4 Bags. Taking up Too Much Space in My Mind (and Closet)

4 bags.  I went through my closet yesterday and released myself of 4 bags of clothes, belts, purses, and shoes cluttering up my closet, and my mind.  4!

If you were to look into your closet, drawers, plastic bins or under the bed storage containers, how many jeans, dresses, skirts, shirts, belts…. how many things are you holding on to for the “one day this might fit” or the “one day I might have a use for this” occurrence?

As women, how many of us struggle with disconnecting our self-worth with the size of our clothing or the number on the scale?  So how is seeing clothes that do not fit any longer on a daily basis helpful in making this disconnection?

I have played this game for years.  I have moved clothes back & forth as seasons have changed, and brought the same clothes up/down stairs or moved from closet to closet, thinking one day I will fit back into those amazing pair of Ann Taylor dress pants or the Elie Tahari dress I bought for a charity event at my work over a decade ago.  I held on to them because they’re “classics” and I am charmed by the “what if I eventually lose the weight I want to lose”…then I will be able to wear these items again.  That mind-set isn’t helpful & doesn’t serve me anymore.

The truth is this.  As much as I thought having the reminder of how lovely each of these items were, and seeing them in my closets, would help me to eventually “fit” back into them, it actually had the reverse impact and served as a constant reminder of how badly I was failing at losing the weight so I could wear these items of clothing again.  This game I played in my head almost served as a measuring stick for my happiness….if only, if only I could do more than squeeze back into these clothing items, then all would be peaceful & joyful in the world.  It has nothing to do with happiness…but it was a concept I was buying into for years.

So 4 bags.…Gone.  This is how I did it.

First….

(1) Does it currently fit?

If answer is no, then into a trash bag to be donated to charity it went.  No.  Further. Discussion.  None.

If yes, it went into a separate pile for next evaluation….

(2) If yes, does it?

Serve a purpose (like yoga or running clothes) or make me feel good when I’m wearing it?

If yes, then back into drawers or closet.

If the answer was “no”, then into a trash bag it went to be donated to charity it went.  No. further. Discussion.  None.

4 bags.  

My closet is sparse.  My drawers in my dresser are much more organized and spacious.   But most importantly and significant, the negative chatter that would often happen in my brain when I would stare into my closet was silent this morning.

I was texting a friend of mine about my plan the other day, and she said she did the same thing!  And to her surprise, she began to lose weight soon after.  Now, if that happens, AWESOME!  But if it doesn’t…. I still feel so much more at peace knowing I was able to donate 4 bags of clothing etc that no longer served me to charity so someone else may benefit, and I was not constantly being reminded of an arbitrary ideal that I was striving for that truly has NOTHING to do with how happy I am or how successful I am in life.

Today… I sat out in the sun and ordered a few more items to fill the void in my closet that actually will fit me and will fuel my confidence rather than undermine it.  Until there is a day when we walk into the doctor’s office & their first request (after insurance and ID) is “Can you step on the scale please” and clothing stores replace their “sizes” with things like:

 

It’s up to all of us to seek our self-worth beyond the number on the scale and the size printed on the back of our clothing items….

Peace…….

5 Simple steps to “unlearn” Body Shaming

In college I didn’t weigh myself and I didn’t own a scale.  My diet consisted of a bagel in the morning and a diet Dr Pepper, an Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip cookie for lunch and probably a diet Dr Pepper, and dinner was chicken and rice or pasta and possibly water (on a rare occasion I would eat a salad from the cafeteria but only if they had red peppers because I am slightly obsessed with them) and shock tarts candy late night at UDF run, and Milano’s turkey submarine sandwiches anytime I could afford them, and a minimum of 3 days a week I drank without any concern of calories or how many was too many.   I didn’t exercise regularly.  The only memory I have of doing so was this….

