Changing Old Beliefs

I’m reading a book on change and in the first chapter it had me thinking. It asked to think of a change you want to make and write out your beliefs as they come to you, no matter how negative. My change is wanting to lose weight. Here are a few of the old beliefs that popped into my head:

- It’s a life-long, losing struggle
- It requires a lot of time and energy
- It’s expensive [fresh food can be expensive] 
- People won’t like me if I’m thin
- My body betrayed me
- People who are always ‘good’ are boring
- I’ll turn into a conceited bitch

As I was writing them out I realized most of them – if not ALL are so outdated and I don’t believe them anymore, but they’re obviously still swirling around in the background for them to come to the surface so quickly and easily. I’ve been trying to lose weight carrying around all these old, negative beliefs like a ton of bricks! No wonder I never got anywhere…

“You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”
– Albert Einstein 

Ain’t that the truth! lol…

So… okay – my belief system is an old beast that needs to be shot so I can get a new set of warm fuzzy beliefs about weightloss. Here are a few I’m trying on for size:

- Losing weight is easy
- Eating healthy is an opportunity for creativity
- My body deserves healthy food
- I love who I am no matter what the scale says
- I won’t change as a person even if I get down to a size 8, and my friends and family will be happy for me!
- The price of fresh, healthy food is small compared to the benefits of health and longevity I’ll achieve
- I didn’t have any good role models growing up, and didn’t how the foods I was eating were affecting my body… rapid weight gain in my mid to late 20s was due to being insulin resistant, not because I was a glutton… and now I know and understand my body so much better so it will never happen again!

I also think there’s something to be said about identity. I’ve either been overweight or struggled with body image for the past 25 years or so. It’s got to be a ‘part’ of me in some way – I identify with that ’struggle’… so maybe not having that as part of my subconscious life is just foreign to me… who knows. I also know that I’ve never accepted my current size either. When I dream, I’m thin as I was back in highschool… so there must be some sort of self esteem issue back there. I’ve come a LONG way over the years. I used to be a scared, sad wall-flower of a girl who had no hope and envied everyone around me. I can’t imagine being that way again. It feels like another lifetime! Losing weight is really the last big issue I want to change for myself – not for anyone else. I know I’m ready. I know I’m not afraid of being thin like I was as a kid. I should say ‘fit’ vs. ‘thin’ – it’s all relative. Thin on me is 170 lbs. It’s thin for me, but I’m not talking super-model aspirations. I prefer being solid and strong. I think of a tiger – that strength and beauty vs. something like a giraffe. lol…

Anyway, so far so good. I’m enjoying this book, and how it’s opening my mind, making me aware of what’s already IN my mind, good or bad. I haven’t gotten through enough of it to feel okay about recommending it yet, but here’s a link if you’re interested in checking it out: The First 30 Days…

Every time I’ve dieted, I’ve failed. I’ve mentioned that before. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but I think growing up with an obese mother who constantly told me ‘we were built to pull the plows!’ hee hee hee… and my best friends mother telling me I was ‘chunky’ compared to her twig of a daughter, having overly critical grandparents who watched every bit of food I put in my mouth and made me ‘work’ for my meals by playing tennis for a certain number of hours, followed by a certain number of laps in the pool… even my dad telling me when I should and shouldn’t have seconds or have dessert. It all ended up in the junkpile of my subconscious. I know a lot of the beliefs I have aren’t even MINE! That’s the frustrating part. It’s like I have a tape recorder filled with everyone else’s beliefs about ME in my head. Now I need to erase them and start again I guess. I thought that changing how I feel about myself was enough but I guess not. Now I have beliefs I don’t agree with but there still in there. lol… why do we humans have to be so complicated?  ;)

So… now I’m working on evicting all these beliefs that don’t help me reach my goals. I’m getting there. I’m ready for change – I CAN change and I’m doing it. And I’m enjoying the journey now.  =)

Not Good With Change?

I was just rereading some of my early posts to see if I could remotivate myself to eat to eat healthy again. I realized that I said the word, “try” a lot, but I didn’t actually DO anything. lol… I came across an article in Natural Health magazine about change [not in the political sense], and how resistant we can be to it. I used to think I was good with change. When I was younger I had a lot of it all the time with a somewhat volatile homelife, and we moved often enough that I was forced to start over with school and friends a few times in key years where it probably would have been better if we hadn’t moved. I never really ‘graduated’ from any of my schools because I’d move before I got to the last grade the school taught.

Maybe I had so much change that subconsciously I decided if I didn’t have to change something as I got older, I just wouldn’t. Who knows… but I did just order a book about it by Ariane De Bonvoisin called The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Any Change (and Loving Your Life More). I’m hoping it’ll give me some pointers on how to make lasting changes like eating healthy, getting 8 hours of sleep per night, etc. Things I’ve struggled with pretty much my entire life. I do have the exercise thing down. I’m not sure how that happened. I guess I started with an open mind and no expectations. I started slow and didn’t beat myself up and started to enjoy how I felt vs. thinking of exercise as punishment. I was always athletic as a kid, but I never knew it. Of course how could you not be if you rollerskated, biked, swam, hiked, skied, skated, and played almost every sport your school offered?

I never thought I was athletic because I didn’t know I had asthma and figured I huffed and puffed my way through physical activity because I was ‘out of shape’… and I figured I was ‘fat’ because my legs weren’t as skinny as my friends’ legs were because I had no concept of body type and the fact that I carried more muscle than most of the girls I knew. I was called “chunky” a lot by my friends parents, and assumed they meant I was fat – I had no idea the term could pertain to being muscular. Not masculine, but just more muscular than all my tiny, skinny friends. If I HAD known, I probably wouldn’t have obsessed about my weight and every morsel I put in my mouth. I always assumed I was doomed to look like my mother who was probably considered obese. 

