Today marks the end of 9 weeks of working with 5 other women through the Marianne Williamson Weight Loss book that we've come to call "Boot Camp". Thinking about the things I've learned over the last 9 weeks with these amazing women it's easy to see that we started out our classes with a veneer of "oh yeah I'm here to lose weight but that's about it, nothing else I need to work on" and by week 3 as they say "shit got real". It is impossible to do work on yourself, lasting work, work on things that will change you from the inside out, without it being hard. Without going to places that you'd really rather not go thank you very much.
But in this class we did. And I'm honestly not done with the book, I've read 10 out of 21 chapters (not consecutive chapters) and I know that there is more work to do. But I also know that I have been changed in a meaningful way by my experience in this class and by working with these other women. It takes not a small amount of courage and strength to strip away one's defensive side and go deep to look at how you think about yourself, how you've trained yourself to act/eat/believe, and to challenge things that you may have not known were deeply ingrained in you.
So, I started this class with the idea that I wanted to be able to change my relationship with food. So that I can be successful in my goal towards being healthy. What I'm ending this class with is a lot more than that. I am indeed more mindful now of what I eat, I have done quite a bit of work on letting emotions like anger and sadness go and not run my eating schedule. I have done a lot to look at how I have been comfortable in my eating habits that led to me being unhealthy, and why I felt I needed that comfort. In the end, it's still going to be me remembering to treat myself kindly and not go into reaction mode when I get stressed or angry (I discovered there's an inner teen inside me that likes to take over and eat "whatever the F I want" when I feel angry or stressed.) and that in changing how I think I am changing how I deal with food. I'm looking at it as fuel, appreciating it, but not relying on it as a drug to keep me happy or calm me down.
And I've started cooking my own healthy meals - a huge first for me because I've always said I'm not a cook. And I'm still not going to run out and try to cook for huge groups of people but I don't cringe anymore when I think about cooking meals for myself. And I don't make ramen or go for fast food - which was my stand-by. I still get coffee and I still go out to eat, but the things I choose to eat are things that I'm not going to regret later.
It's been a good 9 weeks. Some serious stuff came up that I didn't expect, and I feel a great burden gone where a lot of anger/hurt was. Now, to take what I've learned/discovered, and continue on my path of keeping active (I do still enjoy the gym but haven't been going as regularly as I'd like) and eating good foods (Medifast and lots of fresh veggies seems to be my key).
So tonight I'll say farewell and congratulations to my new friends from the class, knowing that we are all working on our stuff and that we have new tools and newly discovered strength to keep going and make good choices that honor the women that we are. That's a big deal, not buying into the idea that I'm a bad person because I look a certain way, or because I make mistakes. Nope, just a person. On a path. And I will keep going.
One day. One pound. One step at a time.
~N
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