How I am Healing my Metabolism...

No matter what *diet*/workout plan I have followed, I have always been on a mission to find what worked for ME... sometimes obsessively, often times unhealthily, but always searching for the answers that would ft MY body. All the while not even LISTENING TO MY OWN BODY, but trying to force it into some mold that promised the answers/look I wanted.  I mostly avoided photos when I was "fat", so I don't have a lot of range... but these photos encompass over a decade... looking at them now, sometimes I know I felt like I was MUCH bigger than I was, and I wish I could have just appreciated life instead of always feeling like I needed to be "fixed"... its frustrating to me that I'm STILL fighting that need to fix my body to LOOK better instead of just trying to find a healthy place...

It wasn't until I was forcefully downed with several health issues and overuse injuries that I was finally able to STOP and start listening to those who had already been there and had been trying to help me along the way. 

After several months of "refeeding" and trying to heal my metabolism by STOPPING the insane "Diet Train" I was on. Weight lifting and learning to eat enough to fuel my workouts and my daily activities. It has been a struggle! 

Yesterday I was feeling horrible and crappy about myself, my lack of progress and just feeling generally ick. I KNEW it was in large part because I haven't been sleeping well, I am bloated and PMS-y, but I was really feeling down and decided to post here and be real.

The support I got, both in comments and private messages really helped a lot. Knowing that I'm not alone in this is a really good thing, and I'm glad I started this page. The reminders that I'm doing this in a far different way this time than ever before caused me to go back and LOOK.

I AM making progress. Yes, it is SLOWER than I would like... but slow and steady is more likely to stick with me this time, and in the long run, I'd rather have slow and steady! Anyway, I looked at some photos and realized that although my changes have been minimal the last few months, I have come a long way since the beginning of the year. I also know that I'm tired and cranky and need to get back to my smoothies, because that made me feel SO much better. I am going to keep working and ignore the scale, the mirrors and anything else until this PMS/perioding phase is over this month. Then I will take photos and reassess. 

I have to admit that these pictures depressed me a little bit. I still have SO much bloating in the stomach area... messed up eating for decades really screwed with my metabolism (imagine that), but I AM healing that, so it is OKAY. 

It is not the end of the world, and within a couple of months, it will all be gone, healed and healthy. My back is DEFINITELY changing a lot, though, and I am definitely getting stronger. My legs are changing, too, but since I only have this little camera that won't work on a tripod because the battery keeps falling out, you'll have to wait for that!

But most importantly, my emotional and MENTAL self is healing.  A lot.  I am getting better.  I am getting stronger.  I can lift heavier things, and I can fight off those annoying voices in my head that want me to be miserable, that want to beat me up for not fitting my 'perfect' image.  

I am HEALING.  It is a good thing.

Epiphanies whilst Eating the Food and Finding Myself

This is kind of a rambling post, just raw feelings as I have some realizations about myself on this journey.

Learning to love myself is much harder than I thought it would be.

I realized last night that I'm subconsciously twisting things to fit my own self doubt.  Subconsciously setting myself up for failure and self loathing.  Feeding my insecurities.

There are games that I play that he can't possibly win... because I play them to keep my own insecurities at the forefront because I don't think I deserve to feel good about myself.  I don't deserve to be loved.

I want him to chase me.  I want him to want me.  Yet I feel so insecure about myself that I can't bear to be touched if there is any chance that he's going to be repelled by my weight.  I don't believe him when he says he wants me.  He can't win.

Somewhere deep inside me, I feel unloveable.  Undeserving of love and affection.  I don't know how to reach this part and bring it out.  I attribute it to the weight I've gained, but I know its deeper than that.  Its not like I felt deserving of love when I was thinner.  I always think, 'I can't control what is going on inside of my thoughts/feelings but I can control the weight, even if I can't seem to fix what's inside.  

This has been my lifelong battle with my weight.  I'm trying to control the one thing that feels like it is within my ability to control when everything else seems out of my hands.

I go to bed alone, lonely, aching for his touch.  He comes to bed and curls up around me, his hands caressing me and I tell myself that its only because I made a big deal about him not being attracted to me anymore.  He can't win.

He will admit that although he is still attracted to me, he was more attracted to me when I was leaner.  I can't even be angry, because I feel the same way about myself.  How can he possibly be *as* attracted to me now, 70 pounds heavier?  Why do I have to hear that as a black and white "I don't want you until you lose the weight", when that isn't at all what he said?

I asked him to tell me the things that he finds sexy or attractive about me, so that I would feel sexier.  He commented that my ass is looking pretty fine.  It wasn't a surprise, or maybe it was, but it broke my heart a little bit that that was the only positive thing he could think to say about my looks.

