Tag Archives: self help

Lost 100 Pounds on Hamburgers

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  First: This is not a new diet.  No secret is included.  All I’m doing is reporting what one woman decided to do and did based on her work to get a big more in charge her EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Remember, no frowns or self-beatings.  This is where your unconditional friend presides. And you are okay, so smile.

This woman, I’ll call her M, lived alone and had a limited social life.  She was forty-six and had been divorced almost twenty-years.  M worked at a good state job and enjoyed quiet evenings with her own company reading and watching favorite shows. She also enjoyed travelling. Limitation travelling was the reason she wanted to think through the weight issue.

To strengthen her access to her THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM, she constructed methods to break the rhythm of reflexive,non-thoughtful, eating.  Then she came up with her own program.  For breakfast and lunch (meals she didn’t really enjoy) she ate an apple and two rice cakes.  At nine in the evening she went through the Whataburger Drive Thru and picked up a double meat cheese Whataburger with double onions. She went home and enjoyed her meal in front of her favorite show.  She did this for months.  She lost the weight.

I know, I can practically feel “Yes, but…” missiles about nutrition, what time of day a person ought to eat, the importance of your astrological sign, and your body frame, someone pointing to a pyramid and, of course, plastic food.  Somewhere out there is even a joy-killer somewhere saying,  “But, Doc,      don’t you think it’s WRONG to enjoy such bad foods.  Don’t you think we should ‘eat to live’ instead of ‘live to eat’?”

Grrrrrrrrrrr.  M lost the weight.  Did all those nutritionist talks ever change anyone’s behavior? I mean anyone except that rude guy in the back chanting, “eat to live instead of eat to live.”

And Dr. L, of course.

The Plastic Food Incident

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  Lack of information is not the reason we persist in self destructive behaviors.  Yet, more information (even if it’s absurdly dishonest) is what we throw at people and problems.  What we throw at ourselves.

Change in our lives comes with MANAGING ANXIETY BETTER.  More information doesn’t do it.   And before I rant along here all serious, keep in mind the motto of this site:  IF DO NOT TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.  IF YOU ONLY TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.

So, let’s not get a stranglehold, life or death on ourselves.  We’re going to MUDDLE through.

Let’s take weight management.  (Remember, humor.  Smile, it keeps them guessing.)  The facts: all diets work (short term).  If you take in fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight.  It’s not about your blood type, your personality type, what time you eat, or what order you eat foods in, secret fat-burning herbs or foods, or machines. and plastic balls. Neither is weight-loss about “shopping at Walmart” or all the pounds you’ll lose after you order a metal dectector–two of the more recent ridiculous claims. Grasping onto more information, buying a “new” diet is back to thinking 10 MINUTES AT A TIME.

Now I’m not into the double-message culture that has way too many women living lives constantly racked by self-hate, anxiety, and guilt.   But as I worked on an eating disorders unit for a while, I sometimes consult with women whose EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS have steered them toward eating to relieve anxiety and carrying the accompanying extra pounds.  These women interested in working on managing their anxiety better as a way of thinking about eating patterns do not need me or anyone else to hand over another diet or a weight chart. I want to tell you about one woman who lost over a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.

But, first I digress to share with you the PLASTIC FOOD Incident. 

After a early and complete hysterectomy I was (gratefully) put on hormones which required some adjusting.  “Some adjusting” being a clinical term for IMMEDIATE CHANGE BECAUSE I AM NOW CRAZY and I don’t want to end up in prison.”  Thus, I ended up with an appointment with a Gynocologic Endocrinologist Assistant.  The GEA asked me to describe the symptoms I was experiencing.  After saying “I’m not the lovely, gentle person I once could convince myself I was,” and  ”I now consider climbing a staircase right up there with swimming the English Channel,”  . . . I mentioned a bit of new flesh showing up around my middle without any changes in my behavior.

And this is what she did. No kidding.  Now, keep in mind this helpful lass is about twenty and I’m not.  This is what she did . .  without even a stutter-step of questioning whether her approach might  be a bit shop-worn. . . even bizarre?    

She smiled as if, “Oh, I know just what you need,”   and reached into a drawer. She then brought out a little plastic steak, a plastic clump of broccoli, and a rather appetizing slice of plastic chocolate cake.  She set these items in front of me on the table.   The innocent GEA then began to explain how calories function in the human body, adding that she finds demonstrating with the plastic food helpful in her explanation because so many people do not realize that PORTION size matters.

