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Be Mindful, and Don’t Suffer

At least once a week I go someplace where I run into someone I haven’t seen in a few months or more. Since Before. And very often they will say, “HOW did you do this?!?” It’s hard to sum it up in a few words, because it truly is a long story, but I think my “elevator pitch” (code for how to pitch a book, or business proposal to an agent or funder in the time it takes to ride an elevator) would be “By being mindful, and not suffering.”

I know, it’s very Buddhist, right? But truly I think this is what has made All the Difference this time. I started attending a meditation class very soon after my pre-diabetes diagnosis. And the idea of being mindful- of paying attention – made a huge impact on my whole weight loss journey. I decided to really pay attention to everything  – to what I truly wanted to eat, and if eating was what I wanted at all, and how much to eat, and everything. It has been absolutely invaluable.

I loved that this week, in my WW mentoring session, the leader spoke a LOT about “being mindful.” I don’t know if he’s a Buddhist or not, but he did bring it up about 20 times during the meeting, and people were nodding and really getting it. I loved that.

Another big concept in Buddhism is that of Suffering.  I know that I have suffered mightily because of my weight and food issues, throughout my life. I suffered when I felt I was depriving myself of food I wanted, but I also suffered when I ate things for the Wrong Reasons (ie for comfort or distraction). I suffered from guilt and remorse, shame and self hatred. There was a LOT of suffering going on.

It’s been shocking for me to notice that this New Way has involved very little suffering, and I know that if I feel like I am suffering, it’s going to come back and bite me BIG time. So it’s important for me to never, ever sigh dramatically and say, “I guess I should eat THIS (salad?) instead of THAT.” Because if I feel deprived in ANY WAY, shape or form, I’m going to overeat. Every single time. I have to find something that makes me HAPPY and satisfied, as well as being a good choice.  Salad is a good example. Sometimes I really crave and love and feel like eating salad. But often, if it’s a cold day or whatever, I want HOT FOOD.  Before, it would be a choice between two kinds of suffering: I’d have a cold salad and feel all deprived, OR I’d have .. I dunno, a huge plate of lasagne or fried chicken and THEN I’d suffer because I’d feel overstuffed, guilty and remorseful. And fat.

So the key is to really be MINDFUL and say, OK, I don’t want salad. (“Then don’t eat salad!”) I want hot food. OK, what kind of hot food will satisfy and yet not make me feel remorseful? Often it is SOUP. I have come to looooooooove soup very much. Because there are so many delicious kinds of soup and EVEN soup that is a bit rich (some cream in it, or meat) a cup of soup can go a very long way. There is a wonderful French food takeout place near my work that has two kinds of amazing soup every day. Usually that will be all I want for lunch, and it probably has WAY fewer calories than a salad with blue cheese, nuts, dressing, avocadoes etc etc.

I have had to build up my repertoire of foods that I both love and feel good about eating. This has taken some time and practice but now I feel like I have wonderful choices.

I still always have half-and-half in my coffee, because I have tried many alternatives (black coffee, skim milk in coffee, nonfat half and half) and they ALL make me suffer. I want my half-and-half. But I have made other changes that allow that to be okay. (more exercise, soup for lunch, etc)

So that’s my short answer for How I Did It (and how I intend to keep Doing It): Be mindful and don’t suffer.

Over and out.

15

What I Did On My Silent Retreat

IMG_1613Are y’all curious? If not, skip to another post, I won’t take it personally if you don’t want to read about the minutae of my weekend. But if so…

Thursday:
•    Arrived; silent dinner (pasta, pesto veggies, salad)
•    Group gathering. I cried. Lit individual candles and placed in chapel. I put mine at the base of a leafless tree hung with gold origami cranes.
•    Read.
•    Slept for 10 hours, very deeply.

