Finally Liking Myself

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.

Christmas Meals – I am Making a Plan

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.

Body Composition

I started January 1, 2024, at a healthy weight for my height of 5’6”. My goal for most of this whole year has simply been to hold onto that level of health that I had achieved, and certainly to even improve it, if I could.

Backsliding with eating ultra processed foods, regaining weight, sloth on the couch = not an option.

Was I perfect all year? No. There was quite a bit of sloth on the couch in July. But then I made new goals for kilometers (just over 1,000 total for the year) to log on my RunKeeper phone app, and my 100 Walks 100 Rocks goal as well.

So, here I am on Friday, December 13, 2024, with some non-scale victories. My hip measurements (which have consistently been a larger ratio due to having a “pear” shape) are finally in a place that makes me feel good about myself. Of course, everyone has their own metric for what makes them feel good about their shape, mine is mine, yours is yours. I wanted to feel in proportion to my small waist, which I now do. And my body fat percentage is down from 25.1% to 18.2% since the beginning of the year, (figuring in that an average household scale can only be so accurate—or inaccurate—in this regard), so I know that walking 1,000 kms this year has (probably) meant I have changed my body composition for the better.

For 2025, more of the same. Maintain the health I was able to reclaim after my accident. Kilometers walked? Probably 1,000 for the year again. I am trying to find a very specific motivator also. Something less vague than 1,000 total, but not too strict, (like 5K a day every day is too strict for me, personally). Rock collecting, for sure. I have great ideas for my garden like this:

I look forward to 2025!

Feelings: Friend or Foe?

Work on my rock garden that started with 100 walks 100 rocks continues. (Definitely more than 100 rocks have been involved…)

Right now, when I experience a poignant strong feeling, especially if it is a negative and ultimately unproductive feeling, I can no longer shove it aside, push it down, or tell myself I am not allowed to feel it. Right now, as I move away from old habits like stuffing down those feelings (or any feeling, really) with excess food, I have to allow myself to feel what I feel. I need to give myself time to allow the feelings, examine them, and heal them (by accepting them), and then I can ultimately move to the other side of them, especially the negative and unproductive ones. In the meantime, I am simply allowed to feel them so I can heal.

And because I do not stuff my feelings down with food, I no longer need a maintenance range in weight. I just do not need it anymore, because it is no longer my identity that I need a buffer zone to allow for the occasional binge. But I am keeping to planning meals ahead of time and keeping track of how much I eat, because without a weight range that allows for an increase on the scale due to allow myself periods of overeating, (which I don’t want to allow, because it has not worked out well for me the past), I simply just try to stay the same weight I am now, which feels very comfortable.

Old Story New Twist

I have been giving a lot of thought to identity, and how believing certain things about myself contributes to who I think I truly am as a person. Of course, the goal is to write this new story for myself, a new identity. One where I believe my weight will remain stable because I do not overeat anymore. It’s not my identity anymore. I am not someone who overeats. That problem is in my past, because it is a past version of myself. This is the new me.

This is not just wishful thinking. It has been long enough now that my new identity is my reality.

And it was never more true than last night.

I stressed myself out leaving assignments too close to the due date, too many times, while finishing my bachelor’s degree. I did my degree as an adult learner, completing it part-time while working full-time. So, when I did my master’s degree, also part-time while working full-time, I made sure I NEVER left assignments to the last minute.

Recently, I got a gig freelance writing articles for the entertainment sphere. I feel like I am in school again, I have assignments and due dates. So, for the first three articles, I was fine. There was a small amount of procrastinating on the third one, but I still had it mostly done a day before the due date. The next morning, I finished it up and edited it. I submitted it with plenty of time to spare.

But the fourth article…I do not know what happened. For five days, I just could not make myself start it. Right up until noon on the last day, (when it was due at midnight that day), I was watching TV, playing solitaire on my iPad, vacuuming, anything to avoid it.

Then I finally started it at about 12:30pm.

Ug! I do not know what got into me!

And my back was killing me, because I wrote for five hours without taking a break, (I don’t even remember going to the bathroom). My body needs me to get up and stretch every hour, when working at the computer like that! And the phone kept ringing. I had to answer it, and deal with whatever it was, as quickly as possible, and then get back to my writing. It felt just like the “old days” as a Bachelor of Arts student. Trying to get an essay done while dealing with unexpected work tasks, the phone, a call-out, which—Murphy’s law—always seemed to increase exponentially when I had a school deadline also.

