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How to Find Time to Exercise When You’re Too Busy

This time of year, it’s crazy busy for most everyone.  Finding time to stay healthy can tumble down the priority list pretty quick.  That’s why I collapse all of my goals into this single thought:  Just show up.  I show up, then I listen to my body.  No time clocks.  No calorie burn rates.  Just me, whatever time I’ve got, and whatever my body can handle that day.

This simple idea keeps healthy habits alive because it nurtures momentum.  I can eat too many treats.  I can detour my workout away from what I had planned.  But I can’t lose my momentum.  Once that’s gone, it is so-so-so-so hard to get back up.

Here’s what keeping momentum looks like for me this month:

• Walking the dog down the street instead of doing that full hour in the gym.
• Plugging in a 15 minute yoga DVD instead of staying for the 5:30 pm class.
• Blending my green smoothie, even though there’s a party with a buffet waiting for me tonight.
• Rolling around on the floor to stretch my back and lube my joints because I woke up too late to do the 15 minute yoga DVD.

This time of year, I have to narrow my focus and just show up.  There’ll be plenty of time later to ramp back up, and I’ll have all that momentum to propel me forward.

 

Shelby lives in Missoula, Montana where she works out at The Women’s Club Health and Fitness Center. 

Infographic: Prevent Holiday Over Eating

Just in time for all of the holiday parties…

Why do these tips work?  Find out in “Eat to Thrive,” a free eGuide from 100 Pounds in 1 Year absolutely brimming with more reasons food can be a friend.

 

 

Christmas Treats That Won’t Make Me Fat?

Note: I first published this post in 2012. Reading it now, the corners of my holly jolly cheeks lift in ironic jest. “Hah!” I say to my younger self. “You thought that was healthy?” For sure, my definition of healthful food has shifted. Just goes to show – diets or no – tastes evolve. I’m a nomadic foodie. What was once a rest area on my road to health is now a spot to zoom by and toss wildflower seeds for next year’s visitors. I wonder what new foodie facts I’ve yet to discover and how that will change my plate; which resembles a map more than a platter. When I come to table this Christmas, my assignment will be to honor the ever-changing landscape between fork and knife.

In that spirit of transformation, I’ve tweaked the original recipe below. Notes in red reflect new food discoveries, including:

• Sugar, any sugar, can raise blood sugar and initiate the corrosive pathway of inflammation and disease, but there are ways to have my fudge and not let it eat me, too.
• There’s some damn good fats out there that actually heal the body while releasing flavor pheromones as good as any afternoon delight.
• We have more flour alternatives than ever; options which nourish as well as preserve the fluffy pillow talk I enjoy between me and my Morning Glory muffin.

Special thanks to Anna Rose-McComb of Tiny Farm Nutrition and Fitness for these discoveries. If they’re new to you, as they once were to me, I invite you to taste them in the most delicious way I can dream up: in the fudge recipe below which can satisfy holiday cravings and literally not make me fat. Enjoy!

From 2012…We’re smack-dab in the middle of the holiday season, and I’m starting to do a lot more smackin’ — of my lips, that is.  I love, love, love Christmas treats:  peanut butter fudge, yogurt-covered pretzels, divinity, candy canes, ribbon candy, brightly painted Christmas sugar cookies, and those morsels with the jelly in the middle.  What else is out there?  Too bad no one has discovered a way for me to eat my fudge and not gain weight, too (Guess what, girl…)  Nonetheless, I’ve accepted my love for Christmas treats.  This year, instead of fighting the temptation or judging myself for caving into desire, I’ve made peace with the bounty of sugar, butter, and chocolate that appears this time of year.  If I maintain my weight from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, I count that as a win.

To celebrate and embrace my holiday sweet tooth, I’d like to share a favorite recipe.  Hubby and I love to bake up these Cranberry Walnut Breads as gifts.  Whenever I watch him in the kitchen I’m convinced he’d make a great TV chef.  I’d put a twist on it and call it The Naked Baker Show (camera peeking just above the counter).  But, that’s for another blog…Here’s the recipe:

