Mind over trail mix

Estes Park, Colorado

"Rule your mind or it will rule you" Horace

Results for Week Nine

Starting Weight Oct. 5th: 257.2

Last Week Nov. 30: 248.8

Week Nine 12/7/09

This morning: 247.2

-1.6 pounds

The picture above is part of my victory of the past week. I went for a 40-minute run in Estes Park. Altitude 7,500 feet. It was cold enough to make my eyes water, and it was kicking my butt. As I neared 30 minutes though, I looked up and saw the scene from above. It caused me to take a deep breath and feel simultaneously very small yet very filled with aliveness. I love running.

This week was my first week of the Fitness Game. It was filled with challenges that I could predict and some that I wasn't expecting. Let's just say that trail mix was stronger than my brain Wednesday. I ate an entire bag of it. 1,300 calories. Opps. The first little bit tasted good, but I don't remember any part after that. I went on auto-pilot. It was on a day at work where I was doing bookkeeping stuff. It is very detail work but repetitive. In auto-pilot, I frequently crave crunchy, salty, and sweet. I guess I needed something to do with my mouth. Success. It took approximately 2+ hours to consume 5 cups of trail mix. ; )

Out of the "Trail Mix" experience, I re-commited to writing my Core Mindsets and reading them daily. In the Fitness Game, each person creates Core Mindsets. They are more than daily affirmations. Core Mindsets are designed to reprogram your brain. Fitness Game Prescription: Repeat until true. I created a few for my participation in the Fitness Game. Below is my favorite one.

Living Healthy is a joyful, daily expression of Mind, Body, and Spirit.

What it replaced was an old mindset.

“Living Healthy is the right way to live because being fat is WRONG (embarrassing and so on.)!!!!”

The underline can be replaced by any number of adjectives about how I feel about how much I weigh. This old mindset has spun me for years into a “should” and then “resist” cycle. So how it looks is I work really hard. I follow a diet very closely. I do all the exercising I am suppose to. I do this for a certain amount of time then... I resist or resent my need to do all of “this” (workout, eat healthy and so on). So I stop everything typically in secret. I eat whatever I want. I don't exercise. I go overboard to do the exact opposite whatever the original plan was.

While in this resist process, I mentally brow beat myself over and over for being lazy or not disciplined enough. Emotionally I feel bad or embarrassed or ashamed (or sometimes all three at once) every time I see someone exercising or being thinner than me, which because I have weighed in the high 200's for a long time means just about everyone else has been thinner than me. Physically I almost feel in pain cause of the mind crud and the emotional stuff. After a long day of beating myself up I either need consoling or want to numb out.

To break this blasted cycle is going to take some attention so my solutions are. One - I am going to take really good care of myself. Getting the sleep I need. Taking my vitamin. Listening to my body and knowing when I need to do yoga instead of going for a run. Two - Celebrating every fricking victory immediately. IMMEDIATELY!!! That includes celebrating with others as well as doing an end zone dance. Third – Practice choosing in every moment again and again and again yep again to live healthy. By choosing I mean taking the process of this moment by moment, meal by meal, workout session by workout session. This for me is the rest of my life.

So My Victories this Week include – Reaching 10 pounds lost. Losing 2 weeks in a row. Having a week where I ran twice and worked out 6 of 7 days. Not giving up and moving towards living healthy even after the Trail Mix incident. Going away for a weekend with friends and choosing every bite I put in my mouth. HUGE VICTORIES!!! Go Me... Any victories out there I can celebrate for you?

Namaste!!