The Constant Beginning

The weird thing about changing your life is that it isn't a one-time deal. Willpower is like rolling a heavy wheel on a flat surface--once you get it going it moves along but if you let up for a minute it stops. The process of moving that heavy wheel forward takes huge effort each time it slows.

What stops your wheel--or wheel-power? (Rimshot!)

In my own mind I have started to feel willpower in a new way. I have had a long time to think about this phenomenon and about what makes me stop my efforts and slide (certainly anyone who has ever started more than one diet or fitness program knows that the restart is evidence of a backslide) and here is what I have learned:

A great defeat is sometimes just a small defeat until you let it go.

Case in point: Years ago I was trying Body for Life. A program that centers around a 90-day challenge and combines good protein with good carbs, short bursts of cardio and weight training, and a weekly free day. It's a motivating program and can be fun and productive, especially if you do it with a partner or friend.

At the time I was playing my scale tricks. (You know, weighing on one foot, holding on and balancing, moving the scale around the bathroom--done right you can pretend to lose several pounds a day.) At the end of the 90 days I weighed on a real doctor's scales. I found that I had lost significantly less than I had tricked myself into thinking I had lost. But here's where it gets complicated--and emotional and confusing. I remember myself in that moment of reckoning. I remember my great depression realizing I hadn't been as successful as I had hoped. Reality hit me like a proverbial ton of bricks. That disappointment caused me to backslide. Or let me phrase that differently--I allowed that disappointment to start a backslide trend in my motivation and my actions. I chose it. I took that moment of disappointment and depression and I used it to fuel my old negative patterns. I gave up.

The Reality: I gave up and threw away 90 days of very hard work and good attitude--and I had actually lost a fair amount of weight and improved my fitness level. What I should have done in retrospect was take a moment (or a day) and mourn my denial, be grateful I caught myself at my own weighing game, maybe have a "free meal" and then go back at it with a renewed sense of vigor.

The Hard Truth: Sometimes this "renewed sense of vigor" thing I just spouted off about is just nonsense. The reality is that sometimes the process of losing weight and embracing fitness is just miserable and challenging and horribly hard--and that's okay--it's still worth it.

The me of today knows that what I needed to do was just do it anyway, even if it felt bad, even if I wasn't thrilled or didn't feel the vigor, or the positive mental attitude, or anything good. Successful transformation happens when you can begin again no matter how you feel about it. No matter what the circumstances. Even if you feel horrible. Get up, eat right, get to the gym, get some sleep, take your vitamins and do it again. And again. And again.

And again, and again, and again, and again is the sound of the wheel beginning to turn. And every day that you do it, every day you slowly move that wheel, it gets easier. What I need to learn, what I am constantly struggling with and re-teaching myself is that my motivation will falter again. I will stop again. What I must constantly relearn is that stopping is just the moment I take before I begin again.

80 Pounds and Counting--the Reboot

In my first blog post I wrote that I would slowly spill my real story and maybe this is a good time to do a little of that. I mentioned that when my older brother died, two-and-a-half years ago now, that I had the ultimate scary wake-up call. When my younger brother said good-bye to me after the funeral before he left for the airport, he hugged me in a parking lot and said, "Promise me that we don't die--not for a really long time, I can't take it."

I promised.

Up until that moment and probably for a long while after, too, my younger brother and I had been engaged in a silent (and definitely not-so-silent) argument--he wanted me to live and be healthy (at a somewhat normal weight) and I wanted him to get off my case and stop being so critical. Now here is where relationships get dicey for fat people. Are your loved ones actually harassing you and on your case and ultra-critical or are they worried out of their minds and hoping you won't die--and therefore always attempting to make you “see the light” before it's too late?

Now that I have some perspective, the perspective that comes from 80 pounds of weight loss, I know his attitude was a combination of things: He remembered me thin. He knew me at my healthiest and he couldn't figure out what happened to me. He worried about me. But most of all, he reacted because he loved me. His worry and his fear and his anger made it hard for us to interact. Up until the time I got back on track I wanted him to ignore the thing he couldn't ignore. In order for him to interact with me about anything else he had to ignore it. He couldn't and it caused some serious conflict.

 Unfortunately the fatter and unhealthier I got the harder it was for me to turn it around—and the harder it was for him to deal with me. I think it made it impossible for us to have any kind of a normal relationship and that hurt me more than I can say. And I am sure it hurt him too.

The issues for me surrounding health and fitness didn’t start that day or even a few years before. Even at the time of my mother’s death after a long illness 12 years ago I was already very overweight. When I got pregnant with my now 19-year-old daughter I was overweight. I was a fat child at some points of my life—I remember shopping with my mother in what used to be called the “chubby” section. (That was a self-esteem builder for little girls everywhere!) It was always an issue. Food was connected to happiness and love for me. The emotional ties between me and a loaf of Wonder Breadâ were forged before I hit first grade.

But a story like this, forged pound after pound, doesn’t get written or explained in a day. In my case, 80 pounds of weight loss and a renewed commitment to exercise and fitness definitely isn’t it. It’s a very good start. And that’s why I am here. To make the rest of my journey something I have to show-up for everyday. To not slide backward even when every day--every decision--is complicated and serious and takes my energy. Whatever it takes to keep the power behind my will, I have to do. So my own story, it will take some time. But the fitter I get, the more time I have to tell it.

Flipping the Switch

A friend of mine mentioned that term to me today. He asked me--At what point had I "flipped the switch" regarding my personal commitment to my health and fitness and how did I do it? I have been thinking about that a lot since our conversation. It's like he opened my proverbial can of self-transformational worms.