Cranberry Walnut Bread

• 6 T. orange zest from 6 large oranges
• 2 cups orange juice from those oranges (tons of hidden sugar in orange juice, so I recommend keeping the fiber by blending slices into a puree, since fiber can slow spikes in blood sugar)
• 4 cups buttermilk (canned coconut milk and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar offers more nutrition without sacrificing the silky texture)
• 1 pound, 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted (Let’s all cheer together:  Butter is our friend!  I like a quality grass-fed brand like Tillamook — I called their office, and they pasture their cows up until freezing in Oregon, so the boxes on the shelves now contain the last of this summer’s grass turned to gold.)
• 6 large eggs (Comparing store-bought yolks to the blazing orbs gifted by our backyard chickens, there’s no contest.  Go backyard if you can.)
•  12 cups flour (Nut flours, gluten free mixes, bean flours, keep going and keep experimenting until you find your fave.  My current go-to is Pamela’s Baking Mix.)
• 6 cups sugar (Damn, that’s a lot of sugar.  Two routes for modifying:  eat these muffins with lots of roughage to slow sugar absorption or — my preference — replace most of the sugar with ground almonds mixed with coconut flour.  Both have a natural sweetness and offer more nutrition.)
• 2 T. salt
• 2 T. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 7 1/2 cups frozen cranberries, coarsely chopped, approx. 3 bags
• 3 cups walnuts, toasted and coarsly chopped

Each batch makes 6 loaves.

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. In large bowl, whisk together flour (alternative), salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
3. In another large bowl, whisk eggs (thank the chickens).  Add buttermilk coconut milk/vinegar, melted butter, orange juice puree, and orange zest to eggs and stir thoroughly.
4. Add just a bit of sugar and almond/coconut flour mix to liquid ingredients, stir.
5. Add chopped cranberries and toasted walnuts to liquid mixture.
6. Stir dry ingredients into liquid mixture; stir just until moistened.  Do not over-mix.

Grease (coconut oil!) and flour (alternative) 6, 9 x 5 loaf pans and divide batter into each.  Spread evenly into corners of pans and bake at 375 for 20 minutes.  Reduce oven heat to 350 and continue baking for about 50-60 minutes more, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Heads-up: these healthier substitutions may shift the temp and time a bit, so stay vigilant, check often and tweak if necessary.  Transfer to wire rack to cool.  Spread with as much butter or coconut oil as your heart desires!

The Fudge that Won’t Make You Fat

• Coconut oil, 1 cup
• Cocoa powder, 1/2 cup (less if you prefer milk chocolate over dark chocolate)
• Honey, 3 Tbsp, or to taste
• Vanilla Extract, 1 tsp, or to taste
• Almond butter, 2 cups
• Optional for a more creamy fudge:  canned coconut milk, 1/4 cup
• Sea salt for sprinkling

1. In microwave-safe bowl: mix coconut oil, cocoa, vanilla extract, and honey.
2. Nuke 30 seconds, then stir.  Repeat until silky.
3. In bigger bowl: mix almond butter and coconut milk (if desired).  Combine chocolate mix into this big bowl and stir ’til thick and sexy.  Sample and tweak if desired.
4. Pour into a baking and sprinkle with sea salt.
5. Freeze until firm.  Cut and serve.

When I come to table this Christmas, my assignment will be to honor the ever-changing landscape between fork and knife.

“Eat to Thrive,” a free eGuide from 100 Pounds in 1 Year absolutely brimming with more reasons food can be a friend.

Read Anna’s Tiny Blog at www.tinyfarmnutrition.com

Shelby lives in Missoula, Montana where she works out at The Women’s Club Health and Fitness Center.

To Get Fit, Flex this Little-Known Muscle

I’ve been flexing my muscles ever since I was ten. That’s when I hauled home a record from Disneyland, put the needle on a record, and started to dance. That album, titled “Exercise with the Jungle Book,” had Baloo the Bear leading me in early 80’s aerobics (Baloo had a little extra junk in the trunk, so I liked him better than Jane Fonda.) Thirty-two years later, I’m still on the hunt for that next best workout. Be it abs, glutes, or core, I’ll try anything that keeps me engaged and brings results. So when I discovered a little-known, master muscle that boosts all my exercise efforts, I got excited.

What is this mystery strength, and why don’t we hear more about it? 

To answer that question, I’ll share a story often told and retold around these parts, especially during winter. In fact, it was winter in Butte — our highest Montana town – at Berkeley Pit, our deepest toxic wastewater site (locals call it Berkeley Lake.) Butte’s an old copper mining town perched atop the Continental Divide. It weathers blizzards that would otherwise breeze over lower elevations. One whiteout evening in ’95, a large flock of migrating geese decided to take refuge from a storm. Scanning for water, they spotted Berkeley Pit. They landed, free from icy winds. The next morning, Butte awoke to a sad site. Almost 350 winter-white geese lay dead, floating atop the toxic waters of Berkeley Pit.

Not long after the geese tragedy, a chemist returned to the pit and pulled a rope its waters. It was covered in green slime – life. Researchers at Montana Tech identified the slime as algae. Not just any algae, though. This plant could neutralize acid and absorb heavy metals. It literally thrived in Berkeley Pit. Theoretically — if scientists can scale up the algae’s metabolism to Berkeley Pit size – a Superfund site could become just like any other clean mountain lake in Montana.

