The Ledge and the High Dive

Wherever we are in this journey, there are times it feels like we hit a wall.
We may still be overweight. I’m not talking by just a few pounds. But we hit that plateau, stall-point, or we just get bored, we get sloppy in the dieting, or we sabotage ourselves… or even worse… we start rationalizing and saying “I’m ok, I’m happy. This is where my body wants to be and I’m good with it.” It gets tough. You may not be able to quite put a finger on the “why’s”, but it happens to all of us. A friend of mine said, “Pammie, I’m hitting a wall.” And as I talked to her, it made me realize something I had hit something too.

During my travels I was given a bottle of absinthe by a friend. A friend who didn’t know my struggle and love/hate relationship with alcohol. In pride, in fear of appearing weak, I graciously accepted it. Inside me, my stomach wrenched tight to the point of feeling sick. Alcohol is something I try to stay away from for the most part.

I have several reasons for not drinking much – with losing weight, I  lost most of my physical tolerance for it – it don’t take MUCH for it to hit me anymore! I don’t feel very well the next day or two after a night of drinking with my friends. I feel it’s a waste of empty calories for the enjoyment of it. I have a slew of bad memories from my party days, both physical and emotional. I feel it’s just another addiction I substitute when I’m trying not to eat. I have a bad taste in my mouth for drinking, frankly speaking and pardon the pun.

So I put this bottle in a cabinet and made a “bargain” with myself. I told myself that if I lost 10 more pounds under my goal, I’d celebrate it by having a drink of this special stuff. (I am NOT skinny, so this would still be healthy weight loss.) Perhaps I thought I was putting the demon in the cage by putting that bottle in the cabinet.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I can hear you gasping from here. I went against one of my cardinal rules. I gave myself a “food incentive” or “food reward” to dangle in front of the scale. Hey, I’m almost a year after hitting goal. I’m (not so) large and in charge here. I can handle it.

Yeah…about that.

I hit what felt like such a huge wall in the past couple months. I worked incredibly hard going after this little goal. After losing 150 pounds, you’d think that 10 pounds is “no big deal”. I remember in my first weeks of weight loss I could POOP out 10 pounds without even thinking about it. I took my calories down, I put more activity in and I went after it as though I was going after the brass ring of my weight loss. The scale wasn’t moving. As I counseled others in their journeys, I looked at my own advice and got meticulous.  I made sure I was preplanning, I cut out my “bonuses”, I put in even more activity, tried to get more sleep.  Yes I was stressed (and still am) with a lot of stuff going on, but I refuse to let that hold me back. The scale started moving and I was elated. I could do this!

Then as I got closer to a new number on the scale… I’d eat. Maybe not a whole lot to someone else. Sometimes as little as a few hundred calories. An extra helping of a healthy meal. Or a few drinks with friends. Or a bag of popcorn while watching a movie with my daughter on the weekend. It added up. I’d lose 5 pounds and then gain it back, and get frustrated. Not enough to affect my clothing, but this is a bad pattern I knew I had to get under control NOW!
WHY was I doing this? I knew the drill! I teach the drill for crying out loud!
Then this past week it hit me when my friend said, “Pammie, I hit a wall.” And I responded to her saying that she wasn’t in front of a wall, she was on a ledge and she was just scared.  She’s made it feel like a high ledge and it’s more built up in her mind than it really is. She needed to walk off the ledge in an act of faith and know that the step was not as scary as she thought. There’s an invisible path to freedom we can’t see until we step off the ledge. It’s excitement and exhilaration, NOT fear… or make it that way. She said to me, “I never lost this much before and I’m scared what’s next.”  So I asked myself WHAT AM I AFRAID OF WITH THIS TEN POUNDS? As I thought about this conversation another analogy came to mind.

This is where I am. The feeling of being on a high dive at the public pool.
Everyone is watching you. Everyone sees you on the high dive. If you step backwards and climb back down the ladder, everyone sees that you couldn’t do it. You got scared and gave up. You admit defeat. And there’s others in line for the dive that are willing to jump in front of you and show you how it’s done. But you have to do it YOURSELF to get your reward.  HOWEVER, if you go forward…. Running, laughing, jumping and throwing your arms in the air and JUMPING off that high dive who KNOWS what will happen? Maybe the water will be very cold at first. It may take your breath away at first. You may bellyflop and it may almost hurt a little. Or it may feel super refreshing. It may feel like the best euphoria you ever experienced. It may feel like the highest high. It may feel like the biggest victory EVER!!! But you won’t know until you ALLOW yourself to do it. And there’s the reward I gave for myself. And that’s when the epiphany hit…
Well, in my case, I knew what was waiting for me. A bottle. The demon in the cabinet cage loomed over me, watching me, waiting for me. And I think that scared the crap out of me to the point that I was sabotaging myself so that I wouldn’t get those extra pounds off. In fact, I was slowly going up on the scale. My own inner core of my mind knew I was scared of those past memories associated with drinking and it wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to happen. Memories of poor decisions made while drinking. Memories of my kids seeing me while drinking. Memories of losing control. We hate it when we lose control. We like to be in control of our journey.
And so… I poured the bottle down the sink. I knew it was the right decision because of the way I felt when I did it. I felt like a rock came off my shoulder. I felt like curtain came away from my thoughts and I could clearly see the path from my own ledge. I had felt trapped on the ledge. I felt in spotlight on the ledge. Vulnerable. Where everyone could see me, that I wasn’t losing anymore. I am on that high dive. And what happens if I can’t do the fantastic swan dive and I have to crawl down the steps? Well…I don’t know, because I’m moving forward.
Well, I still have that inside goal of getting down to 150 pounds. But I took away that double-edged sword of a reward for it.
When you hit your plateau, your stall, when you jump into ONEderland and then everything goes awry… take a look at what you’ve promised yourself. With what you’ve put pressure on yourself. And take it easy on yourself! YES, push yourself to get to goal… but be very careful what you dangle in front of yourself. Ask yourself these questions when you get scared….
1) What is my incentive for losing weight?
2) For who am I losing weight?
3) Is the reward truly “worth it”?
4) Is the incentive enough to keep me at goal or is it a short term goal (such as a reunion, party, wedding, retaliation, trying to make someone jealous?)
5) Will I be truly proud of myself and my intentions?
6) Can I continue the same habits I am using to LOSE weight to be able to STAY at goal weight or is this a fad, harsh diet? Is this healthy eating? Will it cause health issues to keep eating like this?
7) What scares me most?
8) How does that affect or connect to the feelings of fear I’m having right now associated with losing weight? Do I feel my significant other won’t like how I look? Do I feel that I, myself, won’t recognize myself? Am I afraid of what OTHER PEOPLE will say about how I look? Am I afraid of appearing different?

