How I Lost 125 lbs.- Part 2: Digging Deep

Edited, revised and reposted.  Getting better all the time. :)

I continue writing about my weight loss journey in hopes that it might help someone somewhere find the path that is right for them. Since I began writing about my weight loss I have been asked by many people to cut to the chase, get to the point, or in other words, “Just tell us what you did!”

I know some might not be interested in all this back story.  However, I really do believe the path behind is worth taking the time to explore especially if it can help us heal ourselves today and make it easier to walk the path ahead. And I truly believe if I had come to my new way of eating without first having been through what I went through, I would have done what I always did... lose a few pounds only to gain it back again.  So, I ask you to slow down and walk beside me for a while. And if you haven't read part one, you might want to do that now. 

http://squeezingthefruit.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-i-lost-125-lbs-and-have-survivor.html

I needed to get myself geared up to get back in shape, but I always seemed to work so hard and somehow ended up right back where I had started.  This was the cycle all of my life really. Gain. Lose. Gain it back again. And that's why although I was always on a diet, I was still over weight.

I remember being at a party with my husband one night. I was talking with some girls about working out. I was feeling great! I had been working out for about 6 weeks and had lost a little over 15 lbs. I was proud of myself and I was feeling good. I thought I looked awesome. I was out with the man I love. I worked all day pumping myself up for an evening out.  Telling myself no one cares what I look like.  I'm an old married woman anyway. I'll just hang out with the girls!  Of course, I was the biggest girl there. I was always the biggest girl at the party. At least that's how it felt. But, there I was stepping out of my comfort zone, chatting with some chickas. Good times. Till one of the girls brings up the topic of working out. Hey, I know about this topic! I can contribute!

Like most girls who have struggled with their weight, I knew a lot about how to lose weight. I had done it many times. I also knew a lot about working out. My hubby was an avid reader of Muscle & Fitness magazine, which I regularly read and discussed with him. Plus, I had been an active gym member for some time, so I could hold a my own in a discussion about fitness any day. So, I mentioned something about working out that week and this girl looks me up and down, does a "Ppfft!" and turns her back to me.  Huh?? What?? Who me? Did you just do that to me? I bit my lip, blinked back the tears and walked away.  I felt cut off at the knees and powerless. All the hard work and progress I had made wasn't enough. I was still seen as 'the fat girl.'  I almost certainly reached for food to comfort myself like I always did. And thus the cycle began again. I knew I should have just stayed home!  I let her ruin that night. With a look or a word I could go from on top of the world to down in the ditch.

I spent a lot of my life giving away my power like that. I looked into other people's eyes for them to tell me who I was and what I was worthy of.  I gauged how I felt about myself with the feedback I got from others. If I didn't get enough positive feedback, I was not good enough.  The girls at the party had flipped a very deeply ingrained switch in my head.  I was repeatedly told by my paternal grandfather that 'nobody likes a fat girl.' 

This was his mantra with me during my formative years when the weight was coming on. He could see what was ahead and I know his heart was in the right place. He didn't want me to feel the pain that came with being different.  But, the way he said it, "nobody likes a fat girl," told me that if I was heavy, I was bad.  And you see? I was fat and those girls didn't like me.  Not the truth of the situation, that that one girl was a bitch. Oh no, not that!

It was ME!  It had to be me! "I'm not worthy of love because I am not the girl my family wants me to be... Even my family doesn't accept me. I embarrass my family."  I would play that old tape in my head over and over.  And God help me, if I had lost a few pounds and anyone failed to notice. See, I wasn't worthy enough for them to notice! Why the hell am I doing all this hard work if no one is going to notice any way?? And then I'd quit.  It was easy to quit. I didn't really trust myself to follow through anyway, because deep inside me I realized I had this root of rejection and I was just waiting for everyone to confirm what I already believed: I wasn't good enough.  My programming started early and was deep.

A self fulfilling prophesy happens when you believe something in your heart and then you will go about making sure that your outer world reflects your inner world. You will look for every situation that supports your thought and outright ignore anything that contradicts it. That way every time you confirm what you thought, you get to say, See??? I was right!!! I am NOT worthy of love... or happiness... or whatever your programming was.  But that's just the thing I learned: it's all just programming and we have to reprogram our thoughts to reflect what we WANT to see in our life, not what we don't want.  But how many times did I do exactly the opposite?? How many times did I sabotage any progress I made with just a few words from someone whether it was stranger or my own family? And there were always words.

The weight is a symptom of a much deeper issue most of the time. And most of that time, we are totally unaware of it.  If you would have asked me back then, I would have told you I had GREAT self esteem and I loved myself unconditionally.  I thought I did back then.  I was unaware of the deep battle within and how I had become numb to those tapes I played over and over telling myself that I was flawed and not good enough the way I was. Consequently, I engaged in self fulfilling prophesy behavior over and over again without even knowing it.

