Protein... Breakfast of Champions

It dawned on me yesterday that having a protein based breakfast really does help me eat less during the day. During my flu, I was eating oatmeal with raisins, and I found myself more peckish throughout the day.

Yesterday I had some scrambled egg with cheese and veggies in a high fiber wrap, and was able to manage hunger a lot better.

The only problem with this so far is that the protein based breakfast foods I buy, like eggs and peanut butter, are kid magnets. Now that my oldest has returned home, a dozen eggs can be gone in a matter of days. Don't even get me started on the peanut butter.

Thankfully I can deal with that problem fairly effectively with some shrewd shopping choices.

At least it's a start.

As for the exercise I'm going to have to bite the bullet and start whether I'm completely over my cough or not. I'll just have to start slow. So that'll be my goal today. I'm putting it here so I can't make any excuses and back out of it.

Accountability - the most powerful tool in a healthy lifestyle change.

Emotional housekeeping...

I don't deal with neglect well. I chalk it up to investing so much of my value in what other people think of me. When they don't respond to me, it makes me feel invalidated in some way.

It also usually makes me withdraw, sullen and prone to childish behavior... which I chalk up to the patterns that began in my childhood that I have yet to fully work through.

Maybe Jeff is right. Maybe I would benefit from some therapy.

Right now my biggest problem is where I have thrown my heart and attention. On one end of the spectrum, it's been something that I deemed safe because of the lack of response back.

Only the responses came anyway, and in this recent few months more than I had even thought possible. I acted on it and was very surprised when it went right back to the avoidance phase - so much so that my feelings were hurt and I in fact became quite angry.

I'm not sure how to deal with it either. I can either talk it out with this person and jeopardize what I thought I had (only to discover I was fooling myself). Or, as I have been doing, I can just trundle along acting as if it's no big deal and just deal with the worry it'll teach this individual it's okay to treat me in a manner that will hurt my feelings.

I just don't know.

The other end of the spectrum is someone I have given my heart and trust to, only to deal with this nagging suspicion that over the past year something has irrevocably changed. I don't think it's ending, necessarily, but it has changed in a way that I'm not sure we'll ever be able to recapture what once was.

And that saddens me.

Even though I'm wading through the muck to try and figure out how I'll deal with either scenario, the bottom line is these relationships do not define me; as much as I have always tried to believe they do. Whether or not these people care about me or not, it cannot impact how I care about myself. All I can do is learn to accept maybe this is the way these people are... and just because they don't act the way I want them to it doesn't mean I don't have something unique and special with them.

But... learning my own value means I have to make the decision if it's good enough *for me*.

I don't deserve neglect or lies.

So I guess it's time to learn to speak up for myself, even if my voice is shaking. If these relationships are worth having, they'll endure.

And I hope they do.

Au natural

In this ongoing education on how to view food differently, one of my priorities has been to keep it basic. Where I used to use the crutches of diet food - you know... food that was like the food I used to eat but altered to be "healthier" (i.e. sugar free cookies, etc), I've now tried to switch those foods for foods that are naturally healthy rather than filled with substitute ingredients.

I figure any natural source of sweetness in fruits and the like would be preferable to artificial sweeteners, and those should be the foods that I should want to eat. The problem with eating all those "cheat" foods is that I still want to eat those things that aren't particularly healthy for me, so it's just easier to reach for those foods that really should hold a very small place in my life as a crutch to get through the day to day.

So I decided, especially during this first month of "detox", to avoid these potential pitfalls. But the thing was, I didn't see it that way when I made that decision. Like I said at the onset, I was simply trying to find the healthier, more natural alternative.

Only now after about ten days of these new eating habits can I see the inherent wisdom of that choice. Not only am I breaking the dependence on those things, I'm developing a new taste and new desire for these other things like fresh fruit. Not only has this had an emotional payoff in the lack of "eaters remorse" for giving in and plowing through a bag of cookies or chips, but it has also had a physical payoff in the way my body functions. Even as sick as I've been, I feel better overall with more energy and more enthusiasm.