I don't know how to "eat the food" and be okay with continuing to stall or gain weight, but I LOVE not being a slave to food anymore. I KNOW this is the right thing to do.  I thoroughly believe that I need to eat enough, and that taking restrictions off has absolutely helped me with my disordered eating habits.

I don't know how to quit drinking when I feel so devastated and undeserving of happiness.  I know that if I quit drinking every night that I would be able to lose the weight faster.  I just need to get my head in the right place.  I was sober for almost 4 months at the beginning of this year.  I can do it again.

Maybe if I stay sober long enough, I can force myself to deal with these feelings that I keep bottled up and get them out.  Get the voices out of my head that tell me I don't deserve to be happy, that I don't deserve to be loved. 

I will continue to meditate on it, and try to change those voices... it feels good to just get it out of my head right now.

I deserve to be loved.  

I am beautiful.

My body is... (Maybe I'm not quite there yet.)

My body is strong.

I want this to be the last time that I struggle with food.  I want to get healthy and lose weight in a healthy way so that I can maintain it.  I want to get past the inner struggles and heal myself from the inside out.  I deserve to be loved, and my husband deserves to have a wife who can accept his love and love him back.  I will get there.  I am not giving up, because as much as I am hurting right this minute, I feel like I am finally on a sane path to healing my self image and learning to love myself.

And when my husband asked me how I was feeling today, I wrote, "Odd space.  Depressed.  Feeling unloveable, unattractive and lonely."

His reply, "You are a beautiful, funny, intelligent, attractive and witty person who I love with all my heart."  If only I could have a loop of HIS thoughts about me playing in my head all day!

I know this was a sad post, but it was pretty raw and honest and I hope that by acknowledging my feelings on this, that I can get them out of my head and maybe start some healing conversations that will help others along with myself.

Setting Daily Goals for Positive Visualization to change my Body, my Self Image and My Life.

Today is my birthday.  I am 42 years old.  I have spent almost 4 decades being horrible to myself, refusing to love myself outside of some 'perfect' nearly unattainable physical goal.

I am done with that.  

Singing "Baby Got Back" with two of my kids at my birthday party and just enjoying my friends and my party.  PMSing, bloated... and yet I was able to just let go and have FUN and make a REALLY memorable night for myself, my friends and my family.  Any other year, I would have stayed home by myself and been miserable because I was allowing my self loathing to dictate that I didn't "deserve" to have fun and be around people unless I was at my "goal weight" and looked "good enough."  Fuck that noise!!!  No more!!!

Does that mean I'm giving up on my health, getting fitter, more muscular and leaner?

Absofuckinglutely NOT.

It means I am through waiting for "the perfect body" before I'll love myself.  I am never going to change my body by hating it, beating it up and always looking at myself as fat, unattractive and worthless.  From now on I am going to retrain my thoughts to think positively about myself.  I am going to feel beautiful and just get sexier every day. 

Goals:

• Workout (Free download: Beautiful Badass by Nia Shanks) three days a week.  Lift HEAVY.  Get STRONG.
• Use visualization during workouts.  Be focused and purposeful.
• Meditation for at least 15 minutes a day.  (3 times a day for 5 minutes each, probably, as I'm not very good at sitting still).
• Keep the house clean (this helps my stress level immensely if I don't have to walk around looking at mess)
• Blog 3 days a week: Day One:  Creative Visualization Exercises/Challenges, Day Two:   Fitness/Progress Pics/Workouts, etc., Day Three:  Non Scale Victories/Personal realizations

Share your goals with me!  What would you like to accomplish on a daily/weekly basis?

Creative Visualization in Practice: My First Time using Shakti Gawain's techniques

As I posted yesterday, I read the book "Creative Visualization" after a few months of really feeling that the positive thinking area is where I needed to focus my attention to make serious changes in my life.  Today I did my first guided meditation, using the methods of meditating in that book.  It was a lot mroe intense than I expected.

STRANGE.  

Or it was the subliminal 'stress relief' audio.

At first it was really easy, relaxing.  I did the grounding exercise and found it really easy to visualize the roots going into the ground, but I couldn't visualize the connect through the head/universe thing.  

I finally just left that and started on the energy points.  That felt easy.  Just hitting each energy point and feeling it come 'on' down, then up, then back down from head, throat, chest, midsection, pelvis & feet and then up again.  That felt so easy and 'right' that I used that whenever I found myself being distracted.

I started out with some of the affirmations, 

Infinite riches are now flowing into my life

Everything is coming to me easily and effortlessly

I have a firm, sexy body

As money/financial stress is the biggest stress in my life right now, and I believe it has had a huge impact on my weight gain (constant stress fatigues the adrenals) that is my MAIN focus.  I need that stress gone so that I can get healthy.