Friday:
•    Woke up. Went to yoga/meditation.
•    Silent breakfast. (veggie frittata, few spoons of oatmeal, fruit, coffee)
•    Made bed.
•    30 minute walk/run. Injuries bothering me. (shin splint, groin pain)
•    Morning gathering
•    Read poems on various walls, copied many down. Spent time in art room but didn’t do art.
•    Spent one hour in straw bale hermitage. Meditated. Cried.
•    Silent Lunch (turkey, tuna, salad, fruit)
•    Walk/ran one hour. Injuries slightly better but not great.
•    Read.
•    Napped.
•    Showered.
•    Silent dinner: chicken, Israeli couscous, salad. Wrestled with apple crisp with whipped cream. Didn’t eat it.
•    Walk, 30 minutes. Slowly.
•    Evening gathering: meditation, elm dance in courtyard garden: slow, mournful circle dance from Russia, composed to mourn death of forests after Chernobyl
•    Slept, but woke from 2-4am

Saturday:
•    Slept through yoga/meditation. Made bed.
•    Silent breakfast. (hard boiled egg, chicken apple sausage, honeydew, brown rice cereal)
•    Very slow walk
•    Morning gathering – re connection with nature, Wendy Johnson book
•    Silent gardening: planted 3 kinds of lettuce, kale. My first garden experience.
•    Read.
•    Very short nap.
•    Silent lunch: chicken broth with toppings (chicken, green onions, carrot shreds, lime), salad. No cookies 4 me.
•    Another slow walk.
•    Silent art: made ‘treasure boxes’ out of matchboxes, homemade paper, shells, leaves
•    Read.
•    Massage. Melted onto table. Injuries completely gone.
•    Showered.
•    Silent dinner: poached salmon, sugar snap peas, salad. Passed up the potatoes and the wine (only night it was offered). Did not pass up poppyseed cake with whipped cream. Meant to have one bite; ate the whole piece. Delicious.
•    Slow walk, 20 minutes.
•    Tested blood sugar, worried about cake. Ecstatic it was 109. (yay walk!!)
•    Gathering in pillow room. Gave thanks to H & S for 23 years of nurturing us. Cried more. Another elm dance, then meditation in chapel.
•    Wrote.
•    Slept.

Sunday:
•    Woke.
•    Breakfast: scrambled egg, toast, peanut butter, grapefruit.
•    Changed bed linens. Packed.
•    Morning gathering
•    Went to art room and hand-copied several pages from Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings
•    Event closing
•    NONsilent lunch! Made some new friends. Beautiful cheeses, salad, lentil soup, crackers.
•    Drove home. Stopped at Spirit Rock bookstore on the way to buy One Bowl and Mindful Eating.

8

Into the Silence

IMG_0926Tonight, I am going on a silent retreat at one of my favorite places on earth. I have been taking retreats at this place ever since 1987 or so, when they used to host an annual retreat for the Friends of Calligraphy. I would go with my inks, my special paper and drawing board, and set up in the “scriptorium” with other calligraphers, where we would do our calligraphy in silence for a week. There were short breaks in the silence, where master artists would give seminars on how to make the perfect “B,” or brush calligraphy or some such. I felt like some sort of ecstatic monk. It was heaven.

After I had my first child in 1990, I pretty much gave up calligraphy – all those inks and pen nibs were too hazardous for grabby little fingers – and by that time I had switched to writing. I started yearning for a place to get away to just think. Thanks to the wonderful support of said child’s father, I began taking 24-hour writing retreats at the same place.

This place is the most peaceful place I know. It used to be a convent for nuns, and is now used for spiritual and other quiet retreats. There is a beautiful chapel, lovely spare little rooms, a courtyard garden, a strawbale hermitage (for when one wants to be a “hermit”), a yurt, several gardens. But the best part is the silence.

I recently received a (beautifully calligraphed) card to confirm my spot at the retreat. It almost made me cry from happiness.

Within each of us there is a silence, a silence as vast as the universe…

When we experience that silence, we remember who we are, creatures of the stars,

created from time and space, created from silence…

Silence is our deepest nature, our home, our common ground, our peace…

Silence is where God dwells. We yearn to be there.

The experience of silence is now so rare, that we must guard and treasure it. This is especially true for shared silence.”

–Gunilla Norris, Shared Silence

I have been very, very busy, and very active these past months. I am longing for some quiet and some rest. The next few months are going to be even more hectic as my day job heats up to its peak event in July. This is the biggest gift I can think of to give myself, to contemplate all that has happened this year. I plan to write, read, sleep, walk, meditate.  I’m going to try and lay off the Twitter a bit, although I won’t be completely gone (twittering is silent, isn’t it?). I do believe that this is one of the biggest and most important and yet most ignored aspect of a weight loss journey – the peace of mind that is necessary for all the other pieces (food plan, exercise) to work.

