I want you to envision us just sitting and chatting.  Excuse my afro; it’s a bit unruly today.  And I am still in my night clothes, I hope that’s not awkward for you.  But as we sit and talk, I want you to imagine that this conversation is taking place over several weeks, not in one sitting.  And I want you to imagine that you have told me a lot about you before this conversation is taking place.  The things that make you happy…things from your childhood…all good stuff that you remember shaping you into the woman you are today.  And then I want you to think about the some of the most prominent memories of your childhood that stick out to you instantaneously.  You don’t have to dig.  They’re just sitting there like a book on a table.  And most likely they are not positive.  Now, you’re ready to read.

Like a moth to a flame burned by the fire…

The other day I used the example of laundry as being the thing we were “all about” at the time and I used that on purpose because I wanted to make the point that it doesn’t matter what it is that we’re focusing on, it matters that we’re focused.   This is because if it wasn’t your dream that you took you down, then the fuel source that was giving it life finally burned out.  This flame could have been burning like a raging inferno since you were a kid or it could have had a fresh dose of kerosene poured on it later in life.  Regardless of when it started, it was there or you wouldn’t have been driven.  Denying you have a fuel source is futile, you have one—get over it.  The fact that you lost your mojo says that something went out.  Whether it was a tiny candle or a flame thrower is debatable, but the flame is out.  Gone.  Finito.  Zed.  Zilch.

I refer to us a lot as Type A, driven women.  I want to point out here that they are two separate things.  There are many Type A people out there who are not driven and there are many driven people who are not necessarily Type A, although, the latter is less common.  But being type A is not about a flame.  That’s personality.  Being driven, though, is about a flame and that’s what I want us to focus on.  There is something that is making you like a dog with a bone about whatever it is you want to do and if it burned out, it was not healthy.  Those that can burn for years on end without taking themselves or someone else down with them, either have a healthy fuel source or a lot of fuel to burn.  But how many of us are watching what’s going on in the world today and realizing that very few of us have a healthy fuel source?   We read of tragedy after tragedy of celebrities and every day folk self destructing because they burned themselves out.  Very few of us are pulling from a place of security when we set out to do whatever it is we want to do.

I have millions of conversations with women every week.  Seriously.  Millions.  Ok, maybe more like thousands, but that’s as low as I’m going.   I am a consummate introvert—which is hard to believe—but I am not in the least bit shy.  If you give me access to you, I will absolutely ‘go there’ and help you to find the identity of your mojo whether I am working with you or not.  Why do I tell you this?  Because what I am about to explain to you did not come from a book.  I didn’t read a good book on psychology and then come bring it to the blog.  I know what I know because I’ve been up in enough women’s butts for the past 8 years that I can now write about it.  And I only became interested in it and then convinced of it because of my own personal flame (which was a 5 alarm fire that needed 3 city fire departments to put it out—oy!) that blew out and it took all that I had to do to get it back.

There are two ways that we lose our mojo:  we kill the dream (that was yesterday) or we never really had it in the first place and we somehow discovered that in our quest for validation.  I am sure you are thinking, “You made me read all this so far to tell me that?”  Yes.  Sorry it’s not complicated.  It’s very simple.  Your drive has been fueled by something other than ‘your great discipline’.  How do I know that?  You can’t get it back.  When it comes down to it, you no longer believe in any of the reasons you had before to continue doing what you were doing.  Now, you may consciously believe, but deep down inside your inner self took a vacation to your goals.  This is why you can start a plan 35 different ways but finish it the same way:  as a fail.  You cannot muster up enough of anything to get your heart to match what your mind wants and it’s frustrating.   Self sabotage, extreme measures, rigidity, throwing in the towel, depression, jumping from plan to plan, starting a new plan every other week, vegan today—atkins tomorrow and endless excuses are symptoms of this phenomenon.   If you have ever heard yourself say, “It’s because of… that’s why I can’t… If I could just… then…”  Um…no.  You need a new mojo.  You can just [fill in the blank] all you want.  It still isn’t going to get you back to where you want to go.

Sit on this.  Think about it.  I have more…really.  And trust me when I say this, it is always something.  It’s never just because you suck or you just can’t get your act together.  And you do not need therapy.  You just need to know what it is.  Cool?  More tomorrow…woop woop!!

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My husband and I make 24 years this coming Saturday.  We have been married for almost 16 years, but we’ve been together for 24 years this Saturday.   Just to add a little to the story, we were married twice: first, by the justice of the peace in his aunt’s backyard June 23^rd, 1996 and then in a formal ceremony by our pastor at the time on March 9^th, 1997.  [Don’t ask, I’ll explain in another post at another time. Ha!]   Our second wedding was like a hometown reunion.  If you lived in our city, you were at the wedding.  It was ridiculous.  Right when the reception was in full motion and people were having a great time, the music stopped, the lights came on and everyone’s face said the same thing, “What the…??”  It was over.  Don’t know how we did it, but we totally messed up on the time of the DJ vs. the hall that we rented.  It was terrible.  We were all left wanting more.  And so it goes when you’re goal doesn’t fulfill the want you have in your gut.

