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

I saw this motivational poster on Positive Life Tips and it reminded me of the difference of my life before and now my life after.

It reads:

Become a priority in your life.

This means a lot of things that I didn’t know it would mean.

• Setting appointments for things like meditation and exercise that are ESSENTIAL for my mental and physical health.
• Making up food and snacks ahead of time so that I’m not starving and choosing the wrong foods.
• DOING what my sponsor tells me to do.
• NOT doing what my sponsor tells me not to do.
• Putting my needs ahead of the needs of those who don’t matter.

It’s HARD to do these things, but the pay offs are great. Instead of excuses and exhaustion, I am healthy and happy right now. The next time you catch yourself skipping workouts or saying yes to someone who isn’t worth it, remember to make yourself a priority.

I don’t know how this song flew under my radar for so long, but now that I’ve found it, I’m all about that bass!

I had heard the song a couple of months ago and I thought I liked it. Yeah, love for all body images (except the skinny bitches line)! It’s great! Embrace your body and love it for what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah…

Then I saw that video and it made me ADORE the song for ONE reason. The dancing sensation that is this man:

So much of the love your body image has been directed at women that I think men have been left out. This guy is an amazing dancer and he is just so damn adorable. He could tell the EXACT same story as Meghan Trainor. He’s all about that bass, too!

This is my favorite line and it’s so hard to remember sometimes:

Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top.

The next time you’re feeling down about your body, put this song on and crank it up!

This video is a profile of Overeater’s Anonymous by American Medical Review in 2010. It is a good introduction into the program. Fast forward to the 1:10 minute mark to skip past the cheesy graphics and announcer.

This video isn’t a replacement for attending meetings. It’s just an introduction. Nothing can replace the fellowship of other people with eating disorders. If this gave you hope, find a meeting here:

• Overeaters Anonymous – Find a Meeting

If the idea that your eating disorder is a spiritual problem (not just a physical and emotional one) bothers you, read this series of entries about how I found recovery without believing in God.

• Starling Fitness – My Higher Power

There is hope for you. You just need to be brave enough to get yourself to a meeting.

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 just saw this little public Service Announcement for Overeater’s Anonymous. It’s a really good depiction of what it felt like to be powerless over food. It wasn’t dramatic, it just was THERE ALL THE TIME. I NEEDED to be eating everywhere: at work, at home, at the park, in the car, EVERYWHERE.

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 shocked me at how BAD I am at this:

It reads:

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.

• Saint Francis de Sales

Whenever things have gotten harder in my weight loss journey, I have attacked things with stricter eating and more intense exercise. That has always led to a binge for me. I have never just tried to be gentle with myself and give myself time. I’ve done the polar opposite and gotten horrible results.

If you run into problems, try this radical idea. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing. You are at a plateau? Just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t increase your workouts. Don’t change up your food. Just keep eating the calories you’re supposed to eat to lose weight safely. Just keep doing moderate workouts.

Give yourself gentleness and time.

Usually when I have a migraine, I hide in a dark room, hoping to sleep it off, but last month, we were traveling to see family and I couldn’t hide. I took my two naproxen sodium pills and the pain lulled to a dull thud. Mike was going to drive and we stopped to get gas in town before leaving.

That’s when it happened… (more…)

Just yesterday, I was talking about how I need to live in The Here and Now. Then this gorgeous quote from Hank Green shows up in my feed.

It reads:

I live in the present due to the constraints of the Space-Time Continuum.

It’s true. We MUST live in the present. We can’t do anything else. We can’t change the past. We can’t foresee the future. Any time spent trying to do either is WASTED time.

Every time I think about eating this way for the rest of my life, the REASON I feel panicky and unable to complete the task is because of the sheer complexity of fathoming the rest of my life. I’m not panicked about eating this way for the rest of my life. I’m just panicked about the rest of my life.

As long as I focus on TODAY, THIS MINUTE, I can do it. I am like the proverbial Verizon Guy. Can I eat healthy now? YES! Can I eat healthy NOW? YES! Can I eat healthy next year? We do NOT know! You have to wait until the Verizon Guy WALKS there, step by step, to get there. THEN, you can ask me. Can I eat healthy now? YES!

Image via: The Benevolent Slice

I saw this quote today and it helped me be happier with living in the now.

It reads:

The here and now is all we have, and if we play it right it’s all we’ll need.

• Ann Richards

I have a hard time living in the now. I am always thinking about the future or ruminating about the past. Something about the Overeater’s Anonymous program helps us put that aside and live in the now. The idea of living just ONE day at a time sounds simplistic to me, but it has helped me.

The thought of writing down every single bit of food I eat every day for the rest of my life sounds INCREDIBLY restrictive to me. I cannot even think of doing it. Can I write down every single bit of food I eat today? Oh, yeah. That’s totally easy. I can do that.

And I have been doing that for over eleven months now.

Somehow, just focusing on ONE day at a time is easy. Can I eat healthy today? Yes. Can I eat healthy for the rest of my life? I’m not even going to think about that. All I’m going to think about is The Here and Now. I’ll make that awesome and forget about everything else.

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 and it made me feel better about my weight loss failures.

It reads:

Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.

• Minna Thomas Antrim

I’ve been really beating myself up lately about the fact that it took me TEN years to get my butt to Overeater’s Anonymous. I heard about it, dismissed it and then suffered for ten more years. During that time, I failed at Weight Watchers two more times.

So I have failed thrice, which means, if Minna Thomas Antrim is to be believed, that I have uncommon strength.

I have to admit that it DID take strength to pick myself up again and try again, especially when I felt so defeated and lost. Back in October of last year, I lost ALL hope. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was powerless over food. I was going to be hungry ALL the time for the rest of my life. My only hope was to white-knuckle it between my feedings. I talked about it here:

• Starling Fitness – Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

Back then, I said:

After months of not being able to follow my plan for more than an hour each morning, I finally have a tiny modicum of success. It appears that refeeding works for anorexics and binge eaters alike.

It is over a year later, and I STILL have those alarms that go off every two and a half hours. Without questioning it, I eat when they go off and DON’T eat between times. I can ALWAYS wait a couple of hours to eat when I feel hungry. After so much failure, finding something that works is a precious jewel that I have clung to it in near desperation.

I am so grateful I was able to pick myself up and try again, even though I had failed thrice.

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 found a quote yesterday that explained the last decade of suffering to me quite nicely.

It reads:

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

• Nikki Giovanni

I thought I was willing. I wrote down EVERY bite of food that went into my mouth, all 7000 calories each day. I went to Weight Watchers EVERY week, vowing to follow the program this time. Even during earlier times, I faithfully ate everything they told me, right down to the whole grain wheat that ripped and tore at my intestines until they bled. I thought I was willing, but I wasn’t.

I wasn’t willing to do what I needed to do.

I needed to be humble. I needed to believe that I didn’t know everything. I needed to just walk my fat butt into the doors of Overeaters Anonymous, even though I “knew” that the god stuff wouldn’t work for me.

Last January, I became willing. So entirely willing that I pretty much did whatever my sponsor told me to do within hours of her telling me. I went through the steps so quickly that it was surprising, but that’s because I didn’t piddle around. I didn’t waste any time. I was so damn willing that I DID it.

If you are unwilling, you are like that huge rock in the picture. There won’t be anything that can move you. You might think that you are doing what you need to do to get healthy, but just like all my “willingness” in Weight Watchers, it won’t help you a bit. You need to do what WORKS. And for me, Overeaters Anonymous worked.

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.