Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation: Day 48: New Eating Habit in Action

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Day 48: New Eating Habit in Action

Good workout day! Continuing to move forward, and just a couple days away from level 6. Woo!

More exciting for me today was putting my eating epiphane (see Day 47) into action today. In the morning I definitely felt like a burdern had been lifted. I think part of it was the energy that goes into the obsessing about what I'm eating was now extra energy that I had to think about other things. But just in general I would say that I felt happy that I figured out something that could really change my life. For most of the day I didn't feel crazed to get food into my mouth ASAP. I felt like food was a normal part of my day, a normal non-obsession. It was simply food, enjoyable, nourishing, taking up only the part of my life that it appropriately deserves and nothing more.

I wasn't munching all day, planning food all day, feeling crazed by cravings, or going into food comas...and as far as underlying anxiousness goes it was quite minimal compared to usual.

When I did eat, I ate slowly, I tried to be conscious of when I felt a shift from hungry to satiated, took one more bit, and then I stopped. I simply stopped. I acknowledged that even though I was ending a tasty meal, that I would have another tasty meal later in the day when I was hungry again, and therefore there was no reason to keep eating for fear of not having something this good to enjoy again.

If I did want to keep on eating, I asked myself is this hunger, anxiousness, thirst, fatigue? I was talking to my bf today explaining to him what I'd discovered. I told him how I have different tools-hammer, wrench, screwdriver...all serve good purposes, but I had learned to use a wrench when I needed a screwdriver, or a hammer when I needed a wrench. It just doesn't serve my need to use the incorrect tool. In the same way, eating doesn't meet my needs for anxiousness or thirst or sleep.

It was so key for me to realize yesterday that the feeling of hunger and the feeling of anxiousness are actually two completely separate feelings (even though through repeated habit over many years, I had learned to recognize anxiousness and hunger as the same feeling), and therefore the tool of food only serves to meet one of my needs. This stood out for me yesterday because both before and after I ate dinner I had underlying anxiousness, (but the hunger I could tell was only before dinner). It really helped me realize that food did not make the anxiousness go away, and therefore is not the tool I need for anxiousness. So instead, I took several deep breaths. As cliche as it sounds, I really did slow down and just take a handful of deep breaths. Then I watched TV long enough to let the anxiousness pass and I felt okay again. Now, I'm not saying that TV is the best tool to help with anxiousness, but for now I will take TV and a few deep breaths over food, until I find better tools.

Honestly, I would say I ate between 25% and 50% less food today than I normally eat. This without major struggling, or starving myself, or feeling deprived or wrestling against myself to resist temptation. It felt like a new beginning. And of course I'm also excited to hopefully see weight coming off now as well, since I'll be using both consistent exercise and natural portion control. But, I cannot tell you how equally wonderful it felt to enjoy food as a balanced part of my life, rather than an obsessive part of it.

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What has Made This Time Different?

I have attempted to try to stick to an exercise routine so many times in my life, and yet I've rarely made it past a week or two at the most. This time has been a whole new experience, and this is a list of the reasons why (subject to change). Perhaps one or all of these will resonate with you too:

1) I have a simple, mental, visual analogy to help me focus on the bigger picture: In the past I've dieted and exercised and wondered why am I not losing weight? The key was that I wasn't consistent. The truth was that my efforts were sporadic rather than stacking one on top of the other. So it felt like I had exerted so much energy (which I had), but because it was not one foot in front of the other, my efforts did not stack up to any actual results. This made the most sense to me once I understood the the visual analogy of climbing a wall. My goal (lose weight/get fit) was to get over this wall. My attempts to get over the wall included climbing up (working out, dieting). However, I was constantly climbing back down the wall without realizing it (getting off the dieting, not exercising). Over time, I was exhausted from climbing up and didn't understand why I had not yet made it over, after all I had put in a lot of effort. It was then that I realized that every time I stop exercising, I am not picking up from where I left off the next time I start up again. Instead, I have to start from the very bottom of the wall. The steps up the wall do not help you climb over unless the are consistenly moving in a forward direction upward. While this may seem simple, and easy to understand intellectually, it was something I had to understand in the form of an epiphany. It was the first step to me being able to be consistent with my Tracy Anderson Method.

2) Make the goal about following through with the actions, rather than just focusing on the end results: Now that I understood that consistency was such an important factor in being successful with my goal, I had to figure out how to actually be consistent when I had never before been able to. It was so hard for me to imagine getting past level 1, because in my previous attempts I had learned how to do a few days of level 1, feel defeated, take a break, and then start over on level 1 again once I felt like I just couldn't take being overweight any more. My brain only understood how to stop and start over, so it just couldn't imagine what it felt like to move forward to L2-L9 and beyond. So, I made a commitment to myself that I did not even have to do the levels if I did not want to, but that I would play the videos every day as though I were doing them, just for the sake of my brain understanding what that would feel like. Amazingly enough, this triggered something in my brain so that it could at least entertain the possibility of experiencing the program beyond level 1.

