Yesterday we tackled what you needed to do physically to get through the STA. Today, we are going to talk about it emotionally. I am not going to go into too much detail because I would rather cover this more comprehensively at another time but you will get the gist of where I am going and it will give you a few things to think about in the mean time.

Scenario #1 Having to lose weight again within one year of a 10 to 15 pound weight loss.
Pro: This should not be earth shattering in terms of losing the weight again. It is very doable.
Con: You will have to work harder than you did the first time and that is always a bummer.

Things to consider:

1. The weight comes off easier the further you are from the date when you stopped dieting. If you entered into maintenance in April and gained the weight back over the summer, you should not have a hard time come December or January if you follow the guidelines I outlined.
2. The older you are, the harder it is and the longer it takes. Each time may look different so be ready to “re-learn” your body all over again.
3. The way you gained it makes a difference as well. A slow creep is easier to take off than a 2 week bender that happened a month after you entered maintenance.

I find that this is the least debilitating situations out of the four groups. Typically, this did not come about as a “grand revealing” so you don’t have to do the “grand veiling” 6 months later. Most of us who take off ten pounds, just take off ten pounds and there isn’t much fanfare about it. Maybe someone notices and compliments us here and there, but if it took a while, it most likely didn’t cause a commotion. Where the problem comes with this group is that they keep losing the same 10 pounds over and over and over again. This brings on a sense of failure, futility, frustration and guilt that can start to take on a life of its own and also become habitual. I can honestly say that some of us would not know what to do with ourselves if we didn’t have “10 pounds to lose” but if that is the case then I would seriously beseech you to look at the underlying feelings that are causing that craziness.

Scenario #2 Having to lose weight again within two years of a 20 plus pound weight loss.
Pro: If you are closer to the two year mark there is hope.
Con: You will most likely be forced to go extreme to take off the weight if you are impatient–which pretty much describes most of us women.
Things to consider:

1. You lost a good amount of weight and you will not get it off the second time without a fight.
2. Before trying to lose the weight, get all of your ducks in a row in terms of eating and having a rhythm. This means trying to regulate your eating right where you are. Don’t restrict calories, just clean up the diet. Give your body some time to get into a healthy rhythm before putting it through the rigors of dieting again. Usually, when we get off track our normalcy goes with it. Restore that for at least a month before starting on yesterday’s guidelines.
3. If you gained back 20 some odd pounds in less than a year, then it will take an act of nature to get it off again in a year without some sort of extreme measure. Can you do it in 2 years? Yes, you can. But less than one year is going to cost you.

This is a hard one to get through emotionally. Twenty pounds is noticeable and you feel naked before friends and family. What is the hardest, though, are the declarations you most likely made to yourself and others that now you have to live down. Things like “I will never go back to my size { } ever again” or “You just have to make healthy choices” and so on. Insert whatever glib statement you want but many who lose that amount tend to become overnight nutrition counselors to everyone else so when they fall…they fall hard. My weight in last 2.5 years has fluctuated more than the Dow Jones off a bad Tweet. I went for 5.5 years without being able to lose a pound to fixing some major hormonal issues that caused me to drop weight in five seconds flat. So yes, I could now lose weight but I, also, could gain it back faster than I have ever seen before and the roller coaster ride that I went on trying to find a balance was not fun. I have a very different body post apocalypse and I have learned much in terms of the emotions that go with not being able to control your body’s response to things. It will be really tough to go through this if you had much to say about your weight loss to others. To the degree that you were vocal will be the amount that you will struggle on the rebound. If you were quiet, though, your second journey will only be physically hard and only slightly emotionally laborious. Sounds exciting.

Scenario #3 Having to lose weight again after a 12 week hardcore diet countdown of any kind losing ANY amount of weight.
Pros: You haven’t had the new weight long enough to become too emotionally attached.
Cons: If you lost it that fast, EVERYONE knows and is now focusing their attention on you and you feel as naked as a baby’s bum on a changing table.
Things to consider:

1. You have to give yourself at least a 4 week break before you can try to lose weight again. If you dropped into a 15-20 pound weight loss over a 12 week hardcore restrictive diet, you most likely rebounded HARD—meaning almost overnight–when you gained the weight back. This is THE hardest weight to ever take off. Your body is tired from dieting and you are SO over it by this time. Hormonally you need to stabilize before expecting your body to respond.
2. You must drop your cardio immediately and stop dieting. The guidelines are essential—follow them.
3. This was to be expected and I am not sure there was much you could have done to prevent it. It is…the nature of the beast. Knowing that, do not beat yourself up over it because it only wastes time and you don’t have any to waste.
4. You will not rebound this hard the next time you diet. Your body will get used to the dieting and you will be that much wiser the next time around. Trust me on this one.

See my series called Failing Forward to see how this goes down emotionally.

Scenario #4 Having to continue to lose weight when you have a sizable weight loss goal of 30 pounds or more.
Pros: If you have been doing this incrementally and nothing extreme, you just need a refeed here and there and you’re good to go.
Cons: It is a long haul and you need a good team behind you and that’s not always available.
Things to consider:

1. You have to be the master of change: diet, workout, perspective, etc.
2. Cut your cals last. Since you have a long way to go, a cut too deep too soon = plateau.
3. You will lose on the scale, in the mirror and in bodyfat. Do not declare a plateau until all 3 of those have stopped moving.

You need a professional team of rah rah shish coom bah’ers on your staff. They need to stoke you like a coal fire in a steam engine train. There is nothing more to this. If you have to lose more than 30 pounds, you know what I am talking about. Put your nose to the grind, ignore all the people who feel like they are your “Jillian Michaels” for the moment and just keep it moving. Make sure you have a sanity check in your life from someone who knows what they’re talking about and just ride out the storm. Cool? Because the only thing that is going to take you down is taking your eyes off of the road. Looking out the window will cause a crash. Keep your eyes focused on the road.

Oh my, ladies.  Well I’ve lost about five pounds just getting worked up this week over this.  Whew!  Thank you for the workout! Haha!  Next series is a short one…Look for it on Tuesday…Cool?  Woop woop!!

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Prideful

– satisfaction or pleasure taken in one’s own success or achievements.  Not a bad thing for sure until it drives us to hurt ourselves, destroy our true sense of worth or worst of them all:  hurt others.

The “I Know This Works” Diet

What is a good example of this diet? Whatever diet you did when you think you looked the best.

Why do we think we do this? “Oh, this is the only thing that ‘works’ for me.”

Why do we really do it? Because we think, “Oh, this is the only thing that ‘works’ for me.”

If you are two months into a weight loss plateau and you will not change what you are doing simply because ‘this is what got me to where I wanted to be in the first place’, then I am talking to you.  Taking starches out of your diet does not give you instant weight loss, ceasing all cheating does not make your body shape up overnight and splitting your meals into 5 meals from 4 meals does not put you on the fast track to the cover of a magazine.  There is so much more to physique trans4mation than ‘the last thing you did that worked’ and you are cheating yourself out of a new experience simply because ‘you know this works’.   There are three things going on here:

1)      Arrogance: No one knows your body better than you do, as far as you are concerned, and you know what you are doing because you do it for other people. Maybe so but every coach should have a coach, just like every doctor has a doctor.  Get over yourself and learn something new (this said by the former ‘most arrogant nutritionist in the field’) so that you can at least get off that weight loss plateau and before you do something harmful in desperation later.

