Validation and A Pity-Pot That Will Leave a Mark

Apparently up until about a week ago, I had been utilizing a pitypot built for my convenience, since I had been spending so much time on it. First of all I was stressed because I had an extra marketing project to get done, working in an arena in which I hadn't been for several years. Then I was pissed when they removed it from me after a week. Then I got stressed about jumping back into, complete immersion as it were, my own business I've had for the past seven years, and taking complete responsibility for making it work. I haven't lost all hope, but I am very concerned about finances. As they say, have said, and most likely forever will say, Things right now are tough all over. My industry is particularly cut-throat-- that is disheartening in itself-- and at this point there are so many of us who were accustomed to making a good living and have had to learn to w-w-w-w-o-o-o-o-o-r-r-r-rkkk harder for it, that when you finally get a good prospect, it is tantamount to throwing a bone into a pack of starving Dobermans.

So I'd been struggling within myself all week to stay off that PityPot, when I got an uplifting comment from a drive-by encourager the other day on my Sparkpage, that reminded me even when life gets crazy, how GOOD it feels to at least be in control of one thing, and for me, right now, that's being on track with food and exercise. It refocused me on the things I can absolutely control...how much time I spend working in my business productively (as opposed to just working at it) and how much time I spend planning and executing a healthy lifestyle. Then I got another email right after that about a video on YouTube called Validation. If I could figure out how to embed it, you could see it right here, but you'll just have to click the name and link over to it! Validation is a short narrative "fable" about the magic of free parking., starring TJ Thyne (from Bones) & Vicki Davis, by Writer/Director/Composer Kurt Kuenne, and well worth the 16+ minutes you'll spend to view it. Seeing it, really lifted my spirits, and I resolved to spend more time and energy on trying to make life easier for other people.

I set about acquiring and implementing some new marketing tools. I'm designing a new campaign, and began getting back in touch with previous clients. I got back to eating and exercise-walking consciously through planning. I joined a couple of walking groups, the Clearwater Recreational Walkers and Friends, Fitness & Fun, which have interesting outings, and imported the planned walks and hikes into my calendar. I began calling and checking on people I had not heard from in a while. I renewed a habit I had begun years ago of always acknowledging aloud that special something you can see in every human being you meet-- thanks Kurt Kuenne, for reminding me! I, in essence, began validating my own life again by simply infusing it with positive, productive energy and remembering the importance of others in it. By crikies, after only a week of trying out that "new" plan, I feel about a thousand percent better!

Oh, and I did away with the more enticing pity-pot, and installed one with a STUDDED SEAT.

How Did I Not Love Me? Let me count the ways...

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep...

~~Robert Frost

Reading Lynn Bering's Weightloss Blog...she puts it exactly how I feel/felt/found, and I'm going to paraphrase her:

"I’ve done this before, this little dance of denial, and I’ve always gotten back on course. But when I’m in the midst of stress and that irrational voice tells me I’ll find comfort in [a bite of c*******, a spoonful of rice, a few c**** or some evil salt], it’s hard to hear that rational voice that says, 'STOP! Go meditate, walk, brush your teeth, chew gum, eat a Tic Tac…something other than eat that which you did not PLAN.' I’m one of the most stubborn people I know and still I have a hard time telling myself “no” when I need to hear it most of all. I get there eventually, but not without sincere self-discipline, sitting myself down and asking myself what’s really wrong, what’s causing me to eat instead of cope."

I figure today the scale will be up...I'll go check later this morning when I can get to the gym... but I know I can feel it in my stomach. It's the last place it comes off, and the first to go back on. Anyway, I woke up at 3am, after going to bed about 11:30, and could not get back to sleep...too much on my mind...and I knew I had to have a long talk with myself and jerk myself back into reality again. I knew I had to commit to re-commitment and quit beating myself up about having to constantly re-commit. I mean, isn't that just life? I knew I had to quit waiting for someone to call me on the phone and shock me back to my senses. To quit using backpain as an excuse for not sitting down in front of the computer after I'm done working and getting to the forum more and revealing myself to my support group. I knew I had to get up and just return to all the things I've done for months which have carried me this far... to fitday-ing everything so I can see what I’ve eaten in print, and share it with others. I knew I had to pull myself back in, hand over hand, to my lifeline to shore, my peeps on the forum where I post with other women trying to lose large amounts of weight eating healthily, and mainly raw vegan.