But there’s more to the story, and it’s this surprise ending that reveals the mystery muscle.

 The only other place those algae have ever been found is in the guts of geese.  Their sacrifice gave birth to new life. Honestly, if I had been there, I would have been too sad and full of guilt to believe such a miracle. After seeing all those geese dead, any hope arising from those toxic waters would have been the furthest thing from my mind.  Nonetheless, only months later, that chemist did something amazing when he took a walk down to the pit. Scanning its depths, he had to peer past grief to see that rope floating just below the water’s surface. To reach into that toxic soup and keep pulling, hand over hand, he had to ignore the doubt that countered each tug of the slimy rope. Finally, he had to reach for hope when he delivered that rope to experts for examination.

That chemist flexed the mystery muscle. He demonstrated a strength we rarely hear about in exercise circles: returning. Not exercising for a while can bring its own form of loss. The decision to return can be hard. I usually grieve all the ground I’ve lost and weight I’ve gained. Still, I want to move again. At first, doubt and fear follow me into each workout. For a while, I have to decide over and over to return again and again. Eventually, repeated returning helps me break through into hope.

Is “returning” really a muscle, though? How does deciding to return actually strengthen things? 

Neuroscientists point to meditation as an example of how returning can fundamentally change our brains. Meditation rides a looping rhythm of focus, distraction, and returning. It’s less about perfect, zero-point calm and more about returning to the moment. It’s this perfecting of returning which changes the brain. In her article, “This is Your Brain on Meditation,” psychiatrist Rebecca Gladding, MD, explains that meditation strengthens the, “Lateral prefrontal cortex: the part of the brain that allows you to look at things from a more rational, logical and balanced perspective.” At the same time, it weakens caustic neural connections which magnify our failures into flaws. Fewer flaws? Balanced perspective? I’ll take some of that (especially when arguing with myself just to get dressed for a workout).

So “returning” really does change things, but how do I start?

For me, the first, hardest, and most important step is to let go of any shame about being sedentary. As my husband, Frank, says, “I can feel all the stupid that I want, but that won’t keep me from acting stupid in the future.” Shame is a waste of time. It doesn’t make me move any more or work any harder. Positive thoughts actually get me moving. Thoughts like:

• “It took a while to get here; it will take a while to get back.”
• “The body is smart. It did what it had to do while you were away; it will adapt as you start to move now.”
• “You may not be able to pick up from where you left off, but you can pick up.”

Like those scientists who returned to the pit after its greatest tragedy, I can return to fitness. There’s no limit to do-overs. When I decide to return, I flex a master muscle of the mind. For sure, the results aren’t instant. Just like any muscle, returning can atrophy without use. Every time I decide to return, though, it gets stronger, and so do I.

It’s this perfecting of returning which changes the brain.

“I Hate Forcing Myself to Exercise” plus more in “Just Show Up: Why Movement Matters,” a free weight loss eGuide
New Life in a Death Trap
This is Your Brain on Meditation by Rebecca Gladding, MD, in Psychology Today

More Sassy Weight Loss Stories
from Shelby in Every 100 Pounds eGuide

 

 

 

 

 

How to Lose The Weight, Even When You’ve Gained It Back

This summer, my mental health took a dive. When that happens, I gain weight. Pounds accrued between a mix of inspiration/exhaustion, insight/grouchiness, hope/resentment. Between the extremes, I took refuge on the couch, watching TV to calm my ping-pong brain. I knew what could make me feel better. I just couldn’t do it. At this point, it was easy to sink into hopelessness — which I did. Eventually, when hope returned, a question arose like a buoy bobbing up from the deep:

When life gets hard, how are we supposed to keep going?

It sucks to be this stuck. I’m living a nagging paradox:  feeling like less, but still wanting more. I float in lazy limbo, having lost my tether to any tactics I have used to keep going. Little stops and starts fill the time but get me nowhere. I resort to quirky, impulsive attempts at resuscitating hope (“Clear!”)

For example, this summer, I caught myself examining my hands a lot. I used them as a barometer for my entire body. Puffy pillows between my knuckles? Weight gain. Tendons pop as I flutter my fingers? Lost weight. This became my nightly ritual, catching clues out of the corner of my eye while reading in bed. Wrinkles reminded me of Reva. In her 80’s, she was a social sprite with a streak of moxie (the kind of gal I want to be when I’m that age). Sure, her fingers wore wrinkles, but she kept them ringed in cherished bobbles, so I didn’t get it when, one late night at Denny’s, she started crying.

