Leaving the past behind and living in the present

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I’ve been letting the past rule me, lately. I have let it suck me into a deep pit. I still have feelings of guilt over my mother’s death, 2 years ago this month. I’ve been letting old bad habits creep back in. Stopped trying to take care of myself. Let all my mother’s criticisms and damning words run through my head like a raging torrent. I let myself fall into believing that I am unworthy, undeserving, and unlovable. I’m tired of that, even if there is comfort in the old demons and pain.

I can’t go back and do it all over. I can’t change what Mom said to/about me for all those years. I am not stupid. I am not incompetent. I am not ugly with greasy, oily hair and skin. My hair isn’t too thick. My skin isn’t ugly because I can tan. I am not the bottom of the trash heap.

It is scary to let go of the familiar. Move into new, uncharted territory. Find my own narrative. My own voice. The fear and the old hopeless laziness are hard to overcome, but I am determined to do just that.

I know I’ll feel better. Be healed of my psychic wounds. Be physically healthier. Be complete. And worthy. Once I move into the present and let go of the old ghosts in my mind. So, how and what do I do?

I am going to focus on taking care of myself every day. Telling myself I am worthy. I am intelligent. I am creative. I am not disgusting and ugly. I do have strengths and abilities. I am unique and that makes me a worthwhile human being. Using my DBT skills.

I am going to find my strength. My grandfather had me convinced that I was weak and I had to let him touch me and do things that made me feel gross. My mom told me it was my duty to make him happy and my own fault that he did those things to me.

I am going to start moisturizing my face an body. Mom had me convinced I was too oily to need to do that.

I am going to eat healthy. More protein and fiber. Drink more water. Actually pay attention to what I eat and how it affects my body. Mom always said I didn’t deserve or need to eat because I was disgustingly fat.

I am going to become active. I am walking and working out every day. My parents made that something I didn’t like by punishing me if I didn’t run laps or haul enough wood or exercise enough to make them happy.

I am going to make beautiful things. I’ll cross stitch. Crochet. Make books. Bake. Garden. Write. Mom and Dad always made me believe that nothing I did was good enough, and everyone else was better at everything than me.

I am going to allow myself to have feelings and experience them, while letting them pass, knowing I am not my feelings. Mom always told me I was a weak cry baby and didn’t deserve to be happy or calm.

Doing all these things will help me rejuvenate my weight loss by helping my mind get to the right place. I’ve been maintaining my 140 lbs. lost. It’s been for months now. I want to lose another 60-70 lbs. I’m doing a new program called CoreLife Medical. I’m using the tools at my disposal. The nurse practitioner. The nutritionist (first time I’ve ever worked with one). A behavioral therapist. A personal trainer. I’m also using the LoseIt! app to track food and nutrients, as they recommended. My FitBit is synced with the app, so I’m tracking my activity and sleeping, too.

I have learned a lot in my 54 years. Sadly, it was only 4 years ago that I actually began to see myself as a worth while endeavor. I climbed out of the darkness, but not quite into the light. I found that the twilight of being alive instead of the darkness of existing was a good place to be. Now, I’m starting to look out into the morning sun. I realized I wasn’t happy to be alive for the first 50 years of my life. In past 2 years, I have finally started to be happy to be alive.

I will always have the scars in my mind from my abusive childhood. They won’t go away, but they will have less and less of an effect on me. I let Mom’s shadow get to me the past month or so. Time to turn on the light and fly free. I was a caterpillar for a long time. Now, I’m coming out of the shell and learning to fly. Look out world! Here comes the new butterfly!

I’ve climbed back onto the planet of the living

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I’ve been missing for a while. I don’t know if anyone missed me, but I know I was hiding in my tiny corner of the world. I’ve been fighting my inner demons a lot lately. They’ve been eating me alive. I’m finally pulling myself out of their claws.

I’ve been doing a lot of all or nothing thinking lately. I’ve been categorizing everything I do as either 100% good or 100% bad. No existing in between. My eating habits in particular have been all or nothing, and not very healthy. When I’m good, I don’t eat anything. Eating anything is bad. It doesn’t matter if its a 100 calorie salad, it’s still bad to eat it. I’m very unhappy with myself for maintaining my 140 lb. loss, and not losing more. So, the moping about and blaming and intolerance. I’ve got to fix this in my head. So, after looking back through my DBT workbooks, I’ve come to a conclusion. I have to change the way I am thinking about my state.