2)      Fear: The last time I tried something new I gained 10 pounds and fought like a dog to get it off again.  No thank you.   I know this works and I’m sticking to it. I hear you loud and clear here and NO ONE knows this fear quite like me…BUT…it is still a cop out.  Your body does not change because of what you are doing; it changes because of the *change* in what you are doing.  If you do not change, it does not either.

3)      Pride: I actually do not want to change because then I would have to tell someone what is really going on with me and I’ll open up my closet full of Jurassic Park bones. Listen, after reading this site, you have to realize that we all have closets full of pterodactyl bones and it is A-Ok over here.  Feel free to mingle with us loonies.

The Celebrity Diet

What is the origin of this diet? Facebook:  Following the diet of the latest and greatest fitness model.

Why do we think we do this? Typically we start this because we are new to the industry, in love with {insert name here}, naïve enough to believe that they do what they print in the magazines and it is going to work for us.

Why do we really do it? We want to prove to ourselves that we can hang with the best of them even though up until then the only thing we’ve ever “denied” ourselves was humility.

Almost all of us have the same story in terms of our paltry beginnings:  we were always the best at {insert here}/very athletic/very smart/the obedient one/the dare devil who got good grades/worked 2 jobs/started a social campaign to save the whales/discovered America so when we graduated college we were looking for a way to stay athletic/top of the heap/challenged beyond belief because we over achieve at breathing and denying ourselves food and lifting until we pop a hemorrhoid seemed like the best way to do it.  I know, I was like that, too, so this is a common one for all of us in the way beginning:  we find the best looking fitness model/competitor with the most stringent diet and we just follow it.  We may follow their whole diet, the fact that they will not eat {insert here}, how many days out of the week they lift or what have you.  But what is the most notable thing about us doing this diet is that *we* think it is hard and that somehow there is something glorious about us because we can hang with such and such and do what such and such is doing.  Eventually we grow out of this but some of us are still doing it, not by following a person, but by following the *culture on a whole*.

Following the things your favorite fitness model puts on her Facebook is like eating the display dish at your favorite deli counter: both scary and dangerous all at the same time.  Not only is she not telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she is most likely sponsored by someone to tell you all that she did and she is not disclosing that to you.  I am saying this unequivocally right now that this is not about anyone in particular nor am I pointing a finger at fitness models or competitors.  This is about you—and just you.   The internet is a scary place to be when you feel “less than”, when you are vulnerable or when you just gained 3 pounds for no particular reason so you are reaching for straws.   Seeing her Facebook page is like an ex-alcoholic walking into a 24 hour lounge with open bar.  Even if you don’t want to participate, the draw is too much for you to resist when you are down and out.  Think about who you are allowing your mind to be filled with everyday and ask yourself, “Are they helping me or hindering me?  Do I feel good about myself when I am done looking or do I start a barrage of negative self talk right after seeing her bum hoisted up on the bathroom sink with her thong in full view?”

When we stalked them as a particular person, it was easy to spot later on that we had an issue and had to stop.  But when we stalk them all as a culture, it is less obvious and we may not see the things that we are doing that are hurting us.  She diets for a season and a reason, you diet so that your physique is pleasin’—it is not the same.  To hold yourself to that standard of discipline week in and week out is unrealistic and to compare yourself to her is mind numbing.  I totally get it, though, she *looks* like where you want to be but trust me, even if you hardened up your butt cheeks to the point of cement like status, you are still married to the same man, living in the same house, going to the same job and eating the same food.  This is a dangerous diet to be doing.  Knock it off.

The “I Am Superior” Diet

What is a good example of this diet? Dr. Mercola, PhD based diet programs, The Program

Why do we think we do this? We are being mindful of our metabolism; we are nurturing our thyroid; we are on top of our hormones, all cancer and food intolerances.

Why do we really do it? We are showing off.  Plain and simple.  Look at me, I am doing this elite diet by this PhD guy and his intelligence has now wafted on to me somehow.  I am leaner and smarter all at the same time.

We have to be really careful, ladies, we are different.  We diet harder, we workout harder and we achieve more in the day than the average doobie.  Some of us get up at the crack of dawn and do in one hour what many may not do in a month.  Those around us get “it”: we’re driven.  But let me let you in on a secret:  you will not always be.  And when your drive fades or the reason behind your drive shifts, you will be left with a shell of who you used to be and a whole lotta people celebrating your crash because you spent a good amount of your time letting them know how superior you were when you were fit and in shape.

We do not mean to do it, but we do.  We make our families feel bad, our co-workers insecure and our significant others feel like schleps and in all honesty, that is their problem to deal with for sure.  However, we do not help by the way we do things:  making our Facebook pages a place to lecture people on their bad habits, spouting off information that sounds super intelligent but does not help a soul, showing up to the gym in our latest LuLu outfit complete with our program from our ‘top coach’ or being the one at the party who has to set everyone straight on the latest food findings.  There are other little things that we do that may seem more innocuous like never letting anyone ever see you eat something bad, never allowing people to see you “up a few pounds” because you will not go to the gym until you are “back to normal”, never admitting to a friend that you cheat even though your fingers are orange from the bag of Cheetos in the car or basically not ever being “real” with anyone.   All of these things scream, “Look at me.  I look good, I diet harder, I am more disciplined and I am smarter than you.”

What makes this diet so hideous is we did not choose the diet or the online coach because we needed them, we chose them because there was someone we knew who we “didn’t think was up to par” doing the same diet/using the same coach as us and we immediately thought, “I need to up the ante.”  Our fuel for changing and seeking this person out was simply that he/she is at the elite level and we wanted to be associated with them lest the nubie dieters get the idea that they are on the same level of us as dieting and working out.  At this point, we are probably just graduating from the The Celebrity Diet and we need to distance ourselves from the crowd of those “who do” from those “who think they do” so we hire the intelligent guy, keep it hush hush, stop talking about our workouts and food because now it is proprietary (because he’s the only one who knows about oatmeal) and we begin to insulate ourselves from everyone else because…well…we think we are more special.  Wow…did I just say that?  I did.  And it hurts my heart to know it is true.  We can insert whatever we want in there, too, because it is not just dieting.  It can be gyms, trainers, exercises, food brands and so on.  There is an undercurrent of snobbery with us and like I said above, people are waiting in the rafters for us to fail and we eventually do.

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Reactive

– pertaining to or characterized by reaction.  Whether you are reacting to what you have seen or heard, trying to avoid an adverse reaction to what you are not admitting to or trying to snuff out continuous damage done to your physique by your bad habits, it is all in some way reactive.

Oh no!  I think Jodi just threw out her back while actin’ a fool listenin’ to your new diet request.  WOW.

The “I Watched Too Many Documentaries” Diet

What is the origin of this diet? Skinny Bitch, Omnivores Dilemma, Food Inc., Forks Over Knives

Why do we think we do this? Because we are on the cutting edge of health information and we need to set an example for our families and clients.  We need to be aware of what is in our foods.

Why do we really do it? We’re scared crapless!  Oh no!  We’re gonna die!  Aaaahhhhhhh!

I do not know why y’alls do it to yourselves.  And then I don’t know why you then turn around and do it to me!  Stop watching these films and reading these books!  It makes you psycho.

We all have things we do not like about ourselves and we make it a point to work on trying to change them.  One of the things that drive me crazy about myself is that I am physically dramatic whether I want to be or not.  Yes, I am dramatic when I tell you a story or I want to explain something to you and that’s a good thing, but it becomes a bad thing when you come to me with your new food kick you are on because you watched one of these documentaries:

“Jodi.”  The minute you say my name like that I tense up like my 7 year old does when he hears me coming up the basement stairs while he is illegally fishing for snacks in the cabinet.

