I know—no, really…I know!—that I can be a nag about certain things.  I’d be amazed if you did not know that I was a psycho about good fat in your diet or variety in your meal plan.  In fact, I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t know that about me.  But there really are reasons for the broken record lectures that come out of my lap top every week.  This series would rank up there as one in the top 3 reasons I am the psycho I am about the way you diet.  Not just that you diet, but exactly how you do it.  Most folks focus on just your body, others focus on your body and your general health; I would say I focus on your acute symptoms first, general health second, emotional stability third and body fourth because I have seen the damage first hand when the (outside of the) body is the top priority.

Variety is my bat and your menu is my ball and I literally beat the living tar out of it every week.  Occasionally I’ll get a homerun, but for the most part I’m just swinging at it hoping for a line drive (for you to change anything).  Eating the same thing every day, day in and day out is boring, restrictive and will make you manic.  But more importantly, it sets you up for food allergies and intolerances that once they set in, you have most of them for a long time or for life for some others.  Nothing is worse than having a favorite food that you can no longer eat because you ate too much of it and now it either makes you sick or makes you sick when you eat something else with it.  Ok, well I lied.  There is something worse.  And that would be developing an autoimmune disease or condition because of the foods that you are eating such as Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, gastritis, IBS or Ulcers.

Each one of these conditions have no real known cause as to why you have them but all of them can be triggered by food allergies/sensitivities.  Crohn’s typically runs in families but just because your parents have it does not mean you will.  What really needs to happen is that you provide it with the right environment to thrive and then it will kick in when it’s ready.   Ulcers are very much like that, as well.  They are caused by H. Pylori bacteria that flourish in our stomachs but not everyone who has H. Pylori has ulcers.  This means that we needed to get our bodies in such a rut/mess that we cultivated that condition.  I would hate to know I brought something as painful as ulcers into fruition because I insisted on eating XYZ every day.   We would like to think that because we are eating so “healthy” that we no longer have to worry about these things.  Only people who eat crap get these things.  Wrong!  Oh so wrong!

One of the requirements to work with us is to fill out a health history questionnaire.  In that questionnaire we ask if you have any medical conditions that we need to know about.  Time and time again, form after form you will see someone list a gastrointestinal condition as something they are struggling with.  Shoot down to the section on food and they will say, “Every day I have…”  and proceed to give me their food diary.  Is this their fault?  No.  No one talks about variety the way they should and most of us are happy we eat something never mind trying to mix it up.  But now that you do know, you are responsible for your health and you need to get to mixing it up!

Here are some things that you need to know when it comes to these five conditions:

Do not stack slow metabolizers

I talk about this as ‘caustic combos’.  These are foods that are not bad but should not be eaten close to each other.  Salmon, steak, sword fish, beans and pasta come to mind when I think of these.  They are foods that typically take a long time to move through the colon.  Therefore, eating them on the same day or having them day after day is not a good idea.  Slow motility (the amount of time food spends in your colon) is a major factor in diverticulitis and IBS.  The longer food sits in your colon, the more damage it can do.  And yes, we eat a lot of fiber but that means nothing.  Constipation is out of control among clean eaters (hence this series).

Binge on more than just chocolate

Chocolate is mucus forming and can really do a number on the colon.  Mucus is a primary symptom of IBS which basically says that there is major inflammation somewhere.  Say you work out and do not replenish your water adequately.  Then you come home a little later and have a salmon salad for lunch.  Now you’ve jammed up the highway during a drought season.  Then you lose your tree that night on some chocolate (I know…you’d never do that).  Now you have a chief aggravator waiting its turn for exit in your colon while sitting behind pink stucco.  Great.