Instead of being disgusted with myself for not losing more, I should be proud that I’ve maintained this loss for over 6 months. That’s a long time for me NOT TO GAIN! I should be ecstatic! Instead, I’ve been looking at it as a failure. I think that every time I eat I shouldn’t be eating. I stopped working out and walking. I felt like it was pointless because I was eating and still as big as a giant whale. Enough of the self-loathing. Enough of the self-hate. All that was doing was making things worse. No hope. No worthiness. No chance for success. So, I’m shifting the POV.

Never before have I lost so much weight. Never before have I maintained without gaining back the lost weight and then some. It’s been years since I could wear clothes this size. I actually fit in public places (restaurant booths, narrow hallways, and such). I can’t even lift the amount of weight that I’ve lost. I’ve got a lot to be proud of. I am worthy of respect and acceptance.

To help cement this in my mind, I’m back to doing a daily DBT diary card to make sure I keep using my skills. I’ve done a pros and cons of my current behavior, and compared it to one of my previous behaviors (while losing). I’m struggling to stay in Wise Mind. I’m using cheerleading statements. Affirmations. Before and after photos. Lots of reflective writing. When I stopped using my skills, the demons crept out of their crypt, and dragged me back in with them.

I was sleeping way too much. Binge eating, again. Telling myself how stupid/fat/ugly/disgusting/useless/worthless I was. Actually, in reflection, I’m amazed that I didn’t gain all the weight back. When I think about it, I have changed my habits enough that they carried me through the crypt and kept me from going entirely into the dark.

My binges are no where near what they once were. When I ate in the past, it was like I was afraid someone was going to take the food away from me. I ate everything I could get my hands on, no matter how it tasted. I’d sneak and eat away from prying eyes. I eat until it hurt and keep on going. Now, I actually stopped when I realized the food didn’t taste good or wasn’t satisfying me. It was healthier food (whole grain bread instead of a whole quarter sheet cake). I didn’t hide that fact that I was eating. Well, what do you know? I wasn’t doing as badly as I tried to tell myself I was!

I am going to go back to taking care of myself. Buying healthy foods, not junk. drinking more water. Walking every morning. Working out 2-3 times a week. Journaling every morning. Using my DBT skills every day. Self-soothing with a bubble bath or candle watching or coloring or reading. Practice my mindfulness and meditation practice. I’m starting a new weight loss program, too. CoreLife Med. I’m hoping it will combine with all my efforts to help me lose another 60-80 lbs. I took a year to lose the 140 lbs., it’s just not realistic to think I’ll get the rest off with no effort. Kind of silly of me, wasn’t it? I know better. I just let all my demons take charge. They are sneaky things. I let my guard down for a few days, and they came and took charge.

I’ve got this. I have the tools. I have the knowledge. I will do this.

The infamous last dinner of dieting

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Everyone who has ever planned to lose weight, knows about the last dinner. That last meal where you let yourself eat what you really want in preparation for denying and depriving yourself so that you will lose weight. Isn’t that kind of setting yourself up to fail?

If you’re looking at food as rewarding = not healthy and good food = not what you want, aren’t you telling yourself that you don’t deserve to be happy and healthy? That is not a good way to live your life. Everyone deserves to be happy and healthy. You are a human being. You are worthy and valuable to the world. So stop punishing yourself to be “better.”

Needing to lose weight does not mean you are weak, less than anyone else, or deserve punishment. It means that you’ve got some unhealthy habits or problems that need to be improved and unlearned. None of us set out to be fat. We were just trying to comfort or reward ourselves in a world that didn’t meet our needs or care about us. So, we picked up using food to self-medicate. After all, food doesn’t tell you you are ugly, useless, less than, or unworthy. Food provides comfort and enjoyment. Sadly, when that is our only source of comfort and filling the emptiness inside our souls, it creates more problems, making it necessary to use food and even more of a drug. Creating more problems. Increasing the urge to eat. And so on. The classic viscious cycle.

Until, you decide it is time to lose weight. Become a “better” person.

