You Can Change Your Life
I have to admit that I often find myself mystified by the “closet weight losers”. The ones who blog under aliases, never show their faces on their blogs and won’t even disclose their continent of residence, never mind state or town. The ones who have a “normal” blog and a separate “weight loss” blog.
I have one blog. It’s about my life. At the moment losing weight, getting fit and juice feasting feature prominently in my life. So that’s what I mostly blog about. But from time to time I blog about other things as well.
I am not afraid, or even embarrassed to admit that I am fat. Everybody who knows me in person, knows that I am fat. You can’t be secretly fat! Why would I want to hide the fact that I’m working towards becoming thinner, healthier, fitter and fertile? Why would I want to miss out on the opportunity to educate the people in my life who are interested and able to access my blog, about what this journey entails?
I’m not ashamed of myself or of my body. I am not ashamed of having failed at various previous attempts to lose weight either. I am proud of myself for taking responsibility, for learning valuable lessons and for picking myself up and going on every time I stumble and fall.
Health, diet and fitness can never be separate issues in our lives. Neither can you look at what you’re doing to lose weight as a temporary inconvenience. You have to be quite clear that you will be doing this for the rest of your life. That means that you will have to change your life to accommodate the things that promote health, like diet and exercise. If you need to change jobs in order to do so, do it! If you need to move to another part of town, get up earlier, quit playing poker, end friendships and spend less time with your critical mother, do it! If you need to wean your family off the SAD (Standard American Diet), do it (maybe not overnight)! If you need to change the way you spend your free time, holidays and vacations, do it!
You can’t change your life without changing your environment and your infrastructure. Up to now I have been living the lifestyle of a fat person. I am changing to the lifestyle of a fit and healthy person. Of course that means leaving behind a lot of things that I previously enjoyed. My friends and I don’t sit around drinking bottle after bottle of (admittedly excellent) wine and chain-smoking cigarettes anymore. Tuesday night is no longer pizza night at our home. I no longer frequent coffee shops where I while away the hours reading and drinking cup after cup of coffee and maybe absentmindedly eating a slice of cake or a muffin. We no longer order wine, starters, main course, dessert and Irish coffees when we eat out. We order one course, a moderately healthy one at that, and share a bottle of sparkling water (a huge treat that I only have when we eat out!).
The microwave has been banished from the kitchen. I buy groceries 2-3 times per week, so that the produce is always fresh. I plan my day around my gym classes. Days go by where we don’t even switch on the television and I don’t read magazines or newspapers anymore. This means that I’m not being bombarded by advertising all the time I’m also spared the constant stream of negative messages about my body and my life. We have taken up a hobby (target shooting) that involves walking (on the farm) and spending time outdoors.
There is nothing in my house that is not healthy. Not even anything I can prepare something unhealthy with. If I were to suddenly lose my mind, break my juice feast and go on a binge, my options would be, um, pretty much only fruit and vegetables, and oh yes, a bottle of single malt whiskey from Christmas. I’m not the least bit tempted!
As long as you remain stuck in the idea that you are sacrificing something, you will thwarte your own efforts. Feeling that what you’re eating is somehow inferior, in taste and desirability, to what everyone else is eating (and what the advertisers want you to eat), will only make you doubt yourself and resent the process.
The SAD is in no way superior to eating fresh, whole, honest, lovingly grown and prepared food. Not on any level! The only reason you crave it is because of seasoning. Start training your tastebuds to again appreciate the foods that were seasoned by sunlight and prepared by Mother Nature. I used to drown my salads in commercial dressings. That was in the days when I thought that a salad consisted of lettuce leaves, tomato wedges, cucumber slices, onion rings, and if you really wanted to be fancy, a few olives and some feta cheese. Hell no! That’s not a salad! I’ll tell you later how we make salads in this house!
Your body was designed to be active. Your health - physical, emotional and mental - depends on it. Start slowly and build it up from there. Do something that you enjoy. I started out walking on the treadmill, but now I’m doing Pilates and Aqua Aerobics, which I prefer to the treadmill. That doesn’t mean that I’m never going near the treadmill again! I’m looking at introducing weight training and more cardio by the end of March. I promise you, you will start enjoying exercise after a while. You will start revelling in the feeling of accomplishment, the strength that you never knew you had and the almost daily progress. It will become second nature…
Your weight is not a punishment for past indiscretions (wow, did I just have a lightbulb moment when I wrote that!). It’s your body’s way of telling you that your life is not working. Change your life!