There were only a handful of people here and it was awesome.  Cried through the whole thing, got the dress off the rack and delivered my Sunday newspapers that morning with him.  Those were the days.lol

There are three ways we are let down by a goal:  it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t “do it” or it isn’t what we thought it would be for us.  Out of the three, one is defeating, one is dangerous and one is depressing but all of them cause us to be aimlessly lost if not addressed properly.

When we commit to a goal, we do so not just with our minds, but we do so also with our hearts.  When I say that I am sure some of you think about integrity or finishing what we start because we believe in it and yadda, yadda, yadda.  Umm, no.  I mean the minute we commit to a goal we begin to dream about the outcome and our dreams come from the heart.  Not all of us dream in grandiose fashion so please don’t think that the dream has to be this out of control scenario of you winning American Idol or something.  The dream could be as simple as you thinking that the experience is going to be fun, or rewarding or there will be some sort of redeeming quality to it when it is all said and done.  Therefore, when the goal does not come to pass, the dream dies right there on the spot and it takes a piece of your heart with you.  This is defeating.  Or, if the dream does come to pass but it was not enough to fill that want in your heart, you want more and more and more.  This is dangerous.  Finally, if the dream does come to pass but it was not even close to what you thought it was going to be like and you leave there thinking, “What was that?” or “Why did I even want to do that?” then that is depressing.

I think the music cut out 10 min after this.  It was bad.lol  And if you hear that noise, it’s my hair piece whinnying.  I think the horse it came from wants it back. hahahaha!

How we handle each scenario depends on how deep that goal is buried in your heart and what’s the fuel source behind it.  If it is buried deep within, then it’s going to throw you off tremendously.  Getting back on track could take weeks, even months.  If it is not buried deep but the fuel source is a flame thrower (we’ll talk about this tomorrow), it will have the same effect:  devastating.  You may be asking yourself right now, “Did I have a dream?”  And you may be thinking, “I don’t remember dreaming about the outcome at all.  Not my thing.”  This line of thinking would be valid if you’re not an active day dreamer, but this does not mean that you didn’t have a dream.  Instead of trying to remember the dream, ask yourself the following questions and journal your answers:

BEFORE

• Did you have a sort of giddiness about the event that seemed almost childlike?  You may have been super motivated and organized to the nth degree.
• Did you talk about it all the time and couldn’t wait to put time to it?  Going to the gym was easy and cooking was a breeze?
• Did you tell people you were doing it for a cause?  Things like:  to prove I could do it or to “go to the next level”.
• Did you journal it or share it with others daily whether on a blog or a social network of some kind?
• Did you feel pressure to complete it?

AFTER

• Did you have a sense of emptiness after the event even if you won it or did your best ever?
• Did you even get to do the event?  If not, how did you feel?
• Did it not turn out how you wanted it to, if not, why?
• Do you feel shame, embarrassment, anger, resentment or bitterness towards the event in any capacity?

Let me tell you how this goes.  The first time you ever ask yourself these questions, you will stay strictly surface.  They will be one word answers and you most likely won’t see the need.  Or you can answer them and see the issue and because of that, now have the solution.  If either one of these things happen, get up, walk away from the table for a while and go do something mindless like watch reality TV or something.  Whatever you do, keep the mind free from real thought.  Do not be surprised if the answers start going deeper as time goes by.  When they do start coming, answer them to your best, most honest ability.  It may take you a few permutations but you will eventually get to the core.  We will put this together as to what this means soon enough.

If you do not remember a specific event that happened or you’re not exactly sure why you lost your mojo and it’s not here, hang on.  Tomorrow I talk to you about fuel sources and you’re really going to hate me then.  But I love you. J See you tomorrow.   Woop woop!!

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Emotion is a force that drives harder than a stampede of buffalo and is as secure as a tall glass of water sitting on the edge of a table…

I have wanted to do this series since the beginning of last year and have danced around the topic in a few posts since then but have never really “gone there” because this is so close to me.  Whenever I’m this close to a topic, it never really comes out the way I want because I struggle with getting the point out and making sense at the same time.  It’s like I have a conversation in my head and you’re supposed hop in at any time and figure that out. Ha!  Good luck with that.  With this series, though, I know what the hard part is going to be so why not tell you what that is beforehand so you may be prepared in case I begin to become confusing or go over your head in some way?  If you are going to successfully navigate through this series, there are 3 things you will need to recognize as you follow along all week:

There is an internal GPS device that drives us goal oriented folk, whether we acknowledge it or not.  Some of us are super aware of it and it almost seems obvious and silly to mention, sort of like, “Duh. I’m goal oriented.”  However, some of us never realize how much it is driving us until it suddenly stops working one day and then we’re left thinking, “What the heck was that?”  Everything about us operates around that GPS device.  How we treat others, how we treat ourselves, how we handle our jobs/career and even how we handle our relationships is all preprogrammed into that device that is hidden away in us somewhere way out of our view.

