Prey animals

My harshest editor weighs only 4.2 pounds. He waits for me each morning, eager to read over my shoulder. Occasionally he stomps the delete key, erasing whole paragraphs and forcing me to rethink a scene. A grumpy old man trapped in the body of a cuddly bunny, he always thinks I could do better, start earlier, and write more. Except for this Monday, when he wasn’t waiting, already annoyed at my lateness. Instead he sat on his litter box, lethargic and unwilling to move. I raced to the call the vet, frantic at what could happen.

For those of you that don’t know a rabbit intimately, here are a few common aliments and their outcomes:

Illness	Outcome
Pink eye	death
Diarrhea	death
Nose cold	death
Stomach upset	death
Torn Toe Nail	death

I’m exaggerating but only a little. Rabbits are prey animals. They make wonderful pets and great writing companions, but veterinary medicine can only do so much to extend their fragile lives.

Is your writing a prey animal? If you hit a stopping point in the middle of a new manuscript does the whole piece die? What if you turn out a clunky, poorly worded sentence, is that a cause for certain death?

Is your health a prey animal? If you find that running isn’t for you, does that mean you give up on all your plans to start exercising? If you can’t find a healthy breakfast do you kill the rest of the day by eating bad-for-you-food?

I can only do so much to keep my furry editor alive. Healthy food in the right amounts, a clean living environment, and lots of love will extend his natural lifetime from one year to ten times that amount. Thankfully, healthy writing doesn’t have short lifespan.

Writing can be made stronger, through classes and workshops, or just plain writing more. You can resurrect works that have lain nearly dead for years by getting a fresh pair of eyes to make suggestions. You may need to amputate bad scenes or even cut away everything but the healthy subplots, but there’s always something you can do.

You can do the same for your health by not letting yourself be stopped by little problems. It’s fun to daydream about how much weight you’ll lose and how fit you’ll look when you join a new gym, but don’t let those dreams go because the membership is too expensive. Don’t stop yourself from seeking out ways to get enough sleep, relax at the end of the day, or eat a healthy meal. Find ways around problems instead of giving into them.

As of Monday afternoon, my editor was waiting for our usual after-work rereading session. The tummy trouble brought on by indulging in sweets cleared up before his vet could work him into the schedule. I don’t know how many more mornings I’ll have with him, but I know I’ll work hard to make as many of them happen as I can, the same way I’ll work hard to keep my writing and my health.

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Falling down

I’m a runner. I’m not fast, nor graceful. I am not a thing of beauty and strength on two legs. I’m a runner who sometimes falls down. I have plenty of very good excuses why I fall, but that doesn’t stop it from happening.

You would think running is easy: left foot, right foot, repeat as necessary. But thanks to a stroke, my left foot often responds to the call to go forward by saying “Who me? Sure, yeah, I’ll get right on that…” And down I go.

The beauty of falling down often is that you learn it’s not something to be afraid of. It hurts, yes. You end up bloody and bruised, but the first steps up are the hardest. After that you’re mostly just embarrassed and a little ashamed you did something so silly. I learned that falls on concrete take longer to heal than falls on dirt, so I run in the woods.

There’s a tree along my route in the woods, one I used to hate but now I love. The tree stood as a marker. My first goal was running to the tree, then past the tree, and then to the tree, past the tree, and back to the tree. The tree talked trash to me in the beginning, long taunts of “You really think you’re going to make it? You’re already panting. I’ve stood here longer than you’ve been alive little girl. I’ve seen would-be runners come and go, and you’ll go. Trust me.” I cursed that tree for standing just ten feet away from where my breath ran out, just steps from where I had nothing left but acid in my veins and two collapsed lungs.

But after weeks that turned into months, a magical thing happened: I did run to the tree, past the tree, and back to the tree. Suddenly my tree was a symbol of what I had accomplished, a sentry standing firm over the spot where I proved I could do it. After that, the tree only told me good things, and when I fell it told me to get back up and try again.