Oh.  So, I guess that same stunning NEW IDEA would apply to making bank deposits, too?  I never thought of that.  Surely, this lass had not been listening when I mentioned, I WAS CRAZY and MAYBE, JUST MAYBE not as PATIENT with wasting time as I was before the surgery?

Okay, next I’ll fill you in on how the woman lost a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.

Feathers? The Spam Devil?

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  About the woman told the priest about her dream and asked if gossip was a sin.  He sent her on with instructions to take a pillow up to the roof of her house that night, plunge a knife into it, and return the next day.

She did and the priest asked what happened when she stabbed the pillow.

“Feathers,” she said.  Now we have a little lesson here . . . but hark!  The lesson has nothing to do with the kind of gossip that goes on BETWEEN PEOPLE.  The lesson is that each of us has inside of us an

INNER TORTURER. . .   stabbing our brain and poofing down all sorts of  “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”  “YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT,” “YOU ARE JUST NOT UP TO THIS LIFE THING!”

In other words, your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is a big, fluffy sack of self-doubting feathers, just waiting for you to jab them into action. 

And, I for one, in 2009 am going to do something about it!

Note:  The reason I do not keep up with or publish comments is because this computer has in it a monster with a pillow full of SPAM which makes life hell.  No where in the ballpark with my lovely

INNER TORTURER,  but them my PERSONAL I.T. has had many more years of, pretty much, uninterrupted experience.

What’s In Your Pillow?

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  “Which is more important?  The world you can touch, facts, or the WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO?

The movie “Doubt” is a story about that question.  In it, a priest is accused on very little, no, on no evidence of molesting a boy.  Interesting statements of the accusing nun (not exact quotes):

See he IS who I THOUGHT HE WAS.  Proving that the priest is WHO SHE THINKS HE IS quickly becomes more important than the truth.  The priest: “What proof do you have?”

The nun pounds her chest as says, “None.  But I have my ‘CERTAINTY’.”

The priest:  “Your ‘certainty’ is no more than your ‘feeling’, it is not a fact.”

I’ve always been impressed by how we make other people up as we go along.  How much of WHO WE ARE is our playing out of our parents’ “certainty” of who we would become?  In what ways have we limited our goals playing out the expectations of others? 

Okay, here’s where I usually slip into a guilt bog thinking, “And what about the children I’ve influenced and limited?  And my husband?  He’d probably be president if I didn’t work out my anxiety by being critical of him?

Enough about that.  I have to sleep at night.

Where I end up on this is another interesting question.  If in my head I SEE OTHER PEOPLE AS DANGEROUS and CRITICAL . . .  . . .how much of that is the WORLD I’M RESPONDING TO IN MY HEAD that doesn’t even exist?

In what ways am I LIMITING MYSELF by the ME I’ve CREATED IN MY HEAD that doesn’t REALLY EXIST?

ba-deep, ba-deep, ba-deep.  More hard stuff to come trying to engage the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM ain’t for sissies.

Optimism:  A company running an ad on television which says, “Find all the gold in your house, put it in a brown envelope (that we will send to you for FREE!) and mail it to US!  Then, once we receive your envelope, we’ll pick some random amount of money out of the AIR and send you a CHECK (for however much we decided, while giggling hysterically, we wanted to send!)

Oh, the pillow thing?  Later. I won’t forget.  Cause it’s important and has feathers in it.

The Fettucinne, No Brain Connection

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 Okay.    We’ve had lots of examples of the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM messing life up for us.  So where does the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM come in?

And what does it have to do with fettucine?    Everything!!!

The THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM is:

   The part of our brain which can TOLERATE ANXIETY.

   The part of our brain which can GATHER and USE FACTS in decisions.

The part of our brain which can SLOW DOWN and consider, WHEN I TOOK THIS CERTAIN ACTION BEFORE, HOW DID THINGS WORK OUT?

The Fetteccinne Incident, a move made thousands of times a day.  I’m working at a hotel and it’s four in the afternoon.  I haven’t had lunch, so I grab coffee.  This routine (thoughtlessly) is repeated until nine-thirty.  I’m at the bar having a cool glass of wine before calling it a night.  Boy am I starving!  I order fettuccine alfredo to take up to my room.  After all, I haven’t had a meal all day.  The fettuccine was terrific. 

OPTIMISM SIGHTING: That little readout at the bottom of a television ad that suggests you look up their advertisement in some random magazine.

