My Summer To-Do List

This summer, I want to be conscientious on the outset about doing some things that I love to do, and some things that I need to do (and will be thrilled when they are done) to make it a wonderful 3 months – and the only summer that my fiancé and I will ever be engaged before we get married (I think… see #10).

Here’s what’s on my summer to-do list:

1. Summer movies (always a must)
2. Remember to take evening walks in the neighborhood and the park
3. Make brunch for my fiancé
4. Weekend trip to the Sea Island house
5. Write about things I love each week
6. Several home make-over projects (entryway, bedroom, dining room)
7. Start a garden
8. Make my friend, Hilary’s, watermelon mojitos with home-grown mint
9. Take the one-day bar exam (blech)
10. Set a wedding date (we got engaged in December!)

I love the idea of making meaningful memories and enjoying, instead of rushing, through the next few months when it’s so easy for time to fly and wonder where the summer went.

My goal is to tick off my to-do list between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend, as part of a recent shift that I’ve noticed: I’m being slightly more aware of what I’m doing and thinking and feeling (and loving it).

No related posts.

(where no one physically weighs in)

I have an idea.

What if we checked in (and tuned up) on Wednesdays? I’m thinking we check in with things like the right career (how to find what that might be — and then get it), food and body-type stuff (losing the weight, the food being the food), relationships with other things/people… stuff like that. Yeah?

Because that would mean that you can check back each Wednesday, and you’ll know it’s check-in time with the practical stuff, and expect specific how-to’s that get you going immediately.

So, what do you think? Excellent. I like this too. So! Let’s start right now.

It’s the Top-10 Commandments of Enjoying Food (at your lowest natural weight)

I want to start our new Wednesday Weigh-In tradition (WWI? Not the best acronym…) with the thing I get asked about the very most. It’s how to lose weight — and keep it off. This will be incredibly practical, so that you can implement some things in your life today.

Remember my all-time caveat to anything I ever say: listen to yourself above alllllll else. So no matter who tells you anything (including me, and including this), do what feels like the right thing for you to do in the end.

(And if you’re feeling sneaky – shhhhhhhhhh — there’s also a secret class on this.)

#1: Thou shalt always eat when you’re physically hungry. Yes, I’m telling you to always eat (and only eat) you are hungry. The most important reason for this is not what you think it is (this will keep you thin — though this is also true).

The most important reason to eat when you’re physically hungry is really simple: when you’re hungry, the food tastes better.

Remember the best meal you’ve ever had? Yeah, you were hungry when you started eating it. For instance, this past weekend, I went to a 30-course dinner served up by some of the best chefs in America — no exaggeration. Chefs were flown in from around the country. The dinner was hosted by the James Beard Foundation. One seat at one of the many tables was hundreds of dollars (and worth every penny in terms of swag, amount and quality of food, wine pairings).

There were pan seared scallops with seasonal ratatouille, hand-dipped caramel apples, and lardons-on-a-stick with radish and herbs. Oh my!

And, you know what? I thought it was okay. Why just okay? Well, I had a late lunch. I just wasn’t that hungry. Learrrrrrrrn from my careless error…

#2. Thou shalt stop eating when you’re moderately full. And, just eat more of it the next time you’re hungry. There are lots of reasons why we eat until we are stuffed, but the-food-just-tastes-so-good is not one of them. I hear this a lot, and I even catch myself saying it, but it’s not actually, factually true.

Here’s why: The Law of Diminishing Returns. Do you remember it from Economics class? Yeah, I’m a little fuzzy on it too, but it goes like this: The first bite is the best, the second bite is the second best… and the tenth bite is the tenth best.

In other words, more is not more-better. More is not as delicious, because we’re used to the flavor. We know what to expect. So stop eating when you’re full, because you’re really not enjoying the food that much anymore.

(That is, until we’re hungry again and enjoy that first bite, alllllll over again.)

#3. Thou shalt eat whatever you want to eat (really, really, reallyreallyreallyreally). Here’s the thing: there are foods that you think you “shouldn’t” eat because they will make you fat. I am telling you to eat those things, if you want to eat them.

Truthfully, for me to be able to enjoy food but at a low natural weight for me, this alone worked magic. It’s counter-intuitive, yes. And you may imagine that you’ll go bezerk and inhale all of your son’s leftover Halloween Candy. And, maybe at first you will… at first.

At first, when I started following #3, I ate chocolate every time I was hungry, but I also stopped when I was full. Do you know what happened? If you have children, or have desperately bribed other people’s children, to behave, you probably have witnessed this phenomenon: eventually, when you eat a lot of crap without guilt or remorse, you get sick of that crap.

For me, after a week or two of chocolate-only diet, I actually had lost weight. I also felt terrible. My teeth were wearing sweaters and I had zero energy. Had I overeaten? Nope. I listened to my body’s natural appetite when I eat when I’m hungry, so it tells me to stop when it’s done (we go into this in the shhhhhhhhh! secret class).

So, I drank some water and ate some spinach. I had some chicken before going to bed.

And you know what? I definitely ate a bunch of chocolate the next day. But, EVENTUALLY, which was not really that long at all, I wanted to eat something healthy more often then I wanted something unhealthy. Now, I’m even more balanced. I mean, I am fully aware that I drink too much red wine and eat more chocolate than most, but I’m okay with that. Why? Because, I really want it and I follow #1 and #2 so my bottom does not become enormous.

(I’m excluding true dietary restrictions like gluten intolerance that have tangible, negative effects on your health from things that you’re allowed to eat, but besides those, anything is on-limits.)

#4. Thou shalt NOT lower thy culinary standards. I remember about 8 years ago I was staying with a college friend’s family in Lexington, Virginia, and really, REALLY wanting this pastry that Starbucks used to carry. Oh, also, I used to eat pastries from Starbucks, which now seems gross to me. But this is like year 2 of my Enjoy-Food journey and I had some gross habits that I delighted in. And, maybe I still do. Whatever.

Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about this pastry, and Lexington, Virginia did not have a Starbucks at this time. So, you know what I did? Since I had awakened to the fact that I could eat whatever the hell I wanted and not gain weight (if I followed #1 and #2), I drove 30 minutes to the closest Starbucks (this is pre-iPhone, mind you, so I used my OnStar) and bought 2 of these pastries, which is also all that they had that day. I had one immediately. I ate the other one later in my stay, when I wanted it again.

You know what would’ve happened had I tried to eat a salad instead of a delicious pastry? Late that night I would have snuck off to the gas station to get whatever crap that was there.

Again, I realize that pastries do not build healthy bones, but I’m just saying… this rule has been a fabulous starting place for me, and a great place to come back to when I’m all into what I “should” eat.

#5. Thou shall recognize the fear-of-actual-success monster. This is a big commandment, so we’ll keep it brief and soon enough it will get its very own day.

What do you imagine it would be like to be in great shape, stop eating when your full, and eat the things that you enjoy? Well, for one thing, there would be a lot less drama inside your mind, and less judgments about yourself (failure! no self-control! fatty!). All of the old labels would be gone.

So, I’m really asking you to ask yourself: what would there be in place of all of that obsessing and judging? Now, before you answer quickly, and say, “Life would be perfect!” Really take a moment to sit with this. Because without a lot of mental energy devoted to thinking about food and weight right now, what in your mind would take it’s place?

This is SUCH a good question (if I do say so myself) and it’s a biggie. If you are thinking life would be perfect, gently question if that were the case. There might be more to this for you.

We’ll come back here, but I really do encourage you to pause and see what comes up for you emotionally, and in terms of thoughts. Take a peak, and then dog-ear this for later.

You may have noticed that we’re stopping now.

I decided just to post #1 through #5 today. This gives you a chance to digest (ha) what we’ve just talked about and think about living this way. Or, not — it’s up to you. I would never make you enjoy food at your lowest natural weight.

Next Wednesday Weigh-In, we’ll go from #6 through #10 (hint: it challenges some of your most unquestioned ideas about losing weight). So, if you want to lose weight the successful way, you may want to swing by next week.

Ciao, bella!

Related posts:

1. Wednesday, Baby. Wednesday.

Yesterday, I was telling you all about how I’ve felt like I’ve been doing all of the right things, and some weird things too, and not seeing the usual results.

(And, I even re-read my favorite blog post.)

I want to give you a concrete example — and make sure that I’m making sense (not so sure…).

Sometimes things happen. Sometimes… they don’t.

I’m talking about making things actually HAPPEN. Mainly, things happening in your relationships (with the food, with yourself, with your people, with business-stuff, etc. and infinity and beyond), but this could include all things, too.

Especially in areas of your life where you’ve been fruitlessly trying to make things happen (and NOTHING IS HAPPPPEEEENNIINNG).

But, here’s the twist — stuff can happen! And, you know, you CAN do it.

Just follow me.

Because this is the path I’ve been walking. For me lately, I’ve see that I could use a booster shot in two areas of my life: (1) my closest relationships with human beings, AND (2) in my relationship with my business (in getting the exciting stuff done — I’ll tell you more later.)

BUT THEN, I realized that the issue was commitment.

• Have I committed to being in these friendships, with both of my feet inside of the boat?
• Have I committed to creating this stuff for you, the work that goes into it, the fun that goes into it, and the relief that comes out of it?

The reality is that, well, I hadn’t. I was still playing-the-field.  Like –

• You get in the boat first! I’ll *think* about joining you.
• Mayyyyyybe I’ll end up creating, oh, other stuff. Or this stuff… wish-washiness.

Don’t get me wrong — playing-the-field has its place. It’s a GREAT (perhaps, only) place to be when embracing the no-plan plan. You definitely should be exploring options, seeing how things feel. Being choosey.

But sometimes, you’ve been playing in the field … until all of the other children when to bed. (There are two big, fat Greek reasons for this, but I’m not going to get into those.)

Instead, here is what you do: Commit.  Because, sometimes, any decision is better than no decision

1. What do I want for these relationships? Like, specifically, and in detail.
2. What obstacles (mental, emotional, financial, physical…) typically derail me?
3. REALLY, how can I overcome them/ dissolve them/ befriend them, this time — be creative!  And, what do I do when the plan DOESN’T work (inevitable, not a “sign” that it “wasn’t meant to be” — swear).
4. Now — what thoughts would I need to believe for this thing I want to be a real thing, in my life?

Okay, I’ll go first.

1. What do I want for my close friendships? My business stuffs?

Friendships: I want groundedness and safety. What I mean by that is I want to feel really free to be honest, and unguarded, (safety) and feel that way consistently (groundedness).

This could look like [in detail] taking measured risks with people I trust, and being in consistent touch with certain people to provide the opportunity for us to establish consistency.

Business: I want to create really, really good stuff that will help people right now, and ALSO will be something they can come back to. I want it to be so much fun, and so good, that my Right People tell their friends and get excited, too.

This could look like [in detail] creating the stuff in a way that is fun for me (ahhhhhh) and keeping the to-do’s playful and easy.  It also means revising this stuff after forgetting all about it. A lot of times. AND getting two trusted compatriots to review, too.

2. What obstacles (mental, emotional, financial, physical) typically derail me?

Friendships: I get derailed when I, myself, don’t feel grounded in who I am and what I’m about. Oh, man, is it easy to forget! I get derailed when I forget that I have such lovely supporters! And I get derailed when I’m not taking great care of myself, physically.

Business: I take on way too much — like, creating an intricate web of interrelated options that can work for all man kind!!! I do better with REALLY clear, specific goals. Yes. And a schedule! That includes rewards for sticking to it.

3. How to address these obstacles? And what’s the plan when this plan is not 10,000% perfect?

Friendships: Get grounding through yoga — at least 1x per week, and Pilates at least 1x per week. Anything that puts me back into my body is very grounding for me. Get support through my Jedi Council. List people that I want to be consistently in touch with (no more than 6) and reach out.

For whenever that’s not working… create accountability to revisiting the plan by putting this on my blog… so, hi!

