My self-talk is far more loving these days. I accept my “shrinkles” from my weight loss of more than 70 pounds (from 2023 to the end of 2024), and technically I am 90 pounds down if you count my absolute highest weight ever (2003).
But I have experienced a certain degree of body shaming, including at a young age. Some of it was not malicious, it was merely observation, (when puberty hit and I developed “saddle bags”). But when you are 12 years old, observation can sound like criticism.
And back in November, someone’s observation, in connection with those infamous “saddle bags” of mine, and the shape of my legs now, post-weight loss, was “that’s because you have an old lady butt.”
In the past, this would have bothered me. Now, I embrace my butt, my shape, everything leg about my legs, because they are incredible. My legs (thighs and butt included) carry me on hikes up hills. They carry me while walking a 15K back in March. They peddled my electric assist bicycle on a nearly 50K bike ride just one week ago. TMI alert, they allowed me to easily squat in the bush for a pee (twice).
Well, I survived last night cravings, despite getting flirtatious with a couple spoonful’s of peanut butter…
Maybe it was not emotional pain specifically last night, (I do NOT stuff down my emotions with food anymore), maybe it was my chronic physical pain that was pushing me into relief seeking behavior. I am currently dealing with daily arthritis (maybe it’s arthritis, I really don’t know what it is…) pain in my hands that I haven’t had to deal with before. (At least, I have not had pain that is daily like this is since going grain free).
I am better off petting my pets than grabbing a spoon, lol.
Not sure where I will wear this outfit, but it was a gift, so I had to try it on.
I had a productive few days after getting home from holidays, but then tonight, I feel depressed, I am craving sugar, I am craving my old overeating behavior.
It’s like a constant fight against myself, against my old habits, the ways I used to soothe my emotions. I may have changed my identity into someone who does NOT behave that way anymore. But it is like old identity did not die, she is still there inside me, as though she is just biding her time for when I let her out…
You know, part of me feels like these posts about “Look at me, I am in Maintenance!” come across as a little braggy, but I am just reminding myself lately that I do not want to go back up the scale to the old me. Yes, I have changed my identity that I spoke about here.
But…
I have been thinking (obsessing?) lately about the feelings I used to have when I simply would eat food for fun, for indulgence, the way I still see other people eating food. For example, go to a movie theatre. I will see people sitting all around me just eating—for the pure pleasure of eating. I mean, come on. No one is sitting there in a movie theatre eating, for example, a mixed vegetable dish as a meal to nourish their bodies. They are eating food (popcorn and candy, etc.) for fun. Absolutely, I used to do that too. And this week and last week in particular, I have been missing how it felt to escape into something (anything) to eat for the pure oblivion of a few moments of time while just eating. Because for those few moments of time, real life (with its real stresses) just disappears. Oh, real life comes rushing back in as soon as the food is done, and I must NEVER forget that, but for that little bit of time…
So, the “desire to overeat thoughts” have been hanging around again lately. They have been popping in and out of my head for almost 3 weeks now. This is why I did my last post here about feeling so comfortable in the body I have right this minute, so I don’t give it up. I was trying to remind myself why I say no every day to eating (overeating) foods I did not plan.
It seems that lately, when the same old life stresses (that come and go for everyone, I am not unique) are particularly intense, I notice that it feels the very same as in my past when similar stresses were also very intense, and I would overeat my way through the ebb and flow. It was at first an escape. Then, the misery of regaining weight was a distraction. It’s this old familiar pattern of response. Today, I must respond differently.
So, I’ve got to be willing to be someone for whom the food and the weight loss is solved, (now, in the present tense). Period. No more past patterns of behavior. Even when it seems hard to have given up that old version of myself, I am instead embracing that I am the new 2.0 version of myself. I remember the old version. I have even given her a big hug.
But now I step back and hold the old me at arms length. I am not her anymore. I don’t stuff down my feelings with food. I do not replace those feelings instead with feelings of misery about regaining weight. I used to know all about how to feel about regaining weight, I was comfortable with that negative place. In that old place, instead of hugging the old me, I’d be slapping her around and hurting her even worse than it felt that real life was hurting me at the time. I was an expert at that behavior.
So, maybe I am not exactly an expert at dealing with my emotions as this new version of myself (which is why suddenly the old me is standing just off stage. I can see her out of the corner of my eye). But what an unproductive and self-destructive state of existing it would be to go backwards at this point. And I do not want to simply exist like that (in emotional pain and trying to stuff it down with food) anymore.
I am the new me, and I am living my life feeling what I need to feel, instead of stuffing it down.