So, back to the connection with overeating. If I allowed my identity to be that of someone who cannot resist X food, (as I have in the past), then I would have to give into temptation (for example, at Christmastime) to match that identity.

The same is true of the reverse situation.

When my identity is that I do NOT procrastinate assignments, breaking that promise to myself yesterday…well, all last night it felt just as if I had cheated on my diet and overeaten.

What a roller coaster of emotions I had last night! I didn’t even really enjoy the dopamine rush of getting my writing assignment done, because I was so dismayed by my procrastination behavior.

And that’s because that behavior is so contrary to my identity now.

The good news is that I really have changed. My procrastination just reminded me of the old me. But that is not who I am anymore, or I would not have been so upset.

I woke up today knowing I will NOT procrastinate again, just like I will NOT overeat again. I simply eat what I plan to eat, no more, no less. And I enjoy every minute of it without any stress. 😊

Writing a Better Story For Myself

People just have to live their own lives and do what they need to do. I see it on social media a lot, people struggling in so many different ways. And whenever I want to jump in with a comment, even just a “Me too, I know how you feel,” most of the time I instead think to myself, “Don’t try to insert yourself into their story.”

All I can do is just continue to live my own story, and I try to write it better this year than I have written it in the past. 2022 and 2023 (before my accident) were not the best story I could have written for myself. I am writing a better story this year, for sure, and today I want to remember that.

Eating Just Because

This cartoon illustrates what has been my thoughts in the past, (or could be my thoughts, if I let them), that I wrote about here.

It hit me just last night: eating for fun is simply that = fun. Not eating for comfort or stress or distraction, I am talking about eating just for fun, for the pure sensation, for enjoyment.

I don’t eat for fun anymore.

Although I love the meals I plan, I love the food I eat, (I make sure I exclusively eat foods I really like, that are particular to my own tastes), I no longer eat just because it would be fun to eat something. And that is something I used to do. Really, that is normal in our society, it is something that many people do. Normal, as in not necessarily something society would say I should not do, (versus society would say, for example, you should not smoke cigarettes, they are bad for you). And that is why it just hit me last night. I guess I will never eat for fun ever again.

Wow. I will never again just start eating because food is simply there, and it would be fun to eat it.

A big part of this is because I know that planning my meals really works for me. And I know that planning a special occasion indulgence (Thanksgiving, Christmas) is also fine and works for me. But just that realization that I will never just start eating something (snack food=chips, nuts, candy) for fun, for the sensation of chewing, for pure enjoyment, ever again, wow, that really hit me last night.

Of course, it does not end up fun or enjoyable in the end. I may start itching all over, (many nuts are contaminated with gluten during the bagging process, a light dusting of flour prevents nuts from sticking to conveyor belts and each other). I may start feeling intestinal pressure and bloating because chips made with corn flour state gluten free but also contain…I just went and looked at my husband’s bag of mini pizza rounds that he occasionally likes to eat with salsa…calcium hydroxide, which is used to soak corn to make it more digestible, (which will give me gas and bloating for 24 hours). I may end up waking up drenched in sweat from the sugar in candy, (as if occasional menopause hot flashes were not bad enough, nothing brings on the worst nights sweats like sugar will).

So, all in all in the end, no fun, no enjoyment.

Admittedly, I am sensitive (really sensitive) probably because as a Celiac I went undiagnosed for the first 40 years of my life. And even though going gluten free stopped my body’s immune response to gluten, the gluten free substitutes (and many other grains) eventually made me feel just as sick as if I had eaten gluten, because most of them are processed and ultra processed. The suspicion is I have some intestinal permeability that lets through more of these chemicals than average, (and as an eczema sufferer, I also have skin permeability that makes my skin “sensitive” also), which are in most ultra processed foods.

But I could still eat snacks, if I wanted to, and just put up with the discomfort. People do it all the time.

In addition to not eating excess foods for comfort, stress, or distraction, I have to choose every day not to eat foods that will eventually hurt, no matter how good they taste, or how much simply enjoyment or fun I would feel in the moment.

Shrinkles and 5 (Old) Reasons I Used to Overeat

I have shrinkles. Really, it’s mostly my thighs, and interestingly, one thigh is worse than the other, (which happens to be the side on which I went down the day of my accident).

