Getting ready to get ready

This is just a short post to say I'm fine - I don't usually go so long between posting and I didn't want you guys to think I had eaten my way into a coma or anything.  Actually my food has been good this week - not perfect - but NO bingeing or craziness.  I'm still staying conscious of keeping carbs low, but the Phase 1 eating was really doing a number on my stomach so I've modified a bit and have been eating fruit and an occasional 70 calories worth of Joe's O's (Trader Joe's Cheerios). 

I finally de-Christmased the house on Tuesday - usually I'm ready to get all that crap packed and back to the attic before New Year's, but hubby and kids were calling me Scrooge and Grinch (they're right - oh well) so I let it stay as long as I could stand it.  Hubby acts like I'm threatening to murder Baby Jesus when I want the house clear before "Twelfth Night" - January 6th.  He was raised Episcopalian and between that and his Grandmother's b'day being 1/6, he thinks it's immoral and unlawful to tamper with Christmas trees and decorations before.  And I'm just ready for a new beginning!

I haven't exercised as much as usual (because it's freaking freezing) but I've actually begun doing some applied HEAD working out related to my eating issues.  I gave myself a few Christmas presents, one of which was Marianne Williamson's A Course In Weightloss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever.  I've just started it but it seems pretty good.  I've done a scan of the 21 lessons and there is a lot of similarity to working the steps in a 12 step program, though in different order and with different focus.  I'm committing to taking my time with working through of the lessons.  Already in just the introduction, she talks about how compulsive or addictive overeating that isn't dealt with in the subconscious (where the many and varied ways we use eating to fill a spiritual void in ourselves are generated) is likely to recur eventually, even after long periods of sanity with food.  I could write my own book on THAT phenomenon...think I've got it licked and then WHAMMO - hello 20 pounds I lost last year.  So many times.  Marianne talks about how our subconscious issues, beliefs and strategies can derail our effects endlessly unless we discover and parse them.

I might not have believed that had I not experienced what I wrote about the other day...realizing that I was answering a WW commercial with a voice from my mind that said "No, I can't do it".  That was an awakening for me...the awareness that I was DISaffirming myself unconsciously and automatically.  Wow - it's hard to fight what you don't even know is opposing you.  Suddenly the premise of Marianne's book seems relevant.  Important.  Vital.  And one of many programs or action plans to help get to our core stuff.

So...I'll be writing more about this as I delve in.  One of my favorite bloggers, Roxie, has been doing a lot of spiritual work in the last month or longer, and she has totally inspired me.  For years, actually since my 39th birthday when I vowed to spend the year prior to turning 40 getting inside my food issues, I've planned and intended and meant and promised and determined to really begin to investigate at depth the subconscious underpinnings of my relationship with food.  17 years later I've yet to have honestly done it.  Why? Fear - fear of ...it not working, not doing it right, of doing it and still not finding healing, of discovering I'm essentially unworthy to have this issue resolved - by myself or by my God, of being destined to be pudgy and moosey by my genetic make up...fill in the reason blank ____________.  I've gotten started many times - lasted a few days, and then fallen away even before the going even got tough.  I want to be fearless and need to be if I'm going to do let go of the weight.

In AA you often hear that we don't have a drinking problem, we have a THINKING problem (once the booze is gone).  And in that lies the headgame (and I believe the soul sickness) that is operating for an addict.  Faulty thinking that impacts how I conduct my life and my relationships.  But this is something I CAN do something about.  With time and help.  Committment.  My committment gene has been a little thready at times - certainly regarding food and eating.  I don't know what to say about how I will try and strengthen it...again, other than I'm trying again.  Never quitting, but trying to bring in some new artillery to fight this addiction and it's related behaviors that are STILL trying to keep me hating myself.  But I'm not gonna do it...hate myself, that is. 

There's a guy I've heard speak in AA a bunch of times, and he always ends his talks with, "I don't know about loving myself, but at least I don't give myself the finger when I look in the mirror anymore!"  Exactly - a lifetime of maladaptive patterns doesn't turn around overnight, but it can get better a day at a time.

Once again a short post that turned into a novella!  Once I tap into the thinker, it starts percolating all kinds of stuff.  I could go on and on but will do everyone a favor and button it for now.  I have an awesome salad waiting in the wings.