To be fair, the less psycho, goal oriented folk have it, too.  It’s not like they are doomed to a life of aimlessness because they are not taskmasters like us.  It’s more like they have compasses, though, or paper charts and trip-tiks than they have GPS devices.  Ours seem to be much more precise, much more focused which cause us to move with a force and speed in life that is undeniable.  This doesn’t mean that we are super successful or anything because that is not a prerequisite.  It means that if we’re hanging laundry somewhere, we’re hanging laundry somewhere.  It will be done efficiently, with fervor, purpose and zeal.  We may measure out the space or research the best place to hang our laundry.  We may hang more laundry at one time than the average woman would ever hang.  Or we work on several techniques to hang the laundry, visiting other laundromats to make sure we were doing a good job.    Then we move on to hanging laundry while folding at the same time, too.  Then we master folding.  Then we master hanging and folding in several different formats making sure that we stay current in both the hanging world and the folding world.  THEN we want people to know that we are the masters of the hanging world, the folding world *and* the hanging and folding world together.   Most importantly, we want to be recognized for it.  Make no mistake about that.  It’s not enough to do this or learn about it; someone somewhere needs to recognize it.

I use laundry as an example on purpose because the mode in which you burned yourself out has nothing to do with the fact that you burned yourself out.  You may be tempted to blow off this whole series as not pertaining to you if I used an athlete as an example and you don’t feel athletic at all.  Or if I used dieting as an example, you may think that that wasn’t what kept you from running that race so this is about someone other than you because you are the athlete.  I want to make sure I emphasize that it doesn’t matter what you were driven about or whether or not you accomplished your goal, what matters is that your drive is gone.  The GPS signal went dead and now you have no idea where you are going because you have no compass of your own, no paper map to fall back on and no drive to make it happen.

Recognition #1: It’s not about {XYZ}, it’s about my GPS device.  And the question is, “Why did it burn out?”

Once we have lost our way, the chaos and mayhem that follows can be overwhelming:  up and down eating, in and out of the gym, no type of normalcy in our eating or exercising, endless guilt, confusion, questioning our worth, countless attempts to get going again only to have them end in failure.  Each time we try to go back to where we left off but fail to make it happen, we sink deeper into a pit that may show up as anger, depression, resentment or passivity.  It’s either we’re mad at the world, beaten down by the world, sticking our middle finger up at the world or we walk away from the world.  No matter what, we cannot get back who we once were no matter how hard we try.

Recognition #2: No matter what I do, the woman who once was, is now gone and I have to own that.  However, that’s not a bad thing.

It is at this point that all of our stories begin to go in different directions.  Whether we choose to be introspective or stay more on the surface and become more task driven, the journey we take is ours and ours alone.  For me, I went so deep inside that I almost got stuck in my colon for a minute there and wasn’t sure I could get out again.  It has been awesome and hard all at the same time and I want the same thing for you.  But there is work to be done and it is more than just picking another event.  There is a bit of soul searching to do and some realizations that need to be made about ourselves if we are ever to get that drive back again to the degree that was there before AND in a healthier way.  Not everything I say is going to ring true for you, but some aspect of it will.  Take what is yours, leave all else on the screen.

Recognition #3: Ok, I get it.  This series is not “my answer” but the beginning to “my process”.  Getting my drive back is directly related to the amount of digging I am willing to do.

As always, ladies, I cannot wait to hear from you.  Email me, comment below or send a carrier pigeon to my house.  Who cares.  But let me know what you’re thinking…  Cool?  Woop woop!

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I have seen my share of heart wrenching train wrecks in my time:

• The girl who thinks she’s going to lose 30 pounds and look like Heidi Klum when she’s done, only to lose 35 pounds and realize she still looks like herself but smaller.
• The girl who trains really hard for 4 months for a marathon, only to break her foot one week out from the race.
• Tons of girls who sign up to compete because they think they are “going to the next level” only to crash and burn after their first show and walk away from diet and exercise for good.  Not a little while.  For good.

When I watch these things my heart aches.  First, I see it happening in slow motion.  No matter how much I want to spare her the hurt, I can’t.  I am powerless to her emotions and her preconceptions of how this is all going to go down so I am left to take a seat on the sidelines while she barrels head first into mayhem and chaos.  Secondly, there’s usually very little that I can do to get her motivated to do something that intensive again.  Normally, that’s not a problem but since we’re type A’ers, anything less than “all out” is not very satisfying.  So if you were training for a marathon and lost your mojo in the middle of it, me talking you into a 10k isn’t going to do much for you.  You’re over it by this time.  And lastly, the girl inevitably feels like it was something that she did wrong to cause this calamity.  That somehow she failed the ‘sisterhood of iron will’ or didn’t make it through initiation like all the rest of us did.  To be on the front lines of the death of a goal is tough and I have been doing it for years now.  Enough is enough.

I am wondering if we can have an honest talk about goals next week.  Is that possible?  We’ve talked about setting realistic ones before, how about we talk about what it takes to set them—again.  What happens when that goal dies?  How do we get back on track?  How do we pick another sport or do we pick another sport?  How do we do {fill in any daily activity} because for at least 6 months to a year we are useless to ourselves.   It may or may not be specifically about goals, I won’t know til I “go there”, but just know that we’re getting messy next week.  It’s time…

This is a big deal, ladies, and it means we have to go below the water line to figure it out.  I can’t wait; I hope you feel the same.  If there is anything in particular that you want me to cover, let me know below.   We’re diving in on Monday.  Tomorrow I explain Monday’s post on my weekly audio post.  See you then.  Woop woop!!:o)

I need to interrupt the current series on The Pill.  Normally, when I get on a topic I am like a dog with a bone and I want to finish it but this has cropped up so much in the last week, it is worthy of a post.