Enter the last dinner. You promise yourself that you will enjoy this last meal, and it will get you through the denial you plan to practice to lose weight. You get all you favorites. Cheeseburgers. Fries. Chocolate cake. Cookies. Ice cream. Pasta loaded with cheese. Grilled cheese. Whatever gets your appetite going. Lots of each thing, too, of course. Eating until you are painfully full because you expect to never eat the “good stuff” again, because you are going to lose weight. Has it ever worked for you?

It doesn’t work out that way for anyone I’ve ever known. You set yourself up to fail when you approach your eating habits like that. You’re telling yourself A) what you like/love is off limits, B) there is “good” food and “bad” food, and C) you must be punished to redeem yourself. None of those things is healthy for you.

To really get healthy, you have to change habits and mind sets. You can’t view the changes as punishments, or you’ll resent them and sabotage yourself. You can’t think of it as punishing yourself, or you’ll rebel and comfort yourself the same way you always have. You need to know that all food can be good, it’s the amounts that make anything bad for you.

You must eat food that you actually like, for changes to stick. Maybe that means eating mindfully. No more mindless noshing in front of the TV or social media. Actually looking at your food, smelling it, tasting it. Slowing down. Those changes will help you enjoy what you eat and not need so much of it to be content. Perhaps, you’ll need to learn to prepare your favorites yourself and in a healthier way.

You also need to learn new ways to comfort yourself and deal with stress. Food hasn’t worked for you, yet, and it probably never will. I highly recommend therapy and DBT to learn to deal with stressors. You’ll get tools and strategies to use. Behavioral chain analysis, where you break down the behavior you want to change and develop ways to change it. Self soothing that doesn’t involve food (coloring, crafting, reading, listening to music, journaling, taking a bath, taking a walk, etc.). Mindfulness and letting emotions and thoughts pass, instead of being trapped in them. Acceptance of life as it is, reducing the stress from thinking life is supposed to be a particular way. You can do it.

So, no more last dinners. Make every meal a pleasure and you’ll be happier and healthier.

What to do when you’re sinking fast.

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I’m tired of this plateau. I seem to keep running just to stay still. I haven’t changed my eating habits. I’m being more active. I’m drinking more water. So why am I not losing anything except my peace of mind?

I’ve always been an emotional eating. Trying to fill the emptiness with calories. I’m not doing that this time around. I guess I should see that as a victory. In the old days, I would have eaten 4 or 5 cheeseburgers, a large fry, and a cake in one sitting. I don’t do that any more, and even though it was my go to strategy for years, I’m not feeling to urge to do it now. Progress, right?

I need to find a new way to comfort myself and reassure myself. I just want to hide in my little corner and pretend that there are no people out there. I want to be left alone in the dark. I don’t want to eat. So what can I do to put myself in a better place?

Talk to someone? I don’t want to pull anyone else into my bog. I’m not in therapy any more (I “graduated”). Discussion boards with strangers are not an attractive option. I guess I’ll settle for writing a nice, long letter to myself. Use cheerleading statements. List my concerns. Determine what I can and can’t control. Use radical acceptance. Maybe some behavioral chain analysis worksheets while I’m at it. Do some goal planning. A vision board. Try to use the words to rise from the ashes.

I need to look to the light. I haven’t gained any weight. I am fairly healthy. I have a home and a husband. I have friends. Things could be a lot worse. Note to self: That line really doesn’t ever work when you’re down in the bog. All I see at this point is the dark.

I am at least aware of my thoughts, feelings, and motivations this time. I need to be strong and use my DBT skills and do something. Actions change feelings. Thoughts do not change how you feel. If I give up, I know I’ll end up pulling the bog in behind me and not coming out. I have to fight for me. I deserve to feel worthy and useful. It’s time to do some serious work.

So what is real food anyway? And why does it matter?

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Any dieter can tell you that there is real food and there is diet food, and never the twain shall meet. The message fat people have been given is that they don’t deserve good, tasty, real food; and the only way to become a thin (read better) person is to eat only diet food.

What, you may ask, is the difference? Well, let’s start by defining diet food. This food usually contains substitutes for sugar and fats. Often drier and powdery. Often high protein and fiber, and low in flavor. And also usually highly processed and fake. Examples would include the ever popular rice cakes, celery, sugar and fat free hot cocoa, diet sodas. There are many, many more. Anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight knows the list by heart. Frequent words of wisdom to dieters are “if it tastes good, spit it out.”

