What Is Your Normal?

Being a person who has struggled with being overweight since toddler-hood, my sense of self was that I was an obese person, like I was made this way. Obese was my "normal". My identity. My destiny. My attempts at weight loss were frequent and varied, but the results were always temporary. The times I spent close to my healthy weight never changed my personal identity. I always knew that all those pounds of fat were waiting in the wings, ready to slam back on me. I was never safe from it, like I was being stalked.

The emotional chaos of never feeling at peace with my body took it's toll in many ways. Every choice and decision I made in life, somehow pivoted from my low self esteem and my knowledge that I would never be good enough.

I could never figure out how other people maneuvered through their lives, seemingly free from the constant anxiety I had with food and body image. Did other people go to school with a burning empty stomach in their attempt to be normal? I would watch my thin friends and try to figure out how they ate so much, so freely, without any guilt or shame. Why weren't my siblings fat? What was wrong with me? Why was I different? Oh..right...obesity is me.. my normal.

I lost my weight on Cambridge 14 years ago. The amount of effort to lose the weight, was nothing compared to the mental work I had to do to change everything I believed about myself and who I was. Instead of seeing my obesity as normal and moments of thinness as temporary, I had to flip that and force myself to believe that my obesity was what had been the deviation from normal. My body had spent 42 years trying to deal with my physical and emotional demands. It hadn't failed me, I had failed it. I may or may not be more prone to weight gain then someone else with different DNA, but that is my reality to accept and to be responsible for.

We all come in to this world with different challenges. There is no standard "normal". Just your own personal story. My story is that for most of my life, I believed a lie. A lie I convinced myself was true. Obesity is not my identity, my destiny, or my curse. I spent my life justifying my poor health and not ever really taking responsibility for it.  I am not that person anymore.

Here's A Question

Would You Rather Be Covered In Sweat At The Gym, Or Covered With Clothes At The Beach?

As someone that lives about 15 minutes from the beach, this is a pertinent question.  One of the nice things about the beaches here in my part of Florida is that people do not seem to be nearly as body self conscience as the beaches I grew up with on the West coast of Southern Calif. Here, with the large population of retirees, you will see all sizes, shapes, and ages strolling and enjoying the sun and surf in their swimsuits and shorts. I LOVE that!

 Everyone should feel free to enjoy life the same as anyone else does without worry of judgement or hurtful stares or comments. It makes me kind of sad though when I'm at the beach and I do see someone that is overweight and wearing too much clothing with the purpose to cover their body out of shame or embarrassment. I know that feeling. I know how hot and miserable they are. I wish I had a magic wand.  I could tap them with it and take away all those negative thoughts and feelings and free them to enjoy the sun and the water unencumbered.

Unfortunately, we do live in a society that make judgments and can be cruel and demeaning to people with weight issues. It's wrong, but it's our current reality. It can be hard to put yourself out in the world to face ridicule, but you can't let the small minds of others ruin your determination to improve your health and increase your happiness.

Making the effort now to lose the weight and get in shape can be your magic wand. Summer is right around the corner. There is still time to make some progress towards being more comfortable for that light summer clothing we all love to wear. Heavy winter stuff will soon be back in storage so no more hiding!

The "WHY" Of Weight

I know it is a normal thing for people to try and figure out why they have allowed themselves to become overweight or obese. You could spend a lot of time theorizing and even allow yourself to be influenced by whatever the popular thoughts are on the subject, but I came to realize that you really don't get to the root of it until the weight is in the process of being lost. When you are forced to face the reality of self imposed limitations and you no longer have that crutch to lean on, it is time to deal.

One thing I realized over the coarse of my weight loss was that my obesity had lessened others expectations of me. This had not been the conscious reason behind my weight problem, but it certainly did play a part in the path my life had taken all those years. I'm not sure when my sense of feeling incapable compared to others took root, but being obese sure did give me a good excuse not to excel in anything.  I convinced myself that survival was all I could hope for and that I had a perfectly good excuse not to try for more.

I was quite shocked at how that all shifted when I lost the weight. Suddenly people had expectations of me! I was very intimidated by that and it took time for me to adjust, but my sense of achievement and interest in seeing what else I could do eventually got me through it.