The sun has broken through the cloud, as it were. Instead of trudging through life feeling like I was stuck in three feet of mud, I have the energy (and desire) to actively participate in my life instead of watch it pass by from the sidelines.

As someone who has taken anti-depressants before I can tell you this is *exactly* the same feeling I got from a pill... only this time I'm not taking a pill, but choosing to fill my body and essentially my vessel with the right kinds of fuel.

It's really quite remarkable.

I'm feeling so good in fact, I'm kinda paranoid about the potential pitfalls coming up in the next few months with all the holiday triggers to fall back into sugar dependence.

Halloween - candy. Thanksgiving - pies. Christmas - cookies. New Year's - booze.

It makes me want to avoid all these things even though the argument could be made that I can enjoy some of these things in moderation if I can contain it to just those days. Because that's the heart of this healthier eating - I'm not doing it because I "can't" eat those things. I'm doing it because by choosing NOT to eat those things I feel better long after that momentary satisfaction of giving into those triggers.

As long as I keep it my choice, I'm not prey for those deprivation issues that always seem to be my undoing.

Therefore I'm thinking it might be more valuable to me to avoid those temptations altogether just once just to show that I can. If I do give in and indulge for these specific dates, I'm not only opening the door for future excuses to indulge, I'm also literally feeding into the dependence part in my brain that says I can't enjoy these holidays without these foods.

Which, I know intellectually, is complete and utter baloney.

So my challenge then is to find healthier alternatives for these holiday challenges. My requirements: make it more vegetable/fruit specific, and if I use sweeteners of any kind they're going to be natural ones. If I have any recipes that require sweeteners, instead of white granulated sugar, get as basic and raw as I can. I found a great article on natural alternatives that will give me new strategies on how to approach baking - which I love to do.

I'll keep you updated on what I discover. Hopefully the fam will be along for the ride as I make these exciting new changes. Fortunately for me my seventeen year old is a lot more open to embrace this new lifestyle and, like me, has adopted a more "flexitarian" approach. This is particularly exciting for me because he has my same propensity for obesity, and I feel like giving him these tools at this young age will help him avoid getting as far gone as I have done.

Because changing these destructive patterns after decades of poor choices is a lot harder. Undoing nearly forty years of damage is a lot of hard work and concentrated, focused effort.

Thankfully though... not impossible.

And I'm totally equipped for the challenge.

Feeling strangely in control today

Going back to work after a total of seven days off, and even though I'm still battling bronchitis I feel empowered to return to work and resume a somewhat normal life.

I'm extremely proud of the fact that while I was compromised by the sickness, I maintained my commitment to remain sugar free. And today I feel stronger and bolder than I have before... that I really can maintain this new healthier eating lifestyle.

It seemed unthinkable before - like a lifetime without the things I've always counted upon to boost my mood or hide my pain wasn't really within my capability.

But today as I scanned through Twitter and could find myself not even tempted by the food enjoyment others were chatting about, it made me realize that slowly and surely these new eating patterns were paying off. I now want the things that benefit my body, rather than yearn for those things that will do nothing more than make things that much harder for me.

I feel *healthier*, even despite being sick.

It gives me great hope I can get everything else in order too.

Which is the next order of business...

But more about that tomorrow.

Apparently my body went into shock

The moment I started to eat healthily I got a nasty bout of the flu.

I blame Hal's green drink. ;) Too much health too fast!

I am proud to say that despite a few low points these last few days where I wanted sugar to feel better, I did not get any. Even ice cream to soothe a sore throat. Sounds like a minor thing but I consider this a pretty significant victory.

Baby steps.

The good news is the fever is officially gone and I feel a lot better, so I can start making more of these changes effective immediately. Including a walk at either the park OR the treadmill.

I also must blow up the Pilates ball I purchased last Friday in my "take time to pamper myself" extravaganza... which, incidentally, also included a couple of bottles of lotion from Bath & Body Works.

