Almost Angry

I spent the first 3 years of my weight loss burning more calories a week than most humans consume.  (okay, maybe that's slightly exaggerated, but I really liked that line! it was around 3-5 thousand calories...) and weight loss was easy. I ate whatever I wanted as long as it was "worth it." I would equate in my had what it would feel like to burn that many calories and eat it if I was willing to work it off. Well, things have changed. And yes, of course I did learn to stop when I was full, learn how to make better choices, and eat more consciously, but the universe had been trying to tell me since February that it was seriously time to look at my diet, and not expect my workout routines to always be enough to burn what I still allowed myself to over eat. So when I moved in May and left my gym, my yoga studio, my trainer, and fell in love... I watched myself steadily gain about 4-8lbs a month. At this very moment,  I'm sitting at 238lbs, I was 214 the last time I stepped on the scale at Anytime Fitness in Roseville, MI. There's always a lesson, our weight has a story, and what I learned from mine is that it's really time I take charge and train myself, I know what I'm doing, I wasn't admitting I didn't like my job, and my old workout/eating plans no longer worked for me. Attempting to recreate them here was exhausting and didn't feel right. I was a different person and needed to focus on my diet more. I needed to put more time and energy into eating a more fresh fruit/veggie organic diet that I had come to crave. The frozen Kashi meals only work for so long. I was sharing my daily life with another person, and had to take them into account. It was time to create a workout routine on my own and go execute it, and I'm doing all that, slowly and steadily just like I did when I first started and it took all I had to get up before noon and walk to the end of the road and back.

Where Does It Really Hurt?

Where to begin? There are so many thoughts & feelings I wish to express right now that seem so difficult to just that.  I want to cry, but feel as if it would be not entirely authentic. As if doing so is just one of my desperate attempts at release. God, please help me to release whatever block this is nestling in my throat chakra. Because that's where it is. Nestled beautifully between the top of my shoulders and bottom of my years, feels like I have one of those set of neck rings they were in some of those African Tribes. This imbalance is expressing itself as neck and ear pain, hearing is muffled and my ears won't seem to "pop". The muscles and tendons are so tight, I can feel them pull & crack my upper ribs when I move my head. My voice sounds nasally as if every sentence requires a very clear thought pattern before it is expressed. Needing my full attention. I can see how this would be beneficial to me and others. I tend to ramble, and not fully formulate a thought before I begin to say it, causing my words and directions to be unclear. Having a tendency to say yes or okay without every comprehending what the other person is saying. Feels I'm being forced to take the time to fully formulate my thought & intention before I speak and to give my full attention to another as they speak. A beneficial lesson to learn, one of which I am willing. A sense of grace & gratitude are welling up inside of me.

The Lesson here:
   Listen to your body as an avenue of knowing yourself more. Instead of numbing the pain and discomfort with something to alleviate the "symptoms"; find the source. Instead of bogging down these physical manifestations we call symptoms with medications, which only work temporarily and allow it to surface later with even greater vengeance... let it surface NOW. Allow it to fully play itself out, and tell you something, FEEL IT. Guess what? A little discomfort won't kill you, but your attempts at escaping that discomfort just might. So, do things that will facilitate a "letting it run it's course" kind of thing. Drink some tea, breath deep, REST, drink double the water you normally would, eliminate junk for for a few days. Be gentle with yourself, love yourself as you would love your dearest friend if they were "sick."  Any level of discomfort is simply a beckoning that something is ready and in need of change. I asked myself, what in my life? In my thoughts & emotions, was in need of change? Why was physical discomfort manifesting? What was it trying to tell me? And I think I got my answer in the paragraph above... Feels I'm being forced to take the time to fully formulate my thought & intention before I speak and to give my full attention to another as they speak. Fascinating. Often, we wait until a slight discomfort becomes an intolerable pain before we embark on change. Most believe it to be scary. And well, it can be when we've come to rely solely on ourselves, what we think we know, and how we think things are going to be. But when you have mustered up enough trust, change seems less scary. You become willing, at the first signs of discomfort. You listen sooner, so you don't have to be brought to your knees to open your ears.

With grace & gratitude...

Meeting My Body

Good morning!

I'm so happy to be sitting here with my tea and preparing to blog.  A very beautiful thing happened during yoga today.  I found myself extremely angry when holding the poses, a few tears fell, and all I kept hearing in my head is I'm not feeling very flexible today. I was becoming angry at my body because I could go much farther into the pose just a week or so ago, angry because my mind wouldn't push me through it, and ready to just throw that fucking boppy support pillow acrooss the room. I was telling myself it's okay, sometimes things in yoga come up, but I kept getting more and more pissed. My teacher said to be the observer of any thoughts or emotions that arose... and so I did. I laid my head on the support pillow and asked myself what was really wrong. There was a shift within that moment. I felt a connection to my body open up like never before. I felt guilt because I had been ingesting poisen for 3 days. I thought of my relapse, the Sonic I ate the night before, the Thin Mints I ate and threw up before I drank.  I had been very hurtful to my body, and felt guilt. It was like I had hurt my best friend.  I apologized and I cried as I sat in my dragon pose.

