Making headway

(Pumpkin Spice Cappuccino with whipped cream and cinnamon)

 

That title is deceptive. I think I’m making headway, but I’m not really sure. I’ve shut down my constant monologue pretty effectively. Yes, I slip up from time to time, which is why I’m writing the blog more prolifically, but for the most part, I feel a big stress factor in my life has been relieved. I’m not involved in a constant argument with myself or someone else in my head. Trying to keep my mind clear is not easy, but I think I’m getting better at it.

Part of the reason I did so much talking in my head was I think due to inherent loneliness. I’m the background. People don’t notice me. Sometimes even when I’m speaking, so talking to myself was a way to have my opinions heard when no one else was listening. It was a way to fight injustice in a way.

That’s hard to give up, but it’s also liberating – to say, not that no one cares what I have to say, but that I don’t have to explain myself to anyone, including myself. I don’t have to justify everything, even to myself. I can just walk away and not carry any baggage with me.

As for the no-diet diet – it’s not easy to let go of the ‘diet mentality’ that our society insists women especially must live with. I’m still surrounded by people who are terrified of fat, terrified of carbs, terrified of gaining an ounce, hating the gym but forcing themselves to go, freaking out over eating good food at the holidays. It’s sad and disgusting. And I’m not the person who can stand up and say, “For god’s sake, shut up and eat the food. You’re not getting points in heaven for ‘being good’ or talking about ‘being good.’” But I can’t.

Harder still to combat is the ‘instant success’ mentality that the diet industry has also sold us. Because regular diets tend to work in the beginning, I’m used to seeing an immediate change, and so I find I may be looking too hard. I feel less stressed. My legs don’t hurt quite as much and I’m sleeping a little better – but those things are negligible because they change so often.

I have over 30 years of hearing crap like this:

“But it has so much FAT in it!”

“It has real butter? Oh, my God!”
“I have to have diet sweetener!”
“Think of the cholesterol!”
“Only skim milk!!”
“She gained weight! What a shame!”
“She’s too thin!”
“What a butterball!”
“What a chub!”
“I can’t eat that!!”
“You ate all that? What a pig.”
“You’re not going to finish that? What a waste!”
“Put down the salt!”
“You’re eating AGAIN?”
“Why aren’t you eating? What’s wrong?”
“You’re having seconds? What about your diet?”
“You’re not having seconds? Don’t you like it?”
“You’re going to eat that whole piece? What about your diet?”
“You only want a small piece? Are you on a diet or something?”
“Not having any? Oh, you’re being so good.”
“Not having any? Come on, live a little!”

Is it any wonder I don’t know how to trust myself? I’ve spent a lifetime having my every mouthful questioned by someone – often with good intentions but mostly because that’s what the prevailing sheepdom teaches people they should say or do.
 

Years upon years upon years of this have contributed to my classic American female relationship with food.

I eat.

I feel bad.
I starve.
I feel self righteous until I get so hungry I eat more than I need to.
I feel defiant, and then I feel bad and I starve again.

After 31 years of diets, I understand it will take a long time to really let that mindset go for good.

 My new mantra is:

What do I FEEL LIKE eating?

I’m enjoying food a lot more – and I’m on a Fuji Apple kick. I actually look forward to coming home for lunch and having an apple as a side dish/dessert.

Hopefully I can maintain this and improve upon it. We’ll see.

 

Side effects

Remember Fiona, the little pine tree I rescued from CVS? This is her - she's growing well in her larger pot. She has her own pond and a crystal to focus positive energy into her space.

All it takes is time and the right environment for a positive change to occur.

Hopefully that's true with my Zen experiment too.

I'm starting to experience some side effects, though, of shutting down the endless conversations in my head. One of them being the urge to scream on occasion.

I was used to hashing things out. When I couldn't say what I wanted to say in real life, I could walk away and lash out at someone in my head - tell them exactly what I thought without fear of repercussion and get it off my chest. Now, I just walk away and shut the conversation down, which means all those feelings get bottled up, and I'm not sure that's good. I try, as the song says, to 'let it go' - but that's hard, especially when dealing with someone whose default setting is criticism and nitpicking.

Yesterday I received compliments from several people on a new sweater. This person's first sentence to me - 'oh there's a pull in it.' Not, nice sweater - like everyone else had said. Not, hello, how are you. No, the default - here's something I immediately found wrong with your appearance. I'm wearing a sagging old jacket and haven't brushed my hair, but the FIRST thing I see about you is the one flaw in your new outfit. Nice.