Reva dropped her fork and floated both hands in front of her. Bobbles up, fingers shaking, she held the table in silence. I stopped chewing. Stillness is the best dish for digesting wisdom, and Reva was about to serve some. A tired huff rose from her throat. “These are not my hands,” she objected. I nested my own fork. “They used to be so smooth; they used to be so pretty,” she lamented in a teary tremor, palms up.

When I remember Reva, I wonder…

Will my body eventually drift that much out of reach for me? Will it become a stranger to me?

When life gets hard, and I get stuck, it sometimes feel like that day is closer than ever. Desperation drives me to JUST DO SOMETHING. I plan extreme workouts or consider starving myself. Like an animal caught in a steel trap, I would gnaw my leg off to escape the rusty clench of doom. That pain would be easier to bare than any loss of control. But they say control is an illusion, right? In cheerier moments, I remember that. Plus, I realize that I can micro-measure all I want, but it won’t keep me from finding some other body part to worry into a problem. There’s a better way.

What if I chose compassion over control? Could I learn to become a friend to my body? This is more than just accepting my body as it is (I still want to feel better; I still want to get fit.) It’s not acceptance but insistence. Insistence on kindness: towards me, by me, and around me. This radically-generous approach, in fact, redeems the only control I ever really have. I get to decide how to see myself. I get to determine what health looks like on me. So, recently, I had this thought…

I’m already taking up space with my body. It’s time to start taking up space in my life.

I started where I could. When my dog, Huxley, licked my hands to get me off the couch, I got up and took him to the river. When I arrived river rats were anchoring their kayaks or rafts after a sunny day on the water. I refused to resent their fun. Instead, I insisted on my own version. I threw a stick into the current, and Huxley vaulted in. I scanned the crowd: no kids. I shed my shirt. Huxley nabbed his treasure. I dropped my shorts. He dog-paddled back. I tightened my sandals. Just before he touched down in the shallows, I dove past Huxley – in all my nakedness – leaving him bobbing in my wake. I didn’t glance back. My belly, double-chin, curves, and ripples, they all came unabashedly with me.

By Labor Day, the spirit behind those chunky-dunks had trickled into other parts of my life. Ironically, tiny doses of kindness can bring big healing. Things I’ve tweaked so far:

• Unfollowing all those fitness sites and filling my Facebook feed with “Body Positive” images. Some of my favorites are Brittany Gibbons, Yoga Body Image Coalition, Girl With Curves, and a favorite You Tube video called This Girl Can.
• Crafting flexible workouts I can do, no matter how I feel. Using an app called Motive, I programmed a daily text reminder that reads, “Custom movement for today?”
• Honoring Reva by embracing my own sense of style.       My belly roll bends the lines on my striped maxi skirt, but I enjoy modeling the beauty of a woman who fully inhabits her body.

As of this writing, the river has cooled to a brisk polar plunge. I’ve lost some of the weight I gained. Though, some days, I still brace for a crash on the couch. The hardest part is trust. Trusting my best self to return. Trusting my body to want to move when the time comes. I tuck my soft self between kindness and trust — holding both at the same time – waiting for energy to come. Compassion creates space, and I keep finding ways to take it up by living in the full spectrum of my life. It’s easier to move through the spaces in life (an old Chinese adage). Even if hard times get in the way again – as they undoubtedly will – I’ll have a way to keep going.

It’s not acceptance, but insistence, that keeps me going.

Just Show Up: Why Movement Matters, a 100poundsin1year eGuide

Watch “This Girl Can” video

More Sassy Weight Loss Stories
from Shelby in Every 100 Pounds eGuide

Scale the 3rd Week Wall with These 3 Big Ideas

Is your fitness routine fading?  Is that promise you made to yourself getting harder to keep?  Welcome to the “3rd week wall.”  There’s something magical about making it through the third week, and its common to get stuck just as you thought you were doing great.  Don’t get down on yourself.  Instead, read ahead for some tools and tips to help you clear this hurdle and go even farther (first published in Living Well, 2013).

We know what they’re going to say: eat better, exercise more.  As soon as health experts open their mouths, we hear their advice like an overplayed pop hit. Our eyes glaze-over. Our minds go numb. Yet, knowing the latest research hasn’t kept us from a nationwide Obesity and Diabetes epidemic. Why? Is there a missing link between what we’re learning and what we’re doing? Or, is it how we’re learning?   Maybe we need easier ideas, something we can do right now that translates all that advice into real results. We need tips that can come alongside us, not create more conflict with our already-busy lives. While we’re at it, let’s demand something we can do and still be ourselves. Make it not too far out of reach but still inspire us to be our best selves.   In that spirit of uncomplicated accomplishment, here are three revelations which can revive any mission to become and stay healthy.

