Embrace the Swamp

I could have stayed back in a warm house playing Scrabble. Instead, I hiked through brambles and briars and oh-my-god wind, ice and swamp to help (OK…watch) hunting man boyfriend take down his tree stand last Sunday. Colton warned me it wasn’t easy to get to, but you know me. In my mind, it was a quick hike through the woods, and I’ve hiked miles of woods. This would be a piece of cake, baby. Nah nah nah nah…fingers in my ears….let’s go!

We 4-wheeled down a muddy “road” to a point where there was too much water to go further.

“It’s 200 yards over there,” he said, pointing ahead over yards and yards of swamp.

I unzipped my fuzzy brown boots and put on Colton’s waterproof boots, which are two sizes too big, and curled my fingers into my fingerless gloves. 200 yards? No problem. I love a good winter hike.

Unbeknownst to me, however, Colton…super considerate guy that he is…decided that instead of going through the swamp, we’d hike around it because he thought it would be an easier hike for me. He truly had my best interests at heart. The problem was that he’d not gotten to his tree stand that way before and so we walked. And we walked. And we fought brambles. And broke lots of ice. And disturbed deer.

“How many more miles?” I whined, 20 minutes into our supposed 200-yard hike.

“It’s…it’s just over there…” he said.

 Several more minutes and a million more brambles later…

“Do you know where we are?” I asked, pulling burrs out of my scarf and gloves. “Where’s your *@ing tree stand?”

“Over there….Somewhere!”

I wasn’t happy. I had on too-big boots and inefficient gloves. Not to mention I’d been having a really good hair day, but the wind was raw and I had to put up my hood. It wouldn’t have mattered most days, but we were meeting my daughter and her boyfriend for lunch later and…and…well…you know. I didn’t want to look like I’d just walked through brambles and ice.

In my mind, I pissed and moaned, but it’s hard to stay focused on anger when you’re trying not to fall. So I stopped for a second and watched Colton walk several feet ahead of me. What was I mad about? That the plan in my head wasn’t the plan unfolding before me? Colton rerouted us because he honestly thought it would be an easier hike for me than to take me through the swamp (even though we were still in a swamp).

I took a deep breath and hiked on. It wasn’t a few minutes later that Colton pointed to a red tie around a tree.

“There it is!” he said.

That he could find it at all seemed a miracle to me. All woods look the same to me. If it weren’t for trail markers, I’d get lost on every hike. Colton had been hunting those woods for years and, while he hadn’t used the route we took to his tree stand before, he knew instinctually where it was and how to get there. He trusts his gut, one of the many things I admire about him.

He climbed the ladder attached to the tree and began disassembling his stand and umbrella. I held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t fall, wondering how I’d get him out of the woods if he did. Silently, he unstrapped, folded, and guided the stand to the ground, looking up only when I said I wanted to take a picture.

Once the ladder was down, he made an arm strap for both the stand and the ladder so he could carry them on his back through the woods.

I stuffed my jacket pocket with cables, a lock and a set of keys. I wore his safety strap around my neck.

We walked back to the truck directly, through the worst of the swamp. It was challenging, but we focused on each step, not thinking ahead to the next one. Break ice, balance, step. Lift opposite foot, break the ice, balance, step. Even when we saw the truck 50 yards away, we concentrated on the step ahead of us and not on how great it would be once we got there. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?)

No matter how good our intentions, when we meander into weight loss without a plan, it’s easy to get frustrated and lose sight of why we started. Sometimes the swamp is the better route. More difficult, yes, but definitely more efficient. The swamp can be our greatest teacher. One step, one pound at a time; seeing goal, but not striving emotionally or physically any faster to get there above and beyond that one step, that one pound at a time.

There will be brambles and there will be ice, but you knew that before you started. Dont' be afraid of the swamp! With a good plan and good equipment, you can get anywhere you want to go.

(I feel a Howard Dean scream coming on…)

I Still Believe

If there’s a theme song for perseverance, determination, and…in the footsteps of my last blog…resilience, it’s “I Still Believe” by The Call. When I listen to it, I believe I can do anything. Michael Been sings as a man who’s been to heartache and back many times, and the contemplative lyrics were meant for such a voice as his. And mine. And yours. And anyone else who’s not given up.




So much of what we strive to do in our lives – what we really deep down want to achieve – is in defiance of what we’ve been told (by others and ourselves) we can’t do. How many times have you lost weight, only to gain it back? How many times have you started exercising, only to quit after a few months? When have you heard (and by whom?), “You can’t do that! You tried before and failed! Come here. Have a cookie.”

<--------raising my hand

We all have a voice inside us urging us on, telling us what it thinks we should do. Often times, it’s a not-so-wholesome plea: “____ will like me more if I do _____.” “I’ll be happy if I just do ______.” “Life will be perfect once I have ____.” But sometimes, after some contemplation and planning, or just due to plain stubbornness, what we hear is a wholesome plea: “You want this for yourself.” “You’re worth it.” “I believe in this goal and you!”

