Want to attend FitBloggin’ ‘10 but didn’t register in time? Here’s your chance!

I can’t make it and I’d love my ticket to make it to the hands of someone who really wanted to get there and couldn’t get a ticket. Leave a comment here if you want to purchase my ticket and I will use random.org to choose a winner and announce the winner on Thursday!

Details:

-Comments will close at midnight Wednesday, March 10th. I want to ensure that the winner has enough time to make travel plans and arrangements.

-Winner will be announced Thursday mornin, March 11th and I will send an email to the winner. Please be sure to include your email when you post a comment so that I can contact you. If the winner has not left an email address, I will use random.org to choose a different winner that I can contact.

-By entering, you are agreeing to purchase my ticket from me via Paypal. Cost is $75 since I did Early Bird Registration. Payment must be made within 4 hours of my email to you.  Sorry to be a pain on that one, but I want the winner to be able to plan since it’s a bit last minute. If the first winner doesn’t reply, I want to ensure that I have enough to to contact the next person, etc.

-One entry per person.

-Questions? Let me know!

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on food research lately to understand exactly what it is that I’m putting into my body(and my family’s bodies). This is the book that sparked it all for me 5 years ago(can it really be that long??) and I decided to re-visit, knowing how much it moved me. It began my desire to not just lose weight, but to learn about and appreciate the fuel that I eat daily. It also sparked for me an intense desire to understand the larger global impact of the food that we eat and that we can so readily access here in the U.S. It was an incredible introduction for me because Jane Goodall is amazing – her gentle nature and  beautiful voice convey the things that she discusses in the book with so much grace. Her strong convictions matter and she manages to deliver them in a manner that’s somehow not overwhelming, daunting and seemingly so much larger than us.

It’s funny, the more I get to “know” people through their weight loss blogs, the more I see so many similar sentiments that are expressed regularly. One of the things that I have especially notice is that many overweight people seem to be in the same boat as me – we could tell you nutritional and food information up on side and down the other. The challenge continues to be in applying that information to our own lives. I have a feeling that if you’re reading this post because you have a blog of your own or just a general interest in weight loss or food issues, much of this information is probably not new to you. I still felt like sharing, though – just in case it might help someone out there who wants to start to gather more knowledge about the food we consume.

Along with this book, some other resources that you might like if you’re also looking to learn more about our food sources and the larger impact that our diets have:

• Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural history of Four Meals, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
• Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
• Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation
• Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair
• Eric Schlosser’s documentary Food, Inc.
• The documentaries King Corn and Super Size Me
• Food Week – a blog post in one of my favorite, thoughtful, inspiring blogs – Aura Joon
• You Are What You Eat and Just Eat Food – two fantastic family-focused food posts on In the Little Red House
• Grocery List Part 1 – also family-focused – at The Clean Eating Mama – looking forward to more from her!

So, that’s my list. For now. There’s more – always more. But that’s my list for today. Have more to share with me? I’d love it! It all makes me even more excited to get started on our garden – I can’t wait to get digging in the dirt!

• “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not fat from the meals I choose to eat. I’m not fat from a nice plate of really delicious food. I’m fat because I eat too many seconds. I’m fat from eating too much in private (snacking) and I’m fat from too many calorie dense sweets.”

I have literally said that phrase more times than I can count – and it started with my mom saying it. I believe wholeheartedly in eating wholesome, nutrient-dense food that isn’t processed. If you look in our fridge, you’ll see spinach, arugula, peppers, oranges, celery, carrots, grapes, hummus, whole wheat tortilla, cheese, organic yogurt and milk. You might open our fridge and do a double-take back at me and wonder how on earth I got to the size that I am on the food in our house.  So, while I’m thinking of it, let’s delve in, shall we?

1. I eat too much. All of my servings are easily double what I need. Even when I eat the healthiest things, too much is too much – it’s still creating a surplus of calories in my body, and weight loss is at it’s core a math equation. Calories in vs. Calories burned, and I’m still putting a whole lot more in than I’m burning!
2. I eat most of my meals alone – thus enabling the extra servings that I would never eat in front of other people. I’ve started to really try to sit down with my kids for breakfast and lunch rather than feeding them while I stand and wait for their nap time to have my lunch. Eating with them makes lunch more enjoyable and it also gives me even the slightest bit of accountability – even though they’re young, I just want them to see me enjoying food for nourishment in appropriate portions; then eating until not-quite-full and moving on with my day. When I don’t eat with someone else, I almost always eat in front of the computer and I am so much less mindful and present – that makes it so much easier to overeat!
3. The psychological aspects of why I eat too much are ridiculous. They go so deep and I honestly don’t know why. It’s all a tangled web of the shame aspects – even shame that I really don’t have any major psychological trauma from years past that should have caused me to go off the deep end.