First, Take a Step Backwards

Alyssa Schrock, Mrs. Montana 2013, recognizes that gap between knowledge and know-how. At a young age, she was diagnosed with Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis. “Here’s a pamphlet, go figure out a plan,” she quips, mimicking the limp advice she received from her doctor. “No one took the time to explain, ‘This is how you cope. This is what you do.’ As a result, it’s taken me all of fifteen years to learn how to manage my illness.”

Today, Alyssa lectures and educates others about how to navigate health challenges by developing a personal care plan. “I like to work backwards by starting with the end results.” Asking people to envision a fuller life, Alyssa poses questions like, “What do you want?” “Why are you doing this?” “What do you want it to look like?” For her, the answers included reducing her prescription medications, becoming strong enough to care for her family, and increasing her overall stamina. With those kinds of long-term desires in mind, Alyssa then considers short-term actions. “They need to be small steps, things we can do right where we’re at today,” she explains. Every time she progresses to the next step, Alyssa claims a win. It’s those tiny victories which keep her focused, so much so that she now has energy to support others. “I still have tired days when I have to remind myself this is normal for me, but I’m feeling good enough now that I can make my bubble bigger by reaching my arms out to the community, so that others won’t have to walk out of a hospital with a pamphlet and no idea what to do next.”

Think Big, Then Think Even Bigger

Just as Alyssa has learned how supporting her community helps her stay healthy, we may need to unite our health routine with a larger purpose. Often times, we find more motivation when connect with the “why.” Nurturing wellbeing can be an expression of our commitment to something bigger. This bigger picture provides fresh purpose to pluck us from stuck places and create momentum again.

The Women’s Club Health and Fitness Center of Missoula – one of the nation’s first women’s only gyms which started 30 years ago – takes that bigger purpose to heart. “TWC women don’t separate caring for their health from caring for the Missoula community; to them, it’s all connected,” explains Camie Evans, Manager and Co-Owner of the club. Their latest investment is a saline pool and hot tub. Recently, The Women’s Club converted to a salt water system. “We hear how important environmental stewardship is to our members, and they’re happier when they know their workout supports their values” says Cathy Schwenk, Facility Maintenance Leader. “We’ve been looking at a saline system for years, but it’s only recently that the technology has become compatible with our facility. We like to say, ‘We’re going green, so your hair won’t have to.’”

Get off the Guilt-Go-‘Round

I once heard a young mom with a large family lament her sedentary lifestyle. “I know I need to get me and the kids exercising more, but it’s not easy,” she groaned. “They say this town is such an easy place to be active, but you either have to have lots of time or lots of money, and I don’t have either.” I nodded my head. She indeed was one of the busiest moms I knew. I also knew, however, that there was a public trail system just minutes from her home. Spotting the gap between what she said and what she could do, I surmise her frustration served more as a deflection of guilt.

Come to think of it, criticizing the sometimes conflicting health advice we receive is an effective deflection, as well. Resistance can cover up guilt over not being healthier. Here’s the good news: guilt doesn’t work, so you can let it go. Guilt is a disconnecting force which short-circuits our best intentions.  Guilt acts like static to our souls; keeping us judging ourselves and arguing with those judgments.  It fuzzes that heart/mind connection where creativity and motivation abide.  So let go of guilt about not exercising enough or eating bad food.

You can create a vibrant lifestyle when you cultivate these ideas. First, begin with your vision for a healthier you. Then, support that vision by connecting with a bigger purpose. Finally, release energy-sucking guilt. Now you can harness all that energy you’ve been using to simply survive the stuckness and shift your focus into drive.

We need tips that can come alongside us, not create more conflict with our already-busy lives.

 

100 Pounds eGuide:  “Just Show Up: Why Movement Matters.”

Find My Purpose? Ugh! I Just Want to Find My Feet!

I’ll never forget an interview with Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser fame). When asked why she became a personal trainer, she answered (I’m paraphrasing here): I noticed that overweight people were shut off from many areas of their lives. I want to help them live life fully, and weight loss is one doorway to that.

That’s bang-on with my experience. Losing almost 100 pounds has blown my doors way open. However, they weren’t the double-doors of Destiny guarded by a Butler of Truth wearing white gloves and checking for dust. No, I’ve come through a wormhole of sorts, squeezing through and going where I hadn’t planned. Sure, I wanted to lose 100 pounds, but I had no idea that I’d have to root out the cause of those pounds. Jillian Michaels would probably say, “Of course!” Actually, she’s witnessed enough psychological breakthroughs to know it’s always about more than the weight. For me, those added pounds were tangled up in finding my purpose.

