Learning to like myself

Usually I blog about the other three women from Children’s Colorado, but as we near the end of the Colorado Diet, I feel compelled to share my transformational journey.

Drs. Hill and Wyatt chose me for this group as an add-on participant to blog about the program – I didn’t audition for it like the others. Although I knew I needed to lose some weight, I didn’t think I needed this diet.

Little did I know.

A few years back, I was in a serious relationship and over the course of our two years together, I not only traveled with him, shared holidays with him and moved in with him, I also gained 30 pounds. We broke up in February 2012 and I spent the next 18-plus months trying to find myself.

During that relationship, I didn’t know or like who I was, so I conformed to who I thought he wanted me to be; I subconsciously thought he would more readily validate myself than I could.

For those two years, I numbed my mind with TV and numbed my feelings with food. I made excuses for everything – why I couldn’t work out, why I couldn’t eat better, why I couldn’t self-start anything – and crashed anytime the other person showed distaste for these unattractive behaviors. At the time, it was easier to lash out at the world and blame others than it was to face the hard work of self-acceptance.

I look back at that relationship, and others I’ve had since, and see how lazily I looked to someone else to love me for me. But it is a simple truth: you must love yourself before anyone can love you back.  

This past November, I began to run. I always hated running and made excuses not to do it: I thought I had exercise-induced asthma, my side cramped, I was bored, I would start tomorrow. Even at the beginning of the diet, I couldn’t run more than half a mile outside.

Inspired by Dr. Wyatt’s love of getting uncomfortable, I started running outside with my friend Tess, who was a better, fitter runner than me. Week by week, we ran further and faster, and I felt myself growing stronger. By progressing through tough workouts, resisting excuses, turning consistently negative thoughts into thoughts of gratitude, and letting go of my need to control others, I began to like myself.

I started asking other friends to run, and even have started running on my own. For the first time I experienced the “runner’s high” and for the first time I feel strong enough to take on challenges, no matter how much I fear them.

In one week, I will turn 30, and on my birthday, I will register to run the San Francisco half marathon with Tess.

The last 13 weeks have changed my life in ways I never expected. I’ve lost 25 pounds, gained 11 lifelong friends and learned the most important life lesson: we must love ourselves so we can more deeply and unconditionally love others.

If you live in the Denver area and are interested in participating in a Colorado Diet class, check out new sessions beginning in January.

The end.

Everyone is worried about how this will turn out.

Even Julie – sweet, humble, disciplined Julie – who has led the group in total weight loss (30 pounds to date), is worried. Without class, homework, Drs. Hill and Wyatt, the positive attention from friends and family, what will keep her from returning to the way she was before?

We face all kinds of ends in our lives – breakups, moves, deaths, failures – and we worry about them because we fear a departure from our current happiness. We have come to believe positive feelings are the only ones of value.

Denise McGuire, Ph.D., licensed psychologist and behavior change specialist at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center, spoke at the two most recent State of Slim classes to address this broad issue. She explained that emotions lie on a spectrum, with mortal embarrassment and elation, for example, on opposite ends. Many people are uncomfortable with feelings on the negative end of the spectrum (e.g. devastation, hopelessness, embarrassment) so they cut themselves off from feeling them.

In doing so, they also cut themselves off from the other end of the spectrum. By numbing the extreme emotions, you narrow your range so much that after awhile, you don’t feel much of anything.

Dr. McGuire speculated that many or all of us have struggled with weight because we adopted unhealthy behaviors to avoid negative emotions; so many of us spend our entire lives striving for everything to be better than it is right now. So we continue to eat (or smoke or drink or gamble) and lasting happiness continues to elude us.

But what if we loosen our grip on negative emotions and let them enfold us? What if we allow ourselves to feel uncomfortable and just let it pass? What if we become grateful for the presence of negative emotions? Could we then accept the moments before us, as they are?

Maybe then we could stop those numbing/escapism behaviors anytime something feels hard.

This is emotional resiliency, choosing to be okay with imperfect moments, and it is the key to our long-term success and long-term contentment.

Back in October, Julie went to Breckenridge to celebrate her birthday with her family. Traditionally, the family would walk the picturesque Main Street and stop at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for sweets. This year, the family still went to the candy store and everyone but Julie indulged. Instead of pitying herself for not being able to join in, she savored the moment for what it was. She soaked in the beautiful mountain surroundings, breathed in the smell of sweet chocolate, let her diet-compliant coffee warm her hands, and savored the joy on her children’s faces.

Who needed chocolate in a moment as delightful as this?*

A change is coming our way in just a few weeks, but if we all remember to savor moments as Julie did, to appreciate what is before us instead of trying to make it better or fearing what’s ahead, we will be just fine.

*(Of course, a little chocolate every now and then is acceptable, but it’s important to savor the taste, and not use it to fill a void or escape a feeling).

If you’re in the Denver area and are interested in mind and body therapies, call the Wellness Center at 303-724-9030.

Wanting to quit

Eight weeks in, and we are now halfway through the Colorado Diet. Although we’ve collectively lost 194.4 pounds, we’re tired, and I bet most people in the group – if not all – have either thought about quitting or thought fondly of their pre-diet lives.

Today is hard – ice cream would make me feel better.

I don’t want to get up and workout this morning – can’t I just skip today?

At the beginning, the promise of weight loss charmed us into naiveté about the huge commitment before us. Who considers what 16 weeks really feels like when your body is quickly changing in a way that makes you happy? Even if we couldn’t picture the future, it was shiny and we smiled at it with wide eyes.