No more being seduced by the seemingly innocent woods, no more temptation to just rest for awhile, to quit pressing forward... if I give in, I run the very real risk of being covered by my blanket of denial, and slowly, slowly slipping into caloric unconsciousness, then death. No more denial. I committed again to choosing to listen to the re-programmed Skinny Brain, and not to Little Voice, whom I've discussed before in this blog. I’ll get up, get out, and walk, even if it is the third time in a day...this means keeping my athletic shoes on, all the time! Or I'll tackle one of several projects I've thought up to help get my asthmatic mortgage business revived. It worked for me, maybe it will breathe life back into it!

It feels good to at least feel back in control. It feels good to have made some decisions about what I plan to do with the rest of my life--- well, for this week anyway. I’ll knock whatever I gained back off in no time, probably on the Five-Day All-raw Cruise. And I feel safe and hopeful again, because I know I’m doing all I can to stop those pounds from inviting their friends for a party inside my skin... I'm the ONLY one who'll be doing that! Before I'm done, surely, I'll be more seductive than some old snow-laden grove of trees.

All I Gotta Do

My Fat Brain got some bad news in the last few days. A growing awareness in Thinbrain has led to the conclusion that the beatings will continue...the exercise will be increased in frequency, duration and intensity. This year is all about simplification, honesty, accountability, cleaning up and cleaning out. I am continuing to intensify my walking, and now running, exercise by now doing it twice a day, once easy, once a little more intense. Now I am also thinking about adding in extra toning and strengthening exercises. The focus is: I don't have time to play around with the weightloss... GET THESE TOXINS OUT NOW.

I've been paying more and more attention to the ladies I'm in contact with who have lost a lot of weight and kept it off successfully. I've also begun to research the subject, because me dealing with it this year is a reality, and I need to begin to prepare. The general consensus is, the more you lose, the more you have to exercise in order to lose more! Because there is less mass to burn the calories than there was before, and even if you strengthen and build muscle mass to replace and burn calories more efficiently, its very efficiency cannot make up for the volume that was formerly inside the body maintaining itself. The White Queen would no doubt tell me I've been living in a slow sort of country, because now, it takes all the running I can do, to keep in the same place. If I want to get somewhere else, I "must run at least twice as fast as that!"

In sales, you set goals and then you set quotas. You set the goal far out, and then you break down time in between now and when you want to reach the goal into quantifiable quotas which will accumulate over regular intervals during the given period of time to yield the goal amount.

I have a goal of 126. I know when I want to be there. I have now gone back and set weekly quotas for toxins to be released, which will result in reaching the goal when I initially planned. In order to effect that release, my intake of calories, which must remain fairly constant within a range of 1000-1200 calories, is less manipulable than the exercise. The amount of exercise I must do in order to work within the range of calories, given the projected weight my body will be on any given week, is therefore identifiable, quantifiable, and DO-ABLE! I have to burn a certain amount of calories, and there are fairly static basal rates for a given weight, and there are set calories expended by various types of exercise with relation to intensity and duration, and that is identifiable...ALL I HAVE TO DO IS STICK WITH THE PLAN AND MY GOAL IS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION!!!! You don't know how much comfort that gives me.

Now... I just have to WANT to stick with the plan hour by hour, day by day, week by week, for the next 22 weeks! That's all I have to do, and I will have completed the first step in restoring That Seventies Body to mois....in becoming Princess PHATso...and then the next tough part begins, but for now, all I have to keep my eyes on is doing my exercise and eating my fruit and veggies for today, so I can meet this next week's quota! I'm on my way!!! 22 MORE WEEKS!!! Two fiscal quarters! A pittance! A snippet of time!!!

What I Learned at Raw Food Boot Camp

All ten of us who read this blog may have noticed my absence the past, oh, let's just call it six weeks and be done.

Well, my goal was certainly to blog more often, and one of my new year's resolutions was to blog nearly daily, but a funny thing happens on the way to the resolution forum every year. I start early in late November-- to get the jump on the rest of the hoi polloi, you see-- but I suspect I have a hidden agenda about that, as well. I believe that the part of my brain (Fat Brain) where Little Voice dwells, lurking behind some algae-covered synapse, has subscribed to the RSS-feed--- I'm not exactly even sure what that is but I know it has something to do with instant notification of updated information--- of the other side of my brain (the side where Glenda the Good Witch stays when she comes to visit), and goes into overdrive to immediately counter-attack any planned positive changes. Therefore, the jumpstart on new year's resolutions serves as a counter-counter response to any insurgency on the part of Fat Brain, which results in said resolutions actually taking effect about...the first week or two of January, same as everybody else.

