There are all these things about myself that I know, intellectually. Awareness is when the knowing moves from my head to my whole being. Awareness is when I stop getting surprised when these knowings resurface after specific incidents and instead, I see them as they are happening.

Today’s deepening awareness is around how I behave when I’m overtired. My tiredness has been building. Like a small child who resists bedtime, I’ve been letting myself get behind on sleep lately. Then yesterday I had a flare-up of my acid reflux and lost even more sleep.

Today, my emotional responses are exaggerated and less controllable. I heard about a friend’s grandson being taken to the hospital for a fever and my eyes welled up with tears. My sister called to tell me she has to put the family dog down later today and I sobbed. On any other day these things would make me sad, but they wouldn’t reach into my heart and wrench it like they have today.

The awareness is in knowing that later today, at sometime when I least expect it, when I’m feeling less emotional, I’ll want to eat. I won’t immediately realize why, but I’ll feel a strong pull and urge to eat. I won’t want the salad I brought for lunch, nor the tin of tuna salad I keep in my desk drawer for a safe snack, instead I’ll want a donut, or a bagel or a granola bar.

I’ll want something sweet and soft and comforting to soothe my heart and calm my emotions.

The idea of eating something like that will sound reasonable and acceptable. There will be some rationalization that I won’t realize is a rationalization. I’ve done this a million times before and not figured out what happened until afterward.

Awareness is seeing it coming and consciously keeping the awareness with me so that when the wanting to eat comes later, I’ll know what it is and instead of reacting, I’ll be able to make a decision.

Then in January, I started posting on a forum thread for a particular kind of calorie cycling that was close, but not exactly to what I was doing. In its initial, early phase, this particular plan is far more restrictive than what I was doing and of course, most people on the thread were doing the initial phase. I found myself subconsciously moving more towards their way, being more restrictive during my lower calorie cycles. And then I found myself going off plan more often. Deeper into the restriction, I’d go. And off again, I’d fall.

January has been a bust for weight loss. I’m in the same place today as I was at the end of December.

It’s not the thread’s fault. Or that the thread’s plan is wrong. It’s just not right for me and my mind is just too malleable sometimes. I was hearing these things that weren’t right for me, but subconsciously letting them change my behaviour even while knowing intellectually that it was wrong for me.

So, I said good-bye to the thread. I’m using my old labels for my calorie cycling, not the ones I picked up with the new plan. As soon as I did that, I felt a shift. A lessening of the tension of trying to be on a plan that is too restrictive for me. A tiny drop in anxiety that I didn’t even know I was feeling.

I’m so lucky to be one of those people that can get a nice endorphin rush from exercise and I got one from the spin class today so I feel fired up, happy and perky! A great way to start my Saturday. I’m going to go back next week for certain.

In addition to giving me a great mental and emotional pick me up, it’s great training for me as I start getting ready to try my first ever triathlon in June. Now I just have to figure out when I’m going to fit in swimming weekly.

I’m having one of those days where I feel exceptionally, wonderfully, happily grateful for just being where I am. I often think of how awful I felt when I was 300+ pounds, not only physically but emotionally. It was just incredibly, soul-destroyingly painful to be there and not feel as if I had the ability to change it. The difference between that and how I feel this morning is amazing!

I’m always telling people that while weight loss and weight maintenance is hard, it is so worth it. It sounds like a platitude, but it’s not. I feel it in my bones, in my heart, in my soul every day. It is just so worth it.

I don’t want to be so obsessed with staying on track with my food that it’s all I think (and talk) about over Christmas. I don’t want to be hyper vigilant about food and constantly worrying about overeating, eating off plan, or getting back on plan afterwards. I also don’t want to be so nonchalant about the holidays that I don’t pay attention to my food choices and sabotage myself by eating too much sugar or flour that sets me off and triggers my overeating tendencies.

I want to dance along the high wire, but I’m going to do so while keeping my balance and making sure there is a net underneath.