But I have never had “smooth” thighs, because I have always dealt with the good old cellulite, even as a teenager. When I was 28 years old, I travelled to the sunny south part of my province on a holiday, which was a break from living in the rainforest of the northwest and spending five days a week at an office job (and therefore I had zero tan on my legs). It wasn’t just the lack of a tan that led me to walk around (in the heat) wearing a pair of control top panty hose under my shorts, it was my bumpy thighs that I was worried about.

28 years old, healthy on the body mass index, and I did not want to show my bare legs in a pair of shorts.

In the past, I have used poor self-esteem and being self critical of things, (like pale skin and cellulite, which I cannot control no matter how much exercise I do), as an excuse to give up healthy eating and instead overeat to soothe the bad feelings those thoughts created in me.

Recently, the temptation is to follow the same pattern with my thigh shrinkles. I just cannot do that anymore.

My health, the health I have right this minute for which I am working to maintain, is just too important.

I have been working at defining what constitutes and can then satisfy my specific biological chemistry of:

Pleasure

Reward

Contentment

Soothing, and

Gratitude

I want to have a list of healthy behaviors to use instead of my past habit of overeating.

At Christmastime, 2023, I realized there was a big difference indulging in food and overindulging in food. A really big difference between planning an indulgence and just giving in and overindulging. A huge difference!

Planning an indulgence is no problem at all. You make a decision, you make a plan, you indulge in some specialty items because it’s a special occasion. You pick a few favorites and eat them. That is, if you want to. Then you totally own your decision, you own the choices you made, and afterward you feel satisfied. All is well.

On the flip side is some dialogue (that I have had in the past) that may sound like this: I shouldn’t eat that, but maybe I will? Will I or won’t I, can I resist? Maybe just a little. Maybe not. Okay, I had a little, and maybe just a little more. Why can I not control myself? This is dumb to try and resist, everyone else is eating this like it is no big deal. I can just eat a little. Okay, that was not enough. Then: All bets are off, what the heck am I resisting for? I am eating everything until I hurt.

Wow, I do not want to ever be that person again. I will continue to work on my list of healthy activities that will speak to these emotional desires for:

Pleasure

Reward

Contentment

Soothing, and

Gratitude

It’s Not the Food I Have Been Craving, It’s the Behaviors

It’s number 5 on this list I wrote about here, in the past I used to eat to soothe my emotions.

The problem was resulting weight gain from eating to soothe emotions caused even more internal emotional stress and distress than I was already experiencing, and thus a vicious circle of soothing the stress and distress would start, one literally feeding on the other.

I no longer overeat to soothe my emotions and it is really making me notice what other behaviour I will do instead as a substitute. Because the truth is I still want to soothe my emotions. At different points in my day, after different stressors, I want to soothe myself. Taking away the one bad habit (overeating) does not eliminate the desire to soothe my emotions.

There are certain schools of thought on resisting certain soothing in the first place. After all, we’re grown ups now, it’s not like we need a pacifier. Or do we?

I know some people say they can just modulate their emotions, whether that be mind over matter or sheer will. I should just use the correct self talk that will result in positivity and productivity. Go inward, not outward. You do not need anything but what you can find within yourself to fix your own problems. No food, drink, drug, or pill, is going to fix it. You have to fix it. If you decided to fix it, it will be fixed.

There is truth in that, yes. But…what if you are someone for whom that does not always work? Some days, some moments, are just harder than others. And old habits beckon from the wings saying this (comfort food) will make you feel better right now, in this moment.

The people on the other side, the “you simply don’t need that” side of the argument may feel that saying that you need something outside of yourself to feel better is just a convenient excuse to indulge in whatever it is (comfort food) you are desiring in the moment. Of course, the alternative is to just own the choices you make without arguing either side. You are in charge of you. If you want it, have it. (But then you have to own the consequences, which might be eventual weight gain).

I have to ask myself:

Do I want to feed the behaviour (soothing) and thus have to own the consequences (weight gain)?

Or will this feeling pass?

Can it be soothed in a healthy way?

The answers are:

No, I do not want the weight gain.

Yes, this feeling will pass.

And yes, it can be soothed by reminding myself I am maintaining my current health, even improving it, and like the old adage I have been finally able to realize in my own life: nothing tastes as good as thin (healthy) feels. Or like I said in this blog post, “Nothing tastes as good as accepting yourself feels. Nothing tastes as good as not hating yourself feels.”

