Choose Health: Fail for Success Series, 1
SHADOW BOXING
Fighting Myself for Myself: Failing Within Boundaries
I am in the middle of several back-to-back travel experiences that make it difficult to keep a health routine. And, I am in the busy season in a new job that I am still learning. This is a recipe for failing grandly.
I have a history of failing grandly in times like this. The details were different, but the feeling was the same. To stay successful, I have had to let some things go and keep my eye on the big things for long-term success. And, I have fallen off my usual game – within boundaries of short-term failures that make long-term successes possible.
I Wanted to Change the Trajectory of My Life
Finding My Golden Center
People often ask why I made the decision to lose weight. At the golden center of it was my health and wellness. For years, I knew what I should be doing, but I didn’t know how to do it and sustain it. Because this is such a hard process, people need to find a why, a golden center for making the change.
My golden center comes into focus most profoundly between 10:00 pm and 6:00 am, when I no longer live in fear about what my choices were doing to me, when I feel freedom from a lifelong conflict around food. I knew nutrition and health facts as well as anyone, if not better than most. But, I could not find a way to act on what I knew.
Eat When Hungry: My Journey into Shadows, Episode 2
Mindset is everything and nothing.
Mindset and the mental processes around my personal changes are shadows of my transformation.
Mindset plays a starring role in every change I have made. Yet, mindset alone would never be enough to succeed in losing half my weight.
Foreshadows of My Shadows: I Felt “Fat” First
My Hunger Drive and Childhood: Feeling the Force of Addictive Foods
Weight has been a lifelong struggle for me, starting in my childhood. Third grade is my first memory of obesity — even if obesity was not yet part of my reality. This was the year that foreshadowed my future struggle with weight.
Because of the way food in the standard American diet makes me feel, I felt obese before I was obese.
In childhood, this feeling was closely connected with eating potato chips, candy, and pizza without being unable to stop. In truth, I could list hundreds of foods that have caused me problems.
I Was Not Broken and I Am Not Fixed: The Food Is the Problem
Moderation Was Never Going to Work: Processed Foods Are the Problem
In mainstream society, there are many misconceptions around weight, weight loss, obesity, and morbid obesity. One of the central misconceptions is that obesity is caused by personal shortcomings.
Understanding the role of processed foods in my weight has helped me see myself and my weight differently. Years and years of failing at moderation taught me that moderation was never going to be the answer.