My tree often repeats a Japanese proverb to me “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” When it thinks I need it, it quotes Batman Begins “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” When the winter ice makes it dangerous to visit my tree, I think about it missing me. As a writer I can be forgiven that flight of fantasy and I’ve often walked out to see that tree in snow and icy conditions when running is a very dumb idea, just to wrap my arms around it and remember how it felt to run to the tree, past the tree, and back.

Maybe you don’t fall down in the woods. Maybe it isn’t a tree that taunts you but a Big Mac. Maybe the voice inside your head belongs to someone who loved you but hurt you a little too. It doesn’t matter, falling down works the same way for everyone: it hurts but you get back up, brush yourself off, and start going again. You’ll probably limp for a few days. People will see your bruises and cringe. None of that matters. Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

In the mood to share? I’m always happy to hear about how someone picked themselves up from a spectacular fall.

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Letting Go

At our blog we talk about being healthy and often focus on categories like healthy eating and healthy exercise. Today the most important categories for me are physical and mental health. Mentally, I’ve taken a beating this spring. On the one year anniversary of my mother-in-law’s death I buried my best friend from college. A few weeks later my grandmother passed away. Now, as if that stress weren’t enough, I’ve started a new day job and in another month I’ll be moving.

My physical health is better than it has been in some time. Healthy eating is suddenly a habit to me. I remember my vitamins on more days than I forget and I regularly get enough sleep. Thanks to Trish’s challenge I’ve had a streak of running every other day going since late March.

That streak ends tonight. Tonight, I’m choosing mental health over physical health. I made the same choice this morning when I put caffeine in my body. I normally avoid caffeine and high fructose corn syrup. I consider both of them to be about the same as alcohol and cigarettes. Still, today, dealing with all that stress, I know they’re the lesser of the evils in front of me.

There comes a time when you realize some transition, some battle is so hard you can let the other things go. You have a moment when you pray for strength to get through something or ask yourself if you really can do it. At that moment, when the darkness is so deep that you think dawn will never come, I urge you to focus on one promise, to focus yourself, and let the others go.

I’m not telling you that every torn-stocking-missed-the-bus-forgot-your-lunch bad day justifies going off your diet. I’m not giving you license to skip your writing goal for the day because your car broke down. I’m asking you to look at your circumstances and decide if this is a truly stressful time where doing things, even healthy things, will just make the situation worse. I’m giving you permission to take stock of the situation, evaluate your priorities, and say no to some things. Free yourself from guilt, set a date to come back to the habits you set aside, and move forward, focusing on what matters most. Sometimes you have to let go, let yourself drift, so you can come back stronger and better.

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Do Emergencies Matter?

The rain wept down, not hard enough to justify an umbrella, but somehow hard enough that after the brief walk from my car to my door every inch of my clothes held a frosting of wet. Inside I shook off, wiped my face on a towel, and immediately advanced on the kitchen. The smell of spicy-sweet bar-be-queue, one of my favorite foods, came out of the crock-pot, and while the insides needed a stir or two, dinner was well on its way to ready. Deep in consultation with my kitchen scale and a bag of tator tots, I heard something. Unsure, I asked my husband what it was, someone at the door maybe? Not the door, he confirmed, but then it came again, a quiet tapping, hesitating.

We made it to the door at the same time. Neither of us thinking to push aside the heavy coats, umbrellas, and caps that hung over the peephole. We don’t have many visitors and in a building where someone has to be buzzed in the weak tapping raised an alarm. Opening the door we found our neighbor, a frail Asian man, stooped and wrapped in a worn blue bathrobe.

“Need,” he began, but then ran out of breath. “Help,” he exhaled. In his hand, wedged awkwardly between the steel walker and his palm a cordless phone shook. His whole body shook and he repeated his phrase, “Need…. Help.”

Panicked, with visions of dead bodies and EMS, we rushed out of our apartment and into his. We’d never been inside but quickly passed the polished dark wood, the stunning purple orchards, and the clean white carpet. Asian character newspapers scattered on an ottoman were the only thing out of place. After our quick sweep we returned to the man who pointed the phone at the television and repeated his plea for help. Thinking he meant the room behind the TV, I swallowed my fear and checked: no body in the kitchen, no body in the dining room. Back in the living room the nature of the emergency became clear.

