What's Your Treat?

Do you remember when you were a kid, and your Mom couldn't get you stop moving? She had to tell you to stop moving, so she could a)take a bath b)get you to eat, or c) sleep? 

And staying outside until dark, determined to get another fifteen minutes more of play, namely, moving around? 

When did that all change? When did moving around become a chore, something we have to fit into our schedule? 

This post in one of several I like to call "deep things about losing weight." I share this stuff from my own musings along the journey to better health, and hope it helps someone else out! 

I was talking with someone I know a few days ago and I told her that I want to learn to "treat myself" with exercise rather than food.
You see, I used to love movement and feel bad if I had not exercised for the day. Exercise, movement was the treat, the good part of my day. Did you ever feel that way? 

Somewhere along the way, with the busyness of work, career, heartbreak and family, I lost that feeling. Exercise just seemed like one more thing I had to add on to my day, another obligation. And food, too much food, especially, was my treat for many years. Hello! Can anyone relate to me? 

That feeling that overeating, or eating large amounts of junk, is my "treat" has lessened considerably. I see excess food as more of a burden now. It's not that my eating is always perfect but when I do mess up, I know it will cost me in a feeling of being uncomfortable, a feeling of shame, and lack of control. 

I know that it may cost me a higher number on the scale and make it less easy for me to move. I also feel bloated and a general feeling

of "yuck" when I overeat. 
My thinking has changed too in that I know, now, what it feels like to eat normally day after day. I know how it feels to start to lose weight and get lighter. And I love this feeling. I crave it. I know what it feels to be in control of my eating. I have processed this feeling deep within myself. 


Eating right and healthily is not just something I have "put on" because someone told me to, but rather it's becoming part of who I am. I am changing from the inside in.


And this is one of the reasons that I believe so strongly that I can do this. Because I am processing it, not just forcing myself to do it. I feel at peace with it. 


Treat: An object or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure. 

-- Dictionary  

What about you? Can you relate to any of this? What is your treat? How do you think we can make exercise our treat? Please share. We would love to hear your stories! 

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Learned Helpless and Weight Gain -- VERY DEEP STUFF ON LOSING WEIGHT

Thanks! 

First of all, I am so, so grateful for the positive comments in the last few days on this blog. Like I said before, I am having trouble with this commenting system, so I just want to thank you on this post. THANKS! :)

And after I had such a victorious feeling on Sunday, I hate to bring up my next topic, but this is life. It has its ups and downs! I have good news and bad news. First the good news. I no longer have job stress. And now the bad news. I no longer have a job. As of today.

So,  I am back to deciding what to do with the rest of my life. Career decision. I need to go back to work again, but I am not sure where to go from here.

I saw something on Dr. Oz that was really interesting. You may have seen the show: it was about women who are very obese, and about some who were happy with being fat, and some that weren't. I'm not getting into the show itself, which was interesting, but one thing that the psychologist said on the show. He said that these women had been told they could not do anything. And I don't necessarily agree that all overweight women feel that they can't do things, but that is something that I struggle with: that feeling of helplessness.

I have just done some research on this. Before this, I had never made the connection between learned helplessness and being overweight. But there is a connection! Wow. This is a BIG revelation to me.

And this is very deep stuff. That's what this blog is about: some very deep stuff on losing weight. It obviously might not apply to many people, but it does to my healing and journey to wellness. And I found these articles on this topic:

1. From a site on eating disorders: Learned Hopelessness. This article says that women with eating disorders often feel helpless, and tend to default to "I can't, it's impossible," when things go wrong. And this feeling is connected to overeating.
   
   
2. Another article from the Institute of Psychiatry in London says that a study showed that women with eating disorders had a higher level of "learned helplessness" during childhood. Learned helplessness was the opposite of "childhood mastery."
   
   
3. And this is from another article from the same site on eating disorders. This article about natural eating, from the Cedric Centre for Counselling talks about how this feeling of learned helpless is the number one thing that leads people to disordered eating, whether it's binge eating, or anorexia, or bulimia. All of these disorders have a similar makeup. 

This last article talks about learning these attitudes a child: why bother? what's the use? Why try? I'm going to fail. I won't do it right. These are exactly the feelings that I struggle with, in my life, in many areas. And it is this feeling that leads to binging, and overeating, in many cases. These kind of feelings also lead to excessive stress, because so many situations make us feel that we cannot handle them. Hello! This so much applies to me. This is the root cause! I can't tell you excited I am to realize this. I will post more about this as I learn more, and ask the LORD to apply these truths to my heart and life.

I am going to learn more about this, and I thank God for this revelation. I don't know if anyone can relate to this, or not, but if you can, I'd love to hear from you. This is really hard stuff to talk about but it's real.

Reflections on overeating

I wanted to write just a bit more after my last post. I have been really looking deeply at the overeating that I do, and these are some reflections. 

First of all, I ended up overeating yesterday quite a bit. I made some stew for supper and it was delicious. Very delicious. And I had a reasonable portion with my husband before he went to work. Then, after he left, I ate about three more bowls of it. There. It's out. My secret's out. I'm a  closet eater. Still. I've been doing much better but at night, for dinner, I often overeat in my portions. 