Along the same line, as a single mom I was often overwhelmed with the 24/7 never ending demands of my 3 kids, plus running a home based day care 12 hours a day. I realized that the action of eating tended to make people leave me alone for a while. Even a few minutes of no demands kept me sane, so eating was a good shield to tell everyone, "Later, I'm busy eating right now".

These insights gradually became apparent to me over the months of changing. There were others, but these were a couple of the ones that took me by surprise as I discovered them and worked at dealing with the emotions as they were emerging.

If you are in the process of losing weight, take advantage of the insights you will be presented with as you progress. Don't be afraid to accept the fears or to take ownership. None of us get obese because we are hungry. There is ALWAYS an emotional root that needs pulling.

Learned Helplessness

When an athlete has an injury, lets say a runner breaks their leg, and they go through a time of recovery with a cast and crutches or whatever apparatus is required, they have to relearn how to get around and compensate for being off balance with whatever they are forced to drag around. Eventually they get the cast removed and even though they may have spent their entire life up until that injury being a runner, they will have to relearn how to walk normally again. They have learned not to trust that limb, the muscles have atrophied so it feels weak, they have gotten used to their lop sided gait and can't remember how to move smoothly and without thinking about it and it may feel like they will never be back to normal again. Running feels awkward and stilted. It is a learned behavior and the only way to get past it is to challenge it and push through, maybe by using visualization to reboot the mind and muscle memory to once again run freely. Physical therapy can assist the person in relearning to depend on that limb and eventually the recovery is complete.

My point is that we are all susceptible to false beliefs. This can be due to learned conditioning as in the broken limb, or in our self belief based on past experiences and input from others. It makes sense that if you fail at something, you have one of two options. Give up or try again. If you try again and fail it begins to alter your thinking and weakens your confidence until you lose hope in your ability to do any better. You may try again, only this time you go in expecting to fail. Like the broken leg, if every time you try to walk again you fell, how many times would you get back up before fearing failure, possibly not even trying so hard with each attempt. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Most of us have a history of dieting and disappointment. We flog ourselves emotionally with each failure and our self esteem gets chipped away with each attempt. Gradually we come to believe that obesity is our destiny and that the most we can hope for is to keep it under control with periodic efforts at weight loss. We no longer consider ourselves "normal" by the world's standards and our fear of failure is ever present, sometimes to the point of self sabotage without even being aware of it.

Cambridge is a good apparatus to support your body during it's healing from obesity. It can only address the physical need. The emotional mindset of what you believe about yourself and your ability to accomplish your goal is 100% on you. Cambridge can serve as your "physical therapist", but not as your emotional one. There is only so much support you can get from others, or that I can offer one on one to you individually. There is no escaping the fact that at some point, we much deal with ourselves and our issues and do the work to heal them. We can't blame anyone or anything for our situation, nor can we hold others responsible for our successes or failures. You have to force yourself to override the ingrained thinking that continually trips you up and causes you to accept less from yourself then you are truly capable of. It won't be comfortable or seem natural, but it has to happen. You have to believe in yourself and be willing to say "no" just as you would to a tantruming child. No bargaining or justifying. You have to understand that your thinking is the illness and the obesity is the symptom. You can't cure illness by treating symptoms.

Your mindset or concept of self is the core of your issues with food and weight. It is what will propel you forward or hold you back. I learned that if I changed my thinking, I could change my perception of my world and how I experienced it. Once I truly understood my potential to change what I didn't like about how I was living, it opened up doors I never understood I had barricaded. It was a revelation to say the least and I still marvel at it. Cambridge unlocked the door for me, but I had to be brave enough to go through it and see what was on the other side. Fortunately, the other side is wonderful!

Most Embarrassing Moments In a Big Girls Life

I bet we all have stories. I can't be the only one that has had embarrassing moments related to being obese. We may want keep them to ourselves and that is understandable. The embarrassment and shame can be too painful to ever want anyone else to know. However, I have found over the years that by telling these stories, it not only lessens their power over me, but it allows others to realize they are not alone and that there is compassion and understanding out there in the world. Yes, there is also judgment and cruelty, but those people don't matter. Only a miserably unhappy self loathing person can take pleasure in hurting someone. Feel sorry for them, but never let them influence your self worth. So, on with the stories:

1. Car binging. Now I KNOW I am not alone in this! Eating in the privacy of your own car. No limits. No witnesses. I'd go to more then one drive through and pretend I have a "list" of all the people I was picking up food for. I'd find an empty part of the parking lot and eat 'till I could eat no more. I'd get rid of the evidence in the nearest open dumpster and go home. That in its self is embarrassing to admit to, but it's not the embarrassing part. That happened in a mall parking lot. I had gone inside to my favorite bakery and loaded up on cookies, doughnuts and little pies. I went to my car and found my empty hiding place in the parking lot. I dug in with gusto, It was ugly. I had finished up the bag of cookies, 3 doughnuts, and I was half way through one of the pies when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw an entire family in a van, parked next to me, mouths hanging open in stunned amazement at what they had been witnessing.