“Twenty-four,” the old man insisted, pointing at the TV. He then pressed the buttons on the phone with a violence borne of frustration. My husband, a man with patience I will never muster, calmly reached over and replaced the phone in the man’s hand with the television remote. While my heart rate returned slowly to normal a long debate took place about how to get to channel twenty-four.

An emergency had forced my elderly neighbor into the hallway, to knock on the door of someone he didn’t know. That emergency was not knowing how to change the channel on his TV.
Back home, I wondered about the nature of emergencies. I’m still wondering about it now. By nature, I’m a private person, I wouldn’t knock on one of my neighbors’ doors unless there was a grave injury, blood spilling, or some catastrophe. But the rules that make something an emergency are a little less clear. I miss a call from my agent, clearly that’s an emergency. Skip an evening’s work out, stop making a healthy snack, and get to that call. A friend calls in crisis, maybe not an emergency, certainly not enough to make me delay dinner, but maybe enough to keep me up too late, on the phone talking until I know I won’t get up in time the next morning to meet my writing goals.

Some emergencies send people into a spiral of unhealthy eating, skipping exercise, and isolating themselves. Other emergencies just elevate stress levels, breaking down the body’s natural defenses and leaving it vulnerable to illness and injury. But are they worth it? Are they really emergencies? What makes an emergency in your world? Can you separate the real emergencies from the not so important ones? When you do, can you find a way to diffuse the situation before it causes more problems?

I’ll be preparing for emergencies by putting a ready to go healthy meal in the freezer for nights when I lose my cooking time. I’m going to plan a few quick work outs for when phone calls eat up my exercise time. I think a few low impact, easy to do half-asleep routines will come in handy for the mornings after an emergency. As for writing, editing and organizing means I’m still accomplishing things on days when I’m too wiped out to be creative. I can’t stop emergencies from happening, but I can change how I handle them.


~~~

When she’s not cooking, buying, or dreaming about food Rachel Kleinsorge writes steamy paranormal mystery romances. She is currently waiting for the call from her agent, the amazing Carolyn Grayson, while working on her next novel.

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It won’t kill you.

My father’s feet turned to clay when I was ten years old. Before then, he stood as a giant who protected me from everything. At 6’3” and 250 pounds, Dad held us up so we could reach the stars. But the year I turned ten Dad was diagnosed with diabetes. My invincible hero turned into a man with cautions attached to his life. The strongest caution accompanied food. I learned early in my Dad’s diagnosis that if he didn’t eat he would die. Being hungry would kill him. I internalized this message a bit too well, and never let myself go more than a few hours without food.

A funny thing happened when I was 29. I spent 24 hours without eating. It wasn’t by choice, there were other things on my mind at the time, not to mention doctors and nurses who ordered me to take only water. Not a single bite or drop of juice for 24 hours and somehow I survived. Since then I’ve disproven the lesson from my childhood over and over again. I’ve actually come to appreciate being a little hungry. It makes me savor my food, helps me look forward to it. Surprisingly, if I push away from the table still slightly hungry, I can go three or four hours before I need to eat again. I will admit to getting “hangry,” a word a friend made up meaning so hungry you’re angry at everyone, but I haven’t died yet.

Another unspoken family rule taught me that exercise wasn’t to be trusted. Exercise hurt. If you did too much, you would have a heart attack and die. If you escaped that fate you were sure to end up with injuries: torn ligaments, pulled muscles, and surely, broken bones. My Aunt who biked regularly had to have knee surgery. She became an example of why it was best to just avoid all of that danger.

I started running in my early twenties. I was (and am) super slow. In addition to surely dying, according to family and friends I risk a number of maladies every time I put on my sneakers: joint degeneration, back pain, knee problems, and (a personal favorite) any minute now my uterus is going to fall out. And yet, like being hungry, running hasn’t killed me. I’ve come to believe it won’t. I even own a t-shirt that says “Running won’t kill you. You’ll pass out first.”

Exercise makes me feel better. It clears up migraines before they really start. It soothes my moods and helps me form strong friendships with other runners. It teaches me that I can pick a goal and stick to it, no matter what. At the end of March Trish challenged us to set a goal and stick with it. I chose running every other day in preparation for a local 5K. In the month since then my grandmother died, I’ve dealt with job issues, and I had to revisit some old fears. Still I ran. Every other day, despite weather, exhaustion, and just plain lack of any desire to, I got out there. My 5K was the day after my grandmother’s burial. I ran. …and it didn’t kill me.

What lessons hold you back? If you took them out and looked at them, would they still be true? Are you willing to give up the security of those lessons to be healthy?

