OWL Success Tips: Spring House Cleaning is Not Just for Your House
Happy Spring!
Officially beginning this week, spring is a time for renewal and cleaning out the old in order to usher in the new, both actually and metaphorically. In addition to changing our clocks forward an hour, spring is a great time to change what is not working in your life. There are several areas of our lives besides our houses that need freshening and beckon us to spring cleaning.
OWL Success Tip: Spring Cleaning includes body, mind, heart, and spirit; practice daily.
Here are some ways you can approach spring cleaning and freshen your life:
- In health and wellness, you might do a body cleansing or eliminate a certain food that is not healthy for you, such as high fructose corn syrup or junk food. You might resolve to drink more water daily. You could also enroll in the O.W.L. Weight Loss Quick Start Program.
- In money matters, you might shift to a cash-only basis while you pay off debt. Or you could clean out your file cabinet after preparing your tax return. Or you could take the “Weight of Money” program to cleanse non-productive money mindsets and learn how to earn more income.
- In matters of the heart, you may choose to let go of relationships that drag you down and focus on relationships that energize and uplift you. You could eliminate emotional toxins to make room for adding fun, lightness, and joy to your life. You could join a dance class.
- In the area of spirit, you might clear out your schedule to make room for more spiritual time. You might join a meditation group. You could read an inspirational book.
Whether you are cleaning out closets or cleaning out your life, do something each day to spring forward into a fresh, new life.
My Current Weight Loss Journey: Week 8 I Want to be Like Everyone Else
I attended Girls’ Night Out recently where we meet at a home and bring covered dishes for dinner. I notice that when I attend something like GNO, or Ladies Bunko, or a neighborhood party, I always behave in one of two ways:
I either tell myself I am restricted from eating the naughty things or I tell myself I can eat whatever I want.
This is definitely an “All or Nothing” mentality. In the O.W. L. Programs, we call it the “Either/Or” context.
Ok, so I already know this. I teach in the O.W.L. weight loss and money programs how to dispel the Entitlement/Deprivation sabotages. I also teach regularly how to shift to a “Both/And” context. What is interesting to me is why it comes up for me.
I hit the nail on the head today! I want to be like everyone else. I want to fit in. I want to be liked. If I am uncomfortable and not fitting it, I numb my feelings by eating the wrong stuff or else I become Nazi lady and eat nothing. If others are eating a bunch of junk, I want to eat it too.
On the other hand, if I hang around people who eat healthily, I want to do that too. At a recent GNO at my home I invited a friend who dropped 50 pounds last year with my O.W.L. support. Being very committed to keeping it off (see the Keep It Off Club at www.owlweightloss.com/programs/keepitoffclub/ for information on that program), she brought a veggie tray as her contribution, thus giving me “permission” to fit in by eating vegetables instead of the other more fattening foods.
So here is my weight loss work this week: I must ignore my inner, insecure, people-pleasing saboteur and remember to tell myself, in the words of an old “Saturday Night Live” character, Stewart Smalley, “I’m good enough; I’m smart enough; and dog-gone-it, people like me!” By the way, I’ll weigh tomorrow and give you an update next time.
I would love you to share your sabotage patterns and how you shift them.
OWL Success Tip: What The Fat Cruise People Taught Me
I just got back from an Alaskan cruise! Besides the fabulous views, accommodations, and service, I enjoyed a bonus: a life-changing education, including golden nugget insights and tips to share with you. I actually have included some of these in my new book, which will be published shortly. (I’ll let you know when it comes out.) Here is one piece of that education.
OWL Success Tip: How you live your life now will determine the quality of your life later.
We knew that, right? Well, it slammed me in the face last week. Upon observing so many passengers aboard the cruise ship who were older than their years, my heart hurt seeing the effects of too much weight and not enough exercise. Quality of life is greatly diminished by the necessity for walkers, scooters, wheelchairs, and oxygen tanks. The ability to participate in shipboard activities and shore excursions is drastically limited. Many are uncomfortable at best or in chronic pain.
Our next-door stateroom neighbor had to be taken to the infirmary due to a diabetic attack, which made itself known to the steward because of blood on his sheets and in the bathroom. One lady in the public ladies’ room confided that she didn’t know how to get out of the bathroom, much less find her cabin. She was scared to death. What should have been joyful and fulfilling retirement years for so many people were really years of suffering and deterioration for these folks.
We probably know this on some level, so why do we still abuse our bodies? And what can we do to prevent this?
The reason we abuse our bodies with excess food and inactivity is that we are in a state of denial and/or refusal to take responsibility regarding the consequences of our actions. We feel entitled to do what we please. In the story of the grasshopper and the ants, we are like the grasshopper, who played all summer and had nothing to sustain him when winter came. We are not the ants, who prepared for winter.
What can we do to prevent deterioration and preserve vitality, vigor, mobility, and energy until the day we die? Treat our bodies as precious. Feed them good stuff and not too much. Move them. Rest them. Nurture them. Laugh a lot. Love a lot. Give up the food addictions to make room for living life.
