A while ago I realized that I was in trouble. I was spending almost every waking minute at my computer reading blogs. Which meant that I wasn’t taking care of myself.

The whole purpose of not working is for me to get healthy, fit and fertile. I wasn’t even getting close. The hours that were being frittered away every day, were the days of my life. Clearly I needed to make some changes.

So I stepped back a little and took a broader look at my life. What I saw dismayed me. I was seriously missing the point. This journey for me was never about weight loss. Yet, I was hopping on the scale every day. When we decided to go to America this June, I declared that I had 5 weeks in which to lose a chunk of weight so that my trip would be more comfortable. It was time for bootcamp! Every day I “wasted” by not pounding my body into submission made me feel more guilty and more anxious. How is that healthy?

I needed to change the way I thought and the way I spent my time. I more than halved the number of blogs that I subscribe to. That left me some time for being good to myself. And no, I didn’t start the bootcamp! I never will.

I took the time to reconnect with my goals, dreams and desires. And very importantly with myself. I reread the books that teach the principles by which I want to live. And I changed my life in a few short weeks.

Now every day is an opportunity to be kinder and more loving towards my body and spirit. I eat the foods that are good and healing and avoid the things that strain, damage and throw my body (and emotions) out of balance. Some days I’m better at it than others. It doesn’t matter. I’m no longer demanding perfection. I’m learning and improving as I go along.

And my body is loving it! The scale, when I remember to get on it, keeps going down slowly but surely. My health is improving every day. I haven’t had a skin rash in weeks. My hormones did some heroic healing task which delayed my menses for more than two weeks. I’m sleeping well. I have more energy.

And with that increased energy I’m starting to get more active. My body is demanding that I work it. Previously I looked at things that needed to be done in the garden and told myself that I couldn’t do it. Now I tell myself that while I may not be able to do it all in one go, I can do something. Sure, it’s uncomfortable to kneel or bend, but invariably I do more than what I thought I could.

I haven’t gone back to gym yet, because I want my mind to be clear about what I want to do there. I want to my work there to be healing. I don’t want to feel as if I’ve let myself down if I skip a day. The call for more activity, for stretching and toning, running and swimming is getting stronger every day. My body is starting to crave it. I like that!

I’m also taking time to meditate, breathe and just be. My spirit is healing nicely alongside my body. I’m pondering my fertility, my life-choices and my future. And a path is starting emerge. I will be sharing a lot of my thoughts and dreams with you in the near future.

But for now, I’m good! In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’m almost at goal. My goal being to live a healthy lifestyle. That has always been the goal. The weight loss and increased fertility are just byproducts of that lifestyle. I am working with my body, not against it. The scale has ceased to have any hold over me, in fact I barely even notice it anymore when I go into the bathroom.

I won’t be significantly thinner when we leave in just over two weeks’ time. And while we’re away, staying with relatives, we won’t be eating what we normally eat, so I’ll probably put on some weight and throw myself out of balance in various ways. But that’s okay! It’s a minor detour in my life journey. We know what we want and it’s not something we have to attain, but something we’re doing already. I love that!

Swimmer Natalie du Toit is one of South Africa’s top athletes. 

She first competed internationally at the age of 14, when she took part in the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. 

In February 2001 she was struck by a car while driving home from swimming practice on her scooter.  She lost her left leg.

Three months later she was back in the pool, before she could even walk.  She swims without the aid of a prosthetic limb.

During the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Natalie, who was then 18 years old, won both the multi-disability 50 m freestyle and the multi-disability 100 m freestyle in world record time. She also made sporting history by qualifying for the 800 m able-bodied freestyle final - the first time that an athlete with a disability had qualified for the final of an able-bodied event.  At the closing of the Manchester Commonwealth Games, she was presented with the first David Dixon Award* for Outstanding Athlete of the Games.

In 2003, competing against able-bodied swimmers, Natalie won gold in the 800 metres freestyle at the All-Africa Games as well as silver in the 800 metres freestyle and bronze in the 400 metres freestyle at the Afro Asian Games.

She narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympics in Athens in 2004, but during the Paralympics that were held in the same city, she won one silver and five gold medals. In the same year, her courage and achievements were acknowledged with a nomination for the Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year 2004 with Disability Award. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games she repeated her previous performance by winning the same two golds as she had in Manchester. In 2006 Natalie also won six gold medals at the fourth IPC World Swimming Championships, finising third overall in a race which included 36 males and 20 females.

Four days ago Natalie qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics after finishing fourth in the 10km open water ace at the Open Water World Championships in Seville, Spain. Her time was only 5.1 seconds off the winner. 

She is hugely popular in South Africa and inspires people with her will and determination. Her motto is “Be everything you want to be“. Let’s make that our mission!

* David Dixon Award is named after the former honorary secretary of the Commonwealth Games Federation for 17 years, David Dixon. It is given to the outstanding athlete of each of the Games based on their performance at the Commonwealth Games, fair play, and overall contribution to their team’s participation at the Commonwealth Games. The award was introduced in 2002 in Manchester.

A lot of us are working at weight loss… But is that all we want to lose?

I’ve been thinking about this ever since I posted those teenage pictures a few days ago. When I look at my younger self, I not only see a thinner me, but also a more hopeful, more innocent, more care-free me.

And while I know that I can’t undo the last 13 years, and I don’t necessarily want to, I think a part of me wants to regain some of that innocence, hope and exuberance. My extra weight is weighing me down in more ways than one.

Don’t get me wrong… I love where I am in my life. I’m always moving forward. I’m with the man I want to share the rest of my life with. We are making big and exciting plans. I’m learning new skills and discovering new aspects of myself all the time. I’m very happy.

But. I know that I am not treating myself as well as I should. I have this long history of failing myself. Let’s face it, when you gain a lot of weight you’re failing yourself. And every time you declare that you’re going to “do something about your weight” and you don’t, you’re failing yourself. Even when you start with a bang, but fizzle out after a while, you’re failing yourself. Not your mother or your father, or your best friend, or your spouse, or your WW leader, or your blogging buddies or your (ex) training partner. Yourself.

And when we look at pictures of our fat selves, we don’t only see the unsightly bulges and the rows of chins. We see that failure written all over our faces. We see beaten down, disappointed, sad, desperate, fat women. It’s in the sag of the shoulders and the guilt-ridden, stricken eyes. It’s what I saw in the photo I had taken on Tuesday, the ones I will not be posting here (even though my hair looked nice).

That’s what I want to lose! And of course another 130-150 pounds.

Not only do I want to weigh what I weighed when I was 20. I want to have that innocent belief that the world is my oyster.

Is that naive? In a way I suppose it is. I can never be that innocent again. But I believe I can be something even better.

An overcomer.  Someone who has cast off the heavy, debilitating weight of failure and found her wings. 

I came across this quote earlier in the week and it just really spoke to me. It ties in beautifully with something Briy wrote. She felt that she had let herself down in April and vowed to do better in May. But she didn’t delay until 1 May. She renamed the remaining days of April as Pre-May days, i.e. May -1, May -2, etc. And she started doing better immediately. There is a great lesson in that!

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person. ~ Og Mandino

In this journey, there is no tomorrow. There is no Monday. There is no destination. There is no fairy godmother who will transform me.

This is the time.

This is the place.

I am the person.

One of my favorite bloggers, Lyn from Escape from Obesity did this really excellent Q&A post and since then I’ve been seeing it on a lot of blogs. So, here’s my answers to Lyn’s questions:

1. What types of food were you most likely to overeat? Rich, creamy, saucy foods, like lasagne and macaroni and cheese. Also bread and butter. And pizza. I often used to make myself a jug of thick white sauce with cheese and maybe tinned tuna, which I would eat with a spoon. I’m not really a snacker, so things like chips, popcorn, cookies and candy don’t register with me and I’ve never been a fan of fries. But I can overeat on salad or sushi - for me it’s very much about the behavior. I don’t have specific trigger foods - food used to be my trigger.