~~~

When she’s not cooking, buying, or dreaming about food, Rachel Kleinsorge writes steamy paranormal mystery romances. She is currently waiting for the call from her agent, the amazing Carolyn Grayson, while working on her next novel.

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It Is Better to Be in the Game

This past weekend, I went to WRW's annual retreat In the Company of Writers. It is one of my favorite events of the whole year and features a raucous game of Romance Jeopardy on Saturday night. The three hostesses Glinda the Good Witch (Karen Smith), the Scarecrow (Cathy Maxwell), and the Cowardly Lion (Kathleen Gilles Seidel) skipped into the ballroom singing We're Off to See the Wizard, and the fun began.

The number one rule of Romance Jeopardy is "This Game Is Not Fair!" But, as we all cry, "We like it that way." The retreat attendees break up into separate teams with at least one first-time retreat attendee, and the competition heats up with each question. I was on the Munchkins team with (back row) Naomie Hackenberg, Danielle Meitiv, Louise Fury, Barbara Vey, Tim Bentler-Jungr, Elaine English, and Elise Hayes (front row - right, I'm on the left). We're pictured with our serious game faces on! We came in second place, but we went down swinging.

Romance Jeopardy is such a good time that many retreat attendees sit and watch the competition. My roommate, critique partner and dear friend Elise asked, "Why would anyone choose to sit and watch rather than play?" We both agreed it was better to be in the game.

This is a lesson that I sometimes have to relearn especially when it comes to my writing. As I've blogged about before, I just finished my first draft last year even though I've been hanging around RWA since 1996. I've learned tons along the way, made many friends (all my best ones!) and spun lots of stories, but I've yet to submit anywhere. I've been content to sit on the sidelines and observe, but I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be in the game. I'm diving in, and this year is all about me finally submitting. I joke it may happen on Dec. 31st, but it will happen.

For the first time ever, I signed up for literary agent appointments and pitched to three Saturday morning. I was ridiculously nervous about that and wanted to cancel all my appointments, but I'm so tired of retiring from the field before the game begins and feeling like a fake. I skipped out on much of the socializing Friday night to return to my room and work on what I wanted to say and ask when I sat across a table from three leading agents. I did go through some worst-case scenarios and decided if all three told me I was the dumbest writer they had ever met and they never wanted to see a thing I'd produced, I would survive.

Naturally, they did not say that. They were very kind and willing to share their deep knowledge and insights on the publishing world and what they would suggest for my writing projects. This does not mean they said I was the smartest writer they had ever met and they wanted to see everything I'd produced, but they did request the fiction project I was pitching. I also pitched to two of them a nonfiction project based on what I'm doing on my journey to become a healthy woman and lose weight. I really wanted their insights on the health, fitness and self-help markets. One agent said that editors would not buy a prescriptive book on weight loss in the voice of someone who had succeeded at it. You needed a different platform such as some kind of medical expertise. That made me sad, but I think I handled it well.

I was able to take that input and use it to help me frame my questions for the last agent I met to find out how I could sell a book on this journey. If I want to get it published, my choices are to write a memoir and tell the whole story or build a platform, which could be a pretty challenging and time-consuming undertaking. It gave me a lot to think about. I will still work on this project and plan to write a narrative memoir. This may be written for an audience of one or two as Elise will read it. I'm not certain I'll ever submit a memoir because there are parts of the story I may not want to share or parts that family members will not want told, but I'll still work on it. Writing about this has helped me tremendously, and I plan to continue to write and think about my journey until I reach that healthy BMI for my weight. I may need to continue thinking and writing about this until I die because it is one of the most effective ways I have to battle my emotional eating.

