Mindset and Body Image

From skwigg's journal:

"How I treat myself affects my self esteem more than my scale weight."

Yes! It's so important to treat ourselves well regardless of weight or appearance. You can't punish, bully, or guilt-trip yourself happy, not ever. It backfires in horrible ways. When you address your real needs (sleep, nourishment, zone-out time, stress-relief, feeling feelings, connection to others, fun) you don't twist it all into restricting or overconsuming food. It's when those basic needs are not being met, or being met grudgingly, that things get weird.

From skwigg's journal:

I realized today that when my really disordered eating started in my early twenties, when I was feeling so miserable, huge, and uncomfortable in my own skin, I weighed the same as I do in that photo. That hit me right between the eyes! So, two things occurred to me: 1) Mindset trumps scale weight in terms of happiness and body confidence, and 2) Muscle rules! I didn't need to lose weight back then. Thinking that I did sent me on a decades-long roller coaster of restriction and binge eating. It was my behavior I was unhappy with, the way I treated myself, the way I numbed emotions with food, the black and white thinking, the catastrophic storytelling. Starving 20 pounds off of my poor (previously healthy) body didn't address a single thing that was really bothering me. It definitely didn't make me happy or solve all my problems. It created dozens of new ones.

And muscle, wow! Muscle changes everything. Training to build muscle improves mental and physical strength. Eating to feed muscle and fuel performance is a refreshing alternative to always trying to eat less and be less. Strength training for the pure joy of it does wonders for confidence and mood. None of that necessarily makes you lighter on the scale.

From skwigg's journal:

I had some more thoughts on the idea of "making your life bigger." I've made the mistake in the past of believing that bigger meant busier. I was volunteering, taking classes, going to meet-ups. I got myself so heavily scheduled that I had to be somewhere seven days a week for years. I, Super Hermit, didn't have even one day where I could stay home and relax. That didn't actually help anything. It's not about doing more. It's about being more fully present, more connected. Maybe it's a new enthusiasm for something you already do, or appreciation for someone you already have in your life. Maybe it's allowing yourself to fully experience friends and social situations instead of being off in your head fretting about unbalanced macros. Or embracing an activity you love but have avoided because it doesn't burn enough calories. 

Most days, I wake up excited, usually about the little silly things that make me happy. Rainy mornings, kettlebell workouts, baking cookies, dog walks, dinner with my husband. You don't have to start a new business, win the lottery, or move to a tropical island to have a "bigger" and more fulfilling life. This morning, I found a Star Wars toy in my cereal box. There was actual dancing. LOL It's funny because a few years ago, I wouldn't have bought or eaten cereal, certainly not the kind that came with toys. I'd have eaten some kind of organic wicker furniture birdseed from the bulk bin, and I'd probably have felt bad about that, like it wasn't optimal. Sheesh. 

From skwigg's journal:

"It's been very eye opening to know that in order to become leaner, I had to not focus on becoming leaner... But to focus on being more. Being more awesome, taking care of myself more, allowing my body to eat more when hungry, etc. Your body won't ask for what it doesn't need. If you are hungry, eat. If you are sad, feel the emotion. It will pass. A lot of my problem was denying myself food, and then when I would have an emotional issue, I would eat and confuse hunger and whatever emotion I'm feeling."

Yes! Those insights are all so important, especially the emphasis on being more, not less. I love the Krista Scott Dixon interview where she says, "To make your body smaller, make your life bigger." If you spend all day dwelling on eating less, being less, doing less (socially), and getting smaller, it does some really bad things to your psyche. A truly healthy lifestyle feels expansive. It comes with endless possibilities and opportunities. It's about acquiring wonderful new things: strength, confidence, peace, resilience. With an abundance mindset, you feel like you already have plenty and more is coming, whether that's lunch, or muscles, or a new skill. You're grateful for what you have already and you're expecting even more and better with time.

Sometimes people fear that if they're kind to themselves and grateful for where they are now, that means giving up and settling and somehow learning to accept a situation that they're unhappy with. No! Gratitude is the rocket fuel that moves you forward. If you can't appreciate your good qualities and successes right now, the chances that you'll somehow be able to do it 6 months or 10 pounds from now aren't good. You'll get there and it still won't be enough. You still won't be happy or appreciate what you have. You'll find new problems, flaws, and obstacles, because they're always there if that's what you habitually focus on. That mindset of abundance and gratitude is a habit too, one that takes practice if you want it to become automatic.