“I was watching {insert scary movie name here} (instantaneously I just convulsed in your presence) and I had no idea that {insert some God awful thing here like cows were fed pig eyeballs for 4 weeks to fatten them up so they could be slaughtered with acid, fed to llama, regurgitated, breaded and shipped to school kids in Idaho}.  I will never eat {meat, starch, sugar, veggies, worms, etc} again.  Can you help me put a diet together of wheat grass, tempeh and locusts?”

At this point, I have rolled my eyes so hard that I have most likely sprained my Levator Palpebrae Superioris behind my eyeball, sighed in such a manner that I have expelled every inch of air from my lungs and my afro has grown at least 3 inches off of my head into a full blown peacock plumage.  I am visibly not on board with anything that you are saying and I am about as professional as a chimpanzee running around in IKEA.  I admit this fully and I apologize if I have ever done this to you.  But, please, stop watching these things.  If you are not set on changing the world through an aggressive social campaign, spare yourself the drama and just eat whatever food you are now afraid of while praying that it won’t kill you.  I say this because very few of you are truly prepared to become responsible vegetarians. What you actually become is an “I-refuse-to-eat-meat-a-tarian”, which is just a physique nightmare waiting to happen.  Suddenly your meals become cheese, lots of starch and the two vegetables you still eat (because you know you hate asparagus, green beans and broccoli now). Holy hodge podge of food, Batman!  Stop making me show my behind in public by acting out this way.  Just say no to these films!

I do realize that none of you would try to eat brickle every day and pass it off as okay.  But you see, I love brickle…and I do have a picture of chocolate and wine but…I love bricke…and I wanted to see it again…so…I added it.  Sorry.  It’s all about me right now.

The Hypnosis Diet

What is the origin of this diet? Wine is good for you.  Chocolate has antioxidants. It’s just a little milk in my coffee.

Why do we think we do this? We want to prove we can keep these things in our diet because we have restraint, unlike general public dieters, we are different.

Why do we really do it? Life is hard right now and we want what we want when we want it so we convince ourselves that the thing that makes us feel best is actually good for us. And it stokes our sense of adventure by making us feel like we can get away with something.

What I love about this diet is that this is the hidden diet.  This is the thing that you are doing that you think that I don’t know that you are doing that you are secretly hoping you do not have to confess to doing while we are still friends.  Whatever this thing is, it is so good and so important to your well being that you would risk a few pounds on the scale for it and you do not care.  It would take a force of nature to get you to give this thing up.  You would have had to have watched one of those scary food documentaries and find out that your beloved thing was made with squid guts from the sewers of a third world country and even then you would try to find an organic version of it.  You love it and you have convinced yourself it doesn’t have calories or any kind of impact on your goal whatsoever.  When I finally approach you about the thing that you think that I don’t know that you are doing or you finally have to confess it because the pressure is too much to take anymore, you present it to me in 1 of 3 ways:

1)      The scientific approach: “Jodi, studies show that having molten lava chocolate cake once a day enhances your love life and you know my husband and I are struggling.”

2)      The humanistic approach: “Honestly, Jo, this was the only thing keeping me sane during company layoffs.  I just figured that if it kept my cortisol levels down, it was helping. It was just a jar of nutella.”

3)      The defensive approach: “I figured you knew.  How was I supposed to know I shouldn’t be having a quart of cream and a ½ pound of sugar in my 7 coffees a day?  Jeesh!”

Face it, ladies, you don’t stand a chance against this foe.  Look at it.  It’s creamy and yummy and…and…

The Paying Penance Diet

What is a good example of this diet? Juicing, cleanses, any kind of “jump start” plan, shakes and also really hard, psycho workouts that defy human nature fall into this category, too.

Why do we think we do this? We’re cleaning out the toxins, we need to get our heads focused, we need structure, we love to sweat.

Why do we really do it? We put ourselves on punishment for some kind of out of control behavior that we feel we should not get away with so “pat me on the head for disciplining myself”, please.   In fact, you will try to talk about this diet like you deserve it for the awful behavior you have been engaging in.

If you have ever had the luxury of having this conversation with me regarding one of these diets, you now know you will never ask again because I will give you the hairy eyeball times two and force you to fess up.  It starts out this way:

“Jodi.  What do you think of {insert latest hot product name} cleanse/shake system/cat-o-nine tails? “

Sudden silence–enough for me to make you uncomfortable.  Steely stare.  No facial expression.  You start squirming.

“No, I know what you’re thinking.  I just want to try it out.”

I break the silence:  no inflection in voice, quiet, resolute.

“Why?”

You’re nervous. “Well, because I heard it really helps with cleaning out the body.”

“Oh?  Why do you need help with that?”

After what seems like hours but really was no more than a 2 min exchange you begin to babble…

“Honestly, Jo, I am just a mess right now and I need something to get me back on track because I can’t stop eating {insert whatever here but usually full of sugar and involves some form of peanut butter—I know of very few women who can stand against peanut butter} and I just want to feel clean again.  I feel gross.  Work is a mess and I am tired and I am not working out the way I want to and I am up 3 pounds and I eat it every flipping day and…and…and..”

…so you somehow think I am going to say it is ok for you to enter into an incredibly negative cycle of out of control eating and then “cleansing” it away.  Umm…yeah…no.  But what *is* good is that I just stared at you in such a way that you are now thinking about what you just asked me and realizing the root of your folly.  Bullseye.  I joke about this one today, but I bring it up again in a different way a little later on and all humor is gone.  Knock it off. {hairy eyeball}

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Dysfunction junction what’s your unction?

Hooking up diets with crazy thought patterns.

(Feel free to sing along)

Dysfunction: a consequence of a social practice or behavior pattern that undermines the stability of a social system

Junction: a place or point where two or more things meet or converge.

Unction: something soothing or comforting.

Let’s face it:  we have issues.  We do.  As put together as we may appear to our families and friends, we have some hard core, no joke issues that start with our bodies and then manifest through food.   For the longest time, dysfunction was a word that when I heard it I would think of families.  Don’t we all think we have the most dysfunctional family and even more so every time the cops show up to a backyard barbeque because Uncle Peanut and cousin George are going at it again over money?  Or is that just my family?  Now, the word dysfunction immediately makes me think of the way we perceive food—not our bodies—but food in relation *to* our bodies.   How many of you have a certain quirky behavior that you do now that you know you never did before because somehow doing it makes you feel as if those calories do not count or your clothes fit better or whatever?  We all have something and to some degree it’s cute and it’s funny, but then there comes a time when it begins to set up a pattern of thinking that starts out as dysfunctional and quickly morphs into mental bondage.  Where we can’t have a cheat meal—which is food albeit not necessarily the best food but food nonetheless–because we think we will gain weight but we will thoroughly ignore the fact that over the course of the week we ate a bunch of “little” cheats that added up to 4 cheat meals and a snack by the time we were done anyway.  But it doesn’t count…because it took a week…and it wasn’t as bad because…well…because it wasn’t.  [pouting while looking at the floor]  So, to make up for that folly we skip the cheat meal again coming up that weekend because we believe in our warped thinking that we should not have it because we just cheated our way through the week but now we are resentful because we can’t have it…and we want to be done with this dieting thing…and why are we the only one with horrible genetics…and we don’t need it anyway because it’s so much easier not to have it…so we—wait for it…–keep “cheating”!  UGH!