In order for change to be a true change, it WILL BE UNCOMFORTABLE at times. But like always say…turn that sickly feeling in the stomach of fear into excitement and wonderment (or ONEderment). Take control of it and make it work for you.

Take a step off the ledge.

We call create our own limitations in our minds. We have the keys to our cells and it’s up to US to figure out which key unlocks the door.

While helping my friend, I figured out my key. We all need to examine those many keys we hold on that mental key ring and get to the core of what makes us tick, makes us eat, makes us stress…. and then the future’s wide open! I’m slowly going downward on the scale again making up those couple of pounds and headed into new realms. And I’m feeling good about it…no looming anxiety, stalling or binges.

Those are my rambling thoughts for the day! If ya like it, pin it, share it on Facebook, email it to a friend, I’m all about that!

Check out my website at pamkaelin.com and my facebook page!

Emotional Dermatillomania…. Or Picking Our Mental Scabs

Being a teenager is tough. No doubt. Being a fat teenager was extremely hard for me. I was very shy and hated being in rooms full of people I didn’t know. I was not social. It affects some of my behaviors today. There are routines and patterns that have been worn into my head like convoluted hiking paths down to my inner core. They are worn down so heavily, so many times, with rocks protruding up to make me stumble as I try to get to my inner most thoughts at times. These familiar paths and patterns hold me back from going forward other times. Take, for instance, the scenario of me being in a room full of people I don’t know. When I was much younger, it could bring on panic attacks for me. I’d hear a whisper, laughter, a “certain” tone of voice, and assume it was a negative attack on me. There were times it was true and I was the butt of some ill-based jokes. But so many times it was MY ASSUMPTION that I was being mocked. It was a Pavlov’s Dog reaction to being exposed to bullying, snide remarks and such as a result of my weight and my attitude that developed along the way.

Those insults and negative behaviors created a very large wound in my self esteem.

Let’s look at what happens when a part of our body gets physically wounded. I’m outside, walking and say I fall and scrape my knee open. Blood rushes to the surface.   As air hits it, over the next few days, it becomes hardened and the wound is encased in a scab. So I’m sitting outside. Bored. Looking at my knee and start picking at it. I wince because it hurts and it’s not quite healed. But I can’t stop picking at it. I flick away the scabs and watch as more blood comes to the surface. I say to my daughter, “Hey, look at this cut, doesn’t this look nasty?” She agrees and I get attention for it. Another day goes by and it has scabbed up again. I’m at work stressing over an issue and subconsciously start picking at the scab. It starts to bleed, a little heavier because I’ve broken new skin with my fingernails.  I clean it up and it starts the healing process over. Now, what if I keep picking and picking and tearing open that scab? Well, the skin around it will inflame and if enough dirt falls into it from my fingernails, it could become infected and then I have an even bigger problem. Now, being adults, you’re going to look at me and say, “Pam, would just stop picking at your damn knee and it will get better!”

You see, that’s what I did with the wound on my self-esteem and my thoughts for many years. There’s probably a thousand little insults I’ve heard in my whole life. If I keep going back over and over in my mind, and pull up all those times I was embarrassed, tormented, made fun of, bullied, stood up, dumped, etc….it’s like ripping the scab off that wound of bad self esteem everytime I do it. I’m never going to get over it and be able to move forward if I keep picking at that scab. I’m going to become a slave to constantly ripping that scab open to avoid getting over it. To give me a reason to be upset. And hey, it gives me attention to have that “injury” and wound to cry about.  To give me a “right” to be righteous about those who judge based on looks and size. I can point the finger and say it’s THEIR fault I feel this way, my father, my mother, my siblings, my ex-boyfriends, my ex-husband, the kids I went to school with, the public school kids on the bus who made fun of my parochial education, strangers in public, teachers that humiliated me, people I didn’t get along with, strangers in the clothing store, people in restaurants I thought were watching what I was eating, and how many other people I could blame!

Bottom line… it’s MY fault I feel bad because I keep thinking about it. I keep pulling up those bad feelings and continuing them.

It’s time to let the past pains scab over and heal. It takes soul-searching, journaling and some good quiet time to come to peace with these things. If you can’t do it on your own or without hurting loved ones, then it’s time to get professional assistance in this. Talk to a third party like a counselor who won’t take it personal when you need to get angry, but has the professional training to guide you in letting it all go.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. You’re never going to be truly happy and successful until you let go of all this ugly scabby damage.

I garden outside in the warm weather. I get scores of scratches, cuts and little wounds, it comes with the territory. But I wrap them up, protect them and then expose them to air and they get better, most times without a scar.

What happens when you pick at a scab repeatedly?

The area becomes scarred, mangled and the skin has scar tissue and is never the same.

That’s what happens when we keep picking at our emotional scabs. We become scarred, hardened, harsher and generally tough to manage. It gets in the way of living and happiness. You see that scar and you remember the injury and it makes you unhappy and the cycle starts again. You can be the prettiest person, thin and healthy but your negativity can make you very ugly to yourself and others.

I am 48 years old. It doesn’t matter what a group of boys said to me back when I was 16.  I am not that scared lonely girl anymore. Time to let it go.  But what if I still am that scared lonely girl inside? Time to let her go. If repeated bad behaviors have made us feel crappy, lethargic, even suicidal at times…. Then repeated GOOD behaviors should do the opposite. I’m doing that.

We cannot stop people from talking about us, confronting us, trying to include us in their drama, or listening to the silly diary-like statuses on Facebook that annoy the snot out of me. And it annoys me MORE when they come from ME!!! That’s when I stop myself, unplug from the computer, back the hell away from Facebook and all that social media bullshit and go outside and get some fresh air!

But we CAN stand up for ourselves. We can be our own bodyguard. We don’t have to wait for a super hero to come along. We are our OWN hero! It’s never too late to stop the cycle. It’s never too late to adopt new patterns. It’s never too late to change. It’s never too late to correct the path on our journey!

It’s time for healing. Trust me, it makes the journey healthier, happier and easier.

Like I told my son years ago in the Rear View Mirror post… the rear view mirror is a reference to the past, it is NOT where we are going. If we keep looking in it, we are doomed to crash. However, if we look forward and have a positive attitude, I feel anything is possible! Not JUST weight loss, but with anything we set our minds to!

Now…. Stop picking those scabs, it’s time to heal!

Hey! If this helped you, inspired you, pissed you off, cheered you up, gave you that weird feeling in your stomach that you know it hit you right where it counts…then pin it, share it, email it, share the love!!!

Check out my website at pamkaelin.com  and follow me on Facebook!