2. I was on a road trip along the Ca coastline with my lifelong best friend and our kids. We were somewhere near Monterrey and decided to stop for lunch. It was a warm sunny day so the kids all wanted to go eat on the rooftop deck. It was very crowded up there and the view was amazing.  We sat in the plastic patio chairs they had at the tables. I was happy that I fit within the chair arms, but that wasn't the problem. As we sat there in the sun, I became aware of the legs of my chair gradually bending out. I was sinking! I was horrified and didn't know what to say. I used all my leg strength to try and hold me and the chair up, but it was hopeless. In utter humiliation, I excused myself to the bathroom and went in and asked a waitress if they had any wooden chairs. The process of one waiter retrieving my bent plastic chair and another waiter bringing out a sturdy wooden one was not lost on the other diners.

3. I was at a friends house and needed to use the restroom. It was during a birthday party so all her family and friends were there. I went in and sat down, only to hear a lot "crack" and a tremendous pinch on my bottom. I broke the seat. Now, most people do not have a spare toilet seat laying around so I had no choice but to go out and tell her what happened. The only other bathroom was upstairs in the Master bedroom so for the rest of the party, everyone had to use that one.

4. This one harks all the way back to childhood. I was in Elementary School and it was the end of the school year party day. We were all encouraged to bring in games from home.  There was checkers and Monopoly and Life and all the popular board games of that time. One of the kids brought in "Twister". My favorite game! Now I had been a chubby kid my whole life, but I was also a tom-boy and was never one to sit and play quiet games. I got in on the Twister game and was having a great time until I bent and twisted to reach a colored dot and the loudest sound of ripping cloth you ever did hear filled the room. I had worn my favorite long sleeved velveteen dress for our party day (girls didn't wear pants to school back then) and like most of my clothes, it was too tight. The sleeve seam ripped from the elbow, straight to the armpit, and down the side seam to my hip. The entire side of my dress was open. The kids laughed hysterically and I went to the nurses office.

There are many more stories of moments like these. Any one of them should have been enough of a wake up call to get me to stop my self destructive behavior and get control of my life, but they weren't. A person in the midst of their addictive behaviors will endure all sorts of humiliation and shame. I have a clear memory of how I felt at those moments and if I had to find a reason to be grateful for these experiences, no matter how painful they were, it would be a acquiring a deep understanding of how someone else feels when they are trapped in an eating disorder.  Your stories may be different, but I've found over the years of being a Cambridge Distributor...we all have them. I would love to hear yours. Telling them can diffuse the negative emotions they cause. In time, you can even see the humor in them...well...some of them!

Reflections

When you looked in the mirror this morning, what did you see? Where you pleased with your reflection, or did you spend 5 to 10 minutes focused on all your flaws...weight being the main one? Maybe you didn't look at all.

When I was at my heaviest I had an experience that has stuck with me all these years. I want to share it with you. I had a bad tooth. I had procrastinated going in to the dentist (don't we all?) and finally had to accept the fact that I needed to go in when one of my molars cracked while eating a hot dog bun! As I sat in the dentist chair he began to look around in my mouth and I could tell from his face that it wasn't going to be good news. He told me that I had cavities in my two top front teeth! I was shocked when he told me that. He then asked me a question I will never forget. As he held up the mirror and started showing me the holes in my front teeth he asked me, "Don't you ever look in the mirror?" I realized that the answer to his question was "no". I had avoided my reflection for so long that I had actually not noticed holes in my teeth. It goes without saying that I obviously had not been smiling at myself when I did look! I was so ashamed. He held up the mirror to show me my teeth, but what he showed me was my pain. To this day I still struggle with the fillings I have had to replace half a dozen times in those teeth because they don't hold very well. A little reminder for me.