Week 21 Update: Non Scale Victories

Well I haven't posted my weekly update in a few weeks, partially because I have been so busy, partially because the scale can suck it. Mostly the last part. Since throwing in the Weight Watchers towel I have put on about 4 pounds. Not the end of the world but not a good thing of course.

Our lives have been super hectic lately and our eating has suffered big time. We had company a few weekends ago and then during the long weekend a friend in need  moved in with us. Add onto that work stress and my whole "intuitive eating" goal got pushed aside. I still think it is the right way, I just have to start living the principles. That means approaching every meal with my head on straight  and not all wrapped up in the drama of the moment. A tall order? For sure! Impossible? Not at all, people do it all the time!

Even though I am up 4 pounds, I am feeling victorious in other areas. I did some yoga on the weekend with a few girlfriends and really enjoyed it. In fact, I am going to join a yoga studio and start doing it regularly. I think it will really help to strengthen my body (I am still hurting today!) as well as give me a tool to deal with my stress.

I also posted a few weeks ago about getting in touch with my health. I truly believe that if I start to take care of some of the health concerns I have, the weight will start to take care of itself. The first step for me was getting my allergies tested and the results were surprising. Now I know that allergies aren't underlying a lot of my concerns. Today I am beginning a 3 week "digestive reset" prescribed by my Naturopathic Doctor. This involves going grain free and low carb. These dietary guidelines, along with some specific supplements, will help to heal my digestive tract. Interestingly enough, I work for a digestive care company. I know that a healthy digestive tract is the basis of good health and I felt as though my digestive tract was in good order. I was wrong. Apparently my tests showed a severe deficiency in pancreatic enzymes and some issues in my small intestine. So I begin this next 3 weeks of low carb with the intention of healing my gut not losing it. This is the first time in my life I have truly made a dietary change to better my health and not lose weight. This shows me that my mindset must be shifting ever so slowly.

The last victory I had was during my therapy session and it was about letting go of the urgency. I approach life with a certain sense of urgency and this blog is a testament to that. 100 pounds in 2013 is a lofty goal! With each week that passed where I didn't lose any or enough weight, I would get more and more stressed out. In my mind, failure wasn't an option but success was getting less probable and that fight was draining my energy all the time. The idea of coming up to December 31st and failing in such a public way was terrifying and then my therapist asked "So what? What will really happen if you don't lose 100 pounds this year?" This gave me pause. I will be disappointed but I will still be in a better place than I was December 31st of last year. My friends will still be my friends. My husband will still be proud of me. My son will still think I am the best momma in the world. What a relief! This doesn't mean that my goal has changed. I still plan on losing 100 pounds in 2013 but it means that the world won't end if I only lose 60! Leave you with this powerful quote :)

I'm allergic to WHAT?

Anyone who has been following my blog know that I am always thinking I am allergic or sensitive to something. First it was gluten/wheat. Then it was dairy. Tomatoes and nightshade vegetables followed. This is all because I am dealing with hives and itching all the time. Drives me nuts. So I decided to find out once and for all what I am allergic to and got some tests done. I just picked up the results and out of 200 foods, I am sensitive to the following:

• Bananas
• Pineapple
• Blueberries
• Cranberries
• Lemon

Oh and let's not forget cabbage!! Only I would be allergic to FRUIT! Dairy...no worries. Wheat? Not at all. Tomatoes....NOPE! Freaking fruit salad and coleslaw. Summer picnics be damned :)

So I guess it is good news but it certainly doesn't answer why I am itching like I need to be de-loused all the time. The doctor performed some other tests and it looks like I am severely enzyme deficient. This is kind of comical in a way since I work for a company that specializes in enzymes yet I don't actually take them. "I don't find I need them, I am not bloated." Well sister, looks like you do! I also have a lot of inflammation in my ileum, which is the last part of your small intestine. I guess a colonic is in order. Good times, good times...

The doctor wants me to take enzymes and probiotics (along with my other supplements), follow a grain-free and low coffee diet (she actually said no coffee but I am pretending I heard LOW coffee) and come back in three weeks for a follow up. This is my first step in eating to heal my body, not to lose weight. Feels kind of liberating!

Everyone needs therapy!

I have determined that everyone needs to go to therapy at least once in their lives. I had mentioned that I was going to see a psychologist about my eating this week and it went really well. It is amazing what comes up within four walls of no judgement. It was an interesting experience and I uncovered a lot in just one hour. I felt like I was babbling the whole time but when she reframed what I said back to me it gave me pause. I spend SO much time in my head that it was kind of nice to step outside of it for a minute.

It has taken me a few days to kind of process the major things we discussed. It is one thing to uncover something, it is another to figure out what the hell to do with it. I am going to share some of it here now that I have a better grasp on things.