I’ll be thinking of you all and how very grateful I am for the support that has surrounded me since I began this journey, not so very long ago in January. Have a peaceful weekend.

oxoxo

9

The End of Ambivalence

It’s kind of amazing to go to events where I run into people I haven’t seen since… Before. They’re kind of shocked, and always ask, How did you DO this? I laugh and say, “The short answer is, I got diabetes.” Of course everyone knows that diabetes itself does not cause weight loss, unless you’re really ill. But it’s a long answer. The longer answer is, “read my blog.” It’s so complicated and yet it is so simple. It’s so many things.

I went to Weight Watchers this morning and had a 3.2 lb loss at weigh-in. They had a bunch of flyers about WW leader recruitment. I took one. Still mulling this idea over. I still really really miss teaching, and it could be an interesting opportunity. I might go to one of their info meetings next week and find out more.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking a lot about: why now? Why, after 30 years of struggle, is this finally working? I have lost weight in the past – but never this much- and never without terrible effort.

This time, it feels almost effortless – and at the same time, I am putting every ounce of focus and attention on it. It’s one of those weird paradoxes. It doesn’t feel at all like a “diet” – and yet it has taken enormous reservoirs of time and mindfulness. But it’s not “hard.” If that makes sense. Does it make sense?

I realized today that one thing that’s very different this time around (and I think may be the KEY difference) is that I am not ambivalent. For a long time, I was ambivalent about losing weight because I was always wanting to lose weight for my LOOKS, and I felt angry about that. I felt like women should be loved and accepted and appreciated and deemed beautiful no matter what their size. (I still do) So it felt on some level like a betrayal of myself and other women to want to lose weight for looks reasons.

And yet..I have to admit that I think I look better now than I did in January. I FEEL better – both “looks” wise and health wise. I have tons more energy, and I just feel strong and happy.

It was not until I got this pre-diabetes wakeup call that I really cared about losing weight for other reasons, ie health. Before, I didn’t believe that I was unhealthy, because I wasn’t overweight enough. Or so I thought. I used to bristle at the notion that being “only” 25 or 30 lbs overweight was enough to endanger my health. I was wrong about that.

So I sort of defiantly stayed overweight and did not attend to my health because I didn’t want it to be about my looks.

Another thing that is different this year has to do with my past, and my life as an adopted person. It has definitely affected me throughout my life, to think of myself as a person whose very existence was a burden to others. I was most definitely a “mistake,” and the cause of much shame for my birth mother. (I’ve known her since I was 20) She likes me as a person, but also has VERY deep ambivalence about my very existence.  I am her worst, biggest and most distressing secret.

This year is the year that I made the pretty big decision to stop wishing that my birth mother would acknowledge me in the ways that I would like. I pretty much gave up. After about 30 years (hmm, is there a connection here?) of desperately hoping to openly be recognized as her relative. I wonder if this “giving up” makes it suddenly possible for me to lose weight, as well.

I was chasing after love where it couldn’t be found. I was pretty much a bottomless pit of need and sadness. Once, many years ago, in therapy, I made a little clay head with a huge open mouth. I called it “little head” and it represented my unending hunger. And why even the most giant pan of macaroni and cheese would never be enough. I understood it, but I couldn’t change it. Until I finally gave up on wanting what couldn’t be had.

Love isn’t inside food. It isn’t inside some people who just aren’t able to give. But I was certainly chasing after it, for years and years and years.

I’m finally getting where the love is. It’s in me, and it’s in people who are open to it. Food is just… something else. It’s wonderful to enjoy, it’s delicious and fun, but it isn’t love.

(lightbulb moment)

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, it was like I was being asked, “Well? Do you want to live? Are YOU ambivalent about your very existence?” and the answer came back a ferocious YES, and NO.

I’m not ambivalent anymore. I want to be here. I deserve to be here.

And that’s the pretty long answer about how I lost the weight.

8

Over the River and Up the Mountain

I have always had this very vivid image of my weight-loss efforts over the years. I recently tried to draw it but the drawing looked so bad I will have to stick with a verbal description. (can’t draw with a trackpad to save my life!!)