I understand this is where this person is coming from. Jealously - rumination - self-pity. It's easier to pick on someone else than to acknowledge feelings of inferiority. But - SIGH - it's hard to take year after year, day after day, walking in and instead of at least hello, how are you, I get 'Oh, I immediately noticed something isn't perfect.'

That kind of behavior disgusts me, and I used to just quietly go and have it out - yell, scream, swear, in my head and let this person have it both barrels all the things I can't say. But now I don't. I hope it doesn't kill me. There's a difference between really letting things go and just shunting them aside until they blow up in your face, and I hope I can maintain the difference or all this Zen is going to end up in my going utterly postal on someone.

Calm as a noun

This is a picture I took down the shore this summer. It completely represents how I'd like my mind to be - balanced, expansive, calm and yet always in motion.

I'm realizing that takes time to accomplish. I no longer have the 'empty headache' that I had for two days. I seem to be getting better at just letting the space in my thoughts fill itself with thoughts rather than with endless, useless conversations.

I'm trying to think without words.

I cleaned out a couple of drawers yesterday and threw away things I haven't looked at or needed in a decade. It felt good. I've got a long way to go and the whole house will never be a Zen paradise but at least my areas my be neater and less cluttered.

It's going to be a lot of work, and it could mean actually letting go of all the things I love to hang on to - the flotsam and jetsam I collect in anticipation of those 'projects' that come along every once in a while that require that inch of ribbon, that one sequin... I'm like a bird or a squirrel collecting little shiny things for that one moment I may need them. Gotta stop that. Make room for thought and breathing and freedom of expression.

I'm actively trying to create Calm.

It's not easy at all. But I think it's worth doing. Off to be editorial.

The Battle of Serenity Valley

Yes, I know that title is a Firefly reference. Everything in life should be a Firefly reference.

The 'battle' I'm referring to is the one in my head. It's been a day. [I had to go look that up because it feels like it's been two days since I shut off all talk radio in my head.]

Here's what I've noticed so far:

* I've had two really good days.
* But I'm extremely aware of the empty space in my thoughts. I've actually had a headache and I think it's from consciously trying NOT to think too much. Is that possible?
* I slept better.
* I feel more engaged with the world, calmer and slightly less stressed.

This could be the placebo effect - but since I plan to keep at this, let's see what long-term effects look like.

It's hard to control your own thoughts. Dozens of times a day I find myself saying, "Stop the conversation," to myself because I naturally want to fall into a discussion with myself about something and I have to take a beat and remind myself that I do not have to rehash a conversation in my head that I just had with a real person. I do not have to revisit an argument I've been having in my head with someone for five years. I do not have to tell myself something I already know.

I'm wrestling with the fear of having a truly blank mind. I don't want to be a mouth-breathing air head who does not have a thought in my brain ...so it worries me. How functional will I be if I'm not always THINKING a million miles a minute? The thing is, I think there's a difference between constructive thinking (i.e. "Where did I put the card with the doctor's phone number on it? I have to remember to deduct that check from my checking account. etc.) and destructive thinking (i.e. "I can't believe she did that again. Oh my god why doesn't she just get the fact that when she does that she...blah blah blah." or "And then he said...blah blah and I should have said blah blah back but instead I said blah blah blah.")

The bottom line so far seems to be that I can still be highly functional and perhaps even MORE highly functional without the endless diatribe that used to run through my consciousness. I feel like I was expending a lot of energy talking to the committee in my head that had to judge everything every minute of every day and rehash rehash rehash and now I not only have that energy to put toward other things, I also have more time to use in a better way as well. How often would I find myself pausing in a task at hand to have a conversation with myself about stuff that was not important? A lot. I could spend sometimes half an hour just stopped while I went over the same old arguments. Granted sometimes the monologue accompanied a task like making the bed or washing dishes, but often times I was just stopped, in the middle of writing something, in the middle of doing something - because I was busy explaining my own viewpoint to myself.

I worry that my viewpoints won't ever get expressed now - and how will that effect me? Will I become stagnant because I haven't talked out a problem in my head or will I end up yelling at people because I neglected to have the 'rehearsal argument' in my head 20 times before I saw them in person?

Does all this sound slightly insane?

I'm wondering if my taking a step toward calming my mind is making me realize what a nutcase I really am.

Oh, well. I plan to keep at it and see what happens.

I have a feeling I'll be blogging a lot more because all those stopped up words have to go somewhere...

