commitment

Practice.

Posted on by Rachael

Ever hear the phrase “Practice makes perfect”? Annoying right? It’s something that is really hard to hear. At least, I think it’s annoying. It reminds me of something my mom would have said when I was in middle school. I played the clarinet in band, for two years, big deal. The less I practiced, the more my mom said things like “Practice makes perfect”. Now because of that, the phrase seems like nagging. Nagging sucks, it only makes me want to practice less.

Though I have to say that practicing is the only way to get better and make progress, so unfortunately… my mom was right, love you mom.

I have always struggled with my writing. I struggle with focusing and I give partial blame to that, but a significant amount of blame has gone to my confidence. I never thought that my writing could measure up to other people and their masterpieces. I would use procrastination as an excuse not to write, turn my stuff in late and or not do it. I loved learning, just hated writing. Look at me now!

In graduate school I took a writing tutor class as an elective, for three quarters. I did this to supplement my writing and to help me write my final synthesis paper. The teacher for this class had combined psychology with writing, and had a deep understanding for people’s fear of writing. She offered something that would change my life in more ways than she could even imagine. She gave lectures every class period about different tips and tricks of writing. The one that changed my life taught me about practice.

She said that when we grow, we create neural pathways in our brain which are what we do every day when we do things over and over. They are learned behaviors. When we practice new ways of living, we create new neural pathways in our brain. The more we practice along these new neural pathways, the more likely we will continue to follow them. The old ones will always be there, but we will be less likely to follow down those pathways.  (You can google neural pathways right now and it will give you 10 ways to train your brain.)

I have been struggling with food for about 20 years or so. The earliest memories I have with my relationship with food goes back to about 9 years old. I remember being bored, so bored that I would eat to fill time, to fill comfort. Comfort from what? Comfort from loneliness probably. It was stimulation, stimulation that I needed to feel. I remember that I would often go for salty salty foods, or ones that were sweet (when we had sweet things in our house). I remember chicken noodle soup, tuna fish, and baking. I developed a lot of comfort in my relationship with food.

It takes a lot of practice to undo years and years of what the opposite is of what you are trying to accomplish. I have practiced a lot of new ways of living in order to get where I am today. Some good, some not so good, some that have made my brain crazy, some that have helped and some that haven’t helped. What we know from learning new things has been that I’ve made progress. How so? Because I’ve made an effort, I’ve put work in. I have committed to trying out new things and practicing them over and over again.

The point is, when it gets the hardest and you are at your most vulnerable, you put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward because you are worth it. You are deserving of healing. You are deserving of being healthy, and or following your dreams, no matter what those dreams are. All it takes is a little practice and eventually you will no longer be practicing.

 

I’ve made progress.

Posted on by Rachael

As I reflect back on the last year, versus any other time in my life I’ve noticed the difference in myself and my food choices. My brain, body and capabilities have made some incredible leaps. I, me!!! I have done this. I went from commitment, to practicing new ways of life and now I just do the things that I’ve practice, sometimes without a reminder to myself I need to do them. All have been in many different areas of my life.

I notice these changes in subtle ways through a variety of avenues. I’ve noticed that when I go grocery shopping I will rarely shop down the isles and actually I spend most of my time in the produce section when grocery shopping. There are the occasional things that I will go down the isles for which usually include pineapple out of a can, green beans, salsa, tortillas and sometimes crackers.

I cut calories. Cutting calories is an art form, and all though doesn’t seem very fun, is one of the things that helped me most with food. Cutting calories at most or every meal has really taught me a new way to consume and look at my food. It’s taught me that even though I want the cheese on my burger, I don’t need it, or those fries, or extra anything on anything. It’s taught me that food can still be good without the extra things. It helped with portion control.

One way I “cut calories” was with ranch. I will probably never use ranch again in the same way as I use to, if I use it at all. I say this because if you use greek yogurt and mix it with a ranch powder packet, you not only cut your calories but you are consuming something with less preservatives and with added protein. It’s a creative and tastier way to eat more veggies.

Another way I cut calories is in my coffee. I really love coffee, like a lot. As a side note I started to realize that one of the reasons why I loved coffee so much because it was the one thing I had in the day that I would stop for, and really take a moment to enjoy. Food was consumed as an afterthought in the day. With coffee I realized what I enjoyed about that moment with coffee. I loved the foam, and the dark warm aroma of a latte’. With that said, I cut my calories in half by getting non-fat milk, cut with water. The foam was still present, and I still got that cozy feeling I was after. I also switched to sugar free. I know what people say about chemicals and aspartame (and I know what I said about ranch dressing). But as a coffee lover, this was probably one of the most important changes in my “liquid” part of my diet. Liquid calories are tricky and add up rather quickly.

At first it seemed silly asking for my sf mocha, half water, half nonfat milk latte’. It doesn’t sound tasty and it’s not what people are use to hearing on the other end. I remember the first time I started asking for something different than the norm, it felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to offend anyone, or make anyone upset and after watching the movie Waiting I really didn’t want to piss anyone off for making their lives difficult.