Getting “Unstuck” in the Journey

Ever get in your car and go to work, the store, on an errand and it feels like the car is driving itself. It knows where it’s going because you’ve done this a million times before. You’re not even thinking about it. It’s as if your car is on auto-pilot, or on rails or in a rut in the road that just TAKES you to where you’re going. It’s a habit. Not a bad habit, but a habit nonetheless.

My friend Kim Bensen was talking tonight in an online meeting today about habits and it made me think of my journey. Habits have both hindered and helped me.

My journey isn’t too different from driving in a car day after day. I had tried to lose weight in what seemed like a million times before and it always ended the same way in the same place. Nowhere.  I’d stop for one reason or another. It was so many reasons….
– it was a fad diet that I couldn’t sustain, and I’ve been on many
– I gave into the peer pressure of hearing people say I couldn’t do it
– I was losing it for approval of other people such as a significant other, or my parents, or my kids
– I’d reward myself with food and end up binging
– I would sabotage myself
– I’d plateau and give up
– and so many other reasons….

But it was the same paths that led to the same endings in the journey. It was like my car got stuck in the mud of dieting. I was in those same ruts that led me to “that place” of giving up. I’d gun the engine, get frustrated and panic, and spin my tires deeper and deeper into those same habits until I couldn’t climb out and would just… give up.

The only way to get out of the ruts and mud is to throw something different onto that path to climb out. You have to stop panicking, calmly get with your program and think your way out and onto a NEW path. I had to figure out that the old paths weren’t getting me there. My car was so accustomed to those old paths that I did the same triggers, sabotages and routines over and over expecting a different result.

It was time for  a new path. A fresh one. One where my tires have never gone before. I admit, at first it’s scary when you do something new. I don’t mean just a new diet. I’m talking about changing the BEHAVIORS while you’re dieting. I’m talking about the inside work, getting to the core, thinking it through. I journalled. I talked it out with friends who were also in my weight loss group. I read self-help books. I looked at my current habits and how they were feeding into the weight gain.
Some of them were:
– Expecting other people to notice and  validate my weight loss and disappointed when they didn’t…so I’d give up.
– Revolving my special events, Friday nights, holidays, social times around FOOD instead of around people.
– Tracking my food after I ate it and scolding myself and beating myself up for the AFTER effect of eating
– Rewarding myself with food when I had a good weigh in
– Relying on restaurants and outside sources to cater to my food needs when I was on the road and so frustrated when they couldn’t that I’d have an excuse to give up
– Relying on other people to keep me on my program and blaming them when I’d fall off the wagon
– Talking negatively to myself and calling it “just kidding”, referring to myself as “Fat ass”, “The fat lady”, and other derogatory terms on a daily basis.
– Letting tradition and other people dictate my plans for holidays which would involve food
– Letting the demons from the past, voices from the past and present from OTHER people convince me that I couldn’t do this.

These kept me in the ruts. It was time to throw some solid stones in the ruts and climb out. It was time for a new beginning of a new path. My new habits that I learned were:
– Finding a plan that was easy for me to sustain and was also healthy. I choose Options by Kim Bensen and have been doing it since January, 2011 and I don’t see doing anything else. It’s easy. It’s healthy.
– Preplanning my day’s food so that I was prepared.

– Knowing how to adapt if my plans change for the day. A good soldier knows how to adapt and let’s face it. This is a war at times! Keep calm and carry on. We will make a mistake, but we are beautifully human. Nothing good comes of anger, losing control or giving up. Keep calm and carry on.

– Positive self talk. Catching myself when I said ANYTHING derogatory even if I disguised it as a “joke”. I tell myself to stop it and look in the mirror. Yes, look in the mirror and say something NICE to myself. It’s a habit I do every day now. Start the day with “Hello, Sweetie.” A salutation with a term of endearment. End the day with a good night hug, a blown kiss in the mirror, an affirmation.  Someone else might look at it and say I have a big ego, I’m “cocky” or whatever. I look at it this way. I AM MY OWN BEST FRIEND. If I give up on myself, there is nobody else in that corner. NOBODY. The rest of my friends are the cherry on life’s sundae….(yeah, there I go with food references)..but I HAVE TO LIKE MYSELF FIRST. How are we to keep friends, relationships, etc… if we can’t even have a good one with ourselves?

–  Which leads me into the WHY’s of weight loss and DOING IT FOR ME. Not some guy. Not my kids. Not my weight loss leader. Not my parents. Not that guy from high school that never asked me out. Not ANYTHING OR ANYONE else except me. My ex-husband, during an argument, made me realize I was losing weight for attention and approval. Looking back on it, he was right. I realized I had to only have my OWN approval and acceptance. Except for my weight loss group, I had very little support around me. But I did it. You can too.

– Stop blaming the demons from the past. Stop looking in the rear view mirror like I wrote about over a year ago.  Most times, we can’t help what happens in our past. BUT, this is the present. Today. We CAN change today. We just have to WANT TO and stop playing the stupid blame game. Take ownership, grab control of our life and change it.

–NO MORE FOOD REWARDS. When I was over 300 pounds, I said to someone, ‘Once I hit the 100 pounds lost mark I’m going to sit down to a big plate of onion rings from Red Robin and gorge myself.” And she looked at me and said, “Why would you do that? After all that hard work? If you had enough money, would you spray paint graffiti on the Mona Lisa…just because simply –  you could?” She was right. The more I thought about it, she was SO right. I looked at her in that moment of clarity and I would have kissed her if I could, but I was looking in the mirror. I was having a journaling self talk session with myself and that epiphany came from it. It was at that moment I said NO MORE FOOD REWARDS. I still haven’t eaten a Red Robin onion ring in 2 years and that was my “thing”, my food of all foods.

– Packing food when I hit the road. I don’t care if it’s for the weekend or an afternoon shopping. I usually have food in the car and at the very least water. Or I know where I can eat that will be safe. And all else fails…I hit a local grocery store and keep it simple. Check out my blogs on road tripping… it’s easier than you think!
http://myweigh2onederland.com/2011/11/21/watch-out-im-packin/
http://myweigh2onederland.com/2011/11/15/a-roadtrip-through-onederland/
http://myweigh2onederland.com/2012/05/15/roadtripping-eating-out-and-about/
http://myweigh2onederland.com/2012/05/10/pams-roadtrippin-ever-evolvin-food-packin-list/
http://myweigh2onederland.com/2012/05/09/pams-roadtrip-kisses-in-onederland/

Most of all, I want you to realize how awesome and powerful you really are! You are Wonder Woman. You are Iron Man. You are the beautiful love-child when they got together! You CAN do this! You gotta believe in the power of YOU. I want you to high-five yourself and laugh outloud and greet yourself when you look in the mirror. You’re a rockstar! Don’t think that other people are ANY better than YOU!