I’ve been searching for purpose most of my life. There are worse things to go OCD over — and everyone wants to be special — but I needed a purpose to feel my specialness. I created tons of pressure for myself, and that’s where I got into trouble. I ate and ate just to relieve my burden, so it’s not hard to understand how something as promising as purpose can become a 100 pound problem.

There’s another problem, though (one uniquely tied to purpose). It’s a closed loop of sorts, setting purpose up as both my drug and my cure.  When food didn’t relieve the pressure, I’d get down and dirty with all my unanswered dreams, as if mud-wrestling with my angst would earn me a victory, and the prize was my purpose. Often, nothing gelled, so I became even more desperate. How convenient, then, when a new prospect supplied fresh desire (“Ooh, shiny!”) The cycle rebooted. I was an addict addicted to rehab.

I’ll admit, this routine became a delicious distraction. It’s more fun to dream than to actually do the work of making those dreams come true. Plus, I wasn’t alone. Most everyone wants to align their work with their passion, and many people think they need to find their purpose before they can be happy.   We get lots of help forming that idea. Experts admonish us to follow our passion, but here’s the rub: they’re usually already passionate about something, and they’re usually talking to people just like them. To be clear, I see nothing wrong with setting goals or achieving dreams, but words like “passion,” “parachutes,” and “out-of-the-box” have become as sour as summer bed sheets to me. These are things that come after, not the things themselves. (Full disclosure: my first email address started with “outta_d_box.”)

What do I mean by “after?” After the wormhole. After the work. Unfortunately, I’ve not found any easy way around either. The only way I’ve found is through. Purpose hasn’t validated my life. It came already embedded, and I was always in it.   It took going through the wormhole to see that. Even when I’ve tapped out, I was still just recouping on the couch – living off a trickle-charge of hope – until I could get up and go again (“What’s next, Kemo-Slobby?”)

My cycle of escalating desperation came to a head in 2006. I got off the couch (Actually, the couch was more like a cliff, and I jumped off.) I quit my full-time job with benefits to make myself “available.” I wanted my willingness to attract fate to my feet, where she would scoop me up in her arms and let me ride that stallion of destiny across the sand dunes of life. Well, the last day of work, I remember thinking, “I don’t care. Even if I go down in a ball of fire, I’m doing this.” Six months later, I smelled like smoke. I hadn’t found anything. Nothing found me. Instead, I grew angry. That’s when I made fiery speeches to the Heavens. They went something like…

“This sucks!”

Silence

“No, seriously, this is not what I meant.”

Stillness

“Whatever.”

Time

“Great. What am I supposed to do now?”

More time

“Fine. I quit.”

“We’re going inside.”

“Uh, yeah, I think you misunderstood me. I’m going out, not in.”

“We’re going inside.”

“Inside? Heck no! I’ve seen the inside. I’ve had enough of what’s on the inside.”

Silence

Eight years later, inside is exactly where I’ve been. I sank into that place — reluctantly, furiously, and bitching the whole way – at least until I started to see real answers there.  (Learn from my mistakes in my weight loss eGuide, “I Want My Outside to Match My Inside.”)  For sure, the idea of going inside is scary – no one wants more pain – but what I discovered is that all my avoidance was more painful than actually sinking into the hurt. And there was hurt, lots of it. Once I looked at what was there, though, it was a relief. Plus, the hurt did not stay. It didn’t go away, either. Rather, it decayed on a curve. In its wake, healing happened. I relearned that I could affect my world. I owned my pain, and I was doing something about it. I became the healer of my own wound. That was more satisfying than any purpose I could have claimed.

Is searching for purpose a worthwhile endeavor, then? I still say “yes,” but if I skip over the obvious, then the search can be more of a hindrance than a help. On this side of the wormhole, more than having a purpose, I practice purpose. I plan. I do. I dream and make goals. I still want my life to have meaning, but how can it not? That’s what I ask now, and that’s the difference. My core desire remains active, but I’m not driven by it. This is a good thing. I am happier.

I don’t have to be all fixed up to practice purpose, either. My wound is still healing from the inside out, so I walk through life with a limp. However, I’m slower to judge and quicker to listen.  Otherwise, I’d probably become like those experts, only more annoying (“Hold my green tea and watch this.”)

I recently discovered the German poet Rilke. He described what I’m trying to explain when he wrote:

“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees…This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.”

Being overweight is a symptom, but it’s so much more than that. Big bodies can become gateways to healing. Every wound is an invitation to live life large. The hurt won’t disappear, but it will transform into an entry point for joy. The tenderness left behind becomes a safe place. That kind of recovery is contagious. It seeps out the sides, and purpose can’t help but gush from it.