Then I started visualizing having $2,000.00.  Extra, unexpected money.  I counted it in my hands, showed it to the kids, posted about it on livejournal and on my blog.  I then tried laying it out on the table and kept feeling blocked, so I went back tot he energy points for a while, then came back and laid the money out on the couch and counted it.  I used half of it to pay back part of a loan and half to pay bills and felt SO MUCH RELIEF.

I then watched my husband as he went about his day and saw him finding money in random, unexpected places. On the ground at the gas station where he stops to get gas, on a sidewalk, on the floor of the mail truck, odd places. Once it even floated onto his windshield as you were delivering mail.  Some loose change, some dollar bills, a roll of money that had a twenty and a ten dollar bill in it.

Then I remembered about finding the 'safe place' or whatever it was called.  I found myself sitting on the beach watching the kids play in the ocean with you sitting beside me.  I felt deeply content and at peace.

Then I remembered that I had wanted to have my secret place be a secluded waterfall :) so I started to go there instead, but then suddenly (this is really really weird) my husband and I were in a basket type thing (like in a hot air balloon, but on a zip line instead) high in some tropical mountains and I FREAKED OUT in the basket.  SO much so that my first thought was to jump out because surely death was preferable to feeling that much fear and anxiety.

That was SO strange to me that I decided at that point to not have a secret place right now and I went back to the energy points again.  I did that over and over until I felt calm and then went back to seeing you at work.  I ran my hand over your shoulder and visualized heat and healing to your shoulder ...

Holy god this sounds so freaking weird... seriously.  This is WEIRD to write, but its what my brain did, so I want to write it down.)  Never having done this in a purposeful way before, I just let my mind go where it wanted for the most part as I tried some of the exercises that I remembered from the "Creative Visualization" book.

Anyway, I visualized running my hands over my husband's head, down the back of his head and over his shoulder.  I did that over and over for a while and it felt so real that I started to wonder if he was feeling it. :)  I can't tell you how much I want him to be pain free (he has an old shoulder injury that has nearly disabled him).  I spent a bit of time there, trying things that seemed helpful.

Body Imagery

Then I visualized myself, starting at my feet and working my way up, then stalled so I started at the top of my head.  I visualized my skin smoothing (almost like photo editing:), extra fat melting away, spots melting away, muscle definition showing up.  I started from the top and worked my way down and then back up the backside.  This seemed to take a while and felt really difficult at times, but once I refocused, I was able to finish the whole process.

And now my mind just blanked.  I don't know what else happened.  At some point soon thereafter I just started feeling anxiety and stress, so I just brought myself out of that state and got up.

The cat was meowing, so I let her out and felt incredible amounts of stress so I locked the door.  It felt very weird, so I came back to our room to write this out before I forgot.  I turned off the subliminal stress relief and typed this up.  

That's where I am.  I feel excited to see the effects of this process.

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Putting The Power of Positive/Creative Visualization to Work

I have been thinking a lot about positive thinking, purposefully trying to change my attitude about my body, especially, but also in my life in general.

I'm going to work through the exercises in the book "Creative Visualization" by Shakti Gawain by typing them up into a blog post once a week.  I am going to change my negative thought patterns around myself, my body, finances and health... and blog about it as I go.

First Assignment:  Figure Out What Your Goals Are (Write the first thing that comes to mind)

Career/Work:

Become a certified personal trainer

Sell my art

Money

Have more than enough to sustain our desired lives comfortably

Have abundant finances, allowing me to help friends and those in need

Lifestyle/Possessions

Own working vehicles and everything in our home and in our yard is working effectively and efficiently

Change morning and evening habits to include relaxation exercises (and cut out alcohol 5-6 nights a week)

Relationships

I will have an intimate, passionate, deeply loving relationship with my husband

I will have a close, deeply loving and respectful relationship with my children and their friends and partners. They will feel comfortable coming to me for advice on anything.

Creative Self Expression

I will create amazing works of art, the medium I choose will flow perfectly and make people feel wonderful and at peace when they look at them.

My house will be my colorful, peaceful and relaxing sanctuary for myself and my family.

Leisure/Travel

I will have a wonderful vacation alone with my husband on a beach in the perfect climate.

Our family will have an amazing fun and adventurous tropical vacation together.

Personal Growth/Education

I will learn/read/absorb everything I can about utilizing the powers of positive thinking, creative visualization and changing my mind and attitude towards things in life.

I will learn the best way to help myself and others to get in the healthiest state of our/their lives.

Phew!  That was actually kind of enlightening.  I really just wrote in a stream of consciousness and some of these things came out and I read it and thought, "Huh.  I didn't realize THAT would be my answer."  I set myself a limit/goal of two per category, but feel free to write whatever or however many you want.  Just type or write without thinking too hard... let it flow.

Share your goals in the comments if you like.

My Five Months lifting and "Eating the Food" 'progress'

My lifting and "Eating the Food" 'progress' thus far.