Take your journey on some new paths and you’ll end up in new territory and THAT’S when you end up in ONEderland!
I’m all about sharin’ the love! Feel free to share it, pin it, poke it, throw it to the wind and see who catches it! But feel free to share this with anyone that needs some encouragement. Catch me online at pamkaelin.com where I have all kinds of stuff including my recipes and videos and check out my Facebook page And please, I encourage you to check out my friend Kim’s site and program at kimbensen.com  It really changed my life for the better and we’d love to see you there sometime!

Accepting My Reality … on MY Terms

I will never forget a cold wintery night in January of 1984. I don’t remember the exact date but… as usual… I had a lot going on.  I was 3 months pregnant, one step away from being homeless again and living with my unemployed, cheating boyfriend. Yay, me. I was coming home from work and was riding the public bus (by the way, that pic is NOT what I looked like..but hey, that’s how I felt I looked) . It wasn’t the best of times, but in my mind it wasn’t the worst of times either. I was reminding myself that because I was tired and a little depressed at my life. I tried to think of the things going RIGHT instead of the many things I was doing wrong. I weakly smiled as the bus came to a stop. I got off at the intersection of Main and Broad Streets in Lansdale, Pennsylvania right in front of the Hotel Tremont (yes, that is a pic of how it looked)…when there WAS a hotel there. I remember walking down the steps from the bus and there was black ice waiting for me and I was the first passenger getting off. I stepped onto it and immediately fell down to the ground.

I heard a crunch.

I knew it wasn’t good, but I never IMAGINED what was to follow.

My boyfriend was waiting for me and helped me up. I said something was wrong with my foot and I tried walking on it. Bad move. I looked down and my foot was pointing out to the side in an ugly unnatural angle from my body.

My life went from “eh, not the greatest” to…”You’ve GOT to be kidding me.”

I ended up in the hospital…with no insurance, not working, pregnant and about to have my whole ankle reconstructed with screws. I did a real job on it because of being stubborn and trying to walk on it. Long story short, after a long week and a half in the hospital, (and oh GOD, I hate hospitals!), I had a long road ahead of me.  My doctor sat with me in the hospital and gave me a warning. He told me the damage was pretty bad and he could fix it…but I’d always have a walker or at least a cane for the rest of my life.

I remember looking at him and saying that wasn’t acceptable. He snickered. I said, “No, you don’t understand. I’m going to be a mother. I don’t have TIME to use a walker or cane!” He patted me and told I needed to accept my reality.

I was saying “Ain’t nobody got time for that” long before that video came out!

I knew my reality.
Nobody else could do it for me. I knew what I had to do. And I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

After my operation and a few sessions of physical therapy, I got my crutches and made decisions. I moved back in with my parents. Boyfriend gone. And I got ready to take on delivering a baby and going forward as a single mother. By myself, on my crutches. 300 pounds, pregnant…and a bum ankle.

My son, Mike was born that June while I was still on crutches (that, my friends, is a whole other story for another time). I soon graduated to a walker and a cane for getting around. I practiced walking constantly. I went to a follow-up appointment. Dr. Spellman told me not to get too sure of myself and to be prepared to use that cane from now on. Again, I told him that was unacceptable.

While my own son was learning to walk around 7 months old, I was finally walking almost limp-free without a cane, walker or crutches. I did it.  I went back to that doctor’s office one afternoon with my toddler son in tow and wanted to show that doctor I did it. Of course, he didn’t have time (it wasn’t an appointment) and I was asked to leave. (yeah, I got loud)  It didn’t matter that I couldn’t show him, I knew it. But I triumphed. I didn’t care how many diplomas, certificates or other paper he had on his wall. For as far as I was concerned, they were as useless as toilet paper in his opinion on my ability to walk. I didn’t care WHO told me I wasn’t going to walk unaided. I was walking…and even more.

Today, my leg isn’t perfect. I still have the scars on each side and it occasionally gives me problems when I over do it. I work with it. I don’t mope about it. I now wear an embolism stocking to keep swelling down. It’s no biggie, it’s just something to keep going forward with less problems. I keep it in mind, but for the most part it doesn’t hold me back.

I’m reminded of all this because it’s been 6 months since I hit my weight loss goal.  I still find it hard to believe and say that at times. People tried telling me that I could never do it. Medical people tried telling me that the odds were against me. I didn’t care. Time was ticking for me. I needed to fix myself. I wasn’t taking NO for an answer anymore. Family told me I’d never do it. My stubborn kicked in once again.  I still have the memories and scar tissue of what it was like to live fat. The painful memories, the physical scars such as stretch marks.  I will always have that. I can either dwell in those memories or go forward. I keep them in mind, but they don’t hold me back. I push forward… through the DIScomfort zones, into new territories, new horizons. I have my daily precautions of my new life… I plan out my food in my plan… I always will. Just like I wear my stocking for my ankle. (a stocking every day beats a cane everyday!)

I still have my screws from my ankle. Every so often I dig them out when I need inspiration.

They said I couldn’t….and I did.  It wasn’t the first time, …it won’t be the last!

Sometimes we let others’ opinions get in the way of our goals. We don’t value our own opinion for one reason or another. We need to realize that the most important voice we need to believe is within OURSELVES. We accept THEIR reality for us instead of creating our own.

There’s a bunch of reasons we trust others – because they’re older, more educated, have that paper on the wall that says THEY should know, etc.  What would WE know? We DO know at times, we just don’t realize it.  We need to have more faith in our OWN decisions.

I want you to pursue your weight loss goals with the same tenacity. Don’t let others people’s opinions… no matter how “smart” they want you to believe they are…affect you. YOU believe you can do this and you WILL! Now go preplan and ROCK this day!!!

And that last picture IS what my ankle looks like today…with the screws that were used to reconstruct it. I have a long scar on each side of my ankle. It reminds me where I came from. How bad my life was ‘screwed’ up…and I came back and KICKED ITS ASS.

You can too.

Hey, if this post helped you out, share it with a friend, pin it, post it in Facebook, tweet, chirp…do what you do!

Cleaning Out The Emotional Pantry

One of the biggest trends and buzz words that I’ve seen in the dieting world in the past couple years is the concept of “clean eating”. Now… everyone seems to have their own conception of it and I’m not sure there’s a clear definition of it. But BASICALLY it’s taking food down to NON-processed, natural, healthy, whole food. Getting away from the JUNK, the ARTIFICIAL and the vitamin LEACHING, over processed, chemical-laced, nutrient-stripped and “hidden ingredient” added GARBAGE. And going clean and lean.

It’s a pretty good concept and there’s tons of info out there on it regarding food and how to do it.