IDENTITY

My weight has always been a part of my identity from the time I was a little girl. When I was younger it made me into the "funny one". I was the class clown and that worked for me. I always had lots of friends and lots of fun. In my early 20's while I was at University I was the FAT NUTRITIONIST. I fell in love with nutrition and determined that I was going to use this knowledge and passion to figure this whole weight thing out. I was going to start a clinic, write a book and be on Oprah! This dream of mine is one I carry to this day (except the being on Oprah bit....damn retirement!). In my mid to my late twenties, I embraced the BBW label. Big Beautiful Woman. If that wasn't identifying with your size, I don't know what is. After 30, I resolved to get this weight off once and for all. I started sharing my story with everyone I met. The fat nutritionist was back at it.

Now I am 37, a new mom, a wife, the head of a marketing department and trying to get comfortable in all of these new roles.  My identity isn't so defined by my size now and I am struggling a bit with that. I guess part of me feels I am giving up on the dream I have carried so long but the other part of me is SO ready to move on. There is this internal struggle going on as I am trying to figure out who I am now versus who I have always been. I guess I feel a little lost and you know what? That is OK. We all go through phases and changes in our lives. My life has changed course and in so many positive ways, time for me to embrace it.

FOCUS

When I was talking with the Doctor she made a really good observation. I was going on and on about how I change programs all the time, am always thinking about what I can and can't eat, reading new things about diet on an almost daily basis. I said I am obsessed with getting that scale to move down but I am tired of trying to figure out how to make it happen. She replied with "Do you think you are maybe bored or burned out on the whole weight thing?" I am beyond burned out on it but I know I need to get healthier. So she suggested I focus on just that, HEALTH. She liked the idea of intuitive eating and encouraged me to continue following the principles but if there are certain things I know are health concerns, focus on those and make choices that support change in those areas. I am blessed with the knowledge base to be able to deal with most of my health issues myself but I have always had such a singular focus on weight that they fell to the wayside. Perhaps just taking the focus off weight for a while will help me to better take care of myself because what I have been doing up to now has not been taking good care of me. I really want to be a healthy and happy mom for Aidan and I don't have to be 130 pounds to do that.

I walked away from this session understanding myself a little bit more. I am going through a period of change and that is a good thing but also a scary thing. Time to relax into the process and see where it takes me. I am going to see a Naturopathic Doctor on Wednesday so I can begin to deal with some of the health issues that have been underlying for awhile. If she mentions weight (which she will) I am going to say that I have it covered and that I would rather focus on my other issues for now.  I am feeling much more at peace the last few weeks so I must be heading in the right direction.

IE Principle #3: MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD

Well it was a week ago today that I quit Weight Watchers in my attempt to get off the diet rollercoaster and embrace intuitive eating. I would say I am definitely no longer dieting and the waist of my pants might agree. Damn me and my extreme personality. I have enjoyed eating the past week (we had company for part of it) but now I am going to really start focusing on LISTENING to what my body needs instead of what my brain is tell me it wants. It is really like a little angel/devil on my shoulder situation. I am also going to speak with a counselor tonight about food addiction because I know that I need help in dealing with that.

Today I am going to look at the third principle of intuitive eating: MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD

The premise of this principle is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat. The thought is that labeling a food as bad or off limits can lead to intense feelings of self-deprivation. When you finally give into the craving, you may over-eat and feel guilty. Oh boy, can I relate to this! Many times I have ended up indulging on something I thought I could never eat and would never eat again. When I say indulging, I mean binging like it was my last supper! I have such a love-hate relationship with food and that is one of the main reasons I wanted to adopt this philosophy. I don’t want to pass my messed up thoughts on food to my kids and definitely not my messed up habits.

Food to me has always been anything but fuel. It has been comfort. It has been punishment. It has been control. It has been grams of carbohydrates or “Points” or allowances. I have dissected it right down to the micro and macro nutrients.  It has never just been FOOD. I am so sick of looking at it as anything but what it truly is; energy for my body.  When I first read this principle I thought IMPOSSIBLE. How am I going to give myself unconditional permission to eat and not end up 400 pounds?! Then I re-read it. It says unconditional permission to eat, not to OVEREAT. There is the difference. I am so used to feast or famine that the concept of “normal” eating is foreign to me. This principle will take some work but when I get it, I think my whole life with benefit. I can’t imagine how much time will be freed up by not obsessing about what foods I should and shouldn’t eat or how many points/carbs are in my meals. Making peace with food is like making love not war. It is time to love my body instead of battling it. I am calling a truce!

I'm a quitter!

We think of quitting in a negative way but what about when someone quits something that no longer serves them? Quitting smoking for example. Last night I quit Weight Watchers. I didn't give up on losing weight but I quit the program I was on. It was not easy to do but I am so glad I did. I feel relieved to be moving forward in a more positive direction.

I went back and was re-reading some of my initial posts from January when my plan was all shiny and new. Part of me felt bad that I wasn't following through but then I thought about Albert Einstein's definition of insanity.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. 