This is just one of the quirky things that we do and the most easily recognizable but there are many more dysfunctions, and yes, I am going to touch upon one of them in this series and it is not the cheat meal–it’s dieting in general.  Understand dysfunction was not our issue at first.  None of us started this behavior consciously and almost all of us developed it over a long period time.  Long enough that we may even tell our quirk to other people as if it actually had scientific basis or did not seem wonky at all while we try to convince them that we have no other motive for that behavior other than pure science (“Baby, I eat my food cold because studies show it digests better.”  Riiight).  Trust me when I say this, they think you are jacked in the mind.  Just accept it.  Especially when you try to convince them that something tastes amazing when it clearly does not (*cough* protein pancakes *cough*).   Again, all cute and funny here but like I said before, there comes a time…when we reach a certain junction in our lives…when we cross a line from a silly behavior to augmenting the way we eat to accommodate a twisted thought in our head.  Not cool.  That junction is normally at the meeting place of our bodies vs. ‘loss of control’ somewhere in our lives and we feel as if we need that control back NOW.  Stat!  Pronto!  Therefore, decisions must be made and behaviors must be changed (read that as ‘become more extreme’) so that we can feel more in control of something we have absolutely no control over.

The most obvious decision that we make is to do some sort of overhaul with our diet.  We need something to placate the feeling that we have.  We are spiraling out of control.  We are up 5 pounds, manically eating junk, feeling lousy about ourselves, not liking the look of our body for some reason, feeling insecure, wanting relief from something emotionally draining or what have you!  We may be one of those; we may be all of those. The point is:  We. Are. Something.  And if we do not have ‘something’ that soothes or comforts that feeling we have, you know…like an unction (i.e. crazy diet), then we could possibly self destruct until we do.   Here it is, though, here is the scary thing and it is happening so innocently that we may miss it.  The problem is not the choosing of an unction, the problem is in the justification.  What are you telling yourself to justify the decision that you are making?  What “science” are you convincing yourself of?  What rationale are you using to say it is okay to eat white fish at every meal for 2 weeks straight just to lose 5 pounds?  Again, the diet or method you may choose to do may not be bad, but the reason you choose it is and that is puts you on a game playing, weight loss merry-go-round that can be mind boggling at best; destructive at worst.

We, in our dysfunction, diet for many reasons but I have only chosen 3 for this series and 3 diets per reason; I could have easily chosen another 10 if given the chance.  I start the series out in full humor but end in all seriousness.  Tomorrow is about Reactive Dieting, how y’alls tend to do crazy things for silly reasons and try with a straight face to convince me that you have fully thought this through.  Wednesday is about Prideful Dieting.  This is slightly funny but more on the cautionary side.  I may come off as if I am lecturing you but I can assure I am not.  I am sparing you from your own folly.  Ask me how I know (hanging my head in shame).  Thursday I am in your living room, sitting across from you on the couch, looking you dead in your eyes and saying enough is enough.  You are worth more than this psycho behavior can give you and the destruction has to stop.  Friday, after you booted me out of your house on Thursday, I still had more to say so I made you meet me for a tea and I talk about the last diet and then I put a short wrap up together so we are clear on all that I am saying here.

This is much like the last series in that I do not have any lead ins or transition statements at the end of the blogs.  I will not “make sense of” or wrap anything up until Friday so be sure to read all the emails I send to you about the posts and this introduction again if you feel as if you are missing something.  I have much to say about the way we diet, I do not need to make the posts any longer with transition stuff.  I hope you enjoy.  “See” you tomorrow!  WOOP WOOP!

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Something to keep in mind as you read, today especially: Jodiojo isn’t really a blog, it’s a conversation between you and me.  I do not write to an “intended audience” and then hope to find readers.  I write to a few hundred women that I know very intimately.  I would say I know 75% of the Jodiojo readership because I’ve either dieted you or trained you in some capacity so when I write I am very specific in what I say but I’m also intentional in the detail that I share.  I want you to know what goes through my head the same way you share what goes through yours.  Hence today’s post.  Read on…

I appreciate genuine honesty.  We should know what we’re getting into before starting something.

Since we are on the topic of revelation, let me tell you about another one that I have had:  honesty is always the best policy but boy does it come with risk.  This is not the same as what I just described, that was more about you seeing that your psycho tendencies were real but not at all limited to just you and that there was something more behind them than you just not knowing how to take your face out of a bag of chips.  What I am now referring to is how every-so-often I will say something that floors even me.  Something so raw and truthful that once it leaves me lips, the only thing left for me to do is to hide under the table that’s between us.  Let me preface what I am talking about by saying this before illuminating more:  I love what I do.  And I love that there are women out there who trust me on the level that they trust me.  They literally tell me things they have never said to another human being before in their lives;  walk through things with me that take tremendous emotional courage; and look inside themselves in ways I know they never would have if it wasn’t for them trusting me that it was going to go somewhere productive.  I am not a therapist and I do not try to be one.  I am that girlfriend you wished you had to cry with when the one you really had didn’t have time to listen.  I totally understand the enormity of the position I am in because there was a time in my life when I didn’t and I have seen the pain it can cause when you don’t “get” this.  But I get it now—more than you will ever know–and it floors me.  It completely lays me out in lavender.  I am honored beyond all belief and very aware of the fragility of the relationship therefore I treasure our moments together and am never, ever casual about any conversation—even if it is just about the weather.  This is mainly because I understand that every conversation tells me more and more about you—even the silly ones.  You will open up and share about stuff that you may not have ever thought about simply by me asking you the most basic question and you feeling safe enough to be honest.  This is huge and it comes with great responsibility so when I let a grenade fall to the floor, I always hold my breath and pray the pin is still in it or we’re both going down in that particular conversation.   This is not easy!  This is risk in its rawest, most real form:

Will you talk to me again? Trust me when I tell you I have had some who took weeks before they would ever “go there” with me again.  But they eventually did.  Patience.

Do you understand that there’s not a lick of judgment on this end?  That I’m just like you?  And truth be told, probably worse because I know better? I would say yes because you keep reading/talking/texting with me but still, the risk is there.

Are you now a holy hot mess? Remember, I’m not a therapist and I don’t work with anyone who truly needs one, the things we talk about are all relational, but still…I just poked a finger into a gaping wound, major soft spot, place of shame or etc.  What’s going on in your mind right now?

Did I get the timing right?  Did I rush it?  Did I sound impatient?  Was I rude?  How could I have just said that out loud?  Are you hurt?  Do you hate me?  Do you see it, now? AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I wish I could tell you what that feels like when you say something that may seem so innocuous to someone else but you know it’s a loaded scud missile:  “So…do you think you were being selfish when you said that?”  “You do realize that it’s your responsibility to do [X,Y,Z]—not theirs”  “Is it really her fault, or are you just jealous?  Because from here, all I hear is jealousy.”  I could go on for days.  None of these statements are super deep but they are like flaming arrows to the heart when they come out of the mouth of someone you trust, directed to you who is standing with your heart wide open and vulnerable in your hand and they land on it dead center like a bull’s-eye painted on the side of a wall.  I don’t know about you, but that kind of experience will humble anybody with a heart and/or conscience.  I had better have my information straight, my motives on point and my own internal defense mechanism off because there will be repercussions from that conversation—good and bad.  Between phone calls or meetings is where the action is because there are seven days before we will speak again and a lot can happen in your brain in that time.  Basically, you get to think…and think…and think and at times that is to your advantage, many other times, though, it is not.  Thoughts like:

“I never saw it that way”

“How long have I been doing that?”