But I still believe
I still believe
Through the shame
And through the grief
Through the heartache
Through the tears
Through the waiting
Through the years

For people like us
In places like this
We need all the hope
That we can get
Oh, I still believe

What we do in response to that voice is what makes the difference between striving and retreating. I wrote in a post on Lynn’s Weigh on Facebook the other day that I’d agreed to do something outside my comfort zone and that my initial response was to eat mindlessly – to just stuff M&Ms (which I didn’t have in the house, thank goodness) or roasted soybeans (I’d just bought a 12-ounce bag) in my mouth as I contemplated my commitment: to fly to New York in early February and tape a segment on weight maintenance for “60 Minutes Australia” (same show as the U.S., just down-under).

Doing TV turns my stomach into a slip knot. (So how come I “wanted” to eat after I sent the “Sure…I’ll do it!” email?) TV makes me sweat, my heart palpitate. I wake up in the middle of the night wondering what the heck I’m going to wear, and I worry that during the interview I’ll get dry mouth and sound like I’m chewing marbles. This worry and future thinking is not very mindful/Buddhist of me, I know. But I never said I was enlightened.

I’d initially said no to the “60 Minutes” offer, telling the producer I wasn’t the poster child he might be looking for because I’d gained some weight and was struggling with arthritis. His reply? Oh…his reply. Made me rethink a whole lot about the “truths” I’d convinced myself of recently:

“May I say it sounds like you are being a little tough on yourself! You're are still half the weight you once were and despite your body having some issues, you are still living healthily and not stacking on too many pounds.

“It’s not so much the 'poster child' we are after, but the real story of someone who has broadly succeeded in not reverting to their former weight, and being determined about it.”

Determined. I read that word over and over. ‘Heck, yeah, that’s me! Doggedly determined. I’ll be damned if I’m going back to where I was. I’ve come too far, worked too hard, learned too much to do that.’ In the passion of that moment, I wrote back and said I’d do it. That’s when the knot formed in the center of my stomach and I wanted to eat. But instead of consuming copious amounts of whatever, I took a bunch of deep breaths, got dressed, and went to visit my grandkids. Because what I realized is that despite the stress and the doubt, my deep down desire is to make weight maintenance part of our culture’s dialogue. To make it as popular as weight loss. If that’s truly my goal, then that voice inside me can say all it wants about my fear of being on TV. My will is stronger.

I still believe. In me. I still believe that through the bumps in the road, through the temptations and heartaches, through the worries and self-doubts, that I can do what I (and others) tell me I can’t do.

I still believe. I hope you do, too. Listen to that song and let it sink into your bones. Dance to it in the kitchen. Let it drive you on the elliptical. For people like us, in places like this.

Undefining Who We Are

“Resilience is the difference between making _______ one part of your story and [allowing it to be] your entire narrative.” Robert Wicks, author of “Bounce: Living the Resilient Life”

As January wanes and the newness of shiny bright resolutions fade, many people are asking, “How do you stay motivated to lose weight?”

Yesterday, while working out on the elliptical, I was reading an article on resilience and I thought how almost everyone I talk to about weight loss has lost and gained weight more than a few times. It’s as chronic as disease. Everyone’s looking for that key to permanence.

The word in the blank in the quote above was “arthritis,” since the article was published in “Arthritis Today,” but “weight” works, too, as it defines so many of us.

I’ve written before and still believe that you can’t lose weight permanently unless the core of your intent is you, your health, your future, and your peace of mind. Once you believe that you are worth every moment you will spend cooking, eating, and living a more healthy lifestyle, you will succeed. It’s only through that true, heart-felt belief in yourself that you’ll “get it.” That no matter what life throws at you, you won’t let food or excuses dominate your life.

I’d like to tweak that philosophy just a bit by adding “resilience.” When it comes to losing weight, motivation comes and goes. But resilience asks us to stop allowing one issue to define who we are. Only when we see ourselves three-dimensionally, enveloping all our strengths and weaknesses, can we venture outside the box we’ve called home and roam about freely, making better decisions for our well being.

Easier said than done, I know. But I found the article’s tips on how to build resilience to be helpful in how I define myself as arthritic. So with all due respect to the article’s author, Camille Noe Pagan, I offer my adaptation for tips on how to build resilience in the contemplation and/or act of losing weight:

1.  Focus on the upside. “The more hopeful you feel, the more resilient you’ll be. Boosting your optimism requires you to ‘reframe your experience so that you’re aware of the negative, but focused on the positive,’ says David Hellerstein, MD, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.” Ask yourself three questions: Does weight loss provide new opportunities? Can I look at weight loss differently? Is there any good to come out of weight loss?

