madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4/3/02 A child never understands the ramifications of her actions�these are �learned� behaviors that require a cause and effect for understanding to occur. It�s conditioning. It is education by acting and reacting. We are told not to touch the hot stove, but we do anyway because we have no reference point for the pain. So we sear our little fingers on the blistering element, we cry, and then (hopefully) we learn that the stove is indeed hot and we should, indeed, not touch it! I remember my mom telling me that my best friends in high school wouldn�t always be my best friends. I looked at her like she was an alien speaking a foreign language. Why? Because I didn�t know anything else, I had no reference point. High school, my friends and boyfriends were my entire world! I couldn�t imagine my life without these people. Thinking this way made all the good times, all the heartaches and break-ups and friendships seem so dramatic, so real. Well, here I am a 29-year-old woman who has remained in contact with only a couple of people from high school. So my Mom was right. She was right about a lot of things. And although she tried to share with me the wisdom she acquired through her years of experience, I still had to discover it for myself. In this way, I don�t think I�ll ever stop touching the proverbial hot stove, no matter how old I get. This is the path of learning, and it�s usually not until you�re long past the actual event that you realize you�ve learned something from it. Perhaps it�s a different reaction to a reoccurring situation or a new answer to the same old problem. Whatever happens, you find yourself both perplexed and amazed that you can still learn new tricks at this old dog of an age!! When I was so upset about not losing weight last year, I remember readers telling me that I needed to �relax� and �make it a lifestyle change, not a diet�. They advised me to stop weighing myself on the scale and stop judging myself on the numbers. They begged me to accept maintenance as a victory right alongside the weight loss. I thought they were crazy. (no offense) But how could I accept maintenance as a victory? The only victory was moving forward and upward and onward and continuing to lose the pounds. Anything else was failure to me. I just couldn�t see it any other way for the longest time. And then it happened the other day � my moment of clarity. Just like touching the hot stove as a child, I realized that I had truly learned a lesson from this. I�m not being able to verbalize this very well, but all I can say is that I genuinely felt thankful and appreciative that I�ve maintained my weight loss for over a year. I realized that I honestly didn�t feel like a failure! I heard the voices of my readers coming back to me with all the advice they had given me. You were all right! (just like my mother was right when she tried to teach me from her experience) It just took time for me to come to accept these as my truths. I�ve been slowly coming to terms with my diet and my new perspective while approaching the third leg of my journey. I�ve talked a little bit about how I need to accept the fact that this is going to take awhile, that I need to be kinder to myself, that I need these changes to be slow and progressive and constant � not militant and full up with unreasonable expectations. I�ve been wrapping my head around these thoughts for a good month now, and they�re starting to feel more normal, not so foreign to me. I�m exercising, but not like a freak. If I wake up and only feel like doing 15 or 20 minutes, then I only do 15 or 20 minutes! If I feel like having dessert, I have dessert. If I�m up a couple of pounds one week I don�t stress about it. Instead I just tone down my portion sizes the next couple of weeks to compensate. I�ve been tracking my calories, but loosely, more as a guide than a strict dictation of what I can or cannot have. This feels good for me, more natural, more real-life-ish. And although I haven�t lost any weight, I�ve maintained for two months and I�m just as happy about that. For those of you not on my notify list, I wanted to share this link with you. It�s an interview that Wendy Wallace, an online radio host, did with me. I think I sound like a loquacious wind bag, but I�ve always been a little over-critical of myself. It�s a long interview with a 40 minute running time, and you have to have Real Player or some other media program that will read a .pls file type. Be sure to check out Wendy�s other interviews at www.wendywallace.com. http://24.201.147.112:8000/content/show3.pls You'll have a better listening experience if you're using a cable modem. 2:53 p.m. - 4/3/02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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