100 Walks 100 Rocks

One of the keys to my recent success (in being free from cycles of overeating and thus maintaining my healthy weight) is to truly find what continually motivates me on a daily basis.

Motivations can change, evolve, and sometimes reach an end, especially when you are at a “goal weight.” So, now what?

What keeps me going is to reinvent what motivates me anew. Set a new goal? Sure. But a goal, once achieved, comes to an end. I have had (and still do have) exercise goals like how many kilometers I can walk each week or each month. Or a goal of walking more this year than last year. Or recently, I have had a goal of hitting 10,000 all-time kilometers walked since signing onto the RunKeeper app for the first time, (which I will reach in about 4 days, then what?)

Finding (and re-finding) my daily motivations is an ongoing process from which I do not want to ever reach an end. I have found that what really motivates me at a deep level may be individual to me, but that finding that motivation is what allows me to stay on my current path.

In the past, going externally or outward to find my motivation by mimicking someone else’s motivation, or following someone else’s plan, never lasted very long. Instead, I have needed to go inward and find what really works for me. Adopting someone else’s plan only works temporarily. Someone else’s plan has been a starting point maybe, or a guide, but the whole reason why I called this blog the “Bio Joy Diet” is because I find that going internally to look for my motivation usually connects with something that motivates me on a biological level.

We have biological imperatives: survival, territorialism, competition, reproduction, quality of life-seeking, and group forming. It’s the “quality of life-seeking” that I have found provides me the most sustained motivation. When I am constantly trying to improve my own life, which has that biological imperative connection, that is what sustains my motivation the longest. In the past, I have wanted to lose weight for a special event, or lose weight for a holiday, but those events come and go. The biological imperative for quality of life-seeking is a constant. I make maintaining the quality of my current health a daily constant goal, and I feel motivated. I am 53 years old and not getting any younger. Now is the time to hold on to my current healthy weight for as long as I possibly can. There is no time for me to “chuck it in the f#*! it bucket it” and have to start over again. Now is the time!

Maybe my current health is even something on which I can improve.

I do not want to lose my current level of health, only improve it. I just finished reading a really interesting book by Dr. Peter Attia called Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity. His “medicine 3.0” theory is about not waiting until you are declining in health, because that’s when medicine today, “medicine 2.0,” steps in and simply treats your ailments as you acquire them. Medicine 3.0 is about prevention. It’s about maintaining your health now, even improving it, and holding onto it for as long as possible. Not just focusing on your lifespan, but on your health span.

That’s where I am at. I am at a healthy weight, and the quality of life I am seeking to hold on to is the health I have now that I worked for the last 12 months to achieve.

As well, with respect to the biological imperative for competition, I enjoy competing with myself. For example, I’ve already walked more kilometers this year than last year and it’s only August. In previous years I have walked 1000 kilometers or more in a calendar year, so I would also like to exceed those total kilometers walked again by the end of this year.

As much as I like to compete with myself against my previous years, I still find myself feeling like I’ve already done what I wanted to do this year, simply by doing significantly more outdoor walking this year than in the last 2 years. Instead, my new motivation is “100 walks, 100 rocks.” I have a rock garden that this year I’ve worked on creating. We are finally settled into our new home and property so no active construction is going on, and I could look at what I wanted to do outside with the confidence that whatever I did would not get plowed over for some construction project. My rock garden has given me new motivation in the category of quality of life-seeking. I have the luxury of having my own property where I can choose to tend to it in any way I want, and make it look beautiful. Everyday I walk so I can pick up a white rock, preferably quartz, if I can spot a piece. Then I replace a rock in my rock garden with the new white rock, thus brightening a certain area of the garden to be all white. Replacing one rock at a time is slow paced, but 100 walks and 100 rocks from now, wow, it will look amazing,

My 100 walks 100 rocks motivation is really working for me. Whenever you are doing something in life, whether it’s home improvement projects, or a body improvement project like diet and exercise, you need to find your continuous daily motivation. What works best for you to keep you moving forward, to keep improving. What works best for me is going inward, not outward, and tapping into motivation that is hardwired in my biology anyway. Finding motivation that is actually already there and only needs to be cultivated, because artificial motivation from external sources may not stand the test of time. I have discovered that going inward and tapping into the biological imperative that is already hardwired in me, is proving to be more sustainable, just as long as I am tapping into it.