It's Weighing Less On My Mind

Forgive the pun, but weight has been weighing less on my mind these days. It’s this amazing shift that has been happening in the last week or so. I can’t even begin to tell you how surprising this is to someone whose earliest memories are tied up in having an overweight mother and being an overweight child.

As I’ve stated prior, my mother put me on a diet around the age of six or seven. It was humiliating. I didn’t understand why I, and only I, couldn’t eat dessert at night or how eating yogurt instead of cookies was better for me. I was six or seven! I just knew that there was junk food in the house and I wanted to eat it.

But what I did understand, on an emotional level though not yet a mental one, was isolation, criticism, and shame. Instead of instituting a familial shift around playing and moving more, eating more fruits and vegetables, and not having soda in the house whatsoever, my mother unintentionally taught me that a) I was fat, b) I was fundamentally WRONG for being that way, and c) it was something I had caused and something in my control to undo.

At a young age, it is not within a child’s control what foods are brought into the house or what parameters there are around television watching. But I am 26 years old now and everything is within my control.

So, guess what? I, casually, came to the realization that I don’t care as much, anymore, about losing weight. I’ve still got fourteen to nineteen pounds to lose before reaching my ideal goal and I’m not saying that being at a healthy weight for one’s body isn’t important. On the contrary, it’s crucial to living long and living well. It’s also something I plan to help others achieve in my future health counseling career.

But there has been a mental shift, a MONUMENTAL shift, in my attitude toward my own weight loss. My ENTIRE life I have either been on a diet or thinking about starting a diet next week, on Monday, after the holiday... As I’ve been making these lifestyle changes in the last 4.5 months or so, the ultimate focus has still been weight loss.

That mentality has become increasingly antiquated for me. I have made change upon change and I feel like a different person, a person who truly prioritizes health, not just talks about it. Yet I was still criticizing myself and feeling angry and stuck when the numbers on the scale weren’t dropping like I wanted them to.

Not to toot my own horn, but I am the healthiest person I know. I prioritize exercise, I experiment with a variety of healthy fats, proteins, greens, nuts, foods I never would have dreamed of incorporating into my daily diet a year ago. I’ve cut out dairy 100%. I consume a lot more water than I ever used to. I don’t eat very much in the evening, which was a difficult transition for me. I almost never eat processed foods.

What I’m trying to showcase here, besides the fact that I am pretty awesome and dedicated (I jest! I jest!), is that I am damn healthy. I am prioritizing my life, my whole self, in a way that I never have. So what, I’m 164 pounds. I’m 164 pounds and healthy. I’m tuning in to what I need on a holistic level. I’ve got more energy and a more regulated mood than I had before. I look at my arms in the mirror and they are looking so strong. I see my stomach and I don’t hate it as much, anymore. I see it soft and youthful and beautiful, even if it’s not totally flat.

I still want to see 145 to 150 pounds on the scale, I’m not going to lie. It’ll feel unbelievable to be able to walk out of the mall with a pair of size twelve or even size ten jeans. That’s not something I’ve ever experienced in my adult life. But if I push myself to get up at 5:00 a.m. to go to the gym or I actually look forward to my sauteed kale with garlic at lunch because it tastes good (and, oh yeah, it’s chock FULL of nutrients), I’d rather do it for the sake of doing it. Because it increases my energy, because it makes me feel full of vitality and vibrance, because I know I’m contributing to a healthier environment by choosing organic, whole foods. Just because that’s what I do now. I am a healthy person. Someday I know I’ll hit that mark on the scale. Until then, so what? I don’t think that I will ever again operate with weight loss as my dangling carrot.

What a Difference

What a difference a few months can make. When you become so bogged down by self-doubt, by poor eating habits and constant lethargy, you start to feel like this is all there is. It's hard to see a way out of the tunnel.

As I posted right before Thanksgiving, I was feeling so stuck, so miserable. I thought I was trying really hard to maintain a healthy eating regime, an exercise routine but I wasn't seeing the results I wanted as quickly as I wanted. I was headed to LA to visit my girlfriend and I was sick with anxiety and self-deprecation. I wasn't excited, I was worried about how I looked.

I hated feeling that way. I wanted to be looking forward to seeing her and basking in the sunshine but all I could think about was, "What if we go to the beach? How am I going to avoid being in my bathing suit?" It was such a waste of energy, especially because once I got there and I saw my girlfriend and we had fun bashing around town, those anxieties slipped away. I still wasn't happy with my body but I was not thinking about it every moment, like I was right before I left.

I'm headed to LA again in four days and I have to tell you, I feel differently now. I'm still not where I want to be physically and am still frustrated by that fact and still step on my scale far more often I should because it only leaves me frustrated. BUT, I feel like something has shifted emotionally and mentally. I'm less focused on weight now. Not because I'm happy to be 164 pounds because I'm not.

I'm realizing that I am really healthy. I eat whole foods, I make exercise a priority, I take lots of supplements to ensure optimal health, I cook my own food 90% of the time. I am healthy. I feel far more energetic, focused, CONTENT than I have ever been. I know that it's in part due to cutting out all of the refined foods that were bogging my body down. Pure fact: you operate far better when you are putting in high-quality foods.

