Fashion - To Do or Not to Do? Or . . . .

I recently went to a dinner party with new people, and I considered before hand what I should wear that would make me feel pretty and comfortable enough for several hours. I chose to wear a sort of fifties style dress and purple flats. I have several dresses I could have chosen from yet the one I chose I felt the prettiest in and flattered my shape.

Over the years, I have stated that I am not that into fashion. Yet in the last few years, I have been trying to think more about the body I have at the moment and dressing that body. I have only gotten some items here and there that I think are flattering to my bigger size, mostly because I keep waiting to have the body I want to then maintain and buy cute clothes for.

So the truth is that I like fashion and enjoy looking good in my clothes. I just avoid it because I think I am too fat and do not want to waste money buying nice clothes until I lose weight.

Thus the question of to do fashion or to not do fashion is not the real issue;  the real issue is my unwillingness to lose the weight once and for all. Even though I lost many pounds 12 years ago or so and maintained it for a few years, I never truly committed to losing the weight  and keeping it off.

As I stated in another recent post, I have been going up and down in my weight for at least 8 years now and have not yet committed to treating myself well and losing the weight. Which is another layer down to the truth. So, basically,  I ignore and avoid it, even though I know it would help me feel better, feel healthier, feel sexier, which in turn would help my sex life, which could help my relationship, which would make life better all around.

Soooooo where does that come from? Anger and hurt about shit that happened when I was a kid that I learned to ignore and avoid. Learning to ignore and avoid the shit that was happening in my family taught me that I could ignore and avoid and still "do Life" so I started to ignore and avoid much more mundane things in daily life. That ignoring and avoiding has spread around, and I can do it well.

My end conclusion about whether or not to involve myself in fashion is that its not about fashion.  Its about me not ignoring and avoiding my shit, i.e. the things I want for myself that will lead to the life I want.

Hence, I gotta take care of my shit! :)

Take care of your shit and I surmise (since I don't really do it), life will be  better.

Hugs!!

Body Talk

(No this is not me just a great visual.)

Hi all! Been gone for a bit. Hope all of you are well and in good spirits!!

I thought I'd give a short update on how my diet has been going. To recap quickly, I wanted to lose some weigh before I went on a family trip, mainly so I could fit in my clothes, but also for general over body health and self- image. I've been about 30 Lbs. over my goal weight for a while.

So before we left on our trip, I lost 8 pounds and was feeling happier with my body and definitely more comfortable in my clothes. :) I figured on the trip I might gain some weight but planned to not overindulge a lot. To that end, I did so-so. I gained 6 pounds while on vacation.

Since I've been back, I have lost 3 pounds.

This all sounds a little confusing. So to quote one of my favorite movies "Evolution" I am going "to take these snakes and lay them out all straight" for ya. :)

July 2- 178.6 lbs
July 13- 170.6 lbs
July 26- 176.1
August 4 173.3

This yo-yo-ing of my weight is not new. I have lost the same pounds over and over, i.e. going from 178 to 170, and back up to 178, and down to 170.  In the last year, I must have lost those same pounds 6 or 7 times.

I was able to lose the 8 pounds before we left by tracking my carbs and sharing my ups and downs on the scale with my husband. Talking about my carb intake and what the scale said each day really helped to keep me on track.  I am starting back with that today.

What I still need to be looking at are the reasons I have allowed myself to go through this crazy weight roller coast for so many years. That will be a post for the future but something I wanted to mention here because it is very relevant in my weight lose process.

Okay so that's where I am at right now, 173.3 lbs. My goal is 145 lbs. which in the healthy range for my height, 5'8".

How do you all deal with weight? Do you go up and down like me or maintain a healthy weight?

Thanks for stopping by!! Hugs!!

Its Not Weird, Its Just Uncommon

Nadine and I were going to go to the movies recently and then wanted to go run some errands afterwards, but we realized we needed to plan what we were going to do for lunch. We have been on a low carb diet, and it had been going really well; neither of us wanted to break to weight loss streak by eating out at a high carb place. I looked around at the carb content of some of our favorite restaurant foods, and we came to the conclusion we should just bring a little cooler with us filled with the foods we have been eating at lunch during this diet.

I packed us a lunch and off we went to watch the movie. We saw Terminator: Genysis. (It was really good, BTY, especially if you have seen all the other Terminator movies, which we had.) After the movie, we had planned to go to the mall right near the movie theater so we got in the car and drove to the parking structure to get some shade for our lunch. We started to eat our lunch in our car, in a parking structure, and I turned to Nadine and stated that what we were doing was weird. She said something that I have been thinking about every since; she said, "It's not weird; it's just uncommon." Right, it wasn't weird, but it was uncommon to us. We had never eaten a cooler packed lunch in a parking structure. But was there anything weird about it? No, it was just something I had not done before.