Real food is natural. Contains all of its parts. Tastes good. Usually higher in calories and satisfaction. It can be very healthy (leafy greens) or it can be rather bad for you (birthday cake).

So, if all it takes is switching to diet food, why isn’t everyone a size 0? Well, lets begin with satisfaction. Real food pleases the palate. It fuels and feeds your body and soul. There is a great variety and abundance. Diet food, not so much. In the past, when I believed in the diet food mantra, I would find myself unsatisfied. Yearning for a specific flavor and/or texture. So, in an attempt to satisfy that need, I’d eat a ton of diet food, which never did take care of the craving. I’d often end up eating far more than if I’d just gone ahead and eaten the real food. So naturally, I never lost weight. I thought about this problem a lot this time around with WW.

I had a eureka moment. I was consuming far too much calorie-wise, even though I was only eating diet foods. Why couldn’t I stop binge eating the diet foods? Surely the solution was to find a way to no longer need to binge or crave or punish myself. So, I went through therapy (a good therapist is a MUST). I read some books on ways to lose weight. I looked up how others had lost weight on the internet. And I came to this conclusion. Every person deserves real food. No one should use food as a punishment, withholding good food because they are fat and unworthy of good food. Next, I began letting myself actually eat the real food. I’d been brain washed into thinking I could only eat diet food because I was fat. But, when I allowed myself to eat real food, I found I didn’t need to eat so much. I was satisfied with a lot fewer calories. And I lost weight (141 lbs. to date)!

It is so sad. People trying to lose weight have been taught that they must punish themselves to be a better, smaller person. It doesn’t work. That’s why people can’t lose all the weight they would like to lose, and then they gain it back with reinforcements. Don’t do that to yourself. Be mindful. Reflect on what a great, wonderful, beautiful being you are. Know that you deserve good things, including delicious food.

Mindful eating means taking your time. Making your meal an event. Enjoying what you eat. Giving your body a chance to let you know when you’ve had enough. Put your fork down between bites. Sip a little water as you eat. Don’t tell yourself you have to be in the clean plate club. It is OK not to eat all of the food on your plate. If you don’t have enough, and you’re still hungry, you can get some more. Write in your journal about how the food tastes and makes you feel. Think about it; don’t blindly shovel it in trying to fill up your emptiness inside. Take the power away from the food, and give it to yourself. Diet food hurts you in the long run (artificial ingredients, continuing weight gain, feeling miserable). Liberate yourself from the diet food. You’ll feel better and be healthier.

Is it really worth it?

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Everyone reaches a point, where they have to make the decision. Is what I’m gaining worth what I’ve given up? How do you make the choice? How do you adjust? How do you make life better?

I am reminded of my WW leader, who tells us often, that what we eat today to lose weight, we have to be able to maintain every day to be successful. If you’ve given up carbs, can you live with never having another piece of bread? a fresh baked cookie? birthday cake? If you became a vegetarian, do you miss huge, messy, greasy cheeseburgers? What did you gain? Is the gain even noticable in your life?

I have to admit, I can’t bring myself to give up bread, baked goods, cheeseburgers. I just gain too much pleasure from them to do it. I know, I know. I should be able to find contentment and happiness without food. But who am I kidding? That’s just not me. I have been losing weight steadily for the past year by allowing myself the things I love/crave, but in moderation. Instead of 3 cheeseburgers, I eat most of one. One cookie instead of a dozen. I was a champion binge eater. I have given up quantity, not quality. And you know what? I do find that acceptable and a worthwhile trade off for getting healthier. I even have to admit I’m feeling better about myself and life in general. I still enjoy food, but I don’t rely on it to get me through the day any more.

It’s has taken me years of therapy to get here. I also have help from my PCP and support from WW. WW is like a group therapy session for me every week. We’re all food addicts. We’re helping each other learn to cope with the urges to binge/eat unhealthy foods. Learning ways to satisfy the need, fill the emptiness, without food. I’ve learned how to make my favorite things healthier, too.