You know the story. It’s mid-November and the holidays are looming. For us Canadians, this can start even earlier with our Thanskgiving being in October and then closely followed by Halloween. Depending on whether we are trying to find the mojo to start a new weight loss endeavour or we are already on one or maintaining a loss, we start to look at the upcoming holidays and plan how we are going to handle them. When they are far enough away, the prospect isn’t too daunting and we think we might just be able to stay true to our best intentions all season.

Most of us will hit a point where we find we don’t think we can stay *perfectly* on plan for the entire holidays though. Whether we just can’t bear to not eat something special, don’t want to offend Great Aunt Mildred who loves for everyone to rave over ther fudge, or just make a mistake and have that first bite of something we didn’t plan to eat, something happens and we aren’t going to be able to be *perfect*.

That’s often where the “awfukits” start. Well, I’ve blown it, might as well enjoy the pie as well as the fudge then. If I couldn’t get through my husband’s work Christmas party, I’ll never get through Christmas Day, I might as well eat the goodies my co-worker brought in to share with the office now. I’ll just enjoy Christmas and Boxing Day then. Oh, and won’t New Years be more fun if I’m not worried about avoiding goodies! I’ll get back to healthier eating in the New Year. And then suddenly all bets are off and any food and any amount of it is fair game from December 15th until the New Year.

What about the middle ground? Where is the self-preservation instinct to take care of yourself and do the least amount of damage? Come January 2nd or 3rd (we know the “awfukits” don’t recognize January 1st as the New Year, and often it only really starts on the first Monday), will you really have enjoyed your choices over the holidays? Or will you wish you’d held your indulgences to a couple of very specific items you love at your family Christmas celebration, maybe a glass of champagne at New Years and that *one* piece of Aunt Mildred fudge that really is worth the calories once a year and stayed on plan the other 95% of the time.

Which option will start your New Year off right?

Happy Holidays, everyone!

My Christmas resolution is to “Suck it up, buttercup”.

To give you all a little background, I have to tell you that 2010 has been one tough year weight-wise. I’ve struggled with my weight more this past year than I have since I lost the weight in 2003/4 and during the five years of maintenance since. In the past couple of months though, something clicked for me, I made some changes to my behaviours and have been consistently making better choices. Yay, moi!

I still feel a little fragile though and am staying extra vigilant over this Christmas season to stay on course and keep making better choices. And because I’m being so careful, I had a little fit when we received a gift basket at the office filled with chocolate and baked goods this week. I started to laughingly (but secretly seriously) whine and complain to my co-workers about the food and even went so far as to start to suggest that we parcel it out to the employees and make them take it home so it wasn’t left at the office to tempt anyone.

Suddenly I heard what I was saying. How inconsiderate was I being, whining about a gift and trying to prevent others from enjoying it? Suddenly my whole frame of reference changed and I realized that wasn’t the right thing to do.

That’s when I heard the “Suck it up, buttercup” in my head and I realized that instead of an opportunity to fail, this was an opportunity to succeed. I’ve read that willpower is a muscle and while I don’t think we can (or should) rely on willpower all the time, it’s a handy muscle to have strong during temptations like the holidays. Now every time I pass those treats at the office now instead of feeling deprived that I can’t have one, I feel like I’m exercising my willpower and strengthening it by deciding I’d rather not have one and would rather choose to stay focused and staying on track.

Six years in maintenance and I’m still learning new lessons. I love it.

It’s an interesting experiment, though it didn’t start out that way, it started out by just having a couple of busy days where life got in the way. Then I didn’t push myself to get back into it. It’s a different feeling not being so focused on my food, weight & diet all the time and taking more time for other things.

I’ll likely return to a middle ground. The pendulum swings from side to side but eventually falls to equillibrium in the center. I’m off on the other side of the pendulum swing right now, but I’ll be back soon.

I’m at the point now where I’m not only relearning old lessons, but relearning the lesson itself that lessons need to be relearned over and over and coming to terms with that. I suppose it’s normal. I’ve never really thought about it before in that way, but it falls perfectly in line with my tagline of “nana korobi ya oki – fall down seven times, get up eight”. I think what I’m learning today is that those numbers seven and eight might not have been just chosen at random, they might have been chosen for that proverb based on the fact that it takes that long to finally really understand a new lesson. It’s a blow to my ego that I don’t pick up on things, especially things about myself, faster than that, but based on the evidence, I really am slow at figuring myself out.

