During the 50 Day Challenge, I have discovered something amazing.
When I started this challenge, it was with the thought wouldn’t it be great to hit New Year’s Eve with enthusiasm for the coming year and all that life holds? With that in mind I set up the challenge to take one or two things that have been blocking you in life, really focus on it and bust through those walls holding you back. Well I hope there are others out there who are taking the challenge on and seeing results, but what I can say for myself is that the challenge has proved life changing for me.
My two biggest obstacles for years have been writing and weight.
I would see these two things come up in meditation all the time, but it wasn’t until I set extreme determination into play on them that things started coming to light. I have since broken through on both these things, but as it turned out, neither was about what I’d been focusing on all these years and that is what I need to share with you today.
If you’ve read my last several posts on weight, you know that I believe it’s about more than a diet or counting calories, it’s bigger than that, the root is deeper. Otherwise we wouldn’t have two thirds of our country (United States) overweight. That’s an astounding statistic if you ask me… two thirds and childhood obesity levels are still rising, we have a problem. I think much of it lays in how we handle food in this country, but that’s for another blog post. What I want to talk to you about here is something you have absolute control over, your beliefs about yourself.
The big revelation for me was when I saw
that my weight, was not the issue, it was the symptom of the issue. My true issue were habits I developed as a teen and young adult to funnel self-hate. I treated my body cruelly because of things I had come to believe as a teenager, things that I’ve since dealt with appropriately, but the old patterns, the wiring in my brain that constantly pushed me to starve myself, the triggers to do so, were all still in place.
So while my guides were pushing me on “weight” in meditation, it wasn’t weight they wanted me to deal with. They wanted me to rewire my brain, get rid of the old landmines and find replacement coping mechanisms for if I hit one I missed anyway.
So I started to create a “new normal”. I intentionally set about recognizing what tripped my eating issues. I paid attention to what I ate, when I ate it and why I ate, or didn’t. I began to recognize this fear that I had about eating, like if I ate the food, somehow that meant other people somewhere would starve… ugh the messed up things we learn as kids. :p
As I paid attention, it didn’t take long either, only a couple of days and I started to see the pattern. I asked my adult son who I live with to help me out. He agreed and I set out to change my habits. The agreement with my son being that when I felt these things coming on me, I would tell him. That’s all I had to do, because recognizing it aloud, made me stop. It made me look intentionally at what I was doing and as soon as I did that, I was in control and I could choose anything I wanted from there.
It wasn’t easy, especially at first. There were moments I wanted to literally get in bed, curl in a ball, throw the covers over my head and never eat again, never hear the word food again.
One meal at a time though, I got stronger. I rewrote patterns that I’d had for thirty years. I created that new normal. I didn’t focus on anything that I couldn’t eat, I focused on what I needed to eat, needed to drink to be healthy. I set minimums on water, green tea and produce that I had to meet every day so that I never felt deprived or like I had to do without, I was focused on the positive, what I needed to get done. I love checklists, so I made myself one with my water, green tea, and produce needs on them for each day and I love checking them off!
Yeah, I’m a bit of a dork, but it’s working for me and I’m so excited.
The moment I realized that weight wasn’t about pounds or numbers on a scale, everything changed. Yes, I always believed that was true, but you know how it is, you can “know” something is true but until t becomes internalized it doesn’t do you a lot of good.
If you hear nothing else from this article her this part, weight is NOT your issue, it’s a symptom of your issue. The true problem could be anything from your thinking and beliefs, to your habits and your environment, but it’s NOT your weight and so long as you attempt to treat the symptom, it will never go away permanently.
For me, it wasn’t about pounds, it was about resetting my brain wiring and my habits, thus stopping all vicious treatment of my body, ie starving myself, eating unhealthily, so that my body heals and returns to its natural form… ie not fat.
What I’ve learned, is that if I truly value myself, then it matters very much what and how I eat. Food is not a benign substance in your life. Filling yourself with chemicals and synthetic substances along with processed foods and inhumanely kept animals is vicious treatment of yourself. Your body houses your brain and soul, it is important and it serves you loyally no matter what we put it through. Take a moment, stop and look what you are doing to yourself. Don’t you deserve better? I know when I saw it clearly, I was appalled. I’d never let anyone else treat me with such disrespect, it was time I stopped allowing it of myself.
Think of your body like a black eye, it’s overweight as a result to your constantly punching it. You don’t need to lose weight, you need to stop punching yourself.
It’s a turnaround in thinking that if you can grasp, can literally end lifelong issues with weight. It takes some time, effort and discipline, but anyone who’s ever stuck to a diet for more than three days has that in spades!
Food has been my biggest barrier in my entire adult life and this ended that. I’ve lost fifteen pounds so far, and I didn’t sweat off a single one. I didn’t starve or deprive myself. My body is just functioning normally again and there is no way it can hold all this extra weight, because it wasn’t meant to have it in the first place.
I don’t even know what my life will look like on the other side, and it’s not like I think all the old habits will just die and I’ll never have a craving for anything again, but the interface between myself and food is different. I actually care about my body in a way I never did before. I want to treat it well. Before I wanted to punish myself by not eating, but I’ve outgrown that. The person I am today values herself a hell of a lot more than that, and now I’m proving it every single day with the choices I make with my body and honestly, I’m excited for the first time to see where this road leads because I am free once and for all. I pray you will be too.
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