I finished a book on Sunday.

It changed my life.

I’m keeping the title a secret for now, because it’s slightly misleading. The book is about how we view ourselves, why we do the things we do, and how to make it better without forcing and abusing ourselves.

We learn that we’re bad from a very young age. We’re taught that our bodies are separate from our minds. We live in a mind-based society where we sit and read and compute and learn, and we get the running-playing-dancing joyous movement squeezed out of us.

“Sit still!”
“Calm down!”
“Be quiet!”
“Don’t touch that!”
“Stop wiggling!”

I used to teach preschoolers. My class was always, by far, the best class in the school because I didn’t teach them stillness or quiet. I taught them to play, to move. We had reading time, sure, but then we would play. We would dance, we would sing, we would go outside and run. When the weather was outside-prohibitive (which happens a lot in summer in Texas), we would sneak outside for 10 minutes at a time or I’d clear out the center of our room and we’d run and play tag or spin in circles inside.

Most adults will agree that kids need to move. Kids need to play. Kids need to spend time outside.

So why do we think adults don’t?

We sit around staring at our computers, sitting at our desks, sitting on our couches. And then we wonder why we’re depressed and overweight and unhealthy!

But it’s more than that. We’ve started using food as a substitute for all the emotions we’re suppressing. Need connection? Eat something. Need comfort? Grab a snack. Need excitement? Go out to eat. Need socialization? Eat! Feeling depressed? Stuff food in your face!

And it works. Temporarily. We eat and we feel better. The chemicals in the “food” we eat make us feel sated, even if we’re really not. Ice cream can’t replace even five minutes with a friend, but we’ve learned to feel as if it does.

When I was a little girl, my parents owned a frame gallery. It was attached to our house, so they could both work while my brother and I were both left to our own devices. My brother rode his little firetruck up and down our driveway a hundred million times.

I sat on the couch and ate.

I used food as my love and comfort, because my parents were busy and needed to work.

Now, I don’t blame my parents. They were doing the best they could, and I respect their decisions and I love them both a huge lot. But they were busy, and I was (and am still) high maintenance and need lots of attention to feel loved. I wasn’t getting enough. Food was readily available, and I learned that eating made me feel better, feel less alone.

A habit I carried long into my adult life.

But this book, helped along by several personal revelations, really brought all this to light for me. It offered the simple advice of turning food back into food – nourishment and sustenance – and finding ways to get my other needs met. It advised thinking about why you’re eating, every time you go to eat something.

Thinking about eating isn’t something we usually do, other than a great anticipation for our next meal.

There are two big points in the book; this is one of them. Thinking about what you eat before you eat. Consider your food. Is it even real food? Here’s a hint: if it has a paragraph of ingredients, it’s likely not real. It’s been processed far beyond what food needs to have done to it, and if it says “enriched” – that means they’ve taken the nutrients out of it and put them back in. This blows my mind. It also prevents the nutrients from nutrienting our bodies; we can’t process man-made nutrients very well.

I digress. This one thing, considering my food and the reasons I’m reaching for it, has drastically changed my eating habits in only a few days. I found that, when I’m not actually hungry, I’m motivated to eat by desires and needs for other things, things that food is only a (poor) substitute for: comfort, affection, play, socialization, reassurance. Once I know what I really need, I seek it out.

For example, at the grocery store yesterday, I reached for a pint of ice cream. I read the ingredients (a very short list), and deemed it acceptable. But once I had it in my cart, I started thinking about why I wanted it, what I would feel when I ate it. I realized I was really desperate for comfort and reassurance, so I put the ice cream back. When we got home, I snuggled with Pace for a while. My needs were met and I felt much better – without the ice cream!

The other main point of the book is movement; back to what I was talking about earlier. We stop moving somewhere in our youth, and most of us don’t ever get it back. But we’re creatures of movement, and it’s against our nature to sit still so much! Once we find the joy in movement, we might find that we don’t want to sit still, we don’t want to stop moving. Dance, run, bike, swim, spin in circles, wiggle, fidget, swing, bounce. Move. It feels awesome and natural, once you overrun those ingrained patterns.

