Tag: Hard Time

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General Weight Loss Tips

Resound11 Prompt 04: Superpower

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound … we know you’ve got one. What’s your 2011 superpower?

For those of you going what the what … stop. Think about it for a moment: what have you learned that you can do better than anyone you know this year? What can you do that no one else can? Don’t be shy!How will you resound? Follow along here. 

This one is difficult for me. I have a hard time seeing my strengths, but this year saying yes was my superpower. I said yes to my big ideas, to failure, to trying new things, to traveling when it made me nervous, to giving new friendships a chance, to new projects and businesses, hard exercise and sweat, to getting up again, to embarrassing myself and exposing parts of myself. I said yes to a lot of equally bad and good ideas.

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General Weight Loss Tips

Blogging, Spinach and Discovery

I’m embarking on a new journey of self-discovery.  I know this because my thoughts and wants are more clear, yet I’m having a hard time articulating it.

I’ve been asking myself lately: why do I blog? why will I continue to blog? what can i share? what will i get out of it?

This has been the longest project of my life. I started not knowing where I would arrive and five years later I’m still not sure. The only thing that I keep coming back to is to inspire. I don’t even know what that means, but I share because I know I’m not alone. I share because I may say something that might help someone else. I know it’s a big thing to believe about myself, but at the end of the day, I write because my words inspire me. I’m able to see who I am through my writing.

I don’t plan my posts. Which I’ve heard is a blogger mistake. But, I write what I feel, and along this journey I’ve gotten lost in that desire. I’ve seen other bloggers doing things that I wish I could do. I’ve seen them count, track, photograph and document every inch of their lives. I’ve wanted so bad to be other bloggers, that at times, I’ve forgotten who I am and why I’m here.

So there’s a lesson in that. To follow who you are, to follow your gut and not to punish yourself for not being like everyone else.  Because the world needs more people becoming and embracing who they are. There is someone, if not just myself, who needs me to be here just as I am. Saying what I need to say. And so in this realization, I want to continue to share whats important to me, regardless of the content. At the heart of this blog, I’m trying to live a healthier life. But, for me, this is not an isolated action. Being healthy is not just important for my body, it’s important for my relationships, my career and my belief in who I am. My life is about making things happen.

When I eat too much, I get depressed and my work suffers. When I eat well, I am productive and clear.

In all of this, I want to blog more about my process and my journey, regardless of what that looks like.  My journey isn’t just about following blogging tips and tricks, it’s about sharing where I’m headed. Where I want to be and what I know to be true.

So here’s the thing. I’ve completely stopped dieting. A concept I’ve tried before and got too scared. And I want to share this, but sometimes it doesn’t look like it should. It’s not ideal, but, it’s wonderful and eye opening. I’ve been “un-dieting” for several weeks now. I’ve purchased “taboo” foods at the store. Food that is just sugar and comes in wrappers. I’ve openly eaten what I desire in public, in front of my husband and for the world to see. I’ve stopped hiding food. I’ve stopped feeling guilt over food, mentally calculating calories, tracking, and measuring. Punishing myself for not making ideal choices. I’m trusting myself around food. I’ve never trusted myself around food. I’m celebrating that I can live with triggers in my life. That I can have candy in the house and not eat it for breakfast.

I’ve been actively stripping away all guilt around food. Removing the notion of good food or bad food and just being. I’m bridging the gap between unhealthy lorrie and healthy lorrie: they are the same. My choices are not isolated.  Healthy lorrie is just as present and open and ready as binge-eating lorrie. Healthy lorrie  is not a future goal she is who I am, all the time, every single day. Unhealthy, binge eating lorrie has her place too. I wish I knew how to articulate it, but I’ve become okay with the outcome. I’m trusting that I will get there, if I’m open. There have been days when I’ve done exactly what I feared: I ate too much. I turned to food when I stopped trusting myself. But, I embraced the action, and realized it was a choice. I am owning it.

Before, I treated these actions as though they were not a part of me. Habits are choices that I make everyday. It’s a big deal, to trust that I can stop. That eventually I will stop on my own and make another choice. I am making better decisions on my own because they are not future parts of my life. They are now. They reflect what I want and where I’m headed.

