Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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....

8 comments:

Nicole said...

Such a great reference, and applicable whether you've ever heard of Muad'Dib or not. :)

One of my favorite poets wrote, "Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

Sometimes we are afraid of what we need, but that's all the more reason to face and overcome it as much as we possibly can.

Karen Butler Ogle said...

Good motivation for getting past the walls that block us from doing what we should do. The stair aren't bad really. I had more trouble with the wall sits. It is hard to hold them without my thigh trembling. I got them done though and that is what counts in the end. The stair weren't as bad as I expected really. Good luck!

Beth said...

Oooh, I'm so sorry to hear about the hip pain, it's tough to hear of the damage from the weight and I do hope that it is something that can be remediated.

And I love that litany of fear. I was just thinking this evening how much fear and anxiety I have and always have had. It's just my natural state and it requires constant vigilance for me not to be overcome by my various and sundry anxieties.

I like that litany though and I think that having a mantra to fall back on and meditate on is a very good thing. I think I shall note it down and memorise it, I could have used it yesterday, that's for sure.

Night.

lv2 said...

Interesting post...not what i remember of Dune at all but i only read it once many, many, moons ago.

I'm at 2 1/2 stairs hopefully will makeit to 10 some day but with a bad knee i may not...just go for what you can and don't fall, slip or twist your knee

Kelly the Happy Texan said...

Very nice post. Fears are worth conquering. I also have let fears stop me in the past. Now I'm working on doing things that do scare me. What's the worst that can happen? So what if I fail? So what if I have trouble with squats? So what if I can't do something? I'm going to keep trying. So I guess I can't fail if I never stop trying!

Sorry the hip is bothering you. :(

Patrick said...

I will touch on fear in my Thursday post. Although I must say I never expected to see a Dune reference on a health blog. Way to go working that SciFi into what we do here.

Stay Alive!

Anne H said...

Well, the damage is done. But the fear remains.
Best.Quote.Ever.
I live in fear.
And I want out.
Thanks for your words - great post!

WWSuzi said...

Fear is what often holds us back! Onwards without fear