Here we go... *gulp* I started lifting in mid-to late January. I had to take it easy for the first month as I was coming off of a back injury, but I started lifting 3-5 days a week. Soon I was lifting 5-6 days a week with 1 hour workouts and I really really LOVE lifting. No cardio.
During April I started "Eating the Food" (not that I was really purposefully restricting anything other than grains before that, but I DEFINITELY wasn't eating enough because I just didn't know!)

In May I added some little bursts of HIIT cardio during my lifting, but took the workouts down to 2 days a week because I was on my feet all weekends for Ren Faire.  So while there isn't a LOT of progress from the second to third row, the fact that there wasn't much decline when I took over a month off from 5-6 day a week workouts AND upped my calories quite a bit... I think that says a lot.  

First row (Jan) I was 210 pounds, 41% bf and MISERABLE. My own body issues, but I was VERY uncomfortable in my skin. 

Second Row, I was working our 5-6 days a week and losing, 195 lbs and 35.7% bf

Third row: Today, ETF (ZERO restrictions), lifting 2 days a week, 198 lbs and 36.7% bf. 


Moving forward: Going back to 5 days a week lifting heavy things, because I MISS IT. Probably not much HIIT because I hate cardio, trying to eat more veggies, but otherwise ETF. I'm curious to see what happens. It feels like I didn't "lose" much progress wise on my month "off" and I lost very little strength on my lifting, so I'm happy. I'm on board with trying to do what makes me feel good, LISTENING to my body... all around, be it activity, exercise, food, everything.

****************

The BIGGEST change? I have no problem strutting my stuff in the little mini dress, even though TECHNICALLY I'm only like 12 pounds less than in the first pic when I would NOT leave my house without a big jacket/hoodie on, even IN the gym, even when it was literally 115 degrees outside! My WHOLE attitude has changed.

*****************

I just realized that I will turn 42 next month!  I am feeling so great physically (other than injuring myself so easily!!!)... I love where I'm at in my head, with my self esteem and body image.  I hope everyone can learn to love themselves if they haven't yet... it is an incredible feeling!

Positive Thinking is changing the way I live my life

A few years ago, I watched this interview with Will Smith.  I really like him as an actor, and a lot of what he says resounds with the way I've always felt.  A lot of what he had to say in this interview really stood out to me.  I watched it a few times over the years, but could never really lift myself far enough out of my depression to really grasp the whole *positive thinking* thing enough to dig myself out of my whole world of negativity.

The separation between talent and skill... talent you're born with, skill is built with hours and hours and hours of work.

"I want the world to be better because I was here... if you're not making someone else's life better, then you're wasting your time"

"I want to represent possibilities... you really can make what you want."

"I believe that I can create whatever I want."

"The first step, before anyone else has to believe it is that YOU have to believe it."

And my FAVORITE:

"Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity"

Anyway, I then started seeing things like "Bliss Boards" and "Dream Boards" and read about making yourself a visual reminder of what your goals are.  I decided to apply it to all areas of my life.  Well, MOST of them.  I don't have THAT much space!

This is what I've come up with:

And its working!!!  We're suddenly on the road to financial freedom in a way that has totally taken us by surprise, things are falling into place like we never imagined!  Soon my husband will be able to give up the job that he is miserable in and we'll be able to not only get by, but flourish.

One of the things I wanted to do before my oldest boys were up and out of the house (they turn 17 & 18 this year and both graduate next year) was to get a swimming pool for the yard to give all the kids a reason to stick around more (yeah, so sue me, I'm becoming one of *those* moms who doesn't want her kids to leave!)  Anyway, my husband found us a 30 foot pool for $600.00!!!  Now we just have to put it up (stay tuned for pictures of THAT workout! :)

• The money is coming in and soon we'll be able to help people when they need it!

• I'm going to have more sexiness with my husband (thus all those sexy couple pics.  I may even eventually add our own pics:)

• We'll be able to take our kids on a *real* vacation!

• We'll be able to pay our bills before they're due and without juggling to keep things turned on!

• Instead of visiting a food bank because we need food, we'll be visiting to give THEM food!

• (The Dodgeball reference)  We'll be the winners that came out from the bottom, the ones that no one expected to ever win!

• I'm getting stronger and leaner all the time and lifting all the things!

• And a little bitty thing... I am going back to my white hair and cut (and probably some bright colors again!)

One of the best parts is that my husband's new business (buying 'broken' cars for cheap, fixing them himself and reselling them) is bringing him and that boys closer.  They're actually working together and doing things together for the first time, really.  Just the guys!  (We have all always hung out as a family, but as far as just 'dad' time, its been more scarce!

AND... One of MY dreams is coming true... I'm studying to get my personal training certification, as well as getting some different group fitness certifications and its EXCITING to be able to get back into fitness as a paid job again!  

What is on YOUR Dream Board?