And why did I do it? Well, I didn't think it really was that much. I mean, my body afterwards definitely knew it was too much but somehow my mind rationalized it. And I racked my brains trying to come up with, why?:As you may have guessed, this isn't the first time I have done this.

Here's that stew again

And it's much less emotional eating, much less of what I would call the binges. No, it's just kind of mindless eating, and it is a form of denial. When I make it, and it's good homemade food, I tend to think, "it's okay. It's healthy food. It's not that bad." And I don't think it counts for much. In short, I do bad math. I see healthy food, as opposed to french fries or cookies, and I justify. I indulge, indulge in healthy food. But it's still indulging, and the calories still really add up. 

And eating too much has become such a habit for me that I don't even realize that I am doing it. I just do it, and regret it afterwards. So, that is why I have to track right now: to force myself to look at how much I eat. To become aware, after years of not realizing. 

And I believe I will get there because I refuse to give up. I am being brutally honest about where I am at, because I am tired of hiding. If I do this, I know I am not the only one. I am clawing myself out of the fat life, and finding the way. And God is helping me. And I fully believe I will make it. I'm not claiming to be the super diet guru. I'm just a woman trying to change. And change is hard, and gradual,  but good. 

Some Deep Stuff On Losing Weight

Today I wanted to take the opportunity to write about some of the "deep stuff" of losing weight. These are some of the thoughts I've had over the course of the week about this weight loss journey. 

First of all, I want to share an epiphany I had this week. The timing is interesting because this week was the traditional holiday of the Epiphany, which  celebrates the revelation of Jesus Christ, especially to the Magi. 

It was in the morning, in the washroom, as I was getting ready for work. I just saw a picture of how losing weight was not about depriving myself more, but it was, in fact, about caring for myself more.  It was about caring for "me," in a way I never have. Caring for me meant eating wonderful foods that nourish my body and moving in a way that makes me feel young and alive. Caring for me meant "paying attention," to what my body really needed. And this caring is not goal-oriented, or focused on results: it's just a beautiful thing to do. 

When I say I saw this, that's what I mean. It was just like a vision of it: that hit me all at once. Not my mind, but my heart and my spirit. And my body. It became very real to me. I believe truth has to hit us, in our hearts, before it truly becomes real to us. 

Love is not about "doing right." It's about caring. I  have always thought of myself as a caring person. But it is usually for others. Caring for myself has been much more of a stretch. And I mean really caring. Not being selfish and demanding. Just caring. 

In fact, binge eating looks like caring for one's self, because it selfishly eats more than it needs, but it's not. It's actually abusing one's self, because one doesn't need tons of food like that. Abuse of others or one's self is never love. And that's what I do when I binge: I abuse myself. 

Eating well and exercising is love, to ourselves. (Image by Prawy, via Morguefile.)

Eating well and exercising is the opposite: it is love. 

It is funny that a couple of days after I had this epiphany, that I ran across this powerful video from the site at Anti-Jared. This video confirmed the feelings and thoughts that I had, so nicely. 

I close with this, and I would love to hear your thoughts. 

A Man Picked Me Up! And Other Thursday Confessions

This beautiful photo is by Lel4nd at Flckr.com

...I Confess ... I Took Someone Home

Today is Thursday Confessions, and I have a confession to make. I went for a walk and this gorgeous man picked me up as I was walking down the street. And then ... I took him home! Forgive me, but he was my husband and I couldn't resist!  He called me as I was walking and came and met me up halfway through the walk. Awesome!

He's trying to get back into shape, too, and he has a lot less far to come back to. He was a real athlete at one time and it's pretty natural for him.  He needs to lose about ten lbs or so, and he wants to get back in good shape. I think it won't be too hard for him. Me, on the other hand, have further to go! But it's great when we do some walk together. It gets us both out and about and I think we both sleep better, too.

...I Confess ... I Feel Hope

Today is the day that I bare my soul to you the readers. (Not that I don't do that even on other days, but this is the special day for it!) Well, I confess that I feel so much hope right now about losing weight. I know that I can do this! It's not going to be easy and it will take a while, but it is definitely possible.

What clicked for me is that Tuesday I was actually under on my calorie count, for the first time in .... let's see ... forever. And I wasn't really trying. It just worked out that I got busy and didn't eat that much. Having that happen made something click in me.

Imaging those scale numbers!

And the other thing that gave me hope was that as I walked the other morning, I forced myself to visualize losing weight every ten pounds or so. It was weird. At first, I could only visualize the first 30 lbs or so because it's been so long since I've been down there. But I forced myself to imagine it -- to imagine how long it would take me to lose each increment and how I had accomplished that goal. It took a while but I imagined myself all the way down to 120 lbs less than I am right now. My goal right now is 100 lbs gone, but it's hard to say what the final stop will be. I will be able to tell better when I get there.

The hardest part was feeling motivated after getting into the 100 club: being under 200 lbs. It's been so long since I have seen 100 something on the scale and I have almost forgotten how it feels. I thought that when I get there, I will take a couple of months off and just coast and enjoy being 190 something, for the first time in so long. And then I will get back to work.

So that is my confession: that it is seeming possible now. And it's a good feeling!