Business: Well, I kind of did this already — one project at a time! And, daily goals! Corresponding rewards for sticking to the schedule — OH! And for whenever that’s failing… take a break.

4. What thoughts do I need to believe for this to be a real thing in my life, actually happening?

Friendships: (as an aside: um, I feel like I sound cheesy… BUT, you know what? These really are the thoughts that feel good to me, so here’s my flying leap off of a short cliff into nothingness!)

• I’m good enough.
• It feels the best to be myself.
• I’m most successful when I’m myself.
• I already have friends who I accept for themselves — I love how them-ish that they are.
• I love to support people in appropriate ways — I can choose to let them do the same, it’s really a gift.
• I can do this.
• I suspect they already know and love me (I’m not as good at hide-and-seek as I think I am).
• There’s only one way to find out if anyone loves me… be me.
• Living honestly is me living out integrity, and that integrates integrity further into the world that I live in. Beautiful.

Business:

• It’s okay to offer what I know based on my life and my experience — the people who need it will hear me, and those who do not will not be interested.
• Not doing so is actually selfish; sharing is actually compassionate and loving towards others.
• If I have fun doing it (which I know I can), it will be fun for other people.
• I’ll can choose to check in with my instincts frequently to be sure that I’m staying on track with my purpose and message and intention. That will ensure quality.
• I can totally do this.
• It really will be awesome.
• In fact, it already is so completely awesome.

Wowzer, lots of thoughts spewed forth.  I’m impressed you’re still here (you’re just great, you know?).

See?? It fires you up!

I made more progress on stuff yesterday, after doing this, than I have in all of 2010 (not exaggerating).

{In some ways, now that I’m looking at this, it reminds me of Havi’s Personal Ads (right? I looooove when different people arrive at the same conclusion separately) with my own flavor twist.}

I’ll report back on progress as the *official* guinea pig of these experimental games. It’s very possible I’ll forget to do this (remember Part I of What to do when you’re really stress? Yeah, it’s not just you — no Part II yet, keep forgetting…).

But I’ll try not to forget. Now that I said that, I probably won’t forget.

OH! There is one thing I almost forgot to tell you — how I came up with #4. Thoughts you have to believe for this thing to be a real thing.

It was a combination of reading something of Brooke Castillo’s (she’s a powerhouse — if you’re kind of sensitive, she may not be right for you, tbh) mentioning “thought cultivation” and how I got through law school.

Thought cultivation: being conscious of the kinds of thoughts you want to have throughout your day, to create the life you would like to be experiencing.

How I got through law school: Every, single morning, as I walked up the steps of the law school, I said the same prayer.

Thank you for this opportunity to be here.

Thank you for all of the gifts you’ve given me.

Please help me to use my gifts to the best of my ability here.

It may not sound like much, but it really and truly made me believe that I could be successful in law school (among probably other things, like getting the help I was asking for).

And, because I believed I could be successful in law school… I was.

(that’s where it started, anyway, and it couldn’t have started anywhere else and ended in success)

FINAL WORD — Whatever truly stubborn thing you want to happen, it would be very hard for it to be MORE stubborn than me being successful in law school.

(Which means (not to be too cheery, but I meaaaan this!) you can make it happen.)

Related posts:

1. How to make decisions.
2. 10 things about me (that you don’t already know)

Hello, lovey! This isn’t really a post, it’s more of a, Hello! I miss you and want to tell you stuff I’m up to and thinking about.

The best people on the planet enroll in my classes.

How they find me, or know I will love them?? Who knows! But, I always do. I love their emails, their vibe, their questions, everything.  It makes what I do worth doing, and fun.

We just wrapped up the last Guerilla Weight Loss class in the history of the universe (dramatic! but, true).  There will be other classes, but no more of those. It was a really good class, lots of fabulous breakthroughs and aha’s! And, it’s just fun.

The reason I’m not doing it again (because someone asked me, it’s a super good q) is that I’m ready to move on to new and different and varied materials in a different way. Not that I won’t help you change your relationship with food, I SO will, but I want to continue to grow with my biznik. That is the new, cool word for business… or, something.

I get to take a mini-vacay!

This weekend! Although, I’ve sort of already started stressing out about whether or not I’ll be able to relax.  Dumb-ass monkey mind.

I’ve FINALLY made a bunch of progress on my NEW STUFF!

I have a dream… to put this THING out there that is related to Guerilla Weight Loss class but a little different, maybe (shock-attack) better, even, and cheaper! So, basically it’s the absolute most perfect thing oh-my-freaking-gosh. No pressure.

It’s so weird how I’m a person who helps people improve and change their relationships (with food, with themselves, with other people, with their careers) and I still totally get stuck in mine, like I did trying to actually do this NEW STUFF. I’m telling you, it happens, like, all of the time.

I guess the “spin” I could throw at you here is:

Well, first I was all stuck, and then, being perfect, I figured it out! Now everything is just WONDERFUL.

That makes me feel so extremely gross. I have to say, though, how freaking much do people who aim to help you with stuff (read: coaches) spout the “look at how imperfect I was, but how perfect I am now… which means I’m all done with this process I’ll teach you, so you can be like me!” story?

You know what I mean? Sometimes, you want to believe what they are saying, but there is something about it that feels… suspicious.

Well, you’re right to be suspect of the above and similar versions of it.

I officially call total bullshit.

The truth is there will always be more work to do/things to learn in our relationship with ourselves and food and everything.

I don’t want to believe this always-in-process story line all of the time, either. It can really feel daunting. Like, can I PUH-leeeeeze be DONE already?

Well, no. You cannot.

But, in another way of looking at it, you ARE done….

• You are exactly where you should be, right at this minute, and you can choose to examine yourself and find the answers, or… not.  Neither is better, you just tend to get different results, depending on which you choose.
• You also have so much right now — it’s all around you. Not to be, The glass is half full! But think about it: how much more do you know now than you did this time last year? 10 years ago? It’s crazy how much, right?
• And, you ALWAYS hit sweet spots of goodness when you do choose to work on your relationships.  Relief is always nigh.