All the work I have done and continue to do requires my mind to be determined and practice mindfulness and radical acceptance. I have gained the ability to accept what is and move on with it. I’ve stopped expecting life to be fair. (Newsflash – it really never is.) I have found that the food I ate was cementing the pain, the loneliness, and the emptiness in place. Now, I’ve torn that wall down. I’m building a new wall of mindfulness and acceptance that allows me to see the world and grow into myself. I carefully select the pieces. They have openings in them. They let things in and out. The old wall not only kept bad things out (so I thought), it kept bad things in and good things out. It was 10 feet of reinforced concrete, a thousand feet high, a thousand feet into the ground. It was my fortress. Tearing down the fortress was hard and scary. But, I have found that I have gained so much.

I’m almost always happy now. Even a bad day now is 100 times better than my good days used to be. I don’t rely on food to comfort myself or hide my feelings. I own my feelings now. I let them in and out of my mind like clouds passing in a clear sky. In losing my ability to cling to them, I gained the ability to feel them and acknowledge then deal with them. As I gave up my binge eating, I became healthier and learned to love myself.

So, in the end, my gains are definitely outweighing the losses. I’ve lost a lot of pain, loneliness, weakness, and fear. I gave up the binges and got a better me.

The Lotus in the Well

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I’m really struggling these days. I know what I should be doing to take care of myself, but I can’t seem to do it. It’s like I’ve given up. It’s like the deep, dark moss covered well of muddy water is sucking me under, into its depths. Enclosing me in a miasma of self-loathing, self-hate, and despair.

What brought this on? The snide comments of my mother-in-law? Worrying about my sister and half-brother? Concern about the future? Exhaustion from working so hard on myself? All of the above?

Yeah, I think that’s it. All of the above. I’ve been trying to self medicate with carbs. It’s not helping, and I know it isn’t helping. So why am I still doing it? There is this feeling that I don’t deserve to feel good. That I should be a lonely, fat, disgusting lump of flesh because it’s all I deserve. My inner critic is really loud these days. I can’t seem to shut her up or reason with her.

Do I really deserve to feel this badly? No. I’ve done nothing to hurt anyone else. In fact, I think my friends, family, and coworkers would say that I am a good person. I’ve even been called sweet and helpful. I’ve never hurt anyone on purpose, and if I did I’ve always done everything I could to make it up to them. And of course, I am a human being; so I have worth just like everyone else does, even when I don’t feel it.

How do I climb out of the well? The mud is sticky. The mossy walls slick. No light to see.

I must remind myself and convince myself that I do deserve to feel good. Be healthy. Enjoy life. But how?

First of all, I’m going to vent here. Done. Then do some problem solving. Some pros and cons. I’ll get my journal out and fill the pages with thousands of words expressing my positives. My skills. My uses. My importance. Use my DBT tools (pros & cons, behavioral chain analysis) to figure out what to do. How to climb out of the mud and over the moss.

To complete my journaling, I’m going to use some of my colorful pens, washi tape, and stickers to make it happy. After all, you change things by acting, not by ruminating over the feelings like a cow chewing cud. Fake it ’til you make it, as my therapist used to say.

As I write, I’m going to look at things objectively. List my problems. My pains. Then, examine why they hurt so much. Next, I’ll use the tools to brainstorm solutions to heal the pain. The pain never really goes away. I think you just learn to handle it. You find the hand- and foot-holds out of the well. It’s still there. Just as gross and dark as always, but you exist in among the garden around it. Full of light and peace and contentment. You learn to see the butterfly flitting from flower to flower; happy just to be. You learn to see the maple tree grow; using what nature gives it and expecting no more or less. You learn to bloom like the roses; not worrying about how you compare to another.

It always takes time, effort, and determination to climb out of the well and explore the garden. I’ve done it before. I let myself fall back into the well this month. But, I caught myself before I got stuck in the mud. I’m stronger and better than I used to be. I will live in the garden. Smelling the roses, irises, lavender, and stocks. I’ll feel the warm sun. The rain. I’ll grow like the maple tree. Or maybe like a lotus, rising out of the mud in the well. I will grow stronger and better because of what I have felt and what I am doing to grow and flourish. I am the lotus.

Am I the only one?

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This time of year, according to the “rules of life”, we’re supposed to be happy, give until it hurts, and eat tons of sweets and dinners. We’re supposed to treasure our loved ones and have fun with them. But what if you don’t have good memories of your family? What if they always hurt you?