I call it the River. For as long as I can remember (at least in my adult life) I have been on one side of the river, or the other. One side (I’ll call it The Banks of Unconscious Eating!) is where I defiantly stayed for long periods of my life. When I was on that side, I’d eat whatever, whenever and how much I felt like. Often very high caloric, fat and carb-y foods. (think: macaroni and cheese in huge quantities) I’d exercise fairly minimally. I’d thumb my nose at “dieters” and think they were super anal control freaks. I’d feel disdain for people who were “obsessed with exercise.” And, I’d be (surprise?) overweight and fairly unhappy. But really believing that I was “free” because I was not being oppressed by counting calories, depriving myself or flogging myself to exercise. You get the picture. During the periods when I was on that side of the river, I’d look at the Other side and feel anxiety, anger, fear, disgust, whatever.  I was firmly entrenched.

At other times in my life, I’d be on the Dieting side of the river. On that side, I felt fairly rigid, usually counted calories or points, was fairly tense. I exercised whether I liked it or not. I steeled myself with “willpower.” I lost weight, but it was exhausting and I could never ever get to my actual goal weight and never maintain it for very long. I was (maybe) happier but also very tense. And when I was on THIS side of the river, I felt disgust and fear and shame about the OTHER side. (ie, “you fat slob,” I never want to be like you again!!)

Sometimes I’d thrash back and forth from one side to the other, in the space of days.  Often I’d be on the dieting side for 4-5 days of a week, then after my Weight Watchers weigh-in day, I’d fling myself to the “unconscious” side by giving myself a “treat” day.

The truly remarkable thing about this time around is that I feel like I’m not even near the river anymore. I feel like I’ve gone from a short period on the Dieting Side, where I was very anxious (see January posts) but somehow I kept going, away from the river. I crossed a field. I got to the foot of a mountain. I feel like I am miles away and above where I’ve ever been before.

Even though I feel like that Unconscious side is so far away, when I look down it from here, I don’t feel disgusted or afraid of going there anymore. I feel a lot of compassion and love for all the suffering that happened when I was over there. It makes me sad. And I don’t feel tense OR self-righteous or anything about where I am now. It’s easy to be here. I have these small moments (like longing for carrot cake when I was in Trader Joe’s) but they sort of pass, like clouds. (do you see the influence of my meditation class kicking in?) As my meditation teacher says, “You can notice the train going by. You don’t have to hop on that train and let it take you for a ride.”  (okay, HOW many metaphors am I going to use in this post??)

I truly feel like I am geographically, physically, emotionally, in a place where I have never, ever been before. It’s not without its challenges at ALL, but I feel like I’ve moved far away from the banks of that river where I was always feeling battered, conflicted, cold, wet.

9

Eating Without Guilt? Really? Really.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I joined the weight-loss Twittersphere and blogosphere. I was scared, lonely feeling, desperate and really needing community. I felt like it was do-or-die time, and if that I didn’t find a way to lose weight, get healthy, that things were really going to be dire. But I didn’t feel very hopeful or optimistic. I had tried (and failed, failed, failed) to lose weight so many times. Or I tried and it worked for a short time, but I was always eyeing the door and the clock, wondering when I could stop.

I started following anybody who had any kind of tag related to diets, weight loss, health, and exercise. A lot of these turned out to be utter spam machines – just trying to sell some product or whatever, or spewing out the same dumb posts over and over, and linking to them like they were something new. I quickly unfollowed the majority of people I started out following, and eventually began to meet some “real” people. It took a while.

One person I was intrigued by was somebody with the username “EatWithoutGuilt.” My first reaction was, yeah right!! For me, eating and guilt have gone together like – you know, Lucy and Ricky, peanut butter and jelly, Thelma and Louise. I can’t even REMEMBER a time when eating didn’t = guilt of SOME kind. I was always eating too much, or the wrong thing, or wishing I was eating the wrong thing (remember Jimmy Carter “lusting in his heart” – well that was me). I always felt guilty, or longing, or secretive or something that ultimately felt BAD.

I checked out EatWithoutGuilt’s website. At first I could do nothing but snort (sadly) when reading this:

Let’s face it. We’re ALL trying to look good, feel good, and lose those extra pounds. So when you look at the French and Italians and wonder, “How DO they stay so slim?” I can guarantee you this… EATING WITHOUT GUILT IS a huge part of that success!

They enjoy rich foods – like chocolate, pastries, and pasta – and don’t gain weight. YOU TOO can eat the foods you love by learning how to EAT WITHOUT GUILT.

Imagine losing weight…
WITHOUT dieting, counting calories, carbs or fat grams.