So between too much negative change and even more negative self-image I now have a running sabateur in my brain. One that thinks I deserve ‘rewards’ but then also berates me for not being a perfect 10. It’s tough to break through all of that because I DON’T consciously think about it most of the time… And when I do make conscious efforts to eat better, I can hear that whisper telling me I deserve chips or cookies… that I don’t have to go to bed on time – I can keep watching TV… and I find myself whispering back, ‘okay….’ because it’s easier to give in and enjoy my ‘freedom’ than it is to make real changes that require work and planning. 

To say I’m sick of the push-pull and the ridiculous cycle is an understatement. There are so many things I just don’t do because of my weight. I have been dying to go skiing again. I haven’t gone in probably 15 years now, but it’s a sport I loved so much when I was younger. Up until recently, I never felt like I was in good enough shape and have been afraid of injuring myself because skiing takes a lot of strength, coordination and endurance to do and if you’re not 100%, the potential for injury goes way up… I realized I was in no condition to go skiing [downhill, anyway...] when I tried skating for the first time in years and felt like someone had stolen my real body and gave me one that just didn’t work. I used to skate for HOURS a day when I was a kid! I was good at it! I never took lessons, but I taught myself a lot of fun stuff watching the kids that did take figure skating. The day I tried to skate again after years of not skating I felt like my body had betrayed me and even though nothing embarrassing happened, I didn’t enjoy it and I vowed not to bother again until I lost weight. Well… that was probably 12 or 13 years ago and I’m pretty sure I weighed a lot less back then, than I do now. 

I am realizing that my weight isn’t such an important factor anymore because my strength, flexibility and endurance are so much better now – so I feel like I’ve lost a lot more weight than I have. So every extra pound I drop will be like a bonus. I’m not starting from scratch. I’ve been exercising regularly [4-6 times per week] for 10 months now and I’ve gradually upped the challenge to the point where I can get through a 45 minute ‘Turbo Jam’ cardio workout with weighted gloves on, which amazes me. And it didn’t take months for that to happen, only a couple of weeks for my body to adjust to the new moves. That is pretty awesome. So, now I’m at the point where my thinking has shifted from ‘I just want to feel healthy, I don’t care about my weight’ to ‘if I feel this good now, imagine how great my body will feel if I lost 60 lbs!’ 

At my peak of physical activity and performance as a teen I weighed 150 lbs – and I was 13. I grew a few more inches since then… so I think 60 lbs is a good number to go for because it’ll put me at a healthy weight that’ll be easy to maintain vs. going for a stupid number on the scale that barely works for an anorexic supermodel who’s 6 inches taller than I am! lol… I’ve accepted my body shape and the fact that I’m not ‘light as a feather’ – I honestly don’t care. I think women like Jessica Biel, with her strong, yet feminine body are worlds more attractive than the Kate Moss-types [or Keira Knightly as shown above]. Now it boils down to making the changes I need to make to get there…

Thoughts: 11.16.08

Wow – I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post. This is my busiest time of year for work, so I just haven’t had the time to write as much. And, I’m sorry to say, I haven’t been very good about eating healthy since coming back from Bermuda in September. I haven’t been doing horrible, but I could be doing much better. I’m realizing that I do have a pretty big emotional eating habit that I need to address so I can change those habits. For me, food is almost like smoking. It’s become routine. I’ve been eating at designated times, even when I’m not necessarily hungry. Or letting myself go hungry when the urge to eat hits when it’s not convenient, or too late at night to bother making something. 

I haven’t let up on exercising, though. In fact, I’ve ramped it up, doing all Turbo Jam workouts lately and feeling so much stronger all over. I’m really loving the DVDs. The workouts are fun, but tough, which is fine. I enjoy the challenge. I’m loving the kickboxing/martial arts/dance aspects of it. It’s an aggressive workout which satisfies my inner rage. lol… And I’m continually amazed at how much stronger my core is from doing these workouts. I’m tempted to buy the next set of DVDs so I have even more variety. 

So… I tried keeping a food journal and gave up after a day. I’m too busy to remember to take it out and write stuff down. How sad is that? I’ve also realized that I crave crunchy, salty stuff more this time of year – probably due to stress – and things like Goldfish actually make me physically ill. I don’t know what they put in them to cause such a severe reaction in my GI, but it’s bad enough that I don’t touch the stuff anymore… I have discovered the joys of Agave Nectar as sweetener that doesn’t spike my blood sugar because it’s sugar is fructose, which, like fructose found in fruits, needs to be processed by the liver before it can enter the blood stream. I’m going to experiment with making some roasted nut mixes using it and all the yummy spices I love that go along with apple pie – cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. I’ve stopped stacking on nuts lately because I get bored with them pretty quickly. But making some lightly sweetened roasted and spiced mixes should make them more interesting. 

I’m still watching Biggest Loser and wishing I had the discipline to eat like a lab rat and workout 6 hours a day so I could lose 10lbs a week. But I know I’d be miserable and it’s really just not possible without abandoning real life. It still does remind me that it’s possible to lose the weight, though, if those whiny bitches can. lol… This year’s cast is the most annoying bunch of losers [not all but many]. So I find myself hoping they get kicked off and not caring about their progress as much. lol… 

Anyway… I’m going to try and write more often and start having fun with recipes again. The fight is never over. As long as I get back on the horse, I’m happy with that. Today’s a new day.  =)