Get Over It

Leave the girl alone. She looks awesome. Who cares if this is a skort!

All The Single Ladies--

Only three more days until all the singles have to feel like they’re outcasts. I hate Valentine’s Day. I hated it when I was single and I hate it now that I’m married--mostly because I have to watch my single friends feel bad about their status because Hallmark says everyone needs to be part of a couple to be happy! As if we all don’t have enough to feel bad about, now Hallmark has set a date for those who are not in a relationship to be reminded about it for two weeks in February. Not to mention the unreasonable expectation that it sets up for couples to get each other something fabulous and have some “super special” date. I’m not even going to start on the candy--that’s reason enough for me to be pissed off. Oh and people at Hallmark, I’ll get my husband a card that says I love him when I want to, not when you say I should.

My friend Jen had a great post on her blog for Valentine’s Day in 2007. She talked about how she had chosen to be single and extolled the benefits of her unencumbered lifestyle. After reading it I actually felt jealous of her.

I want to re-invent Valentine’s Day as a day to celebrate yourself and nurture your relationship with yourself whether you are in a couple or not. When was the last time you gave yourself some unconditional positive regard? When was the last time you did something frivolous for yourself just because you’ve always wanted to do it? Do you ever take time to acknowledge all the good things that you do and are?

This Valentine’s Day may I suggest beginning your self-love fest by doing any one or all of the following:

Call 800 flowers and send yourself the Valentine’s roses

Write yourself a love letter

Watch any of the following movies: Norma Rae, Erin Brokovich, Working Girl,and get inspired!

Read A Woman’s Worth by Marianne Williamson or Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Call yourself “darling” every time you speak to yourself in your mind

Happy Valentine’s Day My Lovelies--make sure to make at least some of it about you!

* Delicious
* Digg

Savor-ing

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the concept of pleasure. I know that like myself, many women use food as their primary or one of their primary sources of pleasure in life. I’ve been investigating other sources lately and in the process have found that it’s not so much about finding things that are pleasurable but finding the pleasure in things. And I believe there is a word for this--it’s called savoring.

Savor – to get enjoyment from.

I think this concept extends way beyond the enjoyment of food, which frankly much of the time I miss due to my judgment about what I’m eating, but that’s a long story for another post! I do know that it’s possible to savor people, places and things.

I have a friend who works at home and she takes a half hour break each day to go out and have a cup of tea at her local coffee shop. When she described to me how she sits and takes in the enviornment and really enjoys every sip of her tea- – I was kind of awestruck! Wow, I thought it’s just a cup of tea but she’s getting so much enjoyment out of it which leads me to believe...

Savoring has much less to do with the object being savored than it does with your state of mind.

You can savor anything, all it takes is consciousness and slowing down enough to allow yourself to really experience it. Savoring is a way to connect with an object or person but also a way to connect with yourself. It’s all happening too fast, too much, too soon. Let’s start slowing down and savoring all of the things we’ve worked so hard to get into our lives--our living spaces, the nature that’s around us, a piece of music, our friends, spouses, lovers. Let’s start by declaring 30 minutes a day to savor...something.

What will you savor today? I’d love to hear back from you!

Oprah, this one's for us

The other day on the Oprah show, Ms. Winfrey was doing an expose about her recent weight gain. She pretty much said everything that she said in the article in the January issue of "O" but on television you got to see the true intensity of her anger, shame and disappointment with herself. She was being so punitive I just couldn't believe it. I wanted to jump into the TV set and say Oprah, girl it's OK. This is your issue, this is how you act out when you don't know what to do. What you need here is compassion for yourself and your situation. Everyone has their thing that they do when they're under duress. Everyone.

My heart was really breaking for her in that moment as she chastised herself on national television. I felt humiliated for her because I have treated myself with the same cruelty and lack of understanding where it comes to food issues all of my life. There is nothing more transformative than being able to observe your own behavior in another. I thank you Oprah for allowing us to see your pain and for helping me to find new ways to deal with my own.

Stepped off the curb. Again.

It all started innocently enough with Christmas Eve dinner. Larry and I went out to an Italian restaurant where I planned to just eat a normal meal and that's it. No drinking, no dessert. While waiting for my beloved at the bar I ended up having a delightful glass of Rose at the suggestion of Joe, Centro’s most excellent barkeep. It was Christmas Eve, I was going to have a beautiful dinner with my husband so why not have a glass of wine at the bar. Then dear Joe poured me some of this incredible Blood Orange liqueur and after a few sips of that my judgment left the building. Once we sat down to dinner we ordered a bunch of appetizers and I had an incredible lobster risotto. We're still OK as far as I'm concerned and then they pull out the dessert menu. Homemade Baba Au Rhum? I'm not leaving without eating that. So now I'm officially off the reservation and the the bag of Lindt truffles that I had in the pantry at home is now fair game. Because I didn't have enough to eat at the restaurant. But mostly because they were there and because I could. Thursday was a lazy day and we had pasta and salad for dinner. By Saturday when I put on my jeans they were tight. My first thought was "3 days being off the program and already I’m gaining weight?" I was so disgusted and I felt such a loss of control—not about my eating but about my body. Why would my pants be tight from one day of overeating? I felt like hurling myself out a window and I could feel myself getting into that old familiar rage. How could I be on a 10 week cleanse and then have one day of overeating impact my body that much?. OK I wasn’t a model citizen on Thursday and Friday but I ate pretty normally. Was it the half a bag of popcorn at the movies on Thursday? Was it the two pieces of millet toast with butter on Friday? I mean really—is the margin for error that small?