It’s a slow process, asking for what you want in your food. It takes patience with yourself as you build strength to do it and understanding that in the long run… It’s their job. It’s their job to take your order exactly how you want it, it’s their job to serve you and they will be there even if you ask for something exactly how the menu reads. After a while it gets easier, your confidence will improve and eventually you will be able to do it and even joke with the waiter or waitress/barista about it.

In time asking for the things I want has become automatic. It took me a long time to get super creative with menus. I usually will brows it and get creative with what’s on the menu because after visiting the same establishments after a while and only eating off of the salad section of their menu gets pretty boring and makes me hate eating out. I now can eat burgers with no bun and face up hot turkey sandwiches with cheese (only eating half of the bread). I also ask for light on the sauce, brown rice, and extra veggies.

It is though sort of comical to order a burger with light mayo, no cheese, wrapped in lettuce, with a side salad and no croutons (with dressing on the side of course). The waitress kind of jokes with you, and if you visit this place often they start to recognize you. In the end it’s my body, and it’s their job to make it for me.  After all, if I’m allergic to cheese or whatever I don’t ask for, and they bring it to me anyways, I could sue their asses. 😉

Other ways that I’ve made progress are in how I talk to my friends about food.

The biggest way I’ve made progress though is how I talk to myself about food, and maybe now it’s not how I talk to myself about food directly, but how I talk to myself in response to the food I eat and my body and brain in which I have tended to put down for eating food. The last piece is something that I’m now starting to work on and struggle every day with.

Progress is made when we practice new behaviors. I only got to this point where I am through practicing new ways of living. We can only move forward if we practice and I know for myself I will only make progress in my journey through continuing to practice new ways of living. Practice and progress go hand in hand. If you are practicing new things, trying out a new recipe, adding extra veggies, or parking further from the grocery store in the parking lot you are making progress.

Next blog post, Practice, stay tuned. J

Commitment

Posted on by Rachael

People who have known me for years have been so complimentary of my success. They say things like “You look so good”, followed by  “What is the key or secret to your success?”

Usually I start with “Thank you“. If you don’t know me well, or if you do know me well you should know it is really hard for me to accept a compliment. After the initial thank you, I tell them a list of multiple things, sometimes I look back at what I write (through face book or text message) and find it a bit overwhelming myself. I usually follow up by saying something like “I’d love to sit down with you and chat if you are ever interested.” 

It became very apparent that my success has never been one thing. To be honest a lot of the times I don’t feel successful, especially right now. People want answers though and I get that. They want to know how to do it themselves. What I can tell you is that success is multi-dimensional.

Everything we do and why we do it is multi-dimensional. Meaning I had to attack it from different angles and layers. As I approach this blog, I am primarily addressing the different layers of my self and what I’m going through. My real secret though, believe it or not, was commitment. One single word, and all though it sounds easy… It’s not. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to accomplish.

For my 29th birthday I decided to gift myself life. I knew it would be a journey, it would not be easy and I was just going to have to accept that.

With that said… and what I mean by multi-dimensional, is that with my commitment I had to commit to not only myself, but my food, and changing the way that I ate food, cooked food and my relationship with food. I also had to be open to my process, and the new path that I would take.

For my 29th birthday I joined a weight loss clinic. I give a lot of credit to a few food consultants that I did work with to loose weight. They helped me loose 70 lbs through diet change and working their program.

This was going well until recently when my commitment to myself seemed to change. Even more recently this past week I had been binge eating so bad that I felt like throwing up on Sunday because of it. My mind was consumed with old ways of thinking, and I hated myself. I hated my body. I hated my addiction. I could probably tell you all that Iv’e consumed in the past 4-5 days, well most of it anyways. It would probably make you sick. I actually threw a cake away in the trash today to prevent myself from eating it all.

Today, or rather tonight I re-committed myself again. At 930 at night I bought groceries. Chicken, fruit, lettuce, and other veggies. One of the reasons why I eat crap is because I’m not prepared. When I allow myself to eat crap, I then spiral fairly easy into a binge, which sometimes lasts for days.

A part of the program with the clinic was practicing new ways of thinking and eating through diet and some homework. They asked lots of questions and had me look at different aspects of my life including different things in my environment, triggers, planning, tracking food, emotional eating, setting goals, self image,  and more.

I really have learned a lot that has helped so much in my process. The one thing though that has really come to light has been staying engaged in my learning about my food addiction and eating disorder to help stay present in my progress. It’s really hard to change 20 years of deeply in-bedded practices, but I’m going to continue to work towards a healthier me. 🙂

Even though it was late at night tonight, I cooked my chicken, prepared my lunch for tomorrow and wrote this blog post. I needed to be prepared tomorrow, as I know that if I’m not prepared… I will eat crap, which will only perpetuate the cycle. If I didn’t prepare, I wouldn’t be following through with my commitment to myself.