So, my pitches were not a slam dunk, but I am so happy that I am in the game. While I was nervous, I felt like I could hold my head up higher as I waited with my fellow WRW members for our appointments and through the rest of the retreat. I am getting over the ways I have sabotaged my best efforts in the past and perhaps even my fear of success. I'm going to stop holding myself back so much. I've never sat on the sidelines of Romance Jeopardy, and I need to stop doing that elsewhere. It is better to be in the game.

I left the retreat Sunday on a complete writers' high. As I drove home, I developed revised writing goals and plans for the rest of the year and am feeling empowered to meet them. Just in case I might let any doubts creep in about getting in the game, the world reinforced the lesson for me. I was welcomed home by a voice message from VFRW. My manuscript Honor's Redemption is a finalist in the historical category of The Sheila Contest. What a way to end a weekend devoted to nurturing the writer's soul and giving her the tools to take the next step in her career!

Are you in the game? Are there times when you would rather observe than play? If you went to the WRW Retreat, what were some of your favorite moments?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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Is This For Real?

I am now heading towards having lost 35 pounds since January 2009 and 45 pounds from my highest weight ever, and that just amazes me. I can’t believe what I have accomplished. It’s astonishing. Is this for real?

The problem with asking is this for real is that there is a little voice in the back of my mind that sometimes answers no. It’s not. You are right to doubt this. Come on, do you really think that you can continue to lose weight and keep it off once you reach your goal weight? Get real. The real, fat Michelle will come back out and make sure you return to your obese state, where you were for more than ten years and where you really belong. Why do you think this time will be different?

I’m not swamped by these doubts and negative emotions, but they are there at times. Given that I am an emotional eater and can let unacknowledged emotions self-sabotage my good intentions and induce me to overeat, I can’t ignore these thoughts and feelings. This disbelief can also grow when I’ve had a stretch of time when I’ve not lost weight or even when I recognize that I’ve been backsliding a little and eating more while moving less. That pretty much describes where I’ve been in the past month or so.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into Weight Watchers and found out I had gained .2 of a pound. That’s nothing to get upset about, but it was the third week in a row of fairly negligible movement on the scale. I was getting set up for my doubts to grow.

I walked into the meeting, sat in my usual spot and noticed a newcomer in the front row. She was slender and was wearing a pantsuit that I liked and could see myself wearing. She had a similar hairstyle and was probably in her 30s. She screamed professional and in many ways, she reminded me of myself. I thought she might be a big shot from Weight Watchers there to observe the meeting. She was way too thin to be there to lose weight.

It turns out that she is going to be a group leader, and my brilliant group leader is mentoring her for a few weeks. As part of this process, she conducted part of the meeting and shared her weight loss journey. I almost cried.

When she walked into Weight Watchers for the last time several years ago, she was attending one of the best colleges in the country. She had a handsome husband and an active, good life. She was successful by almost every measure of success, but she could not control her weight. She could control everything but the weight. She could accomplish just about every goal she set for herself, but she could not lose the weight. Her rock bottom came when she had to get bigger clothes for a nice vacation because nothing she owned fit anymore. Pretty soon after that vacation, she began her weight loss journey. Now, she is 45 pounds down from her highest weight and lost 35 through Weight Watchers. Do those numbers sound familiar?

Her talk gave me chills, and I could have cried if I let myself. I had a strong, visceral reaction to this. It wasn’t as strong as the one to the Fear of Success talk, but it stands out as the second strongest reaction. I’ve heard much more dramatic weight loss stories, but her story could have been mine.

She could have been talking about me. I don’t have the handsome husband, but I have attended one of the best colleges in the country and succeeded in many other areas. With all that success, I had still been haunted by the fact that I could not lose the weight no matter how much I could succeed in other areas of my life. My most successful attempt ever in terms of weight had started in January 2009, and I had lost about the same amount as she had: 45 pounds from my highest weight and about 35 with Weight Watchers.