There’s far more information in the book than I can convey to you here, so I will unveil the title and hope you get it for yourself. Don’t let the title mislead you, though – it’s about life and living it joyously rather than just food. Transformational Weight Loss, and it’s for sale as a tree book on Amazon or an ebook on his site. I can’t recommend it enough!

I’ve been vegan (well, technically, non-dairy vegetarian) since November. Here are some of my observations from the last three months. In general I’ve felt much better since I stopped eating cheese; here are some specifics.

The cheese pizza experiment

In early January, I was still craving cheese. I decided to eat a cheese pizza to see what happened. I was irritable for three days and congested for a week. It wasn’t worth it.

Cutting out dairy was a double-or-nothing for me. When I stopped eating dairy, I felt better, more clear-headed, more compassionate, and I had more energy. But then when I ate that cheese pizza, I felt far worse than had been my previous baseline when I was just plain old vegetarian. It was as if my body had adjusted to the non-dairy state, and trying to go back was horrific.

Soy cheese may contain dairy products

We bought some soy cheese. The second ingredient was milk products, but we found that out a little too late; I’ve been congested ever since I ate it. It was apparently for lactose intolerant people, but whatever it is in dairy that messes me up, I guess it’s not lactose, because the soy cheese definitely messed me up.

I don’t want potato salad anymore

I used to love potato salad. It has eggs in it, but since I’m not strictly vegan, just non-dairy vegetarian, it was technically okay. But the lonely container of potato salad just sat there in the fridge until it went bad. It just felt heavy and icky and it didn’t sound appetizing anymore. This is weird to me, and pretty awesome. I don’t have to constantly exert my willpower to stop eating things that are bad for me, because they just stop being appetizing. It’s neat. (:

I eat entire bowls full of nothing but vegetables

For anyone who has known me for a long time, this will probably freak you right the hell out. I used to be The Vegetarian Who Doesn’t Eat Vegetables™. Now I eat vegetables with a little sauce and spices. I eat vegetables with rice. Yesterday I ate a red pepper like an apple. It’s yummy! Once I stopped bombarding my taste buds with synthetic crap, I started being able to actually enjoy the flavors of all this natural food.

Kyeli and I have decided to try eating only raw food for the entire month of February. We’ll let you know how it goes! (:

…and vice versa.

Recently, I was dining with two friends who, like me, want to get in better shape and lose weight. We weren’t talking about weight loss specifically, but when our meal arrived, Amy made several comments on what she can’t eat, what she wants but gave up, and even what exercising she wants to do but can’t. She was focusing on the negative, on her can’ts. This is typical for Amy; she focuses on the negative in most situations.

This time, it struck me deeply. My other friend Mary and I focus on the positive; we talk about the good foods we’re eating, how much healthier we feel, and how much fun we have exercising. We chatter excitedly about our progress and our goals and what keeps us motivated. We rarely complain, and when we do, we end on a positive note to remind ourselves that we’re doing what we most want to be doing.

The results are clear: Mary and I are losing weight and gaining tone and health. We’re enjoying the journey, making progress, and feeling good and happy.

Amy is not making progress. She hasn’t set goals and isn’t reaching toward them. She’s focusing on what she’s missing rather than on what she’s gaining, and that makes all the difference.

Focusing on the positive brings the positive to you.

When I complain about my knee aching, it aches sharply and my attention is captured. When I complain about my shoulder, it takes a monumental effort to shift my focus to something else. When I complain about how hard it is to exercise, I lose the desire to exercise, making it far more difficult to get up and do. When I complain about all the food I’ve given up, I miss it and crave it, and don’t want to eat healthier things.

When I take care of my knee and shoulder, they ache less and demand less of my attention. When I focus on how good I feel during and after an exercise session, I get excited about it and enjoy it fully. When I talk about all the good foods I eat now and how they make me feel, I crave and anticipate them, and enjoy eating them.