So, there I was after having my second child, I had lost some weight but was tired of working hard, and it seemed inevitably becoming stuck once again in the cycle of 'lose a little/gain a little.' One afternoon, I watched a movie called The Secret. In this movie they discuss how our thoughts shape our reality. The major focus of this movie disappointingly is the acquisition of wealth. I wasn't so struck with that as I was with the idea that I had been creating everything in my life.  I realized the fact that the major thoughts I had were not all that positive, but filled with worry most of the time (if I was honest with myself.) It made me wonder how my life might have been different and what kind of life I could now create with the help of The Almighty, of course. This is where my voyage of self discovery began.

I had an awakening. It was as if I had known this stuff all my life somewhere deep inside... like a dormant seed of knowledge and now it had been watered and fed a little and was beginning to grow, but it wasn't content to grow in a cramped space. These new ideas needed room to breathe and stretch. I wanted to know more about the law of attraction, quantum physics, reality... all of it! So, I moved on to deeper material.  The more I read, the more I saw that there was something to all of this.  There was a connectedness to it all.

One thing my husband and I both began to incorporate into our daily routine almost immediately upon learning about it was meditation. It seemed that this was perhaps the most important tool to quieting the chatter inside my head long enough to break the habitual thinking.  We found a program we still use today almost 4 years later. It's called Holosync and we found it and one of our favorite teachers, Bill Harris, at Centerpointe.com.   And I will be happy to discuss my meditation journey in another post. For now, let's keep moving forward.

Along with daily meditation, I began reading lots of different teachers. Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth was pivotal to my inner awakening.  It may be a bit 'new age-y' for some, and that's ok.  For me it all made perfect sense and it resonated with me at a very deep level. 

I could actually see how time and time again in my life I had created exactly what happened to me.  Anyone who looked at my life would say I was happy, talented, loving and blessed.  And I was.  But, my life was not all I thought it could be. I had very little inner peace and my health was far from optimal. I was over weight. I worried ALL the time.

I mean, I was a world class worrier. I come from a long line of worriers. I could play scenes in my head that would make anyone drop to their knees and weep, yet I played those scenes over and over. My husband might be 10 minutes late and I have him dead in a ditch and would actually bring myself to tears many times imagining what it must feel like to go through such sorrow. I would read the paper and weep over car accidents.  Anyone's child getting hurt translated to my own daughter getting killed.

It was so unhealthy both mentally and physically.  I can see that now. But, when you are in the thick of living it, worry pretends to be important. You think you worry because you care. You pat yourself on the back because you care so much, but in the meantime you are just bringing horrid negativity to your mind and horrid stress to your body. 

Meditation changed so much of that for me. It quieted my thoughts long enough for me to feel the peace that passes all understanding that I had heard so much about and prayed for so many times. Once I had those moments of freedom, I wanted more.

To Be Continued...

How I Lost 125 lbs.- Part 1: Well How Did I Get Here?

Edited and reposted. Still not perfect, but better. :)

I remember the day my wonderful husband and I were sitting watching Survivor and commenting how everyone who goes on Survivor loses weight. I quip,  "I need to get on Survivor, if not for anything else to lose some weight!"  The hubby points out that they eat mostly rice. A lightbulb goes off and I get the laptop out to start surfing. I come across The Rice Diet Solution book right away and I am sucked in with the promise of losing 20 lbs. in a month.  I read countless reviews on this book. Most people who have done it seem to love it. But do I really want to go on another diet? Can I really eat primarily rice and lose weight and still be happy?   I am not convinced just yet.  All I can think is, "Here we go again!"

Allow me to back up here for a moment. I realize it wouldn't be right of me to begin any story about my weight loss journey without discussing how I got where I was in the first place. Whether or not it was true at the time,  I have thought of myself as a big girl most of my life though my weight constantly fluctuated because I was always on some sort of diet.  I wasn't heavy as a child, but when I hit puberty the weight started to come on slowly even though I was active in sports and cheerleading. Unfortunately, I had several knee injures that curtailed sports for me around age 14, and thusly, my physical activity went basically to nothing at the time when my hormones were raging and I was eating like I was still a kid. Talk about adding insult to injury. Not a good combo! In hindsight I see that I had a womanly figure quite early when many of my friends were still looking like,...well, little girls which is what we were. But, I didn't feel that way around my girlfriends who were a size 2 when I was a size 12... in 8th grade.