Your journey towards health is also not supposed to be penance. It’s a process in learning to enjoy life again, to live an authentic life, not one dictated by circumstance and society. Instead of giving your power away to the bathroom scale (an appliance that in my opinion, should be reclassified as an instrument of torture), ask yourself this question every night before you close your eyes: “Did I make progress on my journey to a new life today, or did I fall back a few steps?” You don’t need a scale to tell you the answer to that question! And if you find that you are often admitting to taking a few steps backward, or being frozen in place, you will have to start asking tougher questions like: “Why am I afraid of success?” or “Why do I believe that I don’t deserve that new life?”
You can change your life! And yes, you are worth it!
hanlie on March 7th 2008 in Health, Diet and Lifestyle, Heart, Soul and Mind
rupasivanarayana responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 12:51 pm #
Amazing, Hanlie….really splendid post….Change our life…thats the real mantra….you are so positive…and addictive with your posts…just love them..I was a bit low these days and this lifted my spirits….thank you
julia responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 1:23 pm #
Great post Hanlie…. it made me smile a real smile (you know the ones that show in the eyes). You are so right…. its all true…. its all about changing our lives and finding harmony with our bodies. I love it. Great post…. thank you.
Jessica responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 2:25 pm #
Thib blog was fantastic! I love your honesty and integrity, you’re just awesome.
And knock it off with the compliments, chicka, you’re making me blush… ;o)
Manuela responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 3:41 pm #
Thanks for sharing. I can’t believe that there is another SAD to add to the list. Most of us have been experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder but know that with sunny, warm days coming we’ll be getting over it.
The Standard American Diet is something that can be controlled, however hard it may be to start. Thanks for sharing another great story!
Michelle responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 4:20 pm #
Wonderful post Hanlie, It really got me thinking. I still, even after 40 days of juice feasting catch myself thinking, I can’t wait to eat popcorn again. Really? Popcorn? Is that the best thing for me? I don’t think so. I struggle with the idea of learning to eat everything in moderation and eating only healthy all the time.
I have tried to get my family off of the SAD diet and they have gotten a bit better but with 5 kids it is so difficult and not enjoyable when they are all gagging at the dinner table (kind of funny when you aren’t the one who prepared the meal :o)
I need to reflect on this and really decide what kind of changes I am going to have to make to help me when I go back to eating.
Thanks again! You’re the greatest!
thinkingwoman responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 5:03 pm #
Hmm…I agree with the vast majority of this wholeheartedly. Developing a healthy lifestyle is definitely something that requires major commitment and a complete change of outlook, and if you aren’t going to do that, you’re really wasting your time and setting yourself up for failure. It’s also something that needs to extend to your family…as I tell my kids, if it’s not healthy for me, it’s certainly not healthy for them. I do recognize that as growing children they require certain nutritional differences, but I definitely don’t want them growing up with the kind of eating habits I had!
It’s not as easy to change for them, but it’s definitely worth the struggle.
[I will say that I am one of those people who has a "regular" blog and a "weight loss/health & fitness" blog. However, it's definitely not out of a desire to hide or in any way diminish awareness of what I'm doing with my life. It's more a matter of structure for me - there is one venue where I explore some issues, and another venue where I explore others. I don't devote a lot of time to my "regular" blog because most of what I'm doing and thinking about revolves around changing my lifestyle right now; but occasionally there is something I want to write about that has nothing whatsoever to do with that, and I don't want to clutter up the Diet Book with it, because the Diet Book is going to be what I look back at later when I need reminding of how and why I made so many changes. (I do call it the Diet Book - it's sort of tongue-in-cheek, I really do understand the difference between a diet and a change of lifestyle, I promise!) But there's no secrecy involved - in fact, they're linked so anyone can easily jump from one to the other if they're interested in my random musings as well as my lifestyle change.
I am not as uncomfortable with it and I probably give more personal details than some, but I do understand those who are...]
Then too, I think that blogging under aliases is, for many people, more a matter of security than of trying to hide the fact that they're overweight. A lot of people are very uncomfortable with the idea that anyone trolling around the internet might be privy to details of their identity that could be used to cause them serious problems. I think they feel that way whether they're blogging about being fat, or about - I don't know, trains, or politics.
