Living Out Loud

I consider myself to be on a journey. A journey toward accepting my body in all of its glory and for all of its flaws. A journey to discover how optimally I operate when I'm eating healthy and moving intentionally. A journey toward being the change I want to effect in other people.

But it's not even close to being easy. I've been overweight as long as I can remember and I've been aware of it as a "defect" in my character for almost as long. When you're put on a diet at a young age by a mother who is also overweight and you watch the rest of your family having dessert every night while you don't, you internalize pretty early on that there's something wrong with you. I felt guilty and ashamed and embarrassed for being overweight. I felt that it was my fault. Even though I didn't do the food shopping or cooking as a young child, I somehow felt weak and responsible for my size. I can go to therapy for years, I can journal all I want, I can rationally tell myself that this thinking is useless and just plain incorrect, but you can't feel one way for 20 years and change it overnight.

I never wanted to talk about my weight growing up. On the school playground in the third grade, I remember my friends sharing how much each of them weighed. I easily weighed 10, 20, maybe even 30 pounds more than all of them and I was humiliated. So as each of them confessed, I kept my mouth shut. When it was my turn, I pretended weight was the last thing I cared about, that I never weighed myself nor wanted to. What a lie. I was aware of myself as a fat kid every moment.

As I've grown up, the situation changes, but in effect, it's always the same. My thinner friends and acquaintances sharing their unhappiness with their weight. It always managed to deepen my shame about my size and my fault in getting me there. If my 140 pound friends were upset with their bodies, how could I ever manage to pull myself out of my fat misery at 170 and 180 pounds? So I never talked about my weight. If I put myself on a diet (which I did often but which rarely lasted), I wouldn't tell people because in my mind admitting out loud that I was on a diet meant admitting my realization of just how big I was and if I did that, people would really realize it, too, and focus on it. I could never risk that. I was always trying to wear the right clothes, make the right jokes, stand or sit the right way so that people wouldn't realize how big I was.

The unfortunate side effect, among many, of never talking about this out loud was that I never got healthy growing up. I never stuck to a healthier eating plan. My views of my body and my intense layers of shame and guilt bogged me down. I thought that if I didn't talk about my body people wouldn't have to notice it or pay attention to it. I've secreted myself away and have lost part of my essence.

So now, I talk about it. I'm enrolled in this program where all you do is talk about health and our bodies so it's inevitable that I would talk about my weight and my goals. But now it's in a different context. I'm loosening my grip on guilt and on shame. I was an overweight, unhealthy child because my parents raised me that way. Once it became my responsibility to prepare meals, my habits were so entrenched that it was impossible for me to change.

Now I'm 26 and I'm on a new career path and talking about my body and my weight and my health are becoming commonplace and I feel so inspired. I've been told that I'm inspiring others. For a kid who felt so traumatized and so defined by her weight to now be inspiring others to live healthier, more intentional lives is almost unfathomable. It's an incredible, overwhelming experience. And all I had to do was stop living in secret.

When the majority of Americans are obese, overweight, or could be healthier if they lost even a little weight, I, and you, should feel comfortable expressing your concerns, your desires. Find a community who understands you, who will listen to and support you. I don't think I would be where I am today had I not started speaking out about where I've been and where I plan to be. Now you can't shut me up.

Baby Carrots Work For Me

As an aspiring holistic health counselor, I truly believe in walking the talk. A large foundational piece of the IIN program is being the change you're trying to effect in others. I don't think I could be an inspiring or effective health counselor when I weight 20-25 pounds more than I'd like to or when I still occasionally eschew dark leafy greens or use sugar or flour products as a quick pick-me up meal because I haven't prepared well ahead of time.