As I said, this statement has had me thinking about me in general. I sometimes don't want to do something yet can't really explain to myself as to why. It seems foreign to me thus I don't really want to do it. Yet in my mind, I feel like I am being rational and offer up what seem like solid reasons why I do not want to do something new, which is essentially weird to me.

This is where I think I need practice in using my new brain (if this phrase doesn't make sense, you can go to this post and read what I am talking about) to place some logic into my life situations. After writing the paragraph above, I can really see that stressful emotions very often interfere with my decision making process.

Doing something new does not make it weird, per se; it just is uncommon. I find a lot of comfort in thinking things are just uncommon, instead of thinking they are weird. Why? I do not know. I just know that an emotional response comes up when I think of something I am doing is weird, but no emotions come up when I think I am doing something uncommon . It seems to me that if I use my new brain to roll around ideas that I have a better chance at succeeding, In other words, if I can be objective and consider things like something is uncommon, instead of weird I might be able to succeed at it trying it, doing it, doing well at it, etc.

Being subjective in my daily life often leads me to be closed off and a wall flower, two things I do not like being and are really against me being the best person I can be. Letting my middle brain control my decision making process, i.e. being subjective (by that I mean this dictionary definition- based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions) only causes me strife. This does not mean that I shouldn't feel emotions or never use my emotions to assist in making decisions, It means I should not let ONLY my emotions make decisions for me. 

Okay that was a long post, huh?! I have written about emotions before and will continue to do so as I struggle with the fight I have set up in my brain between the new and the middle brain (and sometimes the old, primal brain). I figure if I struggle with this others must, too. 

Consider the source of your decisions. It might lead you to some uncommon, better ways of thinking!!  :) 

HUGS!!!! 

My Food Baby AKA My Tummy

 OR  

I am not sure how much I have written about food and my relationship with food. I think I briefly touched on it here and there. Basically, I use food as a comforting tool. If I feel sad or stressed out, I turn to food, have since I was young. And its usually foods that are not healthy, like cheese burgers, fries, chips, bread, sweets. I also love a good meal with tons of carbs, like fettuccine alfredo, pizza and bread sticks, fried calamari, deli sandwiches; you get the picture.

Well, having indulged in this for many years and going back and forth in weight for as many years, I have a fat tummy, which I like to affectionately call my food baby. Well, I am getting sick of my food baby, and it constantly getting smaller and bigger. So I started back on the diet I know works for me (Atkins) and am beginning the process of losing weight again.

One major thing that has prompted me to start again is that we are going on a trip back East to visit family and bury my husband's father. We leave in a little over a week, and I do not fit into many of my clothes. That's a problem.

Also, I would like to have some foods that are not on my diet while I am there and know that if I do not do anything about my weight now, I will only gain more weight while on vacation. And that will only make my food baby bigger, and it will be harder to fit in my clothes.

So my challenge is to face the feelings I have inside about feeling a "need' to eat crap to soothe myself. Yesterday was the first day of the diet, and I did well. Today, I needed to go to town to go food shopping. That was a little difficult because my local Target and supermarket make and sell food so they both smell like food, yummy foods like pizza and fried chicken, and bread and cookies and . . . well you get the point.  All throughout both stores, I had to continually remind myself that I wanted to lose my food baby more than I wanted to eat the foods I was smelling, or more than I wanted to buy something that was full of carbs.

It seems to me that change requires a constant reminder to one's self that you want the change and why you want the change, and I do mean constantly. The reason for the constant-ness of this reminder is that human are creatures of habit, and those habits hold on hard unless they are fought against with inner reasons why change is wanted.

I am no master of this process; in fact, I would say I am quite a failure at this for any long periods of time. Yet I am trying it again. This time, I am working hard to not let any of the usual excuses leak through and get me to do something against my goal.


How do you deal with change? Do you avoid it (like I often do) or face it head on?

I am so appreciative of all of you who come here and read my thoughts. :)

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts, too!

Puppy Update

Buddy and Indy Swimming in Lake

Indy After the Lake

I am so in love with my dogs! No, I'm not a crazy dog person yet it is so fun and joyful to be with them and see them interact with each other. I have so loved having our first dog, Buddy. It was an amazing experience to have my own dog. Before him, I had a family dog but not one that was mine. Also, I had a small fear of big dogs. And Buddy got to be a big dog. He is 75 to 80 pounds and  just over all a big dog. But he has the heart of a teddy bear, a giant teddy bear. This loving, big dog changed my whole perspective on dogs, all dogs really. He showed me how loyal, loving, compassionate and fun dogs really are, and he won my heart. 

