Full Tilt Boogie

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

Stuffing emotions down with food.  Until you've been there you don't know what it feels like to shove all of your emotions down with food.  It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

 

The law of inertia  is to resist change and motion.  Get moving.  That's the first step.  Tiny steps for tiny feet.  

 

Anger can help you get your body moving because if feels good to process anger as opposed to depression from stuffing your emotions down with food.  I didn't have anger at people or things or incidents. 

 

I had to work it UP.   I had certain addictive foods that marshed our mellow.  One size does not fit all. What's germane for me may not apply to you.   I didn't blame anyone else or make huge rationalizations why I needed those foods.   

 

When multi-crap hit the fan,  I stopped rationalizing why I needed to fall back into bowls of pasta, "bread bread",  pizza, sub sandwiches and all of the ususal suspects that I used for an industrial plunger.  I was treating my body like a toilet more than a seagoing vessel.  It takes longer than 30 days to swim back from the Titantic. 

 

In the beginning,  I worked UP emotions to overcome inertia.   I took them out on the trail.  I can  do that and it still works.  I encourage myself and I remind myself why I started in the first place.  You'll have to do that when no one else is around.  

 

Others grow weary of our core struggles.  They have their own.  I had to take full responsibility for pulling myself out of Post Hole Digging without making rationalizations about anything.  

 

I pulled the plunger out of the toilet.  I turned around and took a good hard look at myself.  I worked up anger at those foods that I used to dig that deep dark hole.  Well meaning coworkers, friends and family will continue to bring in mellow marshers into the breakroom.  They'll fill up the cupboards with highly-refined-to-be-craved foods.  There's always another homemade cake coming around the corner.

 

When those foods were shoved my way so I could shove them down my mouth as a plunger to numb out, I began to work up some anger to be used in a very productive way.   I would thank them kindly.  Treat it lovingly and wrap it up.  You can do that at work.   Cover it up like it's going to sleep for the night...your pet parakeet.  Set it on the desk prominently for all to see, especially the baker.  

 

Then when you're well outta sight, you can wad it up into a ball and pitch it.  Hurl it away.  Someone makes or brings you a sandwich and you don't want that light fluffy white bread that's more like angel food cake....when they're out of sight,  just wad it up into a ball and flush it down the toilet.

 

You don't have to make a big production or draw attention to yourself in the lunchroom.  People really aren't left in suspense with what we're eating every minute of the day....it's the attention we draw to ourselves with an 'attitude' to match that catches their eye.

 

You'll find your own strategies because for some reason,  the world is filled with people in breakrooms, potlucks and parties who don't and won't eat like you want to eat.  If you look them in the eye and become self-righteous or raise your hackles,  they won't want to have anything to do with you.  If you preach, they'll run when they see you coming.  

 

It can be a touchy thing, walking on eggshells and dodging food landmines but you'll find your ways to deal without removing people, friends and loved ones from your life.  There's a way without weigh and whey.  

 

Lean into it without rationalizations.  If you have to work up some anger against the highly-refined-to-be-craved foods to get moving.  Do it.   See yourself stomping on pizza pies as you head up the trail and burning fat in the process. Then when you choose to move beyond that refined food anger everything gets better and better.  It will take longer than 30 days.

 

Happy Awareness.   You're no longer using food as a plunger and stuffing all of your emotions down with food. 

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

There are many who enjoy baking cakes for others.  I will not rain on their parade but I'm not marching in it either.  Cakes don't make me happy.

 

[MeadowLily]

No.  Just say NO.   

 

[MeadowLily]

 

 

Encourage yourself.  Who are you when no one else is looking. 

 

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

I've never went on a thrill eating spree with fruit in my entire life.  I like fruit but I can take it or leave it.

 

There are elements about certain fruits that I can't get with vegetables.  I like to make berry balsamic reductions or throw fresh berries into a salad or into turkey, chicken, duck, gamehen dishes.  I add favorite berries into burgers or cherries with pork roasts.   

 

I can eat 1/2 an apple and give the rest away.  Fruit has never been a trigger food.  When people go thrill eating ,  I've noted that most people don't use fruit as their first choice for a bender.  They usually fall back into those refined carbs.   

 

So I don't have to give up fruit and I don't eat it inbetween meals.  It's not my trigger and it never will be.  

 

Today, I went to the hospital and I stopped by the cafeteria for a bite to eat.  There was a really large poster by the door and one on the wall.   I read every single tip and deliberately sat by it.  One of the tips was don't eat anything that your Great-Grandmaw wouldn't recognize as a food.  

 

Don't eat anything that a third grader can't pronounce.  My favorite one was don't eliminate all of your favorite foods.  It's causes food obsessions and it's not mentally healthy.  I agree.

 

I've not eliminated fruit out of my life and I'm certainly not obsessed with it.  Dried fruit.  Meh.

 

I am not an all or nothing person.   In the beginning of my Whole 30,  I told myself that I was and I believed I was a  Black and White thinker.  I'm not.  I've worked very hard to move away from that.