And, now, I was staring at a woman who had lost the same amount I had, and it challenged those little doubts I’d been having lately over whether my weight loss journey was for real. It forced me to see just how dramatic a 35-45 pound weight loss could look when I compared her current appearance to her before photos. I couldn’t help but ask was the difference as startling in me. Why wouldn’t it be?

Her story could have been my story, and hers had a happy ending. She has been at her goal weight for three years and has managed to keep it off. If it is real for her, why can’t it be real for me?

Just in case I had missed the lesson I needed to learn that night, it was reinforced again before the conclusion of the meeting. A newer member was complaining that it was hard for her to keep going because she couldn’t really believe this time would be any different from her previous failed attempts to lose weight. The group leader said that this time would be different. He then turned to look at me and asked, “Right, Michelle?” I nodded in agreement.

Yes, this time is different, and it is for real. I’ve added the woman who reminded me of myself to the unofficial list of success stories I keep. Collecting other people’s success stories gives me hope and helps me believe that I really can lose this weight and keep it off. They can inspire me to believe I can do it and think about how I can make my journey to becoming a healthy writer a success. Forcing myself to confront and analyze what happened to me, how did I gain the weight, what behaviors made me gain weight and in turn what behaviors made me lose weight ultimately give me more confidence that this is for real.

What do you do to encourage yourself when you start asking is your weight loss success for real? How do you find ways to encourage yourself when you start doubting the possibility that you can lose weight?

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Fear of Success

My brilliant Weight Watchers (WW) group leader Melvin has brought up fear of success twice this year. The first time was in early spring. He mentioned that a member in his other group had lost more than 50 pounds and was struggling with her fear of success. She was very uncomfortable with all the attention and compliments her weight loss brought her, and she missed the invisibility she had had as a fat person. He asked if anybody in the room could relate, but nobody did. The woman sitting next to me and I laughed and said we loved the compliments.

I did not share that earlier in my life I had felt like this woman. I have joined Weight Watchers more times than I can remember. The last time I reached size 12, it was 1996 or 1997. I lived in Nashville and went to WW meetings regularly there. I can clearly remember one day looking in the mirror and noticing how thin and pretty my face looked. It freaked me out.

This did not make sense to me. Just 3 or so years earlier, I’d been a very healthy 135/140. Why would I be scared of getting thin or prettier? I brought up this fear in a meeting. The group leader really did try to help me find answers, but I don’t think I was in a place to hear or feel what she was saying. Within a month, I’d dropped out and started gaining the weight back. I never got close to a size 12 again until this fall.

I really did leave that meeting in early 2009 believing that fear of success was not an issue for me anymore. I was very proud that I had done the necessary inner work that needed to be done so I could succeed at my efforts to finally lose all the weight I needed to lose to be healthy. I did not want that invisibility anymore. I was not going to be more comfortable as a fat person than as a thin person.

Fast forward to early October 2009. Melvin, my brilliant leader, brought up fear of success again. He asked if anyone was confronting that or was it too soon. The guy behind me said he was. This was the third time he had reached 67 pounds down. He’d been bouncing around the same 10 pound range for months. Another woman said this was the third time she’d reached her goal weight. She could lose the 20 pounds easily, but she couldn’t keep them off.

Something in my face must have given me away because Melvin challenged me on this fear. Earlier in the meeting, I had joked with a woman sitting next to me about fliers that were on all the chairs. The handouts invited members who were at or close to their goal weight to sign up to be receptionists. The gist of my joke was how I was so not qualified. He had called me on that statement, and I had responded with the fact that I was more than 30 pounds away from even being eligible for goal. He circled back to that conversation and said what if the real issue was that I am ONLY 30 pounds away from goal. Was that frightening me?

People, the waters practically parted. I had one of the strongest visceral responses of my life. My whole body tingled, and it was like I was looking down a tunnel at Melvin, and I could barely hear him. Everyone else blurred. I’ve no recollection of what I said, but it was enough that he started talking to someone else.