It’s that feeling of constriction that I simply cannot tolerate—of having to watch every single morsel that I eat. I no longer have any interest in living that vigilant of a life. I did at one time, but at this point I’ve got other things I want to spend my time on. So here I am busting out of my jeans and wanting to scream my head off until I have no voice because I am so livid. The root of this monstrous emotion? Powerlessness. That's it in one word Just the thought that I do not have control over my own body is enough to make me want to kill. And what happens when those kinds of feelings come up? I overeat and the more I overeat the worse the situation gets.

So here was my week: Saturday—discovered that in going off my program for three days I already started to gain weight which made Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday “all you can eat” days. So now I’ve gained more weight and even fewer of my clothes fit me. I guess I’m not the only one starting the New Year this way and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Honestly, I just want to get on with my life and not have to worry about any of this. It’s so tedious and it’s something that I used to deal with on a daily basis for years. I’m tired, tired, tired of this ride and I want to get off. Right now.

It seems like my options are:

1. Start drinking again. Then I won’t care that nothing fits me.
2. Wear skirts with elastic waist bands. Then I’ll forget that nothing fits me.
3. Buy new clothes in a bigger size. Then everything will fit me.
4. Stop giving a shit. Then it won’t matter what does or does not fit me.

“Monty, I’d like what’s behind door #4 please.”
And Monty, I really really mean that.

Happy Chrismaka

I bought myself this gift for Christmas this year. I always end up buying myself at least a couple of things –when you’re a shopaholic going holiday shopping is very problematic—kind of like being on a strict diet and then going into Dunkin Donuts for coffee; what’s the chances you’re not going to break down and buy a donut??? During my holiday shopping, I often end up doing one for them, one for me, which means for every gift I buy, I get something for myself which is a bad situation, considering the budget I’ve been on for the last three years. I was doing pretty well this year and then I saw this. After much deliberation, I decided to buy it because a). I have been looking for a lotus necklace for a long time, and b). I love the symbolism of it. The lotus is considered a sacred symbol in both Hinduism and Buddhism. It grows in dirty, muddy water and yet blossoms as a pure, uncontaminated flower. So the mud and impurities feed the flower below the surface and this beautiful fragrant flower floats on top of the dirty water.

To say that I am a big fan of transforming the negative into something positive would be an understatement. I believe wholeheartedly that every soul is striving toward health and wholeness and that everything that happens in our lives is in service to that.
I believe that everything happens for a reason and that reason is to bring us to a more evolved place in ourselves. This principle runs rampant through the universe and yet, it isn’t always in operation in people’s lives because they are often too busy being upset about the negative that they can’t see past it to the gift. The gift requires work though, and many people have neither the desire nor the energy for such things. It’s too bad because that’s where the magic is—inside the difficulty, disguised as hardship.

I love this quote from A Bag of Tools by R.L. Sharpe:

Each is given a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass,
A book of rules;
And each must make,
Ere life is flown,
A stumbling-block or
a stepping stone.

I wish you, my dear readers, a transformative holiday season where the difficulties and hardships be they emotional, physical or otherwise end up being nothing more than fertilizer for your dreams and highest aspirations.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober;
Not to make us sorry but wise- Henry Ward Beecher

The Question

This month's O Magazine was very, very interesting. Oprah wrote an article about her recent 40 pound weight gain. What struck me was the conclusion that she came to at the end of the piece. It was a huge validation for me and the work that I've been doing in the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body Workshops with women. In the article, Oprah realizes that the solution to her weight problem is not about finding the right diet or the right exercise plan, it's about saying yes to herself, making herself a priority, and giving herself proper self-care. She also found THE QUESTION, the question that I asked myself every time I wanted to eat something for a solid two years: What am I really hungry for?

Oprah's answer was that she was hungry for balance, hungry to do something other than work. For me it came down to two words really. Yes and freedom. It wasn't so much that I wanted to eat certain foods even though I spent many hours obsessing over whether or not to eat them, it was that I wanted to feel as though I could eat them if I wanted to. I wanted to have the freedom to say yes to whatever it was that I wanted. I realized that I put this into the framework of forbidden foods but in fact it was a metaphor for my life. I wanted to be told yes to whatever I wanted and I wanted the freedom to allow myself to want. My soul longed to go after the real thing and stop accepting inferior substitutes. I was looking for the freedom to explore the possibilities without that critical voice in my head rattling off a diatribe of why what I want to do will not manifest. I was hungry to hear YES, YES, YES to whatever my heart desired and then I wanted to be able to support myself emotionally enough to see it through. I wanted to be on my own team for a change instead of standing at attention like a mercenary waiting to shoot down my next idea. I wanted to be surrounded by my own inspiration and encouragement rather than be immobilized by my own fear and lack of self love. I wanted to nurture my gifts and see their value, instead of dismissing them or repressing them from my consciousness. I wanted to find solace in myself and my own resources, not look to food to heal my wounds. I wanted to stop looking for love and fulfillment in all the wrong places. I wanted to stop thinking that the Yeses were frozen somewhere in a pint of Ben and Jerry's.