Sep. 28th 2010
"view from where I sit this evening"
My personal relationship with the scale, is the same relationship with the scale I try to help my clients foster. The scale is one of many tools we can use or abuse in our quest for wellness. My overarching goal is to live a life of integrity. To demonstrate through action the person I want to be, and the person I say I am. These days, most often the scale is an appropriate accountability tool that I use in conjunction with many other tools to that end. I have made particularly good use of the scale as evidence, and a touchstone, when deep down I know I have not been taking great care of myself (week 9 weigh in) as one example.
This last Friday I made a decision not to weigh myself. None of my rings have been fitting. My tummy bulges over the waistband on the new smaller sized pants I had previously purchased. My eyes look small and puffy. My brown leather boots grab my calves contemptuously. I’m not going to get into a song and dance about what my monthly cycle is doing to my body chemistry because who really wants to hear about that, but I will tell you this: I chose not to weigh myself for fear of disrupting the glorious balance I have enjoyed this last week and a half. Although I have been afflicted with ails that only a severely hormonally imbalanced woman could understand, I am now fortunate enough to realize this is a seperate entity entirely from my committment to myself and my health. My body not only felt like devouring a whole chocolate cake, it actually felt like I
did devour a whole chocolate cake, when in fact I did not. Historically, feeling like I had devoured a whole chocolate cake without having actually devoured it, would certainly be a trigger to just go devour. Afterall, why pay the price in my body without the benefit in my tastebuds? Feeling sluggish, dull, bloated, and unnattractive is a breeding ground for compulsive eating. I’m not going to say I wasn’t tempted, because I was. But what really matters, is not what happened or didn’t happen on the scale, but that I stuck to my food plan, I completed week 1 of training for “
8 weeks to 10K“, and I commenced week 2.
It’s not like the thrills I remember from the old days, skipping meals in order to shimmy into skin tight jeans for the night, giddy dizzy spells following food deprived gym-sessions, and a caffeine buzz that “fortified” me through the entire day…but the thrill I know now, is something far more moving, and more emotional; something that actually fills that emptiness inside me like caffeine (or every thing else I tried) just never could. I can wake up, I can lace up my sneakers, I can eat a yogurt, and I can run each day stronger, faster, more confident, and breathing deeper than I did the day before. I can feel not my best, in fact I can feel downright awful, but I do it anyway. Because this is who I am now….and I’m unwilling to risk some fluke reading on that scale messing with my identity.
Aug. 17th 2010
Here I sit, on the chocolate brown couch, thinking about what I want to write…Todd and Jakey just went to Plum Dandy…the house is finally quiet….and all of a sudden I realize…I’m TIRED!! Like REALLY tired. So tired the words are not coming easily tonight. Work is quiet this week. On the one hand it’s a nice break, on the other hand I struggle with down time, always have. Lately, I have struggled more than usual to get myself focused on that pile of tasks that waits to be attended to on a quiet day. I am quite focused on my excitement about Lovenotlipo.com, my new blog sight, and evo-life.com, my updated private practice website, both coming soon. The web designer told me I may have designs by the end of the week, and at the latest, the first week in September.
This morning I climbed into my car balancing my coffee, my briefcase, my workout bag, my ridiculously large lunch tote, and a gallon of lemon water (literally), and this thought shot into my head out of nowhere and momentarily took my breath away: Everything I believe in, what I work for, what I have to offer the world, and who I fundamentally am, absolutely exists because of my vast eating disordered history, and enduring struggle with weight and body image. The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.