A positive for today: Today was a day with the kiddos. I just could NOT get it together. That’s ok – we’ll move on. But the tv was definitely on more than our normal(which is next to never) and I happened to flip through and see that show The Doctors. There was a woman on talking about hating her spider veins. While I understand why people hate them, I’m also thankful that a positive to my current focus of just getting some weight off is that things like spider veins and stretch marks aren’t even remotely on my radar of things to care about.

p.s. I think I’m ready to get writing again. It’s the perfection thing – I want to have amazing, perfect posts to put up. But just writing on here is very clearly a great accountability tool for me. I’ve gone in circles about writing a food log on here. I read many other weight loss blogs and many have food logs as a personal accountability piece and I wonder how much it truly would help? Even maybe a separate tab where I just keep a list? I don’t know. My issue is honestly with committing to it – I’d be lying if I said I really want to world to see what I eat every single day. It makes me feel naked!

p.s.s. Reason number 53,445,46,546 for needing to lose weight: we got hammered with snow last week. I loooooove snow. Wanted to go play in. Oh wait…I don’t have a winter jacket that fits:( I’ve been wearing my husband’s discarded fleece jackets for the past two years, so on the snow day I wore his Carhart and down vest to get out with my little one and deliver cookies to neighbors. Believe me, I looked *super* cute:( I have a really nice winter coat, but it doesn’t do much good if I can’t zip it up in the snow!

Trying to come to terms with how much time and effort I really need to put into this. Struggling with spending so much time focused on my weight/body/food choices when there are people in the world who have their children crying for food and they don’t even know where they’ll be able to get them food, let alone how they’ll pay for it.

Yet, I need to get my health in check and to a more normalized weight so that there’s less stress on my body – my joints, my feet, my organs, my hormones, my emotions…but then I go back to feeling completely self-absorbed to spend so much time obsessed with this.

If you’re out there Readers, what do you do for yourself to create a balance between obsession and making health and the assumption of taking care of yourself a part of everyday life? I could use some input!

p.s. I’m still working on a list of 101 Reasons I’m Happy Just the Way I Am Today – care to join me?

I started a part time job a couple of weeks ago and it’s sort of thrown me for a loop. It’s so good for me because it gets me out of the house and away by myself more, plus it’s a bit of extra money. But it has also been unexpectedly unnerving because I’m working in retail(in a store where I used to be a manager) and I work with a lot of teen/college-aged girls who are CONSTANTLY talking about being fat, their hair, makeup, clothing, being fat, working out, appearance and working out. It’s mind numbingly boring to say the least, but also just so disturbing. To see such distorted perceptions(and where I started) is just so very sad. I see how much time and energy that these girls are literally wasting on worrying about looking perfect when every single one of them is an intelligent, attractive person with so many more facets than just their looks and so many other things that they could use to focus that energy of self deprecation.

I want to shake them.

Then I want to shake myself.

For being there at there age and never getting past it. For letting it get to me so much that I’ve binged like I have not in a really long time. For letting it take me to that place of shame and anger and self-consciousness when I’m around all of them.

So, all of this just to be honest. I’m struggling. Surprisingly, it’s not so much because of Thanksgiving. I spent so much fantastic time with family and friends and the food took such a back seat to how wonderful it was to be with so many people I never get to see! Plus, honestly, I’m not fat because I enjoy a Thanksgiving meal once a year. It’s the other meals when I eat too many servings, too many meals that weren’t even needed in the first place, too much mindless easting, too many binges because of overwhelming emotions, too many choices that aren’t giving my body the nutrition it needs and not getting up off of my tush and getting moving enough on a daily basis!

Do you ever just get so angry at yourself and need to walk away from the norm a bit? I’ve been feeling that lately. Angry and upset with myself that I’ve gotten myself to such a position that it takes so much out of me – physically, emotionally, spiritually – to keep up with getting myself to a healthier place. I know that this is all one day and one step at a time, but there have been so many days lately that I just get upset with myself for being where I am in the first place. I know, I know – not much I can do about that now an whining about it isn’t changing anything. But I don’t mean this in the sense of just a small, “Oh poor me, I’m so fat” sense.

Here’s what I mean: there are so many things in my life that seem so much more important. I’m not saying my health isn’t important – God only knows how blessed I am to be happy and healthy as a whole. There are just so many things that matter to me that I want to focus my time and energy on, but I only have so much that I can do in a day. My family comes first and with two little ones, it doesn’t leave a ton of extra time. So I get angry that I even have to spend so much time and energy on something like weight loss and I’m really working on changing my habits so that I don’t feel such a dividing line between “weight loss” and the rest of my normal every day functions. I’m working on how to really incorporate the lifestyle changes I need so that they just become a norm and I just assume that I need to take care of myself and eat well and move my body, just the same as I need to brush my teeth and take a shower and make sure my kids eat healthy every day.