Everyday, because I maintain my current weight, I get to wear clothes I love. In the past, I wore clothes that were sometimes tight and uncomfortable. Or even if they fit my body perfectly, I never allowed myself to feel “comfortable.” Instead, many times I found myself hyper-aware of my clothing, and therefore self-conscious of my larger size.
Even if it is not “good” to label my body as “large,” (we do not have to accept any labels we do not want, and can instead love ourselves at any size), my body was simply larger in the past than it is today. And good or bad, clothing comes with its own labels as to their size. I believe there is nothing wrong with any size, 4 or 16, small or large, but if we do not feel “right-sized” for who we want to be, then we may find ourselves moving through life with a feeling of not being comfortable in our current size. I definitely experienced this in the past.
Now I move through life feeling comfortable in my current size.
So, maintenance is not glamorous. It is not as exciting as being in a weight loss phase, with new lower numbers on the scale to track each week, or month, or lower measurements, or new clothing sizes that now fit, (and new clothes to buy!). But I must never let myself forget that I am comfortable everyday, in all my clothes. I can go to my own clothes closet and select to wear my own version of the ever elusive—before which would be from the depths of the back of the closet—skinny jeans. And I get to wear them any day I want, not just in some future picture in my mind, “I’ll wear those when I weigh X.”
Of course, it’s not just clothes. It’s also the daily exercise and activity I can do each day, while feeling strong, able, and most of all—comfortable.
I heard something on YouTube the other day that really resonated with me.
“I live with my food black and white, so that I can live my life in brilliant color.”
This is what I do. My food is black and white. I simply plan each morning what I will eat today, and then I go about my day eating what I planned. And I plan good food I will enjoy eating, (which helps a lot!). I measure it all out, and keep track of what I am eating on an app on my phone, so the scale stays exactly the same (within a pound or 2). This “black and white” behavior keeps my thoughts about food calm and quiet, instead of lit up by variable reward, that I wrote about here.
Intentional is my word this year. For the last 5 years my sister and I (it was her idea) have an anchor word for the year, which is one on which we can focus our thoughts throughout the year, with the intention of growing and flourishing along with the meaning of our chosen word.
2021=Culmination
2022=Momentum
2023=Secure
2024=Unimpeded
2025=Intentional
Being intentional, for me, has two main focuses. 1. Being in the moment and recognizing my thoughts and feelings, and then 2. making more deliberate choices and decisions based on that.
Firstly, being intentional requires me to be in the moment, to experience my life not overly distracted by future worries, (which has been problematic for me in the past, a long ingrained habit back to childhood). Being in the moment has resulted in me being very aware of myself, and differentiating between what are my actual thoughts, and what are my feelings, (there is a difference).
And then secondly, making decisions and choices NOT on autopilot to my old habits and triggers, or on just my feelings, but based on my reasonings, my thinking. I am taking the wheel and driving the bus, so to speak, far more often than ever before.
So yesterday, I thought I would make a cake, (gluten free, rice free, made primary with cassava root four).
Throughout the Christmas season, I had planned on having a gluten free dessert option, if one presented itself. I eat meals, I love what I eat, I put real sugar in my tea, so I do consume “sweet” things. But I don’t usually have any desserts, (which are defined as the sweet course eaten at the end of a meal). But it turned out, a gluten free dessert option never came my way. Okay, no desserts through Christmas.
Back on Canada Day, July 1, I had planned to have a treat while watching the fireworks, some gluten free fudge. But instead of having one piece, I had three. The next day, I thought a bit about why I did not stop at one piece, but the fudge was all gone, so I didn’t really think enough about it to figure out why my decision to have a treat ended up in a bigger portion than I had planned.
Until the cake last night. Three pieces later, I realized I just wanted to eat. It. All.
I wasn’t eating the cake because I liked it, (although I did certainly like it, it was very, very good), I was eating it to overeat it, just like I used to. I used to eat to overeat. Overeating (mostly sugar) either anesthetized any painful emotions I was having, or it stuffed my stomach to the point of discomfort, so that the physical pain was a distraction from whatever mental pain I was having.
But last night I was not having any mental pain, (other than the normal worries people worry about, that ebb and flow with what is happening in our lives at any given time).
(And writing that makes me realize, even more than before, that this is why I had to stop overeating my way through life. Ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys, will always be a part of life).
Anyhow, I wasn’t experiencing an emotional reason to overeat the cake last night. I simply overate it because that was the only reason I had to eat it in the first place. I wasn’t hungry, I had just had dinner. I realize I have not yet learned to intentionally eat cake, for a specific reason, like a moment (not a whole evening) of pure enjoyment. I have only learned how overeat it (because of ingrained past behaviors) for emotional reasons.