I maybe went off on a tangent there. LOL I also completely agree with what you said about the inability to process emotions when you're chronically hungry. That applies not just to physical, but mental and emotional hunger. With a scarcity mindset and/or an empty life, all roads lead to the refrigerator. Food becomes a go-to because you're longing for nourishment in any form.

Which is a very roundabout way of nodding in complete agreement that I got leaner when I stopped trying to get leaner. :-)

From skwigg's journal:

"When you say that tuning out all that noise was liberating, I assume you were very caught up in it up until you made that shift. Around when did you start changing how you talked to yourself, and what tools did you employ to help?"

It was around the time that I broke my leg, tore my ACL, and couldn't walk for a couple of months that I started to question, not just diet dogma, but everything about the way I was thinking and living. I couldn't do it anymore. I had literally pushed myself to a breaking point with stress, worry, exhaustion, and pain. I kept the pressure on, with my trainer, with my diet, with my schedule, with my fitness blog, with trying to please and impress everyone. I literally snapped (well my leg did), and that was followed by a resounding, "Fuckitfuckitfuckit! I'm not doing this anymore!" I had no idea what to do next, mind you, but that's when I started investigating happy eating, enjoyable movement, questioning painful thoughts, and creating balance. I started reading Byron Katie. Her "is that true?" changed my life because nothing was true! Certainly none of the scary shit I'd been telling myself about what would happen if I missed a workout, ate a carb without protein, or had pizza on a non-designated day. I realized that my whole inner dialog was boohockey! The constant fear and pressure actually made my behavior worse and made my quality of life worse. Thoughts become things, not in a woo-woo way, but in that you can only experience what you believe and expect. If you believe and expect doom and failure and difficulty, you'll find evidence of it everywhere because your beliefs cloud your perception. That was major incentive to embrace some different beliefs. Bookwise, that was Byron Katie's "Loving What Is" and "A Thousand Names for Joy." Foodwise, some of the game-changers were "Naturally Thin" by Bethenny Frankel, "The Four-Day Win" by Martha Beck, "Taking Up Space" by Amber Rogers (Go Kaleo), "Ditching Diets" by Gillian Riley. For workouts, Josh Hillis and System Six really changed my perception of what was required to be strong and fit. It was a teeny fraction of what I had imagined. Five minutes here, fifteen minutes there, at home, minimal equipment. I don't think the original is available anymore but it became his book "Fat Loss Happens on Monday." Then there's "Lean Habits" of course. I'd already eased into many of these habits well before the book came out, but it solidified things for me.

From skwigg's journal:

Yes, speaking to yourself like you would a dear friend or little daughter helps tremendously. We would never say some of these things to someone we love. We'd be worried about damaging them forever! Yet we don't give ourselves the same consideration. 

The selfie itself didn't seem so important. I just caught a glimpse and realized that I look like what I do, and I love what I do! That would be the Zgym, Lean Habits, baking cookies, dog walks, humor, kindness, naps, pretending to be an action hero. :-) Genetics may have something to do with it, but my family has as many obese diabetics as fit people. How that plays out seems to depend on who exercises and who doesn't. Nobody walks around looking lean and muscular without intentional effort. All the more reason to make sure the effort involved is FUN.

I also chuckled when I saw this because I thought, I am totally rocking the "middle-aged woman who bakes" thing. I define me. I don't look to others for permission or approval to be ok with myself and my approach. If I want to be lean and fit, and bake bread, and quit the gym, and eat chocolate every day, and watch 60 hours of television a week. I don't listen to others who say, "You can't...that won't...you'll never...you'd better." I swear, tuning out all the noise about what everyone else "knows" to be true was the most liberating thing ever. Trying to do everything "right" according to "them" was paralyzing because there is no single right way to eat or train. All the conflicting information keeps you stuck and doubting yourself. Freedom is when you start treating yourself well and doing what you love with the confidence that it will eventually take you where you want to go.