For sure, the idea of going inside is scary – no one wants more pain – but what I discovered is that all my avoidance was more painful than sinking into the hurt.

 

100 Pounds weight loss eGuide, “I Want My Outside to Match My Inside.”)

The Myth of Finding Your Purpose, by Kris Carr

“Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God” translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

7 Ways I Got My Body Back

January 2nd (and the Monday after New Year’s) are HUGE days for anyone wanting to lose weight.  I’m rebooting this post as a way to encourage anyone shooting out of the starting block today.

Seven years ago, I had a dream which I’ve never really been able to shake. I always wondered what it meant. I think I’ve finally figured it out. At the time, I was working with a therapist. I shared the dream’s details with her. I described the dug-out pit I occupied and how it resembled a sunken site of an old, archeological dig. We surmised why the pit’s fence – which ran along the top of the ground above me, at shoulder height – seemed more like a military perimeter. With its bulky timbers reinforced by steel rebar, I wasn’t going anywhere. Why did it need to be so strong? More intriguing, however, were the holes underneath the fence. Someone had dug out gaps underneath the fence. Just enough space for a torso appeared along the edges every ten feet. Why had no one filled them in? Had hope carved out each escape route, and I hadn’t bothered to replace it? Maybe there was no point, since a pair of army boots stood patrol on the other side of every hollow. Why the necessary precaution? Who was out there, standing in those boots, and why did I stand inside, alone? I felt trapped. My solace was the open, blue sky above me. Puffy, white clouds paraded over me. This brings me to my biggest question…

Why didn’t I just fly out?

All notions of “flying dreams” aside, this seems a legit question. I acted as if the sky was a roof. There wasn’t anything holding me back, except me. In thinking of the top seven lessons I’ve learned throughout my weight loss journey, that’s the clincher. I see this self-limiting pattern over and over. Each of these seven ideas healed some element of whatever, or whyever, I was my biggest obstacle.