It would have helped if I had realized that BEFORE I baked the cake. I didn’t realize having a good reason to eat it would help divert me from slipping back into an old habit.
So, today? I don’t want to eat the cake unless I am eating it for a new reason, a new way to experience my food, (in particular dessert, which I so rarely eat). In the past, I didn’t just eat dessert-like foods, I overate those foods to create a particular experience. Now, having a different reason to eat them will change my experience of them. I don’t want to go back to my old way of experiencing food.
When I say I experience food, I mean as a verb, not a noun. As an action, as an encounter or to undergo (an event or occurrence). In the past, I either used to only overeat dessert-like foods, or I abstained altogether. Because I have been primarily abstaining for the last 18 months, I had not had an opportunity to be intentional about eating them, and therefore unravel some of this old pattern of behavior for myself. Instead, last night I ate some cake, then ate some more, then ate some more, until I said, hey, wait a minute! What is going on here!?
Now I know what was going on.
If I have some cake today, I will have a better reason to have it. If it was still Christmas, or a birthday, that would have been a good reason. But honestly, I don’t feel like it right now. I just finished a cup of tea sweetened with real sugar, (which is additionally sweet from the milk I put in it, because I drink tea almost like a latte with a lot of milk, and milk is quite sweet), so my desire for something sweet is already entirely satisfied. Hmmm, who knew I would need a good reason to eat something, or I would truly prefer to just not eat it at all.
With respect to a problem I have been working on with self-hatred, (that I first wrote about here), a funny thing happened as I embraced liking myself: I started disliking other people.
I do not know why I have spent a lot of time NOT liking myself. Even though not liking myself was a negative state of mind, which led to overall unhappiness, self-dislike or even self-hatred was probably a maladaptive coping mechanism of some kind. I was used to it, and I did it a lot. And maybe, it ultimately enabled me to not show up fully for my life = a ready made excuse for not striving to reach my full potential. (And a ready made excuse to treat my body like a garbage can, and overeat, for example).
But the more I like myself, it seems, the more I dislike other people.
In the past, when I have thought about how I felt I was not like other people, (or that I was different from other people in some or many different ways, from my point of view), I used to not like myself. And I would assume, “They don’t like me,” (afterall, I don’t like me). And it felt like I should instead be like them, (and why wasn’t I like them?? What is wrong with me??). They must be likeable, especially if I wanted to be like them in some way, (a way that I perceived I was not). Therefore, I did not like me, and they got an automatic “like.”
But now that I am okay liking me, I’m getting a bit pickier about other people.
Of course, some people really don’t like me, and that is their right. For example, if you find excessively talkative people like me annoying, that’s fine.
(But we should not be mean to people, even people we don’t like, because you get back from this world what you put into this world. So, kindness and politeness can go a long way. Unless someone is endangering you in some way, I think we should all simply be polite and move on).
So lately, when I feel as though I am different in some way, I like how I am different. I look at how other people behave differently from me, (more talkative, less talkative, smiley, not so smiley, stuff like that), and if they act in a way that I interpret as “I don’t think they really like me, maybe I annoy them,” instead of directing dislike towards myself, I have found myself disliking them. The tables have really turned. I like me, so now I find myself not automatically giving everyone the automatic “like,” so to speak, that I used to.
Of course, I think we should be allowed to just live our lives, and choose who we spend our time with. ”Like” and ”don’t like” are simple preferences. If you are on Facebook, you don’t automatically give everything a “like.” But I used to, to a certain degree. A form of extreme people pleasing, I suppose.
I absolutely recognize that NOT liking myself tilted me out of balance, so that now as I correct that imbalance, the scales have overcompensated and tilted in the opposite direction. I am sure that I will soon let go of “dislike of others,” (because it’s negative and unproductive, and is not even necessarily based in truth), and I will find a proper balance of not judging myself or others either. I should be able to like myself without the need to dislike others.
Negative emotions ultimately do not serve me, whether they are directed inward or outward, either way is out of balance. I want to be more balanced in the middle, and simply be a positive person towards myself and others.
Writing, acting, planning, (especially planning, because a plan is my to-do list for follow through), training, yup, taking actionable steps in anything does seem to help me a lot.
With that said, I am making a plan for what I will be eating throughout the holiday season. No—will I, should I, won’t I—thoughts. Just my plan, and then follow through.
The Bio Joy Diet 