However, I used to be Amy:

“I have this health problem, I can’t get in shape!” “I can’t get healthy or thinner; my genetics make me heavy!” “I can’t exercise; I’m injured!” “I can’t be vegan! I need to eat cheese!”

That was me. I spent 15 years there; I focused on the negative to the eclipse of positivity. Trapped in victim mentality, I lost sight of my ability to change my focus and remained stuck in that place of can’ts and give ups and missing outs. I spent 15 years making excuses, blaming, complaining, avoiding, and putting off. I spent 15 years blind to personal responsibility.

It took a lot of change to bring me to a place where I usually focus on the positive. The biggest step in my process was also the simplest: saying “That makes me happy!” whenever something makes me happy. I started saying it because Pace said it, and I found that it made me feel good when I heard it. I tried saying it, a few times at first, and I found that it helped me remember the good things that happened in my day more clearly. It gave me positive things to focus on and talk about. I liked having positive things to share with Pace; she responded far more positively to happy events than to depressing ones, and our conversations grew longer and our connection deeper.

More than that, though, was my internal state. I felt better. I felt happier. I started smiling and whistling and humming. I would say “That makes me happy!” to everyone who did something that brought me any measure of joy: clerks, cashiers, co-workers, friends, family, strangers, waiters. Anyone! And I found that, by sharing the joy they’d given me, they felt happier too! It’s a positive upwards spiral!

Once I felt that joy, once I realized how that one little thing brought such big happiness, I wanted more. I started on a path of self-work and self-discovery, shaking myself out of the victim mentality that’s so common in our society. I took responsibility for myself, my actions, my thoughts, and even my feelings. I shifted my focus from negative to positive. I’m gentle with myself when I fall back, but don’t tolerate it for too long. When I get injured, I take care of myself and work with my body instead of letting it incapacitate me. I changed my habits. I changed my perspective. It hasn’t been an easy journey, but it’s certainly been rewarding and life-changing!

If you are how I used to be, like Amy is, if you feel excuses forming or live in a world of can’ts, try starting with something small. Make a little change, take a little step. Try focusing on the positive once or twice a day, and write it down or talk about it. See how it feels, and see if you want more.

It’s all in how you look at it.

I use eating out for three main things:

1) celebrating
2) rewards
3) financial security

We eat out to celebrate anything from getting a little return from our insurance to getting our blog in the top million. We eat out to celebrate with friends, family, or just us.

I get the desire to eat out to reward myself for various things, and most of the time when I ask, Pace consents. We usually go to my favorite places when this is the case, so it feels very rewarding indeed.

When I was little, my family went out to eat weekly or more, even after my parents got divorced. When I was out on my own, I often couldn’t afford to eat out. Then, when Pace and I got married, our financial situation improved drastically, and we started eating out a lot. This ingrained in me that financial security equals eating out a lot.

A few months ago, I started eating vastly healthier and far less in portions. This has led to internal dissonance – wanting to eat out for my three reasons, but not wanting to eat poorly or overeat. Even in Austin, it’s difficult to find places to eat that fit my strange food habits. And then, as our grocery bill climbs (healthy food is more expensive because that makes sense (sarcasm)), eating out becomes less and less attractive to our budget as well… but the three needs haven’t magically gone away for me.

Today, Megan and I were talking about this. She said she used to have the exact same three things, and she solved it brilliantly, and I will now regale you with the solutions.

1) celebrating
2) rewards
3) financial security

1) Celebrating can be done at home! We can celebrate by inviting friends over and cooking together – someone can bring something interesting to drink, someone can bring dessert, and we can make a meal to share. Sharing food with friends does not have to be done in a restaurant! In fact, I imagine that sharing food prepared by myself with friends would be even more rewarding and celebratory than sharing food in an outside atmosphere.