This was such an oh crap moment. I really thought that fear of success was no longer an issue for me – at least in terms of weight loss. I no longer subconsciously wanted to be fat or felt more comfortable being fat. I thought I was over that. I have been told many times that fear of success was an issue in terms of my writing. That completely resonates, but I’ve yet to figure out how to deal with it. If I’m completely honest, I can come up with arguments for how fear of success has affected me in other areas of my life. I was stunned how much this was still an issue in several areas and had no idea what to do.

I started to listen intensely to what everybody else had to stay. A couple of ladies both complained that they were being told online that they were losing weigh too quickly. Both of them said they took that subconsciously as permission TO EAT and subsequently had gained more than 2 pounds the past week. A couple of other folks shared experiences of self-sabotage. In these stories, there were no answers to how one could stop this self-sabotage, so I asked Melvin.

He said something that I did not get at all. I came back with, so you are saying that you have to work out the emotions that are convincing you to do this. He said, yes, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I wanted to say, no this is not obvious. Assume I know nothing. You need to break it down step by step. I’ve no idea how to combat this, and I now know this is still a huge issue for me.

So, I left that meeting with the knowledge that fear of success is still a big issue for me, and I needed to work it out. Great. Where did I start? I didn’t know, and I gained weight the next week. Things were not getting better.

I decided I’d work it out by blogging about it. I started a word file for this piece in early October. It’s now late December. I still have no great answer. I know I need to work it out. One of my big goals for 2010 will be to figure out ways to get a handle on my fear of success. I was able to get a handle on one of my other big issues in 2009 – emotional eating – so I know it’s possible to make progress.

I’m aware of the issue. Now I can start working on how and why it’s an issue. Can I figure out and address the underlying concerns? Can I develop coping strategies? Can I figure out ways I can break it down into addressable pieces? Can I figure out ways I can make forward progress on this and promise myself to try to do them? Can I be aware of what I’m doing so that I can learn to recognize when I’m self-sabotaging and get to the point where I can stop those attempts?

I think I can. That’s a start.

Do any of you have fear of success? Have you figured out how to address it? I’d love any and all tips.

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Can You Take a Break?

A very common complaint of dieters is that they get so sick of having to be aware of everything they put in their mouths and constantly counting calories or points. They want to be able to eat “like everyone else” and not have to work so hard at this. They’re particularly jealous of thin people who seem to be able to eat whatever they want and still stay skinny.

This is definitely a complaint I’ve thought, felt and said through the years. I’ve gone so far as to say I’m going to take a break from keeping a food diary and stop obsessing about how many calories I’m eating. I’d often do this for a vacation, a business trip, a holiday or just whenever I needed a break.

The problem with this was that my old, bad habits were waiting to embrace me with open arms and I almost always gained weight. Whenever I went home to Connecticut for the holidays or vacation, it seemed like open season on overeating started as soon as I hit the airport. The smell of Cinnabuns or Five Guys would call my name so strongly that I’d kick off my trip by eating almost my whole calorie allotment for the day in one sitting.

I don’t want to do this the week I’m in Connecticut for Thanksgiving or later in December for Christmas. I’ve thought long and hard about how I can prevent this. I don’t plan to count points/calories on Thanksgiving Day, but I do plan to do that on the other days I’m out of town.

There have been previous trips home for Thanksgiving when I did not gain weight, and that was when I got a travel pass for the gym and worked out at a local Gold’s while in Connecticut. I got my travel pass yesterday and plan to work out both in November and late December.

My accomplishments on my journey to become healthy have inspired my Mom to go back to Weight Watchers and my Dad to try to lose weight. I know my Mom and I can encourage each other to be good starting Friday. I plan to go to a Weight Watchers meeting with her after Thanksgiving to put a stop to the holiday.

To further counterbalance the fear that I’ll gain a lot of weight at home – something that I could obsess over too much and let ruin my vacation – I’ve also given myself credit for what I’ve accomplished this year. I have changed a lot of my bad habits. I just can’t eat as much as I used to. Even if I could, there’s no way I could regain 30 pounds in one week. The stakes aren’t that high.

