Robin's words after my last cheat on the FB group:  " If you cheat, observe your justifications, judgments, and your guilt. Cheating opens your eyes to observe your thoughts and your resulting behavior. they can be essential steps towards changing your relationship with food and your body permanently."

So now I will use these words as a tool to analyse what happened today.  Today I broke protocol.  Again.  In one week.  But I know, I have to let go of the idea of perfection.  The goal is to slowly change how I look at food and how I look at myself.  So . . .

My justifications:

  1.) I was baking cookies for the Step Up seniors at Roosevelt and I wanted to see how they tasted (had to make some recipe modifications.
  2.) My husband and I had a huge blow out fight and I was frustrated.
  3.) The food was left out and it looked good.

My judgments/guilt:

  1.) Now I have ruined my diet and I will be fat forever.
  2.) I might as well give up.  I am going to suffer through this round and lose nothing.
  3.) I might as well give up.  I am going to keep cheating and gain back more than I was at first.
  4.) I can't do this for myself so I must hate myself.
  5.) I am never going to lose weight or meet my goal of not emotionally eating.  Ever.

Thoughts:

I notice that one thing I left out when I was so upset and food was so available was how my body felt in that emotional space.  In fact I don't remember one thought I had in that moment.  I just remember being mad and shovelling food into my face.  Last week my goal was to observe my bodies' reaction to my feelings, especially uncomfortable feelings without judgment.  Just to see what my body feels like when my mind is in an uncomfortable situation.  I ate much more normally when I did that.  So what I learned from today is that it is imperative that I give myself a time out when those emotions start to surface ESPECIALLY when food is around.

I can do this. Still.

Goodbye grads . . . happy thoughts and worried confessions

Today I had the immeasurable privilege of seeing 12 of the students I have worked with for at least one year, and some more extensively through this year GRADUATE.  What a feeling!  So much excitement and so much stress, writing all of my thoughts and wishes for each of them down.  

Food was present in my mind all day.  I noticed that I was also hungry more than usual.  True, I am dealing with TOM, but I am concerned that there was an element of stress eating.  Or celebration eating?  Whatevs. Emotional eating, not need based eating.  

I still struggle with stopping eating when I am no longer hungry.  I know if I am not satisfied, if I am still hungry I will go get more, or another food option.  But if I have scooped it out I will consume it.  :/

While I am confessing, I better put this out in the universe: I have been weighing myself.  A lot.  Like, the first two days, at least twice a day.  The past two days I have only been weighing daily.  I know I need to put the scale away!!  

What am I looking for the scale to tell me?  I guess that I am making progress?  I don't know!  I know the real progress is what is gong on inside, what the scale cannot measure.  I know that if I change PERMANENTLY my view of food that my weight, looks, outward will eventually match the changes I make inside.  

So why the scale?

I will set a date.  Saturday.  I will note my weight for the week and ask my husband to put the scale away until next week.

Also I am scared that since I have been weighing so frequently, and since my body asked for a little more then protocol today, that I will be upset/frustrated/discouraged by my weight tomorrow.  Which is, I realize, one of the biggest reasons that Mind/Body HCG protocol recommends not weighing.  I have been challenged by Robin on the Facebook support group to accept a protocol round that is not perfect.  I will take my weigh in tomorrow as a challenge to do just that.

Back in the saddle . . . da da, dadadada . .

I have decided that the time for the HCG protocol redo is now. 

I originally stopped because of some crazy personal stuff that was going on, up to, but not only including the anniversary of one of my best friend's death, further revelations about why and how he died (like reliving it all), my current best friend moving to a place where she is almost inaccessible, and getting laid off.

Robin Phipps Woodall was the one that set me straight. 
 "A quick way to abruptly change direction is to stop telling yourself you'll fix the damages 

later."

Wow, Robin.  

I know that I have changed.  So much.  But honestly, friends, I was one step from 

crying over the scale . . . again.  Eating until I had acid reflux at every meal.  That ol' body

hatred cycle.  I was stuck and I couldn't figure out how to recapture my original enthusiasm 

but I knew I HAD to.

So I'm done.  I am not going to be that HCG bulimic that uses HCG instead of puking.  I want 

the me that I envisioned when I began that journey.  I need to go back and reread my own 

posts and reinspire myself.



I can't wait.

Just. Doing. BADDDDD.