Then there is the whole maddening December thing my head goes on a tirade about, on any given year, ever since I lost both my parents and a favored dachshund during that season several years back. A few Decembers since 2000, I have absolutely had all I could do to function for the entire month. Much less make the journey, alone, into that head of mine, a necessary evil of the blogging process. And this year, I also had to deal with the contemplation of the end of a career path, continuing the raw food path, etc, etc, waaaah-waaaah, ad nauseum... there are my excuses, and I'm sticking to it!

Now we've got that out of the way, I had taken some time to reflect upon what the Raw Food Boot Camp experience had done for me after it ended November 21st, besides help me lose about 28 pounds. Fortunately, dear reader, I made a few notes and saved them in a text file for future reference for when I wrote my report, What I have learned as a Result of Boot Camp.

Three major things come to mind: getting back "in touch" with ME; uncovering and tackling some inner "work" that needed doing I didnt' know was there; and how to open up lines of communication with my husband, the benefit to the latter of which being re-evaluated on a daily basis. The biggest thing I took away was the realization it can be done, and it can be done by me. I had pretty much given up on getting below the number on the scales the ginormous amount of weight I managed to accumulate inside my skin afforded me. But I proved to myself I was about to give up right before the change. Now, I know it is possible. Now, I know that I can lose the weight--- it takes determination and sticking to the plan but I can do it. I am starting to see the old me, that I imagine I was at some point whether that has any bearing upon the actual truth or not, start to shine through. Now I am taking the excitement of knowing there is something that absolutely does work and converting it to action to shed the pounds! I really am so thankful for this experience!

I have also learned to incorporate exercise and keep it a priority in my life, because I have come to believe and admit that exercise is key to any successful weightloss program, and to keeping it off once you've lost it... and that harder isn't always the best if its the pounds you're really looking to lose. I've learned that I really can set goals and follow through. I've also learned that exercise is good and can elevate my mood more than ice cream ever could, or, as Dr. Stephen Gullo says, exercise keeps my moods out of my foods. I've also learned that all fruit is the best, most efficient way to lose weight, for me, for right now-- fruit always tastes delicious, it's portable, it delivers live nutrients at a moment's notice, it's beautiful to behold and it fills me up..... physically and emotionally.

Oh, a couple more aphorisms... after enduring a particularly difficult December:

It is better to be thinner and miserable, than fat and miserable.

There is no value high enough to be placed upon friends, cyber and flesh alike, who help you keep an attitude of gratitude....SPEAKING OF WHICH, please be good to yourself today and visit an AMAZING SITE that belongs to my new cyber-friend, Christy Murphy. She has tapped into something that is one of the major cures for depression, and has almost become a lost art in our society today...expressing thanks.

And if you are reading this, thank you.

The Worst Thing About My First Day Raw

The worst thing about my first day raw with RFBC was the hour leading up to the time I had set for myself, in my head, to exercise...w-w-w-w-a-a-a-a-lk. How do I hate thee, walking? Let me count the ways... to the depth of shame I feel walking down my favorite walk by the bay as I pass the multitudes of other walker/skater/bikers, all thinner than I. To the heighth of my body which does not seem to be stretched to its full heighth as I walk, but instead, to be sinking, vertebrae by vertebrae into the back of my pelvis, compacting what coccyx I have left into a Necco-sized wafer. To the breadth of my, well, breadth, as my almost-normal sized ankles attempt to balance an entire additional person inside the skin we call my body and totter both beings along the sidewalk at a 3mph clip for 60 minutes.

Right up until I bent forward, squishing a goodly part of me between my chest and my upper thighs as I perched on the sofa, to tie my shoes, stood up and walked right out the front door, my tuchas rushing behind to catch up, no doubt wondering where the feet were going at this hour... right up until then I was not 100% sure I could count on myself to do it. But, I did.

And not without many arguments with Little Voice (not exactly sure, but I think it is the spirit of a long-deceased Native American, apparently bent upon my destruction, I picked up while living in the desert a decade ago), which periodically hissed suggestions I turn back because my large left toe had begun to hurt. Then the blister I got a few days ago on my Achilles tendon flared up, then the back thing kicked in... and it was dark and there were too many thin people to pass, their attractive visages filling and tormenting my view... and on and on... thank God and Drill Sergeant Carlene I got sick of listening to Little Voice's whining this time, and began to distract myself instead with the beautiful surroundings, and to be thankful I could get up and walk at all, and began to notice instead the breeze blowing off the bay helping to drybrush the sweat from my skin.

No nausea today, feeling clean and healthy, and ever so grateful for having taken the walk.