I heard the phrase, "but you have such a pretty face" more times than I care to recount.  Although strangers and the kids at school could be cruel, it was my family that seemed to be obsessed with my weight and took every opportunity to discuss it. I felt like everyone saw the weight first and me as a person second. My worth was tied to how much I weighed. This filled me with such feelings of shame. I felt that I disappointed my mother most of all.  She was so beautiful and thin.  And I... well... I didn't even look like her daughter.  Judy was a neighbor across the street who had a daughter my age named Tara. The adults used to joke that Tara, who was thin and cute as a button, was my mom's daughter and I was Judy's.  Judy was thought of as chunky because she had a little more meat on her bones in those days.  I know this was meant as a joke, but it made me feel unwanted and unworthy of even being my own mother’s daughter. I couldn't be her's- I was fat!

I continued to gain weight through high school and spent many a night in front of the TV watching MTV instead of dating, which like every teenage girl I would have liked to have done more often. But it's a vicious cycle. You eat because you feel awful and eating makes you feel good.... then you gain weight, so you feel awful, so you eat because eating makes you feel better... then you gain weight, so you feel awful... and so it goes.... and so it goes. Someone cue Fat Bastard please, "I eat because I'm unhappy and I'm unhappy because I eat."  Can you hear the bad Scottish accent?? And high school boys are not known for looking past the outer appearance. I met a few, but not many.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't sitting at home every night. I had a very active social life. I performed in many plays and musicals throughout these years and  had lots of friends. I was quite happy. But when I looked around at other girls my age who were dating boys and having what is supposed to be the typical teenage experience, it wasn't mine and I wanted what they had.  

I met my future husband in college. He showed me what real unconditional love looked like. We had many a long talk and through the time we spent together, I dealt with many of the issues I had growing up and the feelings of shame and guilt.  I forgave my parents for they were truly doing the best they could. In hindsight, my mother did more for me than most mothers would ever have done. She was always putting me on this diet or that one trying to help me fit in. She never meant to hurt me. No one did.  As I accepted what happened,  I began to feel a sense of self worth I never had before. I was worthy of the love of others, yes. But most of all I was worthy of self love. 

Our detailed story is a post for another day, but suffice it to say he accepted me for who I was and what I looked like. He became proud of me because he loved so much more of the person I was inside than what I looked like on the outside or how I made him look to other people.  My weight went up and down in those years. I was still ‘dieting,’ so nothing stuck for good. It never seemed to matter to him. God bless that man.

In those years, I also developed a severe milk allergy.  I went from being able to enjoy ice cream, sour cream and all the goodies of the dairy world (Cheese! Glorious cheese!) to getting severe abdominal cramps and not being able to leave the bathroom if I ate even a little! I began having to read labels for fear of accidental dosing and being up in the middle of the night sitting on the throne wondering what the hell I had eaten that contained the dreaded culprit- casein, a protein found in milk and used in many products nowadays.

My husband and I were married for 10 years before we got pregnant with our first child. One wonderful side effect to pregnancy for me (and believe me, I needed something wonderful! I had morning sickness that lasted 24/7 for almost the whole  9 months) was that my milk allergy went into remission for the duration of my pregnancy and for the first few months of breast feeding.  So, guess what I did for that time? I did what anyone would do who was in my shoes- I ate! And I mean, I ATE!  It seemed the only time I felt good and not nauseous was when I was eating.  A girl like me doesn’t need much more of an excuse to indulge, let me tell you. So, dairy was back on the menu! Cheese! Italian food that I missed so much was back also. I was teaching theater at this time and every day at school, I ate Sonic bacon cheeseburgers for lunch and topped it off with a Snicker ice cream bar. It became my 'little' routine.  

Go figure, I gained 100 lbs. with my first daughter. And in the four years before child number two, I had lost only some of it before getting pregnant again.  And once again, I was able to eat all the good stuff and kinda figuring it was my last hurrah (since I wasn't planning on having anymore kids)  I ATE! And ATE! And enjoyed every minute of it! Standing on the scale at the ObGyn,  I hit 301 lbs. and remember asking the nurse if she would please just write down 299 because I was so embarrassed.  My health was good so my doctor didn’t give me much grief about my weight. I blamed the scale. I always hated that scale anyway. It has it out for me. It is never the same as my scale back home! Why don’t you people get this thing fixed already!  And I only lost something like 5 lbs after giving birth.  How that is possible when your baby weighs almost 8 lbs. is beyond me, but that's how it went for me. 

When I told you I enjoyed gaining all that weight, that was not the whole truth. Gaining so much weight made me feel horrible about myself. On the outside I’d pretend I was fine with it, but deep down inside I was so ashamed of myself. I had really let myself go. The eating fun only lasted so long and now here I was heavier than ever and with 2 kids and a husband to take care of. I understood why so many moms are overweight these days.  I didn’t have much ‘me’ time anymore. 