I used to feel very, very guilty because I didn’t want to be around my family during the holidays. I don’t have any happy memories from Christmas. All I remember is being told I ate too much and was too fat. It was rough. There they were making all of this food: ham, turkey, rolls, sweet potato casserole, dozens of cookies, red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, and more. It surrounded me. I don’t remember games, singing Christmas carols, never had a white Christmas, or feeling validated. I remember being told I couldn’t have this cake or that cookie. I grew up equating food with being good and loved. So, when I wasn’t allowed to have the food, I thought I was unworthy and unwanted. A nuisance. A waste of space.

What did I do in response? Of course, I snuck food into my room. Gorged on everything I could find, whether I liked it or not. All that mattered was filling the empty space in my soul. I thought I could do it with food. I really, really tried to fill up my soul. I thought if I just ate enough all the pain and emptiness would go away. It was also a way to try to exert some control over my life. It was like bailing out a sinking ship with a seive. Not very effective. In fact, it only made things worse.

Do I still have issues with the holidays? Yes. Even though the people that hurt me so much are no longer around, I now feel guilty because I don’t want them around. You’re supposed to love spending holidays with your family, aren’t you? At least, that is what I always see on all the media. You’re a bad person if you aren’t with your family or don’t want to be around them.

I am so tired of that. I have learned to understand that you don’t have to let others hurt you to earn love. In fact, you shouldn’t have to earn love that way. If they hurt you, they don’t love you, no matter what they say. The love the power they have over you. They don’t deserve that. You deserve to be happy. Content. Serene.

Now, instead of eating 2 dozen sugar cookies in 5 minutes, I’ve learned to write my feelings out. Thanks to therapy, I know it’s OK not to want to be around people that hurt you, no matter what everyone else says. When I do a behavioral chain analysis of my binge eating, I often find that the beginning of the binge is thinking of my family and my past experiences with them. So, how to handle it?

I now stop, allow myself to feel, tell myself it is OK, I am a good person and I deserve to be happy. I tell my inner child that we are safe. No one is going to hurt us. Is it easy to stop and do this? Not always. Some days I can’t manage it at all. But, the good news is that now it works more often than not. I’ve learned to be mindful. Accept, don’t expect. Let go of judgements. See the good and beauty in every moment. I manage this about 80% of the time. The other 20% I have my old demons coming back to control me. Yet, those periods of pain/sorrow/self-hate/dejection are getting shorter and shorter. I don’t always run to the food to try to numb my feelings or fill the hole. It has taken me a lot of work to get here. I have more to do. I accept that I am a human being with all the beauty, feelings, thoughts, flaws, and miracles that it entails. Life is not always good. Sometimes it is rough and tries you. You can’t control what others do or what happens around you. You have to learn to accept it, deal with it or let it go, and move on.

This Christmas, I will be having my half-brother come to see me for Christmas Eve and Christmas Dinner. Our mother died 2 years ago. His father died this past summer. I am his “second momma”. He is 21 years younger than me. I feel good about him coming. I am looking forward to cooking for him. I want to make his Christmas a good one, even though I didn’t have good ones. I’m moving on. I’m creating peace and fulfillment for myself by creating a new Christmas tradition. One in which food is still there, but it is not controlling me. I can eat the cookies, cake, ham, and such with moderation. I can enjoy and not lose control. It will necessitate being mindful and accepting what is, not expecting what isn’t. I can do it. I will do it.

Happy Holidays to All

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It is that time of year. Everyone expects everyone else to be jolly and eat like there is no tomorrow. Lots of cookies, cakes, fudge, pies, and more all over the place. So, what do you do if you are working on losing weight in the middle of all of this?

Well, the traditional answer is abstain from eating any of the yummy sweets. Will that work? Well, yeah, for the short term. Will it make you happy? That depends on how much you value your weight loss over your pleasure. Doing without can be very miserable and lonely. Most people gain some weight this time of year because they are enjoying all the treats. If you don’t enjoy the treats, you will lose weight. If you are one of those rare creatures who actually dislikes sugar and chocolate, you’ll be perfectly happy. If you are a typical person, you won’t. If you’re not happy, you can’t keep doing the same thing. You’ll burn out and quit, trying to recapture your happiness.

