October 2010

I’ve written about self-acceptance and the role it has played in my quest for a healthy body and mind, but I don’t think I’ve ever come out and said this directly:

I believe that self-acceptance is necessary for me to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

I never said it because, even though I wanted to believe it, I wasn’t sure if it were true. Part of me believed that a healthy body weight could only be achieved through struggle, restriction, misery, difficulty, and doing things that go against my natural way of being.

But it is true. Back in 2005 when I decided  try and lose weight for the 38th time in 42 years, I stumbled upon something called Emotional Freedom Technique. I went to an EFT practitioner named Lynn Gaffin and in our first session she came up with this phrase for me to tap on: “even though I am overweight, I still love and accept myself.” I couldn’t say it. I was full of self-loathing and felt not shred of acceptance for myself. But until that moment I didn’t realize it.

EFT didn’t cause the weight to just fall off me, but it helped me develop confidence and self-acceptance, which in turn, helped me to  do the right things for myself. At the time, those things involved counting calories, aiming for certain carbohydrate/fat/protein ratios, avoiding “white” foods, weighing and measuring food, eating “super foods,” exercising, and weighing myself once a week (or more). And so it seemed to me that the weight loss came relatively easily. I lost 55 pounds over the course of 18 months.

Then came a period of uneasiness. I was maintaining the weight loss but was obsessed with the scale and the fact that I wasn’t losing any more. I kept playing with ratios and numbers. I had wanted to lose 75 pounds, not just 55. It seemed all I could think or talk about was my weight, how much I’d lost and how much I still had to lose, blah blah blah.

That’s when the self-acceptance went out the window and I started to gain weight. And as I gained weight it became even harder for me to accept myself. Vicious cycle.

Yes, I’ve written about this before so why am I writing about it again? Because it’s vital. It’s everything.

I believe that self-acceptance is necessary for me to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

So many people believe that the two concepts – “self-acceptance right now” and “losing weight” – are mutually exclusive.

“How can I accept myself now (still not at a perfect weight)?”

“If I accept the way I am right now I’ll never lose weight.”

“How can I accept myself if I hate my body?”

“Self-acceptance right now” and “losing weight” are inextricably intertwined. And when I try and explain this to people (usually in the form of comments on their blogs), I get the impression, via their responses, that they think it must have always come easily to me.

For example, here’s a comment I left on Big Girl Bombshell’s blog in response to Kimberly’s comment:

“If you don’t accept yourself now, you won’t accept yourself ever. Acceptance does not come at the expense of health or weight loss. Health and weight loss come from acceptance. And acceptance is not something you get once and then can forget. Acceptance takes practice…Now my mantra is ‘practice don’t preach’ followed by ‘practice practice practice’ until infinity.”

In response she wrote:

“Karen, I am practicing as hard as I can. It is just very difficult to remove half a lifetime of self-loathing. I’m being perfectly honest here. I have never understood acceptance at any size because the world is a far different place for a thin person than it is for a fat person. How do you conquer that? How do you not see yourself through the eyes of what the world expects? I want to feel comfortable in my own skin, it is just not such an easy thing to do.”

When I read that I thought, she must think I’ve never felt bad about myself ever! And so I wrote:

“I spent 40+ years full of self-loathing and NOT accepting myself.”

And then I told her how I practice self-acceptance. You can do this full clothed, naked, or somewhere in between. The more naked, the better.

Stand with your back to the mirror. Take some deep belly breaths. Think about someone or something that you love unconditionally—a baby, a puppy, your spouse. Think of how much this being brings to your life and how much you love it. Feel the googly, melting heart feeling until it you can’t tell whether it’s emotional or physical. It should feel like your chest is expanding with warmth and goodness.

Now imagine yourself as a little child who is totally lovable and vulnerable. Take yourself into your own heart.

Now turn around with your eyes closed. Soften your eyes. Take a few deep belly breaths. Check your posture? Are you tense? Are your shoulders up around your ears? Unlock yourself. Relax. Take some more deep breaths. Open your eyes and keep them soft. Look at yourself in the mirror with soft eyes and turn that warm googly, melty heart feeling in to yourself. Immerse yourself in it for as long as you can.*

Now that I am practicing self-acceptance on a regular basis, I am once again doing the right things for myself. This time around, “the right things” are a little different than they were in 2005.

Rather than count calories, I’ve embraced intuitive eating.

I’m more willing to view my body as a holistic system and am advocating for my health in a way I hadn’t before.

I still exercise, but I don’t consistently push myself to the point of pain and/or injury.

I also still weigh and measure some foods and I still aim to eat as much whole, unprocessed (or minimally processed) foods as possible.

I don’t classify any food as “bad” unless it’s because I actually do not like the way it tastes or if it happens to be spoiled.

I don’t weigh myself but rather use my waist measurement and how my clothes fit as an indication of how my body is responding.

I give myself full permission.

These things do not involve struggle, restriction, misery, or difficulty, and they do not go against my natural way of being. As a result, I am more relaxed and happy than ever before, I am fitter, and my body and my health reflect it.

Every step I’ve taken I was meant to take, and every step you’ve taken you were meant to take.