So in this can of transformational worms I find a lot of stuff. Digging around I pull out "self awareness and self esteem," "will power and motivation," and even a few handfuls of "direction, planning and know-how." I am not sure how I got from flipping a switch (electrical) to worms in cans (ugh) but there you go.

"Flipping the switch" is something that everyone gets and can visualize. It's going from off to on, from the past to the present, from passive to active, it's the big "aha!" moment.

When I think about my own journey and what kick-started me into action I have to start at the loss of my brother. My brother Chuck died at age 52 of a blood pressure-related heart attack while body surfing with his son in the ocean off a California beach. His death was sudden and unexpected and shocked me and everyone who knew him. However for me, after the shock came the realization--he was overweight and out of shape and had taxed his body beyond its ability to recover. Once the initial grief and responsibilities of my brother's death were past I was left with only one constant, depressing, fearful thought--I was next.

That thought sang out in my brain like a tune that gets stuck. Not only a horrible affirmation, but in this case a ringing truth like an alarm bell. For me that thought flipped my switch. It didn't flip all at once and it didn't flip into some permanent and unalterable state. Moving in the right direction isn't a one time decision--and that's what makes it so hard. Moving in the right direction is a never-ending series of good decisions. It takes some serious moxie.

I think something that was vital was the moment I realized that the journey was going to be difficult and that all this sense of challenge I felt and hard work it was taking was real. It wasn't that I had a bad attitude about it, or that I was weak or that I had no willpower--it was simply that changing one's life is always complicated. I relaxed some when I realized that it was going to be hard as hell sometimes--and that was okay.

Thoughts are Things

"What you thought before has led to every choice you have made, and this adds up to you at this moment. If you want to change who you are physically, mentally, and spiritually, you will have to change what you think."

Dr. Patrick Gentempo

Last night I remembered an important truth: What I put in my mind has a definite impact on how I feel. I can really change my mood, my reaction to things, and even my health by the thoughts and images I allow in. For example, when surfing the interwebs I came across a sort of sci fi fetish story for lack of a better way of putting it that was sort of Matrix-like and gloomy. It was the kind of story that leaves you feeling disgusted. All I could come up with last night in way of a personal explanation was "icky."

So when I got to the end of this truly dreadful story (which incidentally was poorly written and self indulgent if to allow the literary snob in myself out for a minute) I knew I had to fill my head with something happier. I spent some of the rest of the evening looking at old Frasier episodes on YouTube--filling my mind with laughter and wit--driving the ugliness out.

It was a good way to remember how much control I have over my experience. What is that old expression? "Garbage in, garbage out."?  Everything I ingest--mentally, physically, spiritually--impacts how I feel. Thoughts are eventually things.

I say eventually because unlike many New Thought aficionados I don't believe in the hocus-pocus of it. I think thoughts are like trends. You have to think a whole lot of negative thoughts to move your personal reality. It isn't a fleeting thought that changes destiny, but a concentration of thoughts over time. Over my morning coffee I have been thinking about how self critical I am and how critical I am of others as well. How can I change that? How can I use my words to be a more positive force toward myself and those I love the most on earth?

In particular I am thinking of my daughter and her lack of criticism toward most situations--and especially toward me. She is one of those people on earth that graces me with her unshakable belief in my strength, my talent and my impact on the world. At times her words of support and belief seem almost foreign to me--I am thinking of myself or a situation in such a negative light. It's not that I am generally negative, but I think I am generally critical. So where does critical stop and negative begin?

My old school beliefs or maybe plain old logic makes me think that being critical is a good thing. It's the power of being able to look at something and determine how to fix it. On the other hand, maybe not everything about myself or those I care for needs to be fixed constantly. Maybe unshakable belief definitely has its place.

So instead of seeing my world and myself--my body, my health, my fitness--as something to constantly be fixed, I can choose to believe in it. I can see the positive and affirm the good changes. I can believe in myself and those I love to make excellent choices. I can focus on what's right about my situation and self--visualizing a positive outcome.

It's a balance, to be sure. But it's worth thinking about.

Beauty and the Blog--The True Story

I am Beauty. Well, at least that is who I am for this blog. The truth is that this is my pen name--or blog name, or what-have-you and that I am actually someone else. I am a writer. A writer who has stopped working temporarily to do something I value more than my name on the spine of a book. I have stopped working as a writer for the moment to work on me as a person.

The reasons for this are many and varied, but the main one was (and is) I just needed to embrace myself and take my weary, worn-out body and soul and mind and put my metaphoric arms around myself. I needed to love myself again and act like it in my thoughts and deeds. I had at one time or another lost my way. And you know the thing I have noticed about a lost way is that it seems to grow, a lost way becomes its own living, breathing thing--it becomes huge. For me it was loss and pain and emotions and frustrations and fear and a bunch of other things. It was a touch of laziness and procrastination and slipping into habits that were really, quite frankly, destructive. I had become quietly destructive--self destructive.

Not the big in-your-face sort of self destruction that makes headlines. I didn't try to "off" myself, I didn't take to frequenting some dive bar and sitting on a bar stool soused. No, I took to letting go of myself by inches, becoming fatter and unhealthier and more covered in my own lack of will to change. I was sinking inside myself, inside walls of unhappiness and fat. And I wouldn't have been able to clearly ascertain that, not if you held up a large check to motivate me. What finally motivated me was fear and loss.

So, gentle reader, just a little heads-up. I am not going to spill it for you all here in this post, but entice you. I will tell my story in snippets and in between ramble on with wit and potential clarity about other interesting topics that should hopefully amuse us. ("Us" being the you-and-I involved in personal transformation on any level.) I hope you find yourself here, or at the very least, have a moment or two of fun.

Love--

Beauty