Now, there’s several types of hunger out there. Physical hunger, head hunger and EMOTIONAL hunger.

The physical hunger we feed with real food. When we feed our physical hunger with good, clean, wholesome food in amounts that our bodies REQUIRE (as opposed to crave), we can see positive results with our bodies. We see pounds reducing, muscles toning and strengthening, illnesses minimizing, minds thinking clearer.

Head hunger is a little trickier. I’m not going to go into this much because this deserves its own topic another time. But it’s when we’re not really physically hungry but we THINK we are. Such as in boredom, routines, bad habits (such as always having popcorn to watch a movie, or always eating dessert with dinner, or a commercial comes on television and we look for food).

But let’s look at something we don’t talk about often. EMOTIONAL hunger. That craving for approval or compliments. That starving we have for a better life or happiness. That nagging feeling deep inside us for the relationship or job we either don’t have or it’s not quite what we want. Money problems. Anxieties. Depression. Not being able to stick up for ourselves.  Lack of self-esteem.  A horrible secret we’re hiding from the world. There’s many, many causes of this insatiable hunger.

We tend to feed that emotional hunger with excessive worry, negative thoughts, sabotage. And even after we’ve gone back for seconds and thirds at the buffet of beating ourselves up, we put ourselves in situations, conversations and relationships that reinforce this negative behavior at times. We stockpile a catalog of insults, past memories of pain, and reels and reels of mental video that we play over and over when we want to feel kicked. We engage people that we know are going to upset us and we allow them to make us feel less than worthy.

Why on earth do we do this?  We all have our issues. I found it comes down to this…

Even if you’re following the greatest diet in the world for your food on a daily basis – you gotta clean out that mind pantry of the mental junk food! That’s how I look at it.

It’s those over-processed memories of insults that we play over and over. It’s the artificial intentions and reading into how people look at us, talk to us, their tone, etc. It’s how we double-dip ourselves into bad relationships that we KNOW are bad, but it’s SOMEONE and it’s SOME attention. It’s the nutrient-stripped situations we purposely put ourselves into that put us in a bad frame of mind that “make” us….

Go eat.

You know how it happens. Let’s look at the most recent events. Christmas. For some people, it can be one of the most stressful holidays. Oh, trust me, there’s some people I don’t even want to look at on Christmas let alone any other calendar day. But on Christmas, everyone plays nice. You’re the jerk if you don’t. So you have to put on the smile. Then there’s the relative who verbally pokes at you or insults you. You hold it in. You smile. You’re asked why you’re still single. Or why you’re not pregnant yet. Or where’s your unemployed spouse and why do you think they can’t find a job? Or what about that kid of yours in rehab, how did that happen? You smile, you repress it. You hold it together. Then you go home and you’re dislodging your jaw in front of the refrigerator and pouring the contents down your throat. You’re sobbing because you can’t stop eating. And why are you eating non-stop? I’m not even sure why I do it when I binge.

When I binge on crunchy food during stressful times, I sometimes think it’s because I want to drown out those horrible insults I’m hearing over and over inside my head. But you know what…your mind will play them longer than you can eat. I’ve eaten myself to the point of vomiting, while sobbing and unable to stop. All because I allowed someone to upset me.

Yes…I ALLOWED them to upset me. We ALLOW others’ drama and stress to affect us. Drama is contagious. Nothing says lovin’ like freaking out. It’s how we show people we care. Or at least that’s how they perceive it at times. I have seen it whether  it’s co-workers, family or friends and they’re engaging me in debate. Their voices are going higher and louder and the emotions are escalating. If I’m keeping my cool, I’ve had it screamed at me, “You don’t even care or you’d be as upset as I am.” Well, I learned a long time ago that nothing good comes from anger or being upset.

You can’t think. You can’t focus. You get so wrapped up in the OMG moment that you go straight to worse case scenario in your brain. And it’s not worth it.

Let’s clean out the mental pantry.

FIRST – Throw away all the negative self-talk and name calling that you do to yourself. It’s junk food for your esteem, pure and simple.

SECOND – Stop purposely throwing yourself into situations where people are going to upset you. On holidays, I visit those houses where I HAVE to, for a short amount of time. It doesn’t have to be hours on end. Just enough to say I visited and it’s done. And then I don’t dwell on the negativity that did transpire. Stick up for yourself. Learn to SAY NO. Give yourself permission to be nice to YOURSELF. Make YOURSELF a priority.

THIRD –  Journaling – when we come out of the “high” or “drunkenness” of a emotional binge, step back.  Start a journal entry with “I ate today because…” and just start writing. Get it out. Write until you just can’t write anymore and don’t correct your grammar. Just let the heart pour out. SEE it on paper. You think it’s easy? Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. When it’s particularly painful, it can be hard to write those words out. It’s admitting those core things that upset us and seeing those words on paper such as “I really hate my spouse when they…” or “I just wish I’d never wake up so I could get away from all this”. Just because we don’t SAY these things out loud in the “real world” doesn’t mean we’re not thinking them. And our THOUGHTS feed our EMOTIONS and manifest in how we treat our bodies. Journaling cleans out the emotional pantry. It’s those rancid thoughts that have been left to sit on the shelf and go bad past their expiration. Journaling throws these thoughts into a sort of trashcan. You don’t have to go back and read it later. You can burn it, like I know some people do. Or just put it away. It doesn’t even have to be a fancy journal. Even your computer or a scrap of a tablet.

FOURTH – Start looking in the mirror and talking to yourself with positive self-talk. YES, it feels silly and YES it works!

FIFTH – Keep in mind that not everyone is going to like you. Everyone has a free will and has their own opinions. It doesn’t mean they are right or wrong but they are different. It’s what makes this world diverse and wonderful. If everyone was the same…it’d be rather boring, don’t you think? Accept that some people just won’t like you and they will try to make you feel bad. Don’t matter.

SIXTH – No matter what, be your own best friend. Treat yourself in the same way that you would treat your BFF. Be nice. Compliment yourself. Pep talk yourself. (Again, look in the mirror) Be in your corner. Don’t do things to impress others so much as YOURSELF. Don’t diet to make someone ELSE proud…do it to make YOURSELF proud!

SEVENTH – Fill your mental pantry with the beautiful memories of everything. No matter how bad a situation is, there’s ALWAYS something good that came as a result. Focus on the positives, or the humor of a situation. Believe me, I can find humor in almost ANYTHING and I’ve had a LOT of stuff happen to me! Stockpile the nice words and compliments that are given to you along the way.

Stop living in the past memories of pain with the long overdue expiration dates. They’re DONE. Today is worth living NOW.

Stop dwelling in the OMG of a situation and live in the WOW of now.