But like I've admitted on here before, I am not perfect. SHOCKING. I can only do so much so often. Another large foundational piece of the IIN program is the 90-10 rule. Eat healthy 90% of the time and the other 10%, do whatever you want. Eat a piece of cake at a birthday party. Order fries instead of the salad. Soak in the bath and drink a glass of wine instead of going for a run. Anytime, no exaggeration, ANYTIME we impose such strict regulations on ourselves, we are bound to disappoint. It is in our most basic nature to have desires and to have things that bring us pleasure and to satisfy those needs. If we are constantly denying those needs, we will a) be miserable, even if it's hidden under the surface and b) eventually need to fulfill those desires, anyways, and by then it might not be in the most healthy or direct of ways.

So my thinking, as a human being and as a future holistic health counselor, is to just do what works for you. I stick to a mostly no flour, no sugar eating plan. It works for me. I don't have an urgent sweet tooth and I really enjoy food shopping and cooking so planning meals that suit my plan ahead of time is usually a joy and not a chore. However, today is the day before a holiday, so I decided to forego my normal cup of coffee with stevia and a splash of organic half-and-half and buy a Peppermint Mocha Soy Latte from Starbucks. It was a total indulgence and full of sugar, I am sure, but worth it. I won't consume sugar in any amount like that for awhile and I won't miss it. But I wanted to today and I did.

Other examples of having expectations for myself and realizing they don't actually work for me are with grocery shopping. I'm all about farmer's markets and buying local and sustainable and purchasing items with the least amount of packaging, etc. But one thing I've been realizing is that I really love carrots (with hummus) as a daily snack, but I don't really love buying them whole and having to clean and cut them often. I eat carrots a lot but I'm much less apt to eat them unless I buy the beautiful, shiny crisp baby carrots. They're quick and easy and I need that. In essence, it's a really stupid idea because I'm incredibly capable of preparing them myself. I don't NEED a carrot that's been peeled and cut and shaped into cute little sizes, but I like them. In essence, I think the fact that people are so far removed from a carrot with its green top, pulled from the ground with its dirty peel intact is horrifying. I had a few vegetables growing in my backyard this past summer and I volunteered a couple of times on local farms. So I love vegetables in their pure forms. But I need to do what works for me, and baby carrots work for me.

I'm not promoting an unhealthy diet or lack of exercise or giving into every whim. There is a lot to be said for goals and healthy expectations and living a healthy lifestyle. I'm simply saying it's okay to allow yourself space and freedom from guilt to listen to your desires and to indulge yourself every now and then and to accept what works for you and what doesn't. Baby carrots work for me even though on an environmental and intellectual level they don't. My health is better for them. Find what works for you.

Pre-Holiday Tragedy

This isn't what you'd expect. I'm not worried about cooking an entire, traditional Thanksgiving meal or how members of my family are going to interact this year. I should be really looking forward to my holiday plans. But I'm not.

My girlfriend, my wonderful partner, lives in Los Angeles and I live on the East Coast. It's been a tough transition having her out there for grad school but we are both making it work the best way we know how. I haven't seen her in over a month and I am relishing the time we have together. This will be our first Thanksgiving as a couple and with all the family drama we have both experienced in the past year, I want nothing more than to be with her, and only her, on a holiday.

So you'd think I'd have woken up this morning with less than 24 hours before I hop on a plane thinking about our first kiss this time around or how lovely it'll be to spend Thanksgiving on the beach because the weather will be pure perfection. Or I'd be thinking about all the fun things we'll do in and outside of her apartment for the five days I'm there.

But you know what I woke up feeling and thinking about this morning? Anxiety. Not excitement, but anxiety, fear, and pessimism. I had high hopes for how my body would look better and better every visit with her. I wanted to hit 168 pounds and fit into this dress I bought in the spring and have never worn because it doesn't actually zip all the way up. But I haven't reached those goals. It hasn't been for lack of trying but just maybe hitting a plateau and not quite knowing where to move next. Eventually I'll figure it out but that meager amount of hope does not make me feel better this morning.