Easy on the offenders

Dairy, wheat/gluten, egg whites, nuts, soy, popcorn, chemicals in food, caffeine (yoohoo diet coke lovers), chicken and fructose/sweeteners of any kind are known allergens.  Eating them in large quantities is just asking for trouble.  Back in the day, Walden farms marinades were all the rage.  Then people started cropping up with all kinds of health issues—not because there was something wrong with the marinades, but because they were going through a bottle a week.  It was crazy.  I am sure Walden Farms did not want people eating their product on that level.  But that’s what we do, we KILL foods we love.  KILL them dead!  We eat them until their pouring out of our skin.  So much of what we go through is incredibly preventive.

Listen, if you made it this far….wow.  There is more.  We need to talk symptoms of the above, supplements for everything and thyroid stuff.   This goes much deeper than you think.  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post

Yesterday I introduced the three most popular conditions that I hear about when it comes to tummy issues and I did it in a very “basic information” sort of way.   You can find a ton of info out there about them but most of the information is very general in that all the sites sort of say the same thing.  Any time someone wants to tell me to “eat better” as a way to fix the issue, I tend to tune them out because we, on a whole, have already solved that problem.  This then sends me on a hunt as to what may also be the issue or what may be the alternate remedy.  The other thing is that I am not really interested in solving the problem with an Over The Counter drug simply because if we are working this hard to eat clean and exercise, an OTC seems out of place in our lives.  We tend to want a natural remedy that reflects our more natural type of lifestyle.  This brings me to today’s post.  I am not about to give you a host of remedies, I think that would not be cool; But I am going to show you how detailed you can be about what you are going through and that it really benefits you to be in tune with your symptoms.

If you ever have the pleasure (I say that with a giggle) to speak with me, you will find that you cannot say something to me in passing and I just let it go.  I have been told that I am a dog with a bone, worse than someone’s mother, a pitbull and so on when it comes to your health and what you think is nothing is typically something.  There’s also no such thing as TMI in my book.  Please…keep that in mind.  I will ask you ALL kinds of questions if I think that there is something fishy going on.  I always say this, and I do mean this, I am not a doctor.  What I am is an air traffic controller and I am here to keep you from ignoring the big pink elephant in the room.

This is why I am about to provide the following two lists for you, because if you could, you would just ignore what your body is telling you and just keep trying to lose weight.  But here is another thing I always say, ‘only healthy people can lose weight.’  If you are backed up or leaking like a cracked pipe, you can forget changing your body composition.  Your body has priorities and healing is number 1.  Not weight loss.    You may think the occasional bout of constipation, diarrhea, gas or bloating is no big deal, but maybe you’ll think differently if you know it comes with other symptoms.   The following two lists are different ways each of the 2 conditions can manifest in your body.  Each bullet point is its own manifestation.  You should only have one bullet point.  If you have more than one, get to a doc even faster.  The lists come from Prescription for Natural Cures by James Balch MD, Mark Stengler MD and Robin Balch ND, 2004.

Constipation

• Going days without going and when you finally do it’s hard and dry.  You also have sudden, noticeable memory issues.
• No desire to go at all and when you do it’s hard and dry.  This comes with great thirst, irritability and you may have a headache.
• Chronic constipation with chills and clammy hands.  You may also feel overwhelmed.
• Constipation with bloating and bad gas.  Cravings for sweets are out of control and symptoms are worse in late afternoon.  You feel better when you drink something warm.
• Constipation with a strong craving for salt and water.  You may be depressed and also light sensitive.
• Having an urgent feeling to go but can’t.  You may be irritable and/or feel overstressed.
• Constipation with PMS or menopause.  Could be chilly, irritable and having a really hard time going when you do.
• Can go but it is work!  Not coming out without a fight.  May have chills also and you are generally lean.
• Back and forth between constipation and diarrhea.  May have strong thirst for freezing cold drinks.