Quieting the conversation

Part 1 of the no diet diet involves food. Part 2 involved my brain. I'm a talker, though you wouldn't know it by talking to me. In real life I'm quiet, I'm a listening, I'm foliage. But in my mind I NEVER shut up.

Literally. Never.

I am always engaged in a conversation in my head. Granted oftentimes it's between two characters I'm writing about - the acceptable form of psychotic that's called being a working writer. But a lot of the other times, I'm in that endless loop of "And another thing...!" that we all [or maybe some of us?] do all the time. We [hopefully it's not just me] finish arguments in our heads, win them, trump our opponents and leave them wimpering in the proverbial dust. We rehearse conversations and sometimes just say the things we should say out loud to people but we know it will hurt them, cause a fight, make us look petty, result in nothing changing or everything changing in a way we don't want them to so we remain silent and have the conversation in our heads so it can go the way we want it to go.

This is why I miss exits on the highway and why I forget to take vitamins every day. My mind is elsewhere. I'm having conversations I'm going to have later, conversations I'm never going to have, conversations I had and conversations I should have had. All in my head, all the time. It's exhausting.

So my next project is to STOP the madness. I've turned off the ALL TALK channel in my head. It is NOT easy.

Zen is about clearing the mind, clearing the clutter from our lives. So while I plan to start once again tackling the physical clutter, my chief objective is to tackle the mental clutter.

I heretofore pledge that I will SHUT UP. I will not engage in the conversations in my head that make me angry, self-righteous or distract me from what's in front of me. I will work diligently to quiet my rampaging mind. This means I may blog more, because there might be things I just HAVE to say, but I won't be talking to the people in my head anymore, unless they are fictional characters whose words will be put on paper. No more dress rehearsal conversations, no more decade long arguments with people who are long gone or people who should be long gone. No more constant monologue about any subject just to keep me busy while I'm driving, sitting, sleeping.

It's all about quiet. The conversation is OVER.

The hardest 'diet' ever

It's been a while since I've visited. Once the Beach House was done, I felt a little bereft, with no projects, so I've been sort of floating around, not getting much accomplished.

I've spent the better part of 2015 in sort of a funk. I had begun the year wanting to spend much less time on the computer and more time out in the real world, hence my garden, less writing and I've taken up bike riding [which is to say I've found new way to make myself feel miserable!].

Now that the year is winding down I find that I need a big change to motivate me. Writing has lost so much of it's appeal to me - the industry is so jaded, full of authors churning out mediocre work and making bank on it. I've really stepped back, the problem is that my writing income has become negligible. Now the question is, do I want to keep writing so I can eek out some more money, or do I want to keep writing because I enjoy writing? I don't know the answer at the moment.

But that's really for another post. The point of this one is to talk about the 'dieting' and the various experiments I've conducted. While I enjoy the keto way of eating and I've found that it has made me feel better, done some good with my 'important' numbers and allowed me to eat things I actually like, it has made no lasting impact on my weight.

What I've finally decided is to embark on the most difficult 'diet' yet. What, you say? Are you insane? No. Actually I think I finally got SANE. The diet I'm embarking on is one where I finally train my MIND, not my body. Here's how it goes:

Rule #1:  Eat what you want to eat.
Rule #2: Don't be hungry.
Rule #3: Ignore the scale.
Rule #4: F*ck the diet industry.

Four simple rules - but probably very hard to follow. I pledge right now on October 18th 2015 to STOP the following things:

I will STOP weighing myself.
I will STOP looking for the next better diet or eating plan.
I will STOP feeling guilty for eating things I like.
I will STOP considering the calories, fat or carb content of a food and only consider its nutritional value.
I will STOP letting the diet industry convince me that I should be worrying about all these things all the time and that I am not doing enough to be 'healthy'.

I will NOT enter into a dialogue with any doctor about diet unless it pertains to allergies, nutrients or drug interactions.

I will NOT enter into a dialogue with another person in which I pretend to be worried about my weight or suffering from guilt about what I have eaten.

I will NOT use words like "good" or "bad" to describe my behavior with regard to food.

I will NOT use words like "good" or "bad" to describe food except in the context of flavor or freshness. [i.e. This ice cream is GOOD! or That sour cream went BAD.]

I will NOT allow someone else to shame me into eating or not eating.

I will NOT engage in a constant internal monologue/dialogue about weight loss, health or dieting.

Whew. Sounds rough, right?

I hope I can do it. It's important and it's for my overall physical and mental health.

Wish me luck. Hopefully a year from now I will feel better because of it.