We need to chat about…food.  Not just the edibleness of food, but what food represents and how personal it is in our lives.  If you really want to know the power of food, take a mixed crowd of women of all ages and bring out two trays.  On one tray is a healthy appetizer that is very good for you but maybe a 7 on the scale of 1 to 10 in flavor.  On the other tray is a not-so-good-for-you appetizer but is an 11 on the scale of 1 to 10 in flavor.  The event is a high visibility event, there are at least 50 women in the room and everybody there knows at least 2 people.

Some background for you:

The room is full of different sizes of women but not inclusive of all sizes.

Also, all types of women (athletic, moms, single, married, childless—you name it) are represented.

There is no music or anything that serves as a distraction.

The average age in the room is 36 with the age span going from 28 to 46.

There’s at least a few races represented in the room.

It’s an event for an organization-type-thing which means that there’s politics and there’s a pecking order.

The appetizers are the only food served at this event.

The trays were being brought around but everyone knew what the choices were without having to see the trays.

This is fully fictitious but I want to make it as real to you as possible.

Here are some observations for you:

• There was a ton of chatter in the room before the trays came out.
• About 30% of the women were not talking with anyone, though.
• There was noticeably less chatter in the room once the trays came out.  It wasn’t silence, but it was a loud hush.
• Three women hopped on the yummy appetizer right away and were very loud and funny about it.  Jokes were flying as they were eating.  They made at least 2 self conscious remarks but kept on eating.  They looked around the whole time without looking like they were looking around and 1 of them went back for a second one.
• An even bigger group of women, say about 8 or so, attacked the healthy appetizer.  They said nothing about it. They kept talking about whatever had their attention in the first place but never mentioned the food once.
• The majority of the women abstained from either choice…until…the “captivating women” chose what they wanted.  Then the other women in the room slowly made choices to eat.
• As soon as the trays came out, at least 70% of the room began to fidget with their clothing.  Pulling down skirts, flattening out their shirts on the bellies, buttoning jackets—if you could adjust it, then it was adjusted.
• At least half of the room suddenly learned how to scope a whole room out without moving their heads.  Their eyes developed some kind of Xray/360 degree vision where they could see through the back of their head to see who was eating what and how much.  It was eerie.  Felt like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie.
• Those that ate more than one appetizer all had a remark.  Either about what they were wearing, how they were on a diet, how they hadn’t eaten all day.  Basically, qualifiers.
• Some stared at some women in pure, noticeable disdain for either their choice of appetizer or for the quantity they ate.
• A few women went around offering their friends an appetizer—the yummy one—while they themselves chose the healthy one afterwards.
• Those that were alone chose the yummy appetizer 2 to 1 to those who were engaged in conversation.
• By the end of the serving of the food, 80% of the room had one of each appetizer although it was varied as to who had which one first.  Thirteen percent had only the healthy appetizer with the other 7% having just the yummy appetizer.  No one could abstain from eating all night long.
• Over the course of the evening, at least 2 separate groups broke off and headed to the bathroom to talk about who chose what and why!!

On Friday I will finish this in my audio post.  I will tell you where I am going with this and why.  But just know:  food IS…  Do you recognize yourself in there anywhere or someone close to you?  I’d love to know below.  Back to the series tomorrow.  Woop woop!

It is 2 days before our wedding date and guess what?  We didn’t make our goal.  Our seamstress didn’t have to let the gown out any more, but we don’t look like the cover model that we thought we would and we didn’t hit our goal weight either.

Dang it!

Yes, I know…sad.  But true, nonetheless.  And we didn’t make goal in a few ways, not just on the scale, because our virtual diet is going to have a real ending as opposed to those commercials that make you think everyone is successful.  Everyone that is…except you.

Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.  Walter Anderson

I want to stress this point until I sprain a finger typing on my laptop keyboard:  realistic goals = success.  Dreams are great motivators only to the degree that the 1 size-too-small pair of pants hanging in your closet is.  In theory they are great to keep us going, but in reality they cause tremendous disappointment because they are so out of proportion to what we can expect as the outcome that nothing could satisfy our hearts at the end.  I am all for motivating quotes and rah rah shishcoombah type encouragement but only to a certain extent.  Then after that, we need to be yanked out of the clouds and have someone slap some sense into our heads.  Here are some facts:

• You will not diet into a great shape the first or second time around.  Maybe the third, though.  Even then, you will still be able to pinch something, jiggle something or point to something that you do not like because it’s not your body that is lacking, it’s your sanity that is.
• You will not maintain it without some level of work.  If you want something extraordinary, you have to put the ‘extra’ in to get it.
• The scale weight does not necessarily reflect the way your body looks.  This goes both ways.  I have seen folks excited that they hit goal weight and they look like someone beat them down with a bag of flour and I have seen women fall short by 5 pounds but be absolute stunners in the process.  Get over the number.  If it means that much to you, tape it on the scale and it will always read that and you’ll be good to go.
• Just because you “stopped eating” the junk does not mean that you will automatically begin to lose.  Where’s your sacrifice?