• Crammed in my sorority house living room, with my best friend, archaic tv set with a ….wait for it…VHS version of Cher’s aerobic tape.  Now…if you have never had the privilege of working out to Cher, let me say, it was by far the BEST time I have ever had working out.  Perhaps because it was utterly ridiculous to be watching her in I am not kidding….lingerie that was supposed to somehow be workout attire and her never ever even sweating as my best friend and I were about to pass out either from laughter or exhaustion……. but faithfully for what I am sure was only a few short weeks of cramming for bikini season in the annual Dayton to Daytona trip post graduation….we plopped in that VHS tape and did our best to work out so we could bare being in a bikini among our peers for a week straight.

Perhaps that started my own 2 decade + struggle with body shaming.

When I look back at the photos from that time period, I was fairly small.  I have no idea how much I weighed but I do know we all shared clothes and I always thought my friends were small, but I didn’t see myself that way.  Somehow I had convinced myself that my genetically inspired boobs were too big, or my I’m sure these are great “birthing” hips, were somehow “wrong”…..

Fast forward……20+ years later.  I own a scale and force myself to only weigh myself once a week.  I have been a vegetarian for 5+ years.  May be more…. I exercise daily.  Daily…and I do mean daily.  Over the past 10 years, I started running and have completed many races of distances from 5K- full marathons.  I walk my dog, aka Layla the Wonderdog at least 2x daily.  And 2 1/2 years ago I started practicing yoga and now do a minimum of 3 days a week.  And drinking?  Maybe 1 day a week and the caloric count and how am I feeling after drinking it is ever-present.

So the frustrating part of me, and something I want to share with others, is all awhile I am doing all of this, I still struggle not only with the probably 20+ lbs I have on me from college but the shame I feel about it.

• Shame for not being more disciplined in my eating/exercising.
• Shame for not weighing less.
• Shame for caring that I don’t weigh less.
• Shame for measuring myself against others.
• Shame for making excuses on days I really really really need sleep vs getting up early to exercise.
• Shame for somehow thinking my self-worth is connected to the number on the scale or the arbitrary size some dress manufacture put in my dress.
• Shame for ……… fill in the blank.

As I am putting the final pieces together to launch my (thankfully already piloted) online consulting/therapeutic business (strong peaceful women), I am forced to not only look at what road blocks have presented themselves in the path to its launch, but also how am I living what I preach to others.

Ugh……

It isn’t just that my weight is up, and my exercise has been sporadic over the past few weeks, it’s that I don’t feel well.  My piriformis syndrome that I manage through yoga and exercise is aggravated.  My eating, because of my increasingly busy schedule, is not planned out and regular in times and content.  And the “oh it’s summer and the 27th graduation party of the season, sure why don’t I have another beer” has happened.  Period.

And I sooooo want to be the embodiment of what I teach (and sometimes preach) to others….alas I am just like the rest of the world doing my best with what I have each day.  In yoga, yet again, I was reminded of the journey…not the destination….of peace. Even though I know it isn’t a “place”, and I teach others this concept, I forget sometimes.

So this is certainly not an exhaustive list but here is my version of steps to start “unlearning” body shaming behavior…..

• Focus on what your body can do, versus what it cannot.  Can you walk? AWESOME!  Practice gratitude and start (and may be stay!) there.
• Treat yourself for positive behavior changes with positive rewards.  Work out consistently for 2 weeks in a row.  Buy a new workout tank to show off your ever- toning arms of steel.  Or a pedicure to soothe your strong amazing feet!
• Be realistic with your workout, eating, drinking, life goals and make small consistent changes over time.  It is the best way to make life-long changes.
• Stop trying to be someone else.  You have ONE body- focus on learning to love (or at least appreciate) the body you live in each day/night.
• Look at yourself in the mirror each day and repeat these words……I am perfectly imperfect and beautiful in my imperfections.  

It is a journey.  I live it each day.  Somedays I am rocking it- I am eating well and working out and practicing deep breathing when my stress increases and sleeping well and helping others and going to church or walking in nature or …..practicing what I preach.  And truly, my lesson to teach others is just like you, I have to work at it.  If I had a magic wand or pixie dust to sprinkle over the world for help people find inner peace and happiness I would but….

What I have is my conceptual program of combining body, mind, spirit and service to find inner peace and happiness…and even I need to be reminded of it from time to time.

Hope for at least one person living with “body shaming”…this helped you to know you are not alone….

Peace….