*I developed this exercise based on something that Dr. Christiane Northrup told me during an interview, and combined it with an affirmation I learned in the Living Lighter class I took back in 2009. It’s a super-charged affirmation that works on our emotions and our physical bodies. Dr. Northrup explains that the electromagnetic field around our hearts (the center of our emotions) is a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic field of our brains (the center of our thoughts).  This means that no matter what you think, what you feel always wins! So when you are able to feel such powerful emotions, to the point that you sense them physically as well, and then you direct them inward, it’s powerful stuff!

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You’d think that with the name “Before & After” this blog would be all about what I look like. I’ve had people tell me that they’re disappointed because I don’t have actual “before” and “after” photos of myself posted somewhere on this blog. I’ve also had people tell me that they think I must be ashamed of how I look because I regained some of the weight I had lost.

I admit that I have “ashamed” moments, but they are fleeting and occur a lot less often than they used to. But here’s the thing: for way too long my life was about my weight and my looks. Somewhere along the line I decided to stop trying to fix my physical self, and start healing my emotional self. I knew that if I took the time to know who I really am on the inside, to nurture and love the inside me, then who I am on the outside would respond in kind.

A little over a year ago a woman named Mish started the “Exposed” movement because she was tired of hating the way that she looked and wanted to celebrate her body. I now join Mish and all the others (there are more than 100) who have participated in this very empowering movement.

This is my almost-48-year-old body. The most important thing that it does is house “me.” For many years I abused my body by hating it, by eating too much food, and by not moving it enough. As a result, it and I suffered. Five years ago, I started to love it more and it responded by releasing excess fat. But I fell back into hating it and so I pushed it and hurt it and abused it some more.

My mission, since the beginning of 2009, has been to make peace with this body, to make sure it is safe, healthy and loved. It feels so much better now that I am not ashamed of it. I challenge it, but don’t push it too hard. I feed it well. And as a result, it is capable of many things and allows me to live a life that is more in alignment with who I am.

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This will be a post about gratitude, eventually.

I’ve been hurting lately, both physically and emotionally. I haven’t felt this way in more than six months.

It was just about a year ago that I went to see my chiropractor because my body hurt and I chalked it up to running while getting older and fatter. That one visit resulted in a series of doctors visits, diagnoses, miracles, and revelations. The chiropractor recommended that I see a naturopath, and the naturopath recommended that I see a hormone specialist. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease,* hormone imbalance, and a few other things…mostly having to do with my body as a whole being out of balance.

Treating these issues resulted in amazing things. As Spring sprung, so did I. I felt fantastic, the mental fog cleared, I got my energy back, my cravings and false hunger went away, and I started working out with kettlebells. Life was good and my body reflected it.

Then the days got shorter, colder and damper and, in a matter of days it seemed, my body started to hurt (the “bad” aches and pains not the ones I associate with a good workout), then came some slight depression and unusual fatigue. The good news is that my cravings and false hunger have not returned, I haven’t gained weight, and, for the most part I am able to continue working out.

I’m trying to stay positive, but admit that I’m worried. I don’t want to go back to that physically painful and emotionally depressing place. And yes, “back” also means to a place where I am not comfortable with the way my body looks and feels (pain aside). When I feel physical pain and depression…when I focus on it, I also feel “fat.”

But the point of this post isn’t to complain, it’s to be grateful. I really have to remind myself of one of the guiding principles in my life: what you see depends mainly on what you look for…focusing on it will only make it grow. And so I have been practicing gratitude to make myself feel better, both mentally and physically. The amazing thing is that it works.

The idea of gratitude, or of being grateful, has changed a lot for me over the years. It used to be just one more “should,” as in “you should be more grateful,” or “you don’t know how lucky you are,” … said, I suppose, to stop me from whining or complaining about something.

There were many years when being grateful didn’t really occur to me, except during prescribed moments like Thanksgiving. Then came the gratitude fad. Remember when those “Simple Abundance” gratitude journals by Sarah Ban Breathnach came out? At the time, I rolled my eyes at the whole thing.

It has taken me a long time to understand what it really means to be grateful. Now I understand that, much like love, gratitude is something that feeds on itself. The more you are grateful, the more you have to be grateful for! The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate (I think Oprah said that). And when I cultivate gratitude, I get an actual physical feeling in my body and it seems to make me feel better.

But being grateful isn’t enough to “cure” whatever is going on with me, so it’s time for another Lyme disease test. There is a brand new test that is designed to provide a much more comprehensive assessment. It identifies the antibody response to the Lyme bacteria, examines the immune system’s memory to identify if the bacteria are hiding out in the body, and identifies the presence of inflammation due to it. In other words, it will determine whether I’ve ever been exposed and whether or not the Lyme is active. I plan to have the blood drawn next week. Once I have the results, then I can decide how to proceed. I’ll keep you posted.

Stay tuned…in an effort to really appreciate my body and show it some gratitude, I’ll be doing an “Exposed” post soon…

This post was written as part of Self-Discovery, Word By Word, a new blogging series kicked off  by Ashley, who writes Nourishing the Soul, a body image blog. The series is intended to help those who are interested in exploring their lives through words.

*I am still not convinced that I ever had Lyme disease.

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