2. What times of day did you overeat most often? When I was alone. Writing that provided one of those lightbulb moments for me. I’ve always known that I was a sneaky eater, and therefore I didn’t binge in front of other people, but I never really considered that being alone might trigger my bingeing… I’m going to have to think about this! Maybe I’m not such a loner after all!

3. What feelings were you having most often when you overate? Boredom, anger, frustration, loneliness, defiance, fear. I remember once biting into a warm meat pie and thinking “this is pure love”. What bullshit! There’s no love there! That thing was made by a bored, underpaid worker in a factory. This exercise has made me realize that I eat out of anger more than anything else. I’ve been angry for so long - at my parents, the men in my life, my employers, even my wonderful husband. And because I have always been unable to voice my anger, I would direct it towards myself and punish myself. Eating for me is about punishment and rebellion. Deep down I’m still fighting my teenage battles… and of course the person I’m most pissed off with is myself! I need to do some work around this issue…

4. Do you think you have a binge-eating disorder? I know I do! I would buy enough rich food to feed a family of four for a whole day and scarf it all down in one sitting.

5. What circumstances in your life do you believe contributed to your weight gain? I first gained weight when I went to university, like most first year students do. I gained some more when I au paired in France, but the real weight came when I married to husband #1. I gained over 100 pounds in one year. Since my divorce I gained another 50 odd pounds… Reading that has given me another insight. I used to see a therapist who told me that fat people often use their weight as a way to “anchor” themselves. I can now see that my significant weight gains all happened during times of change in my life. Which doesn’t mean that I should avoid change! Oh no, I should learn to deal better with change!

6. Do you “blame” anyone for your weight? I’ve always had this large, willing target for blaming and despising - myself! When I’m really honest with myself, the roots of this thing lie in my relationship with my parents when I grew up. They did the best that they could, but they made some big mistakes with me and it’s always made me feel very bad about myself. Being big is my way of expressing myself, of drawing attention to myself and of making a statement. Once again, I’m learning to express myself differently. Dr. Phil always talks about the pay-offs we get from certain behaviors and I can definitely see that, for me, there are pay-offs attached to being fat.

7. What other behaviors made you overweight? Being lazy and sedentary. Drinking too much. Smoking. Involving food in every social event.

8. Were you active or exercising while you gained weight? I was never exercising, but before my first marriage I used to walk everywhere I wanted to be, since I didn’t have a car. When I got married, we moved to the suburbs, I got a car and never walked anywhere until now…

9. Why did you choose that activity level? I was lazy, I was married to a fat lazy alcoholic and I worked long hours. And I think I didn’t really know how neccessary exercise is for good health.

10. What finally made you want to change? I was starting to develop certain degenerative lifestyle conditions, I was infertile and I was getting older. It was just starting to feel as if I was throwing away my life. I had made an intensive study of health and nutrition over the course of about five years and I knew what I needed to do. My wonderful new husband also provides me with so much support and motivation, that for the first time I believe that I CAN do this. I have discovered my own ability and resolve. And I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter how long this takes me; as long as I keep moving in the right direction I can’t fail!

Wow, I loved doing this! I discovered so many truths while answering these questions. I am really going to work on the anger aspect. And on expressing myself in a healthy way, embracing change and finding ways to reassure myself when I’m alone. This was a very valuable exercise for me!

I hope that you found something of value to yourself in my answers. The beauty of blogging is that we learn so much from one another, and I’m always pleased to see how similiar we often are, even when we come from vastly different backgrounds and countries.

Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death. ~ Betty Bender

We can do anything we set our minds to. I have been Juice Feasting for 77 days. So many people have told me that they “could never do that”. You don’t know that! But if you tell yourself that, you make it your truth.

