Honouring your feelings

I'm having a bad day today. It doesn't really matter why because that's not the point of my post. I might write about the whys and wherefores of it all elsewhere (but it is boy-related - doesn't seem to matter what age you are because they are always problematic :( ).

No, the reason I was moved to put fingers to keys was that when the sad feelings first hit me, of course I naturally felt like going straight for the chocolate/cake/biscuits/chips/unhealthy, unnecessary food. But it occurred to me that the main reason I shouldn't do this is because the only thing that would achieve is squashing the feelings down temporarily. After which time I'd have to eat more and squash them back down again. And so on we'd go around and around. And none of this would do anything to actually make me feel any better in the long term. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It occurs to me that when we do this, eat to suppress our emotions, we're basically telling ourselves that what we are feeling is not valid. It's not important enough to actually let ourselves experience it. It's something to be shoved to one side and put in a corner and ignored. Is it any wonder that the strategy basically never works! Sure, I don't feel great right now. I'm teary and uncomfortable and very mixed-up about things. But if I don't learn to stop stepping all over my emotions, I'll never deal with anything. In fact, I actually believe that what I'm feeling today traces back to other events three years ago. I didn't deal with THAT stuff then and so now, what has happened today has pushed buttons which have connected back to that other undealt-with stuff. So in a way, I'm not surprised I feel so yuck in my mind so often. I probably have spent most of my life running away from things I'm SUPPOSED to feel. I know one thing's for sure - it doesn't work. Not at all.

So today, I'm writing this as a reminder. I am NOT going to handle this by disappearing into a huge vat of ice-cream. I'm going to just experience this horrible wash of sadness and yucky negativity. I don't care if it's hard - it's necessary. Otherwise I may still be having these revelations when I'm 70 but still be in the same mindset. Enough is enough.

Shopping sucks sometimes

There are times in life when you just wish you could wave a magic wand and instantly change something in your life. I had one of those days today. I wanted that wand to make me a size that's in all clothing shops.

In a little over two weeks I have a performance I have to be in with the choir. I need clothes, specific clothes for certain bits of the concert. The main things I needed to get today were a long black skirt and 3/4 sleeve top or a long black dress. I went to every possible shop I could think of to find these things, and I had absolutely no joy. Not only that, every item of clothing I tried on just looked dreadful. Nothing like a look at all your wobbly bits in dressing room mirrors to give the old self-esteem a healthy wallop. :( I know I am supposed to accept and love myself where I am now. I'm trying, I really am. But in situations like this, it's not easy. Right now I'm feeling just awful about myself. I intensely dislike how I look at times. I'm very tired and grumpy, too. I'm not sure if this is part of the depressive illness, which seems to have reared its ugly head lately. But I feel huge and uncomfortable and blahhhhhh and at the same time I am filled with inertia and fear. Quite the dilemma, and one with which I am all too familiar.

I'm going to write something now and I plan to revisit it in the future. Right now I feel so very uncomfortable in my skin. People like Craig Harper are always talking about being prepared to get uncomfortable. I think what I am facing is a choice between two different sorts of uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable feeling yuck and horrible in your own skin and feeling every single item of clothing you try on looks appalling and you look like a beached whale in it. It is also uncomfortable not eating food that you think is going to make you feel less "blahhhh" when you are having a bad day. The choice is mine. Do it or don't do it. It's that simple.

PS No offence to whales - they are really beautiful creatures. But they are meant to be that big and I'm not!

Cos you've gotta have faith...

Hello, blogosphere. That title isn't just a lyric from a favourite 1980s song of mine - it's how I'm treating my behavioural change program. I said this was going to be an honest blog so I'll reiterate that when it comes to the belief that one day I will be a normal, healthy weight, well, I'd say I really don't believe it in my heart of hearts. I will have to cultivate a more positive attitude to this, I can see, but right now everything is too raw and new and I'm flying blind to an extent, but admittedly I do have some good people flying along with me and that means a lot.