2.  Learn from experience. If you have lost weight in the past, you’re already more resilient than you probably give yourself credit for. When you’re dealing with setback (“I’ve gained half my weight back! I have no motivation!”), ask yourself, “How have I dealt with this problem in the past? What strategies worked and which strategies should I skip this time?”

3. Expand your knowledge. Ask lots of questions when you’re online or at a Weight Watchers meeting or talking with your doctor or dietician. Read all you can about weight loss and health. “Learning boosts resilience,” says Dr. Hellerstein. “The more you learn how best to [lose weight], the more control you have. Control as well as resourcefulness give you the confidence to move forward in the face of adversity.”

4. Find your bliss. Make time to find and do things you love. Resilience researchers at the University of California, Riverside, found that “emotions like joy, satisfaction and interest…provide individuals with a sort of ‘psychological time-out’ in the face of stress and help them perceive the ‘big picture’ of their situation.”

5. Get  moving. In addition to its physical benefits, exercise “decreases anxiety and depression, improves sleep and increases the levels of mood-improving chemicals,” says Dr. Hellerstein. As many of you know, I didn’t start exercising until I’d lost over 100 pounds. If I knew at the beginning of my journey what I know now, I’d have started much sooner. Slowly, to be sure, but the freedom I found in the act of walking even a few blocks was so liberating that it spurred me on to lose more weight.

6. Seek support. I don’t need the article’s help on this one. That you’re reading this blog right now means you have or are looking for support. I can’t say enough about the Weight Watcher 100+ To Lose message board while I was losing weight. The people I met there (some of whom have become BFFs and maintenance partners) were key to me reaching my goal. I am forever indebted to their knowledge, support, and ass kicking.

7.  Count your blessings. Researchers at UC Riverside found that individuals who expressed gratitude or wrote in a gratitude journal several times a week felt more connected, autonomous, optimistic and happy – traits that contribute to resilience. “Gratitude makes you think about what you have, which in turn keeps you from focusing on what you don’t have,” says Wicks. “When you feel blessed, it’s easier to keep going – no matter what you’re up against.” Here’s my two-cents again: When I view my own personal adversities (arthritis or weight gain) as a gift, something I can learn from, I am definitely more optimistic and am better able to act accordingly. Also, when I sit in metta meditation and simply repeat, “May I be happy” or “May so-and-so be happy,” I am sitting in gratitude for viewing myself as a person who is worthy of giving and receiving love, not a person who is in pain or not at some ideal weight.  

So…what word or words do you allow to be your entire narrative? How will you undefine yourself and discover that you really are more than your issue?

Food

Since embarking on this weight journey seven years ago, I’ve lived, breathed, written about and obsessed over food. I’ve studied it, planned my life around it, cursed it, adored it, avoided it, snuck it, and forgot about it.

But never in the last seven years – or ever – did I lack it. Never did I not know where my next meal would come from or what it would be.

When I began volunteering at an inner city non-profit a month ago, my intent – in addition to “helping people” – was to learn more about community nutrition by working for the agency’s food pantry, soup kitchen, and Meals On Wheels program. What I’ve learned so far is just how naively short of reality my definition of “community nutrition” fell. Feeding people in need is much more than filling a bag of groceries, spooning mashed potatoes on to a plate, or knocking on a door.

The effort it takes to feed thousands of people every month is nothing short of Herculean. The manpower required (both paid and unpaid) and the volume and variety of food (both donated and purchased) that is delivered every day is staggering. And every day, those people unbag and unload and prepare and distribute that food.

In the soup kitchen, they clean dishes, scrub floors, pare potatoes, chop onions, divvy up desserts, roll plastic silverware in napkins, bag containers of milk and juice, assemble sandwiches and hot meals and bag lunches, chop meals for those with no teeth, hand out extra ketchup because it’s the nice thing to do, say no when it’s necessary, put on and take off multiple pairs of latex gloves, and fight with hair nets. (But maybe that’s just me.)

In the food pantry, because it’s January, funding sources require every person who comes in for groceries to have new paperwork filed. Each person must present proof of income (or, in the case of no income, fill out a non-income affidavit) and a recent piece of mail to verify their address is within our service area. Then they need to answer questions: How many are in your family? Ages? Do you receive food stamps? Is anyone in your household disabled? Does anyone in your family not have health insurance? How far did you go in school? Do you own or rent? While I understand the relevance of each question and how the answers will be used, there’s an unavoidable sense of judgment attached to each one.

One young woman I interviewed Monday said she’d worked at two jobs all of last year. One as an administrative assistant for a non-profit agency and the other as a clerk at Staples. After the holidays, the non-profit’s grant was not renewed and Staples let all holiday staff go.

“I work hard, I really do,” she said, wiping away a tear. “I’m out there every day trying to find something. I don’t come here very often, maybe three times last year, but I have my kids and…” She looked away.

