That
was the advice. Sought after advice. Eagerly awaited advice. Kindly delivered
by my wise mentor. Kind because I know she wanted to use the “F” word.
I
had been focused on building my business and organizing my time. I was stressed
about doing something completely new that exposed me, encouraged being
vulnerable. I was not tolerating that stress terribly well. My brain kept
offering up my old security blanket, overeating.
When
I built my new neural pathways, the ones that support me in extinguishing the
desire to overeat, I built them strong and wide. I made it easy to divert my
thinking away from thoughts that lead to overeating and back to thoughts that
lead to focusing on my life, not on my food and/or my weight. For a year and a
half, I had successfully kept off the 60 pounds that I had lost by changing my
brain. And it was easy.
Now
my freedom from food drama began to feel less free. It turns out that the
neural pathways that were previously laid down from a lifetime of overeating
have not been completely removed. Though the new paths are well established,
when my little lizard brain panicked, it chose to run down the old familiar
paths, despite 18 months of overgrowth.
I
chose to respond with shock, and awe, and confusion.
Not
wanting to take responsibility for it.
“It’s
the stress.”
“It’s
too hard.”
“I
don’t have the bandwidth to deal with this now.”
Bring
on the chips. Ice cream. Handfuls of nuts. And weight gain.
And
my panic over the weight gain, of course, led to more weight gain.
Like
all my clients, I have a human brain. And that brain wants so desperately to
keep me safe. And is wholly inadequate at deciphering what is actually
dangerous and what is “made up” dangerous. It doesn’t know that my story, a
bunch of sentences in my head, will not actually kill me. But
running/overeating from the feeling that story produces 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅
actually kill me. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease. All encouraged by
overeating.
Now,
the choice between believing those sentences and the outcome of that, and the
choice to see them as harmless words on a page has taken on a heavier meaning
(pun intended). My mental health. My goals. My business. My future. My life.
I
asked for advice. Plaintively. She responded with tough love. “You are the best
coach for you.”
My
confidence in my own abilities is what is going to get me what I want. It’s
there. When I clean up my mind, I’ll see it.
I
just need to quit messing around.
I’ve
got this.
𝑆𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑎 𝑃ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝐶𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑒𝑑 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑊𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐶𝑜𝑎𝑐ℎ. 𝑆ℎ𝑒’𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 50 𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑠….𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦. 𝑁𝑜 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑚𝑎. 𝑁𝑜 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑙𝑒.