Losing Weight?

I've belonged to a paid weightloss group for just over a year now. Have I lost any weight? Well, maybe net 5-6 pounds down over the whole year (the Washington diet: don't actually reduce, just slow the rate of growth). And, a couple of pounds up from where I was in October. It sure beats gaining weight, but it doesn't appear on the surface to be a ringing endorsement for this weight-loss approach. Never-the-less, I think this is the right approach for me, and I have no plans to end my membership any time soon. Why?

First the background: This program is called "No BS" and it is the creation of a foul-mouthed southern woman named Corinne Crabtree. There is a free podcast, which is not only a marketing recruitment effort but also useful in and of itself, covering the basics of her approach. She has a free, short, on-line course. Once you complete that, you get on an invite list for the 2-3 times a year she opens to new members. Once you are in, there is a lengthy video course, emails, live zoom coaching sessions, pdf planner and worksheets to download (or buy to be shipped), a huge Facebook group with additional subgroups, spontaneous Facebook live events, and specialty short focus courses. Frankly, much more than I need.  

There are four basics to this: Sleep well, drink lots of water, make and assess afterwards a daily plan of what you will eat, and eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Sounds so simple, yes? There are no other food rules.

I went through the video course last year when I joined, and I've been doing the daily worksheets more often than not for the past year. She updated the video course for this year, and it's much improved and I'm going through it slowly. The focus is of course on that last basic: eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Any other eating is termed an "overeat". How do you quell overeating? Much of the course is on this - full of practical guidance and step-by-step approaches.

This program makes use of how we live and how our brains work. So maybe it isn't surprising that fundamentally, the key to eating mindfully has a lot in common with what I've learned about how to mindfully quell chronic pain. She says, in the video course, we are fat because we overeat, and there are three reasons we overeat: 

• Lack of body awareness
• Failure to feel our feelings
• Allowing our habit brain to take over

In dealing with chronic pain, these are also the three areas we work on. Much time is spent in mindfully focusing on our body and our feelings. And pain, like eating, can be a habit. Sometimes, it works for us, as a way of avoiding dealing with life. Sometimes we think, "I'm hungry", when we are tired or frightened. And sometimes, we think, "my leg hurts so very much" when we are scared or avoiding something. Body awareness - putting the lens of our attention to very specifically how "hunger" or "pain" is manifesting in our body, is part of the process. Journaling and meditating to bring our thoughts and feelings to consciousness is part of the process. And observing what we do - making unconscious actions conscious - helps us find habits that don't serve us and create habits that help us make the life we want. 

And, as part of both processes, we bring self-talk into our conscious mind, and change it deliberately. 

So with both processes I've done a great deal of work over the past year. I've had a hard time - and still am - with leg pains and migraines. But with the work I've done, I feel like I'm on the right track to leave them behind me. Just like I feel like I'm on the right approach to deal with my eating, in order to get to a better weight.

Self-Talk, Self-Care, Self-Love

I've been thinking a lot about my interior dialogue. Of course, I have a constant running rumination, but it's really shocking to actually tune in and hear the less-than-kind way I address myself. Word choice matters a lot, not just in the "big things" but also in the little things.

I've been a meditator for a while now, and I've always had a problem with the type of meditation known as "loving kindness". Frankly, it sounds like the woo-woo stuff I've always run far away from. The language and phrasing, invariably delivered in a special meditator's voice that comes across as pretentious to me, are sappy and sometimes downright silly. I doubt the power of positive thoughts to do much for oblivious recipients. And then, to apply that woo-woo stuff to myself...! I can't even. "You are perfect just as you are!"  P-U-L-E-A-S-E spare me! I am so far from perfect I can't even type the phrase without grimacing!

I've had a lot of problems with language around self-care, as well. "Self-indulgence, more like!" I think. I have no shortage of self-indulgences, from impulse shopping to ice cream or TV binges. I don't need more self-care, I need more self-discipline, to go out there and do more things that matter better. There is so far for me to go to live up to my own standards and judgement.

But through my various works at self-improvement, I've heard repeatedly that "self-love" is a necessary precursor for lasting change. At the same time, meditation has given me the ability to actually observe and overhear my inner dialogue, which is a manifestation of my relationship with myself. I definitely have an inner mean girl (and we don't need to delve here into why the voice sounds so much like my mother). So when my meditation app (Ten Percent Happier) said they were doing a New Year's challenge around self-love, I decided to give it a go.  

Well, it turns out that Dan Harris, the self-described "fidgety skeptic" behind the app, shares my distaste for the whole subject, and yet understands its importance for the same reasons I do. Leading up to the meditation challenge, he did several podcasts (also named "Ten Percent Happier") about what is really meant by the practice and approach of self-love, why it is necessary, and how to approach it so that it feels authentic and not forced bullshit. The challenge itself, short video clips followed by a daily meditation, was useful and I was faithful at participating. But it was really the conversations on the podcasts that helped me so much. 

