Freedom Comes From Letting Go

I’ve been feeling very grateful for the practice of Intuitive Eating this holiday season. It is so much more than a way of eating. It is a doorway into getting back in touch with yourself.   That is the real goal. Once we are more in touch with ourselves, there is nothing we can’t accomplish and when we trust ourselves, there is nothing to fear. When we diet, we hand over the fulfillment of our needs, wants and desires to an outside source. We let a book or a diet program or a weight loss guru dictate what we should eat and how we should move our bodies and tell us how we should feel.  They also tell us when to eat and move and how much to eat and move. We think that we are gaining control by following these plans and taking steps to make sure we live a long and healthy life with our slim waists and healthy eating.

However, there are no guarantees. No matter how healthy we eat, we still might get sick and even die. Bad shit may still happen. Not to mention, there is no guarantee that a certain way of eating will give us a slim waist. That is not always true because it depends on so many other factors. Not being in control can be frightening and often we try to control what we think we can.  However, the truth is, we cannot control our food either.  The diet industry and our culture would like you to think you can control your eating but trying to tell ourselves not to eat when we are hungry or not to eat what we are hungry for is like trying to control our breathing, or the weather or how tall we are going to be.  If it were that easy then the we would all be the same size already.  It’s not like we haven’t been trying.

Studying and practicing Intuitive Eating helped me see the futility in what I was trying to control. It also opened me up to the fears that I was trying to combat by using my appearance. Walking through the doorway of Intuitive Eating has allowed me to spend this year learning more about myself.  What do I want to eat turned into what do I really want in general? What do I like? How do I want to spend my time? What is meaningful to me? Is it really dependent on my size?

My son talked me into watching a movie this morning.  It was a Friday morning and I had work to do, bills to pay, errands to run and a house to clean. I was going to exercise too and wrap some Christmas presents. I had a long to do list and little time. But he told me I had to see a movie that really impressed him recently and I know that it’s a unique and special opportunity when your teenage son is home on a Friday morning and wants to watch a movie with you, even if it is 10 am.  I hesitated for only a second and then said yes.

He wanted me to watch the Black Swan.  It’s an amazingly powerful film that has many levels of meaning. I had the vague notion that I had seen it before but I couldn’t remember what was going to happen or what message it was going to convey.  In the end, the movie was summed up by 3 sentences spoken near the end of the movie; “The only person standing in your way is you.  It’s time to let her go.  Lose yourself.”

I connected with those words instantly.  I have been standing in my own way for a very long time. Always thinking that something was wrong or needed to be fixed. The movie also gave the message that trying to be perfect can kill you.  If it doesn’t kill you literally, it can also most certainly kill you figuratively. It kills your spirit and it kills what makes you uniquely and wonderfully you.  When we diet, we are striving for a perfection that we think exists and we are all standing in our own way.  We are standing in the way of creative expression and wild abandon and spontaneous joy.  We are standing in the way of knowing ourselves and honoring ourselves and most importantly, trusting ourselves. When we live in this state, something is always going to feel wrong and we will never be at peace.

Not coincidentally, because I don’t believe in coincidences, this week I framed a quote and put it on my desk.  It said “Freedom comes in letting go.”  I didn’t know when I bought the quote that it was going to be the lesson I was supposed to learn this week. I even wondered why exactly I was buying the quote.  Yet, when we let go of the idea that we have to be a certain way to be accepted in this world, our world explodes with limitless possibilities and potential that we could never have imagined.

Let go of the one thing you think you should be and you can be anything you want.

I am humbled and grateful to have received this message today, through my son.  Letting go of the diet mentality has opened my eyes and my heart and my world to so much beauty and grace that it hurts sometimes. I so appreciate the shift in my thinking and I know that I will never go back to the small and fragile world that I came from. I invite anyone else who is reading this to consider reflecting as we enter a new year, am I holding onto something that is holding me back? In what way can I let go and be free?

