Month: March 2015 (Page 2 of 2)

When I observe my eight year old in action, nothing weighs him down. Effortless excitement leaps into a present-moment thrill, and he flies with wings that lift him from any doom that lay beneath. Bright lightness of being dims gradually, as life circumstances threaten the freedom of his imagination, the security of his emotional well-being, and limit his natural response for play, song, and movement. His innocence knows nothing of such possibility, a naivete fragile enough to shatter by the interference of the surrounding world.

Yet interference of great magnitude has affected us all. Parents, teachers, and the environment that bolsters boundaries around the freedom of expression, begins to deteriorate one’s truth early in life. The weight of these limits begins to press upon expectations, cognitive functioning, and emotional stability. Our wings begin to crumple under duress, eliminating flight. Ego, competition, and the mind replace living from the heart, intuition, and essence. Grounded until an awakening, the mending of the disruption, deterioration, and dilution of our spirit, navigates us back to our original form, enabling our life purpose to arise again. Without the inner healing, a weight burdens us, preventing a life with ultimate meaning.

Freeing our souls from the outside expectations, allowing a heart-centered moral compass to rule our behavior, and unleashing the intuition that guides each of us, lighten the heaviness that weighs us down. Materialized excess pounds act as a reminder to return to our original path of purpose and essence. Releasing the physical weight and this metaphoric boulder signifies a heart’s freedom and reveal a path to present-moment living where stillness, presence, and intuition live. With wisdom, the release of captivity from judgment, and freedom to follow the essence of who we are, allows our wings to resurface. Flight follows, weight of life dissipates, and we soar. The heart opens, essence illuminates, and we fly effortlessly.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Physically shrinking, like removing a layer of paint one day at a time, is a game of patience, perseverance, and faith in the process. Dedication to a lifestyle change forces focus, commitment, and allegiance to a plan in place. Doubt dubs itself into the mix debating whether the effort is worth the wait. Pounds dropping slowly and inconsistently is common as the body’s digestion varies daily, depending upon food choices, stress (cortisol levels), and exercise (movement). A plethora of variables cause weight to zig-zag, coast, and teeter like the scales of justice uncertain of which direction to lean. Inexact science, individual chemistry, and food sensitivities play roles in the results. Yet in the end, it is a waiting game.

After four weeks a culmination of six-tenths of a pound lost without disembarking from the food plan, intense exercise activity four days per week, and feeling unstressed, slim patience may emerge. Weekly tweaking gently, checking food journals carefully, and believing my actions will warrant change, only to relent again by scarce results is a practice in persistence. Although the claim that slow weight loss stays at bay longer than quickly losing, this slow protocol I follow without intention is unmotivating. I am asked if clothes are looser, body more svelte, inches gone; these possibilities are not the case. Water retention, constipation, and/or hormonal imbalances such as a sluggish thyroid, are questioned. No, no, and no again.

Although disappointed, a “staying the course” attitude backs the belief that my day in court will come with scales of justice leaning in my favor with a positive verdict. The fifth week, unanimous votes deliberated a 3.8-pound verdict, the looser pants, and a leaner body. Singing praise for such slow results requires patience and conviction that the process is functioning correctly even when invisible to the naked eye. The challenging waiting game make the rewards feel more grand. When motivation wanes, and the reasons for this lifestyle dissipate from the forefront of one’s mind, wavering between why proceed versus the ease of not, commences. Mindfully remembering “why” you began is an imperative in the journey to healing, patience, and continuity in a waiting game.

With a lifestyle change, no ending exists. Process continues, sustains, and ventures onto a non-linear path. Small ups and downs, a few lines of regression, and eventual dips downward until one day, a foundation for maintenance, know-how, and confidence will simply be part who I am and how I live. It shall replace doubt, rebounding weight, and fear of old weight ascending again. The repeatable pounds that have been lost and gained do not outweigh the measurable effect it had on one’s confidence for future weight maintenance. Yet those were diets; this is a lifestyle. Diets are temporary; lifestyles are forever. Within a lifestyle the inner healing has an opportunity to take place, guarding against recurring numbing via unhealthy food. Deprivation, unsustainability, and metabolic slow downs from restricted calories prevents a diet from elongated success.

With no magic pill, a lifestyle is sustainable with support, self-care, and self-respect for what enters the body. Food for fuel as a motto, self-love as an internal compass, and increasing strength as an energy booster, all beam light into a lifelong plan. Maintaining the lifestyle is the new normal, boundaries are set surrounding social situations, and non-negotiables on what will and will not be done, encourage the numbers to drop on the scale. When living the lifestyle of “clean” eating consistently, slow is the speed required, and waiting, waiting, waiting is the game worth winning.

Without a pill to swallow, a quick fix to reduce excess pounds, or a fat shredding program, I discovered the key to unlock the weight loss secret. No easy way exists but boot camp classes, community support, and consumption of real, “clean” food lead to success. Decades delving through diet discoveries, spending money to pay for fake food, and weight loss programs meeting and greeting the masses of unhappy, hefty humans fighting the persistent pounds, my final wake up call arrived. Feeling desperate to heal from the hollowness of self-doubt, low self-worth, and the self-deprecating response of an overweight body, my searches led me to look within and reevaluate “real” food. Uncomfortable in my skin, wanting to shake my exterior from everyone’s visual, disappear and alleviate the pain of the past, I felt rock bottom beneath me.