Oh! In fact, we can even celebrate without inviting friends over! We could have special meals we rarely have, light some candles, take time to discuss our celebratory intent, and really make it feel special and different!

2) Rewarding myself by eating food that actually makes me feel sick seems counter-productive. Megan suggested finding something I really enjoy that’s either a little too expensive or a little too sweet for regular consumption, and get that when I feel I’ve done something to deserve a reward. I think this is fucking brilliant.

3) As I mentioned, buying healthier food does wind up being more expensive. Why not take that expensive eating out and turn it into those healthier groceries? Having financial security provides us with good, healthy food that makes us feel good, food we want to eat and enjoy eating!

I am really looking forward to implementing these awesome ideas. We’ve already burned through our food budget for September, but starting October 1st, we’re going cold turkey (with three exceptions). We’re going to try eating in for 30 days, implement all the above ideas, and see how it goes!

I’m really excited about it!

The other night, I had a weird food experience. I ate half a bag of Doritos, most of which I consumed well after I stopped wanting them. I mulled on this for a long time, trying to figure out why the hell I’d eat so much junk, especially after I stopped wanting it.

I think I figured it out. I think it was a starvation reaction.

My system has adjusted and now expects whole, alive, nourishing sustenance. When I fed us junk devoid of nourishment, my body panicked, thinking no goodness would come of the food I was ingesting and went into overdrive, needing to consume as much as possible in an attempt to scrounge some kind of life-sustainability from the chips. This created a need to continue eating them even well after I was consciously ready to stop, because my body was afraid of starving. I didn’t get full, either, because that kind of “food” doesn’t actually get processed and turned into anything useful, so it was being shuffled out as fast as I was putting it in.

When I eat life-giving real food, I get satisfied and only eat when I want to and can stop when I want. I don’t panic and don’t wonder why I’m eating so much, because I’m not eating so much. But every time I eat foods that aren’t as nourishing, I get that feeling and end up eating far more than I wanted, and far more than I needed, and I get over-full and feel icky.

Food is so interesting and exciting!! Our bodies are so amazing and interesting!

At the beginning of July, I launched into a new way of life.

At the end of June, Pace and I read a really awesome post on motivation. This got the two of us thinking and talking quite a bit, and Pace made a post about the fundamental equations of motivational alchemy and another one about the power of habits (and there’s a third one yet to come!).

I found that I am particularly drawn to soft self-discipline and hard self-discipline. I thought about what I want out of life, what I want to do to achieve those goals, and set some rules in place.

I’ve really adhered to the hard rules I set, even surpassing them. I’m really pleased and I feel like I’ve come a long way.

In July, I exercised at least five days a week (sometimes more). I missed four days in a row due to ankle weirdness, but made it every day on either side of the break – even though the break put me back in the dip. I started paying attention to what I eat, culminating in eating tiny meals every two to three hours and much healthier foods.

As a result, I’ve lost 10 pounds! More excitedly, I’ve lost 5½ inches in my waist, 1¾ inches in my upper arms, and 1 inch in my hips!!

I’ve never lost more than 5lbs. I’ve gone up and up and up, but never down. I cannot describe the joy I’m feeling!! (:

It has been hard. I’ve been sore nearly 24/7, tired a lot, and exhausted for the past couple of days. Yesterday I didn’t think I could finish my workout, but I did, and today was easier. My endurance is up, my self-esteem and confidence are up, and I’m feeling really good. I’m really happy and extremely proud of myself! Woo!

I baked a cake! (The Boy helped!)

It was super-yummy!

This is the first thing I’ve ever made from scratch that didn’t turn out icky in some way. I’m extraordinarily proud of myself!!

I’ve been overcoming externally inflicted limitations a lot recently, and this was a BIG one. I’m really proud and pleased and excited to be constantly proving to myself that the only thing that limits me is me.

*dances* I can cook, I can bake, I can spell, I can do math, I can sing, I can chill, I can be happy, I can do whatever I want. I rock!