Intentions

Intention. What does that really mean? How can I eat, move, and live with intention? How do I know if I'm doing that or not doing that now?

I've been on a diet or have thought about being on a diet since my mother put me on one at the age of 7. I didn't understand then. I was just a kid and I ate the way my parents allowed me to eat, the way that they ate. I liked potato chips and ice cream and donuts.

But I quickly came to realize that food is tied up in so much more than simply physical nourishment. More times than I will ever care to realize, I have eaten and eaten and eaten as a way to shut out feelings of self-doubt, anxiety, anger, boredom, loneliness, and so on. Food silenced and nourished me on a deeper level. Food was my first, and most major, love-hate relationship. It's always been there for me and yet has caused me so much grief. After I'd binge, I'd vow that the next day would be different. That I could no longer eat in this catastrophic, mindless way.

Certainly the next day I always started off with fresh intentions. I'd eat healthy, stop bingeing, stick to a diet, lose weight, find long-lasting peace within myself. But it never lasted. Food was too stable for me. It was too comforting. Intentions or not, I always faltered.

Until now. I'm tired of hating my body, I'm tired of feeling out of control. I'm tired of being overweight and allowing myself to define myself as that and only that. I feel that my ideas about myself as an overweight person are coloring my relationship with my partner and has affected so many decisions I've made throughout my life. Reforming lifelong habits seems near impossible and sometimes the challenge seems too much to surmount. I know that I want to be healthy, I want to be thinner and more toned, I want to feel more confident and at peace, but it's hard. I really want to enter the IIN program at the end of February and know without question that I am meant to be there and that I will do good work. And I don't think I can do that when I walk into a room and feel people instinctively assess me as an overweight person, before anything else.

So I start every day now by reading an intention that I wrote for myself. I started to really focus my efforts on health and weight loss at the beginning of September and I lost 7 lbs. in one month. I was so excited and inspired and for the first time really seeing promise in myself. But the last month I've found myself stuck. I feel that I'm eating pretty healthy almost all of the time and getting exercise several times a week, but I have been stuck at 173 lbs. for weeks now and I'm not sure what to do. The written intention reminds me everyday that I'm aware that this will be a constant struggle but not an insurmountable one. Whatever your intention is, make it strong, make it powerful. There are millions of people in this world, I would guess, that want to lose weight, but wanting it and doing it are not the same thing.

So, what is your intention? As you wake up every morning, as you eat your meals, as you go to work, as you interact with your family or friends or roommates or co-workers, are you mindful of what it is that you're doing, eating, saying, etc. or are you just putting one foot in front of the other? I've been doing the latter for 26 years. That's a long time but I would like to think that I have a long life ahead of me. I don't want to react blindly for another 26, 36, 46 years.

My intention is to live out loud without being afraid of who I am or the choices I make. I want to be a positive, proud, honest example of a healthy, energetic person for my friends, family and future clients. I don’t want to make the choices, anymore, of the person I’m not. Overeating and eating junk, processed foods and making excuses to not move intentionally on a daily basis are not who I am and I intend to be who I am fully from now on.

An Introduction

So, here it is. Finally. My first blog entry. I'm hoping this will actually accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish. I love being healthy and I love talking about food and health and I love seeing people getting excited about their health and their lives.

But I'm not perfect. No one is, but we try to be. How can I be this person who attempts to help other people live healthier, happier, fuller lives when I struggle on a day-to-day basis with my own health and happiness? By reaching out to others who are in my position. People who want to live intentionally but haven't quite figured it all out yet. So we can blunder together. And hopefully we will figure it out.

So, my story is that I'm a 26-year-old nanny living in the Boston area. I enrolled in this amazing, holistic health program called the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in NYC. By the end of July, I will be a certified health counselor with the goods to start my own business. Classes don't start until the end of February but I'm able to start doing some work now. I don't know what will come of this program but I know I'm on a path toward finding out who I really am. I enjoy taking care of children but I know it's not something I want to do as a lifetime career. I think through the IIN I will figure out what my potential lifetime career will be.

I love food. I love shopping for it, preparing it, eating it, sharing it with others. I love that cooking is a marriage of science, art, and intuition. I love that food is a necessity and a pleasure. I love that what we eat and how we eat and why we eat are incredibly individual choices yet our deepest ways of connecting with others often center around food. We all eat everyday, yet how much do we really think about what we are eating, or why? I'm beyond excited about what being in this program will mean for me and for those around me. I want to be a positive role model for my partner, my family, my friends, and my 2-year-old nephew.

But the other side of my story is that I've struggled with my relationship with my food for my entire life. I've been overweight as long as I can remember. I remember my mother, my own overweight mother, putting me on a diet at the age of 7 or 8. I remember crying post-clothing shopping because I couldn't fit into the types of jeans that my friends were wearing. I remember shoveling a cookie into my mouth on a day when I was really sad. At 6 or 7 or 8 years old, I learned how to shut off the noise of sadness, of loneliness, of boredom, of anger, of anxiety, of self-hatred. I stuffed away any feelings I wasn't prepared to handle with food. I learned to do this two decades ago and have continued ever since.

Now at the age of 26, I refuse to live like that, anymore. I want to repair my relationship with my body and my mind and my soul and with food. I refuse to live unintentionally, anymore. If I eat something, I want it to be because I chose to and I want to delight in that choice. I don't want to use food to shut out the way I feel. I need to heal myself in order to teach others how to heal themselves. I'm not sure that I could've ever really treaded this path for myself if I hadn't signed up for this program.

My wish is that I will lose weight, gain energy, and learn to love food, not abuse it. My wish is that I will begin to eat, and live, intuitively. My wish is that through my own process others will begin to do the same.

So I will end my first entry with a question. In what ways are you not eating, and hence living, intuitively? Do you want to change that? If so, why? How do you see yourself enacting that change?

Good luck.