I read all this and just thought to myself, YEAH, in another universe!! But I was definitely intrigued. I messaged her (her real name is Dinneen Diette, believe it or not! for real!) and she responded in such a warm, personal way. It was disarming. Later I called her up for a short phone consult that turned long. She was so human and kind, so understanding and compassionate, and GENEROUS. This was definitely not just someone trying to sell me a product or a doodad.

I have continued to be wowed by Dinneen’s steady, kind presence. She has counseled me through some rough times, with incredible attentiveness.

And now she is holding a contest on her blog, and the prize is an hour-long consult with her! I tell you, this would be a GREAT prize to get.

In order to enter the contest, all you need to do is write about your biggest weight-loss or diet challenge.

I’ve been giving that some thought. The things that are challenging me now are not what challenged me a few months ago. Right now I’d say my biggest challenges are related to what Buddha called the “five hindrances” (which I learned about in my meditation class) – desire, anger, tiredness or boredom (“sloth”), restless worry, or doubt.

I think I’m mostly challenged by doubt right now – doubt that I can see this newfound healthy way through the rest of my life, doubt that I can keep it up. Doubt doubt doubt. I probably have a little bit of desire thrown in there too, but that has subsided greatly since January. I think doubt is definitely the biggest one, maybe coupled with restless worry.

Whenever I feel this way all I can do is come back to what I am doing right now, which is taking care of myself in a healthy way.

Dinneen? Any thoughts? How can I calm my doubtful mind?

If any of YOU want to enter Dinneen’s “Get out of the Diet Rut” contest, all YOU need to do is:

1)  Email it directly to her at info@EatWithoutGuilt.com OR

2)  post it on your blog or Facebook with a link back to www.EatWithoutGuilt.com.   Then email info@EatWithoutGuilt.com with your entry. OR

3) Leave a comment on her blog here.

So this post is meant to be a great big shout-out and thank you to Dinneen, who showed me a peek at a world I didn’t think was possible for me, just four short months ago (or less?). I’m truly grateful to know you and to have been shown that possibility.



3

foodbodyheartmind

Last night I went to the second session of my meditation class. I love this class so much. I have gone to several meditation classes and retreats before, and always ended up feeling like it wasn’t for me, or I wasn’t doing it right, or something. It didn’t fully click somehow. But this class, and this teacher, clicked from the moment I walked in the door.  I love this place in downtown Oakland. The teacher fills me with a sense of calm. Her voice is just amazingly soothing, reassuring, peaceful. The sound of the bell at the end of the meditation is one of the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard.

Last week, when I went for the first time, it was a Monday night, the night before I went to my first diabetes class and started using my blood glucometer. I was wound up tighter than a spring. I was anxious, distraught, grieving the loss of my innocent health, and just a wreck. But I knew that I needed this. I knew that stress is one thing that has a definite affect on blood glucose levels.  It also has an effect on weight loss – if you’re stressed out, your cortisol levels rise, and that makes  you gain weight, or unable to lose it. So I felt like coming to this meditation class and learning how to de-stress was as important as taking my medication or exercising.

I loved it pretty much immediately.  Sitting there, I felt like my heart was breaking and I was just opening up in all directions. I felt like I had found an absolutely essential little sanctuary in time and place.  I needed it.

Last night the teacher opened with this poem by the poet Kabir, and that was it – I started tearing up right away.

You know the sprout is hidden inside the seed

We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.

Let your arrogance go, and look around inside

The blue sky opens out farther and farther

The daily sense of failure goes away

The damage I have done to myself fades

A million suns come forward with light

When I sit firmly in that world.

Whoo. Right? That line – the damage I have done to myself fades – just made my heart start pounding. The damage I have done. I really feel that now, the years that I overate and didn’t take care of myself.  The tendency to want to blame and punish myself for getting to the point of having diabetes.  It makes me want to howl sometimes. But then that other word – fades – is also true. It’s fading. With every thing I do to be good to myself, it fades. But wow, it is there.

The thing that I love about this meditation class is that it is all about love and compassion. Because I think truly that that is the key for me, it is the ONLY WAY out. Because when I was eating more than I needed, for so many years, it was because I was chasing love (in all the wrong places), I was hurt and rejected-feeling and all the food in the world couldn’t make that go away (although believe me I tried). And so while counting calories and points and exercising is all good and important, I don’t think there’s a shadow of a chance it can work unless I find a way to live with more love and compassion, for myself and for others.

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