Mining Nuggets

Weight, weight, don't tell me ...

For the past seven months I have been trying an experiment on myself:

• To take notice of the times that loneliness and emotional-hunger rise up within and send me running to the refrigerator to desperately try and fill the hole in my soul with food.
• Inspired by Jean's goal to walk 1000 miles this year, walk as often as possible...
• Eat whatever I feel like eating.

Here are the preliminary results:

While I will not make the 1000 miles this year, I am pretty close to making 600 by the end of the year. I have been working hard to average four to six times a week running and walking on my treadmill for 40 minutes (2.6 miles at a time). So, to date, on my seven month anniversary, I have reached 366 miles total. This is exciting to me for a number of reasons:

1. I am now able to walk uphill from Valley Green and the Wissahickon to my home on that terribly steep incline without gasping and spluttering like some dying fool,
2. I am becoming fit enough to perhaps participate in an English hike with my sister next June,
3. My body feels healthier and stronger, and,
4. I am losing weight.

While I have not been keeping a journal or writing down my thoughts about emotional eating, I have begun to notice correlations between feelings of boredom, anger, frustration, loneliness, and my hunger. In fact, there are times when I ache with hunger even after having just eaten a splendidly, good meal. If I allow myself to hold still and experience my feelings, quite often I discover an emotional versus physical source to being ravenous. Sometimes it prevents me from eating to try fill the void. At others I allow myself the food as an experiment in comfort, and then, in those instances, I invariably notice that hunger is abated only briefly. Fascinating!

What is more fascinating is that I have begun to eat smaller portions, healthier foods and am becoming aware of who I am and what I feel about all sorts of things. In addition, I have become more compassionate and not as insulting towards myself as I used to be. For example, I less often call myself names, like "fat pig," when I look in the mirror. And, what is even more exciting for me is that I am slowly becoming less afraid of painful feelings.

I have lost 12 pounds in weight. Yes, I know, it has taken seven months instead of all those crash diets I tried all my life where I lost tens of pounds in two or three minutes. But who cares? I have all my life to lose the weight I need to lose to die healthy. Yes indeed. I think that for the first time in my life I am taking care of myself in a kinder, gentler, healthier, and more respectful way.

Yesterday I went out and bought a few new clothes. It felt good.

So, thank you Jean, and Geneen. It is not that I have followed all your rules. It is that you have joined a line of inspirational role models for me, who have affected, influenced and supported me over the years, so that I might choose the path I want to take, and do it my way.

... and now off I go ... up on my treadmill once again ...

A year ago on Tamarika: A Pause for Reflection.

Inspired

I am inspired by dear friends who write poetry like this. Thank you, Anya.

On Procrastination

By Anya Albers

The worst that could happen is art-

through accidents

that find beauty when we let them go-

Just close your eyes

and you’ll burst into flames.

Just wait for the water to rush in-

for waves of salt-

or for someone to be missing.

Or you could wait for countries

to gather their pieces

in a sack- peel off boarders-

and scatter pieces again.

Or, you could wait for confidence.

Or you could wait to see

if there is such a thing

as being pulled from the wreckage-

or you could change directions. 

Have I said it all?

Looking back, I had a lot more to say last year. It seemed as if everything I had ever been working on in all my therapies over the years rose up and out of me. Of course it really started when I wrote my book. Finding my voice in that way had a profound affect on my self-understanding. The truth set me free and with that so much more needed to be said. That is to say, written about. In a public forum, such as my blog. I simply needed to put it out there so that I could look at it together with anyone else who happened by. Facing my self with all the pain and vulnerabilities in that way afforded me a different reality about myself, a new perspective. All the old family beliefs and myths became just that: myths. In writing about those ancient hurts, somehow I took the edge off them. After all, they had reached enormous proportions locked away in my mind for they were placed there when I was a child. And everything seems so much bigger, more magical, devastating, terrifying, wondrous, or insurmountable when we are children.

As I wrote about those dangerously unmentionable childhood feelings and fears, knowing somewhere in the not so back-of-my-mind that someone in the family would start yelling furiously and try to stuff me back into my box, the adult Tamarika (A.T.) started to emerge. At first, she was bewildered and hurt. "What is all the noise about?" she wondered out loud about all that anger at her for mentioning the unmentionable. She began to back peddle, erase what she had written and, even, changed her entire blog site!

And then the summer came and with it three months of alone time. Hours for reflection, but more than that, space for the A.T. to come out of the closet, spread her enormous wings of comfort and reason, and soothe all the panic and fear that had taken hold. Dangerously unmentionable slowly became un-dangered.

I realized, my voice is my voice, life experience my own, and my feelings are valid. The real and most significant "unmentionable" does not even need to be mentioned out loud any longer. Just knowing, understanding and facing it within me is enough.

Finally, I believe me. And that is the most important point of all.

So, yes, I agree, Neil: " ... it's a great way to see how you've changed from last year -- and how you're still mulling over the same issues..."

But I wonder, have I said it all?

A Year Ago on Tamarika: Identifying my Angels

Past and present

One of the things I like at Citizen of the Month is Neil's link to his post last year at this time: "A Year Ago on Citizen of the Month." As I have been driving back and forth from my new job I was wondering where I was or what I was thinking about last year this time. Plus, last year I was still blogging at my old original site, Tamarika, and I must admit I miss the old cyber home that started me off on my blogging career over a year and a half ago. Time passes quickly (since I turned 50, seven years ago) and this could be a way of looking in on snippets of those former days that have disappeared so fast.

And so, if Neil doesn't mind, I will borrow his idea for awhile, and from now on link to last year's post. Now seems like a good time to start: September First. The season has changed even over night with cool breezes, gray clouds and drips of rain drizzling down on me as I run around shopping today. Fall is in the air.

As I was reading my post: A Year Ago on Tamarika: Back in the Saddle, I realized how similar it was in one sense. And yet, in another, it tells of a much more anxious person starting out in the new full-time world of academia. In fact, this past week has been quite relaxing and interesting compared to the me of last year. It certainly helped to be treated with kindness and respect. There were many instances this week where people made me feel not only welcome but as wanted as could be!

Hello hurray, let the show begin, I'm ready ...