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.  Peter F. Drucker

We would be able to go back and see where the disconnect happened in our plan if we were 100% on it.  I’m not saying that we cheated or anything, no—we were “following” it the whole time.  But the plan we were on was a hybrid plan.  See, we all do it.  We get our plan from our coach or from whomever we charged with the responsibility of dieting us at the time and upon opening it, decided that they were no longer qualified to do the job.  What were they thinking to tell us what to eat and when?  And don’t they know that that would make us hungry or possibly even cranky so there is no way we’re going to stick with that?  And we don’t have to let them know that we know better than they do, we’ve been dieting ourselves for years.  They just learned about us yesterday.  So we’re going to eat whatever we want for meals 3 and 4, do as much cardio as necessary and lift the way that we want to lift and if it doesn’t work out….well that’s their fault.  They should know we didn’t really want a plan to get us to the goal, we wanted our own plan—the one that fictitiously works in our mind—validated.  Affirm us that we were on the right track and all we needed was for someone to tell us about some new egg whites and oatmeal that we have never heard about before so we could get on with the weight loss thing.  Sheesh.

• Either you’re in or you’re out.  Get off the fence and stop being a couch coach.
• Get over yourself.  Yes, you read a lot.  Yes, you know a thing or two about nutrition.  But objectivity is impossible when you diet yourself so you are not hiring someone who necessarily “knows” more than you or even “knows” you; you are hiring someone who is not you.
• Once you change a plan you negate the outcome.  Period.

Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.—Mark Knopfler

We’ve done everything right, according to the book and we had a very realistic goal and we still didn’t make it.  What gives?

• If you’re healthy and nothing medically stands out, you have been dieting too long.  Time for a break.
• You may have something medically going on that you are not aware of.  Only healthy people lose weight easily. Keep that in mind.
• Things you may not be aware of:  birth control, thyroid meds, food intolerances, stress, liver issues, chemicals in your diet, heavy metals in your body and the list goes on.  Depends on how your diet goes to be able to figure it out.  There will be telling signs.

That was the longest diet I have been on in years.  What was that, 7 days total?  I think I cheated at least 4 times since we started.  Shame.  Next series is on obstacle races like the Tough Mudder and such.  Not sure when that starts but it’ll be within the next few days.  Hang tight and hit me up below with questions or via my email if you like:  Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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We’re near the end of this great journey through our virtual tour of a 12 week diet but we still have yet to conquer our fears and deal with a goal that does not come to pass.  Let’s not waste time and just hop right in.

I have thought about this all week long in terms of how I was going to present fear to you.  My initial thought was to sort of pick up where I left off with ‘pressure’ and tell you about the fake voices in your head and how they control you.  However, I know that some good brain cells were set on fire with that post so I will put out those flames later on with another post when we go into the series that discusses the after effects of this diet.   What I feel that most of us lack is an understanding of how real those voices and feelings seem at the time and because of this, how much they can rob us of a healthy dieting experience.  If we can acknowledge in our hearts—not our minds—that those voices are just fear and they are not real, then we may be able to make it through this diet without making any rash, harmful decisions.  But it is the acknowledging that is the hard part.  We have such a tough veneer that most of us aren’t honest enough with ourselves to share that we have fears.  Real fears.  So real, they seem like people in a room to us.

FEAR is an acronym in the English language for “False Evidence Appearing Real”. Neale Donald Walsch

Hands down, the best weapon in war or any other kind of battle is intimidation.  Warring parties would try to convince the other side that they had an advantage in hopes of getting them to surrender without even going to battle.  In many instances it worked and a fight was avoided.  When it comes to something such as dieting, the enemy isn’t another country warring against us; the enemy is in our mind and it will stop at nothing to de-rail us from our goal.  It is real, it occupies real space in our brain and it can become so real that we could almost have a conversation with it on the couch.  Actually, we do have a conversation with it on the couch.

I want to stress this concept to the point of ad nauseam because you may fail to see its relevance and impact in your life.  When you are 7 weeks into this diet but your only 1/3 of the way to goal, it is fear who is going to remind you of that.  When you are in the gym and you suddenly feel portly compared to the week before, it is fear that is making that happen.  When you are deciding on adding extra cardio into your program when you know you shouldn’t or cut out carbs before your plan tells you to, it is fear that gives you the wherewithal to that.  Fear becomes your best friend.  He goes from being just a topic you discuss with someone you trust to a scary man with bad breath who is real, mean and standing right next to you.

As dieters, the things we fear seem so silly when we say them out loud so we keep them to ourselves and it is there that they become true villains in our minds.  They literally take on the human likeness of a 6’3” tall, large frame, ominous looking and strong male who stalks us wherever we go.  He pops up at the most inopportune times and refuses to leave us, even after we have convinced ourselves for the 20^th time that hour he is a figment of our imagination and nothing is going to happen.  He has bad breath and is happy to breathe on us any time we feel we are losing control of our present circumstances.  Thus if life begins to squeeze us emotionally through work, home life or friends, here comes fear to keep us company through that by giving us something else to worry over instead of the real issues at hand.

He makes us anxious.  He makes us get up, go to the cabinets and eat like there is no tomorrow.   He can tell us to take a not-so-good ergogenic aid because without it we will never get to where we want.  He’ll talk all day long if we let him—and we do!  We argue with him, reason with him and even shout at him if we’re alone.  He is in full control and we are at his mercy when he strikes because we 1) want to deny that he is real and 2) do not recognize the behaviors that he brings out in us because we keep denying he is real.  More than anything you must acknowledge his presence to get rid of him or he just keeps sitting at the dinner table in your mind feasting on your sanity.