And you know what? It actually did boost my mood.

I didn't rely on sugar. Even when I went out to eat. AND I ate a vegetarian meal, so even better. I did succumb to the bread basket, but like I said - baby steps.

Not having dessert (even when it was part of the meal deal) AND forsaking booze was huge.

I also purchased a book entitled "The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery System", and have perused through it to see if it's something that can work for me. The author maintains that we only eat three meals a day, which I'm not sure is going to work out. I've found the best way to curb my appetite is to space it out and eat on regular intervals. The longer I go in between meals the stronger my impulse to gorge, protein or no protein.

But the information is there if I decide to go that route.

I'm definitely implementing the idea of eating more protein. From what I've researched in the past, protein does help stabilize blood sugar. I think the best dietary course of action will be the Low GI plan, which simply means I give up those foods which cause a dramatic spike in blood sugar for things like lean proteins, whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables.

I like the idea of dividing the plate into quarters, making one half of the plate fresh veggies and fruits, while one quarter is a low GI starch and the other quarter is a low fat protein.

We'll see how it works out in real life. Such things sound plausible in theory but sometimes life does get in the way.

I'm not going to make any rigid changes until I get the sugar addiction under control first.

This isn't about setting myself up for failure. This is about doing something every day to make me feel proud of how I'm honoring my body and taking care of my health, which - despite my guilt doing so - can also include staying home from work when I'm sick to prevent spreading the flu.

But enough of that for now, it's time to go make breakfast. Peanut butter on toast with some fresh fruit, washed down with a refreshing bottle of water.

Nummy!

Now that we've tackled the emotional componant...

It's time to deal - truthfully - with the physical reason I have been unable or unwilling to make these changes.

It's rather obvious I've been medicating with food for a long, long time. I have all these intense emotional feelings and have been satisfying them with the bandaid of the foods that recreate in the brain these chemicals that I should be feeling naturally.

In simple terms... I've been getting high on sugar.

And like any addiction, it's also been a self fulfilling prophesy. I feel bad emotionally, I get the artificial mood boost from sugar, which only lasts until the next "fix".

That's why getting something "sweet" was how I spoiled myself (quite literally it turned out), and always - always - how I self destructed once I saw any real success. I looked in the mirror, saw the changes or worse, had others point them out for me, and suddenly I was emotionally vulnerable.

This leads once again to more sugar, which leads again to more masking the real reason I'm burying myself with weight because the temporary "high" is so much better.

So step one to reclaiming my life means that I have to get rid of my dependence on sugar.

I went to the store the other day and implemented my plan. I spent the majority of my time on the outer edges of the store (fresh produce, etc) than in the middle, reminding myself that "nothing good ever comes in a bag". I didn't even get sugar free cookies or pudding or ice cream - which had been my original plan. Instead I went with fruit or natural sugars to facilitate the detoxification from processed chemicals.

In the same respect, I'm trying to move away from eating meat... to fill my body with live stuff like vegetables, fruit and produce rather than dead animals. Not vegan necessarily, and not even vegetarian (since I've read that fish is actually a really good food to combat chemical depression), but just a more conscious effort to get away the more conventional eating habits that have always contributed to my dependence on sugar.

I figure the better I feel physically, the better I'll feel mentally - and I need to do that naturally instead of just these quick temporary fixes.

So my focus, then, is to avoid sugar by eating things that are good for me and my body rather than fill it with chemicals.

It hasn't been easy. Walking past the cookies and turning away dessert at the restaurant (and the booze) was not an easy task.

Like with any addiction... one day at a time.

It all started with a bottle of lotion.

I work at a call center, and as the late shift we don't have assigned seating per se. Instead we have to sit where ever there is an empty seat, and more often than not we end up using a desk that the day shift has decorated and personalized for themselves.

So as I sat there at that desk, I noticed this bottle of lotion. Not a lotion user myself, I wasn't particularly compelled to use any of it, but the longer I sat there the more I grew curious about it. I noticed it was from Bath & Body Works, a place I never go because I think it's overpriced - and I don't want to spend that kind of money on that stuff.

I finally picked it up and gave it a sniff. Sweet Pea, it said. It was nice. Curiosity satisfied I capped the bottle and put it back in its place without using a drop. Since I didn't buy it, I wasn't going to use it. That's just not my way.

Plus, I'm not the kind of person who uses lotion anyway.

Call after call came in and I kept looking at that bottle. Every now and again I'd pick it up and sniff it, recap it and put it back on the desk. It dawned on me that just by how pretty it smelled, it simply improved my mood just to smell it.

As I'm growing older I am noticing the changes in my skin. It's becoming a little less elastic and soft. I started to contemplate the benefits of lotion - and wondered why I'd never really gotten into the whole beauty regimen type stuff other girls seem to relish.

Someone like the gal whose desk I shared, whose pictures showed she took care of the way she looked.

I thought about my long, unkempt hair in a ponytail that hadn't been styled in months. I thought about how I usually don't wear makeup or even worry too much about the clothes that I wear. As long as they're clean, they fit and do their job camouflaging all my problem spots, that's all I really require.

The night wore on and that bottle continued to haunt me. Why *didn't* I try harder to make myself more presentable? Why did I use "pampering" myself as an excuse to pile on more pounds and eat myself to death?

I blamed the expense on why I wouldn't go to Bath & Body Works, but a bottle of lotion lasts far longer than a lunch at McDonalds - and as opposed to that high fat, high calorie junk fest, the bottle of lotion actually *does* pamper you and improve you.

Why, I finally asked myself, am I so willing to be unattractive? Not just unattractive... but repellent even.

That's when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

When I was attacked at the age of four and sexually molested, that rapist did more to me than simply invade my body and corrupt my innocence.

He stole my pretty.

Before that, I was exalted as a beautiful child. I was an average weight, and had a mother who taught me how to take care of my femininity. Men loved me from the time I was born, and my mother's favorite story is how they'd line up at the nursery just for a chance to hold me for a few minutes.

But after that event, no longer did I care about attracting any attention. Such attention could be, and in fact had proven to be, quite dangerous.

And thus, the lifelong - albeit unconscious - attempt to keep people at arm's length began. Being a pretty girl was dangerous, but being a fat girl - while often painful and bitterly lonely - was *safe*.

The lesser of two evils, as it were.

I've been on the journey to lose weight more often than not, and the pattern always repeats. I'll do very well, see significant changes and then I'll shut down and start to undo all the good I've done.

It's not a conscious choice, mind you. It's a choice that is buried under excuse after excuse why I can't do what I was doing that was working so well. And it all comes back to one simple truth.

Being attractive or successful or pretty makes me vulnerable. If people want to pay attention to me, it scares me to death.

I don't want to be targeted or worse... overcome. So I keep this wall of flesh around me like a barricade, certain that no one will want to invade me or if they do - I have the stature to prevent it from happening again.

I guess that's what happens when you're abused when you're small. Being big suddenly means you need to swing as far to the other side of the pendulum to ensure that it never, ever happens again.

As I get smaller, I feel less empowered. More vulnerable.

So I guess I need to work on the feelings that I felt back on that day so many years ago.

I felt targeted, so I made myself unattractive.

I felt small and helpless, so I made myself big and threatening.

I felt vulnerable, so I turned into a control freak.

Men who wanted me = a threat. Men who didn't want me = safe. (a pattern that has repeated many times over the course of my life as I chose where to throw my affection and attention)

The hell you create by choice always seems far more preferable than risking fate, where anything can happen to you.

So here I am with all this information and vague ideas what to do with it.

The first of which is a new mission. To dig deep under the layers of fear and find my pretty.

It was quite an epiphany for a Sunday afternoon.

And it all started with a bottle of lotion.