me to lose weight. So when I hear the negative self-talk I do as Tolle advises--I shine the Light onto that thought and it dissipates. The Ego can't bear to be in the Light. Now when I'm hungry (or at least think that I am) or some food looks tempting or I'm starting to think that I can't do this or I'm feeling sorry for myself, I can say "Hello Ego, I know that's you talking because the Light knows that's not true.
There were many other insights but that's a whole other blog in itself.
So my weight loss still hasn't been fast. I've lost 4 pounds and 1% body fat. But I'm finding it so much easier to stick to eating 1500 calories each day and exercising 150-300 minutes in a week. In fact some days I think "I gotta eat some more, I'm not at 1500 calories yet." I don't want to go too far below and then be hungrier the next day or reduce my metabolism.
This weekend SBF Donna and I are doing a juice fast led by Jeanie "The Fitness Jeanie". So far today (12:00pm) I have had about 32 oz of fresh made juice (2 apples, 1 cup strawberries, 1/3 of a papaya and a small grapefruit) diluted with distilled water. So already today I've had my liquid intake for the day 64 oz. I've stopped drinking fruit juice for now and will start with veggie juice in about 30 minutes. I ate my last meal at 4:00-4:30 last night so that I could end my fast Sunday for dinner and have a meal with my husband. I had raw food from Cilantro Live to get my body used to eating the raw veggies and fruits this weekend.
My intentions for doing this (Jeanie said we should set a clear intention) is to allow my body to detox to give me more energy, to get some weight loss momentum going, and to release any emotions that might be weighing me down
Right now (12:13 pm) I have a touch of headache and tiny bit of hunger twinge. I mentioned to Jeanie that my only concern for this weekend was getting a headache. She said not to concentrate on that because that's what I'd get. :\ Of course trying NOT to think about something makes hit harder to not think about it.
I'll update this post as I go today and add new posts this weekend.
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