But then we got used to the weekly success (or occasional backslide) and the power of it began to fade, especially as time got scarcer and workouts got harder. The time in between weigh-ins became longer and in moments of weakness, we saw others living the non-diet life, and all we wanted was what they were having. Maybe we began to lose sight of why we made this commitment to begin with.

Long-term commitments are exhausting by nature, and they can make you vulnerable to the temptations of your old life: indulging in things that satisfied you in the short term but made you unhappy in the long term. Sugar, fat, and laziness call out to you and if you are not strong enough, chances are you will indulge.

What is strength, anyway? Is it having a larger reserve of willpower? Is it superior genes? Is it never showing weakness?

I always thought that I just wasn’t “good at willpower,” as if it were a talent or that I didn’t have enough of it. In fact, as Drs. Wyatt and Hill explain, willpower is a finite resource; those who seem to have an unending supply are just better at knowing when to use it. They roadblock temptation with routines and no-brainer choices, conserving their willpower for when they really need it.

Strength is also allowing others to help you (i.e. getting vulnerable); it’s being okay with showing weakness and leaning on others for support. The catch is, in order to gain strength from others you have to let them know you need it.

This scares a lot of people and can inhibit any kind of change.

To get through this period of wanting to quit, we all have to learn to dig deep, identify our weaknesses, and accept strength from others.

I guarantee that none of us State of Slimmers would have lost as much weight as we have if not for our friends, families, co-workers, and each other. Everyone likes to think they can do it alone – and that’s fine if you want to tell yourself that – but you’re probably happier and less likely to quit if you open yourself up to the human experience.

Cooking for life

Julia Child didn’t start cooking until she was 36 years old.

In 1948 the would-be world-renowned American chef moved to Paris for her husband’s job. To make the most of her time in France, she enlisted in the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and embarked on a new career (she had previously worked for the U.S. government).

Child is hardly the role model for healthy cooking, but she can inspire those who believe they can never change.

In just six weeks, most of us have made extraordinary lifestyle changes to accommodate the Colorado Diet. Because we have to eat six times a day, preparing food that complies with the diet consumes a great deal of time. We are cooking more than we ever have; before this diet, some participants never cooked.

“I enjoy all the other parts of being a mom, but cooking is the one thing I hate,” Natalie said the other day, explaining that she didn’t even like sautéing meat. Before, she routinely bought frozen and pre-made food, which looked healthy but in fact contained high sodium and oil (among other things).

“What I ate before didn’t contribute to weight loss,” she said. “They weren’t fat burners. I wasn’t eating the right food. It was all pre-made and I didn’t know what was in them.”

So, to eat the right food – the fat burners – in the right combinations, cooking is survival, unless you want to eat cottage cheese six times a day, every day. 

On Natalie’s first big cooking day – the first Sunday of the diet – it took her six hours to prepare stir fry, pumpkin chili, pancakes, muffins and other foods for the week. “I hate to cook,” I heard from her more than once as she tried to see the lifestyle change in a positive light.

But slowly, Sunday by Sunday, Natalie has reduced that food prep time to three hours and has come to enjoy cooking for the first time in her life.

And, family and friends have started asking for her recipes.

“No one’s ever asked me about what I cooked,” Natalie laughs. “My kids are taking pictures of me in the kitchen.”

I think a lot of what has prevented people from changing – most visibly as weight loss – is the belief that they can’t change. Hope for change is fleeting and many may give up before they start.

But as Julia Child and Natalie Goldstein show us, change is never impossible, no matter how old you are or how many life milestones you have passed.  

“This diet has changed my life,” Natalie said. “And now I know I can cook.”

Who knows? Because of this life change, we may have the next, great American chef in our midst.

The candy baby

The candy covered the conference table like a decorative runner, the orange, blue, red and silver wrappers calling us with their promises of milk chocolate, peanut butter and caramel.

It sat there the entire class until, at the very end, Dr. Wyatt said, “Go ahead. Make a pile of your favorites.”

We grabbed at the Halloween candy, hoping this was a special treat, maybe because we’d been so good. Then Dr. Wyatt passed around plastic sandwich bags. “Now put all your candy in the bag.”

Once we snapped our bags shut, Dr. Wyatt delivered the news: for the next seven days we would have to keep these “candy babies” in sight at all times (so named for the likeness to baby dolls high schoolers have to “parent” for homework). And we had to return every piece of candy the following week.

My candy baby went with me everywhere. She sat at my desk all day, stowed away in my purse at an awards banquet, and withstood stares from people at the gym.

Co-workers stopped at my desk with furrowed brows, wondering why I would torture myself like this and why I didn’t offer any to them.

"The idea [behind the candy baby exercise] is that sometimes you will be in a situation where something -- candy, a piece of cheesecake, chips -- are going to be put in front of you and you may not be able to control that," Dr. Wyatt said. "What will you do?  What can you control or do it make it less likely you will eat the candy in a moment of weakness?"

I love candy – the taste, the texture, the sugar high, the instant gratification. But fewer than 24 hours after receiving my candy baby, it (mostly) ceased to exist as a temptation. The wrappers’ sheen faded and I could picture the melted and remolded chocolate inside the wrappers, becoming less appetizing with every new location to which it traveled.

Slowly, we’re gaining perspective on some of our worst vices, trying to see them away from the grip they usually have on us, but I think it will take a lot more than one week with a candy baby to make us immune to its attraction, to automate the skills necessary to say no. 

At least Halloween only comes once a year.