“Oh my goodness, I really do, do that!”

This is the first day or two, however, if you are not in the place to want to see something, shame or blame may set in:

“Who does she think she is saying that?”

“She thinks she knows everything and she knows nothing!”

“She always gets my head going and I can’t stand it.  I don’t need to think about this to lose 5 pounds!”

Embarrassment and panic could set in because we pulled the ‘kick me’ sign off of you so now you are defensive:

“Why didn’t anyone tell me I’ve been doing that?”

“I can’t go back to the gym now.  I need to find a new gym.”

There’s a chance of bitterness and resentment from erroneous conclusions about friends and loved ones:

“I knew my boyfriend wasn’t looking out for my best interest.”

“This is all my mother’s fault.  She would always…”

“My so called friends are jerks.”

All of the thoughts introduce risk; not on the level of therapy—just on the level of pride.  Has your pride been damaged because if it has, I’m going down the next time I press in your ten digits.  And I am sure you are wondering, and I will answer the question for you now, yes, I have been eaten for breakfast by some folks but it is always temporary (because ultimately they get their breakthrough) and I have never ended on a sour note but I have had a few frosty phone calls that were not exactly fun.

Now that you know that I do this, how do I write about it?  You can’t hear love in my tone if you’re reading this.  I know I can soften it up but then it loses the effect.  I want you to wake up and smell the coffee:  He is NOT the best guy for you, yes he IS cheating on you and that IS why you just ate that bag of chocolate and I meant to say that, but reading it would come off harsh.  And if I am writing about it, then it most likely would not be that specific.  It would be more general which would mean that for me to make my point, the word I deliver would really have to be a major scud missile and then I just worry about hurting people’s feelings because you may not know me enough in this way now to understand where I’m coming from and you will read it wrong.  Sigh…

Again, I will figure it out and get back to the task at hand.  But you can see where I have been for the past few months in that I have been metamorphosing in the confines of my basement.  Did that sound sort of creepy to anyone else besides me?  What I mean is, a lot has been going on on this side of the computer.

Tomorrow I share where I am headed.  It’s not a mystery if you have been reading the last 4 days but I lay it out in black and white because the site is changing.  Normally, a blog would just sort of change and not make too big of a deal of it in terms of saying why.  It would just happen.  But back to my original point, this is “not just a blog” and I feel you should know where I am headed and decide whether you want to come, as well.  We finish up tomorrow!  Woop woop!!

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You have to read this series as if it was one long blog post because…well…it was.  But it was way too long to post as one day so I chopped it in five…keep reading…

Flash forward to now.  Now…I don’t say a word.  Why?  Because personal revelation is far more effective and long lasting than me *telling* you about yourself (and boy can I tell you about yourself if given the chance. OY!)  Understand what I am saying here: I am not saying that I will let you walk around endlessly with a ‘kick me’ sign on your back because I thoroughly recognize that I have a moral obligation to tell you that you are smoking crack and you need to back away from the pipe.  What I am saying is that there is a huge element of timing that is involved in breakthrough and a certain level of risk on my part that I have to be willing to accept (i.e. you getting angry at me that the scale isn’t moving fast enough) if I really want to get you to a true place of success.  I am so done with ordering people around for 12 weeks only to have them back 6 months later because they didn’t learn a thing about themselves the first time around.  It is time for breakthrough but breakthrough requires patience and an element of looking like I don’t know what I’m doing for a while and back in the day, I was not willing to take that risk.  It is not always fun for me at first, but it is so worth it in the end when you are a whole new woman not controlled by your moods thereby not controlled by your eating.

Let me tell you what this looks like because you may still be thinking, “I don’t care, Jodi, I don’t ever want a ‘kick me’ sign on my back.”  I understand that fully but guess what, if you do, it will still be there after you lose whatever weight you would want to lose.  The only thing that would change is that you would be 10 pounds lighter with that sign on you only your friends and family won’t come along and take it off your back because they know you will need it again in 9 months when you gain all the weight back and start the crap all over again.  With that being said, hold on to your sign while I tell you what it looks like to take it off for good:

Most of us (in fact I can go out on a limb and say if you are reading Jodiojo then you have definitely at one time or another done what I am about to say) have struggled losing weight at some time or another in our lives and at the end of that struggle we may have found something that “worked” at that time.  Be it low carb, high carb, no carb, extra fat, no fat, certain types of fat, eating while standing up vs. eating while being upside down, the cute trainer in the gym vs. the old guy with the hairy mole at the boxing ring, whatever it was, we automatically thought, “that was it” and then we erroneously set our lives up around that food, food plan, gym, trainer or what have you.  May I be so bold as to tell you that it is never “them”?  If it was the first time that you had to lose weight, then yes, it could have been “them”.  But if you have worn a tread around the Mulberry bush losing the same 5 to 10 pounds every year—it’s never “them”.  Let’s flash back, then, to the days of my depravity.  I would have to beat you into submission/understanding that the root of your problem was not “them”.  I would tell you the truth and what I said was right, but I would say it in a way that just shut you down and never gave you the chance to experience it for yourself.  What’s so bad about that is you never got to see where you had gone wrong in your thinking so you could not appreciate/grasp the concept/understand what part of your thinking was holding you back in the first place.  Not one of you lack diet knowledge—not one.  There is not a shortage of brain power with the readers of this site.  However, all of us still walk around the Mulberry bush ‘over thinking’ our issue thinking that it is the glycemic index in relation to the mitochondrial influence on our Thyroid that has caused us to mysteriously put on 10 pounds while we were getting our hair done because we just learned on Dr Oz that if we don’t control the surge of ghrelin in our guts, we will surely release too much insulin!!  WHAT??  Really???  Heavens to Murgatroyd!  Say isn’t so, Sam!  You want to watch my afro grow 45 feet in 3 minutes flat?  Come to me with some nonsense like that and I could seriously launch out of my skin into your head and stomp on your thinking for about 10 minutes before I even realized that I had invaded your mind like that.  I know some of you are laughing right now because you are still picking out remnants from the bottom of my shoes out of your frontal lobes so you know what I am saying is true.  Please…whatever you do…don’t come to me with craziness like that.  It makes me psycho…and you wouldn’t like me when I’m psycho.

Now this is some bull right here!

After all of this, though, I still have not told you what this looks like so here it goes:  First, let me start by saying that this is not anyone in particular so please do not email me and say that that’s you.  One, get over yourself; two, we ALL do this.  ALL of us!  You are not a freak—you’re normal!  Seriously.  This means that no one can email me and say that I put their business out there because it is EVERYBODY’S business!  Get your hands off the keyboard now.  Thank you.  What was I saying?  Oh yes, you decide you cannot take the extra ten pounds anymore and so you hunt me down for a “diet”.  The conversation may go a little something like this:

Girl: “Jodi!  Where have you been?  I miss you!”

Who knows I haven’t been ‘anywhere’?  What they’re really saying is, “Why weren’t you here last week when I stuck my face in my refrigerator on Friday and then didn’t bring it back out again until Sunday night?  You slackard!  Now I’m up 10 and it’s all your fault for not making your voice loud enough in my head. Grrr.”

Me: “Uh…I’ve been right here.  I miss you, too.  What’s up?”