Diarrhea

• Comes with rumbling and gurgling in the tummy followed by an explosion.  Could be discolored and mucus filled.
• Comes with anticipation of a stressful event or eating way too much sugar.
• Diarrhea and vomiting together.  You may be anxious, restless and chilly.  There may be blood in stool.  This could be food poisoning if the first time happening.
• Comes with extreme exhaustion and weakness.
• Comes with nausea.
• Painful diarrhea that’s accompanied by extreme sweating and spasms of the intestines.
• May just be watery but not fully diarrhea.  Typically smells foul.  You may be anxious and crave cold drinks.
• May happen after eating greasy foods or certain fruits.  You feel better in open air than in a warm room.
• Burning, explosive diarrhea that smells like rotten eggs.  You have extreme thirst for cold drinks.

There you have it.  The TMI list of all TMI lists.  But I want to tell you how necessary something like this is.  Many times we discount the thing we’re going through as it’s all the same thing and it is not.  So when your doctor, or someone psychotically detail oriented like myself, asks you questions  you may not understand why.  Or when you slap a general remedy on it but it doesn’t seem to help.  Each one of these has a different cause and a different natural remedy.  It is imperative to pay attention to your digestive system because just like your period, it is an infamous Town Crier ready to tattle on you at the drop of a hat.

We’re moving on.  Yes.  There is more TMI to be exposed.  We’re a hot bed for conditions.  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

Waking up every morning to a flat stomach is a great feeling.  Not just because we all want a flat belly, but because it typically means we feel good, too.  But as the day wears on, many of us begin to bloat, become gassy or our stomachs start to complain with this occurring on a near daily basis.  Since our diets tend to be free of the usual suspects (processed food, cheese and excessive sweeteners) we are left to wonder what are we doing wrong and why do we need to burn a hole through our office chair when no one is around?

Aside from the normal issues associated with diarrhea, constipation and persistent gas, I wanted to take you into the land of naturopathic medicine and give you a few more things to think about other than the normal causes and remedies.

Diarrhea

What is it? Annoying and smelly.  Great combo right there; makes you just want to have it weekly.

Normal Causes: Incomplete digestion, food poisoning, artificial sweeteners

Notable Causes: Emotional stress—I see this a lot.  We must find ways to manage our stress better.  We tend to forget that running, plyos, cardio and lifting are also a form of stress to the body so we heap on more stress on top of good stress.  From here we just become one big leaky gut.  Chron’s or ulcerative colitis—Here is another common one that you would not necessarily think about but many of us suffer from it.  If you are having chronic diarrhea and have just said ‘what the heck about it’, get this checked out!  Vitamin Deficiency—specifically A, B and zinc.  I know we think we eat healthy so we don’t need to supplement, but that’s crap (pardon the pun).  We play hard and eat lite.  Stay on top of your vitamins.

Treatment: The easiest by far is the BRAT diet.  Go here before going to Immodium.  BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apples and toast) starts out with chicken broth first.  Just plain old chicken broth with lots of sodium in it.  Do that for about 2 meals, then add rice at the next meal.  If you can hold all that in, add a piece of dry toast with that soup next meal.  If all goes well, have a banana or an apple/sauce.  Lastly, add in plain chicken for stability and you should be good to go by then.  If it’s really severe, start with  rice water first:  1 cup rice boiled in 5 cups water for 45 min.  Have it throughout the day before venturing into the BRAT diet.

Constipation

What is it? A traffic jam that when released, causes the scale to drop as much as 3 pounds.

Normal Causes: Dehydration!

Notable causes: Not going when you have to—if you have to go, then go.  Don’t hold back for long periods of time because that can have major consequences.  Magnesium deficiency—now do you see why I am psycho about it?  This is just one of the benefits of Mg.  Depression—need I say more?  Very prevalent in the clean eating community.  Hypothyroidism—if you can’t kick start your system, you can’t really kick the colon into action either.  This is a good sign as to whether they have you dialed into the right dose of thyroid med.

Treatment: Start with a fiber product.  Use laxatives only as last resort.  Teas work really well.  But here are some things you may not have thought of:  Guacamole—with or without chips, enough of this stuff can make the meal you at on prom night fall out of you.  It’s called greasin’ the groove.  As a side note…do not have this or salmon or anything high fat the day before a long run.  That’ll be an inconvenient run if ever there was one.  Do NOT have fiber—if you have gone 5 or 6 days without going, fiber at this point is like stuffing cotton into your eardrum.  It doesn’t make sense.  Instead, try a stool softener.  It will work much better.