 

We are all different: We are all the same

(click on above video, to view song)

We are all different, yet we are all the same.

My new business launched last week.  Strong Peaceful Women.  (www.strongpeacefulwomen.com)

I was hoping to have 8 women join to pilot the program.  I was astonished when I realized the ever-growing list blossomed to 25 courageous women, from all over the country, all wanting to learn more about my philosophy of combining mind, body, spirit and service for overall peace and happiness.  Huge honor.  Huge responsibility.

Quickly I have learned, their stories are MY story.  Their stories are YOUR stories.  For we are all different, yet all the same.  We all long for acceptance, we all long for love, we all long for peace, we all long for happiness.  Each with our unique challenges, but challenges we all face nonetheless.

I’m on a huge Kacey Musgraves kick, and found this song that spoke to me in each of our journeys towards finding love (which by the way….always, always, always, always needs to come from within before we are ever open to finding true love in another) and finding peace.

For over a decade, I worked in community.  I facilitated groups, I volunteered on fundraising committees, I corralled runners to join the “Gilda’s Runners” team and train to run a half or a full marathon…..all done in community.  I quickly learned the power of community.  Not in the common concept of “it takes a village”, yet not dislike it either.  It is in community where we realize….hey, others are struggling in this thing called life too.  I don’t need to struggle alone, and perhaps in having others along on the journey with me, I will find strength and courage in whatever I am facing in life.

But let us not forget, community is stronger when we become strong individually.  When we learn to love ourselves not DESPITE our flaws, but WITH our flaws.

“……We’re all hoping and we’re hopeless.  We’re all thorns and we’re all roses.  We’re all looking down our noses at ourselves. We’re all flawed & we’re all perfect.  We’re all lost and we’re all hurting….”

YES!

May be if we spent more time opening up to others about our REAL life, struggles and all, instead of posting on Facebook or Instagram or …… the life we WANT others to think we are living, we’d find a way towards loving ourselves just a little bit more, knowing we are all different, yet the same in this journey called life.

Love this one so much…think I’ll just end with that as my final thought today.

Peace…….

Well Behaved Women…….

“Well behaved women rarely make history.” Marilyn Monroe.  

No idea she was the one who is credited with this quote, but it’s been haunting me over past few days.  Not haunting in a creepy Halloween sort of way, but in a recurring theme in my head.  Who makes history?  Who changes things in this life? People who sit idly by and allow whatever is to happen, to happen, or people who have a little bit of fire within them guiding them to push the envelope, mix things up a bit?

I’m launching a new business, entitled “Strong/Peaceful Women” in the near-ish future…..(much credit given to those who are encouraging me along this path to spread my path towards peace to others in the world.  Thank you.) and perhaps this is why I’ve been thinking about this topic so much lately.  Can the two aspects co-exist?  Strong and Peaceful.  Bold and Calm.  Advocate and patient listener. I think so.  I believe so with every fiber of my body and am perplexed that it seems like it is a novel concept.

In our society, men are afforded the opportunity to be ruthless businessmen and gentle parents if they choose to do so, so why can’t women have the same opportunity?  Be strong in her field and gentle in her life?

Relax…before anyone thinks I’m starting a male vs female roles in society debate, I’m really not…..each are beautiful and wonderful in his/her own way….

Rather, I’m contemplating the unfortunate opportunity we are missing, as a society, in not only allowing but encouraging each of us, male or female, to be strong when it serves, and peaceful when possible.

When I think of those who in my life are strong, they aren’t World Champion weight lifters (although more power to them if they were), or vicious with their words.  They’re decisive.  They’re passionate.  They’re advocates, learned, aware, and self assured.  Don’t we want everyone to be that way?

When I think of people who in my life are peaceful, they are not necessarily Yogi Gurus or Faith Filled Priests  (although again more power to them if they were), rather they are people living with “real” life issues: depression, substance abuse, maritial/family strife, losses great and small…and no matter what happens in their lives, they’re choosing to find some peace in whatever life offers. Don’t we want everyone to be that way?

My thoughts today, brief, but I hope resinate for all of us…to allow and encourage all to live strong, peaceful lives.

Peace….