Completely said with that voice that says “I’m so onto where you’re going and I’m not going with you.  However, I’ll entertain you for a minute because I love you.”  Compassion in action.

Girl: “I need you to put a diet together for me.  I need to take this extra weight off.”

Me: “Really?  What happened to the last 4 I put together?”

Who can hear me saying that to you?  Again…no shortage of knowledge on this site!

Girl: “They worked awesome!!  I just need to get it together again.  I need a jumpstart/energizer/refresher/focused plan/structured type of thing to get me back on track/serious/in line again/all about health/where I was before.”

Me: “That’s what you said before.  What happened?”

Girl: “Nothing.  It was awesome actually.  I hit goal.  But then…work/husband/kids/life/high school reunion/alien life forces/alignment of the stars got in the way and I’m back to square one.  Please Jodi.  Can you just make me a diet/make me hot/make me like my job/make me not want to hit my relative/make me look good naked just this one/two/three/four times again?”

Me: “I’ll tell you what…”

Right away you should know something is coming down the pike at you that is going to cost you something and I don’t mean money.

Me: “I’ll give you a new plan—we’ll start this Friday.  You have it for 4 weeks.  If you can’t stick with it, then can we talk?”

Girl: “Absolutely!!  I’m so excited!  Thank you!”

Said Girl (thank you, Norman) gets the diet.  She’s good for the first 2 weeks like it is her job! Then week 3 comes along and there’s a bit of a falter and by week 4 she’s bordering on being a mess (mind you, the whole time she was losing weight so this isn’t about lack of progress!):

Me: “Ok girl, what’s going on?  You know there’s no pressure from me but you’re not going to make the goal that you wanted to make if you keep falling apart like this.”

In other words, do you see what I see? Go ahead, sing it in your head.

Girl: “Nothing is going on.  I’m super focused…it’s just that my food is so boring/life is so hectic/I really want to be able to eat [insert here]/I hate cardio/I’m so tired from work/I need someone to cook my food…so I haven’t been on track lately.”

Me: Total dead pan tone, “Really.”

I get blamed for everything. Sigh.

Here is where back in the day I would have lambasted you, got you in a head lock and ate you for breakfast.  Now?  Not so much.  Instead, I wait…it  may take a few more weeks…but I wait…hear every word you say, we talk about your progress, we put minor solutions into operation…and then I wait again…drop little hints here and there…ask questions…and wait…chat with you like I know nothing….celebrate your achievements…and wait…til it hits you like a ton of bricks that it’s not the carbs/insulin/wheat/gluten/beef vs. vegetarianism issue that you have been plagued with and if someone had cooked your food/hand delivered your food/heck, ate your food for you, you STILL wouldn’t have stayed on track.  Instead, the issue lies with you!  Now if I had told you that, you would not have believed me.  You would have blamed the diet/republicans/democrats/gun laws/innocent wombats/webkinz and so on because you were not in a place to see what I was seeing.   But for some reason, the lights have been turned on and all our patience has paid off because THAT’s where the success lies.  When you tell it back to me like I had zero idea and honestly, I most likely didn’t, but I knew something was up then we are truly cooking with gas.  But you needed to figure that out—not me.  Me knowing does you no good.

This has been my last 2 years and it has impacted my writing tremendously because I can no longer write about what I used to I see things so differently now.  Hence my disappearance.  I’m not done, though.  There’s more.  Not much, but enough that I couldn’t shove it in today.  See you tomorrow.  Woop woop!

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It’s so good to be back and the story continues…make sure you read all week to see where I’m at…

Honestly, I would never get you in a headlock on the first meeting.  I always wait a few months.  For real.

Another significant change is that I’m much more compassionate.  Five years ago if you had asked me ‘do these jeans make me look fat?’ I would have told you, “No, you make you look fat.  In fact, if you got your head out of your behind and focused, maybe you could fit in your jeans.  Not for nuthin’, but I have better things to do with my time like floss my teeth than have this conversation with you.  Anytime you’re ready and you can stop wishing the weight off, I’m here for you.”  Now, I know what you’re thinking:  ‘You just told me that last week!  More compassionate my behind!’  And you may have a point there, but now instead of saying that snarkily, I would say that with full love and compassion in my heart.  It would probably come out more like this:  “No.  You do not “look” fat. And you are NOT fat.  Are you where you want to be?  No.  But you know why and there’s no reason to go over this again and beat the tar out of you with it.  However, don’t ask questions you know the answer to that somehow prove you suck, because I’m not on board with that.  But do take off those jeans cuz they ain’t workin’ for ya!”  See?  Much better.  And then I’d give you “the look”.  You know what the look is because even those who only talk to me on the phone say, “I know you have that look on your face.”  Cracks me up when y’alls say that to me.

All joking aside, I have been having this ongoing revelation that on the other side of every diet question is a woman looking for someone to tell her she’s either beautiful, worthy or loved and I can no longer be party to being a soul “krusher”.  I have been transforming bodies for a long, long time now and no matter how many bodies I’ve changed the thing I remember most and what counts more to me than anything else is the woman who has allowed me to watch her heart be transformed more than her outer shell.  The ultimate privilege/honor/desire for me is to be there when the lights turn on in your head and you realize that that little box on the floor that you step on is a liar, or that you do not need to eat half a cabinet because your Aunt Betty Anne did not invite you AGAIN to the cookout or that your girlfriend who you think is the most-put-together-hot-chic-this-side-of-the-Mississippi is really a holy hot mess who is one Prozac pill away from losing it all and you’ve been worshipping her why????  THAT, my dear, is glory to me!!  Because on the other side of that is freedom!  And isn’t that what it’s all about?  What good is a great body if you are only a prisoner in it and not a landowner?

So am I now going to be writing sappy material that says ‘you can do it’ when you are much more intelligent than that?  Mmm..no…but I may not chew you up and spit you out like I did before…well…at least not in a harsh way…keep reading…

I know you THINK that’s why you want a new diet but let’s really get to the matter at hand.

Another thing that I have noticed is that I am much more perceptive of motives, driving forces, bull crap, excuses, superstitions, myths, crutches and bold faced lies than I ever have been before and at the same time I am much more comfortable in my own skin.  This has created an interesting combination.  Back in the day, I would have to call someone on their crap right away—not because it was to their benefit, no…that would be noble.  I did it mainly because I did not want them to think that I did not know—when I actually did–or have them blame me for something that was not “my fault”.  Awful—I know!  And honestly, it hurts my heart to even type that!  It was all about me and I was NOT going down with the ship.  I will try to illustrate this more in terms of training in a minute but for the sake of just getting where I am going, think about a girlfriend that you have that says stuff to you about herself that you know is not true.  She does not do it maliciously, she is honestly delusional or in obvious self denial.  The normal response is to not say a thing but to call another girlfriend that knows her and ask her if you are crazy because so and so just said such and such and you were dumbfounded.  I, of course, am not condoning gossip but let’s face it—we have all made that call once in our lives:  “Girl, I just got off the phone with Aunt Betty Anne.  What in Heaven’s name is she smoking??  She just said—no, I’m serious when I say this—she just said that she doesn’t understand why she gained 5 pounds over the weekend AFTER she just said she went to the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival and sampled EVERYTHING there while having 2 beers and a glass of wine—but wait for it…–she said she didn’t understand because they were all healthy choices!  WHAT????  I didn’t know what to say.”  If it happens and she is your girlfriend, that is ok.  If it happens and she is your client, that is called a-disaster-waiting-to-happen.  Should you lie to this person?  NO!  Absolutely not.  But are there ways to handle this without “krushing” a soul?  Yes.  Read on.