So I realize that the past 4 days or so I have been eating and eating and eating.  Never when hungry, and often until I am sick.  I realize I have been sadder than usual, and even though Sunday was the anniversary of my best friend's death (one year) I feel like there is something else I need to face.  I have actually felt more at peace with losing my friend then I was a week ago.  And I realize how much I hate going to bed on a full stomach.  I can't sleep on it, never mind other night time activities I enjoy ;)  Even though I really tried to address and face my emotional issues that caused me to binge during the VLCP, I need to bring that practice of consciousness back into my everyday life.  I don't like how I feel right now.  I feel guilty for eating a whole batch of cookies, not to mention greedy.  I can't use my stomach muscles because they are too stretched out.

I hate this.

I have so much awareness of other addictive behaviors!  I had been having a (rather large) glass of wine every night.  I felt like I was looking forward to it too much, so I quit having it.  I am currently messing around with the idea of quitting coffee, especially when work ends for the school year.  I hate the idea of something external determining how I feel.

So why is food so hard to break free from?

The negative self talk has not returned, however.  I feel like if I don't get this binging under control, that is the only thing left to return.  The body obsession, self hating, scale obsessed woman that is embarrassed to look in the mirror or be in a picture.  I am still better than I was.

I have been going to the gym, doing zumba still, and lifting weights.  Feeling my body work and pushing it and observing it reach its limits is truly exhilarating.  I am grateful that my attitude towards working out has not changed.

The goal is the same . . .
 

ZZZZZUMBA!

Today, not ONCE did I feel past about a 5.5!  What a great feeling!  But my biggest revelation was in Zumba today.

For me, Zumba has been like a recovery of sorts.  My biggest stretches of disordered eating accompanied my participation in dance.  I would always look in the mirror and see "too fat to dance."  Seeing "too fat to dance" made me self conscious, overly critical of other girls and just a less joyful dancer.  After I read the book Chi Running, I saw why I had felt so unsuccessful   I always felt like I was just outside of something so beautiful and so perfect in my dance, but I had only skimmed it a couple times.  Those times that I felt such an intense joy and so full of every breath in my body that my movement couldn't help but be perfect.

What had stopped me from always being this way?  My body image.  Caused by my weight gain from emotional eating.  Which made me sad about being so big and not being able to dance like I wanted.  Which made me eat.  And sometimes throw up.

If I was skinny, I used to say.  If I was skinny I would be a star.  If I was skinny I could choreograph, I could partner, all of the teachers would drool over me and my feet, my flexibility.  But when I read Chi Running, about directing your Chi and feeling your breath flow through out your body with no impediments, I realized . . . I was my biggest impediment.  I didn't want to smile or have fun.  How could I smile if I couldn't get the moves as quick as other girls?  How could I get the moves when I was so busy thinking about my leotard showing my back fat?

So when I started Zumba, it was in the dark.  I felt the energy soaring through my body.  There was no judgement, only joy.  It was like making peace with my body and my movement, one of the fundamental ways I felt good expressing myself.

Now I belong to LA Fitness.  I am back in a dance studio with mirrors and a teacher.  Now, I know Zumba is not anything like a dance class.  But I am astonished at the way I jumped back into that negative dancer mentality.  One of my fellow Zumbaphiles was wearing jazz shoes and kept trying to do intricate moves between the dances we were doing.  I found myself judging her, instead of feeling her enjoyment in the movement.  Then I looked in the mirror at the blank look on my sweaty face.  I felt so good, why was I holding it in?  Was I jealous of the woman who was so freely . . . happy?

So I did it.  I just let go of my face and let it reflect the joy I felt.  It was scary.  But you know what?  I had so much more fun that way.  Just like I am working so hard to make peace with food and tune into what my body needs, one day I hope to make peace with my movement and to truly move from my heart, cut out the sound, the negative back talk and just dance.

Feel the pain, and do it anyway

It's been a rough, rough, ROUGH couple days.  I ate okay, but I feel like I have been going through life in a daze.  I feel my self slowly shutting myself off, slowly retreating back into old habits of quiet worry and isolation.  For a little while, I am losing my best friend due to some personal issues that she needs to resolve. I fully support her and what she needs to do.  On the other hand, I am very cognizant of the fact that talking to her and her support and being able to support her has been huge in my recovery from emotional eating.

She needs to do her right now.  And I need to do me.

But right now, I feel like it just hurts too much to figure out what that means.  Opening up my feelings to another person is the scariest thing that I can imagine.  Public speech? Heights? Dentist? HONESTY AND OPENNESS??  The words typed out sends me into a panic.

I feel frozen in time and space.  But I can't look back.  Yes, I ate a bag of some kind of potato puffs while totally not hungry.  Yes, I binged on split pea soup (easier then it sounds).  But the changes I have made are real.  I am going to the gym because I want to and because it feels good.  I am eating only when hungry about 85% of the time (still working on how to stop).  But I see progress.  And eating doesn't stop the pain.