Mentally, I'm also starting to realize that I am more than this body. I want to take care of it because I want to live as long and well as possible. But I'm extricating my self-image from my physical form. I've held myself back from feeling and exploring and learning so many things because I thought as a fat person, I couldn't or shouldn't expect certain things. What a life I have missed living simply because I was overweight. Because I saw myself almost exclusively defined as being overweight.

Fat people shouldn't expect very many people to hit on them or want to date them for very long. Fat people shouldn't expect to excel at sports and shouldn't even try because they will look ridiculous. Fat people shouldn't engage in fun, physical activities with their friends, like ice skating on a pond in the winter or rollerblading on the boardwalk at the beach in the summer. When cute, thin women fall while ice skating, it's cute and silly. When fat women do it, they just look fat.

I'm not exaggerating. This is exactly how I have thought my whole life. I really wish I were a better ice skater and would love to hold hands with the person I'm dating and skate for one hour each winter. That's it! But I'm not very good and I'm so afraid that if I fall, I won't look cute and silly, I'll look like a fat person who fell. It's sad even articulating this but I know other people must feel/have felt this same way.

I'm not perfectly content yet. I might never go ice skating. But I'm EXCITED to go to LA. I'm EXCITED to see my girlfriend and to hang out on the beach and to maybe go bike riding in her neighborhood. Not because I've found the magic cure to self-acceptance but simply because I've been able to sustain a HEALTHY lifestyle for months and months now. My focus is shifting from weight to just being healthy, just being happy.

What a difference a few months can make.

Getting in Touch

So it is's been awhile since I've posted last but only because I've been so busy focusing on getting ready for school. It's still mind-boggling to me that I am about to start classes to be a HEALTH counselor. That I will be counseling other people whose shoes I have been in how to eat, and live, intuitively.

You have no idea what it means to me to, for the first time, be getting in touch with what I actually need. I have turned to food as a means to fill the void (of friends, of an non-stimulating job, etc.), to shut out the critical voices (mine and other people's) and to be a constant in an ever-changing, chaotic world for decades. What I constantly seemed to forget was that after I finished bingeing I would still feel that void or hear those voices or remember the instability. PLUS, I would then feel the shame, guilt, and anger at myself for overeating. So I, in the end, made myself feel WORSE.

Not to mention that on the physical side, eating foods laden with salt, sugar, and bad forms of fat and/or overeating contributed to my lack of energy, lethargy, lack of desire to exercise, etc. If I felt tired in the afternoon at work, I, like a lot of Americans, wanted to grab the nearest cookie or, if I felt really bored (as I often do at my current job), I would just want to eat crackers as a way to feel my life was more interesting. Funny thing is that I always ended up feeling full, thirsty, more lethargic, and just plain gross on top of all the negative emotions I was trying not to feel.

The point of all this being that over 26 years, I have learned how to be completely out-of-touch with how I actually feel and what my body actually needs. As human beings, we are so complexly and beautifully designed to need very specific nutrients at specific times and to know instinctively what those foods are. But because of our focus on being thinner and thinner in the 20th century, we have lost touch with what we actually need to consume to be healthy and to be a weight that works for us. Also, we have lost ourselves in the desire to buy more, own more, have more money, work more hours, go, go, go, multi-task, multi-task, multi-task and we've stashed our emotions so deep down that it makes us uncomfortable to just sit with those feelings.

Guess what? I'm not doing it anymore! Let me repeat that: I'm not doing it, anymore!! Every day that I drop some weight, every day that I call a friend or write in my journal instead of opening up a box of crackers, every day that I choose to eat a piece of fruit over a piece of cake, I realize that I've turned a corner and I can't ever turn back. For the first time, I don't want to. I don't miss those days.

This is a bigger shift than I even realize sometimes. I have been overweight, unconfident, lethargic, unsatisfied, and living below the level of happiness and satisfaction that I deserve, since I was a child. You get to the point where you think that a) things will never change and b) this is all you are capable of being and feeling. That's a very powerful and taxing thought to have, even if you're having it unconsciously. I realize now that I'm not alone. More people than I even realize are living just below that level of health and happiness. Not so sick and depressed that they feel compelled to seek help, but not nearly at the level they could be. We are a nation of people living mediocre lives.

I'm a shining example that you can change. You can change! It's so easy to think that this is status quo, forever. But it's not. I'm not saying that change is easy but when you start to make changes, you start realizing how much better you feel. You start to realize that you can feel better. You can have more energy, sleep better, think more positively, love yourself better because you're taking more care of yourself.

When you start to live from a more intuitive place, you really start peeling the film from your eyes. Life has possibility! You are capable! You are beautiful and worth it! It becomes about more than just food, about way more than just losing weight. Living intuitively applies to every aspect of one's life. Start with the food piece, see how it evolves.

If you don't believe this, just ask me. I know from incredibly personal experience.

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.