Week 6: Struggling

I did SO good on my birthday.  And then Valentine's Day came.... and proved to me that I still have a long way to go.  I'm still vulnerable.  I still don't know how to moderate.  Today was another binge day, and I feel awful and unmotivated and so angry with myself.

So, self, STOP right now.  Think about the bigger picture.  You overate and didn't exercise for three days.  That is three days out of your entire existence.  Are you going to let three days stop you?

Remember,

DON'T YOU QUIT.

And remember, you don't have to do this alone.  Tomorrow, I will redouble my efforts to pray for strength in meeting my goals, I will study at least one spiritual article that relates to health and the Gospel, and I will set up an appointment with a counselor to talk about some things that have been bothering me.

I'm not quitting.

Hold me accountable, okay?

Week 4: The Lord is Nigh

"Weight is a protection," my aunt told me today. "A protection from things that we fear."  Although I have lately been in a hopeful mindset, an experience last week resurfaced one of my deepest fears: that I will never be loved and married.  I am sure that my weight and that fear are quite connected; exactly how, I need to explore more.  I'm not comfortable putting the all details of what happened on a public blog, but as I walked home last Monday night, those fearful, buried thoughts resurrected.  "He broke my trust.  How can I ever open up to someone again?"  "If I had been skinnier, would things have turned out differently?"  "If he wouldn't love me, will anyone?" 

"Heavenly Father, please bless that I can receive some comfort from the lesson tonight," I prayed silently as we began FHE.  We were asked to open to Psalms 34 and read verses 14-19. Right from the start, the verses seemed to speak to me: "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open unto their cry. ... The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles" (vs. 15, 17).  Then listen to verse 18.  Could there have been a more fitting verse in all of scripture?

"The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart..."  

Seriously.  That's what it says.  Immediately, I felt exactly what I prayed to feel-- comfort-- and, again, faith and hope.  Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I have NO need to fear rejection.  He accepts me  (see Isaiah 53:3-5).  Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I have NO need to protect and hide myself in fatty layers of emotional eating.  His grace covers me and strengthens me.  Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I have NO need to feel alone.  He is near me, even (and perhaps especially) when my heart is broken.

Don't mistake me and think I am healed all at once.  Like my habits and goals for healthy living, reaching emotional health will be a process that also takes time.  I must expect opposition and failure and learn flexible strategies for dealing with those.  But I just feel better about approaching my future, knowing, again, that I don't have to do it by myself.

Switchpoints and Emotional Eating Part 2

After many thoughtful showers, several books from the 613 section of the library, a fair share of tears, and a trial run on Monday, I'm feeling in a good place.  One book that particularly struck a chord with me was "Conquer Your Food Addiction" by this lady. 

She explained that food addicts have learned to self-medicate every negative situation with food.  As Bob Harper would say, they "eat their feelings instead of feel their feelings."  So food becomes the conditioned response to most stimuli.  Thus, in this process that I am engaging in I need to create new responses to emotions and respond only to hunger with food.  Some call this intuitive eating.


For the next 18 days, I will:

- eat only when hungry
- if I am hungry, but my dominant emotion is not positive, address the emotion until I feel happy or content.
- make each meal last 20 minutes*
- complete some exercise at the YMCA Monday through Saturday

*This is part of a pattern called mindful eating, in which the eater tastes, savors, enjoys the food instead of washing it down mindlessly and then wanting more because it hasn't registered with their brain or taste buds that they actually ate enough already.

Why 18 days? Because I just watched the Biggest Loser episode last night in which the contestants had 18 days at home in which they were supposed to lose 5% of their body weight.  I'm going to weigh myself at the gym this morning to decide if I want that vigorous of a goal, but I want to use that time period anyway.  Plus, 18 days is so random! And I'm usually pretty OCD about good, even, round numbers.  Like, I would never start a diet on Friday, I would wait until Monday.  But if I'm going to reexamine old habits and form new ones, why not here, too?  I'm starting on a Wednesday an eating plan that will last 18 days. :) Ready, go!

Switchpoints and Emotional Eating Part 1

Gordon B. Hinckley, former prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints once shared this powerful story: 

"Many years ago I worked for a railroad in the central offices in Denver... One morning I received a call from my counterpart in Newark, New Jersey. He said, 'Train number such-and-such has arrived, but it has no baggage car. Somewhere, 300 passengers have lost their baggage, and they are mad.'

"I went immediately to work to find out where it may have gone. I found it had been properly loaded and properly [moved from] ...California [to] Salt Lake City... to Denver... to Pueblo... to St. Louis. There it was to be handled by another railroad which would take it to Newark, New Jersey. But some thoughtless switchman in the St. Louis yards moved a small piece of steel just three inches, a switch point, then pulled the lever to uncouple the car. We discovered that a baggage car that belonged in Newark, New Jersey, was in fact in New Orleans, Louisiana—1,500 miles from its destination. Just the three-inch movement of the switch in the St. Louis yard by a careless employee had started it on the wrong track, and the distance from its true destination increased dramatically." Read the full article here

Last night was one of those rough nights.  I came home from a babysitting job to find the house in uproar.  More  pairs of dirty socks lying around than we have pairs of feet.  Brother 7 screaming.  Brother 4 beatboxing {read: making any purposeless noise imaginable}.  Dad frantic over homemade dinner for us plus a sick neighbor family.  Mom superhumanly switching between kneading roll dough, crafting Pinterest-inspired Valentines, and tending the little people.  And to me this translates into PRESSURE.  The pressure of unspoken expectations, unfulfilled needs, and uncontrolled surroundings.  I can't meet all those expectations.  I can't fulfill every need.  I can't control everyone and everything.  So I try to fill the gap with the source I've mentally made my cure-all: food.  But six breadsticks later, I'm realizing once again that something doesn't add up.  

Physical hunger is satisfied with physical nourishment.  Emotional hunger is satisfied with emotional nourishment.  And for so long I've been in the habit of mixing the two.  

It was such a blessing that I got the emotional nourishment I needed right after dinner last night at young adult scripture study.  We reviewed President Hinckley's story and talked about David {of Goliath and Bath-sheba fame} and the three-inch switch points that led to his tragic downfall.  And it clicked for me.  How I respond to emotional pressure will be a powerful switch point in my journey to health and fitness.  Too often I move that crucial three inches and turn to food and by the "end" of the cycle I'm so far from where I intended to be.  This turns into eating more and more food but never resolving the emotional stress:

Emotional pressure --> want to feel better --> turn to food --> eat unhealthy choices or quantities --> feel guilty, angry, depressed --> emotional pressure.

Now that I have identified this switch point, I need to find small, simple, and constructive "three-inch" alternatives to turning to food.  I'll give it some good brainstorming and experimenting and let you know what I discover.  And I'd love advice from you.  What do YOU think?