So I don't have to use the loving-kindness vocabulary, and I don't have to jump all the way to pretending I'm perfect. I'm a work in progress, for sure. Self-love may be a bridge too far, but I can get to self-acceptance for sure. I'm a person, and deserve credit just for that. I don't have to look back at my accomplishments to justify my existence. Simply being here is all it takes to be worthy of love. In the language of one of the first meditations I learned, "as long as you are breathing know there is more right with you than not". 

So I've been cutting myself a lot more slack lately. I still have the urge to do more, be more, be better. But I think I'm more tuned to being kind when I don't live up to my own expectations. By listening to the way I talk to myself - turning inchoate feelings into actual words, often on the page, helps me get out useless loops of self-recriminations, accept what really is, and move on. And the "moving on" still involves effort and striving and falling short - but now it has just a little less recrimination.

UPDATE: Re-reading, I see I didn’t circle back to self-indulgence versus self-care. I got this through an analogy of how we treat others. For example, if an employee falls short, you don’t go all “it’s fine, it doesn’t matter, here’s an award so you don’t feel bad”. But you do encourage them, coach them, help them figure out how to do better next time, because it does matter and you want them to succeed. What are the barriers to success? Are there ways to provide assistance?  That same dialogue internally is caring for yourself, instead of a tongue-lashing, even if the tongue-lashing comes with ice cream.

Four years ago

This popped up on my Facebook feed today. It’s worth it to pause and remember how afraid we were, and then how much worse everything got than we were able to imagine then. How Truth disappeared.  And how hard it was to sustain our energy (at least it was for me). How insidious and wearing were the constant assaults. We’ve got a moment now to breathe, but it is just a moment.

January 22, 2017

So here's the thing:  Can we try to focus our attention and outrage on things that matter?  Can we make sure we devote bandwidth (posts, column inches, minutes on broadcast media) to those things that affect the most number of people? 

Yes, there was a Big Lie about inauguration crowds. The fact there was an unrepentant lie is important. Note that fact in plain language, link to the spreadsheet, and move on.  What has happened lately in terms of executive orders about health care? Focus, people.  Let's focus on areas where people's lives are affected.  I don't care where the president's family lives, not much, not enough to spend bandwidth on it.  I care about foreign policy, health care, and the environment.  And other things. But we have to prioritize and choose where to expend our energy.

This isn't a moment, it's the movement.  Rise UP!

2021: Nice

Isn't this nice?

For the past two years, I've selected a one-word motto for the year. While I haven't written here about the topic after announcing the selection, I do actually think about the topic during the year. For 2019, the word was "Move". For last year, it was "Engage". 

This year, the word is "Nice". 

Underwhelmed? Stay with me here.

The point of selecting just a single word is it allows for ambiguity and multiple interpretations. So "nice" is an exclamation, a synonym for "cool". It also means how we treat each other, and we could all stand for a little more niceness in our interactions. And, inspired by Alice, I'm wanting to add a little style to my life: flowers on the table, color in my hair, food arranged artfully on the plate. So if I achieve "nice" this year, it will be enough.

Travel

I have a huge advantage over most people in the travel logging department, for two reasons. First, my family twice spent a sabbatical year in London, when I was two and when I was twelve. And also because in my thirties I was childless and worked for United Airlines. My job required me to travel, especially internationally at the end- if I had earned frequent flyer miles I would have been top tier my last two years. Plus, I was able to fly for fun for free (actually really cheap but not exactly free) and my work friends could fly free too, so I had companions.

For domestic travel, before I went to work for the airline I had never been west of the Mississippi. Now, the only two states I haven’t been to are North Dakota and Idaho. A flip side to the great flying benefits was that vacation time for junior employees really sucked, so most of my personal travel during that time was in the U.S., where I literally went to San Francisco to have dinner with a friend one Saturday night and home on the red-eye.  Another day trip was to the San Diego zoo, again returning on the redeye. (I lived in the central staging spot of Chicago, also the biggest hub so the most non-stops.) I’m glad to say I did not squander my opportunities. So to wrap up domestic, I’ve been to the US Virgin Islands, but never Puerto Rico. And not Guam or American Samoa.

As I noted at the top, I got a head start on the international thing, starting when I was two years old. So by continent, here are the places I've been, with notes.

In this hemisphere, in order of visits, I've been to:

Canada
Bahamas
Cuba
Mexico
British Virgin Islands

So South America is totally missing. 

In Europe, where there are so many small countries jammed together, in no particular order I've been to:

England
Scotland

Wales
France
Belgium
Netherlands
Germany
Switzerland
Spain
Italy
Monaco
Iceland*
Norway
Sweden
Denmark
Estonia
Russia **
*In Iceland, I was on a ferry flight taking delivery of a new airplane from Paris to Chicago. The Airbus 320 couldn't make it across the Atlantic, so we made a fuel stop in Iceland. I never left the airport, but I did spend a few hours there. And I had the most spectacular views ever, as we were below normal cruising level, and I was in the cockpit for the landing and takeoff.
**I spent 10 hours in St. Petersburg, off a cruise ship, on a guided tour. It seems hardly fair to color in the whole huge country based on that experience!

