Just one minute!

As I sat in the car on my way to South Hebron Hills (West Bank, Palestine) I read the 2^nd chapter from Marian Williamson’s book A Course in Miracles. I’m not going to lie I was glad it was on my Kobo so that no one would know what I was reading and then slightly blushed when my co-worker peaked over to look at what I was reading. I’ve always been embarrassed to admit that I struggle with my weight. Not that I don’t want to admit how I feel about the way I look, I complain all the time, but I don’t want to admit the inner struggles behind it and embarrassment I feel concerning my inner struggles. Coincidentally, today’s lesson dealt with the side of us that rejects our “fat self”.  She explained that our fat selves appear because we are rejecting some other pain that can only make itself seen through this layer of unwanted fat, so denying the weight is denying the pain.

So her exercise in that chapter was to write a letter to “our fat selves” where we expressed everything we felt towards it and the fat sides response. While I thought this would be a useless exercise. “What do you mean write a letter to me?” was my initial reaction. But as I picked up my phone and started typing on my letter in my notes (I didn’t have a pen and paper) I realized I had so much pent up frustration that wanted a way out. The more I wrote the more things just appeared. My response was even longer; it was my way of forgiving myself and trying to let it go.

L, I agree with you, I don’t know how spiritually awakening these exercises are and whether or not they really do help us deal with these issues. I do believe that having a challenge to resort too definitely keeps me in check, it’s like this book these exercise and this blog is a support system and one that I don’t want to fail. Although, looking at it from that perspective might not be ideal as my fear of failure is one of the things I need to learn to deal with a little better. Also, I think it gives me something to do. I know one of the reasons I binge sometimes is because I feel like I should be doing something but I don’t have anything “responsible” to do. Although I could do something like read or watch a movie, I wont be able to focus because my mind is all focused on eating. Advice that was given to me was to try and meditate or reflect when I felt that need to binge creep up. These exercise allow me to do that before I get to that point which I really do find appeasing, and if I haven’t done it yet then it’s a perfect excuse to self-reflect and do something instead of eat when I’m not actually hungry. And I don’t know bout you L, but I tend to disregard my feelings. Ignore my anxiety and never spare any time to take a minute to just listen to my emotions and what they want to say to me. This in turn prevents me from dealing with them. How did you react to this exercise?

Oh! It also dawned on me that I’ve been talking about what I think about these exercises, I never talked about how my eating has been! It had been my goal before L suggested I read the book and we work on all this together that I wanted to lose 10 pounds. So when L proposed this idea I decided I would work on it simultaneously. So far my 3 days have been pretty good, I avoided seconds, I stopped eating when I wasn’t hungry (which is a big deal for me) and saying no to snacks I don’t actually want but I’m simply craving. It’s also only been 3 days, Anyone can stay motivated for that long, but the knowing I had this challenge to fall back on helped stop me from caving when burgers and fries were staring me in the face today! 19 more days!