But the heartburn at midnight was awful.  At two, I got up and stumbled down the hall for a Coke hoping that would help.  I didn’t get much sleep at all.  NOTE: I’m not suggesting that “not eating” is good and holy and “eating fettucine or any other lovely food is bad.” Just as many people “don’t eat” under rule of the non-fact-based EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM as people who “eat” on decisions made by the same system.

The point is, the EMOTIONAL SYSTEM doesn’t pay attention to the FACTS.  The EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM ignores past experiences.  You can bet that wasn’t my first lonely midnight heartburn.

Down with the Downers

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  Okay, the first step of this better living in 2009 is giving up the negativity.  This means, not only avoiding the anxiety-builders on every newscast, not only learning to turn another person’s negative spin into something positive, but cutting our own NEGATIVITY.  ME?  CHANGE?  Are you nuts?

Whoa.  This is hard for me.  Negative comments are the way people in my family show how in-the-know we are.  I have been told by persons close to me that    ”You do know that it’s okay with us if you go through the world without evaluating it?”

What?  You don’t NEED to know what I think of this television show?  That politician?  New Yorkers?  Californians?  Canadians?  What about Paris Hilton?  Do you really want to know?

Do you really need one more person to point out that those FREE male enhancement pills, the free computer instruction discs, the free energy tabs are about the “shipping and handling?”  No, you know that.  My comments add nothing except down energy.  (Hey, I sort of got away with it, but we all have to have outlets.)

I recommend outlets in which no one is actually being damaged.  Which means no one is in position to hear our negativity. 

Which leaves talking back to the television (only when alone) and belligerent dialogues with that insanely saccharine voiced woman telling you how important your call is while you are on terminal hold.  I personally have grave fear that my responses (a kind term) when she says, “I’m sorry, your call is so important–are being recorded.  Let me try to get you the help you need by seeing if any of the following options meet your needs.”

 **See previous entry for BLIND OPTIMISM, federal highway department.

The String Bikini Incident

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  Motto for 2009: “You know, I’ve been thinking.  I’ve decided I would look GREAT in a string bikini!”

Yep.  The very thought is beyond ridiculous if I’m talking about what someone else would think.  I’m not sure I could talk a salesperson into letting me try on, much less purchase a string bikini.  I chose the string bikini statement because someone who loves me very much just the way I am said that once spying a string bikini on a store manikin.  He couldn’t have been more wrong.  And I’m not being coy.  I would look ridiculous in a string bikini, then and even more now.  But not according to him.

The only way we’re going to get our lives back is by producing our own feedback channels run by that part of ourselves that’s like that guy who said I’d look great in a string bikini..  You can go to FOX News for the conservative take, NBC for a more liberal take.  And to your own channel for the best take for you.  This is the channel run by that director who is absolutely CRAZY about you. We are not tuning into the channel manned by others.    Alert!!  CRAZY and unwise are not the same.  Remember best thinking over emotionally based decisions is what we’re going for. The reason no comments have been shown on this site is that I haven’t sorted through the thousands and thousands of spams.  I’m trying to catch up now and must say—Buying more exercise machines, male organ size enhancements, and God forbid, those all-in-one girdles–is not the kind of CRAZY that goes into having a better life.  It’s the kind of crazy that keeps everything the same except you have less money.  

The crazy we’re going for is the kind that gets you to submit that short story, write that novel, paint that picture, run that race, because if you’re not crazy confident you’ll talk yourself out of it.  Crazy confidence is not about buying easy-sounding solutions.  It’s about DOING something that changes your life. I know, kind of confusing.  Manana.

WHY IS SOMEONE ELSE’S WAY OF SEEING YOU MORE REAL THAN THE WAY YOU CHOOSE TO SEE YOURSELF? 

It’s not like their opinion is right.  It’s JUST THEIR OPINION.

This year we are going to LAUGH, LAUGH, LAUGH.  And anytime anyone doubts us, most particularly ourselves, we are going to have this sentence pop out of our mouths:  “You know, I’ve been thinking about it and I just realized I would look great in a string bikini.”

And when others scoff, pass out or threaten to have us picked up by the men in the white jackets, we’ll ask, “Which is more important?  The world I can touch?  Or the world to which I AM RESPONDING?”   To which others will say, “You’re crazy.”   And you’ll say, “Great.   It’s working.” 

 **The unbelievable optimism from the federal highway department:  On the endless nothingness of IH 8 between Yuma, Arizona and El Centro, California, along the shoulder are signs saying, “No parking except in case of emergency.”  Now there’s optimism.  Someone’s going to park there for a picnic?