These originally self-flagellating thoughts stemmed from an issue I had this weekend. I’m once again working on trying to lose the last twenty pounds to get to my ultimate goal. I’ve been tweaking my diet a bit, cutting out a few marginal items that are usually okay for me to eat but are high calorie enough that they hinder weight loss. I’m balancing this with my overriding need not to feel hungry or deprived – now there’s a lesson learned after a very long time – and I’ve been doing fairly well for the last three weeks crafting and following a plan that seems to be do-able, and likely to accomplish my goal. The confounding problem? I’ve been watching the scale. I thought I had to, to monitor whether my new plan was working or not. That’s silly, after all this time, I know when I’m eating well. I could add the calories in my head and know I was in the right place. I could feel the relative ease of sticking with this new plan. I was watching the scale for gratification, not monitoring. I was enjoying the extra motivation and validation of seeing another little drop on the scale. It was stroking my ego, until it stopped. And it does. I know that. I’ve learned that lesson a few hundred times, too. The scale goes up and down and weight loss is not linear. I use the tagline “Bouncy” under my avatar at my support forum for that very reason. More lessons relearned.

So, after a few days of no change on the scale, or small bounces up, yesterday morning it finally got to me. As it has done before, many times. The frustration overrides my good sense and subconsciously I wonder “why bother if it’s not working” and I decide if it’s not working, I might as well stop depriving myself. And I eat things that are not going to help me achieve my goal in quantities that will prevent me from achieving my goal. I’m shaking my head as I write this because I still can’t believe I fell for that stupid line of subconscious reasoning yet again, but I did. I guess I need to realize that this probably won’t be the last time, either.

There is progress in setback though. I did remember yesterday to stay away from sugar. This may be only the second time that I’ve fallen off my diet plan like this without also turning to sugar. It took me forever, but I have learned (at least for now, I’m sure I’ll have to relearn this lesson again someday) that sugar is freaking dangerous for me, especially when I’m having an off plan day resulting from feelings from frustration and deprivation.

Fall down, get up. I fell down yesterday, and I’m back up today. I’m back on my food plan and about to head out for my usual Sunday long run. And, I’ve learned my lesson again, not for the first, not for the last time. Don’t weigh everyday. That’s my lesson, I know daily weighing works for many, but my lesson is don’t weigh everyday. I’ve got a measuring tape, a pair of just too tight jeans and a slightly too small, but stunningly gorgeous red dress that I want to wear to the office Christmas party. I think I’ll stick to those three items for gauging my progress with my diet for the next month.

I’m the first to admit that I will reach for food if I’m upset. And I’m also the first to admit that my relationship with food is not an easy one. I don’t deal with hunger or deprivation well, I get antsy and uptight if I can’t eat when I feel I need to. I need more control over my food than many others do. So I don’t pretend that my food and weight issues have no psychological effect on me.

As I watched “The Biggest Loser: Families” on TV last night, I got to thinking about how, for many of the contestants, there is definitely a big emotional or psychological component in their weight loss journey. I’ve watched every year of this series since its inception, and have observed how, especially for the women, losing weight often becomes a time where the contestants learn to value themselves, find self-acceptance and self-love.

How to reconcile it all? I’m kind of thinking out loud here, but I have some ideas that make a little sense to me.

I do stand by my original premise. I hate the term emotional eating and the insistance that it is behind all obesity and making it sound like a deep-rooted psychological disorder. I really feel it diminishes the reality of what is happening and shames us for having confusing responses around food when what we really need is solutions, tools and self-acceptance. I hate the underlying assumption that the obese are of poor moral character because we use food as a coping mechanism sometimes. Everyone uses a coping mechanism sometimes, the fact that ours is food is less harmful than some coping mechanisms, though admittedly, not as healthy as others.

But, maybe I was wrong in assuming the two aren’t connected for many people.