Although your girlfriend tried to convince you that it means “hot body”, deep down you know it means “kick me” with an arrow saying where.

Then I got to a point where I’d be a little more patient about it, but I still had to let you know that I knew or let someone else know that I knew (see call above) and I still refused to go down with the ship.  Again, back then it was never about their welfare or their progress, because if it was it would have been handled very differently.  Unfortunately, it was all about me not taking the blame for their delusion and me being right and me, me, me…UGH!  Right about now you may be thinking, “But wait!! Jodi, I WANT you to tell me I’m delusional.  I don’t EVER want to be that girl who is walking around with the ‘kick me’ sign on my back and I have no idea.”  I hear you but if you are thinking that or even thinking that it is my moral obligation to tell her as her nutritionist and you do not see the problem with this, keep reading and it will begin to make sense.

Yes…the heat is about to get hotter…see you tomorrow morning for more…woop woop!!

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I’ve changed.  Yet again, I have changed.  I know, I know…I disappeared last summer and I am resurfacing today because this current series was nagging my fingers to type (and because about 20 of you called/texted/emailed/sent smoke signals saying ‘write or else you die’ but that’s neither here nor there) so here I am typing away but I have to tell you…I’m different.  At first I didn’t think that it made a difference that I’m not the same person anymore but how many of you already know how silly that statement is?  Then I thought that I would just throw out a few series here and there and I would figure it out as I went along.  Well, that didn’t happen either since I have now had the longest writing gap to date in the life of Jodiojo.  Now I am at the point of simply fessin’ up to the fact that I am not the same person but I have no idea how to package all that rattles around in my brain and get it to you in a way that makes sense so that I don’t come off like some kind of internet troll with an ax to grind.  Please bear with me over the next five days as I tell you how my metamorphosis affects the information that comes out of this blog.

There I am.  Eighty five and still talking someone off a Dr. Mercola ledge.

First, let’s talk about the fact that I’m older—and I don’t mean my age–I mean in my worldview, the way I think and process information–I’m like an old lady.  I am much older in the way that I view things but in my everyday life I feel like a kid again.  I describe it in that manner because I feel like I’m getting younger everyday (I’m so much happier, life really is awesome and if I could, I’d skip around my house a few times) but my professional disposition is that of an 85 year old woman.  I have no interest in the ‘latest happening’.  If it’s on TV, it’s not on my radar.  Period.  If you saw it in a magazine and want to know what I think, you’ll have a better chance of getting me to tell you that you can drink alcohol for the next 3 weekends in a row—and good luck with that.  So I’ve become this sort of…curmudgeon.  It’s terrible.  Yes, I know…you already thought I was one.  But if you can believe it, I’m worse!  No kidding.

What is worse is that I no longer have a passion for the nutrition and training industry.  It’s gone.  Dead as a doornail.  Sigh.  ALRIGHT!  That’s a little dramatic and far be it from me to be dramatic but the passion has severely waned.  The thing is, losing any part of my heart for the industry on a whole is monumental because I have lived nutrition and training for the past 16 years (and seeing that I just turned 21…haha!) and I cannot even imagine doing anything else since I “get” it and I can do it in my sleep.  It’s almost frightening.  Most of you know that I started out as both an engineer and group fitness instructor, dropped the engineering to stay home with my kids and voila! my career began.   It was fun, new to me and a perfect fit seeing as I had a biology concentration alongside my engineering degree from college.  However, the industry of old is not the industry of new and I can no longer stomach where it is going.  It’s a shame.  At one point there seemed to be dignity to the craft and people honestly gave a crap but now, not so much.  There’s a trainer on every corner but they are less and less interested in being educated, never mind certified; there’s a new diet on the market every month; and there’s a ‘new reason’ every ten minutes as to why the country is obese/dying of cancer/leprous/you-name-it and typically it’s wheat/gluten/dairy/meat/starch/sugar…whatever—gimme a break!  So much of it is fear mongering and whatever is truth is so massaged in favor of whoever is presenting it that it is hard to believe it for face value.

But it is more than just the charlatans that have moved in and set up camp on the internet or the latest fads on the market, it is the overall mindset of the consumer, too, because we are the ones giving these folks a voice.    If you do not have a gimmick, if you are not pushing the latest craze or if you refuse to put a gratuitous butt shot on your site, you might as well give it up in terms of being heard.  Please let me say, I do not mean being “heard” is about being “liked” by everyone on FB or having a super popular website because that’s not even in my vocabulary.  If I cared about that, I would be on Twitter, FB, Pinterest, Instagram and so on vying for attention like everyone else.  I am nowhere near that stuff; I am too busy sitting in my basement office loving life.  No, what I mean is you are not heard by the people you are working with simply because they themselves are drowning in life. The enemies are typical:  the news, the internet, the hot chic on FB, the latest myth in Oxygen, Oprah, Dr. Oz and so on.  The more I think about it, they are actually not enemies but more distractions.  The real enemy is what’s going on in our minds, and getting someone to see that takes time and patience that I no longer have in that capacity.  If you want me to sit with you one on one and walk you through a nutrition concept, I have endless patience.  If you want me to argue with you about why someone else can do something that you can’t (like lose 5 pounds while eating junk), I’m going to have to bow out on that one—I am fresh out of patience.  In terms of other trainers, you have to be willing to argue with whatever camp that may be out there pushing whatever the latest and greatest discovery is and if you notice one thing about Jodiojo—I am not into that at all.  I refuse to argue.  I’d rather pluck the tiny hairs on my toes with an old pair of pliers before I’d ever waste my time arguing over the metabolic impact of eating a sleeve of Oreos versus the slow response of serotonin when doing a squat. (I so just pulled all that out of my butt–with those pliers.  Thank you for humoring me.)  You get my point, though.

You know those aren’t my toes right? The question is: did I pluck my toe hairs first or pull that out of my butt? Hmmm….

When did the industry change like this?  I feel like I was on a deserted island for 10 years and this is what I have come back to.  ACK!!  However, the real question is:  How does this affect Jodiojo?  I’m getting there…  There’s more…lots more…hang tight.  So glad to be back.  Woop woop!

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When you were younger life was carefree and summers were never long enough.  You spent all your time at the beach or as you got older, with your girlfriends at the beach.  Conversation never lacked with them and although from time to time someone would have an attitude with someone else, for the most part you all got along great.  As you’ve aged, though, things have changed.  Some jealousies have cropped up, new girls have come into the mix and there’s this weird underlying tension that, at times, makes you uneasy.  You long for the “old days” when life was so simple and you didn’t notice how critical and self centered some of your girlfriend’s have become and now here you sit on the deck with them all, on a gorgeous summer night, wondering why you don’t measure up and how come this doesn’t feel so good anymore.

I think obsessively…about how no matter how much I work out, I never have legs like X have.  Her legs are perfect.  Honestly, if I had my way, I lace a bottle of Nair with something and give her something jacked up to worry about for a change.  Sigh.  And why Z just keeps shooting out jabs all night long about how *she* doesn’t have to work out that much anymore and how *she* solved all her issues with this great trainer and how *perfect* her body is now and why don’t *I* go and see him, too, since I’m working out so hard.  I would have punched her in the mouth if it wasn’t for the fact the she’s married to a lawyer.