Gas

What is it? Embarrassing and revealing all at the same time.

Here’s the deal: All of us have gas all the time.  It’s normal.  But when it starts to smell like first days of the Boston Harbor Project at low tide, something is wrong.  If you have adequate variety in your diet, this should not be a huge issue.  But if you insist on eating only 2 veggies and they are broccoli and kale, you may have the ability to clear out a commuter train at 5pm.  Also, I find that because our meals are packed for the day and we tend to either eat them cold or eat them rapidly, that our digestion is typically poor.  Slow down, heat up your food and take time to eat it.  You could be saving yourself some money in the long run with all the candles you won’t have to buy.

Treatment: Digestive enzymes, glutamine and probiotics.  Most of us run out and get the probiotics and we forget about the enzymes.  More on those later.

We have more to delve into over the next few days.  Bloating is caused by much more than what’s here.  I am finding we have stomach issues and liver problems, as well.  More than anything I really want you to reduce your stress.  That includes working out too much.  Ya hear me?  Woop woop!

Next Post in Series

There comes a time when an issue is so worth discussing that we have to look past the embarrassment factor that it may cause.  When I first started eating clean, I never thought about anything but the outcome.  All I cared about was what I was going to look like when I reached goal and the methodology behind what I was doing to get there (remember, I started this to do what I do now for a living, not to just look good).  I had no idea that I could crave foods more than a pregnant woman in her 9 month or after a period of dieting hate chicken with a passion reserved for mean people and animal abusers.  But what was the real shocker was the gastric disturbance caused by all of the veggies and artificial sweeteners in my diet.  Even after I cleared out all the sweeteners, I could still level a 4 story building with one shot if I wasn’t careful.  You know it’s clinical, when you are burning so many candles that you change the temperature in the room that you are sitting in.  That’s serious business right there.

This is going to be a TMI series at some points and a great help at others.  What I have found in the clean eating community is an abnormal amount of gastric issues when they should be cleared up with our initial diet change.  IBS, heartburn, constipation, Crohn’s disease, gastritis and so on are rampant amongst the ranks and it seems as if it shouldn’t be.  So I want us to take a look at what we are doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we don’t even know that we are doing that is furthering these conditions.  Whenever you read a book on these conditions, the first thing that they tell you is to clean up the diet and we have already.  So what gives?

I will be talking about these conditions and how they affect us both physically and emotionally because both play a role in our overall health.  Since we tend to be type A folks, we have to look at what that does to our stress levels and our colons alike.  Most of us at some point in our dieting careers are like wound up balls of yarn waiting to unwind at any moment.  That does a number on us long term and since adrenal fatigue is a concern nowadays, we need to be prudent in the way we relax as much as the way we diet.

I won’t be starting this series until Monday.  There will be no blog on Thursday and the Friday audio post will not be posted until Saturday afternoon.  I owe you sweet and savory so I’ll be getting that on the blog this weekend.  If you have anything you want to see covered in this next series, hit me up at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

I started to open this series up with a ton of science on our brains that shows how we are hard wired to desire certain types of foods and how these foods affect our emotions so we desire them more and so on and so forth.  However, I kept coming back to the same place of debunking some kind of crazy myth that we all seem to buy into that has been perpetuated by the powers that be and has secretly tormented us over the years.  I finally came to the conclusion that I need to debunk the myths first.