Nigh. Odd word.

The point is that, in seeing my complete inability to get anything done, and figuring out what that was about, I learned boat loads about how to improve my relationship with my work (and, as always, the relationship with myself).

So… here I am: Sweet spot!

Sometimes, life is really good.

I know some people say that if you can just change your thoughts, life is good all of the time.

This has definitely NOT been my experience.

There are always ways to improve the way you’re thinking about things, and many times, our own minds are the only things keeping us from what we want most.

But, working on your thoughts is not enough.

Not in my book, anyway, and my book has been treating me really well, especially lately.  There are things like NEEDS, and INTUTIONS that are not even put-int0-word possible, and, like, what if you’re DEPRESSED? You think you can get out of that on your own, just by working on your thoughts?

Well, maybe someone could… I know that I could not.

Working on my thoughts daily changes my reality… but, that’s not enough. And, sometimes, life just sucks and you’re in a really bad place, and it isn’t entirely the fault of your own thoughts.

Let’s not be overly simplistic for the sake of making things simple, saying, “it’s just your thoughts.”  I just needed to say that, out loud, because it’s really important to me to put my voice into the fray of this.

Also: To each his own! What works for some won’t work for all! Live, and let live. Do what works for you, dearest one, and if it is just working on your thoughts, lady bug, do it with gusto. I support you.

So, anyway, sometimes life is really good, and sometimes life is really hard — and that’s okay. In fact, that’s the way it SHOULD be. This is Life School, not “buy a Buick and get a black-top driveway while cruising through Life, effortlessly, School.”

Another thing I’ve been thinking about: Being TERRIFIED is just part of it.

Terror, of such things as:

• MY own success!
• MY own greatness!
• Of failing (and EVERYBODY knows about it)
• Of trying new things (because, what if I FAIL? Or, SUCCEED?!)
• Of being myself in the world (because, what if zero people actually LIKE the real me??)
• Of being really and truly vulnerable (because, what if I get shot down, rejected, and then DIE??)

There are as many things to be totally petrified of as there are minutes in the day, and I am beginning to suspect that I’ve found all of them.

But I’m beginning to see how the TERROR can just be part of it. I can expect Terror to turn up. I can hold his little sock monkey hand, and let him come with me.

And, once I’ve done the thing that happens to terrify me at that moment, the little sock monkey that is my constant Terror companion is so happy! He swings from the highest treeeeeeees!

Because (and this is my last completely stream-of-consciousness thought for the day) a hard day is the same thing as a Terror Monkey.

I’m learning in Yoga, and life, that the more I get in there — I mean, REALLY get in there, where my biggest fears hide or where I normally avoid the  physical stuckness in my bod — and feel the awkwardness all of the way through, the sweeter and more delicious the ensuring sweet spot.

And then, I actually LIKE it when I find good, juicy stucknesses.  The deliciousness will be even sweeter!

I am not always in this place of which I speak. But, sometimes I am.

One more clarifier: I don’t go to war with the gunk — it’s all parts of me, and I don’t want to cut off my offending pinky toe or whatever. But, it’s parts of me — get it? I get to learn about it, be kind to it, and welcome it into the sunshine!

But mainly: hello!  Been thinking about you. Here’s what’s up in my life lately.

{And….. scene.}

Related posts:

1. Non-Terror Inducing Job Finding Maneuvers for Recent Grads
2. Lose Weight Four Days at a Time
3. Tuesday Styles #3: Time Travel Edition

Form follows function.

(I quoth Le Corbusier, a famed architect of the 20th century… eat your heart out, IM Pei, you schmuck).

I’ve been feeling a little shab-tastic lately.

I haven’t been as into expressing myself through what I’m wearing lately.

It’s not like me!

I mean, I cognitively understand the vibrant options and infinite combinations that exist in all closets (for realsies) tire me.

Vat has happened??

All the stuff we’ve talked about regarding style is still true. It’s true!

• Only letting the most wonderful of joyful things into our space… this is a real thing that really can change your life. What you surround yourself with informs how you feel about yourself. TOTALLY.

But, it hasn’t felt all that important to me lately. Of all people! I mean, I started this stupid series, for heaven’s sake!!!

First of all, remember my commitment to stop beating myself up?

Well, here’s another example of when I beat myself up… for trying things and changing things here on a blog that I am the boss of with no one to answer to but me, and only my favorite YOU to talk to.

What is a beating doing HERE??

Well, I did a little beat-up dance about how I should be more energized over style… and then, I remembered that every one of us is existing in the Change Cycle, somewhere or other!

Which, I’m realizing, I’ve never even talked with you about —

Change Cycle! Be a Change Cyclist, you save your world.

Well, I touched on it here, in dealing with overwhelm. But it needs it’s own post. STAY TUNED, lassie.

It’s VERY reassuring for times when you are in a, what’s going ON with me lately? state. I mean, one way out of a funk is to just change one thing. That works like ah chahm.

But the Change Cycle is great because it explains every single thing that is going on for you at all times. Not joking.

And, it’s just four squares!

It shows you that you’re not crazy that you’re in a fantastic new job, and yet feeling all amiss (square 1!). You’re engaged to the loveliest man on the planet, but you’re feeling all befuddled (square 1, again! it’s a kicker). You thought being a writer was your calling, but it’s not just happening easily the way you imagined it would (square 3!).

I’m largely, currently, in square 1… and when you’re there, you kind don’t give a shit about your style. I mean, you really couldn’t care, even if you wanted to.

So, I’m gonna write you a post that tells you about the Change Cycle! Like, tomorrow. If you’re reading this after July 20th, 2010, you can dash into the future of the post and read it now.

For everyone else, here’s the point of this fairly ramblesome post:

You don’t have to:

1. Consistently, throughout your life, care the same amount about anything (in fact, you cannot).
2. It can be really helpful sometimes (Square 1!) to go with the flow.

This, applied to style means that when you care less about it, it also means that some internal changes are taking shape. That is GOOD (even though it often doesn’t feel that good) but it means that you fall into the looking glass.  Which is always disorienting.

But, you come out of it with blazing saddles and full of cheer! The more you go with it…

BOTTOM LINE (until more lines are drawn):  You go through a big ass change? Your whole world changes (or how you see it, which, really, is the same thing, right?) and that means what you WEAR changes.

Working backwards — don’t know what to wear? Yeah, you’re going through some big changes. You ain’t alone, cuteness. You got me.

Related posts:

1. Change Cyclists: they get all the great parking spots.
2. Tuesday Styles: Change your style, you change your life.
3. Tuesday Styles #8: 10 ways to change your mood (by changing your look)

You know what is freaking creepy? How much we sound like little Hitlers when we are talking to ourselves.

I did not fully realize this until last week when I started monitoring what I told myself when I did something that I have been trying not to do for a while.

It goes like this (this is the weight loss edition — in honor of tomorrow’s class! You can insert thing-that-you-do-that-you-wish-you-didn’t-do HERE):

• Write down the things you tell yourself after you overeat. ALL of the things (you do it now, before you keep reading, because it works better that way).
• Now, how does hearing those things make you feel? After each sentence, write down how it makes you feel (you may be a lil’ surprised by some of the answers… sad/frustrated and excited, for instance…). Pause at each sentence and see what emotions come up for you.
• When you feel that way, how do you feel about food (or that-you-do-that-you-wish-you-didn’t-do)? Do you want to do the thing/eat more, or less?

Interesting, right????

Because, what if you committed to not beating yourself up, and just watching where in your life you beat yourself up?? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

I beat myself for a handful of reasons, including:

• Eating when I’m not hungry (yes, even I do this sometimes)
• Not being productive enough
• Not BEING PRODUCTIVE ENOUGH, already, Gay!?!

And other things, too.

What’s interesting is that I’ve found that, I am eating/being unproductive TO beat myself up. It’s a lovely little side bogie distraction from a lot of things that I don’t want to feel or deal with.

Which, as I know very well, makes nothing go away. I can hide under the sheets, that is totally fine…

…but, in this life, I’ve committed to working through my junk and showing you how to work through yours, too.

What do you beat yourself up about, ehhhh? (we all SO do this… just start being curious about it… I believe it’s a great back door into some lovely happiness waiting for you.)

No related posts.

Aaaaaaaaaand, here we are! We have arrived at a crappy day.

(By “we” I mean “me”).

I woke up feeling really yucky. I didn’t feel like getting-up-and-getting-going. I felt heavy, and rotten, and gross.

In the food and weight loss world in which I play, one might call this “feeling fat.”

My first reaction: I should not be feeling this way!

For one thing, I’m a person that helps other people be themselves, be happy and be free from obsessions that are crazy-making. So, to do that, I need to be living it.

And when you’re living in your own skin, doing what is right for you and respecting your body, it feels good… which, is how I’m supposed to feel, right? And, yet, I feel all crappy.

Hypocrite! Thy name is Laurie. I must not be doing stuff right!  I must not be taking care of myself.

Which means, I’m a failure! Ay yi yi, the dreaded failure. You know – DOOOOM!

It also means adding a layer of self-loathing to my already state of crapitude.

We kind of all do this. You know, when you’re angry at yourself for not being more, or better, or producing enough?

That’s what I’m talking about. It’s the anger on top of the not-ideal emotion that’s hanging out in side of you.

I know that I do this — I’ve earmarked it in my Book of Me. I know that when I try to beat the crappy mood out of me, I’m actually kicking holes in walls that are built back stronger, instead of dissolving the walls and making the progress and healing that I want. I really, really want.

I know that a better way to handle anything is from a place of acceptance.

I remember, back when I was working full-time for a big law firm and feeling very lost, I watched the Eckhart Tolle and Oprah series on his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose late at night when there were hours of work ahead before I would go home.

The series is kind of boring, but good background listening/watching while doing something else, like drafting a Purchase Agreement, say. And, it’s content is pretty amazing, and very advanced. It’s no “Your Life’s Purpose, 101.” It’s like “Your Life’s Purpose, PhD level.”

But one of the themes that resonated with me was, what you resist persists.

What you resist persists. That means that the more that you resist your crappy mood, your habit of overeating, your tendency to drink too much (a.k.a., beating yourself up over it), the more you strengthen it.

So, here’s what I did:

My list of reasons why I should feel crappy today:

• I’ve been working very hard lately, with little down time (and rest is SO important for productivity and happiness)
• I didn’t get enough sleep last night
• Something happened last weekend that really hurt, and I’m still processing that
• I’ve been denying myself some stuff (good flavors, free time, play) because of an old lie I used to believe, that sneaks back in sometimes: you must earn good stuff, you don’t just deserve it! (so not true)
• I have not been consciously identifying with my intention behind my actions, which is the most important thing I could ever talk to you about

That is quite a list! It makes a lot of sense that I would feel crappy today. It’s acceptable, and understandable, and almost a good thing….

….it means that I’m in touch with my feelings.

That’s so good! Yay, me. It’s the first step to Finding Your Purpose — meeting yourself where you are. And, I met myself where I am: crap crap crap.

I consciously accept that it’s okay to feel crappy, especially when I clearly should be feeling crappy. The fact that I feel that way makes it valid. And this is the express purpose of our feelings.

This doesn’t mean DOING nothing.

I mean, you never actually have to do anything at all. Ever!

For me, once I list the reasons why I should feel crappy, should’ve messed up or should’ve flown off of the handle, and see the evidence that how I feel is valid, and through that accept how I feel, I relax.

I look to see, based on my list what I might really need. (Rest! Taking care of myself! Adding flavors to my days!)

I give myself permission to think about giving those things to myself. I take deep breaths.

If I feel like giving myself rest, or care, or spiciness, at that moment, I do it. Because, I have permission to meet my own needs first.

So, I’m off to spend a little time with Ina Garten (rest), email some friends (care), and then do a little bit of work (which I’ve re-branded as “play”). Those activities are my pre-ward for playing.

And then I get another reward for my play — a lil’ time with good, wholesome nature.