I am learning to believe that I can do anything. And I wouldn’t exchange this knowledge for anything in the world. If a fairy godmother were to visit me tonight and tell me that I can wake up at goal tomorrow, I’d have to decline. I don’t need fairy godmothers. I can and I want to do this myself! I want to change my life. I want to learn the lessons. I want to grow. I want to heal. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t even care what the scale says. I know when I’m losing weight. I know that I’m getting fitter and stronger, because I challenge my body every day.

My primary goal is not weight loss.  My primary goal is to change my life to one of abundant health and vitality.  And fertility.  We want to grow our own organic food.  We want to do physical work.  These are not means to an end - they are the end.

Someone asked me whether, with that level of health, one would just die of natural causes.  Barring accidents, yes!  But I am less concerned about how I’m going to die and more concerned with the quality of my life.  I want to be robust and active, without degenerative diseases until the very end.   How many people over sixty do you know who have no medical conditions, not even high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol?  How many people in their 80’s and 90’s are still active and in possession of all their faculties?

I intend to be.  You can too!

Darren Rowse from the immensely popular and successful marketing blog, ProBlogger, woke up this morning with three very appreciative e-mails in his mailbox, effectively making his day. This prompted him to declare today (14 April) an unofficial Blogger Appreciation Day.

The idea is to thank our fellow bloggers for their continued and valued influence in our lives and let them know how much they enrich us. You can do this via comments, e-mails or posting and linking back. I’ll do this mostly via commenting, because I read so many blogs and I love you all.

Your contribution to my life has been immense. I am inspired, challenged, amused, encouraged and made welcome by you every single day. You teach me about blogging, weight loss, nutrition, exercise, life, love, raw food, juice feasting, motivation, perseverance, growth, emotional freedom, motherhood, fashion, even enemas! You are my social life, my sounding board and my cheerleading squad.

I love, value and appreciate every single one of you! Thank you for taking an interest in my life and my journey, as well as sharing your own. Our journeys may differ vastly, but ultimately we’re working towards the same goal - giving birth to our authentic selves. It’s an honour to walk with you!

Expect me to drop in with random acts of appreciation today! Pay it forward!

The only thing I can fault Darren on is the fact that he didn’t design a badge or emblem while wiping the sleep from his eyes. I so love pictures, you know!

If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come. ~ Chinese proverb

When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray and meditate until they hear the song of the child. They recognize that every soul has its own vibration that expresses its unique flavor and purpose. When the women attune to the song, they sing it out loud. Then they return to the tribe and teach it to everyone else.

When the child is born, the community gathers and sings the child’s song to him or her. Later, when the child enters education, the village gathers and chants the child’s song. When the child passes through the initiation to adulthood, the people again come together and sing. At the time of marriage, the person hears his or her song.

Finally, when the soul is about to pass from this world, the family and friends gather at the person’s bed, just as they did at their birth, and they sing the person to the next life.

Something inside me knows that I too have a song, and I have to start listening for it, so that I can sing it to myself.   My song would help me allay my fears of success, change and embracing life.  My song would resonate within the deepest recesses of my bruised and battered heart and heal my brokenness.

In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity.

When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt yourself or another. You will remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.

If you do not give your song a voice, you will feel lost, alone, and confused. If you express it, you will come to life.  Let’s all open our hearts to listen for our song, so that we can find our way home…

 You see an obese person and think to yourself “How could she let herself go like that? She has no self-control. She should eat less and do some exercise.” Clever you! You think you have all the answers. But you don’t. Here’s why:

We live in a society that likes to treat the symptom and not the underlying cause. When we have headaches, we swallow some pills, instead of eliminating the caffeine, sugar, xyz that caused the headache. When we block our arteries, we have bypass surgery instead of changing our lifestyle. When our children have ear infections, we give them antibiotics, instead of eliminating dairy from their diets. Similarly, when we are fat, we think that we have to eat less and exercise more.

Of course we do. We became obese by eating too much of the wrong foods and not exercising enough. And in order to lose weight, we need to change those patterns. But this is not the most important aspect of weight loss. (I’m not talking here about someone who is a size 2 and wants to be a size 0, or carries a few extra kilograms - I’m mostly talking about people who are obese.)

