Get Fit from Within
The following is an excerpt from Fit from Within by Victoria Moran. Contemporary Books, 2002. Used with permission.
Lose weight for the last time -- not just another time! These 10 tips can help you build a healthier relationship with food and your body.
1. Accept yourself today
2. Walk more
3. Write what you eat and keep on writing
4. Get up, get dressed, get going
5. Make peace with your past and other people
6. Alter your definition of success
7. Get a support system
8. Deal with your stress
9. Develop your mind and your talents
10. Listen to your body
1. Accept yourself today
Accepting who you are, body and soul, does not guarantee that you will lose weight. It does, however, put you in the ideal position for losing weight -- not just one more time, but for the last time. If you don't accept yourself, you won't live fully, and if you don't live fully, you'll need to get full some other way.
Acceptance is not rationalizing overeating as okay. Nothing that is diminishing your life belongs in your life, whether that's an abusive boss, an untreated illness, or a peculiar affinity for layer cake and leftovers. Your behavior around food is a -- you pick the word -- habit, weakness, sickness, raw deal. Whatever you call it, it's something in which you participate; it's not who you are. Deal with the problem, but accept yourself.
2. Walk more
An exercise program, in spite of the many physical and emotional benefits it can impart, will backfire just like a diet if it's too much too soon. Instead, start by walking more. It will make a tremendous difference in your attitude, your appetite, and your weight. Walking allows you to think, come up with solutions to problems, understand yourself better, and tap into insights you may not have remembered you have.
Get into the walking habit by walking more today. That's this 24-hour period. The old park-at-the-far-edge-of-the-lot strategy is a good enough place to start. You can also park in the first empty place you pass on the street instead of driving around and around in search of something closer to where you're going. You can walk on your lunch hour, in the morning with you neighbor, or after dinner with your own true love. You can take the stairs or offer to pick up the mail or to get bread and milk and oranges at the corner store.
3. Write what you eat and keep on writing
When you write down what you eat, you know what's going on. It gives you valuable information. It provides you with clarity. Start today to write what you eat in your journal, your day planner, or a spiral notebook earmarked for the purpose. Some people lose weight doing nothing but this, because it causes them to realize how much cream makes its way into all those cups of coffee, how much dressing is going on those healthy salads, and how many heretofore unnoticed nibbles cross their lips each day. Sometimes we have no idea what we've been eating or how much until we see it on paper instead of on a plate.
Writing your food can open the door to the truth that sets you free. You can record the type and amount of exercise you do, too, if you like. Keeping track of your food and activity levels can grow into full-fledged journal keeping, a practice that can help you know yourself better, access more of your inner wisdom, solve problems more effectively and deepen your spiritual life. Writing thoughts, feelings, and food in a journal can be a true boon to long-term weight loss. It's a way not only to keep track of what you eat but also to provide insights on the connection between what you eat and how you feel. Writing in a journal can be an outlet for uncomfortable feelings that might otherwise lure you down the snack aisle.
4. Get up, get dressed, get going
Remember Newton's Law about a body in motion staying in motion and one that's at rest staying that way? It applies here. Lethargy and isolation are overeating's best friends; mobility is its archenemy.
Take this tip for yourself: get up, get dressed, get going. When you are doing other things you aren't doing inappropriate eating. When your body is occupied, your mind is, too.
When you get up, get dressed and get going, you inform the universe that you're here, you're ready and you intend to get in the game. You don't have to feel like it. You just have to do it.
5. Make peace with your past and other people
When a grain of sand irritates an oyster, a pearl results. When a nagging memory irritates a practicing overeater, a binge results. The past may be over, but it's not necessarily done with. Until it is, it can lead to a return to unproductive eating. Wading in old hurts and disappointments is hardly a day at the beach, but without being willing to face the deep-seated issues that may be responsible for at least some of your food problem, you may never solve it.
a name="alt" id="alt">6. Alter your definition of success
For weight loss to last, you need to move away from the commonly accepted definition of success in this arena, which is a number on a scale. Instead, start to interpret success as every day you pay attention to your inner life, eat reasonably, and treat yourself and others well. If you get some exercise, give a nod to your creative side, or enjoy yourself a bit more than usual, you get extra credit. Success is not down the road. It can be precisely where you are on the road, right now, today.
