Day 24 of Phase 4 Challenge: Yesterday's Particulars, Calm Mood Persists, Hot Cake Hankering, the Joy of a Flatter TumTum, the pain of hips that endured too much fat for too long....Litany for Fearful Overeaters (with apologies to Frank Herbert),

Scale: 227.4

Movement in right direction continues to cheer me.

Yesterday:
Calories: 1074
Exercise: walking (flaked on the strength ones, so must face them TODAY, scared of stairs)
Mood: very peaceful and content
Hunger: minimal

I'm less "high on happy", but still feeling good. It's a tranquil sort of happy. I'm moving slowly and with pondering. My pondering told me that hot cakes sounded good for breakfast.

Okay, I've been eating almost 100% clean--eggs, egg whites, veggies galore, some fruit, lean meats, cheese, nuts, Greek yogurt, water. The only "unclean stuff" was my sucralose and the occasional low-carb, low-sugar nibbly treat. Some days, not even a single sweet nibble.

My WonderSlim hot cakes are low cal, lower carb, higher protein, but not "clean". Didn't care. Wanted hot cakes. So, I made a smaller portion of egg whites and veggies and had my hot cakes and my java and water, and it was gooooooooooooooooooooooooooood. And I feel very satisfied. Fewer than 300 calories. :D

Sooooo....Yeah....backtrack: I liked waking up today. It was slow and easy and some trailing dreams lingering in my eyes as I opened them. Nice dreams. I felt my body, as I do when I wake up, and it felt...smaller. The belly felt flatter. Okay, liking it. I got up naked and went to the mirror. Yeah, looks flatter. Boobies look flatter, too, but not going there. Tranquil, tranquil....

I like how my hands can lay on my torso when I lay on my back (and yes, I'm back to sleeping in my fave position, thank you weight loss). It's not trying to stretch over the fat barrel of my torso. My hands were comby. My elbows flush on the mattress at my waist. It was nice. Real nice.

Then I thought about the strength exercises and shuddered a bit. I've been putting them off.

I've seen blog entries lately on fear--fear of failure, fear of socializing, fear of dating, fear of one's own fat body, fear of the future.

I'm a champ at fear. I am a worry wart, an anxious Annabella. I have sabotaged myself over and over out of assorted fears, including fear of failure.

I almost didn't join the P4 challenge out of fear of 1200 calories and the exercises we'd have to do. Seriously, how defective am I?

I'm no longer afraid of 1200 calories, as I barely make it some days and don't even bother to try and make it others when eating has no allure.

Exercise is still a fear-generator. I have discovered that my hips are WORSE than I realized. My knees and right ankle--I knew those were crap, especially the L unstable knee. And while after age 49, I noticed increasing aches in my right hip, since losing weight and beginning walking and doing squats, I have come to the realization that my hips are really not so good. I have more mobility there since the fat has moved out of the way to some degree. (I have a lot less thigh and hip and pubic fat.)

My hips hurt EVERY DAY. When I walk, the first few minutes are painful, then things ease up.

I think the thing that may have happened (and this will be another subject to discuss with my ortho come the future appointment I will make when I'm ready to ratchet up activity and see if my knee has a fix) is that I damaged those hips through nearly 20 sedentary years. Years of sitting with little movement. Years of fat causing pressure on those joints--and abdominal obesity like mine has to be hard on that area, has to be! Years of deforming movement requiring the hips to be a way that's unnatural, unintended.

Well, the damage is done. But the fear remains. So, I brought back an old habit of mine from my teen years (when I was more risk-taking than now). I brought back the Litany of Fear.

Did you catch that reference? No??

Pity. You've missed one of the grandest reading experiences science fiction has to offer. My fave sci-fi novel: DUNE. I have read it at least 14 to 16 times since I was 16...the age at which I discovered it and my passion for this genre.

Here is the Litany of Fear, a chant used by characters to calm and center themselves when they were in dire situations:

"I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing...... Only I will remain."

 

I wish I had heeded this message fully when I was younger. I might have accomplished a lot more of what I wished to in life had I not been crippled by self-doubt, insecurity,  and fear.

One could easily rewrite it for a particular situation:

I will not fear lowering my calories...
I will face 1200 calories..
I will allow it to satisfy me, nourish me...
Where the extra calories and fear have gone, nothing will remain, only a slenderer me.


I will not fear stairwork....
Where the fear is gone, there will be nothing ...only I with stronger muscles.

I will not overeat.
Overeating is a mind and body killer.
Overeating is the little-death that brings the big-death sooner
I will allow the urge to overeat pass through me...
Only I will remain.


I will not fear the stressors and emotions that make me want to eat...
Stress is the mind killer....
I will let those feelings and fears and anxieties pass through me...
Only I, calm and centered and undefeated,  will remain.

Something like that.

This is part of my day today. Not fearing. Letting it pass through me. I will remain..and it will be a better, less anxious me. A stronger me.

I hope if you are, like me, one of those people riddled with self-doubt, fears, whatever: use the litany. If it  helps, why not?

And let's get over our fears --of giving up food luxuries for a while or forever, of moving a body that hasn't been used to movement of certain kinds (or any), of a changing body (not always for the best, as we saggy-skinners can attest post-weight loss), of a changing life.

Change can be scary. But change says LIFE. LIFE IS CHANGE. I wanna feel MORE alive.

Have a Well Wednesday. Eat soundly. Move . Drink clean water. Love yourself enough to change for health....