Honestly, I already feel calmer, looser, and better. Just by talking about it. You’ll feel less like overeating anytime you do this around your stuff, too.

I say, anything that sounds interesting is worth a try — keep what works for you, discard ALL else.  Because, you’re always right.

Related posts:

1. “Taking It All Off.” Or, “Guerilla Weight Loss Tactics (that work)”

New restaurants, cooking (like last night! sweet potato latkes and chipotle pork tenderloin, an experiment! moderate success) and cool new food-stuffs… love.

So! What to do, when one of your loves is also giving you love handles?

Or a bagel butt? (Which is what my high school boyfriend’s mom called me while I was working at the Bagel Bin… for good reason.)

The natural thing to do is to develop a love-hate relationship with the food. Sure, you love food! De-LISH-ious dinners and desserts. Oh my.

But, you also hate that it’s keeping you chubby. Fattening food becomes the forbidden fruit (or, really, forbidden fettucini alfredo because who cares about fruit) and yet, also something you cannot avoid.

You have to eat. So, you try to “eat healthily.” Oh, the bland, boring world of health food and dieting…

• Diet Coke, diet Chick-Fil-A lemonade = not that bad
• Dry turkey sandwiches and egg white omlettes = not that satisfying
• All-spinach diet (since you heard that Audrey Hepburn ate only spinach) = incredibly difficult to actually do
• No pasta or chocolate or fries, EVER = sad, self-torture

Ultimately, you have two glasses of wine one night, clean your plate and find yourself raiding the fridge afterwards. It’s really frustrating, because you TRULY want to feel good in your body and be at a weight that is healthy and thin for you, but doing this [through the usual channels (self-discipline, dieting, extra-exercising)] has not lead to losing weight and keeping it of.

That’s because “usual channels” for weight loss are stupid.

The “usual channels” are a FAIL.

This means, fabulously, that there is nothing wrong with you — even when you overeat (more on that in a sec).

The usual channels for weight loss have not worked because they do not account for something you cannot escape: your human nature.

Your biological instincts get in the way of any modicum of lasting weight loss success through restricting food and increasing your exercise. Here’s the extremely overly simplified version of why this is so:

• Your body is biologically programed to survive. Meaning, it interprets a diet — or, any voluntary restriction of food — as a scarcity of food, just like a famine.

To your body, there is no difference between the South Beach Diet and the crops being destroyed by a tornado; it all means “there’s not enough food.”

• Because you’re built for survival in a world of scarcity (clearly, your body has somehow missed every single one of the WallMart Super Centers across the land), our brain then sends a *red alert* to put on weight and keep it on.

The horrors. The more that you diet, the more your body and brain sabotage your efforts, thinking that they are helping you! Irony.

You start to notice that losing weight is hard and slow-going. You, of course, start exercising. Make sense to do? Definitely. Work for weight loss? Definitely not.

At least, not when your body is already in preservation-of-the-species mode. Increasing your activity just doubles the urgency of the situation and your body clings even more tightly to every calorie you eat — and slows down your fat burn.

What makes this so awful — and I know that I’m preaching to the choir, here — is that none of this process is any fun for you, anyway. Your grinding weight loss journey is painful and hard, and very discouraging, and it’s also not even the most effective (or, at all effective) way to actually lose weight for one primary reason:

Mother Nature will always win a battle of wills with you.

She is relentless and tireless. That’s why you feel obsessed with food when you restrict your food intake: she’s using her entire arsenal to get you eating.

She’s worse than a Jewish mother (I should know — my mother was raised Jewish).

Your body is packing on the calories that you eat so you’ll survive this faux famine. You know this is all true because you would have lost the weight by now if these methods worked.

And they just don’t.

(The “best” case scenario, if you can even call it that, in following conventional wisdom is becoming fairly thin, but mentally obsessed with what you’re eating, and how you look, almost every waking moment as your biological instincts never, ever take a break.)

Plus, in the “best” case scenario, you’re also intensely exercising a million hours a week and eating nothing you actually like. How utterly miserable.

I think we’ve both been there. Let’s please never go back.

Here’s the part where I tell you how there is nothing wrong with you.

There isn’t, because of all of the reasons above. You’re not lazy and you’re probably not even genetically geared to be overweight (there’s one way to find this out — keep reading).

I, for one, after decades of struggling and not seeing results, and thinking, thinking, thinking about it all of the time, felt completely burnt out and ready to just be a chub if that’s what I was born to be. But, stuffing myself has always felt kind of like, oh I was stuffing myself: fairly unpleasant to extremely painful, depending on the degree of stuffed-ness.

Through a series of events that I’ll tell you about one day, I thought that giving up on trying to look a certain way, and focusing entirely on eating whatever my body wanted, whenever my body wanted it, and stopping when it was quietly satisfied (there will always be more later!) might be crazy enough to work.

Or, at least let the food be the food and I get to have just one wardrobe that always fits me.

Flash forward after massive trial and error on HOW best to consistently eating according to hunger, and low and behold! It works!

It works because:

(1) it doesn’t trigger our survival instincts, and

(2) it is sustainable.

Why don’t we naturally do this? Well, we actually DO.  We are programmed to eat according to our bodies’ desires.  Think of a baby stopping when it’s done with its bottle (but with thinner thighs, and in the bottle there’s a milkshake… um, a cow’s milk milkshake).

The glitch in this system happens as we un-learn what we know to do innately.

We are never told to listen to, and trust ourselves, when we are growing up.

Instead, we are told to clean our plates (even when we’re full). We are told to put on a sweater (even when we’re not cold).  We get a cookie if we stay quiet in church (food becomes reward, comfort).

We are told to look a certain way, if we want to be loved (the unspoken message from society, media, even our families and schools).

And all of these messages add up to a lifetime struggle with our weight.

It’s really more than a “struggle.” It’s completely agonizing. It’s probably the biggest and toughest obstacle I’ve worked through in my entire lifetime. A friend of mine, Martha, who is in remission for two chronic illnesses told me that healing her relationship with food and her body was more painful and more difficult than both combined.