#ihaveembraced

Wow. The Embrace documentary is a powerfully moving film that makes you think on so many different levels.   I have spent the last few weeks contemplating the movie since I saw it for the first time and I have been wondering what people thought of it.  On the one hand, I have received wonderfully supportive feedback.  My community was moved and impressed and they texted me and emailed me and posted on Facebook to thank me for bringing the film to our area.  There was also some talk as people left the movie of -" what do I do now? I am so much more aware of this issue and I don't know how I can help".  I actually had one dear sweet friend ask how she could help support me support the movement. I have an answer for that although at the time we were talking I felt just as overwhelmed as she did by the enormity of the problem concerning women and body image in our society. I also spent time wondering about the people who did not reach out and tell me what they thought.  I wondered if they had a negative reaction.  Did they not relate to any of it? Did they think we are all bunch of cry babies lamenting our larger figures? Many of my less positive thoughts were not at all productive but I welcomed them because they made me re-examine my beliefs and caused me to challenge my own ideas about body image.  That is always a good thing for me because every time I do that, I come back stronger in my belief that dieting is not the answer, we are all beautiful and perfect human beings just as we are and we all have a light to shine that we may be hiding somewhere.  And for god's sake, 90% of the time, it's not about the food.

At one point, while I was wondering what people thought of the movie, my friend shared with me this picture.  Her 13 year old daughter  drew it after watching my screening of the movie.  I saw that and burst into tears.  I don't normally burst into tears but I was overcome with the emotions of gratitude and validation for what I was trying to achieve.  The picture reminded me that I will never know what impact the movie has on people exactly but if there is one person, like this amazingly talented young woman, who can draw a picture like this after seeing the movie, then everything I was trying to achieve was accomplished.  I stopped wondering what the impact on everyone was or whether people loved or hated it.  If I at all had any doubts, I was back on track with my mission.

Why doubts? The short answer is I think we all question what we are doing as we are doing it.  Even though my gut and my heart tells me I am on the right path the majority of the time, my head and my inner critic and my ego are trying to get a word in edgewise.  Not to mention that pull of society and the media.  I've been conditioned to think a certain way for 40 (alright 46) years and it's not going to dissolve in an instant.  It's not entirely fun to have doubts, but I welcome them because they lead me to more clarity and more conviction once I work it out.  I happy to say I feel stronger than ever about my belief that life is simply better on the other side of the scale.

What to do about the "what do we do now" questions?  When women walk out of this movie, they may be more are aware of society's impact on their body image or maybe they are now able to name something they felt but didn't know how to identify.  That can feel raw and exposed and overwhelming.  The issue might be understood intellectually, but how do we move on from there?   The answer is, we each individually have to do what we can and what feels right to forward the movement for ourselves and not worry about the mountain of work there is to do around this issue.  I was talking to someone yesterday who reminded me of a quote by Confucius. He said, "The man (or I'd like to say woman) who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."

So if people can examine their own lives and find that one way they can forward the movement, before you know it, we will have moved the mountain.  What might this look like? It might look like canceling your Weight Watchers membership.  It might look like signing up for that dance class that you always wanted to try but were too scared to go for.  It might start with following a body positive stream on Instagram or reading a book about body positivity.  It might look like not commenting on your child's weight or food intake.  It might look like doing some research into the science behind Health at Every Size.  It might look like stopping yourself when you are about to lambaste your back fat in the mirror.  It might look like getting rid of the scale and ditching the magazines that are full of false promises.  It might look like making time to go for a walk by yourself or cooking something for dinner that you can't wait to eat.

There are actually so many ways that we can start to move this mountain, right now, today. I am not feeling overwhelmed anymore, I am feeling inspired.  Personally,  I'm going to write this blog post for my approximately 0 subscribers and hope that maybe my mom reads it or someone glances through it on their trip around the web late one night.  What are you going to do today to support the movement? Feel free to comment below (mom) - I'd love to hear your ideas.

Embrace

On September 28 and October 19, at 7:30 pm, I will be hosting screenings of the documentary EMBRACE. This film is encouraging women around the world to love their bodies.  I am very proud to be a partof this experience and to be spreading the word about how challenging having a good body image can be and what we can do about it. Maybe you already saw the movie and that is why you are here reading this? I could probably write about a dozen blog posts on all the things going through my head getting ready for the Embrace movie screening.  I’ll try to keep this to one topic.

Why did I want to share this movie with my community?

I wanted to share this movie because the trailer resonated with me deeply.  I can relate to being sucked in to what society said I should look like from a very young age.  I didn’t know any differently and I didn’t think anything of it.  Of course I would want to change myself if I don’t look like the women on the pages of Seventeen magazine, or later Cosmopolitan.  Isn’t that what we are all striving for?