It is no mystery to any of us that we care about how we look.  We also love the satisfaction of a good workout, the feeling of being fit and the distinction of being different than the rest of the population.  With that love comes the heavy burden of trying to stick to a challenging diet for a long period of time:  no processed food, limited starches, limited sweets and low fat choices with very little support from outside of the clean community.  This is not the haven we thought it would be when we first signed up for this lifestyle.  I don’t know about you, but I know I thought this would be easy because I would feel great all the time and wouldn’t want unhealthy food because I was now “so healthy”.  I had no idea what I was in for the first time I broke my diet.  All I know is I started in the morning with Dunkin’ Donuts and ended in the evening with Bertucci’s and everything in between was a blurr.  That was 9 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday, although, that could be because there was butter involved.  Shhh.

When I first started dieting, I did it for a very specific reason so the means justified the ends.  I was a fitness competitor and the protocol was that you needed to torture yourself with dieting in order to get on stage or else you were not getting on stage.  Or let me say, I wasn’t getting on stage.  I don’t know if everyone shared my same views back then.  But there was an obvious reason for my very bland, boring diet that lacked variety, starch and fat.  Fast forward to present day and my diet, although still clean, looks very different than it did back then.   Flavor, texture, fat, balance and quantity vary all the time and that is something that has mattered far more than anything when it comes to me sticking to this eating lifestyle.  The majority of us who can’t stick to it long term or find ourselves struggling all the time are over dieting for the results that we desire.  If you say to me that you do not want to get on stage and you are not eating sodium, still eating tuna from a can or packet or follow any bogus diet in a magazine, we really need to talk.

This industry (meaning clean eating) it what it is because of competitors and fitness models.  You can thank both men and women alike that don the cover of magazines and strut across stages for our initial desire to enter into this way of eating.  Even if you are a runner/athlete, you have been enticed to this way of living because that’s how your favorite athletes are maintaining their weight, as well.  However, we want their look without the stage or the lights and believe to get that we need to follow their diet, or their method of dieting, *all* the time.  Not so, says I.  Also, this industry is full of “diets” but then refer to them as a lifestyle.  You cannot have a lifestyle of dieting (in the noun sense)—that’s a nightmare waiting to happen.  At some point we need to learn how to *live* this life instead of hopping on a diet for 12 weeks, off a diet into a pit of sugar for 8 weeks, back on the diet to negate all that we did in the pit, back off of the diet again into sheer anger and frustration and so on.   Or better yet, live in maintenance hell where you are constantly wondering if you are doing enough to stay where you want to be so you do more, crash, do more, crash, etc.

There are many things we need to consider when eating like this:  flavor, texture, variety and balance are a great place to start.  We also need to think about serotonin, dopamine, estrogen and galanin when it comes to the brain stuff and lastly, sodium, sugar and fat are beyond important to our long term survival.  Magazines like to talk in terms of recipes and nutritional sound bites, your friends will talk in terms of suffering, the internet is going to show you how much you suck at doing this but I’m going to talk about this as a living, breathing thing that must be learned and nurtured to be accomplished.  Are you ready?  Woop woop!!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

Before I delve into how our girl is a survivor and how she is much smarter in her attempts to diet, I want to back track a bit to yesterday’s post.  Under Stalemate, I mentioned a bevy of things our girl was no longer sticking to like she did the first time around and I failed to mention how important that was.  When we diet the second time, third time and even fourth time around, we become less and less detail oriented.  We excuse more and more of our indiscretions but yet we look for the exact same results that we had when we were following the plan to a T.  As soon as we realize that we are not progressing like we did before, we then use that as a weapon of mass destruction against ourselves, our purpose, our success in life, our relationships and so on.  So we do it half heartedly but judge it whole heartedly.  It’s a bad combo.  What can we learn from that?

Myth: We are really on point while dieting even though we’re not tracking anything or fully adhering to anything.

Fact: We know when we are on fire and we know when we are going through the motions.  We are not disappointed with the plan when we do not get results—secretly we know we shouldn’t have any.  We are actually disappointed with ourselves because we cannot stay focused.