Let’s not underplay what we’ve been through.

Healing my relationship with food has been incredibly freeing.

It’s freeing because I can focus on not-food, a.k.a., all of the other stuff that there is to do out there, in the world. And there’s a lot of stuff!

(I think I could’ve learned French and German if I’d used the mental energy I spent counting calories and concerning myself over abstract food quantities on that instead. Which is really not a big deal since most people in both countries totally speak English, anyway.)

Really good, high-quality food in really innovative forms and combinations is a tremendous passion of mine. If food were still an enemy, I’d never have uncovered that. That does make me feel pretty sad to imagine.

But, it’s an ongoing process — like my friend, Martha, I’m happily and steadily in remission; the old problems creep up when I neglect my self-work and healthy personal habits, serving as a reminder to get back on the listening-to-my-body bandwagon that has served me very well.

This is why you don’t actually know whether you’re genetically inclined to be overweight, or if it’s just the broken relationship running your life. There is only one way to find out.

It’s why I help people enjoy food at their lowest natural weight.

If this stuff is resonating with you, that means that you’re finally ready to begin the healing process and have a normal relationship with food.

You can work with me in the Guerilla Weight Loss class starting July 20th (6 5 spots left). Extra Q&A info from previous classes may be helpful for figuring this out, too.

You can read basically anything by Geneen Roth, who helps women have a healthy relationship with food through mindful eating and 7 guiding principles.

You can get Brooke’s book, If I am so smart, why can’t I lose weight?

There are many resources — the important thing is to find a person, resource, workshop or combination of all of the above that feels really good to you (because, you’re always right).

(For me, “feels really good” means feels really FUN and exciting. That has never steered me wrong.)

Because, your love affair with food, while tormented, isn’t over.

The best is yet to come — and by “best,” I mean “peppermint ice cream, without the guilt (or fear of waking up with cankles).”

Related posts:

1. Feelings are not for Eating.

There is, basically, one key to doing everything successfully.

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how there seems to be one key to everything — like to being more yourself in your world and in that thing you do out there, to losing weight, to healing your relationship with food (and, healing other relationships) and feeling really strong in your life.

That one key is pretty much what led to me finding, and now, doing, this work that I do out here.

And because of my experience in figuring this out and helping you figure your stuff out, too, I see that there is one commonality in people who do things successfully.

When I say, “successfully,” I mean successfully doing things in the right way for you. The one key to doing everything shows you the way to do anything to be the most perfect way for you (whatever that thing may be!).

With the one key thing, you feel right, acting from your deepest place of strength and peace.

The one key to doing basically everything is to reconnect to yourself.

Reconnecting to yourself is the key to basically everything that you want to do. Reconnecting to yourself is kind of an abstract concept, but it means being in touch with who you are, at your core, what your driving purpose is, and knowing what you want.

It’s the strongest place (for you) on the planet. It’s been my experience that once you get connected with yourself, from that place you know what to do in each instance and what you truly want. And, often times, things just kind of work out.

I could site a bunch of people who agree with me, but I don’t feel really feel like I need to because I think you know that I’m speaking the truth.

So, if feeling peaceful and knowing who you truly are appeals to you, keep reading. I’ll tell you some right-now steps to get started.

Knowing who you are and what you want may sound simple, but if it were really easy, we’d all be connected right now. We lose who we truly are in the busy activity of our days, the perceived expectations of others, and the fears of the unknown and what-ifs that surround us all.

Which all just makes it is all the more important to know how to reconnect. Here are some simple things to do now to get you reconnected to yourself so that you can successfully go out and do, well, anything.

• Find a memory that brings you oh-so-much joy. This act of “treasuring” memories that bring you happiness reconnects you to things that make the real you happy, and your physical experience when thinking of that memory is just as if that thing were truly happening. You can give yourself the experience of a great, youified, day in your head.
• Exercise. It’s so easy, but moving around with the purpose of giving yourself something that will reconnect you and help you be more of yourself, instead exercising for the purpose of losing weight or getting ripped (definitely the other purpose that I struggle with… um, not at all) restores you and provides clarity like you wouldn’t believe.
• Focus on your heart. This is a little exercise that Tia Dayton taught me. It may sound a smidge cheesy… but, focus on your heart and imagine that love is moving all around it, and that all you need is all around your heart. I do this probably 50 million times each day, and it’s incredibly soothing and centering.
• Sit in the sunshine and just breath. I know it’s simple, but I’ve actually bothered to do this for about 15 minutes each day lately, and it changes my entire perspective. I know like you probably do that vitamin D makes helps release seratonin in your brain, which makes you happy, but, really, it does — and, it reconnects you to yourself, too.
• Remember all of the people who have gone before you. Reconnecting with yourself also means being connected to everyone in the universe, so you can go at that backwards by first feeling connect to others. Find someone who has overcome the obstacle that you’re struggling with (all successful people have struggled their fannies off) and look at where they are now. My favorite: Lincoln ran for office 20 million times in a row and lost, while his first and then second wives passed away, and he had a tremendously successful life.
• Meet yourself where you are. Instead of thinking, I should do this! I should be that! Write down all of the reasons why it makes perfect sense that you are feeling how you do, right now. Feeling crappy? Maybe it’s because you don’t like your job and are new to a city; maybe it’s because you went to bed late. There’s a reason, and accepting where you gets you connected to who you are now, and then you’ll know what to do now.
• Drink more water (but, more mindfully). Get present in the moment to reconnect with yourself by tasting the water that you’re drinking, how it feels when you swallow and how you feel after drinking it. It’s easy, and you can do it every time you take a sip and get reconnected to yourself.

Keeping it all together, and staying connected all of the time, is not exactly our destinies, I’m sorry to say. Our destiny is to fumble, screw it all up and quit, feel like we’re losing our grip and piss everyone off. (Or, is that just me??)

And, THEN, our destiny is to reconnect. Again and again and again. It gets easier pretty quickly with some practice, I promise.

And now that you have the key to, basically, everything, try one of these bad boys out and see if you don’t feel a little closer to calm, clarity and ready for your perfectly right, next action.