My maximum weight leaped upward by a dozen pounds while writing my first memoir. Although my editor gave me two thumbs up for writing ability, the manuscript needed major editing with its organization, dialogue, and a reduction of 25,000 words. Immediately I started the editing process with hopes of completion within a few months, but stalled within three weeks purely paralyzed, inactive, and dead-ended. Reacquainting, rehashing, and repeatedly revisiting my past to complete a second draft felt overwhelmingly disabling. My attention and focus diluted quickly from the memoir to motherhood, volunteerism, and friendships, establishing a great distance from my writing and prevention of releasing my past into the hands of readers.

Gravity of failure weighed heavily; excess pounds plagued my inner peace, refusing their release. Depression, a downward spiral of disappointment, damaged and delayed my writing career. The dangling inspiration of my book lay dying, my inner strength dissipating, and the weight, a symptom declaring my resignation, wore itself upon me, a reminder of healing needing resolution. My extensive work to mend the broken pieces of myself lay dormant, ready to leap forward when the healing came knocking. Yet I sat in squalor with my thoughts, numbing the emotions in need of expression. While my writing took a rest, my passion shadowed into darkness, the shining light of community volunteerism, motherhood, and fostering friendships were illuminated. From the outside, life looked favorable, while the inner healing waited once again.

One year later, the sun shining and spring awakening, I requested a sign and support from anyone, anything, and any avenue, to thwart the inner pain that beckoned healing. Feeling despair, depressed, and drowning just below the surface, an angel in the form of a stranger spoke honestly and openly with me about her journey to shedding pounds, joining a community of like-minded souls, and eating “clean.” A clearing beckoned, I answered the call, and have engaged with this supportive community since. The healthy lifestyle she espoused I have embraced wholeheartedly. No shortcuts existed, but simple, not easy processes strengthened my mind, body, and spirit. Connection between those searching for meaning, healing, and personal growth has made the journey welcoming, while my patience for shedding pounds increases, and the journey has no official ending. Healing the shattered pieces of my inner self, returning to my passion of writing, and accessing self-love, self-acceptance, and self-respect for all that I am, supports sustainable weight maintenance long after the weight is gone, allowing a lifestyle to transpose itself into everyday well being.

Like hiking up a mountain to discover a false peak, a peak appearing as the pinnacle falsely, the summit climb continuing, the weight loss victory contains similar surprising false peaks. Each arrival at the apparent top, more is learned, and another summit climbed. Additional pieces to the weight loss journey are yet to be learned and executed before a victory declared. Climbing a peak in Colorado summers ago, a thunderstorm set in just as we summited; we were driven immediately down the mountain in full sprint as hail began to fall. Given weight loss maintenance tools to remain upon the peak, enjoying the views from the top, there, the victory lies. Without the resolution of deep-seeded, emotional baggage resulting in symptomatic weight gain and a protective layer, summit views are short lived; pounds revisit repeatedly.

“I am cured” is the phrase of weight loss affliction denied. A recovering food addict depicts a more accurate assessment. Emotional healing guided to a healing heart, mind, and body, enables successful weight maintenance. Although sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar” and physical weight increases for reasons of medication, slower metabolism, and engorging for a celebration, the long term, pounds plummeting, recurring dieting population is a horse of a different color. We, the dieting club, represent a lifetime of utilizing food for emotional purposes rather than fuel. Losing weight only to gain it back and then some, is a club not worth joining, as it leads to additional ailments.

Research, experience, and introspection about the gravity of physical weight conclude that unresolved emotional trauma, the unfelt emotions and unhealed parts of ourselves is a necessary component as the pounds plummet. Healing psychological wounds, filling the emotional voids, and addressing lack of self-worth, are imperative pieces of a puzzle left incomplete. When sustainability finds its space within the cycle of weight maintenance, inner healing has halted the hefty recoil of weight gain. Emotional baggage from the present and/or the past, add burden to the shoulders like the weight of the world upon them. Reaching the root cause of the weight, enables a host of healing to take place. Routing around these resolutions, losing the weight with only physical awareness, remains a battle lost and won repeatedly, each time with greater difficulty.

Finding peace within, honoring one’s body respectfully, and mindfully consuming edibles, are functions of well being. Healthy food and fitness as energizing forces of fuel and strength, guide the journey and eliminate the external excess, yet inner brokenness that results in additional weight, low self-worth, and food addiction, must heal to sustain successful weight loss. Without addressing the emotional, internal, and weighted issues causing the underlying pounds, band-aiding the symptoms will not cure the “dis-ease.” Healing when pounds plummet is what constitutes true victory, the sustainability of weight loss permanence. Reaching deep, discovering the void of love, pain of loss, or childhood traumas, is when weight maintenance and healing are possible. Ignore the brokenness and inevitably pounds repeat their appearance. Inner healing releases the beast of burden of a weighted life and lighten the load of living, ending with true weight loss victory, without false peaks visited.The view from the top is powerfully stunning; remaining at the summit is extraordinary.