Failing forward: The longer we diet, the better we get at knowing when to start a plan and when to cry ‘uncle’.  Much like learning how to separate emotion from the task at hand, knowing when to start a diet and knowing when to wait is an art in and of itself but it can be done.  We begin to learn that there is a difference to committing to a plan and “cleaning up our act”.  The latter is best used when it is not a good idea to diet but staying where you are is not a good idea either.

Won the Battle, Lost the War

She reached goal, folks, and you would think that she would be excited but she’s not.  In fact, not only is she not excited, she’s actually panicked about it.  For her to make goal she had to do a bunch of things with her diet and workouts she wasn’t exactly prepared to do and now doesn’t know how to back out of them.  For one thing, she does cardio 2 times a day, 7 days a week and has no idea how to back out of that.  She also eats less than 1000 cals per day, no fat, no cheat meal and hasn’t seen a starch for weeks.  She’s exhausted, cranky, weather beaten and bitter because this isn’t what she had in mind when she first started dieting.  She feels sort of trapped.  On the one hand, she loves her body but on the other hand, she feels like a slave to it and can’t imagine keeping the pace she is at indefinitely.

Myth: Maintenance is hard.  It is actually easier than you think but our girl is confused right now.  She does not realize that the only reason she is in this spot is because she forced a situation in the first place.

Fact: The longer you are at a weight, the more you *own* it.  It will take more to make you gain weight as time goes on and you will do less and less to maintain it.

Failing forward: Eventually we begin to learn that we can’t just *stop* things.  We begin to see that there is a method to this madness and that a slow taper will keep our results while we lighten the burden on our bodies.   As we do this, we start to learn what’s a trigger food, what causes us to have insomnia, what’s the least we can do and still sane and what’s the most we can do and not collapse from exhaustion.

The Smoke is Clearing

Flash forward a year and our girl is doing ok.  Not great, just ok.  She has much to learn about being lean and staying lean but seems to be up for the lessons.  She rebounded again from the last diet she did but nowhere like she did the first time.  The second rebound was about 7 pounds and the manic frenzy of eating was not nearly as dramatic as before.  However, she noticed that her body on a whole is different, her weight distribution is not close to being the same and she is developing acne for the first time in her adult life.  Something is up but she’s not sure what.

Myth: We just diet, get lean and all else stays the same.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Fact: If you want to maintain this lifestyle long term, you need to get smarter about what you are doing to your body being this lean.  There are good and bad consequences and you should know what they all are.

Failing forward: With as much drama that comes with every diet, we look better each and every time we do it.  Our weight distribution tends to even out, our body composition changes more favorably and we have less and less mood swings when done the right way.   However, when it’s not done the right way we can develop disordered eating patterns, burn ourselves out and go the complete opposite direction of health and wellness and head down a long dark corridor of confusion and disillusionment.  Failing forward is the right way.  By giving ourselves permission to not be perfect, not always be on a plan, gain a few pounds here and there and like working out for other reasons than how we look, we begin to embrace this as a lifestyle instead of a means to an end.  What I would love for us to see on a whole is that every week of your diet is a learning experience—not a test.  Therefore, you are there to take notes…not score a 100.  If you look at your dieting in this light, it will change the way you react when you “can’t get everything right”.

I wrap this all up tomorrow on audio.  I have some things I want to say more than write so I hope you meet me there.  In the mean time, get off your back and cut yourself some slack.  Cool?  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

Normally I would use a story like this to lead into a series but since this is the week of randomness, this isn’t going to lead me into anything but drama.  And to tell you the truth, I would have it no other way.

I recently had a doctor’s appointment that was really a consultation for a procedure that I want done.  I am going to immediately dispel some rumors right now so I can move on with the story.  I did not go to find out about…

• Plastic surgery. With my luck, I’d be on the table and they would have lost what I wanted done so they would just wing it.  And then charge me extra, cuz that’s how it always happens with me.  Not only do they get my order wrong, but then they charge me for it to boot.
• Removing warts, skin tags or wisdom teeth. I’m too old for that stuff.  You do that in your late 20’s and early 30’s when it makes a difference.  Right now I’d be afraid they’d mistake something usable on my body for that and take it off while I still need it.  And then they’d charge me for it, too.  See #1.
• Liposuction or tucking anything anywhere. There is no need for that.  I am about 5 to 8 years away from my skin sagging enough that I can do it myself for free using duct tape.  I’d never pay for that.
• Any other miscellaneous, nefarious, random, exotic thing out there. Nothing exciting over here.  Boring.