I did lose a little bit because I breast fed and tried to watch what I was eating. Some days I even tried to get into yoga again. But my knees were hurting and my ankles still swollen and my spirit still quite broken.  I had gained and lost weight so many times and I was tired. I hit a plateau after losing about 40 lbs. and it became increasingly hard to shed anymore. I am just a big girl, I thought and copped out just like I had so many times before. That was easier on me than thinking of the work it was going to take to lose any more weight. My husband would hear me make excuses and would say, “You're not a big girl. I don’t see you that way. I never have. You have a small frame. Stop  telling yourself a lie.”   I didn't want to hear him.  If I wasn't just a big girl, then why has it so hard to lose weight all my life?  Every pound was always a struggle. I was beaten down and feeling FAT. I didn't want to leave the house most days. My weight ruled my life.  How did I let myself get like this?

To be cont.

So, What's With All The Fruit Squeezing?

Why did I name my blog Squeezing The Fruit? One of my favorite verses from the Bible is Matthew 7:16, "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?" One should be judged (if we can even use that word)  by the 'fruit' they produce not simply what they say they believe. Actions speak louder than words. Do not judge a book simply by its cover.  You don't know what's inside a fruit till you squeeze it! These idioms urge us to behave in a certain way. These are themes that span most religious practices as well. The idea that the inward is reflected in the outward. As within, so without. Out of the heart the mouth speaks, etc. These are themes everyone can agree are true.

I feel like too many ideas are simply thrown away by most people because they make snap judgments based on what they see in one moment. The ideas may scare them because they are simply under informed or ill informed. So many people miss out on so much beauty and thinking about new ideas because it makes them uncomfortable to do so, and unfortunately for some, because they don't like the cover the book comes in, they place it back on the shelf never to pick it up again.  But, what if we, you and I together, opened the book and began reading it for a bit instead. What if we didn't jump to conclusions and tested things out a bit.  This is a perfect example of what I am talking about.  http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-already-knows-everything-he-needs-to-know-abou,17990/# I feel sorry for this guy. What kind of life is that??

But let's get back to the fruit.  What if we collected the fruit and tasted it before we made judgments on whether we like it or not. We need to taste and see.  We can use the minds God gave us and the other faculties we have to assess what is good and what is not so good. What serves us and what is better left to someone else.  We can do it together.

I want to be able to come here and open things up.  I'd like to visit some ideas I have about things and see if anyone else feels the same.  I'd like to test some ideas and taste some new flavors!  Most of all I want to encourage you to think for yourself. Trust yourself. You will know them by their fruit, not by the outward appearance only. Let's see what's inside before you throw it to the side. In other words, let's start SQUEEZING THE FRUIT!

Biodiversity and Why Are We Underusing Our Natural Resources Anyway?

I just watched this well done video that discusses biodiversity. It is worth the 2 minutes. One of the shocking facts they present is that there are more than 80,000 plant species on the planet yet we choose only 13 of those encompassing 90% of our diet. That is just CRAZY! We also under use the medicinal plants that are available to us in the rain forest, 1% I think was the number, even though 50% of our medicines come from those very natural resources.  CRaaaA ZzZeeeeY! Right??

Land of Plenty - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

And another blogger begins...

So, I've decided I need to blog.  I have been on Facebook now for quite a while now and I LOVE it! It has allowed me to reconnect with so many friends and former students. I am very grateful for it. But, it is not a great forum for deep thoughts.   I feel at times, however some topics need a bit more fleshing out,  a bit more time spent on discussing them or maybe I feel the need to rant a bit.

Jesus said, "You will know them by their fruit." You can't just look at a piece of fruit to see if it's good. You need to pick it up. Smell it. Squeeze it to really see what it's all about.

I wanted a place where I could do some fruit squeezing.

I also wanted a place I could share my weight loss journey in detail.  I have been asked many times to share what I have learned. I envision a place where tips and recipes can be shared and support given to anyone who needs it.  I feel I have a lot to share and give in this area and I wanted to put it out to the world. A blog is a good way to do that.

I have also been on a spiritual awakening of sorts for the past 8 years or so. I have done a lot of praying, soul searching reading, learning, meditating and a lot of changing.  Changing the way I think and what I believe has been like an awakening from sleep. But, it has been a rough process of changing my paradigm for living. It made me question EVERYTHING. And I'd like to share my journey with you and share what I have learned. And what I am still learning. Cuz every day, it's a process.

 Squeezing some fruit, yes. But also a beacon of hope... a friend to lean on...  an ear to bend.

And if you are here reading this, you are also the reason I started this blog. I wanted to share my heart with you.  I thank you even now for taking the time to read what I have to say.

I love you for that!

Let's go squeeze some fruit!