I have been practicing more exercise and improved eating habits over the past 2 months. I have lost 20 lbs, and am at a weight that I haven't seen in a healthy way in 25 years or more. Did I just wake up one day and decide I needed to lose 20 lbs? No! I've been wanting to lose weight and trying different strategies the whole time. I am not comfortable being overweight. I was so overweight at one time that I couldn't tie my shoes without getting short of breath. I didn't like the way I looked when I was overweight. Other people couldn't necessarily tell, but I could every time I took a shower.
So imagine taking a shower (almost) every day and looking at myself and saying to myself, "I've got to lose weight. Why can't I lose weight? Today, I won't eat any sugar." And then, sure enough, when I'd arrive at work, it'd be somebody's birthday, and they'd brought in a couple dozen donuts. And there went my resolve. What do you suppose happens to a person's self-esteem, self-worth, and self-trust if they, day after day, resolve to do something good for themselves, and then fail to do it? If I had a friend who promised to do something with me every day, and who continually failed to make good on his promise, I wouldn't have that friend anymore.
So what happened a couple of months ago? I had gotten a new Primary Care Provider after my previous one passed away (that's a little ominous). I had gone to see her because I've been experiencing some problems in the abdominal area since about December of last year, and that's a long time for me to experience these problems. So she got me signed up for tests and such, and looked at my last labwork, and asked, "How long have you been pre-diabetic?" And I told her about 15 years at least. And she gave me a list of things to give up in order to get my symptoms under control.
Now my new care provider is thorough, intelligent, and a good listener. But I've had a few good medical providers in my life - none of them ever convinced me to do anything. And neither did this one.
I think it's a combination of things that got me committed to my weight loss. The persistent abdominal stuff was concerning to me, because of the very real possibility of certain diseases that I'd rather not have. For instance, my pancreas (which produces insulin) is probably my weakest organ. I've had episodes of hypoglycemia throughout my life, and I know that pouring alcohol on top of a pancreas is not the healthiest thing to do. Also, I'm nearing the completion of my 59th trip around the sun, and I know that as I age, my body does not seem to repair itself as efficiently as it used to. So part of my personal power comes from a growing practicality.
But if practicality were all it took for me to make good life choices, my history would look a lot different! So there's more to it.
Let's take a look at what I've done to get down to a comfortable weight: The very most important thing that I did was to give up my latest comfort snack. I used to, on a daily basis, eat a large peanut butter and Nutella burrito. I can't describe how good that was. It was wonderful. But it's also loaded with sugar and fats. (By the way, alcohol is a sugar, too - I'm sure that glucose affects me in a similar way that alcohol affects me). I'm pretty sure one of the abdominal attacks I experienced was a gall bladder attack, which can come from eating too much fatty food. Ok, so give up the sugar - that's like an instant 5 pounds right there. But I also committed to becoming more consistent with my exercise. How many times have I been out of breath while bicycling up a hill and cursing my fat ass? But really what I committed to was giving up the comfort that came with the unhealthy way I was eating.
As you might know, I've been practicing meditation consistently for a little over a year now. There's that word 'consistently' again! The only thing I used to do consistently was give up. When I first started, I know I did it every day for 90 days, and it was possibly 12o days. Either way, that was a miracle - it was the first time in my life that I had done something good, something healthy for myself on a regular basis that nobody else saw or cared about. And I continue that practice today (not always daily, but still regularly and consistently). Well, part of meditation is learning to sit with discomfort, because discomfort doesn't cause problems in my life. What causes suffering for me is my aversion to discomfort. I have learned, over the past year, that anything I feel is temporary - if I accept it for what it is and let it go. This has been very helpful to me.
So I began to look at this whole weight thing as an opportunity to practice sitting with discomfort, because I knew if I let go of my comfort foods (and there are quite a few more than those yummy burritos), I'd be experiencing discomfort. And the really cool thing is that I don't have to dive back into my past to figure out what 'causes' me to overeat, or eat for comfort rather than energy and nutrition. If I'm willing to sit with the discomfort of giving up a comforting habit (but one that ultimately causes suffering), then whatever I need to learn about its origins will come to me. As it turns out, food is just one of the things I've used to deal with anxiety and insecurity.
The real miracle of this thing, and why this is so important, is that I've been able to move toward healthy eating and away from comfort eating over the past two months while working my job, which arouses my insecurities and anxieties. And I work in a grocery store. I work in the dairy department which, in this instance, is surrounded by the bakery, the liquor department, the ice cream freezers, and the pharmacy. I work right in the most addictive part of the store.