1. Food can transform from currency into contentment. For most of my life, I’ve used food as currency. Food to feel my value. Food to reward my effort. Food to stand in for any desire I could not fill. The problem with this strategy is that I never experienced fullness. By using food as currency, I limited the amount of joy and contentment I could feel because food can only do so much. In addiction terms, I could only get as high as my next hit. I couldn’t stop this limiting cycle until I felt my intrinsic worth. I needed to connect with that unearned merit which abides at depths universal to us all. A Biblical poet put it best: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” (Isaiah 55) When I experienced my natural worth — which I cannot earn or have enough of anything to pay it back with — that’s when food transformed from currency to contentment.
2. I do not have to lose 100 pounds before I feel better. When I first decided to lose 100 pounds in 1 year, I thought I wouldn’t be happy until I dropped all that weight. In reality, I felt better after shedding just 15 pounds. I can remember having more energy, feeling less pain, and sleeping better within weeks. The 100 pound goal gave me enough hope to launch my journey, but it didn’t have to power me all the way. In fact, the inherent restriction of my goal, as it was defined by a total number of pounds within a given time frame, became a burden. That expectation felt heavier than the extra pounds I was carrying. In order to continue, without the heavy restriction, I had to trade big expectations for tiny victories. It’s those everyday wins which took me the rest of the way, bringing the finish line to me.
3. “Set Point Theory” isn’t as sexy, but it makes more sense. “100 Pounds in 1 Year” sure rolls off the tongue, but without the pressure of numbers, I made space to learn an amazing lesson, called “Set Point Theory.” Basically, it’s what keeps lost pounds from never coming back. Researchers have found that a slow burn — no more than 5% of total body weight every three months – keeps weight loss below our starvation radar. If I lose weight any faster, then I could be wasting my time and shooting my future self in the foot. According to Set Point Theory, in order to lose 100 pounds in 1 year, I would have had to start out weighing over 500 pounds. Indeed, that’s exactly where some folks start. For others, however, patient, compassionate weight loss and a return trip to the calculator and will avoid return trips to the diet isle.
4. Weight loss is not a straight line but a meandering path through the woods. If I zoom out on my journey, taking a Google Maps view, I see lots of pitfalls and rabbit trails along the way. At first, I hated these obstacles because they slowed down my weight loss. But the hurdles just kept coming. They didn’t slow down until I slowed down. Turns out, I needed the hidden meaning in every detour. I learned to sink into the sand because there was probably something in there for me. If I tried to skip over it, I usually came back to it, anyway. I could only go as fast as my heart and mind could handle. Ironically, once I geared down to soul speed, I found oodles of freedom to play and experiment. Pit stops became hidden treasures and weight loss an adventure in living. My self-limiting insistence on a linear, start-to-finish highway to happiness seems silly and unrealistic to me now.
5. Relationship brings results. So often, I’ve turned to tips and strategies for results, but copying other people’s fitness success works more like trying to push a button from behind by yanking on the circuitry. Tactics like counting calories, logging hours of exercise, or tracking total steps, these aren’t what cause fitness. They’re what comes after; after the choice to just show up, after frustrating days of missed workouts, and after the next day when I decide to pick up where I left off. All of these moments create a relationship, which is what really brings results. By sticking only to what worked for other people, I actually limited my options. When I drilled down to healing my relationship with myself, that’s when the power kicked in. I found out that I could trust my gut to lead me to my next, best step. Granted, it didn’t feel great all the time. I had walked around like a floating head for years; I was that disconnected to my body. It was scary to reconnect with my heart and mind through my body, even painful at times. But by staying authentic, no matter the circumstance, no effort was wasted.
6. Get thinner but never stop getting thicker. I want to get thick, in my soul I mean. I want to slather on layers of life. I got into this journey by opening up to desire. I don’t want to stop now. I want to stay engaged with the juiciness of the Big Wow that infiltrates every part of every day. I think back to my days of eating drive-thru in my car on my lunch hour. I remember how utterly bored I felt with my life. To me, becoming thinner has happened more out of a sense of fullness, rather than depriving myself of joy (with food or otherwise.) By feeding awe and curiosity, I continue to uncover reasons to keep making healthy choices.
7. I decided that I Already Have My Body Back. After losing 62 of my 100 pounds, I came to a crossroads. You may remember a recent blog when I slammed the proverbial table and declared, “I want my body back, dammit!” You know what came up after that release of pent-up angst? A quiet voice humbly whispered, Why not just decide to have it, then? This challenged me. What do you mean? I retorted. I can’t JUST DECIDE.   Turns out, I can. There’s this tune from The Antlers, called “Palace” (totally the sound track to my journey.) One phrase slays me: “…the day we wake inside the secret place that everyone can see.” That’s what this is. It’s inhabiting the beauty I’ve kept hidden from myself but which everyone around me has always seen. It’s the decision to fly out of the pit. This is possible because getting down to my real self wasn’t like peeling layers of rotten flesh from an onion. Not at all. It felt more like connecting with the orb inside. I kept nurturing myself. The onion grew bigger, got brighter, until its paper skin could no longer hold the glowing bulk and had to break off and fly away to make room for more. Granted, I couldn’t have gotten here before now. I needed more than a nice idea to try on. I needed to experience my body in healthy ways. I needed to trade out old clothes for new. I needed to climb mountains. I needed to see muscles flexing in the mirror. Now, though, I am ready to be who I’ve always been.

 

Why not just fly out?

For more in-depth, down-and-dirty-details of how I learned these lessons, check out the 100 Pounds eGuides

Listen to “Palace” by The Antlers

What Flips that Switch Inside?

Lately, when sharing my story, the same question keeps popping up:  What does it take to get unstuck and make the healthy choices we already know to make?  It’s as if there’s this mysterious black box  that we cannot see into, but which holds the key to flipping whatever switch inside, so we can make the choices we want to make — but for some reason — haven ‘t.  I cannot know what will flip the switch for you, but I can suggest one way to feel for it.  I call it “Micro-Meditation.”  I started this practice as a way to calm my monkey mind.  To my surprise, it also helped me make better decisions, including the ones about what to eat and how to move.

I started inside my car, waiting for traffic.  I focused on where I placed my hands on the steering wheel, which finger reached for the stereo, or how I slid my sunglasses around my face.  Then, while getting out of the car, how I grabbed my purse strap before wrapping it around my shoulder.  How I leaned into the door to unlock the car.  Which foot hit the ground first and how my balance changed as I closed the door.  You see what I mean?  It sounds too simple to make a difference (Typing this paragraph took more effort than the actual doing of it.)  However, if I wasn’t practicing micro-meditation, I would be busy worrying, planning, or just being numb.  There’s lots to gain and nothing to lose.

Soon after starting this practice, my insides started to change.  It’s hard to describe, but it was that same feeling when every light turns green, you take curves with the perfect balance of speed and torque, and seas of traffic part with mere intention.  In one word:  flow.

I’ve since fallen in love with “Micro-Mediation” (when I remember to do it).  It works instantly at any moment without extra equipment.  It takes nothing from my day and, in fact, saves time because I make better decisions with more clarity.  When it’s time to choose a meal or workout, the switch almost flips itself.