 

I do believe if you remove all of your favorite foods or limit your choices down to a mere handful, you can become food obsessed and a food reckoning thrill eating bender can sneak in through the backdoor.

 

So fruit in limited quantities stays.  It doesn't trigger or stir anything up.  

[Laurie]

Hi Meadow. I am back. I joined a Whole 30 group for the month of April. Great people - so much openness, honesty and sharing. Lots of people with similar issues. Stop by our group and spread your wisdom and experience.

Need to figure out how to live without the love of my life, my beautiful Steve.

[jmcbn]

I do believe if you remove all of your favorite foods or limit your choices down to a mere handful, you can become food obsessed and a food reckoning thrill eating bender can sneak in through the backdoor.

Research has shown this to be the the case.

Over-restriction leads to bingeing - particularly for (but not limited to) those predisposed to binges.

[MeadowLily]

That's good, Laurie.  Visiting with people will help.  I was at the hospital yesterday. Taking care of others as you have been doing over the last few years is something others understand once they've been through it. It is the one of the most difficult things in life a person will every have to do and the most rewarding and lasting and honorable.

 

While others think nothing of running out of the house for groceries or the gas station, you can't leave without an alternate to take your place.  You jump in the shower while they're sleeping.  We wash their hair and feet, rub their backs and try to calm their anxieties and fears.

 

Our days are spent sitting by them holding their hand or watching old movies.  Occasionally, you can ask the tough questions.  But you learn to spread those out over weeks because it only causes fear. Fear is contagious and it can bring on panic attacks.  

 

So we mince and parse our words.   We do our crying and sobbing in the car while we're driving down the road.   I was crying with big tears running down my face at a stoplight.  A man rolled down his window and said,  Mam ,  surely things can't be that bad.   I tried to smile and was glad the light finally changed.

 

Yes, Laurie and Hutlifr and jmcbn and Higs, anyone else.   A caregiver needs others to lean on.  You bolster and encourage yourself every day.  It's the way you pick yourself up off the floor and carry on.   When you're going through it, there are days you have to throw everything up against the wall to see what sticks.   

 

Then you get back in that ring and you keep dancing.  No rope-a-dope....nobody puts baby in a corner. Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. 

 

[MeadowLily]

Research has shown this to be the the case.

Over-restriction leads to bingeing - particularly for (but not limited to) those predisposed to binges.

 

I know this to be true.  Dieting was the road to ruin.  Completely ruining a relationship with food.

 

If there was one single diet that would work for all, there would never been need for another diet again in anyone's life.   Some have released almost a 100 lbs and rebounded with every single pound.  They were dieting.  They said they weren't but secretly they were.   

 

They were logging food and doing all of the usual things that dieters do.  Counting crows and calories.  I know this is not a diet BUT......but I'm going to use it like a diet and keep on dieting.  After a few rounds of dieting, they may be ready to lay it down for good.

 

That's the important part of the healing process when you're ready to tell dieting to eat your dust.  Lay it down and don't pick it back up.   Drop dieting like it's hot and say it with strong conviction.  If you're secretly dieting the truth will find you out.

 

 

I believe that trying to eliminate all of your favorite foods for a lifetime is a setup for a hookup with more thrill eating and food benders that will leave you dieting for decades.

 

The only way you'll know you've faced it is when you quit weight cycling with tremendous losses and rebounds.  Until then, it's not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing and you'll get lost in the forest.   Search and Rescue teams will be sent out looking for you with planes and volunteer searchers on the ground.   So don't hide.  Show yourselves out in the open.  Find a clearing so we can see you.   Leave pieces of your clothing tied to trees.   Time is short and don't waste another day out there dieting.  

 

Grizz is out there.  He's really hungry.  Get back here with us because there's safety in numbers.  

 

Dieting is trying to "thin the herd".   It does not work.

[MeadowLily]

jmcbn.  You're a fighter and champion in the ring.  

 

[MeadowLily]

Quantifying food into human characteristics.   'Nuts are so dangerous.'  That's nutty.

 

If you're saying things like that it's edging up against food disorder.  Linear eating leads to obesity and eating disorders.

 

http://www.measuringbehavior.org/files/2014/Proceedings/Ioakimidis,%20I.%20-%20MB2014.pdf

[MeadowLily]

[MeadowLily]

There's no such thing as the perfect future.  Trying to create the perfect future is an attempt to control others around you and their realities.  Where we live and who we live with defines our world.

 

You can move and change your address but you're taking you with you.  We can buy things to alleviate boredom but land that is not cultivated will quit producing.  Business that is ignored will not survive. Families without affection, no amount of things will make up the difference.  We can't control the weather or the outcomes.

 

People wait all week for Friday.  All year for Summer.  All life for happiness.

 

Most of the stuff we worry about never happens.  Let's be happy for 30 days in a row and call it Whole 30.