Yet having two dogs is even more than that. They are definitely different personality wise. Buddy is way more submissive and Indy is more dominant. Of course, Indy is a puppy, which makes him a bundle of energy and play. Buddy is 9+ years old and is trained as a hunting dog. He is much more mellow and focused on retrieving, sleeping, swimming, and resting. Their differences have made me really appreciate them both so much for whom they are and what they give me and others.

I was very apprehensive about having two dogs at the same time, yet it has been, and I am sure will continue to be, a rewarding experience. Being able to love and care for a dog can be a life altering experience and for me, that is truly what it has been. I look forward to the future with both of our dogs and can't wait to see how the little guy grows and continues to change our lives.

Indy, our puppy, will be going to hunting school tomorrow and will be gone for 3 to 6 months, and I will dearly miss him. But I am so excited to see what he learns and what kind of hunter he will turn out to be in the end. Its hard to do what is best for our pets, but after having sent Buddy to hunting school, I know this is the best choice for Indy and that he will be all the better for it.

Love your pets! Let them love you back! Remember to enjoy as many moments with them as you can as they won't be around forever. :)

Hugs!

The Brain and Its Parts

I am taking a course online about emotional intelligence and learned some interesting information about the brain. 

The brain have many parts but can be simply categorized in to three parts: the old brain, the middle brain, and the new brain. The old brain is also called the reptilian brain, and it is in charge of our fight, flight, or freeze instincts. The middle brain is in charge of our feelings, emotions. The new brain, which is rightly named since it is the part that evolved last, is in charge of logic and language. 

Although the brain works as a whole, these areas cannot do the function of the others. In other words, the old brain cannot form language and the new brain does not dole out feelings. So in light of this, it is understood that although we have feelings that generate from our brains, or we institutionally respond with fright, flight, or freeze, we do not automatically have logical responses to those things. We must then use a different part of our brain to logically get through that feeling or response, to react in a way that is most beneficial to our life. 

Wow- I just reread what I wrote above and it sounds like I know how to do this; no, not so much. Really, I think that my inability to do this has caused an enormous amount of problems in my life. I have often reacted very quickly to the things without thinking thus not reacting from my new brain. 

My goal now is to try and process everything through my new brain. 

How do you think you handle these different aspects of your brain? Do you think you use your new brain to regulate the middle and old brain? 

Love to hear any thoughts any of you have!

Hugs!!

Emotional Response

I went last Friday to make a donation to one of our local thrift stores. I dropped off all the things I had used in the last two years to help me while I was broken and after my recent surgery. The things in the picture are a shower seat, my crutches, and two canes.

The day before, I visited my surgeon who told me things were healing up well, which meant I could get the staples out and walk without assistance (which I was already doing because my leg felt good). When my husband and I got home from the doctor's, I promptly told him that him that I had been waiting for that day for almost two years; the day that I knew I could get rid of all the aids I had needed to get well, get clean, and get around. I told him we had go to the thrift store the next day and donate all of it.

Friday morning, we loaded everything up, and I was feeling thrilled! We drove down and talked a little about how long we have had these items and how great it was that we didn't need to have them any more. We had stored it all after I didn't need them when I was recovered from the break so that they would be available for me to use after the second surgery to take the hardware out. As we pulled up and dropped off the items, I had an interesting emotional reaction. I felt sad, like I was giving away a friend or something. Don't get me wrong; I was also very happy to be at the point in all this to not need them any more yet there was sadness.

We talked about those feelings and I came to the conclusion that it was what it was. I had spent a lot of time with those items, and they had really helped me for long periods of time to get along better than I could have without them. They were my crutches, both literally and figuratively. Without them, I would had a much harder time living life.

That event has made me reflect many times since on the emotional reality I go through on a daily basis and the importance of honoring those emotions. That does not mean acting on all the feelings I have but to, at least, acknowledge the feelings and then work through them in a logical manner. I often in life have tried to get rid of or completely ignore feelings I have had. It seems to me that doing that has caused an enormous amount of problems in my life because feelings will come out somewhere if they are no looked at and consciously dealt with in some way.

So I am trying to respect myself more and look at my feelings and work through them constructively.

How about you? How do you deal with feelings? I would love to hear what you think!!

Hugs!!