I’m not even going to try to address conquering fear here and for the most part of this series I have only pointed out emotions and actions without going into how to get over them.  This is mainly because it is not that simple to “fix” and this post is already longer than the line of traffic at a cheap gas station without adding that in.  I promise I will get there.  We have much to cover in the coming months and I think it best to get your mind percolating first.

Tomorrow I will wrap this series up by giving you the last two weeks of the diet.  It may interest you to know that we do not make it to goal the way we want and so I will cover what to do when that happens, as well.  This has been a great series and I really appreciate all the emails and comments.  Keep ‘em coming! Woop woop!

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Week 4 is here and now we’re into remembering what food used to taste like.  We actually reminisce from time to time what cheese was like and how awesome it is and we wonder if we’ll ever have it again.   Then we think of the goal date and snap out of it.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEK 4

• Anything and everything extraneous comes out of the diet.  Everything.
• Condiments like mustard, vinegar (any kind), ketchup and so on are still fine but all else has to go.
• Lose the nutbutters and any other inefficient fat to trim back on the choices.
• Increase water and maybe even cardio at this point.  You should be 2/3 of way to weight goal or size goal by now.

PITFALLS

• You will cut out too much, go too extreme and doubt your way into misery.
• Get objective feedback.  If someone says you look good—believe them or don’t ask them.

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”  Eric Hoffer

I opened up this series by stating that dieting is personal and it is about this time that we begin to realize how personal it is.  With 4 weeks left to goal, we are visibly different than when we started and we are just now getting a true taste of how intoxicating adoration can be.  But there is an ugly relative of adoration who reaches just as far into our souls but is nowhere near as nice.  This relative is known as unwarranted comments and it is quite powerful.

I think we all in our lifetime have had to swallow a dose of someone else’s vinegar and for the most part, we can handle it.  But when the comments come daily and most of them from people you do not know, it becomes a bit much.  Soon we begin to stoop to their level with retorts that are not necessarily pleasant or with shame/anger that makes us sulk for the rest of the day because we have had a personal lifestyle choice judged by a complete stranger.  It is vital for our survival to understand that our choices have condemned theirs and do not truly reflect who we are but more what they are not doing, so we must instantly reject their comments and not receive them in our hearts.  I am sure you think you do that when you get in your car and text your girlfriend the whole exchange that went down, but the fact that we thought about it after it happened enough to text someone the whole exchange, means that we made it ours.  Stop, right then and there, and categorically reject people’s unnecessary, hurtful opinions by loving them with everything you got.

I know you’re going to ask me how to do that so let’s get right to it:

SCENARIO #1

You’re at a restaurant.  You just ordered a meal that was initially lasagna but after all your substitutions and requests it was essentially baked cod with steamed vegetables (we have a talent for this).  The waitress is annoyed, to say the least.  She takes the time out of her day to snarkly say to you “I think you can afford to have a little fat in the meal, don’t you think?”

Bad response: “I think I can afford to have a whole lot more than you, killah.  Meet you on the arc trainer in the morning? Hmmm??  I’ll bring the motivation, you bring the rest of the steak n cheese you’re going to have for dinner tonight and we’ll have a good time.  Don’t you think?”  Umm…not the way to handle that.

Good response: “To be honest, I’m super blessed to be able to afford this meal of which I am really looking forward to.  Thank you for asking.”  Said with a sincere and true smile.  Finish by telling her you like her hair or something.  Works great on getting the point across that you are not in the least bit affected and you are into giving folks second chances.  Don’t be surprised if she’s your best friend by the end.

SCENARIO #2

You’re at the gym.  You’re working out in typical leave-me-alone gear:  hoodie, hat, ipod, smelly shirt with baggy sweatpants.   Everything about you says “back-the-heck-off.”  Here she comes…off your right flank…there’s nowhere to hide…she’s gotcha now:  “Wow.  You look great.  When is your wedding?  Four weeks?  Great job, girl. I can’t wait to see your pictures. (This is called The Setup.  Don’t worry, she has an agenda.)  Are you worried that you’ll be able to keep it off after?  I know lots of girls who rebound after dieting like that.  It’s so extreme, ya know?”  WHAMMO!  You didn’t even see it coming.  That’s called the old let-me-pee-in-your-cereal-trick.  Works like a charm.

Bad response: “Extreme?  You’ve been here for 2 hours, talked to 8 people, been briefed on the tactical operations happening on cardio and surveyed the weight room and you want to call me extreme?  Girl, you better realize you’re in a gym and go find yourself a weight.  You know, those heavy things that change your shape (look her up and down)—for the better.”  At this point I would say you’re bitter.  Go eat a starch.

Good response: “You know I have thought about that and I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Nothing I am doing right now is extreme but I honestly cannot tell you what I will be like at that time, I’ve never done this before.  I hope you supported the girls who rebounded.  That has to be hard and I would think they need support more than anything else.”  That leaves her realizing that she just said something nasty.  It may take a while to seep in, but it’ll get there.