I can’t assume to know what it’s like to be the thousand families the food pantry serves monthly or the 85 Meals On Wheels clients or the 95-125 soup kitchen clients served daily. I know some are indifferent and are not affected by the hoops they are required to jump through. But many, like the young woman I interviewed, swallow a lot of emotions to feed themselves or their family.

Of all the many things my blog readers have taught me over the years, perhaps the most universal is that emotion and food cannot be separated. There’s the detachment of enough and the fear of not enough. There’s the pain of addiction and the casualness of indifference. There are the opposite feelings of warmth and guilt when in the presence of comfort food. There’s a sense of belonging and pride when preparing or eating ethnic food. Food is complicated.

Of all the things I’m learning as a volunteer, the most important thing so far is understanding that the “community” in community nutrition is all of us. Whether we’re heroin addicts or stay-at-home moms, shoplifters or Wall Street analysts, living under a bridge or sailing a yacht around the world, we all need food. How we acquire it is our only real difference.

Food is something I will still obsess and write about, analyze, study and eat too much of sometimes, but food is something I can no longer – in good conscience – take for granted.

Space, The Middle Frontier

In my last blog, I mentioned a Buddhist saying that I like: “Between the stimulus and our response is the space in which lies our power and freedom.” I was listening to one of Tara Brach’s audio talks this morning, as I do several times a week before getting out of bed. (You can find them here, or you can subscribe to her podcast.) I find it starts my day in a mind frame of compassion for both myself and the world, which sticks with me even through rush hour…some days.

The talk I listened to this morning was from December 14 called “The Dance of Relational Trance.” From the description on the website: “When we become emotionally reactive in our relationships, we often go into a trance that creates separation and locks us into a narrow sense of self. This talk explores how, by pausing and deepening our attention, we can reconnect with the wisdom of our hearts.”

Tara conducted an exercise in which we were to close our eyes and think of a situation that happens often, one in which we react immediately in a usual emotional way. I called to mind a situation with someone I’m close to in which I often feel misunderstood or dissed. My reaction is to say things that aren’t true to my heart to make that person “like me” again. Tara then had us invite into our minds someone wise (the Dalai Lama, Jesus, our grandmothers, Yoda) and think about what they’d say to us in that space between the stimulus and our response. At the end of the exercise, Tara said that the advice we imagined came from our own highest self, that when we are caught in a trance of reactivity, we have the intuition within ourselves to respond in a wiser and kinder way.

I turned off my iPod and started thinking about the new eating plan I wanted to develop for myself. That got me thinking about a particular situation with food in which I get caught in a reactionary trance. It goes something like this: I get done working at the soup kitchen or I get done working out and it’s time to eat. I might have a salad in mind or a veggie burger. Innocent enough. But what happens while I’m making the salad or burger is that I start justifying. “You burned 300 calories! (Or in the case of the soup kitchen, I stood for 5 hours.) You can add an extra tablespoon of almonds and dressing and, oh yes, put on a few more croutons. They don’t add up to a whole slice of bread, it doesn’t matter.” Before I know it, my salad is overflowing or my burger has so many added condiments and side dishes that all the calories I just burned are now going right back in, with no doubt a few extras in there as well.  

I called upon my wiser self for advice and discovered two old patterns of behavior working:

1) In my trance state, I’ve somehow convinced myself that I’ve maintained my weight so long that I don’t need to keep track of everything that goes in my mouth. My wise self knows better. The only possible way to maintain is to be constantly mindful of everything I eat and how much. I’m not beating myself up for falling into this mindset, but I’m definitely guiding myself back to tracking and, more importantly, revisiting the reasons why losing weight in the first place was so important to me. (I’ll be digging out old journals and rereading some old blogs this week!)

2) In my trance state, I shove food in my mouth because it keeps me from thinking about how busy I am and all the things I have to accomplish in a day, a week, a month, a semester. I love the saying, “If hunger isn’t the problem, food isn’t the answer.” My wise self says to use the space between stimulus and response to feel the anxiety rather than run away from it. Wise self promises it won’t be as bad as I think.

My wise self also reminded me to follow my own best advice: How will I feel five minutes after eating this? If my answer is “I will feel great, like I’ve made a good choice!” then I will eat it. If the answer is “I wish I hadn’t eaten that,” I will let it go.

I love how every day can be a fresh start. It doesn’t matter what choices I made yesterday. What matters is what I chose right now, in this moment. And right now, in this moment, I need to get this blog posted because I have to wash my hair and get ready to do a Meals on Wheels route and…and…remind myself that shoving something in my mouth other than the omelet and toast I made and consumed 30 minutes ago will not in any way change the fact that I’m facing a busy morning on snow-covered roads. Stimulus…space…wiser, kinder response.