Furthermore, I’ve paid attention to my “thin” friends when they were eating enough the past couple of years to realize that I typically ate more than them at any one sitting. For the most part, they practiced much better portion control and balanced their calories in and calories out better than I did. This allowed me to stop being so jealous of how easy it was for them to be thin because I realized that they weren’t thin because they hit some genetic jackpot. They were thin because of healthy behaviors.

Realizing this allowed me to concentrate just on myself and what I need to do to change my life in terms of diet and fitness. I can finally say that I am on a lifestyle change and not a diet. There is no break from that. Even if I do gain weight while home for Thanksgiving, I’ll lose it once I return. I really am changing my life here and a blip here or a blip there is not going to keep me from continuing my journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer.

Do you take breaks from your efforts to become healthy? Do you have any good strategies for not allowing a break to keep you off track? Do you have any strategies for not gaining weight while on vacation or during the holidays?

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A Vote of Confidence in Myself

I’ve struggled with my weight since elementary school, and it became a much bigger issue in college – pun intended. I first joined Weight Watchers (WW) in 1995 and have made many attempts since then to get back to a healthy weight range. My current effort is the most successful ever. Part of that accomplishment is due to the fact that I took the time to figure out what lessons I could learn from my past failures and semi-successes.

In 2004 or 2003, a colleague organized a Weight Watchers at work program that started the week before Thanksgiving and ran through mid-Winter. I participated and lost around 15 or so pounds. For the first time in my life, I did not regain all of the weight I had lost during one of my WW attempts. Furthermore, I hadn’t even started at my highest weight ever. After I moved from Texas to DC, I lost about 10 - 15 pounds because I drive less and walk more here in my day-to-day life.

How was I able to maintain this loss of 10 – 15 pounds? Part of it was the increased activity from living in a walking-friendly environment, but there is one other tactic I took that I highly recommend. At the end of the Weight Watchers at work program, I went through my closets and drawers and removed all the clothing that was a size or two too big at that point and gave it to Goodwill. Most of my size 16 plus clothing, all of the 18 plus and the most-hated, it-was-so-hot-in-Texas, and I-had-no-shorts-that-fit-and-I-was-desperate, size 20 plus shorts were gone, and I vowed never to buy clothes in those sizes again. Whenever the remaining clothes got tight enough that I started to long for some of the very nice clothing I had given to Goodwill, I got motivated enough to do something and lose 5-10 pounds. Part of this motivation came from my frugality, but some of it came from stubbornness.

The value of drawing this clear line in the sand was a very useful lesson, and I’m turning to it again. Yesterday and earlier this summer, I went through my closets and drawers and pulled out all of my clothing that was too big. I have a mountain of clothes on my loveseat that includes the following sizes: 16 plus (not a lot – most of it went the last time I did this), 14 plus, X and even some 1X, 16 regular (including several fabulous Jones New York suits), a few 14 regular, extra large, very few larges and a few men’s sizes and other stuff so random I almost don’t know how I accumulated it. Looking at that pile makes me very happy, but it is tinged with a little fear.

Even though this has worked in the past, it’s still scary. I’m giving away a lot of very nice clothing – stuff that would be very expensive to replace – and it’s been so long, more than ten years, since I’ve been in my size range – a pretty solid 14 with some “small” size 16 stuff and “big” size 12 stuff. I’m also more of a large or a rare medium on top instead of an extra large. Is this just a temporary fluke? Can I stay here or even get smaller? I’ve been fat most of my adult life, and for years, I accepted that as what I was meant to be.

Some of you may notice that I said I cleaned my closets earlier this summer. That too-big summer clothing has been sitting on my loveseat for more than a month because I couldn’t find the courage to bring it to Goodwill. It was good stuff, and I couldn’t completely convince myself that I wouldn’t need it again. The pile has now doubled. I need to believe in myself and that my journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer will be a success. I need to acknowledge the fear holding me back, confront it, and get over it.

This morning, I sent an email to my local writer’s group offering this clothing to anyone interested (some of it really is very nice) and gave myself a deadline of next Sunday to get the remaining clothes to Goodwill. This is my vote of confidence in myself for the next four months – and beyond.

What kind of “vote of confidence in yourself” can you make for the next four months that will help you along your journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer?

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