It’s a great post…I think very often people have no concept of the difference between losing weight and becoming healthy. I could probably weigh 135 pounds again - but not with any kind of muscle mass. Over the past two years of this process, I’ve definitely exchanged the two. I still want to lose weight, but right now it’s not as much about a number as it is about the being the best “me” I can be, whether that’s at 135 or 160, size 4 or size 8, a BMI of 25 or 29. (I’m just tossing numbers out, here.) I think that’s a focus that needs to be emphasized because it’s entirely possible to be thin without being healthy - and to be heavy AND healthy.
And I absolutely LOVE your statement that “Your weight is not a punishment for past indiscretions …Your journey towards health is also not supposed to be penance.” Wow. What a positive and empowering affirmation. It’s so hard to do good things for yourself if you are angry and disgusted and hating yourself…what a great way to remind yourself that you’re doing this out of love, not out of anger. I will definitely print that one out and pin it on my inspiration board! In fact…it will probably go on a page of my next “behaviors-tracking” calendar. Thanks for sharing.
Valerie
Lora responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 7:14 pm #
Very well said! Your post was truly an inspiration today! Bravo!
Lynn responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 7:20 pm #
Eh, I keep my blog under an alias for a couple of reasons… it’s not because I feel that I need to hide being fat from people, it’s because I have people in my life who aren’t so good about my wanting to be thinner.
Maybe I should ditch the friends who subconsciously try to sabotage me… but really, I don’t think abandoning a 16 year friendship because of one thing is a good deal… and *I* am not ready to deal with this issue between us, yet.
Eventually I will be, and I’ll probably tell her about it. But right now, I’m not in that place yet. It’s like keeping something tempting and bad for you in the house that you just know you’re going to eat. If you’re still doing that, you’re not ready for the lifestyle change. By not discussing this with some of my friends, I’m keeping myself separate from my temptation to cheat, my temptation to quit.
What it boils down to it is this: this is my journey, and these are my problems. If I’m going for a walk, I don’t load up my backpack with bricks and do the walk that way, so why should I volunteer to overburden myself in an emotional sense?
Tigerlilly responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 7:21 pm #
Great Post Hanlie!
You amaze me with inspiration every time I read your blog!! Thank you!
I know this may not mean as much coming from someone who doesn’t know you in person.. but.. I am very proud of you and I wish you the best of luck in becoming healthy and fertile. You will make a fantastic mother with a wonderful story to tell and lessons to pass on!
diana the scale junkie responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 11:16 pm #
You’ve come so far and grown so much on the inside while your outside shrinks away.
I do have to say that I do understand why some people don’t want to share their names or photos. Weight loss is a very private thing for many people. I know when I was manager of a large department I wouldn’t want my employees looking so closely at some of the things I write. There are many who work in jobs that when you show any sign of weakness its career suicide. I have been told by some of my blog friends who are a few years older than me that they don’t want their adult children reading or they wouldn’t want their childrens boss or friends reading. I know that you and I pretty much put our lives out there but don’t assume that everyone who doesn’t share so completely holds back for the reasons you mentioned. I’ve heard dozens of reasons, some shocked even me, but I respect their need for privacy.
I agree completely that you can change your life and that we need to take the time to examine the reasons why we self sabotage or are afraid of success. You are doing such a great job, you should be so proud of yourself!!
Chanda responded on 07 Mar 2008 at 11:52 pm #
I blog under my real name, but I can certainly understand why others would not be comfortable doing that either for privacy, security, or just for the comfort annonymity can provide when writing about something painful. Weight loss, examining how we got to be heavy, and the journey of rediscovery thataccompanies a change in lifestyle can be very emotional, and perhaps writing under a false name allows for someone to address issues that would hurt other memebers of their family, or friends if they read it. It’s all a personal thing, really. Regardless, I think this was a spectacular post, very positive. You really have your stuff together girl!
Heather responded on 08 Mar 2008 at 12:56 am #
that is fantastic post! i love your line about about being fat and our bodies are telling us something is not working ! that is what I wish I could shout to people when they make comments about my lunch etc because obviously I Wasnt always fat, things I were doing were not working and that is why I was fat.
Monica responded on 08 Mar 2008 at 3:54 am #
It’s funny that you actually wrote about this at this time.
I have been over the last couple of days been seriously considering restarting a blog only for weight loss and keeping my blog with my kids and hubby private.
I’m still in the decision process of it - I am just questioning if it’s really the wisest to have my children’s pictures on the net.
I need/want to always protect them so that would be the reason it went private.