No related posts.

I get this question quite often from clients and friends, especially since (and I actually thing this is kind of funny*), according to several people, how could a thin person help people with weight loss?

*I think that is funny because it seems to me that a fit person should teach fitness and a thin (healthily so) person should teach weight loss.

Well, this is a GREAT question, because:

1. What I teach will help you lose weight — but it’s not “weight loss”
2. You don’t have to be overweight to be in the throws of body and food obsession-hell
3. I haven’t always been friends with food and at a good weight for me (that’s kind of the whole, where you are is where I’ve been to hell and back, thing)

The real bottom line for why I do my weight loss work (and it’s work I enjoy so, so much) is #3:

I have been in the complete agony that is thinking about your weight and food, feeling terrible for having eating what you ate, feeling on the brink nearly every day and yet not being able to escape the problem (because you need to food to live and you’re in your body for this earth-school duration) even when you try to.

It’s so awful.

Sometimes, it makes me extremely nervous and uncomfortable to put myself out there as a person who can show you how to heal your relationship with food and your body.

But, since I have done it for myself, I know that what I’ve learned can help you, and I am not going to let my quaky boots keep me from offering you tremendous relief.

What it is I actually DO

I teach you how to let the food be the food, and how to listen to your body to know when and what to eat.

And, why even bother actually listening to me about how you can do that?

That is a very good question, and one I hope you always ask yourself before swallowing anyone’s advice (I know you already know this, I just think it’s so important to do that it deserves reinforcing, with some reinforcement and high-fives).

Back in the day, I spent most of my time thinking about how to be thinner, how much I was eating, how my clothes looked on me compared to how other people looked in their clothes… and everything else touching and concerning being skinny.

I felt very invested in being extremely thin growing up, and it was always in the back of my mind.

…no cheese or mayo on my sandwiches because they have fat in them; no regular sodas; no eating after 8pm; no carbs; eat as little as humanly possible…

I would read stupid articles in magazines about what to eat and what not to eat. I pretended like I didn’t care about what size I was, but, really, I cared a LOT.

And, as you probably know all too well, my many attempts at restricting what I ate just led to me being obsessed with what I was eating, and that always leads to being heavier than your body wants to be.

It also kind of (and I realize this a lot more now that I have a healthy relaitonship with me and my bod and the food) alienated me from being truly intimate with most of my friends.

The more I tried to diet (I define diet as, consciously restricting your food intake) the more my weight rose and fell. I have gained and lost sooooo many pounds. Maybe thousands.

Re-reading this, I am thinking — I much prefer levity and humor when I talk to you, but it’s hard to find something that dominates your life so terribly funny sometimes.

Everything can be funny, but I don’t want to make light of my struggle, or the struggle you’re going through.

Eventually, I was exhausted.

I felt so exhausted from the mental preoccupation and so tired of feeling like a failure after having tried to lose weight and not, ultimately, losing weight, that I became open to trying eating “normally” — which I assumed meant, giving up on being thin.**

**This is the opposite of what actually happened to me, pretty cool! When you start eating according to your appetite.  If we ate according to our appetites, we’d be at our naturally thinnest weight — which means, most of us do not do that right now.

From what I could gather, eating “normally” meant eating when you are hungry and stopping eating whenever you (not anyone else) felt full. I tried this out.

It was a LOT harder than I thought it was going to be.

One thing that helped a lot was realizing that there will always be more food so that it’s okay to stop eating at any time.

I could choose to stop eating when I felt light and energized. I could also choose to eat a TON.

I realized I could listen to my appetite, or ignore it and eat for all sorts of other reason.

I learned lots of tricks to stay connected to my appetite when it was hard to (like, when I was with other people, or feeling stressed or experiencing the extreme boredom of studying in a library).

In a nutshell, this is what I learned:

• To set as the ideal, eating according to my appetite
• To stay connected to my appetite even when I wanted to check out
• How to overcome the reasons that I do not eat according to my appetite, even when I was aware of my appetite

It took kind of a lot of years. But, after a lot of trial and error and KNOWING somewhere deep inside of me that this is the only way to let the food be the food, I stuck with it.

And, howdy ho! I’m in good shape.

I get to NOT pass my junk with food onto any future kids or people around me. That makes me overjoyed every time I think it.

Years later, I found out that other women found the same secret.

We all have great ways to help you eat according to your appetite.  There is overlap and there are differences, so find the person that you feel most connected to to get the best results.

So, that’s what I’ve been teaching people how to do.

Because the agony is torturous, getting through it is tricky, but being free from it is the best feeling I’ve ever know.

I support people to do this work in their journey to reconnect to their appetites, to create permanent changes into their lifestyle to be naturally thin and enjoying delicious food.

As an aside, I found out that this method is clinically proven — meaning this:

• The Department of Psychology at Emory University ran trials in a controlled environment with many possible methods of healing an abnormal relationship with food.
• By an outstanding margin it was proven that monitoring your appetite in a certain way is the route to healed relationship with food. It’s how the food becomes the food.
• Food rules, restricting intake of food, and food monitoring (writing down what you eat) were all shown to be in effective.

I have known for years that this is the only way for me to enjoy food and be thin — but it’s kind of encouraging to me to see so many ways that it’s true for others, too.

The Emory tools are not available to the public, but I got my grubby little hands on them, and incorporated the tools Emory developed in my work. Stellar!

This reconnecting to your appetite business is the only way to be free from dieting and food obsession

It’s the only way I know of to be present and accounted for in your life.

That is how I got into weight loss stuff.

It’s been part of my path, and your relationship with food may be the way that you get right with yourself, listen to yourself and be more of yourself in your life.

And, helping you be more of yourself in your life is definitely what I’m here to do — which is why I do the weight loss stuff!

Get it? If not, throw me some questions in the comments, I love them all.

Related posts:

1. How Does Demon Liquor Figure into Weight Loss?
2. “Taking It All Off.” Or, “Guerilla Weight Loss Tactics (that work)”
3. The Last Weight Loss Class You’ll Ever Need