SCENARIO #3

You’re at your in-laws.  It’s Thanksgiving.  You’ve got a MIL who doesn’t mince words.  No set up needed for this one, she’s heck on wheels, “Frank, pass the plate to your wife.  She’s needs some more food on her plate.”  Now looking at you she adds, “You’re getting too skinny and quite frankly it’s not attractive.”

Bad response: “You have hair on your chin, you’re going to tell me what’s attractive?  Not for nothing but–”  Now I’m going to cut you off right there.  Knock it off, that’s your MIL.

Good response: “I thank you for your concern, BettyAnn.  I do wonder, at times, if I would know if this ever got out of hand but I know that I can count on you to keep my head on tight.  I am comfortable where I am at now but it’s comforting to know that you have my best interest in mind.”  You just put a cigarette out in her head with that comment.  Works even more if you mean it so show some love there.  Got me? She’ll be wondering the whole night if that was for real or not.

I’m afraid the last one is about fear.  Get ready for that on Monday.  In the mean time, let me know some of the crazy things people have said to you and how you’ve handled it.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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Time is flying on this diet (what’s it been now, 4 days?) and we’re at that junction where if I was working with you back in the day my tone would go from super supportive coach (Oh girl, it’s fine.  You’ve got plenty of time.  Pick yourself up and keep it moving.) to edgy coach (We do have a goal, you know.  I know you don’t understand how 2 pounds of chocolate could add 10 pounds of fat, but I took bioenergetics and I understand!).  Ok, I’m just kidding…it only adds 5 pounds of fat.  And I wouldn’t be edgy…I’d have a tone, though.  Just sayin’.   Er…moving on.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEKS 6 & 5

• Cheat meal becomes a “really good meal” at a restaurant or from home that is cooked with full flavor and fat but nothing processed.  No cheese then.
• Diet goes down to a few select choices for STarches, veggies and fruits.  Keep protein wide open.
• Start rotating something here:  calories, starches, fruits, etc.  And it depends on your goal as to what.

WHERE YOUR HEAD IS AT

• Panic.  Straight, unadulterated panic.  It’s a scary area right now in your brain.  Nothing rational going on in there.

WHERE YOUR BODY IS AT

• You should be 1/3 of the way toward goal or you need to regroup.
• You will not have any definition at this point.  You should just be smaller.

“A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat.”   Erma Bombeck

Six weeks into the diet and you are beginning to lose more than just body fat; you are losing your best friend.  She had no desire to diet like you but opted to simply do her thing alongside of you and offer her support.  However, you are changing, she is not and life suddenly became complicated.  This happens with a spouse, with parents and with co-workers, it is not just limited to friends.  Most of us automatically think that it is them, right?  I am sure you have had this discussion or read this somewhere a 1000 times and it was presented to you in a way that makes you feel justified because they are not where you are, they just don’t have the discipline and yadda, yadda, yadda.  But it is much more than that.  What if I told you that what was splitting up your friendship/marriage/work friendship was simply emotional protection on your part?  Instead of being your bestie she’s now your “competition”.

I use the word competition here lightly.  I do not mean that you are competing against her in a real, physical sense or that she’s some new jealous psycho friend who stalks you at the gym by showing up in the parking lot with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s (although, that would be sight to see).  What I am referring to is emotional competition; which for us as women is fiercer than anything that would happen in that gym parking lot (unless she covered her face in Vaseline and took off her earrings.  If that happens, get out of there quick).

Emotional competition is the struggle we enter into when we decide to change our bodies on a radical level and then try to live life normally.  This is not a onetime struggle that can be resolved very easily.  This is not about us “not getting along with our friends anymore” so now we just move on.  As bad as that sounds, that’s easier than where I’m going.  No, this is about the battle we now have with the world that says “I am having such a good time eating whatever I want, going wherever I want without worrying about when I’m working out and just casually living and loving life—why can’t you just…?”.  Every day is now a mental mêlée where we must re-commit to our goal when we hang out with our friends.  Every day is a test of will when we cook for the family, go to a family function or visit friends.  Every day it seems like the fight gets more and more intense and we have a harder time justifying why we are doing this.  We are emotionally torn between hanging out with those that we love and pursuing our bucket list goal of a great body.  This is not a simple conflict.  This is a competition.  This is about two separate lives competing for our undivided loyalty.  Neither wants to cut us any slack and they both scream, “It’s us or the highway.”  So what do we do?  Turtle.  We crawl inside of our shells, tune out the world and then we hop on a forum and find like-minded individuals who are chasing the same goal.

Not good.  Not cool.

Why is this a bad thing?  Because this is an extreme lifestyle and we just shut out all contact with the outside world.  Now we live in a fish bowl and we’ve already discussed how pressured we are merely living this lifestyle.   Our entire day becomes centered on how we look.  Not directly, but in a “well…yeah…” sort of way.  We spend our entire day looking at pictures of other women, keeping up with their workouts and searching out new recipes.  There is not a lick of balance in our lives and then we wonder why we’re losing our tree over things such as someone eating our pre-packed meals in the fridge.  I mean…don’t they understand??  It took all day to cook that! UGH!