Maybe the degree to which there is a psychological component to our obesity differs from person to person. In me, I think it’s small, as I said before. But maybe that’s because I did therapy for years and dealt with much of the very real life and esteem issues I had in my younger years. If I had never dealt with those issues previously, then started losing weight, would the weight loss have been a catalyst for emotional change? Would I have then sought to solve some of those life issues and become convinced that the two (weight and emotion) were two halves of the same coin?

Maybe, it’s just that there are life issues that need to be resolved that aren’t necessarily tied to weight, but when we make huge shifts in our lives, like losing weight, it throws off our equillibrium and we are forced to deal with life issues that were lying quietly before. We are challenging the status quo with regard to our physical health, and so we inadvertantly challenge the status quo of our mental health. It seems like the two are irrevocably intertwined, and maybe it’s easier to deal with them as one issue, but perhaps they are two seperate issues, either one of which could have been dealt with without the others at a different time or place in our lives.

And then, for others, maybe the two are irrevocably linked, one unsolveable without solving the other? Particularly in cases of abuse, I can see this as possibly being true, where people may have cloaked themselves in weight in an effort to protect themselves from further abuse. Certainly we see people act out in response to life’s traumas in many ways, why can’t obesity be one of them?

I have noticed that people tend to assume that what is true for them is necessarily true for others. I guess I made the same mistake in that earlier blog post, assuming that because my obesity was mostly physiological, that it must be that way for others. Maybe I’m just in the minority of people that have dealt with their emotional issues and obesity issues seperately. Could the strong current belief that emotional issues must be at the heart of obesity stem from the fact that the majority of people who have lost weight have just found they had to deal with emotional issues (whether they were truly connected or not) at the same time?

No answers, just more questions.

Why has obesity doubled or tripled or whatever it is, in the last 30 years? Where did this obesity epidemic come from? Everyone points to our food supply and lifestyles. Health industry professionals or Joe Averages (Six Packs? ) on the street, if asked about the “obesity epidemic”, will all give an answer that is some riff on the idea that we have too much food, too much junk food, too sedentary a lifestyle and the population is too lazy. Do we really believe this? Really? We believe that two-thirds of the population of North America is overweight or obese because they are too lazy to exercise and eat right and chooses not to? People are dying from diabetes & heart disease and just don’t care enough to eat right? I went to bed each night awash in shame and humiliation because I was too lazy? Yes, white chocolate covered Oreos taste good, but *that* good? Good enough to kill myself over? I don’t buy it. Sorry.

What if it isn’t our fault? What if it isn’t a matter of discipline, self-love or anything else? What if it’s physiological? What if our bodies are betraying us, day after day, making the wrong food choices so strong that we can’t give up those foods any more than we can decide to give up breathing?

Call me melodramatic, but that’s exactly what I feel obesity is. At least, that’s what it was for me.

When I went on my low-carb diet, cutting out sugar, flour and starches, I experienced an amazing thing. After a while, I stopped craving them constantly. Sure, the idea of them still sounded great, but I didn’t need to have them NOW. A chicken breast with roasted vegetables sounded as good for dinner as a roast beef dip on french bread with a side of fries. It didn’t used to. That’s how I know now when I’ve been eating too many starches and refined carbohydrates again, my tastes change, and the healthier fare sounds boring and bland compared to the sugars, flours & starches.

I discovered that I react physiologically to refined carbohydrates, they are like an opiate in my system. That’s when I realized that the sentiment of “I just don’t have enough discipline and this is all my fault” was not true and a very damaging belief.

A good forum-mate gave me the title for this blog post, she was talking about how discovering that truth is empowering, for the want of a better word. There is a world of difference between blame and responsibility. If we are to blame for our own obesity, that blame can weigh us down and make it hard to lift our heads long enough to find solutions. I don’t take the blame for my obesity anymore. I do take responsibility for it, though. I’m the only one that can go out and find out why I have these issues and figure out how to fix them, but I can’t do that if I’m too mired down in the idea that I’m a lousy, lazy & undisciplined person in the first place.