Upon deeper reflection I discovered a few more things.  I had begun to not trust my body. I allowed the impatience of my ego to talk me into taking an amphetemine appetite suppressant (although I had lost almost 50 lbs on my own over the last year simply through diet changes, excercise, yoga, hypnotherapy, and acupuncture) I took the pills knowing all to well what it would do to my body... speed up my heartrate, decrease my sleep, potentially (and likely) to increase my anxiety, deplete my body of potassium because of the potent diuretic that goes along with taking the amphetemine to counter-act the tendencies to raise the HR and BP. Coming from someone who DESPISES taking any kind of pill, this was more than counter-productive. It was a direct blow at my integrity and core beliefs that I have embraced over several years. I justified my actions by telling a couple people I KNEW would tell me it was okay, and keep myself working out and making good food choices. If I continued to do all THAT, then I was only using it as a tool right?! (Please note the sarcasm) Three days before my relapse, I got out of bed and passed out smashing my head on the metal clothes hamper and causing me to go to the hospital... what was the culprit? Severe dehydration.... the cause of the dehydration? The pills I was taking to suppress my appetite. FUCK. I was ashamed, embarrased. I felt hypocritical and unworthy of the love and concern of those who cared about me. Especially when both of them sitting next to me in the ER were shocked and angry.

Since deciding to no longer take the pills, I've spent the last several days sleeping. My body needed rest to re-balance itself out.  It was artifical energized for about 5 weeks, and now it was tired. More fully realizing the distress I caused on my body, and energy filled I was filled with anger and sadness. I spent all day Sunday (2 days post collapse) crying and sleeping, by midnight Sun/Mon I was drinking. AFTER I spent a couple hours yelling at the man I'm in love with about how much it hurts that he doesn't love me back (which is TOTAL BS, lol PLEASE see previous blog about Falling in Love With What Is for further clarification on that one!) :)

Love is the only thing that is real and what heals. Love is all there is. God is Love. (With all the being said, and not to go into my whole schpeel on Love) ... I realized on the way home how many of my actions, leading up to this very moment where based upon fear (the OPPOSITE of Love) and not Love. (Fear and Love cannot co-exist, they are opposits of each other, like how in the presence of light, darkness doesn't exist.) ANYWAYS... The decision to get the diet pills in the first place was a fear based decision because I was afraid of the plateau I had hit, and the potential of it causing me to gain a few pounds. My decision to express feelings of pain, longing, and hurt to this man were also out of fear. Fear of me seeing what was REALLY the issue. Along with, my choosing to withold Love from him and myself. Because at this point I was not allowing myself to be my truest nature, which is Love. I was denying myself the allowance to be what I was, thus causing pain and me projecting it onto someone else. I had denied Love the access to healing me on all levels... thus creating a vaccum effect and allowing fear and self-destruction to run rampat and me to drink myself into a stupor. Multiplying the guilt I had already felt for binging and purging on food and putting my body through the amphetemine high and detox. I was spent.

Today is 6 days post collapse. Finally, today I feel balanced and peaceful. So here I sit knowing in my being that there are no mistakes, every event was a stepping stone in bringing me to this moment. Because of what I've put myself through over the last few months, I've develped a closer and keener relationship with my body. I'm excited. Being this in-tune with my body will allow me to instinctively know what my body needs.  I can then eat accordingly, and decipher caloric needs from emotional feeding. I'm drinking my Yogi tea (which I've not done because I was to AFRAID of putting anything more energizing into my body) Today, I chose Love. I gave myself permission to feel that which I truly am.  I didn't deny myself the Love that will allow me to heal on all levels because of any feelings of guilt, unworthiness, or anger. Those feelings aren't real anyway. They are only an absence of Love, as darkness is an absence of Light. Therefore, just allowing myself to feel Love, all those other feelings dissipate. I forgave myself for hurting myself... for disrupting my energetic balance, for ingesting toxins into my physical body, and for being fallible, being human, because sometimes I like to deny that too.

I laid there in that dragon pose today and was introduced to my body. It was like FINALLY introducing yourself to that new face around the office for almost 6 months, knowing their name, what they do... but never actually MEETING them, never actually introducing yourself. There's like a timid awkwardness to that. Although it IS possible to communicate with that person, it's not through a direct means, and uses more time and energy than necessary. Today, we established a direct connection. Myself and my body. We met, and it was beautiful <3

Namaste'
Dottie