But we didn’t shut them out because they did something wrong or they violated us in some way.  We shut them out because we couldn’t take the competition.  We couldn’t deal with the choices that we were facing so we just stopped making them a choice.  I know what you’re thinking, “I don’t do those things anymore so why do I want to be around it?”  And no, you don’t, but you can find a common ground with them.  You have to; you are rejecting their lifestyle—not them.  Life is about compromise; balance is about sanity and you need both.  There will come a time when this lifestyle is passé for us and we will be forced to walk away from it.  When that happens, if we handle this the wrong way, there will be a bunch of people we love that we will have to say I am sorry to and that does not always feel good.

Am I the only one who feels like they need to give somebody a call right now?  I will go over this one again from another angle in another series.  Til then, there are two more to talk about and then we wrap the diet up on its own.  Hope you are keeping up.  See you tomorrow!  Woop woop!

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We’re at that part of the diet where we begin to doubt.  We’re 8 weeks and counting and we’re not seeing enough of a change to feel comfortable about the goal we set out to achieve.  Hang in there because many times what you do to “speed things along” is actually going to mess you up more.

GUIDELINES FOR WEEKS 8 & 7

• Get rid of miscellaneous foods now.  Anything you may have been eating that does not have as much “cluck for its buck”:  low carb tortillas, beans, lentils, corn, peas, sugar snap peas…etc.
• Focus on STarches such as steel cut oats, shredded wheat, oat bran as well as the usuals like yams and brown rice.
• Eliminate any tropical or dried fruit and focus more on the heavy hitters that have high vitamin impact.
• Cheat meal stays the same for now.
• There MUST be a rhythm in your dieting by now.  You cannot still be “getting it together” at this point.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW AT THIS POINT

• You will change in the mirror long before you will on the scale.  You will see the changes, but your weight may not reflect it.  That’s ok.
• You will not have very defined arms and abs right now because you still have a good amount of non essential foods in your diet.  But they are necessary for sanity, so leave them alone.
• Doing extra cardio may help you short term regarding your goal but will kill you long term in terms of maintaining.  Don’t add anything in extra.

“Have no fear of perfection–you’ll never reach it.”  Salvador Dali

With all this adoration comes something new that you didn’t think you would ever have:  pressure.   Suddenly, people are watching you everywhere you go.  Whether you realize it or not, they started watching you the first day you showed up to work with Tupperware and smelly food.  That fact that you ate often, on a schedule and you regularly turned down sweets at the office screamed, “I am doing something different.  Yoohoo!  Look at me diet.  Wooooohooooo! Here I am making you feel bad about my choices.”

“Hawk eyes” begin to pop up here and there.  These are women whose x-ray vision is so keen for weight loss changes you would think they were part of some government agency specially trained for enemy warfare via the human body.  Their noses have been trained to pick up as little as a 2 pound weight loss and their eyeballs are calibrated in grams—not even pounds.  And they will make you feel like they are supporting you the whole way but you kinda feel like they are waiting for you to fail.  The sad thing is—some are.  But not all of them.  A few of them are encouraging family members and friends who want to support you on your new endeavor which makes you feel like you’re not just dieting for yourself but for them, as well.  Pressure.  It’s mounting.  You’re getting closer to the goal date and the expectations are growing.    You wonder…

Am I changing enough?

{Pinching something somewhere no one can see} What about this?  I need to lose “this”.

I am not changing fast enough.  I won’t make it.

There is a voice that pops up in your head about four to five weeks from whatever thing you are dieting for that starts to taunt you.  It says you can’t do this.  It says even if you do “do” this you still won’t look good.  It says that you won’t be able to maintain it so why bother.  It says that you have never done anything right, why will you now.  This voice is adept at getting to your core.  It knows your weak spots.  It’s going to bring up every bad memory that you can think of and when that doesn’t work, it starts threatening you with new ones.  Things that aren’t even related to dieting become the focus of your anxiety.  If you don’t make goal, you won’t get that promotion at the office.  Your husband will figure out you can’t achieve anything you set your mind to therefore he’s probably wondering how you really parent the kids.  The women at the park where you bring your kids won’t want to talk to you if you can’t make your goal.  They’ll laugh at you behind your back and not invite you to things.  Pressure.  Irrational pressure. All of it from you, almost none of it from outside forces.

Our pressure is different than that of other dieters.  We are not trying to attain a waif like body that is gaunt and thin and it is not weight loss “at all costs” either.  We treasure our muscles and love our shape—we just want that shape to be without the ripples and the dimples.   Therefore, when mainstream magazines and shows talk about diet pressure, we tune them out thinking that we don’t qualify.  And we don’t, or at least not with that type of pressure.  But we are type A folks; high achievers.  We get ‘er done and we do it efficiently.  We also want to be recognized for doing so.  Gradually, this goal represents a whole lot more than it did on the onset.  It becomes the litmus for whether we are getting married, graduating college, going to the moon and so on.   And then because of that, it becomes the goal that must happen because there is nothing else.  It’s ‘going down’ because there’s way too many people involved now and too many people know.  Pulling out now means failure everywhere.  Not making goal means failure everywhere.  The saddest thing about this is none of this really matters.  None of it.  The hawk eyes will always be just that—hawk eyes.  And if we weren’t doing this with dieting, we’d be doing this with something else so why can’t we just ease up?

Man, if we thought this was bad, wait til we add in competition from our family and friends.  Oh boy.  Let me know below what your experience has been like with not letting yourself off the hook.  I think we can all relate to this one.  See you tomorrow.  Woop woop!:o)

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