When you get to the core of WHY you binge or starve, I have found that it’s so much easier to stay on your program, lose your weight and stay at your goal weight. Attack the core issues of your eating! It’s like operating on the tumor that’s giving you a headache instead of just taking aspirin all the time to take away the pain.

That’s my pep talk today… go clean out those pantries and start tomorrow anew!

My Biggest Weight Loss Tip

Today’s blog post is guaranteed to do one of the following:
Make you think
Piss you off
Motivate you
Change your mind
Or confirm what you’re already doing

….and I’m good with that.

There’s a scary vibe out there in weight loss and it’s a recurring theme for me. And people don’t like to hear it.

Who are you losing weight for?
And if you’re at maintenance… who are you maintaining for?

Here’s the common list of answers I hear:

My boy/girlfriend, spouse, significant other
to be more attractive to GET a significant other I haven’t met yet
to get back at all those people who made fun of me
for my family or my kids
to be accepted or approved by the “in” crowd
so I don’t disappoint my mentor/role model who got me here
for you, Pam – because I want you to be proud of me.

And every now and again, I hear the golden nugget..the response I’m looking for
When someone looks at me and says, “Me, of course.”

People come and go in our lives.
Let me repeat that….

PEOPLE COME AND GO IN OUR LIVES.

Oh, I’ve had people get in my face in regard to this issue. They get loud, mad and nasty when I go over this topic. I’ve had talks interrupted when I tried to get into this topic.  It touches a nerve. It’s too close to the bone.  Some people don’t want to confront this issue. Why don’t they want to address this???

Because here’s the consequences of that thinking:

What happens when that significant other leaves you in some way…either through life or via death? Are you going to stop and gain it all back?
What about those people who you are trying to retaliate for all that torture from the past? Do you think they really care? Do they really devote the daily attention YOU give THEM? Stop it.
Quite honestly, I won’t be around forever. I will leave this world at some point. What happens if I get hit by a bus tomorrow? Are you going to stop and gain your weight back? NO, of COURSE NOT! (You aren’t, right?)

The only one we are guaranteed to be stuck with forever, the only one that we have to impress for the rest of our lives is OURSELVES. Even when we are totally ALONE, we still have to be around OURSELVES! And the only ones we should care about who approves and acknowledges our weight losses is OURSELVES!

Remember that.

You ARE worthy.
You ARE that important.
It is NOT selfish.

My first video on YouTube addressed this very subject and it’s worth watching if you’ve never seen it before (and it’s worth a re-watch if you have)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U27lNCqKCk8

It’s a painful lesson, but it’s the most valuable lesson I can ever share with you. It’s what got me to goal, it’s what keeps me at goal. Accountability is great. I love talking to you, being friends with you and knowing you. But you have to lose this for YOU, my friend. You’re a beautiful person that deserves this!

That’s your thought for the day.

You HAVE the power.
You CAN DO THIS!
You just gotta BELIEVE in yourself!

Change your mind, change your life!
If you liked what you read – feel free to share it about via Facebook, Pinterest and all those lovely ways including email and such. Join me on the Facebook page so we can motivate each other on a daily basis!

Thanksgiving…My Way.

Well, here it is again. Thanksgiving. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote about Thanksgiving in my blogpost last year called Taking the Gobble Out of Thanksgiving http://myweigh2onederland.com/2011/11/20/taking-the-gobble-out-of-thanksgiving/

In fact, I look back at it in wonder and think… really, has it only been a year? I wrote a line in there that said my life is filled with craziness and busy-ness. (chuckle)… yes, now more than ever it seems. (sigh)

It also seems that here in America, we have this NEED to devote whole days around food. Especially Thanksgiving. While other holidays like Christmas have a central theme that food plays into, Thanksgiving is simply a food-fest. There’s no other purpose! This is supposed to be a feast of gratitude and I guess it started out as a harvest celebration in the early days of America.

Quite frankly, the only way most of us are “harvesting” is by standing in line at the check-out at the grocery store after we’ve knocked over 3 old ladies, a soccer mom and some guy in a motorized scooter on our way to get the biggest, fattest turkey they’ve put on sale.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve cashed in at the store all those free rewards to get my free turkey breast too. But this year, I really am playing it differently. I’m going to kick back and defrag, recharge, relax, organize, write and get into what I want to do. And it’s going to feel exhilaratingly nice…hopefully.

People can’t handle it when you want to get away from the food on Thanksgiving. Something must be “wrong” with you. Are you ok, are you feeling well, are you depressed, what’s wrong, we’re worried about you, you mustn’t be alone, you must come to dinner, you must be around people. I realize it’s all done with the best of intentions, but… I am going to truly enjoy the quiet.

It made me think, once again, about we turn a whole day into an event centered around food as though it’s a sport or this huge competition. We spend the days before Thanksgiving gathering our ingredients like the coach of this inanimate team who’s out to score the ultimate culinary touchdown. Some people will order foods through the Internet and on shopping channels. They acquire that “gotta have” ingredient to make the day memorable. They spend hours prepping and cooking and creating.  In my case, I spend the day making the kitchen look like it’s been in a food fight only to sit down with the family and have it be basically annihilated within about ten minutes. Then there’s round two with seconds, or thirds or more. Then there’s the dessert tray with Grandma’s pies and those interesting little cookies that Auntie Jane will never disclose how they’re made although we beg her year after year and ice cream. In some houses there’s cocktails, glasses of wine, beer and other beverages. It makes me almost sick to the stomach to think about it…because I’ve eaten myself privately sick other years. Gone back for seconds when nobody’s looking, shoved an extra roll in my mouth when I went to the buffet table when nobody else was standing there.

There’s no RULE that says I have to participate in this. It’s one of the few days of the year I don’t have to work and I should be able to enjoy it the way I see fit. My daughter is with her father, my son has some odd jobs to attend to and I don’t have a “better half” to impress with my culinary skills.

My son and I will do what we want to do and cap it off with a modest dinner out at the Asian buffet he likes so he can get his crab leg addiction fed.

I eat turkey throughout the year. I eat crustless pumpkin pie throughout the year. I don’t devote certain foods to one day a year or one season a year. Maybe that’s how I can take the gobble out of my Thanksgiving pretty easily. If we have a food issue, let’s not feel obligated to court that vampire. There’s no crime in finding something different to do for the day that makes us feel relaxed or alive. A concert. A movie. A walk through a botanical garden (we did that for Christmas last year). A project we haven’t had time to get into. Time for US. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I do realize it’s inescapable for some of us. There’s many ways to minimize damage when you must be exposed to “the dinner” (read my blog from last year for some tips). But just remember… there’s no rule or law that says we must participate in this.