Nobody I’ve ever heard of has ever woken up one morning and decided to eat more and exercise less in order to become obese. Nobody wants to be obese. The slide is gradual and happens while we are trying to make sense of our lives. Often this slide follows a trauma to our psyche. A psychologist I used to see explained to me that traumatized people often feel the need to be more solid as a way of protecting themselves - basically it boils down to anchoring themselves.

Deep down, below all the social brainwashing, we all know what is necessary for health. We are born with that knowledge, just as a deer or a tiger is born with that knowledge. We lose it because our society has learned to trust external authorities, instead of ourselves. Instincts are perceived as primitive and we blindly travel along the enlightened scientific path, disregarding our own common sense. The traumatized woman who subconsciously wants to punish herself, will do so in a number of ways. Some will attempt suicide.  Some will drink, use drugs, or throw themselves into a cause or career.  Some people will cut themselves. Some will overeat - suicide by fork.

All this happens in the subconscious mind. The person is not aware that she is punishing herself. In fact, she believes that she deserves the treats, because of what has happened to her. She owes it to herself! Furthermore, just as some people will use alcohol or drugs (street or prescription) to distance themselves from their emotions, so some people get the same effect with food. In our minds, all the bad things about being fat (the indignities, the discomfort, the social censure, the health concerns, the sheer ugliness) are not as scary as feeling certain emotions. Best we pile some more food on that memory or emotion, lest it comes to the surface and destroys us!

Another central theme with obese people is that they often had a very dominant parent, be it the father or the mother. Especially if they were an only child or the eldest. The parent over controls the child and the result is that the child never learns an internal locus of control. This means that the child, even when she grows up, will always measure her worth and get her cues from outside herself - an external locus of control. She literally has not learnt to control her own impulses - she needs outside influences to keep her in line. She may end up in abusive relationships or become promiscuous - looking for love in the wrong places. All of which will further erode her self-esteem and set the stage for obesity.

The diet industry of course perpetuates the external locus of control, while making it seem as if they are teaching you self-control. That is why I am not so excited about calorie counting, weighing portions, diet clubs, diet potions and pills and diet food. It’s just another way of not taking control. It’s just another way of saying that the solution to your problem is a temporary inconvenience that you need to suffer and then you can let the good times roll again! A.k.a. going on a diet. How many of us have tried every diet we could get our pudgy paws on? Did we lose weight? Often yes, but diets don’t work, because they don’t heal the underlying cause, which is of course emotional, with a good dose of bad habits. First of all they are not teaching you good habits, but they are also doing absolutely nothing for your emotional health and even less for your physical health!

Have you ever prayed, wished or daydreamed that you would just wake up thin the next day? Did you imagine how happy you would be? How nothing in your closet will fit! The excitement of having to get new things! Of seeing the admiration in people’s eyes! But let me burst your bubble… you’ll be fat again in no time. Partly because you will not have learnt what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, but because while you were fat, you believed that you did not deserve to be thin. That belief will only be reinforced if you lose weight miraculously. You will start punishing yourself straight away.

All obese people have a very deep sense of self-loathing. We are offended by our own bodies. We see the disgust in other people’s faces and we just hate ourselves more. We know that we did this to ourselves. We know that we are not good enough. We know that people think we’re lazy, slow-witted and slovenly. Actually, a lot of obese people are very successful in other areas of their lives. They are not weak. They are not spineless.

There is not an obese person on this earth who doesn’t know that he or she needs to lose weight - even those fat acceptance people know it, they’ve just decided to make the best of a bad deal. But there is really no “best” to being fat. Fat acceptance just means that you’ve given up. You are not even going to try and be the person you can be. And by that I don’t mean a thin person, by that I mean a whole person. And don’t tell me you can be fat and whole! You can’t. When you’re whole, you want to be the best you. You are loving and kind to your body, which means that you feed it healthy foods and exercise it.

