Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I found this motivational poster on Positive Outlooks Facebook Page. It’s from the Positive Outlooks Blog.

It reads:

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.

• Robert H. Schuller

This is SO true for weight loss. Whenever I start bragging about how much weight I’ve lost, I am in for trouble. It might be the bragging and the lack of humility that’s the problem, but looking BACK is not the way to face the world. I always need to look forward. I may have lost 59.4 pounds, but I still have 42.4 pounds to go. I am just barely past the halfway mark. I have a lot more to go, so I need to stop looking in the rear view mirror and focus on those 42.4 pounds. THEY are the ones that are important…

Just when I was about to delete Fitness, Health and Confidence for being food porn and real porn, they posted this awesome animated GIF:

It reads:

Train your mind to see the good in everything.

YES!!! This has helped me FAR more than any diet or exercise program. When I’m angry or resentful, I am always tempted to eat, so dealing with those emotions keeps me from overeating. Learning to see the good in everything has evaporated anger, alleviated resentment and helped me beyond words. The next time you’re feeling anger, remember to take a deep breath and try to think of three good things about the person you are angry about. Let it truly sink in how good this person is before you act and before you turn to food.

This is one of the quotes that convinced me that I had been living my life incorrectly.

It reads:

The secret of all success is to know how to deny yourself. Prove that you can control yourself, and you are an educated man; and without this all other education is good for nothing.

• R. D. Hitchcock

I had known that living a life of hedonism was wrong. I had learned that over the years, but I never knew of the concept of sophrosyne. I had never been taught that self-control and moderation could create a healthy state of being. Sure, I had heard the phrase, “All things in moderation,” but it wasn’t a way of life for me.

In fact, I loved to find objections to that rule. Really? All things in moderation? How much rat poison is moderate?

Despite that, the concept of living a moderate life has brought me FAR more happiness than hedonism ever did. Being able to deny myself has given me more peace of mind, happiness and calm than over-doing it ever did.

And YES, all my other education was good for NOTHING in the face of that hedonism. NOTHING. It didn’t matter that I had a degree. It didn’t matter that I was a writer. NOTHING mattered except more and more eating. There was no way to stop it, no matter how much I learned about the dopamine response, it was useless without the ability to deny myself.

And I haven’t learned how to deny myself, really. I just handed all those decisions about food over to a part of mind that continually makes better decisions than I ever did. Should I eat that? What does my FitBit say? Has my meal alarm went off? What does Lose It say? Do I have any calories left? I don’t make those decisions anymore, because when I did, I chose hedonism. I can’t be trusted to make those decisions, so sophrosyne is in charge, not me.

I am so surprised that this quote means so much to me. It has literally saved my life.

I adore this quote from Horace:

It reads:

Remember when life’s path is steep to keep your mind even.

• Horace

The path in that picture is of the Na Pali Coast Trail. Mike and I visited Hawaii back in 2002 and hiked part of this trail on that trip. It was VERY hard for us and I was sore for days afterward. Here’s a picture Mike snapped of me on that trip.

I remember thinking, “Someday I’ll be really fit and be able to do the whole hike.” It is nearly THIRTEEN years later and I’m not there yet. This life really is steep, so I’m keeping my mind even. Hopefully, by the time I return, I WILL be fit and able to do the whole hike without suffering for days afterwards.

So much of recovery is dealing with the past. This quote seems to help me.

It reads:

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

• Josh Billings

The only problem I have with this quote is the idea that revenge is important. Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of revenge. I can waste many hours of my life imagining what the perfect revenge is, but in the end, it is really just a waste of time.

I recently rewatched an episode of How I Met Your Mother from the 8th season called The Final Page.

• How I Met Your Mother: The Final Page – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In that episode, they talk about revenge and who you would put in your “Silence of the Lambs” pit if you had the chance. In the end, however, you learn that when you have those sorts of fantasies, the only person really in your “Silence of the Lambs” pit is yourself. And the only person who can free you, is you.

So, forgiveness really IS the true revenge. You need to forgive the people who have hurt you in your life, because if you don’t, you’re just going to stay down in that pit, hoping someone will throw you a line.

I love this quote from Jennifer Hudson:

It reads:

If you’re… asking yourself why I have this success and you don’t, don’t be angry with me—stop and ask yourself what your issues are that are holding you back.

• Jennifer Hudson, I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down, 2012

This quote is from Jennifer Hudson’s book, I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down. I really liked the book and found lots of quotes in it that I really liked.

I never did a review of this book because I read it at a particularly low time in my life, when I felt as if I couldn’t do anything about my eating. I wasn’t too far off the mark. I AM powerless over my eating. I just can’t do anything about it, so I have to let my inner mind deal with it. It’s way better at those things than I am, anyway.