So that’s where I am. Sorry for the absence and sorry that this post is sort of all over the place. It’s a journey and mine is involving a lot of quiet contemplation right now and that hasn’t led to a ton of posting on here. I’m working on meditation in my life – I need more spirituality for a million different reason, but most of all because of the peace I know it brings to me.

What if we used that time and spent it living life? Having special conversations with loved ones? Giving kids extra hugs and extra trips to the park? Moving our bodies because it feels good? Taking deep, full breaths? Meditating?  Reading books we think we don’t have time to read? Sharing time with a friend? Trying a new hobby? Taking a long, hot shower or bath and curling up under a cozy blanket for some much-needed extra sleep instead of watching an extra hour of television? Cooking a delicious, nutritious meal that will keep you energized? Trying something new?

I’m challenging everyone reading this to make yourself a list of 101 Reasons You’re Happy Just as You Are Today - including at least 25 about your body! It doesn’t need to be public or on a blog – just grab a piece of paper and start writing. {If you’re putting it out there publicly on your blog – let me know! Send me a link and I’d love to add it to my list to share of all of the Loving Lists!}

Since I started my list, I can’t even begin to express to you how much it’s made me more aware of how much time I’m spending focused on the negative. Every time I add something to my list, I feel more and more free from wasting time worrying about such mundane things and what others think about me or my decisions and better and better about JUST LIVING LIFE – HAPPILY.

I’m realizing more and more that so many things are tied to this all or nothing obsession with things being perfect. This applies so much to exercise. I have this idea in my mind that I need to run and I need to do intense workouts and it all just seems so overwhelming. So what do I do? Nothing! Literally. Yes, I do need the big workouts. But I also need ANY movement of my body!

So, as I was blog hopping, I found this post by simpledaisy and this quote really sparked something for me:

“A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.” ~ Paul Dudley White

SO TRUE. So so so true. I love the word “vigorous” in there. It conveys strength and energy and just taking a huge deep breath – all of the things that we need to gain from exercise and using our bodies. I spend my time not exercising and not just moving my body nearly enough out of the {ridiculous} fear of not being capable of doing the unrealistic goals I have in my mind when I could simply be taking a walk daily and doing something more than nothing!

So, I’m setting a goal of getting out for a walk every single day. Even if it’s 10 minutes to take my kids to the park and back or just go around the block, it will be fresh air and good for me mentally and physically. Plus, we all know that the biggest challenge is taking the first step. Getting out there every day inevitably leads to increasingly more steps and more energy and it can just potentially snowball from there into incredible workouts.

First, though, I just need to go for a walk. One step at a time.

There’s so much talk about Fat-Talk Free Week and it’s all so positive. I think a huge part of that positiveness is that the lack of Fat-Talk also means that it’s less for young girls to be hearing and internalizing and taking through life with them. If I can make myself healthier and stop even one minute of my daughter doing that to herself, every difficult step of this weight loss journey will be worth itself a million times over.

11/10/09 – I’m changing this to a list of reasons I am happy just the way I am TODAY(with special thanks to Ivory for the bigger inspiration;) I do believe that I could think of 101 Reasons I Love My Body, but I think that it’s just so much more important to focus on a larger picture of why we love ourselves JUST AS WE ARE – body, mind and spirit. My body is only one piece of the puzzle that makes up “me.”

1. I love my freckles.

2. I love my hair color – no one else has a color quite like it.

3. I love my hands,

4. Especially my strong, nice nails.

5. My breasts are LARGE and have more than provided milk easily for my two beautiful babies.

6. I love that my legs are so strong and sturdy.

7. I love the way my body feels when I stretch.

8. I love that my body nourished, grew and blessed me with two amazing children.

9. My body is a soft, warm place for my kids to snuggle.

10. I have nice feet.

11. I like my pale skin.

12. I love how I look in any shade of pale aqua or blue.

13. I love how I feel about myself in the evening when I’m rocking my kids and inhaling every morsel of their sweet baby scents.

14. I love that I don’t often feel the need to defend the way I feel about things – if I care about, I know that what I truly believe in my heart is what matter, not how someone else perceives it.

15. I care about more than just my weight. At the end of the day when I’m alone with just myself, when I’m with my kids or my husband, I’m proud of the human being that I am.

16. I love that this body has carried me through everything in life so far and I’m still going and so very blessed.

17. I love that this body carried me to Haiti and allowed me to see more of the world than I ever imagined.

18. I love that this body (AND MIND) have allowed me to try to understand on a daily basis how I can be grateful and conscious of how truly blessed I am when I think that things are getting difficult.