I'm Afraid I HAVE TO QUIT

"Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul"

~Simone Weil

... who, after a lifetime of battling illness and frailty, died in August 1943 from cardiac failure at the age of 34. The coroner's report said that "the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed." Despite all her concerted efforts,

apparently the light never did flood her soul.

I decided to focus on the Healthy Reflections from Sparkpeople quote for the day because it was just so darn spot-on in what I've been thinking about since yesterday.

What we can learn about patience from a diamond
"Trying (but failing) to see your goals realized can be frustrating. Margaret Thatcher once said "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it," and she was absolutely right. You've got to believe that you will succeed! Never admit defeat as long as time and effort remain. Our greatest asset is patience; our greatest weakness is throwing in the towel. Banish discouragement and feelings of impossibility by working hard, doing more, and not giving in! A diamond was only made beautiful after millions of years as a lump of coal."

I was just thinking about how painful is the loss I feel after having released 62 pounds, to re-acquire 24 of them back. I realized I have been beating myself up, over and over again, every day, all day... when I notice the bulge at top of my legs that was gone, the little bloop of flesh around my knees that had disappeared, the extra fullness around my waist in the back which had miraculously smoothed out... and I keep mentally berating myself. I must QUIT IT.

I have to QUIT with the self-flagellation, I have to QUIT getting my hair shirt out every day and putting it on. If the rest of the world-who-actually-knows-me who has seen me regain some weight thinks negatively about me? What business is it of mine? The only way I can change it, is to CHANGE it. And beating myself up day after day about not being able to enjoy RIGHT NOW the benefits of shedding the particular amount of pounds I had, is not going to put me any closer to get that 24-pound battle won this time. And now is all I have right now.

I remember something somebody once said: "If you've got one foot in tomorrow and the other in yesterday, you can't help but piss all over today." So graphic, but so true. So I am HEREBY PUBLICLY FORGIVING MYSELF for being human, being like (unfortunately) 80% of all people who lose weight, and letting it creep back on. If any of those self-destructive thoughts come again, I have selected a suitable phrase I won't print here I'll use to get rid of them. And I will simply move forward, SET FREE from the tyranny of my own self-defeating guilt, and FINISH BANISHING THE 24 into oblivion!

The Dangers of Rejecting Turkey

When I first glanced at this subject heading in my email inbox last week, I briefly thought, oh, heeeeere we go. Some idiot has decided eating turkey is absolutely necessary to the survival of the human race. Life as we know it, according to some scientist in god-knows-where Azerbaijan, will end, turning upon the mandatory consumption of a giant NorthAmerican fowl.

Imagine the jarring feeling I got when I read the first paragraph of the article: "Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked out of Davos in a huff last week during a discussion about Gaza in which he berated Israel..." and I subsequently discovered that the COUNTRY of Turkey is apparently hugely strategic, a NATO ally and a longstanding friend to the West. "What Turks do and think affects the balance of power in the world, positioned as they are between the Middle East and Europe, between Russia and the Arab-Islamic bloc, while serving as Iraq's conduit for trade and supplies in the south and Georgia's in the north." Oh. THAT Turkey.

Which leads me to my reflections for today, dear reader. How insulated I have become in my own mental construct, how completely attuned to ALL THINGS COMESTIBLE... that I automatically think of the food-related meanings with regards to all communications. I am truly food-centered. This has got to stop.

So I asked myself, what would the Prime Minister of Turkey do in this instance? Why not randomly take a look at my personal issues from Turkey's perspective? To start with, let's examine Erdogan's personal motives, the first and most important: "As the global economy tanks and brings Turkey with it, he needs to distract attention from the bottom line." So taking a lesson from Erdogan, I must begin to DISTRACT myself from FOOD. I came up with these strategies for this week:

1. Spend as much time engaged in my work, my projects, and exercise as possible.
2. Avoid ALL commercials and advertisements involving food.
3. Think about NO recipes...engage in monoeating for the next several weeks.
4. Plan for weeks, but execute the DAYS...mayhaps the HOURS.
   

That's it. Oh, I won't go into how two-faced Erdogan is behaving in the world arena. In all of this, it doesn't matter whether the Turks are right or wrong, wise or ill-advised in their sense of grievance. Or how Erdogan is certainly playing a dangerous game. What may bear ill omen: the West is not in the game at all. As Melik Kaylan says in his Forbes article this week, "While Russia has become Turkey's main trading partner, Iran a partner in the struggle to contain Kurdish separatism, Syria ditto, and Arab oil money a major investor, the West [keeps standing Turkey up at the dance,] while Turkey waits, publicly humiliated."

He was, after all, a mere pawn in my arbitrary choice of a blog topic.