Mindfulness is an entirely new concept for me.
Take food and fitness for just one example. Or two.
For more than 20 years now, I throw myself into fitness when I’m well and fall into fatness when I’m unwell. I have lived on an emotional roller coaster of food and fitness.
So I use food to get through it.
I feel my feelings as much as I can, have a good cry when I can, and eat when I feel like I’m bursting with emotions that need to get out.
Thanks Ben and Jerry. You guys have totally had my back.
Miscarriage After Effects
It’s been almost a month now since I had a miscarriage. Then right at the end of my miscarriage I got horrible food poisoning.
Yay me.
I have two kids at home. I have a husband. I have clients and projects. I have a house to run. I have a women’s circle to lead.
I led a women’s circle while I was miscarrying.
I don’t have time to fall apart in typical ways.
I also don’t have the inclination to fall apart in typical ways.
I took a couple of days off, but then I just thought “well, what the hell is this gonna do for me?” And I got back up and moved on with my life.
But I knew I wasn’t right still.
So I ate.
And ate.
And ate.
And I got on the scale out of sheer curiosity the other day and WHAM!
I’ve gained 15 pounds.
In one month.
Like I said, Thanks Ben and Jerry.
Facing It
But the truth is, I knew what I was doing while I was doing it. I was not mindlessly shoveling buckets of Chubby Hubby. I fully intended to fall apart into bowls of ice cream and pounds of chocolate. Dozens of slices of pizza and mountains of macaroni and cheese.
That is how I allowed myself to grieve, to process, to feel, to live my experience fully.
That is how I fall apart.
And I just fucking needed to fall apart.
How do I know that it was mindful?
Because toward the end of last week, I lost the desire to shovel food. I lost interest in buckets of ice cream, and my drive to run came back.
By Saturday I was excited to get out and run. By Monday it had become part of my daily hunger once more: “I can’t wait to get out and run.”
It doesn’t happen all at once. Nothing does.
I still have days where I think “ah, fuck it.”
But I know what’s happening, and I ride it out.
I am not running away from my demons. I am facing them. This is what my battle looks like.
The trick, for me, is to finish the battle and not shame myself for what I had to do to win.
The trick is mindfulness.
No Shame in My Game
I was out running the other day, and I thought about how often I have never fully come out of those little bouts of falling apart because of how ashamed I was of what I did to myself.
“Oh my god I’ve gained so much weight! I’m so fat! Well, I guess I’m just fat now. That’s it.”
And then I would just keep eating shit I didn’t even really feel like eating anymore, but I just couldn’t break the cycle. I told this shameful story about myself and then bought into it fully, playing a role I didn’t even want to play in a story I made up.
Now, I can look at my victory: I’m still here. I’m stronger now than ever before. I’m proud of myself for how I’ve handled it. I’ve allowed myself to feel my feelings.
And I can say: “I did the best I could with what I had.” And I know that’s true. Because it’s always true of all of us.
The Lessons of Self Love
This is one of the biggest self love lessons I have learned in the last year. Without shame, negative cycles have no reason to continue. Without feeding the negative feelings, they simply fad away. And you no longer need the vice. You no longer need the thing you needed so badly to get you through.
And because I don’t judge myself, I don’t feel any shame. And since I don’t feel any shame, I don’t have to continue to drown in feelings I could have let go of, allowing myself to bubble back to the surface of the water, back to my happy place.
I do what I do because I want to.
I don’t hit the streets running to lose weight. I run because I want to. Running makes me happy. More than that; running makes me exhilarated. I don’t run for exercise; I run for endorphins. Exercise is an added benefit.
I enjoy being outside. I enjoy movement. I enjoy the feeling of being spent after a run.
When you shift your perception to the things you do in life to a simple matter of “do I want to do this?” The things you do slowly begin to change.
One of my goals in life, something I work on every day, is mindfulness.
Want Versus Need
I toyed with the idea of not drinking anymore. I only really have a glass of wine every once in a while, maybe a couple times a week, but I started to see a lot of messaging in the world of enlightenment and higher consciousness that mentioned alcohol as a block to reaching the highest level of consciousness. I’ve seen some shaming go around about moms who love their wine, and I’ll admit I became a little infected by all the talk.
So I thought about it, deeply.
Did I want to stop drinking altogether, “become sober?”
After a few weeks of not drinking at all, of really not taking interest in alcohol, I felt like having a glass of wine.