What to do? How to succeed and be happy and keep it up for the long term? I have a suggestion or 2 that I hope will help.

First, cope ahead. If you know you’re going to be somewhere that temptation will be running rampant, do things to help reduce the temptation and maintain your health. Eat a healthy snack or meal, so you’re not going to be ready to eat everything in sight. Practice behaviors that allow you to avoid or reduce the amount of treats. If you know a food pusher is going to be there, rehearse how you will speak to them and politely stand up for yourself. Practice moving around the room with a glass of water in your hand so that you are never too near the treats for too long. Keep drinking that water so you are participating, and keeping yourself from getting hungry.

Or, accept that you are going to eat the treats, but practice restraint. Have Grandma’s special pie, just don’t eat the whole thing. Take a few bites of the foods on offer, then stop. Remember, the first few bites taste the best. So don’t keep eating to chase that elusive quality. You won’t find it. This way, you don’t upset anyone, you participate, you don’t punish yourself, and you can keep doing this for the rest of your life. It is possible to have treats and lose weight. Doing this will shed the pounds of pressure, guilt, and loneliness that often come with not participating with everyone else. I know, I know. An adult should be disciplined and mature enough not to give in to peer pressure, but are we really? I’m not. I’ll be having some of the good stuff. I’ll be participating in the party or meal. I’ll let myself enjoy things. And I’ll be mindful when I eat, so that I have control over the amount and content on my plate. In a manner of speaking, I’ll have my cake and eat it, too.

Oh Wow, It’s Gobble-gobble Time Again!

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Well, here it is, the holiday dedicated to over eating. What am I going to do to keep it under control?

Well, first of all, I have the advantage that I’m not going to my family to eat. It will be lonelier, but I can avoid 5 tons of food being pushed into my face. So, I’ll take it. My husband and I will have a small dinner that I make so I control it and will be able to make sure that the food is healthy and fresh and homemade.

That’s another thing I’m doing to manage it. I’ll make food in healthier ways. Less fat. More fiber. I will be able to control just how much food is available, too. No mountains of potatoes or dressing. I’ll make enough for us and a couple more meals over the weekend. Not enough to feed a whole hoard of people.

My WW coach always tells us to cope ahead and plan what we will eat. She also says to have islands on your plate, not continents. I am coping ahead by avoiding temptation and the stress of dealing with my family. I’ll also rehearse just what I’ll put on my plate. These skills give me more control and make me pro-active, not reactive. It will help me keep things smooth and calm. As a result, I’ll enjoy the day, but I won’t regret it.

I’ve had the Thanksgiving where Mammaw pushed 5 kinds of potatoes, deviled eggs, ham, turkey, coleslaw, green beans, corn, homemade rolls, pies, and red velvet cake. I’d eat until it hurt and keep going. Afterwards, I’d feel stuffed, ugly, guilty, and miserable. She didn’t mean to make me unhappy or hurt me, but that was how she showed her love, and not going along with it would have broken her heart. So, it was a choice between her pain and mine. She’s gone now, so I don’t have to worry about hurting her feelings any more. I’m not sure how I would handle her now. I know that eating like that only hurts me. I work hard not to do it. I have learned to take care of myself, finally. Setting boundaries and plans for healthy goals.

Not seeing my family is bittersweet. I feel envious of those who have big family get togethers because that is what I’ve been told my whole life is the way it should be. At the same time, I feel relief and freedom from not having to do as they want me to, not having to be the obedient daughter who does as she’s told and puts everyone else first no matter what it does to her.

The first year we stayed home for Thanksgiving, I felt a lot of grief and guilt. I was letting the family down. I wasn’t being the dutiful daughter. But as time passed, I came to see that they were doing just fine without me there. I don’t think they even missed me, to be honest. I felt better about myself because I wasn’t having to play 20 questions about why I didn’t have children and how much I weighed. That was all they ever seemed to care about. Not that I could create lovely crafts and cook good food or take care of myself or my successes. I stopped gaining 20 tons of guilt and 10 pounds of weight because of Thanksgiving.

Now, I am thankful and feel gratitude for my independence. My skills I’ve learned to take care of myself. My own home. My husband. My things. I know it’s OK not to hurt yourself to make someone else feel good. You aren’t being bad or selfish when you take care of yourself. You are being wise and planning for a better future.