Please note that I’m not saying that thin people are necessarily whole people. Different people have different coping mechanisms in place, some of them healthy, some of them not. A person who is a healthy size 4, but thinks that she should starve herself to be a size 0 is far from whole. Food can be a weapon or sustenance. Exercise can be healthy, or an addiction.

So what is the answer? The answer is learning to love ourselves unconditionally. How do we do that? I don’t know… I’m just learning this myself.

Daniele posted this link a while ago. It’s the story of a woman, Nancy Makin, who lost 530 lb (about 241 kg)! She says that she didn’t need a diet chart, she needed a life. She got one and then she got thin. Not overnight, but she did it (she used to walk in the cemetery, because she was too ashamed to be seen in public). And you know what?  I believe that she’ll remain thin. There seem to be two main reactions to this story among the obese. Some are inspired and happy for her, but others are not so enthusiastic. Why? I believe it’s because she didn’t follow the rules! She didn’t deprive herself, she didn’t count calories and she didn’t agonize over every morsel she put in her mouth. So she didn’t suffer like the poor dieter is suffering! How dare she!

As for me? I’m learning to be kind to myself. Every day.  And I’ll count my blessings, not my calories or my fat rolls!  I concern myself with the quality of my food more than the quantity.  If I can get my heart over the bar, my body will surely follow…

I stumbled upon this very useful article about avoiding binges. It’s by Karen Knowler, the well-know UK raw food coach. I’m definitely going to apply this, since bingeing is an all too familiar knee-jerk reaction to adversity in my life.

I e-mailed some advice to a client earlier today and felt that not to share it with you would be a huge waste of some very good advice that I know could make a world of difference to those of you reading who are struggling with the regular or occasional binge cycle… Or any type of “out of control” food situation for that matter.

The client was sharing how she had just got over a “semi-binge”, where she had not gone all-out and lost complete control but had still been compelled to eat foods that she has recently sworn off of completely, and was now licking her wounds a little…

Chances are, if you are mostly or completely human, then you’ve been there…

The following is the exercise I recommended to her, based on the understanding that when we make any food choice, however we perceive it (good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, naughty/nice) at an underlying level we very much feel we are “signing up” for something when we make our choice. The BIG QUESTION is:

“What do I believe I am signing up for when I eat these binge foods?”
(i.e. what exactly do I think or feel I will gain as a result of eating these foods, or drinking these drinks? What is it I am REALLY looking for when I open the packet or jar or lift the fork towards my mouth or raise the glass towards my lips? How do I think me or my world will be a happier place for having these foods in my life experience?)

Then do a free flowing brain dump of all the things those foods represent to you.

Examples from my own past:

CHIPS (Fries) = * Warmth * Cuddles * Delicious * Moist * Salty * Hot * Treat * Get lost in the fattiness * Escape
COOKIES = * Child-like * Freedom * Dumb-down * Big crunch/ release aggression * Forget about worries
ICE-CREAM = * Play * Relax * Meditational movement (spoon to mouth, spoon to mouth) * Time out * Leave the world behind * Huddle up on the sofa and chill
WINE = * Being grown up * Being sophisticated * Relaxing * Being sexy * Being liberated * New experience within same situation * Social acceptance * Fun

Now it’s your turn! Keep writing until you have all of your own “I wish I didn’t eat these” foods and drinks listed out.

When you have your list, write next to each word AT LEAST two other activities that you can do to create the same experience/feelings. It works a treat!

Using one of my examples again:

COOKIES = * Child-like * Freedom * Dumb-down * Big crunch/ release aggression * Forget about worries

What I could replace cookies with that isn’t edible is…

Playing with my son * Running around the park * Going swimming * Running at the gym * Becoming absorbed in a good book * Watching a DVD in bed * Going to the movies

All of the above would tick one or more of the boxes I was looking to tick when I chose cookies.

Do you get the idea? It’s actually very fun and empowering when you get going. Of course you have to actually act on these things…

Just know that often the “nutrient” you are seeking cannot be found in food .