What I have been doing to myself both physically and mentally is insane. I know better and that is why I get so frustrated with myself! My history of one extreme diet after another is the definition of insanity. I am excited about the days, weeks and months ahead. This is whole new territory for me but it feels like home. It is where I need to be. Fitting that I finally bit the bullet on International No Diet Day. It was like a sign that I was making the right decision. I shared this on my Facebook but I will share it here as well. After my visceral reaction to my weigh-in yesterday, it is a message that I need to adopt as fact.

Week 18 Update: Fork in the road, not in the pie!

HI Everyone,

This past week has been a very interesting one and overall I would say a success even if the scale doesn't agree. I was up 1.1 pounds this morning and very surprised by that. I was expecting a moderate loss, maybe the 1.6 pounds I had put on the week before and a little extra. Definitely wasn't expecting to be up but it happened for a reason. There is a lesson to be learnt from this I am sure.

Let me tell you about my week last week. I started applying the concepts of Intuitive Eating. I was listening to my body and making choices that served me in that moment. I actually felt very peaceful (for lack of a better term) the whole week. On Saturday I even remarked to my husband "Even if I am not down a lot this week, I feel happy knowing that I really listened to what my body needed and made good choices". That was Saturday, on Sunday the weigh-in stress started kicking in and Jon and I fought like cats and dogs all day. By the end of the day, I was feeling really anxious about the next morning. Woke up this morning, went to weigh-in and was up a piddly 1.1 pounds. I felt like I was going to cry.  As I was standing there, fighting back the tears and knowing I had spent the week prior making good choices for myself, the gal who weighed me in passed me a tracker. She said to track on paper the next week so my leader could tell me what I was doing wrong next Monday. That is so opposite of where my head is at right now, so completely opposite. Of course she was just offering a suggestion to try to help but it highlighted the importance of me moving forward with this intuitive eating.  I need to get to a place where a weigh-in doesn't unravel me emotionally and overshadow all of the good that happened leading up to it. That place is not within the walls of Weight Watchers. I think I have come to this conclusion. It is a great program for some but for me it is detrimental to where I am at right now.

So whats my next step? Keep working the principles of IE and deciding how I am going to measure my success. Part of me wants to weigh daily. It seems counter intuitive but  removing that weekly anticipation might be a very good thing for me. Another part of me thinks I should weigh-in every 2 weeks and measure my waist circumference on the off weeks. Regardless of the scale, I need to learn to focus more on the NSV "Non-scale victories" like how great I felt last week. I am a much healthier and happier woman than I was 4 months ago and I know I will be even healthier and happier 4 months from now. It is a process and for me, one of trial and error. Most importantly, I feel like I am heading in the right direction.  I mean how can getting in tune with your body be wrong?

IE Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger

I have a few days of trying to be more in tune with my eating under my belt. I have unsubscribed to all of my weight loss newsletters/blogs and I am trying to figure out what to do with all of my weight loss books. I am still unsure about cancelling my Weight Watchers membership, it feels like a big step that I might not be quite ready to make. I am working on “rejecting the diet mentality” but it is so deeply engrained that I know it will take some time. I also know that until I do, I will never be able to fully embrace intuitive eating. Today I am going to begin looking at the 2^nd principle of intuitive eating:

Honor Your Hunger

This principle is all about the importance of keeping your body fed so you don’t trigger that primal drive to over-eat. Once we reach that point of being famished, all good intentions go out the window. You just want to eat and you will eat anything you can get your hands on. The intention of eating moderately or consciously became a distant memory. It is all about listening to your body and knowing its signals so that you never reach that point of excessive hunger.

I have a weird history with hunger. When I was a teenager someone told me to embrace the feeling of hunger because when my stomach was rumbling that meant my body had to use fat to survive. I took this nugget of info and ran with it. I loved when I felt that way however I could only hold onto the feeling for so long before I cracked. This was the beginning of my binging episodes. I would starve myself all day and then binge at night. I also just kept getting bigger and bigger. During my first year of university I realized that this disordered eating so I worked at fixing it and my weight started to move in a more positive direction. Unfortunately I became almost panicked when I would feel hungry so for years I never allowed myself to get to that point because it was uncomfortable for me.

 Two extremes, neither good.

Now I can live with the feelings of hunger (I am hungry right now!) but I don’t really trust my body and mind to decipher between true hunger and emotional hunger. This will take some time. I have been trying to become more aware of what those signals are and what some of my habits are. For example, often when I am hungry I have a cup of coffee. It fills me up, perks me up and I love the taste. This week instead of reaching for that quick fix, I have been asking “What does my body need right now?” usually it is some water and a few almonds or a piece of fruit.  If the answer is “A coffee” then so be it, but at least I took the moment to reflect on the situation.

This is also about not always eating to the clock. Just because it is noon, doesn’t mean you have to eat lunch. Similarly, just because it is 3pm doesn’t mean you can’t have dinner (call me Grandma!). It is about eating when you are hungry to fuel your body. Not because the clock tells you to, not because there is food there so you might as well, not because you are bored. You eat because you are hungry and you never allow yourself to get so hungry that you lose control. Hmmmm sounds doable right? Time will tell!