In Africa, I've been to:

    Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo
    Kenya
    Tanzania
    Egypt
    Tunisia

In Asia and the Pacific Rim, I've been to (all for work):

Japan
Singapore
Malaysia
Hong Kong

Australia
New Zealand
Fiji

So where haven't I been that I really really want to go? Almost anywhere I haven't been. And, for that matter, there is no place I've been that I wouldn't mind going to again. The only trip on the books right now is one from Norway to Iceland via the Shetlands in a small cruise ship at the end of June. This is much less adventurous than the sailing trip I had planned to Iceland last year, but it's with friends and will cover much more territory. We're all buying trip insurance and the consensus just before Christmas was about a 40% probability we would go. Way too soon to tell!

2020 Report Card and Final Wrap-Up

 Herewith is my final report card for the year. After this, 2020 begone! I'm only looking forward!

 

First up: Activity. This past year was not great for my moving. Kim's friend Chris would be sad for me. I expended fewer calories overall, had fewer high activity days, fewer steps, more days very sedentary, and what I'm saddest about, many fewer days working out with weights. I got the bike out once, and tried running once. Only in "intentional miles" walking am I up slightly - and I think that is because I was more assiduous in tracking those miles. (In order to be logged, a "walk" needs to be at least 1 1/2 miles - no counting the incidental miles in the course of living my life.)

I have reasons and excuses, of course. The main one is I felt bad much of the time. Joint and muscle pain, headaches, upset stomach, all the things that are elusive and not subject to definitive diagnosis or fixing. But I'm extremely optimistic that I've now got a firm grasp on the mind-body approach to this, and this next year will be much better. 

 Next, my weight. I didn't achieve any big goals here, but I guess in the quarantine context I'm doing ok. I weigh slightly less than last year at this time, and (not shown) slightly more than I did in November, my lowest point of the year. Not coincidentally, I'm planning and tracking food much more often. I'm also really tuning into my hunger and satiation signals. I think I'm on the right track here, and again, I'm optimistic things will be even better next year.

 

On mind-body, it's a mixed picture. Not shown or tracked, I started serious therapy this year for the first time ever. First, in January, for twelve weeks I was in a structured (zoom) group, and following that, I started individual therapy over facetime. What I'm doing is geared towards somatic issues, specifically to address those with chronic pain of the types I have. On those things I do track, I'm meditating, less than last year (huh, if I didn't track it, I would have guessed different). My migraines are up for the year, but there were NONE in December and I think this is an effect of the emotional work I'm doing to re-train my brain. I am generally a champion sleeper, I certainly have plenty of time. My resting heart rate, which generally shows an overall fitness level, is slightly better than last year.

On the category I might term "self-actualization", if you are a regular reader, you know for sure I was a reading fool this year. I blogged more than last year, less than I would have liked. I started tracking "trips downtown" last year after I retired - generally trips last year were social, catching up with former work friends. Most of this year's trips were solitary dawn walks, reminding myself the city even exists. It feels like I sailed a lot this year, but seeing that it's less than last year, it must feel like more because it stands out so clearly in such a mass of otherwise undifferentiated days. Other accomplishments include a tap dancing class at the local community college (surprisingly effective over zoom) and several seminars and on-line short courses. I also got into sewing masks, and really engaged on the design and engineering creativity side while doing it.

I think I'm going to add movies watched to this list for next year - I would like to see a movie a week. This seems so very do-able, and I find setting a quantitative goal and reporting it here would be helpful. I want to do even more classes and short courses, tap class again, and sit down at my piano sometimes. I don't know I'll be tracking quantitatively here, though tracking can be part of the reward system that encourages me to keep going. I aspire to travel, but you know...

On the money front, I've spent some time working on the budget. My goals for this year were to get a handle on where the money goes, and specifically to reduce costs on food and clothes. Missions accomplished! This is the one area where the quarantine really helped. I cut food spending by 25%, mostly because I'm not eating out. Clothing was down by more than a third. (There was really no reason for me to buy any clothes at all this year, but I get bored and just want something new.) 

As another couple of money accomplishments, I did a final distribution to my family of the money from my mother's estate, and cut down on the number of different bank accounts I have. My mother's probate estate was something of a nightmare to deal with, and the IRS combined forces with the US Postal Service to screw some things up that created a great deal of angst for me. So when I close the estate's last bank account next week, I'm going to do a happy dance.

I tend to be analytic and want to be intentional about how I live my life. My current focus is trying to engineer my days to build good routines. When do I do what kind of exercise or other work? I've learned about habit formation so I'm thinking about this as another design challenge. What is my trigger to make me go work out? What might be the barriers? How can I make it easier to start? I know I hate going outside on days like today (grey and drizzling) so what can I do to get over the hurdle? Or is there something I can do indoors instead? Stay tuned!

2020 Wrap-up: Travel

OK, so not much. In February, I went on my one big trip, on an airplane, to Utah via Las Vegas. That was immediately followed by the Bloggers Bash, Brooklyn Style. Aside from that, to paraphrase my father's inaccurate Henry Thoreau quote, I traveled extensively around my block.

The light spots on the map are where I went.