So what I'm doing right now is just putting my trust in the process. While my belief in my ultimate success is not strong, to put it mildly, what I DO have is a pretty strong belief that if I keep doing what I'm doing, really important changes are going to happen. Right now things are hard and uncomfortable. Eating at a table, not in front of the TV, not while I'm reading a paper or some catalogues or mucking around on my smartphone - that feels so weird and unnatural. Deliberately leaving some food on my plate when I'm finished eating, as it's been recommended I do - THAT'S hard to do as well. While I'm eating, trying to tune in to my body's signals to see when it tells me I have had enough food - well, I feel like my body and I are communicating with two old tins strung together with fishing line, so unclear are those signals. But yet I HAVE felt that little moment when it seemed very clear to me that I'd filled my stomach and it was just as I've been told - after I'd had a pretty damn small amount of food. A stomach is the size of a fist and even though I have quite a large fist, that's still not much food. When you know this and you realise how often you shovel fistful after fistful of food into it in one go, everything suddenly makes so much more sense. No wonder things have got to this state.

And this may not make any sense to anyone who's currently following any kind of conventional diet or exercise program, but I feel better about doing this than I have felt about any diet I've ever been on, and it has nothing to do with the fact that nobody has put any restrictions on my diet. Well, they didn't need to because following these rules, you naturally eat less. I know I'm not going to see fast results. I could do a 12-week challenge and probably lose 15kg or more, no worries. Hell, I've done it before. But I know deep, deep in my heart that there is no way I'm ever going to commit permanently to a program of food restriction/heavy exercise for the rest of my life. I wish I could but realistically, it's just not going to happen. And my GP and I would far rather I lose 10kg in a year and never again regain it than lose 40kg in a year and end up 50kg heavier in the next year. The madness just has to stop and I'm stopping it. So I'm not doing this because I hate myself - I'm doing it because I don't. And that makes it so different to every other time.

Enough of this philosophy. Peace out, for now. :)

Why does someone who's 46 need one of these?

So, who remembers this little guy? If anyone under 30 is reading they probably won't, but this is Linus van Pelt from the famous Charlie Brown comic strip that a few of us grew up on. And he is pictured with his security blanket.

This is an image which popped into my head tonight. I'm on my fourth day of Week 1 of Sandy's Mindwise Bodywise program. Against my usual "all or nothing" instincts, I'm determined to do this in a gradual way because that's how it's meant to work. The first week is all about recording food, but in a different way as I mentioned in my last entry. I've been writing down when I eat, what I eat (no calories mentioned), how hungry I was before, during and after it and, if it seems relevant, my mood. In these four days, two things stand out. One, it has truly stunned me how INfrequently I get hungry. I can think of perhaps twice in the last four days when I've felt hunger pangs. Eeesh, that's been a shock to realise! Two, I've started to develop a small awareness of how much I'm prepared to tolerate the discomfort I feel after eating certain foods or, more precisely, eating too much of certain foods. And here's where Linus, our old mate, comes in. It's because food is obviously a security blanket for me. When I feel like I need it, I think I just get whatever food it is that I think will make me feel better and sometimes I'll just keep eating it until, way too late, I realise that I've overdone things. This leads to feelings of physical discomfort like a sore stomach, feeling overfull and uncomfortable for sometimes hours afterwards, burping/indigestion, and so it goes on. I don't think I'm that much of a masochist that I'd put up with this without a very strong compulsion. I think I knew this anyway but it's good to revisit it because it makes me realise just what I am up against and how much work it's going to take to turn this around. And yet I still do believe I can turn it around, so long as I attack it the right way i.e. via the mind.

And tomorrow my doctor has arranged an appointment for me with someone who will be able to assist me further in this regard. I am looking forward to this as I think it will dovetail in very well with what I've started with Mindwise Bodywise. Wish me luck. Ciao for now. xx