3) Don't tell anyone I am learning to establish an exercise routine, until I'm on a roll. I understand using someone as an accountability buddy, and I do think that is helpful. But for me, I found that when I told people I was starting to exercise I diverted energy away from my goal (establish a regular exercise routine). So when I used to tell people, "oh I'm starting something new" people kindly wanted to know how it's going, how much I've lost, all these reasonable questions. For me, that added an extra pressure that I just didn't need. I didn't want to be accountable to anyone but myself, and I because I am someone who worries too much about what other people think, it just served me better to start the journey on my own and learn from my own experiences, learn to trust myself and my own instinct, and feel free to experiment without fearing judgements from others.

4) Don't make any changes to diet initially, but instead first focus on making exercise a regular part of my routine. Learning to exercise regularly and consistently & eating nutritiously are both lofty goals in and of themselves. To do both simultaneously has never ever worked for me. For my brain, my emotions, my inability to adapt to change, it was far too large an undertaking to attempt diet exercise simultaneously. For me, exercise is the easier place to start because it feels more in my control. There are only two choices (to exercise or not), and it is completely up to me, and not influenced by much else. On the other hand, food requires more preparation what with shopping, and storing and cooking, and taking food with me places. Exercise is just once a day whereas eating is something to work on multiple times throughout the day. Another thing is that if I attempted exercise and diet at the same time, if I did poorly in one area that day, it wiped out any good work I did in the other area (in my mind), and made me want to give up on BOTH. Exercise is the place to start for me.

5) Accept that my objectives are long-term and therefore no matter how hard I work, I will not be skinny in a month or two. But a year from now and for the rest of my life I will be.

6) Keep a blog or journal. For me, blogging has enabled me to see that some days are challenging, but there are also other days are easier. It is easy to forget the good days when I'm just focusing on the negative one at hand. Blogging allows me to go back and remember the positive things I've gained and learned along my journey.

7) Exercise with a buddy in the beginning to help make exercise a daily habit. While I didn't tell anyone about working out until about 2 weeks after I'd started, after that when I told my friend she was excited and wanted to try it out too. We exercised together for about two weeks, and that helped me establish a routine of exercising first thing in the morning consistenly.

8) Immerse myself in the success of others. I read others' blogs and success stories and facebook and the TA forum. www.masteringthemethod.com was such a great tool because it was the first visual I had to understand that this was going to be a journey and a process. It is so easy to see the "before" and "afters" and think that 1 week or a month of commiting will take me from before to after. Being able to see the "during" as well made such a difference to my brain because it was like the missing piece of the puzzle to understand this is not in any shape or form an overnight, overweek, or overmonth process. It showed me the bridge from "before" through "during" to "after".

9) Watch and re-watch and watch again Tracy's informercial and multiple visits to QVC. Especially the first month I watched them almost every day. Seeing the informercial is the pique of excitement in the beginning of a new exercise routine. Watching the infomercials help me remember the feelings I had in the beginnning and reminds me why I began this journey in the first place.

10) Trust Tracy, yourself, and those who have come before you, and have faith that while you can't imagine it today, each step you take will lead you to your after as it has for so many others.

11) Let go of being a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist prevented me from succeeding 100% of the other times I've attempted to exercise. It was vital to learn to only do whatever my personal abilites are and nothing more. Understanding and believing that I would build from wherever I was starting, as there is no need to exhaust myself physically and mentally by exercising beyond my capabilites was again instrumental. The very first time I tried metamorphosis, I was beyond defeated and in tears as there was no way I was gonna be able to do 40 reps of all the leg exercises as she did. I initially would pause the TV after every exercise attempting to complete 40 reps like Tracy was going. Helllllloooo, Tracy is in shape and she invented the method for goodness sake. I never exercised and was carrying around at least 50 pounds that didn't need to be there. Because I couldn't be "perfect" I thought I couldn't do the method. This was completely false. Finally, I figured out that I just had to do whatever reps I was able to do while she was doing the same exercise. Then when she moved on, I moved on to the next move. Suddenly my abilites were increasing, just by doing my personal best. It was the same thing with the cardio. It was important to me to play the whole tape, but that didn't mean I had to be jumping the whole time. Instead, I would step touch or march in place, drink some water. The point is that I got to experience what 30 minutes of cardio would feel like, and eventually be able to build up to it. I can now do an hour of cardio :)

...to be continued

Rumspringa...My Tracy Anderson Transformation

90 Day Metamorphosis with Tracy Anderson

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Day 48: New Eating Habit in Action

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