I am going to read this book again because I’m in a much better place than I was before and I’m interested to read it with new eyes.

This quote reminds me that big resolutions don’t really help me.

It reads:

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

• Ellen Goodman

This is VERY applicable to me at this New Year’s Resolution time. I used to set New Year’s Resolutions and decide on life-changing diets and exercise regimes at this time of year. Over the last year, I have learned that the only New Year’s Resolution that has ever helped me was resolving to get my butt to an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting. All the other ones just sent me on the pathway to a binge.

I’ve learned that my eating disorder has TWO facets: bingeing and over-exercising. I would set up a restrictive diet and a strict exercise plan and then I would binge after a couple of weeks of restriction. I used to think that the restriction part of the cycle was the cure to my bingeing, but I was wrong. It was part of my disease.

This New Year’s Resolution is just ONE thing: I devote myself to the greater good. Whatever that entails, I will follow it. Eating healthy and exercising moderately is part of the greater good. Helping other people is part of the greater good. Being a better person emotionally is part of the greater good. THAT will be my question to everything I think of: Is this part of the greater good? Am I helping myself and others with this action? If not, I won’t do it. If so, I’ll do it to the best of my ability, asking for help when I fall short.

Let your only New Year’s Resolution this year be a dedication to the greater good. You will be shocked at the outcome compared to former years.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

I saw this quote today and it made me think about my eating disorder.

It reads:

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

• Robert Frost

As far as my binge-eating disorder goes, I had A LOT of education about it. I read everything I could about it, but that didn’t stop me from bingeing. No matter how much I learned about it, I couldn’t stop my bingeing. Education helped me realize that it was a disease, but it didn’t help me cure it.

That’s because there is no cure…

They have yet to really find out what causes bingeing and how to cure it, so until then, the only option that I have is Overeater’s Anonymous. I have found some semblance of recovery with them and I cling to them and the precepts for dear life, because my life truly DOES depend on them.

Also, because of all my research I did trying to cure myself, I can hear about the eating plans of others without losing my temper or self-confidence. What works for others may or may not work for me. It doesn’t bother me if someone has a different plan than mine because I realize that this disease attacks our brains differently. Each of us abused different foods, so each of us have to have different food plans to recover.

Robert Frost is RIGHT! Education DOES help me from losing my temper or losing my self-confidence, but it never helped cure my disease.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

For the past four months, I have been working on a meditation book for atheists. The twelve step programs are so god-heavy that it’s really hard for atheists to recover. I wrote this book to help others through this process. You can see it here:

• Twelve Step Meditations for Atheists by Laura M. – Kindle Edition at Amazon.com

• Twelve Step Meditations for Atheists by Laura M. – Paperback Edition at Amazon.com

I am so grateful to Overeater’s Anonymous and I truly believe they saved my life, but at the same time, I wasted ten years trying to solve my eating problems on my own all because I knew that twelve step programs are very god-oriented. I am here to tell you that it is possible to find recovery without losing your atheism. If you are avoiding going to OA, AA or any other twelve step program because you don’t believe in god, stop it. Go right now. Find a meeting and get yourself the recovery you deserve.

No god required.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

This quote really helped me when I was accepting the fact that my eating is disordered.

It reads:

Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you’re going to do about it.

• Kathleen Casey Theisen

Last year in October, I came to the stark realization that my brain was BROKEN and there was never going to be a cure for this hunger I have all the time. When I watched The Skinny on Obesity, I realized that I have ZERO control over my eating. Here are those videos from the University of California here:

These videos left me in a pretty hopeless state. I realized that I was going to be hungry all the time and that there was nothing I could do to fix my brain.

After a year and 59 pounds lost, I am no longer hopeless. My brain is still broken and my unnatural hunger kicks in at times, but my life is much more calm now because of Overeater’s Anonymous. They also believe that disordered eating is a disease that is currently incurable. This acceptance of my problem has helped me so much over the last year.

For so long, I refused to accept that I had a disease. I refused to accept that I couldn’t control my eating. Somehow, that made me feel like I was giving up. I thought acceptance was a cop-out. It was a way to pass off the blame on my broken brain.

Instead, it has freed me to take action that has worked when everything else did not. My brain is broken. I’m going to be hungry and want to eat at times when I just don’t need food. In fact, I can’t trust my hunger signals at all because they are almost always wrong. Accepting this helps me devise ways to work around it, with methods like Re-feeding.

Accepting that I am sick and will probably never see a physical cure in my lifetime has helped me get 59 pounds closer to a healthy weight. It has done what nothing else has been able to do for me for the last ten years.

If you are feeling like you just have NO control over your eating, then get yourself to Overeater’s Anonymous and get a sponsor. That simple statement has literally saved my life this year and it can save yours as well.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.