My mother almost insisted I spend Thanksgiving with them this year. Now, you have to understand. I live 2 doors down the street from my parents and I work with my parents almost every day of the year. I see them every day. One day is NOT going to kill them that I have time to myself. I found my voice this year and said, “No. I really don’t want to be around the food all day and I have things I want to do.” It felt…. good. Let me tell ya, my mother asked me more than once or twice and it was becoming a sore subject for the past month. But I stuck to my guns. She said, “You need to be around people.” When I looked her in the eye and said, “Mom, I’m around people every every day. I need a break.” She finally got it. She didn’t like it. But she realized I’m not Howard Hughes (I sure as crap don’t have his money) and I’m not sitting in the dark growing my nails to ungodly lengths and getting crazy. I simply need some refueling that doesn’t involve food.

Last year, at Thanksgiving, I wasn’t at goal yet. I prepped food and took it with me to someone else’s house and weighed and measured everything. If I was doing a big dinner… I would still be doing that. It never STOPS. These habits you are forging now to LOSE weight do not instantly stop once you reach goal. Please remember that. Goal is simply a turn down another street in our journey. It’s NOT the final stop. Do I feel it’s easier? Yes. Not everyone feels that way. But the more you stick to your guns now while you’re losing weight and make those habits rock solid, it’s easier. Our diet, our lifestyle is NOT a punishment. On Thanksgiving, this day of thanks and gratefulness… be thankful you took the time to get your health back. It’s worth it.

Find your voice. Be brave. Write your own story, don’t let the world control you. Don’t let anyone tell you what you MUST eat on a particular day of the year. Don’t let the world bully you. Be happy in your journey. When you lose weight, you tend to find YOURSELF… your voice, your style, your personality. Not everyone will like it, but you aren’t put on this planet to please everyone…just yourself.

Weighing Our Words Again

One of my first blog posts was called Weighing Our Words

I talked about how we spoke in regard to ourselves; our body types, our size, our beauty or self-imposed lack of it. I talked about how others hear our words and it affects their behaviors, how they speak and what they eat….but I never addressed the biggest issue.

How we talk about FOOD.

You know… FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

Have you ever really looked at your Foodese, your foodspeak, your language of food?

How many times have you said:

1. “I just LOVE  <insert food here> .”
2. “You can’t go to <insert place here> and NOT have the <insert really good food here> …you just CAN’T!”
3. “Grandma’s cheesecake IS TO DIE FOR.”
4. “That cookie is calling my name.”
5. “It jumped into my mouth and I ate it before I knew it.”

….and let’s not even talk about the movie “American Pie”…. (‘nuf said)

In our house, my daughter, Katie can tell you, we’ve corrected our language.

Let’s look at
#1. Love. That has got to be the most abused word. And people have even taken the word love and reduced it to a symbol. The heart. They “heart” this and that. People and things. Actions and everything. Sad. You love PEOPLE, not things, or actions, or rock bands, or restaurants …or food. Watch how many times you hear that phrase “I love ______” and see how many times it’s about a PERSON and how many times it is not. When we say we LOVE a food item, we have given it the same role as a person. But food cannot love us back. Food will never reciprocate those feelings.

Number 2. This is a myth. “You cannot go to X without eating Y.” It’s fuzzy math that isn’t true. I live a couple hours away from Hershey, PA. When I was married, this was a “pilgrimage” because my husband went to school in Hershey, actually at the Milton Hershey School for orphans. So this was a place we went often. Yes, the lamp posts have huge Hershey kisses on them. Yes, the town is painted in more shades of chocolate than I knew existed and I’ve been through Chocolate World so many times I could guide the tour. But I can go into a town like Hershey and not buy an ounce of chocolate (or lick a lamp post). Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy chocolate, but food is not the focus of my life anymore. When we went to Hershey, it was to meet up with people and enjoy doing things…not sit and eat chocolate. I can do THAT at home. A bigger challenge, for me, is going to Red Robin and not eating the tower of onion rings. I used to devour those things like a mother lion on an antelope! Not kidding. But I can now go to that restaurant and have a salad (although they don’t offer much else I choose to eat now) without dressing (I bring my own) and I’m good.

Number 3. Let’s just settle something here. No food is worth DYING for…not even Grandma’s cheesecake. Seriously. If you’re going to use that phrase of being a true martyr, would you do it for FOOD? I can understand dying for Faith. Dying for kids, spouse, loved ones. Jumping in front of a car to save someone you love. But for food? If you’re going to run in the street because there’s an icecream cone about to get hit by a car…please… get professional help.

Number 4. There is no food that calls your name. It reminds me of those videos on YouTube of the Annoying Orange sitting there saying “Hey, Apple. Hey, Apple.” I’m sorry, you’d have to see it to believe it. My guilty pleasure. Again, we’re giving food this property it doesn’t have. It’s not a person, it can’t talk and we can’t love it. It cannot talk to you. It’s sitting there minding its own business while your brain is imagining it’s calling out to you. Hide it, put it away, throw it away, give it away, flush it, do whatever you have to do. The only thing REMOTELY close to food talking to you is the Chiquita stickers on the bananas…which I do love to stick on various parts of my body as I grocery shop.

Number 5. There is no food that’s literally going to run on its little legs and crawl into your mouth unless you’re eating bugs and creepy crawlies on the show Survivor. Again, we’re taking away our own responsibility and transferring it onto the food. It’s the food’s “fault”. We didn’t do it. We were just minding our own business and the darn food literally jumped right into our mouth and demanded to be eaten. Right now! Without chewing!

Let’s start minding our P’s and Q’s with how we TALK about our food.

We are so eager to give food human qualities. Certain people won’t eat anything that “has a face”… but you’ll let it speak to you? To give it this POWER that it simply does not have! Maybe it’s because it takes away the responsibility of saying we stumbled and ate something. We need to start looking at our food quite honestly and taking away all those “magical” abilities we gave it.

Food is nutrition.
Food is fuel.
Food is NOT an event.
Food is NOT a person.
It won’t love us back.
It cannot convey emotion or confirm our “love” for it.
It won’t do ANYTHING for us except sustain us and give us nutrients.
It is not magic.
It cannot talk to us, scream at us, condemn us or compliment us.
It gets in our mouth by our little fingers and no other way (unless you’re faceplanting into your plate)

Let’s start changing the way we talk about food.
Start becoming aware of how we talk about our food.
Proper nutrition helps us think better, helps us focus.
Let’s change our minds for the better.

Change your mind…change your life.

I Can’t “Go Mama Hamster” etc etc.