Traditionally, people with weight to lose have been goal oriented. That's legitimate when you're out to reach a sales quota, save for a major purchase, or hit the bull's-eye during archery practice, but releasing weight
-- a preferable term to losing, I think
-- is different. It is not a goal in itself but rather the result of changing your attitude and the way you do things. Therefore, the truest indication that you're winning this battle comes in how you spend your days.
7. Get a support system
You have to be able to talk things out -- hurts, questions, decisions, dilemmas. Civilians, people who have never had a weight problem, may love you to pieces, but they're virtually worthless when it comes to understanding what you've been through and what you're doing to change things. Don't frustrate yourself by expecting people to understand who never will. Instead, get yourself a group of allies (in person or online) who are using some of the same tools you are to reach a long-term healthy body size. You can find them in an established organization or gather them from people you already know.
Characteristics to look for in the people who'll support you in this are kindness, honesty, and a generous spirit that leaves jealousy and pettiness outside the door. Talk with them. Compare notes. Walk or exercise together. Pour out your heart when necessary. And seek the counsel of persons who have treaded this path before you and accomplished what you want to do yourself. They can be the next best thing to guardian angels. When the going gets tough, you want to know there are individuals you can reach out to who will know what you're talking about and be able to help.
8. Deal with your stress
Many people with weight problems eat to calm down, soothe themselves and smooth the rough edges off the day. If you learn to do that soothing and smoothing in other ways, you've freed yourself from one reason -- reason, not excuse -- for using food as a mind-altering substance. Not only will this help you lose weight, it will give you alternatives that work far better than food does.
There are even some quick fixes (hurray! we like those) for stress management that aren't half bad. The easiest and most readily available is breathing. Slow, deep breathing -- in through your nose, out through your mouth -- can calm you down when you're anxious or angry. A hot bath will work, too, especially if you add a scented de-stressor like lavender oil. Self-massage -- kneading the kinks out of your shoulders, neck, and hands -- is pleasant, and getting somebody else to squeeze the tension from your back and trapezius muscles can be a slice of paradise. A change of scene -- go outside if you're inside, lie down if you're up, take a walk if you're stewing on the couch -- can help; and a good belly laugh will nourish you with a cocktail of calming, healing biochemical reactions.
When you stop using food to deal with stress, you will be discarding a tool that may have served you for a long time. You need to replace it with other tools. Making the switch isn't the easiest thing you'll ever do -- change never is -- but these stress-defeating devices will eventually perform better for you than food ever did. And they won't hang around on your hips.
9. Develop your mind and your talents
Eating is a wonderful part of life -- one wonderful part of life. Watch it take its place in the hierarchy of good things as you focus more on developing your mind and your talents. What did you once love to do that you aren't doing now? Take it up again. What have you always wanted to do that you've never done? Try it. The things you can do, and what you can learn, are fascinating and absorbing. You can't be engrossed in your intellect or your talents and simultaneously be engaged in an eating spree.
10. Listen to your body
"Listen to your body" is an aging adage spawned in the era of "go with the flow" and "make love, not war." It isn't trendy, but it is true: your body knows what it needs and will communicate this to you. The old assumption that overweight people have damaged their "appestats" and lost this body wisdom is simply not true. Like everybody else, we can know when we've had enough. We have simply ignored the "enough" signal so long and so successfully that eventually we don't hear it anymore -- the way people adjust to living near railroad crossings and firehouses. In reality, though, the body -- your body -- will not only tell you when you've had enough, it will tell you what it needs to nourish itself if you listen.
