What I've learned since 2007: Part 4

4. I decided to stop using torture and hatred as a means to transform myself.

I’ve lost weight, significant amounts of weight, countless times in my thirty two years on this earth. Each weight loss followed the same formula of equal parts restriction, torture, self abuse, and misery.

I have talked to so many women and our belief as a society of what healthy eating and exercise should feel like is frequently the same: in order to lose weight, you have to be totally miserable.

You need to eat things you have NO DESIRE to eat just because they ‘fit’ into your ‘diet’. If you were Champagne Chai, this meant that you greatly restricted your salt, sugar, carb and fat intake. What does this leave? Not much. Shocking that once the weight came off I couldn’t maintain these eating habits, isn’t it?

When other people are enjoying a piece of cake or a steak or anything that isn’t on my ‘diet’ I have to have iron will power and not participate. ‘Giving in’ to such evil, sinful foods means that I am a failure.

Exercise must be akin to torture. If I can breathe, I'm not working hard enough. If I'm not miserable, clearly whatever I'm participating in isn’t going to be effective.

Every pound lost is meaningless if no one’s noticed/I'm not down a dress size/I can’t fit into those pants the way I want to/I'm not in a certain outfit by a certain date/insert-expectation-that-is-specific-to-you.

All of the above is exactly the behavior and thought process that I believed would lead to successful weight loss. If I failed (which I always did since I failed to keep the weight off) clearly it was because I was somehow defective. There was nothing wrong with my methods, I just lacked willpower, I didn’t want it badly enough, etc.

EVERYTHING was wrong with my methods.

Because I now loved myself, there was no way I could follow this same eating and exercise process ever again. Who would do that to someone they loved? I love my dogs and I have yet to express this love by depriving and torturing them. The same logic was to be applied to how I treated Champagne on her new journey. I was going to love myself every step of the way. But how?:

A. I eat when I’m hungry. I stop when I’m full.

How do I know when I'm hungry? How do I know when I'm full? After years of abusing and not listening to my body, I had no idea.

I’ve learned that if I have to ask myself if I'm hungry, I'm thinking about it too hard: I need to get out of my head and into my body. Do I feel hungry? Not sure? The answer is likely ‘no, I'm not hungry’. I need to wait an hour and check in again (‘an hour’ is arbitrary. I may wait 15 minutes and FEEL the hunger in my BODY. That’s the point, not some amount of time. My body is different everyday and needs food at different times. It doesn't live by the clock. I now LISTEN to it). Hunger is a feeling. I will FEEL true hunger and not be able to mistake it for anything else. For me, hunger feels like emptiness. My stomach growls and feels vacant. I also get fatigued and irritable if I let myself get too hungry. Life is unpredictable and ideally I never allow myself to get to the point of extreme hunger, but it happens. Bottom line, I took the time to listen to my body and learn what hunger feels like.

What does fullness feel like? This one is harder for me. I’m still learning what fullness feels like so I’m not able to put it into words very easily. Since I can’t easily identify satisfaction after years of over and under eating, I check in with myself every few bites. I eat slowly, chewing my food thoroughly. I try to eat without distraction (still working on this one) so that I can be aware of what I’m eating and how it makes me feel. Sometimes the feeling of fullness is sudden and obvious and I drop my fork. Other times I’m not sure so I have a few more bites and check in again. It can be subtle, but if I pay attention I can tell when I’ve had enough.

B. I let my body decide what I eat.

In addition to eating when I’m hungry and stopping when I’m full, I’ve also gotten to know what foods make me feel good and keep me operating at my best. This involved some trial and error, but that’s okay since perfection isn’t the goal.

I had to learn how to distinguish between what Bethenny Frankel refers to as my ‘food noise’ and my ‘food voice’:

So I’m DESPERATE for cheesecake. It’s all I can think about. I eat it. Plow through it. The entire thing. I feel terrible after... I just listened to my food noise.

I see a commercial for something and am now DYING for it... Also food noise.

Last night after my workout, I was ready to eat my arm. I got home and was desperate for a green salad loaded with all my fave veggies topped with grilled salmon. I was able to pay attention to the entire meal, savor it, feel it nourish my body and stop eating when I was full. This was an example of me listening to my food voice.

It’s not always this clear cut, but knowing that most of my cravings are just food noise and will pass if I just sit tight makes it SO MUCH EASIER to recognize the craving for what it is.

I’m not perfect and I don’t just sit there and bask in my self control when a craving strikes. Sometimes I too need to satisfy the craving with a substitute (I see a commercial for Doritos and would now sell my soul for a bag. If I can’t wait it out, I hit the fridge and eat a pickle or two. The salty crunch was a fine substitute. Craving averted. Moving on).

Other times I can just sit there and endure the food noise now that I know what triggers most of my so called ‘cravings’: I would have a fight with my husband and ‘crave’ something; I would not be able to wear an outfit that made me feel beautiful and suddenly I’m having a ‘craving’. ALL. FOOD. NOISE.

C. Food is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just food.

I used to be TERRIFIED at the prospect of being put in a situation where I would be confronted by food that was not part of my uber-restrictive diet. WHAT IF I HAD ONE BITE OF SOMETHING THAT DIDN’T FIT INTO MY EATING PLAN!!!???

I actually had good reason to be terrified because when one is starving oneself and/or eating only foods that bring no joy, it is completely likely that a binge is only one bite of delicious food away.

But I’m no longer starving myself. I’m listening to my body, eating when I’m hungry, stopping when I’m full and eating what my body wants. NOW I can walk into a situation that involves delicious food and eat it. Or not eat it. It’s just food.