This is my revolution.  This is my chance to do me.  And just like I tell my students, they are intelligent, strong, and they deserve their successes, I know I should say the same to myself.  I need to keep heeding my conscience, listening to my heart, and staying tuned in to my body.

I want to imitate Rilla Gibson (http://mindbodyhcg.wordpress.com/).  She has been logging daily using the hunger scale to increase her self awareness.  While I want to continue being gentle with myself I want to limit mindless eating and increase my own awareness of my patterns.

Hunger & Fullness Scale

Hunger Scale:
1 - Disparaging
2 - Critical
3 - Urgent
4 - Patient
5 - Content

Fullness Scale:
6 - Satisfied
7 - Satiated
8 - Full
9 - Discomfort
10 - Pain

"Eat cautiously, introduce fats slowly, and keep hunger between a 3.5 and 5.5. Avoid getting too hungry and overly satiated." (Source: Mind Body Method Workbook)

Like Learning To Ride a Bike . . .

Today was a huge day for me. I learned how to ride a bike for the first time today! I learned in a public park with people around and I just focused on what I had to do. It was hard and the thought crossed my mind that maybe I just COULDN'T do it. But this was my time! It took two hours and paying a pro 75 smackers for two hours. And yes, I stumbled, I felt awkward and uncomfortable. I had to learn to do things differently. But eventually O was able to trust the body mechanics and the physics that cause that effortless forward motion. At 33, I finally am a bike rider.

I have tried to find a natural way to eat and live for years. Now is my time. My days as an emotionally driven self condemning, controlling, losing control, excuse making dieter are already fading  into my history. Yes, I will stumble. I might feel awkward or unnatural. But I know I will be able to trust my body soon. To let go and let my body care for itself in a way I never have. The same effortless forward motion towards freedom from diets and harmful body image thoughts. I will get there.

Today I was so hungry all day. I still ate to hunger, all protein (not by choice). I will be honest, I'm feeling a little freaked. But weight loss or not, I was successful because I can say I ate to hunger. No no complaints!

I WILL GET THERE!!!


The hunger is so hard to name right now . . . I feel like it's emotional maybe.  I have this sense that a binge is just looming over me . . . Watching Robin right now.  I got this y'all.

This is my goal, people.  To be the girl on this video:

Not Robin :)  The one she is talking to.  I know I will get there.  I know I will be able to trust this process.  Today I had a great day eating to hunger, but I find that all morning I am drinking coffee.  I also worry that I am leaning too hard on coconut oil.  I actually want to weigh myself tomorrow (I'm sorry!) just to confirm that I am doing okay even with the coconut oil.  If I am still going down, then I will give my scale to my mom and I will fall into trust . . . eyes closed, mind open . . .

I want to be able to see myself accomplishing SOLID GOALS.  I am fitting into older clothes, but nothing shocking to me.  But I am wary of making my motivation body size related.  I cannot say that right now I love my body, but I don't hate it, and I feel like I am able to coexist with it in friendship for the first time ever.  I mean, I am not putting down parts of my body or punishing it with too much food.  I am just listening.

It feels good.

10 Reasons Not To Weigh 

During Mind/Body Hcg Protocol Round

1. If I gain weight, or stall, I might give up and eat everything in sight.
2. If I lose weight, I might be too happy and eat everything in sight.
3. Weight loss does not give me any information about how I have done eating to hunger.  Only I can give that information.  The scale can take that power from me.
4. Weight says nothing about fat gain, loss, or shifts.
5. Focusing on weight will orient my thinking back to size and body image and away from my goal: to eat in response to HUNGER and break the cycle of emotional eating.
6. Monitoring my weight will change my goal to a weight loss amount rather than the weight loss being a side effect of being a healthier, happier, person.
7. Whether or not I weigh myself, the magic will happen . . . so let it be magical!
8. I don't want my kids seeing me on the scale multiple times a day (I always start with weighing once, then twice, usually three times).
9. Before this, not weighing myself has been a symptom of me giving up.  From now on, I want not weighing to be associated with being more and more in tune with my body rather than needing an appliance to give me the 411.
10. I decided I would not do it, and I want to keep my commitment to myself!

I did give in and weigh myself, and I don't know why.  I hadn't weighed myself since about a week before I began my protocol so I don't really know what the number means.  206.4 was my weight.  I guess when I am done I can use this number to have an idea of what I lost.  But I can't care about that.

I have bigger fish to poach.

