Finding your joy

I have been reading a lot.

Specifically, a lot of books about the emotional side of eating, which is something that I have a problem with.

I know what I need to do to lose weight- let's face it, we all do, because we hear about the obesity epidemic every stinking day. Eat right and exercise. And if it was easy, we'd all just do it to shut THEM up.

So in retrospect, the link between the cookies and the progesterone suppositories (back in the day) was simply that my body was saying, "I feel like crap. Give me something to fix it." Well, plus, who doesn't like cookies? Voila! Chocolate and sugar. Problem solved, for now.

Anyway. One book in particular talks about the joy you get from eating, and how if you get 95% of your joy from eating, but are unhappy with everything else in your life, it doesn't matter what diet you go on, or how many crunches you do. If you want to lose weight, you need to find alternate sources of joy before you start your journey. Otherwise, failure is pretty much a given.

It strikes me that this is applicable in so many different ways than just eating. I have a lot of different coping mechanisms- sarcasm, defensivess, humor. Joy isn't really my go-to emotion when things in one part of my life aren't going the way that I want, and I suspect it's that way for most people.

Another aspect of the whole weight thing is control. Losing weight for other people is something that I have tried before, either willingly or reluctantly. Oddly enough, the fact that it was also something that I wanted was nullified by the desires and intentions of others, somehow.

Let's face it, when you are 12, and it's your birthday, and someone you love dearly asks if you REALLY want to eat that scoop of ice cream...well. There's that part of you that says, "YES! I want to eat it! And I will eat TWO scoops of it, just to spite you."

Because you know, you're 12, and your eating is one of the few things that you have control over.

If you've ever tried to get a three year old to eat her peas- same basic principle, just in reverse. You can rationalize, you can bribe, you can threaten, punish, and plead, but short of child abuse, there isn't really any way to make her do what you want, and she knows it. She is in control, and that is probably the only situation in her life that she has control over.

If you read parenting blogs, you know that this is a common problem, and the kid learns that their parent is so desperate to keep them from getting scurvy that they'll try anything to get them to eat something besides peanut butter on Saltines.

But I digress.

My point (I do have one) is that Operation Hot Momma is my way of finding my joy, and my way of saying that I do have some measure of control over my body. Nobody suggested this, nobody said I had to do it or die of heart disease.

Feeling like I can control anything about my body after dealing with IF is a welcome change. I didn't feel like my body belonged to me for a long time. I threw vitamins and hormones into it, kept alcohol out of it, stuck it with needles, subjected it to blood tests, and at the end of thing, I just felt like my soul was chained to a big piece of meat that didn't have anything to do with me.

I don't feel like that anymore. Thank God!

I am slowly finding more things to be joyful about. My relationship with The Man. My ridiculous pets. My job, and the kids that I love. The adventure we are about to embark on in the Bay Area. Writing. Dancing. Driving the convertible with the top down.

I am also learning not to avoid the things that freak me out. I have wasted a lot of time doing that, and missed a lot of opportunites because of it. I try to ask myself why something is bothering me so much, and sometimes, the answer is so ridiculous or shocking that it just ceases to be a problem.

A month ago, my whole family got together (for the first time since the Thanksgiving debacle) and I was...well, on edge. Predictably, it didn't go well. I will spare you the gory details, but the worst of it was that a couple my parents were friends with came up, got introduced to all of us, and proceeded to gush about how they now had three grandchildren, who were just the best thing ever. And I felt everyone's eyes on me, and predictably, I felt like a huge disappointment.

Then I thought about it later, and the reason I felt so awful wasn't really because of IF. It was that I felt like I was disappointing my parents(again). It was totally about keeping up with the Joneses (or whatever their names were, I can't remember.) It was also about how everyone was looking at me like I was a time bomb ready to go off, and ohmigod, they must think that I am crazy.

So I wasn't worried so much about the actual baby thing. Just my parent's potential involvement in the Grandparent Olympics and what other people were thinking about me, neither of which I have any control over. Phew!

Clarity is strange. Wonderful, but also kind of scary.

Getting my sparkle back

That's what my friends said when we looked at the pictures we took this weekend. (I finally uploaded one!)

The three of us spent the weekend in Carmel, and we had a fabulous time meandering all over, eating snacky things and knitting, and oh yes, venting. We all covered a lot of territory- One just got emotionally sideswiped by the guy she was dating, the other is going through a divorce and reinventing herself after almost 10 years of marriage. And of course, I have my own issues.

It seems like every time I leave town, I have an epiphany. This epiphany involved my relationship with food, my relationship with my family, my relationship with God, and my relationship with my body. None of those relationships is particularly comforting or healthy, and they haven't been for quite some time. I feel like all those relationships have let me down. No wonder I was such a mess. My faith was gone. I had exhausted my reserves of inner strength, and I know now that I had never felt so hopeless and alone.

It took time in the company of two very good friends to figure that out. I am light years away from the funk that I was in during the unending IF cycles, but I still have a long, long way to go.

The clarity that I experience when I am taken out of my element is somewhat frightening. It makes me think of what that psychic said, about my hometown being a toxic environment for me. Something to wonder about, I guess!

That said, I am closer to happiness than I have been in a long time. I seem to be focusing more on what I have accomplished than what my life is lacking. I am forging ahead in a bunch of ways. And Operation Hot Momma is still in full swing. I am down 20 lbs so far. It helps to focus on my success so far, and not look at the finish line- just focus on what I am doing now, and taking things one small step at a time. If I look at the big picture, I will freak out and give up again, and I can't let myself do that.

There's a lot going on- my job is changing. I am taking on several new challenges, and getting my ducks in a row to go back to school. The Man went up to the Bay Area this weekend, in order to schedule the next six months. It's really happening.

I missed you guys, by the way. Hope everything's going well!