I’m having one of “those days” which started with my checking account plummeting into the red and bouncing checks like beach balls at a rave. Thank goodness it’s Friday and I’m at least getting a paycheck to shove in there. While I’m on the online checking bank website, my boss a.k.a. Dad is questioning me about a piece of equipment that got messed up yesterday under my watch. I’m on my failing iPhone that needs replacing, texting my son that I’m about ready to go “Mama Hamster” on him and eat him whole because of a situation… I wasn’t joking. At the same time, my father is confirming that I will, indeed, be at my other job at his store to be on hand for the dance party the store is hosting with dueling DJ’s, dueling bartenders (non-alcoholic drinks)… I can tell already this is going to be a long, grueling day from Hell and the last thing I want to do is be dancing tonight.

Oh, sign me up, Dad. I’m just so in the mood to work 8 hours selling industrial metals, make sure the landscaping is getting done and then… go sell jewelry and DANCE in my spare time with customers for another 6 hours. No, I’m not selling dances for a dime, but I’m seriously considering it to pay for a replacement iPhone!

I have 8 levels of Dante’s Inferno breaking loose all around me and the more I’m discussing it with my father, I can feel my eyes welling up and my voice starting to crack. I’m stressed. My personal, business and private worlds are all on a collision course to smack right into my face…and my stomach.

I’m tired already just thinking about it.

And I need to eat something.

What?

Did I just say that?

No, I just need to chew something, what do I have here?

I have a 14 hr work day today which means I have ALL MY FOOD packed WITH me for the day. I’m a stress eater. I’m like a Labrador Retriever with a weekend’s bowl of chow in front of me. If it’s there and visible…I just might eat it. So I took the insulated bag, put it in my car. My lunch and any daytime snacks are OUT IN THE CAR, not at my fingertips.

Yes, even with this garbage breaking loose, I’m able to step back and say, “Hey, you know, it’s just not healthy for this food to be sitting this close to me.” I’m not looking for a pat on the back. I want you to recognize those days and those circumstances in your own lives.

It’s easy to eat my whole day’s worth of calories right here and now and sit here with a stomach ache, crying about my messed up checkbook, broken equipment, bitchy customers, long work hours etc. etc. yadda. Yadda freaking. Yadda. Then 5:00 is going to roll around when I’m at the jewelry store and I’m going to get hungry again. I won’t have my allotted food and I’ll end up hitting the convenience store up the street or one of the bistro’s in town…which are NOT… good options (sorry guys, but you’re not!) So the choice is mine.

I can get my “food bowl” put away and out of view and at least get ONE aspect of this stupid day under control.  I did that. And I texted my girlfriend in Jersey that always makes me feel better.Then I put some of my favorite dance music in my ear (Deadmau5) and it helped ease the stress. Figured out the checkbook, got the bank and those nasty overdraft charges taken care of…and now it’s just a matter of keeping a smile and controlling what I can. I can’t control these insane working hours

I still have my dinner intact for over at my other job.

I haven’t eaten my son in a fit of fury… because quite frankly it would be consuming far too many calories and Xchanges.

And I’m starting to smile.

So later, I will maybe even feel like dancing. And I bet I will. And I might even post pics on the Facebook page for the blog to prove my point.

See?  It’s all about taking control of a crappy day and turning it around. We just gotta WANT to take control instead of letting it take control of us.

There are so many things we can’t control…I’ve been through every emotion today and I haven’t had a period in 7 years… but there are some thing we can.

Focus on the things we CAN control and the rest will follow.

And please… don’t email me the caloric content of a young man… I don’t want to have to factor it in my day.

What Freddie Mercury Taught a Little Fat Girl

Today is Freddie Mercury’s birthday and he would have been 66 years old.

I was sitting here this morning trying to remember the first time I heard his dynamic vocals and discovered the musical world of Queen. It was 1974. I was about 10 years old.

I was 10 years old, an awkward, heavy girl and feeling like crud. And listening to a new song called Killer Queen by Queen. Growing up in a conservative, strictly religious family…well, it wasn’t easy. My mother removed several Queen posters of Freddie wearing his ballet tights and showing more than she cared to see. But I never looked at him in a sexual way, ever. He was the dynamic, over-the-top, showman, leader, devil-may-care, life-is-a-party-and-I’m-LIVING-it, attitude I needed and wanted so badly. I wanted TO BE Freddie Mercury. The more I listened to Queen music, I felt empowered, happier, ready to take on the world with a “who cares what the world thinks” attitude. I saved up allowances, baby sitting money and later job money to buy every Queen album as it was released in vinyl (and later in CD format). When life kicked me, music transported me away. Other kids smoked dope and drank. I listened to music (and ate, of course). But music let me go to a world where I got the support I wasn’t getting around me.

Although I never met Freddie Mercury or even had the chance to see a Queen concert in person, I learned so much that got me through my puberty and awkward teenage fat years.

In fact, I made a list, Freddie Mercury taught me:
1) Be yourself.   He never compromised. He never hid that he was gay, never pretended and never cared what anyone thought about it.

2) Bloom where you land.  Although recognized as British, he was actually of Indian descent (his real name is Farrokh Bulsara) born in Zanzibar before eventually relocating with his family into Britain and growing up there.

 
3) Put passion into your life. He loved, owned and lived his life with full uncompromising passion.

 
4) Go over the top and let the rest of the world deal with it. Need I even go into it? He was as flamboyant as Liberace with no apologies. Two quotes I have always loved of Freddie Mercury are, “I won’t be a rock star, I will be a legend.” And “I always knew I was a star And now, the rest of the world seems to agree with me.” Whether he truly believed it or not, he said it. He said it outloud and BECAME it.

 
5) No matter what life throws at you, keep a smile, the show must go on. Even though AIDS was destroying his body, and he was barely able to walk. He helped record the Queen album “Innuendo” including the song “The Show Must Go On”.

 
6) You can always recreate yourself, no matter what. From their beginnings in the late 1960’s through 1990, Freddie Mercury and Queen constantly evolved and moved forward. From ballet tights and long hair to leather jackets, short hair and his signature mustache near the end and the music…though classified as “classic rock” had a diversity that was never nailed down. Always changing, always going forward.

 
7) We are ALL champions. You’ve probably heard the song “We Are the Champions” repeatedly, through your life, at sports events and hundreds of times on the radio if you’re my age. I never tire of the song. It’s a rallying cry that isn’t sung by an egoist…but sung to inspire and bring you WITH him.

What’s this have to do with my weight loss journey? When nobody else was there for support, there was my music and Freddie. It wasn’t music full of “pity me, my life sucks” lyrics. It drove me forward, it kept me going, it helped me LIVE. And today he continues to inspire me. I don’t listen to Queen everyday…but when I do, it never fails to put a smile on my face.

Happy Birthday, Freddie Mercury

…and thank you…

for so much.

You taught me to LIVE.