I want to hop off that plane tomorrow morning and into her arms and feel so confident, so beautiful that I focus on nothing but spending every second relishing in her adoration and affection. But I don't think that's going to happen. I wish my trendy skinny jeans fit a little looser. I wish my stomach looked flatter so that I didn't have to worry about how to stand, sit, lay, move in just the right way so that it doesn't look as big as I think it does.

Maybe you'll say to yourself this is all too much personal information from someone you don't know. I say these have got to be common worries for people with poor self-image. I know my girlfriend loves me and I know she must find me beautiful, even if she doesn't say it all the time. But there is this lingering voice in the back of my head that says, "You better hurt up and drop a size or two, you better tone your arms and abs, you better buy all the trendy skirts and jeans and accessories you can find or your girlfriend will leave you." I recognize how absurd that sounds out loud, but no one said anxieties come in rational packages.

I've done this for so long. Lost the pure enjoyment of something because I was so consumed with how I looked and how I thought other people perceived me. I hate water parks because the idea of walking around in my bathing suit all day is terrifying. I can't go jean shopping with anyone else because it can turn into an hours-long affair, most of it spent with me analyzing every angle of my butt in the mirror, berating myself. So many examples of me forgetting about how enjoyable something or someone could be because I hate my size 14/16 body. That's tragic. If you think about it, it's really tragic.

I know we'll have an amazing time when I get there tomorrow afternoon. I know she loves me and I know she would never leave me based on the size of my jeans. But how do I shut off the ever-critical worries in my head? In the end, this is really not about her at all, but about me and my relationship with my body. That's the toughest relationship at all to fix.

The definition of beauty

Who am I to try to define beauty? It's an intangible, abstract concept, or so it should be. Like love, we know what beauty is when we see it and we're pretty sure we know what it's not, but it plagues us to really put it into words. Not to mention the fact that everyone's idea of beauty can differ greatly.

The reason that I'm even talking about this on a health and wellness blog is that I find I can very easily stray from any intention of eating healthy, exercising daily and repairing my relationship with my body when my view of my own beauty becomes skewed. If I see a fat stomach or acne (yes, adult acne! boo!) or I'm feeling underwhelmed and unsatisfied at my job, I can spiral down a tunnel of self-hatred. Once I get into that place, there's not a lot that can pull me out.

I can have the best of intentions and plans and goals. I can write down and review those plans every morning (and I do). I can journal and I can throw out all the junk food in my house but if I look in the mirror and I see fat and I see ugly, I'm lost. All my hard work is lost on one moment, on one sideways view of my body in bad lighting.

It's particularly difficult for me on the days when I'm feeling bad about the way I look when I'm at work. I work in a wealthy suburb and the other women I see around me are often stay-at-home moms with the time and resources and self-/peer pressure to be very thin and very well-dressed. Without even realizing I'm doing it, I try to stand differently, laugh differently, etc. when I'm around these other women, who are at least ten years my senior. I immediately assume they are judging me for my weight or my clothing because I am judging me.

So? What do I do? Continue berating myself for the rest of my life? I guess when I was loathing this body at 15 I assumed at some point I'd just become an adult and move past it. But I haven't. And I don't want to be 30, 40, 60 and still comparing the size of my thighs to other women on the street, whether they're my age or not. This isn't just about losing another 18 pounds. I'm not delusional enough to think that once I hit that magical marker I'll beam with self-confidence every morning and never look at another woman with envy.

Then how do I define beauty for myself? How do I allow myself to feel even a little bit beautiful, a little bit feminine, a little bit worthy? Because if I don't figure that out, then I think all will be lost. I'll go from being a 170 lb woman who hates herself to a 152 pound woman who hates herself, and in the end, what's the difference? What's the point?

Living intentionally is beautiful. Eating healthy and moving daily say to yourself and to others that you respect your body. Desiring to be an example for those around you is beautiful. I'm beautiful every morning that I wake up and I try hard to be a more joyful, more true and a more engaged version of myself than I was the day before.

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.