So, somewhere along the line, my personal real well-being began to take precedence over my immediate feelings. But this whole using substances and behaviors (outside things) to change the way I felt inside is something I've known about since I was a teenager, and a part of me also knew it wasn't the way to go. Deep down, for probably my whole life, or at least since I was an adolescent, I've wanted to learn how to change and live from the inside out rather than the other way around. It's just that I was so afraid of the way I felt - I identified so closely with my feelings - that I was, for the most part, unwilling to let go and see what would happen if I stopped medicating the way I felt. I was afraid that my emotions and feelings would crush me. Alcohol was about the only thing I was willing to give up - until now.
Obviously I've been pondering this thing for a couple of months. How is this so relatively easy? And it's not that I made one decision and stuck with it. Believe me, I make many decisions to choose health and facing my anxiety and insecurities every day, and I'm successful about 90% of the time. Part of it is that I've started to care for myself - I mean, I'm really getting to know and like myself. And as such, I feel less compelled to do things that I know are potentially harmful to me. Part of it is that I am really learning to see things - life - with a clearer perspective. Life is constantly changing - nothing is permanent (except maybe change). So if nothing is permanent, I don't have to cling, to anything. In fact, since nothing is permanent, my clinging or attachment to past events (and everything is a past event) will cause suffering. So I learn to let go, and if someone was an asshole to me yesterday, well, today's a different day and maybe they're different, too. Or maybe I'm more compassionate and forgiving today - who knows?
The very biggest thing that I've gotten from this experience is that I like myself better today than I did 2 months ago (but at least I liked myself enough to go to the doctor!). The reason I like myself better is that I'm not lying to myself as much - I'm not looking in the mirror and making promises I know I'm not going to keep.
Success breeds success, so my next venture is to give up nicotine, which I've used for most of 46 years. I've already started. I feel good about this - I been doing this for a couple of days, and I notice I get little cravings - a little more than thoughts, but not like huge, I'm going to die if I don't get some chew (smokeless tobacco) cravings. A little thought, a little craving, is relatively easy to let go of. I get little thoughts about everything all day long, and the difference now is that I don't hang onto them as long (for the most part) and allow them to turn into trains of thought. It's a lot easier to let go of a thought than it is a whole train. Today I don't worry about little cravings because I know they're little more than thoughts, and thoughts contain only as much energy (or power) as I give them. What I don't feed goes away.
I'm developing personal power. Personal power is using volition and agency to better myself, to create a better existence for myself (and, by extension, those around me).
This is a very new thing for me. I've felt personally weak my entire life. Up to this point, I have failed to accomplish so very much more than I have accomplished.
Developing, or nurturing and cultivating, my personal power looks like this:
- Accepting and embracing it when I notice it, rather than pushing it away simply because it's something new and entirely different;
- Setting and enforcing boundaries - with myself and with others;
- Recognizing core beliefs, attitudes, fears (safety nets), and habits which no longer serve me and becoming willing to let them go;
- Letting go of attachments, especially to people who are not healthy for me;
- Learning to listen for and heeding the still, small voice within, rather than the noise of society at large;
- Choosing how I show up in the world based upon my own standards and ethics, rather than trying to live up to the imagined expectations of others;
- Cultivating habits that are physically empowering, such as abstaining from addictive substances and behaviors, maintaining or improving my physical strength, and eating in a healthy way;
- Develop self-discipline with things nobody sees - when I get up and when I sleep, meditation, prayer, exercise;
- Practicing each day living from the inside out, meaning living from the fact that I am safe, and I already have everything I need within to enjoy this day and make it the best day ever;
- Practice gratitude - for my recovery, for health, for my friends, for prosperity, for a place to live, for my 5 senses, for nature, etc.
There's probably more, which we'll discover along the way. This stuff is important for me, and it's important for anybody in recovery - not only from mental health and substance use disorders, but physical diseases, too. Things happen in life that can help to make us feel weak, helpless, powerless. The Truth is that we aren't.
This morning I once again experienced severe abdominal cramping at work. I had taken stuff for it - an anti-anxiety med, Pepto-Bismol, and was practicing breathing and re-framing my thoughts. The pain seemingly wouldn't leave (I felt helpless) and the thought came to mind that a drink of alcohol would relieve the pain. This was a serious thought, alcohol is readily available to me, and I knew for a fact that it would relieve the pain and cramping - at first. The truth is that alcohol and my stomach (nor any other organ in my body) do not get along, and any pain alleviated would be replaced later by a much greater pain. So I let that idea go, and allowed the other remedies to take effect, which they eventually did. I relate this to illustrate that sometimes stuff happens that is so painful - illness, grief, etc., - that we feel powerless over it and would do anything to alleviate our suffering. The Truth is that we are more powerful than we know, and we do not have to succumb to our weakness to alleviate discomfort, pain, and suffering.
I think that's all for now. I hope you received something from reading this; I received something from writing it! Also, I am going to begin to write again with more frequency. I've got a boatload of topics, and many started-but-never-finished posts. I don't want to be that way anymore - that doesn't make me feel good about myself. Thank you for reading.
Namasté,
Ken
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