With eyes wide open I see…a woman beyond great legs in X.  She’s spent more time asking about me and my life than anyone else here.  Yes, I’m jealous and I have to get over that.  She has great legs and I want them.  She also just spent 10 minutes frothing over my hair.  Granted, hers does look like she had a horrible run in with a Vitamix on the high setting, clearly I need to get over myself and help her out.  I never thought to help her because I can’t get past her legs.  What is my gig?  And for the love of all that is holy, poor Z.  Seriously.  Man, I would kill for her body and I would love not to work out so hard but if that’s the only thing she can talk about all night—I’d rather remove my excess body fat with a Flowbee and a butter knife in a back room of a seedy bar than be that obsessed.  More than anything, I don’t know if anyone else notices the way I do—but Z is one unhappy camper.

Here comes the wine and the chatter goes from casual, catch-up kind of chatter to slower, more personal talking amongst you all.  You realize the group is beginning to splinter off into smaller conversations on the deck and you’re not sure which one you want to join.  X and Y are chatting about their kids.  Cute convo but you don’t have any and you’re not sure you want to go there all night.  Z, A and B are talking about Z’s marvelous adventures with her new star trainer and all that that entails.  You’re ready to go MMA on her if you have another glass of wine.  Time to slow the pace there.  C and D are chatting about nothing in particular, yet, but both of them intimidate you.  You’re not sure which one is has it more together but it doesn’t matter because either one makes you feel like an amateur at life.  You decide to hop in with them and the squirming, primping and excuse making by you starts almost immediately.

I think obsessively…how fat I feel.  How dumb I look.  How much I haven’t done with my life.  How much I struggle to keep my body looking the way it does and they don’t.  They’re not asses like Z is, which is nice, but they still don’t have to work hard to look great.  It would take me hours to find an outfit like C’s.  I’d never be able to put something together like that.  Why do I look like I just raided a halfway house’s linen closet and D looks like the model out of the fall catalogue of Ann Taylor Loft?  UGH!!

With eyes wide open I see…something I have never seen before.  Either we have never talked alone like this or the wine makes people share things they never would have before (who guessed the wine?).  Here are two women I truly admire and have a serious girl crush on talking about struggles that they have that I would 1) never imagine and 2) do not ever struggle with.  The fears and paranoia these two ladies have is mind boggling.  Now truth be told, they’re both 2 glasses in with no signs of slowing down and I can’t imagine what they’ll be sharing in an hour or so.  I feel bad.  I have spent a long time being jealous and insecure over their lives when I’m now sitting here thinking I would do anything not to be where they are right now (and not in a judgey sort of way, more like in a “I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-realize-you-were-human-because-I’ve-been-so-obsessed” sort of way.)

The night ends with you becoming closer with two people who you can learn a lot from and share with.  They can give you a better sense of fashion since your idea of dressing up is taking a shower and wearing deodorant and you can show them how to live life since you do that pretty well without even trying.  Both of them are in love with you because you spent half the night talking them off of a ledge and helping them see the faultiness of their logic without making them feel like jerks.  It’s a rare talent but you clearly possess it.  Now if you can just stomach Z for more than 10 minutes, you may be able to find something good in her, too…

The summary of all four posts is next.   Hang tight, it’s time for some rules, guidelines and empathy…  Woop woop!

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We are in the middle of the gastrointestinal nightmare series defined by bloated bellies and leaky butts (yeah I said that…what are you gonna do about it?) so I feel obligated to ask the one question I always feel is necessary:  Is it worth it?  Seriously.  Is all the worry, stress, hustle and bustle worth it in your life when it is all said and done?

Back in the day, and I mean back in the day, I was at UMass Boston taking an exam to get my ACSM personal trainer certification.  I think at the time I was also a stay at home mom, group fitness instructor, NASA astronaut, part time pastry chef, Red Cross volunteer and candy striper.  Honestly, there wasn’t much I wasn’t doing during this time.  I had supernatural powers and supernatural energy.  But I was missing some major medical signs that all wasn’t well in Dodge (I really had a knack for this—what a clown I was) because I routinely had a “nervous belly” and really didn’t do much to fix it.  So here I am in the middle of an exam and I have to “go”.  No…I mean GO.  Like right then.  Pronto.  Clear a path.  No turning back, it was coming.  And I remember the proctor not wanting to let me go but I think the sweat on my forehead told him something wasn’t right and he acquiesced.  This was one of those situations where I knew that I wasn’t going to use a bathroom in the building that was within 2 floors of where that test was being taken.  Is anyone hearing me right now?   I believe on that day I cleared out all vegetation within a 3 mile zone of the school.  I lost some of the information I studied that day in the bathroom.  It was tragic.  It was humbling.  And when I finally went to the doc, it was IBS.

What Is Our Gig?

Why do we feel it so necessary to overachieve on a level that is almost comical?  I talk to some of you and wonder how you have time to actually go to the bathroom never mind anything else.  There comes a time when we have to take a long hard look at ourselves and say, “What do you think you’re proving right now because nobody notices what you’re doing but you.  Either I get over the martyr routine or I need to demand recognition.  But enough is enough.”  Most of us have been this way since birth but at some point, this took a wrong turn and started to become caustic.  We are adrenaline junkies.  We live on the high of psychoticness but guess what?  Your body can’t keep up and it’s starting to show.

Sorry, I Have To Say It

If you have ever said to someone in defense of your insanity, “if I don’t do it, it’ll never get done” or “I’m the only one who knows how to…” or “no one else will help me, can help me, is competent…etc”  I have 3 words for you:  Get. Over. Yourself.  I am not saying this to be rude—I am saying it to save you.  It is the best thing anybody ever said to me because I was the QUEEN of Savioritis.  If you think that the world will stop revolving if you step off it, you are sadly mistaken.  You are not your family’s savior.  You are not your work’s savior.  You have not been commissioned by the US Govt to make sure all of America is getting along just fine.  Trust me, the world will keep on keepin’ on without you solving the Cuban Missle Crisis.  Please stop auditioning for work on the Bodie Plantation and start living life.  Your family and your colon will thank you.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Coming home every night to chaos and mayhem only to “unwind” by having a glass of wine is like going to Chuck E Cheese to have an intimate dinner with your man.  Alcohol is a stimulant and is about as effective at relaxing you as a colonic performed with a garden hose.  Yes, you have an initial giddy phase where you feel loose and happy (accidentally start snapping photos and over sharing on FB—we know, we know) but then it wears off after you face plant into your bed at night and then spend at least an hour or two staring at the ceiling.  This does nothing for your stress levels except to raise them even higher.  There has to be something better like reading, meditating or deep sea diving.

I’m Continually Amazed

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “How do you know what I am thinking?  It’s like you’re in my head.”  Do you want to know how?  Because I was you but on crack!  Whatever you do now, I did on a level that defied logic and gravity.  I had ISSUES.  No…I-S-S-U-E-S.  My husband can look at me at times and just shake his head.  It’s a shame.  I say all that so I can emphasize this one point:  slowwwww dowwwwwwn.  Please.  You will miss your children’s lives, your husband’s life, your own life and your colon if not.  Ninety nine percent of all our gastric trouble is self induced by our hectic lifestyle—I just totally pulled that out of my arse but if it scares you even just a little bit to slow down, I’ll stand by it.   I no longer suffer from IBS, constipation and so on (although I can occasionally levitate in my office, just sayin’) and it is because the pace of my life changed, not the quality of my food.

We need to talk supplements and thyroid.  More to come!!  Woop woop!

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