Un-dieting is not without goals, I have them, but they are different. This week, my goal is to eat fresh, raw vegetables as much as possible. I purchased a huge container of organic spinach and kale, lots of squash, apples, oranges, and bananas. My goal is to eat it all this week. To eat them first, not because I feel like I have to, but because I genuinely want to.  I like how I feel when I eat well, I need to feel good to complete all my goals. Not just the ones that result in a lower weight on the scale.

It’s been huge for me to let go of worry and possible outcomes. I’ve let go of the fear of the unknown. The fear of eating until I weigh 400 pounds. The fear of never stopping. The fear that I can’t control what I eat without a regulated system. I trust that I will stop and that I know how to hear what I really want and need. There are days when I shock myself with how soon I stop eating. And it doesn’t happen because I think “I should stop”, or “how many calories am I at now?” it just happens because I’m done.

I had a glimpse of myself recently. A glimpse of where I’m headed and it’s incredibly beautiful.

 

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General Weight Loss Tips

Thoughts on Twitter

This week flew by! I kept up with taking food photos, but had a hard time coming here to make an actual post. This week successful in a few ways: I tracked all of my food, I lost seven pounds, I exercised, I got a lot of work done. And then not so successful because I just felt bad about myself all week. I know it is most likely hormone related depression, but it’s awful to feel bad emotionally.

I go in and out of clarity and that feel good feeling that suddenly, without warning goes away. All I can do is just ride it out. I have very mellow dramatic thoughts in days like this so I know it’s better for me to just stay away from most forms of social communication where all I want to do is whine and be passive aggressive. Social media can be lonely especially when you feel ignored or that your life is summed up in  140 characters.

I really want to get out of social media as my main means of keeping up with people. On the other hand I enjoy sharing projects,  blog and stuff I’m working on. I just sometimes feel like when I’m away from twitter, I lose touch. And it shouldn’t be that way, I didn’t even know what twitter was until recently- and now it’s my main source of communication with far too many people. There isn’t a lot that feels good about twitter and I haven’t read much that contributes positively to my life.

I have a friend who doesn’t use social media in any way. She has two businesses that run on word of mouth and when we want to catch up? We meet for lunch, email or call. We do this about once a week, and it’s refreshing not to have our relationship hanging in the balance of tweets. Call it old fashioned, but it’s a way less complicated friendship. We aren’t annoyed by the tweets of each other, or judging what the other has said, or reading into every menial thought or complaint the other has shared. I’m never worried that I didn’t congratulate her or acknowledge her in her latest tweets because I missed it. And I’m never sore with her because she never tweets me back, or interacts with me. We just have real communication, and it feels healthier.

I’m not saying twitter/facebook isn’t helpful, but I often feel left out of the swing of things. I don’t have a boring job and I’m not wishing the days away until the weekend (omg! TGIF!!!)  with my thoughts on twitter. Most days I have nothing witty, funny or smart to say. I don’t want my interaction on twitter to be my only interaction with friends. When I tweet it’s usually about an interesting article I’ve read, or that I’ve updated my blog, or that I have jewelry to sell, or that I exercised. Everything else is just noise to me.

Because I don’t share every detail of my life online (I know that’s hard to believe) I get that feeling that people are suspicious of me. That they feel they don’t know the real me. And it’s true. This isn’t the whole of me, I don’t share every single project I’m working on, every single thing my husband or cats do, every time I leave the house, every thing I’m involved in- because really…who cares? I would bore myself with it all and I suspect others would be too. And when I do share something I’m excited about…no one does care. And that’s okay. Because there comes a point when we all start thinking things about each other that we normally wouldn’t think in a real relationship: okay,  we get it, you’re awesome. everything you touch turns to gold. you’re a goddess and totally rocking life. we all want to be like you.

Celebration on twitter often feels like bragging. And then I realize that sometimes my self-worth, my likability hangs in 140 character. And that is  not acceptable.

I feel like twitter has become a place tell anyone all of the random thoughts we have throughout the day. You’re sick again, your knee hurts, you hate your job/co-workers/boss, there is a spider on your desk, you hated some movie or tv show, you are having a shitty day, but wait, it’s awesome again(!). It just feels like uncontrolled mind noise, not moving forward, but backwards. I say all of this to say, that I am backing away from using social media as a way to keep up with people. I like email, I sometimes don’t mind a call or even a text, and planning for the next time we see each other.

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