8 Reasons I Would Rather Defeat Emotional Eating

Then Lose Weight

1. I can gain the weight back.  If I quit emotional eating, I will not have a mind that leads my body down that path.
2. You can be a skinny bulimic or anorexic.  I want to be a role model more than I want to be a fashion model.
3. I want to trust my body, not control it.
4. I want to love and respect my body, not hate and fight it.
5. If I only eat when I am hungry, I don't have to worry about getting sick, hormonal issues like PMS or TOM.  I can have confidence that my body will take care of business.
6. I like food, and I don't want it to become my enemy.
7. I am more tired of the dieting roller coaster then I am of being fat.  So why not end the madness in a way that will give me the full happy ending I want?
8. I can eat whatever I want a stay a healthy size! (Except I will have changed what I want and when I want it)

This hunger thing is trickier than I thought.  I keep analyzing and reanalyzing yesterday, because I feel like everything was mentally and emotionally in the right place.  Why the fall?

I have come up with two reasons.

1.) Maybe I WAS hungry.  I ignore my hunger so much, especially busy times during the day.  When I was pregnant sometimes I would wait until I was actually dizzy to eat.  Maybe I misread, and the empty, stomach gnawing feeling was hunger.  I was waiting for pain, or to feel like I had to have food.  Maybe that isn't what it looks like for me.

2.) I may not have been getting enough water.  I usually drink coffee and don't really drink water until nightfall (with the rest of my calories).  This will not be a way to be successful on the HCG protocol.

Today was okay, I ate really light for a protocol day but I ate when I felt that empty hunger.

The biggest thing I encountered today on my journal was a challenge from my therapist.  She was excited to see that I was trying to shift my thinking on weight loss, body image, etc.  She saw a road bump:

What about your inner critic?  Can you spend this week really tuning in to what that voice is saying, and when it is talking?  Not just about dieting, not just about your body, but about anything . . .

Wow.  Like most people I notice my inner critic.  I mostly notice it when I look in the mirror.  Or when I used to weigh myself.

Do I feed myself in response to the negative energy generated by my inner critic?

I asked myself this question:  What if I finish this journey, and my body settles at a size 10?  Mind you, right now I am a size 14 (sometimes a little more depending of the style).   Would I be able to stand up to that voice and say "I'm done, my body is at a healthy weight, and size?"  Right now, the answer is no.  I couldn't face myself in the mirror and see that as my destination.  But what if that is what my body needs?  My inner critic is going to have to learn to line up with my body, we are all in this together!

Me, all of me, is going to have to decide I am good enough.

How does your inner critic affect how and what you eat?

"What does it feel like to be hungry?  Because I don't think I really know."

My mom asked me that when I explained the philosophy of Weight Loss Apocolypse's version of the HCG protocol.  I explained that my primary work on this, my second round of the HCG protocol, was not to lose the 70 pounds I have been belly aching about for 75% of my life.  My work is learning when I am hungry and when I am not.  

I went over and over and over this in my head, this question . . . I told my mom something about physical hunger, stomachs growling, something . . . but here I am in Day three, after eating 2 protein servings and one fruit . . .

And I don't know if I am hungry.

I'm watching television after my sons are in bed.  I usually eat during this.  I feel an emptiness in my stomach but I wouldn't say it's hunger . . .

I thought back to the times that I didn't think about eating as a hobby - that's what it is, right?  A hobby.  When did I eat to be nourished?  When did I eat in a way that respected my body?

I sometimes work as part of a facilitation team that does life changing summer camps for youth.  I have worked about four of them and I remember the stress of it.  I remember the late nights and early mornings.  Every meal was all you can eat.  Many people munched non stop, and at one of the camps I was pregnant.  But at camp I was so focused on the experience of the kids that I postponed eating until I finished whatever work was at hand.  Or until I caught that girl who was crying during one of the pieces.  Or until I finished writing my appreciations.  Yes, the food was camp food, and yes, I ate gummy worms and s'mores.  But my focus was not on avoiding or eating food.  My focus was on THE MOMENT.

How can I bring the honor and respect that I carry for my students and their experience into my life?  I must practice what I preach.  I cannot tell them that they can achieve anything, that they must value themselves, that they must be present and take their opportunity to change without taking mine.  

After camp we always were saddened that kids lose much of camp.  They arrive late to class.  They return to substance abuse.  They bottle up their feelings.

I never realized that camp set me up for a new beginning also.  I must take advantage of it.

Night all.  Gonna watch one of Robin Phipps Woodall's videos and try to stay away from that last melba toast.

The Hunger Scale from Robin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVCIWZ-WFc4