Bring on the meal plans, bring on the diets, bring on low fat, no fat and Brummel and Brown yogurt butter.  Bring on carrot sticks and diet coke.  Bring on the daily vow to get up and run or work out in some fashion, hello Jane Fonda!  Let me start snubbing my nose at those that eat cake in public, knowing full well that I will go home and eat all the cake when no one is looking.

I remember my mom taking a picture of me in a leotard as motivation for working out.  I remember standing there sheepishly in the front hall while the picture was being taken. I was about 12 or 13.   It wasn’t her fault, a nutritionist suggested it.  I remember being both excited about the prospect of my imminent change and slightly humiliated at the same time that I wasn’t good enough just as I was.

And that is the insidiousness of our world’s “healthy” messages.  As we try to change ourselves, we are constantly telling ourselves we are no good without even realizing it.  Then we are reinforcing that message to ourselves over and over with every diet that ends and every new one that begins.  I am not perfect and therefore I must change.

A couple years ago, my odd diet behavior was escalating and it was getting harder and harder to keep the weight off, so I kept trying harder and harder.   I was eventually only reading non-fiction books at night like This is Why You are Fat, Grain Brain, Wheat Belly, the Anti-Inflammation diet, the Zone diet, Paleo, The Flat Belly Diet, The Sonoma Diet, The Fast Metabolism Diet, The 8 hour diet….you get the idea.  I will admit that some of these diets have valid and legitimate advice.  But…..

The problem is, if you are reading any of these with the only goal being weight loss, they will not help you get where you want to go.  They will only perpetuate the cycle you are in and possibly make it worse. The problem is, you are not starting in the right place when you are hating your body and think your life will be perfect if you could only lose 5,10,25, 50 pounds.

With this mindset, your body will be in a constant state of stress and you will most likely be overriding everything she is trying to tell you with something that a book said you should do. Eventually you will rebel and as Newton’s law of motion says -  if one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts an equal and opposite reaction force on the first.  Chances are, your diet is not going to end well.

As luck would have it, during my quest for non-fiction literature that would “fix me” or “solve my problem”, I stumbled across Intuitive Eating for the first time. I have to admit, the premise sounded pretty amazing.  Eat what I want and be happy in my body? Get out – not possible.  I also immediately thought “hell no – I’m not giving up yet!”.  Wow – I can’t even believe I was in it so deep that I couldn’t even see it.  Giving up what? Misery? Self flagellation? The desire to never leave the house again?

The idea of Intuitive Eating percolated for awhile and my non-fiction reading started taking a turn.  I moved onto Health at Every Size and realized there was a whole genre of non-dieting books out in the world. A non-dieting book? What??!! I was intrigued and dug in.  Slowly I got past my reservations with intuitive eating and decided to give it a try.  Holy moly. Powerful stuff.

I eventually realized that food was not a problem at all and the simple fact that I kept trying to control it is what was sending me back to food over and over again. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

Long story short, (?) that is why I wanted to bring this movie to my community.  Because there is another way, there are a million ways, there are infinite ways that you can choose to live your life and write your story that are so much more rewarding and satisfying than the narrow minded world of weight loss would have you believe.

I wanted to share this movie as a part of my healing.  I am still scrambling out of the hole I have been hiding in for years and years and sometimes I start to slip back.  This movie is like a lifeline reminding me that I didn’t make this all up and it’s a real and big problem with our world. This movie reminded me that I am not alone in my struggle and that I am 100% on the right path with my journey through intuitive eating and health at every size.  When I present this movie, I will be standing up for myself in a way that I never have before.  It feels powerful and emotional and it’s all I can do not to get all teary eyed every time I think about it.  I am so appreciative and so grateful that I found my way out and I have never been more excited for the rest of my life.

I wanted to share this movie and my experience on the off chance that there is anyone else out there who knows how I feel or is going through the same thing or who may need some extra support to get out of the hole she has put herself in. If you identify with dieting mentality or any mentality that says you are not worthy the way you are right now, today, then it’s that mentality that has to change.

My hope is that at a minimum, women walk away from this movie feeling better about themselves and that they recognize their worth as human beings.  It would also be awesome if they would walk away improving how they talk to themselves. And when they improve how they talk to themselves, they will improve how they treat other people too and whammo – the world just became a better place.

So yeah - I guess I brought my community this movie because ultimately I think it will make the world a better place and I am proud and honored to be a part of the movement.