I thought to myself, “do I want a glass of wine, or do I need a glass of wine?”
And I realized that that was the big difference, in anything really, in our relationships with each other, with food, with alcohol.
When we feel like we need something, we’re disconnecting from ourselves, the deepest part of ourselves that can actually heal us.
When we feel like we want something, we are simply enjoying the fruits of the material world we are all part of.
Only we can know the difference.
And neither one is right or wrong; I just wanted to know the difference for me, so I could proceed accordingly and mindfully.
I had the glass of wine.
Mindfulness
So my emotional roller coaster of food and fitness may never end. I really enjoy the full experience of falling apart when I have to fall apart. When shit goes sideways, that’s how I deal. I refuse to shove my emotions down and not feel them, and the alternatives that I have seen are unacceptable to me.
There may come a day when I don’t feel like I need food to help me deal with shitty situations. Maybe there won’t.
I’m human, and I am really enjoying the human experience. This food and fitness roller coaster is a part of that for me right now.
The lesson I’ve learned in all of this isn’t that I “shouldn’t” turn to food, or that I don’t need it when I’m falling apart.
The lesson I’ve learned is that it’s okay to fall apart. It’s okay to turn to food. It’s okay to be wherever I am whenever I am in that space. That there is no shame in whatever I need to do to get through. But that I have to be able to see myself clearly when I’m in it, and see my way out of it.
Through mindfulness.
I am here. This is where I am right now. I will not always be here. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to be over there now. I’m going to start to do the work I have to do to get over there.
Repeat as needed.
When you’re mindful, you’re empowered. When you’re empowered, self love becomes much easier to practice. When you love yourself, you’re unstoppable.
And then?
And then you live happily ever after.
Such a great article! I think we can all benefit from just listening to ourselves and not beating ourselves up so much. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this! I have the same struggles of falling in and out of fitness, and food is my comfort for everything, too. If anything, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one out there going through this sort of thing and these feelings!
So easy to get caught up feeding feelings, and yah Ben & Jerry’s is like a good ol’ friend. I try not to beat myself up too bad when I do this, only makes for a longer road. Mindfulness truly is empowering.
Great reminder to do whatever you feel is right for you and your body.
I can relate to that food and fitness battle within myself. I love your perspective on it.
I’m really sorry to hear about your loss. I love that you don’t apologize for who you are and take life as it comes! You keep doing you!
Thank you for sharing. I think the more we start listening to our bodies (yes, even the moments when it needs something “unhealthy”) the better we will eventually be in mind and body.
I’m so sorry to read about the miscarriage! Thank you for sharing about the emotions that come afterwards and how you dealt with them. I’m an emotional eater too, and you make such a good point that sometimes we need that to process those emotions we can’t deal with in other ways. As you showed, the key is being able to stop the eating cycle when you don’t need it any more and get back into the healthy things that make you feel good. I always enjoy reading your posts, thank you for being so raw and real.
I gained weight during my pregnancy, one that didn’t work out like I had hoped. And then I gained even more weight after I lost the baby. Reading your story was so similar to my own. I am hoping to break the cycle and maintain the focus on health even when there are difficulties.
Great post! I spent YEARS eating my feelings, especially when I was stressed. It took so long for me to break those habits and remember that primarily, food is fuel. It’s definitely a process and it’s something I have to keep remembering. Thanks for sharing your story!
Thank you for sharing such a powerful story. I’m sure all women can relate to any part of this story. These things are what makes us stronger.
I am so sorry for your loss. Its amazing how we just pick up the pieces and keep mov in ng kn for e everyone else. I’m glad you took the time to grieve and be sad. It sounds like things are already turning around:)
Ah, yes! I’m moving into this state more and more ~ the “I don’t want to be here, I want to be there,” so I need to get over there somehow. Great motivation and I’m glad to hear that things are improving!
This is a great article. I am overweight and all my life my weight has been an issue. This really hits home for me. Thanks for posting.
So sorry for your loss. But yes, sometimes you do owe it to yourself to fall apart. I think as women we often think that we try to hold ourselves together, but we need to give ourselves a break.
I love your posts…they are so honest. Sometimes, when things go wrong, we just do what we need to do. Then hopefully we can bring ourselves to move on….
Thanks for your honesty in this post. I’m so sorry for your loss. I also need to be more mindful in my life. Thank you for the inspiration.
I’m very sorry for your loss. I miscarried between my first two kids. It stinks.
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