But I went to the girlie doc for this consultation and it was supposed to be a simple discussion about the possible things that could happen if I go ahead with it.  The doctor himself was the nicest guy.   A little on the awkward side but you would be too if you were a girlie doc all day long.  I’ve had 3 kids and I have yet to meet a socially acceptable male girlie doc.  He had no problem explaining all the ins and outs of the procedure to me and didn’t try to sugar coat anything he told me.

Now for me to have this consultation, I was weighed (who remembers Ginny), blood pressure measured and heart listened to all for me to sit in this office and hear about the procedure.  Not to have it done; just to hear about it.  So I get this feeling that this guy is very thorough.  I have never met him before, I only need to know him to have this done so I have no idea what he’s like and he has no idea that I’m unhinged a bit dramatic at times.  All is going well until the end when he says, “Oh.  And for me to do this, I need to give you the Depo Provera shot for at least 6 months.”  He said it like he was saying something as nonchalant as how his day went that day to his wife.   First, for what I am having done, no I don’t need to have a Depo shot.  It is completely unnecessary and it’s like he’s throwing it in there because I’ll be on the table.  It would be like me telling someone to pick up something they dropped and while they were bent over I ‘might as well do a proctology exam since I have access’.  Really right now?  Second, he would have been better off telling me that he was going to make me clean all his instruments for the day…by hand…with no gloves…in a kitchen sink…than tell me that.  I almost Lost. My. Mind.

Let me lay down some foundational information for you so you can understand why my afro grew 2 feet in the office and the doctor now will never see the original version of Clash of the Titans again (the remake was awful).  If you are new to my blog, you may not know my history.  About 7 years ago I gained a little less than 55 pounds in four months due to some heinous shenanigans on my part through bad dieting but also from the bad hormone dosing on my doctor’s part and then went through heck trying to get it off.  Not all the way there, yet, either.  The chief culprit given to me back then?  Depo Provera.  And with every round that I went through, I gained an average of 15 pounds.  By the third round I was done.  I was also sufficiently obese.  And then I got pregnant–immeditately.  OY.

So here is Johnny Come Lately with his Depo shot comment and he follows it up with, “And you may gain a pound or two but you can take that off…”  He didn’t get to finish the sentence.  Both my butt cheeks held me down to the table while the inside of me took a page from the book of Jimmy Snuka Fly and leapt onto that man’s head like a cat on a mouse.  Who can just imagine this conversation that started with, “Just 2 pounds?!!!!” and ended with something along the lines of, “You have no idea who you are talking to…?” while tufts of hair are flying around the room like disrupted feathers.  And then I cried.  Needless to say, they’ll be no Depo.

Ok.  So my point of all of this?

1)      Do not take a hormone for any reason what-so-ever unless you know without a shadow of a doubt that it is necessary.  They make you feel powerless and you are not.  You can say no.  And please do.

2)      Understand that although they are doctors, they do not always have your best interest in mind.

3)      Drug companies have a big stake in what goes in your body whether you realize that or not.

4)      Docs get paid big bucks for that and the reason why he wanted me to take the hormone was so that he could be the one who did the procedure.  It’s all based on timing and without the Depo, there’s no guarantee.  Shame.

5)      Lastly, Knot Today hair elixir mixed with Curl Assurance Fix hair gel makes my hair smell yummy.  Thinking about that in the appt calmed me down.  Felt like letting you know that.