Eating it isn’t the end of the world because now that I eat when I’m hungry, I didn’t ‘save up’ for this event. I’ve eaten normal meals all day long. I probably had a huge salad right before this event as an extra precaution. Since I’m not walking in ready to inhale the first plate of food I see, I’m able to do a lap, look at everything, eat what looks good, eat what appeals to me most, eat just a few bites of some things, CONSTANTLY checking in with myself to see if I’m still enjoying this bite as much as the last. Asking myself if I am full? Am I overfull?

This event is not the last event that I will eat at. Knowing that this food won’t make me happy/won’t make me love myself/it’s just food/I’ll see all this food again in my life/I’ll see better food in my life/etc makes it so much easier to enjoy what appeals to me most without needing to wear stretchy pants. I love myself every step of the way. Stuffing myself and making myself uncomfortable is no way to love myself with food.

Ideally I’ve eaten before this event. But what if this was a non-ideal day? What if I did allow myself to get overly hungry and I arrive at the event ready to tie one on? Simple: I find foods that are part of my daily intake (salads, soups, fruit, veg, lean proteins) and eat my usual portion. Most events offer something that resembles food that I would eat on any given day. I eat this first. Wait. Check in. Listen to my body. Once I’ve brought my blood sugar up to a normal level and I’m able to make sensible decisions about the more indulgent items, I do another lap and pick the foods that I want to sample and I do just that: sample. I have a few bites, enjoy them, check in, rinse and repeat until my body tells me to stop.

Again, perfection isn’t the goal. Sometimes I pull a chair up to the hors d'oeuvres. It happens. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I don’t beat myself up. I love myself no matter what. Over eating does not affect my self worth. I move on.

I also use over eating as an opportunity to check in. How do I feel now that I over ate? Am I bloated? Exhausted? Sluggish? Did I have to race to the ladies room and shit my brains out? If I feel like garbage, I’m not being very loving to myself. Again, I don’t judge, I just check in and continue to take stock, without judgment, of how different foods make me feel. The more mindful I become, the easier it gets to eat a comfortable amount of ANY FOOD because I know that I don’t want to feel sick and bloated.

D. I love myself with exercise.

There was a time when we all moved our bodies for the joy of it. I don’t care who you are and how much you think you hate exercising. There was a time, even if you were only a few years old, where you loved to do SOMETHING that involved physical activity.

As time passed, I lost the love of movement because I bought into the idea that exercise had to be torture to be effective. Sure, going for a 30 minute walk probably doesn’t burn as many calories as a 30 minute run. But I won’t run since I hate running. I will walk because I love walking. See where I’m going here? DOING something I love is more effective than not doing something I hate.

I won’t go for that run. I will think about how I have to run later and dread it ALL DAY. Then, when it’s time to run, I will delay it as long as possible. If I do run for a few days or even a few weeks, I won’t stick with it because NO ONE WILL STICK WITH SOMETHING THAT THEY HATE. Nor should they.

I was at a point with exercise where I genuinely thought that I hated anything that involved movement and I had to relearn my love of movement. Anyone can do this. Here’s how I did it:

I was a dancer my entire life but stopped dancing after college. When I gained weight and stopped performing, the opportunities for me to dance were all but non-existent. I was inspired at my heaviest to start taking dance classes again. When I got into class, it was like coming home. Sure, I was out of shape and not one-tenth of the dancer I used to be, but dance is one of my greatest loves and my hours in class flew by.

I was busting ass and sweating like a beast NOT because it would lead to more calories burned, but because to dance, for me, is my body’s ultimate form of expression. I have to dance or I will die. It literally POURS out of me.

So that was one night of the week. What about the other six? I would leave class each week WANTING to move more, but the urge to ‘exercise’ never hit me the other six days of the week. Why? I know now it’s because I needed to remember other activities besides dance that used to bring little Champagne joy.

Quite by accident (and I’ve written about it in this blog), I discovered that I love to bike ride. While on vacation in a beach resort, some friends and I rented bikes (I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I figured that if it was torture, it would only be one hour of my life). Much to my surprise, I LOVED it. When we returned from vacation, I was DESPERATE to own a bike. Once I owned that bike, I would wake up at 5in the morning (no lie) unable to sleep because I was so excited to hit the bike path. This love was the exact same love I had of bike riding as a child but had totally forgotten about.

Once I had dance and bike riding I knew I was on to something. I live in Buffalo and can’t ride year round so I had to dig deep and remember other activities I used to love.

In middle school, I couldn’t sleep the night before a roller skating party.

Growing up, you couldn’t keep me out of the pool during the summer months.

My senior year of high school, I went indoor rock climbing for the first time and LOVED it.

You get the idea. Do what you love (and trust me, you love something).

This has progressed into an exercise habit. Now, I try to move my body every day. I’m not obsessive about it, but have learned through listening to my body that moving on a daily basis makes me feel good. I sleep better. I wake feeling rested. I have a means to relieve stress. The list goes on. Life happens and some days there just isn’t time, but I don’t obsess over a missed workout because I’m going to have another work out tomorrow. And not because I have to, because I want to. Genuinely. I wasn’t always this way, but this has been my progression.

Some days I don’t feel like working out (GASP!). It’s true. But I know that I can’t trust my feelings. My feelings are a huge part of what got me into this mess in the first place. I can really only trust my body. When I don’t feel like working out, I check in with my body. What’s going on in my body? Is it fatigued? A little…how’s about I go to dance class anyway but take it easy tonight. I can always leave if I’m too tired to continue once class starts.

What always ends up happening is I get to class and feel energized. Some classes I have more energy than others, but my body isn’t a machine. It doesn’t operate on the exact same level every day. I have yet to go to class on a day that I ‘felt’ too tired to work out and abandoned ship in the middle of class (or regretted going).

Go. You can always leave. Your feelings are lying to you.

D. Bottom Line: Everything you do for yourself should be an expression of how much you love yourself.