What are your thoughts? How are you insuring that your quality of life will stay intact as you age?
OWL Success Tips: Feeding Your Real Needs
How many times have you found yourself eating and realized that you were not really hungry?
Or you noticed yourself eating something you did not really want? Or you realized that no matter how much you ate, you still felt hungry?
When food becomes more than fuel to us, we use it to fill all kinds of needs other than hunger. What needs? Over-eaters Anonymous asks us to look at the acronym H.A.L.T. – hungry, angry, lonely, tired – as a tool for distinguishing hunger from other needs. Ontological Weight Loss Program (OWL) adds an S for Stress – H.A.L.T.S.
Cognitive therapist Judith Beck asks her weight loss clients to abstain from eating and to feel the hunger pangs in order to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger. Transformational coach Anthony Robbins identifies six needs of human beings: certainty, significance, love, variety, growth, and contribution. Psychologist Abraham Mazlow in his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, describes human needs as physical, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.
Because we are so used to operating on automatic pilot, we don’t always recognize the needs underneath. If we turn off our auto pilot mechanism long enough, we may identify our real needs and may then empower ourselves to choose behaviors that support rather than sabotage a healthy weight.
- Simple example #1: If I realize I am tired, I can choose to rest instead of eat.
- Simple example #2: If I realize I don’t feel loved, I can do something kind and loving for myself.
- Simple example #3: If I realize I am stressed, I can call a friend, take a bath, meditate, or take a walk
It sounds easy, doesn’t it? The challenge, of course, is to have the willingness, self-respect, and courage to get out of the automatic comfort zone and move into the realm of possibility and transformation. Another challenge is to change ingrained habits.
O.W.L. Success Tip: If you’re up for it, stop before you eat. Notice what you are feeling. Identify your real needs. And take action to fill the needs with something other than food.
To learn more about “Feeding Your Real Needs” register for a complimentary Weight Loss Breakthrough session.
With Love,
You & The Sabotage Cycle
Have you ever been on a weight loss program, doing just fine thank you, when whammo!
You notice you have sabotaged yourself big time. Maybe you went off your diet. Maybe you stopped exercising. Maybe you allowed a small indiscretion to balloon into a full-out eating binge or exercise boycott. And then what happened? If there was a downward spiral that lasted a while, you may have been caught in the Sabotage Cycle!
I believe that we sabotage our best efforts and our commitments in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. Sabotage takes us from power to powerlessness, keeps us from realizing our results and our greatness, and then is a tool to beat ourselves up. Ready to give up sabotage? Let’s do it!
First identify your sabotage cycle so that you can understand it and not have it run your life. In your experience of sabotage, what happens first? And then what happens? And what happens next? Keep going until you have made a full circle.
Here is my cycle as an example:
- I am empowered, being in integrity, and practicing good self-care.
- I have an unexpressed fear or a need.
- I don’t want to look at it.
- I stuff it or manage it, operating over the top of the fear of need.
- I do something to numb out, usually eat or play computer games.
- I beat myself up – self-criticize.
- I suffer.
- I decide to break the cycle.
- I break the cycle
- I am empowered, back in integrity and self-care.
Although I come back to empowerment, I have probably created havoc with my weight loss in the meantime. So the trick is to stop it mid-cycle. What does your Sabotage Cycle look like? Take a moment to make some notes. Once you have described it, then the following exercise can support you in the intervention.
Step 1: Notice the red flags signaling a fear or need. (If I am reaching for snacks when I have just finished a meal, it might be a red flag. If I do not like chocolate but find myself eating chocolate, that might be a red flag.)
Step 2: Name the voices inside your head. (Is Debby Denial saying, “I won’t think about this today.” Is Nancy Nazi saying, “You are a fat pig loser!” Is Ruby Rebel saying, “I’ll eat whatever I want!”) These voices are merely protection defaults. Whenever you notice them, you can bet there is an undistinguished need or fear underneath.
Step 3: Thank these voices. Be grateful that they are trying to protect you.
Step 4: Identify the fear or the need. (For instance, if I am preparing a speech and notice myself eating absently, I may be covering my fear of public speaking. Or if I feel lonely, I may numb the need for companionship with food.)
Step 5: Remember who you are and what is your commitment.
Step 6: Break the Sabotage Cycle with a tool such as these:
- See yourself with compassion
- Forgive yourself
- Recommit
- Get coaching or other support
- Review your plan
- Get back on program (or join the OWL program 🙂
To learn more about the “Sabotage/Entitlement” Sabotage Pattern and creating a Lifetime Plan, you will want to register for my “Weight Loss Jump Start”.
You CAN have it all!
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Lose Weight for Life:
9 Unconscious reasons you can’t keep the weight off and what to do about it
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9 Unconscious reasons you can’t keep the weight off and what to do about it
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