And so the random week goes…  Woop woop!! )

Yes.  The device went dead.  Here’s the million dollar question:  What does it take to get it back?  Here is a list of things you can do to get your mojo back in no particular order:

Start all over again. I know what you’re thinking: “What is wrong with you, you pelican!  You know I’ve tried that at least 50 times and it hasn’t worked…clown.  Last time I’m reading your blog for any advice.  Sheesh.”  Thank you, I’ll take the beating.  Now shush and listen.  Starting all over again is not going back to what you know and resurrecting it, it’s about starting with something completely new.

• Do not try to eat 5 small meals with the same old chicken and broccoli.  That ain’t gonna cut it.  In fact, I would say start with 3 meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner and then have a snack here and there.
• Give up the thought of trying to eat like you did when you were on point.  Accept anything healthy.  Don’t worry if it is a carb, fruit, protein, Styrofoam—whatever.  Just eat.  If it’s unprocessed, it’s yours.
• Do NOT pick up a fad way of eating:  raw, vegan, paleo or etc. unless that’s what you truly believe in.  This needs to be mindless and easy with absolutely zero pressure.
• Do NOT put a weight loss goal on it or any other type of goal.  JUST HANG OUT FOR A WHILE.

Make 2/3 of your workouts be outside and bodyweight driven. There is something about being a kid again that gets us energized.  I’d ask you to skip to work if I thought you’d do it.  Get up, get out and have fun.

• Do NOT set up a workout to be a body part split unless lifting isn’t your issue.
• Do NOT get 2 feet near an elliptical.  In fact, burn the ones in your gym during prime time.  Although, DO get the people off of the machines first.  They didn’t do anything to you, you know.
• Don’t tell me that it’s winter and it’s cold and blah, blah, blah.  Get up, get out and have fun.
• Do NOT ride the bandwagon of the latest fitness craze.  That only perpetuates the burnout.  But DO do something completely different than what you were doing before that involves all of your bodyweight and agility:  snowshoeing, biking, skiing, hiking, trail running, CATZ and whatever else you can think of that is not lifting or stationary cardio.
• Make general goals like I need to move 4 times this week.  Avoid things like, “I need to lift 3 days and do HIIT 3X’s a week” for now.  They emotionally bog you down and immediately set you up for failure.

Go beneath the water line. You must want this for more than aesthetic reasons and realize that “proving” yourself hardcore is no longer the draw it used to be for your subconscious.  Go down into the deep recesses of your heart and soul and find out why you do this.  Make peace with your thighs.  Love your back fat.  Enjoy your cellulite.  I don’t care how you do it, but move beyond the mirror and start digging in that well spring known as your heart.  Discover other reasons as to why you exercise and eat right.  Now is the time to:

• Journal
• Meditate
• Discover
• Analyze

Now is NEVER the time to:

• Criticize
• Dump on yourself
• Bitch and moan
• Whine

You know this emotional exercise is for you if your immediate thought was, “I don’t have time for this.  I need to lose X amount of pounds.  This stuff is stupid and it’s for those who are too weak to get it done.”  Ding ding ding ding ding!!!!

Change your environment. If you are beaten down right now and trying to get your mojo back but everything that surrounds you binds you to your past, it’s time to move on.  Stop the magazine subscription, block some folks out of your feed on facebook, change gyms if you must and find new friends if need be but do something now.  Don’t let it drag you down even further before you finally cut the umbilical cord.  You are not leaving forever—just until you get healthy.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What bothers you about it?
• Did you ever do the same thing as what bothers you about it?  If so, why/how?
• How does it make you feel?  Why?  If it’s a super strong reaction, note that.
• Where is that coming from?
• What can you do about it?
• Does this feeling crop up every time you start a new program?

These are just a small sample of questions to ask yourself once you de-clutter your mind.  I have a million more but I’ll start you off here.  Last but not least…

Know your fuel source. Find the accelerant.  Remove all the charred material.  Build it again but this time make it fire proof.  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

Previous Series Post

Play Now:

 What's Your Fuel Source [15:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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!!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series