The Grass in Heaven

Leading from Depression - Asking for Help

2011-12-14T10:24:00.000-05:00

Two Mondays ago, I suggested to my trainer that I come infor a talk. I had been binge eating, I felt overwhelmed, and I felt alone.Though I know I have the ability to make consistent lifestyle changes, I wasnot.

While talking with Julia, she made some suggestions. She told me shenormally gives her clients homework. My response was, “really? I don’t gethomework.” Of course, I quickly realized that I rarely ask for help. I researchweight loss in medical journals giving me lots of information and strategies at which I am a master at making into a plan.Yet I rarely follow the plan for very long. During our conversation, I gained some insight thatmy knowledge may be a hindrance. Knowledge,I thought, is hindering me from asking forhelp.

Asking for help is the part of the first step in the recovering fromdepression. This process, which I recently wrote about in a paper called“Leading from Depression”, starts with honesty. A person must be honest enoughwith him/herself to recognize the feeling of being overwhelmed. Beingoverwhelmed can be solved two ways. First, slowing down and developing simplegoals to get through the difficult time. Or, and usually after the first optionhas failed far too many times, and hopefully before a complete meltdown, werealize that we need help, we need support, we need guidance.

I wrote in my paper that books on leadership place a high value on a leaders ability to ask for help. Mentors seem to be standard for every leader, and outsourcingthe parts of their business to those better suited for such tasks asaccounting, marketing, etc. From my research, knowing that a person needs helpand then asking for it, was a prized attribute of almost every leader. Everyleader I read about succeeded, to quote Isaac Newton, because they “stood onthe shoulders of giants”.

Leaders ask for help from the outset, but those sufferingfrom mental illness usually do not. I know that I struggled and still struggle to ask for help. Inseeking help, I must admit I am overwhelmed, possibly lost, and maybe even beginninglose control. Asking for assistance requires that we recognize our weaknesses.It requires vulnerability. In the context of mental illness, vulnerability isfrightening, possibly terrifying. It is terrifying because we, those who sufferfrom mental illness, must admit that we do not have control over the one thingthat makes us who we are – our mind.

Except for death, I know of no other experience worsethan losing control of one’s thoughts. I have counseled many patients who tryvery hard but cannot get a grasp on their thoughts. They cannot stop feelingdepressed, hearing voices, or having panic attacks. Maybe they even have acombination of all three symptoms. It is a darkness that spontaneously andcontinuously arose in my mind and filled my heart, and at that time it felt bottomless,as if without beginning, end or reason. It is an experience I never want tolive through again, because I am afraid of it. No matter how much I tried, Icould not seem to get control of it until I asked for help.

To say that medication was the first step in recoverywould be incorrect. Getting help, admitting that I did not have the solutionwas the first step. Admitting this, I was forced to stop everything. I had toput down all the goals and plans I had made. I had to rethink what was and wasnot working. I had to reevaluate everything, because I was not making progresson my own.

And so, that iswhere I am with weight loss. I am not reaching my goals and I am not followingmy plan. I am not making the progress I wanted to make. But most importantly, Iam not making the consistent progress that Iknow I am capable of. Therefore, I met with my trainer, my therapist, andsome of my friends and I asked for help. I am, just as I did with depression,reevaluating my strategies for weight loss and lifestyle change. I am slowingdown and looking for the vital behaviorsto make the changes I want to make.

If this intensive reflection worked for depression, I amsure that it can work for weight loss. I will update soon on my initialfindings . . .

Coping Skills, Hollow Words, and Neural Pathways

2011-11-29T16:08:00.001-05:00

Honest reflection is difficult. While I want to loseweight, I know that tomorrow I will not want to follow the plan I made thisafternoon. I am of two minds about many things, weight loss being the mostprevalent. Looking back, I see manyfailures and a few sprinkled successes. This reality make me think anystatements going forward about weight loss goals are only hollow words. Yet, lookingforward, I still feel hopeful. And, in the present moment, I feel both, andthis is a confusing, exhausting struggle.

Change is difficult, and weight loss requires change. Thestruggle to change arises from frequent, almost constant, impulses to follow apath contrary to my overarching goal. For example, I set a goal to walk in themorning, but when I wake up I do not want to. I make a meal plan, but by 6:30pmI don’t want to follow it. I should swim, but I’m tired by the evening. If I don’tfollow my plan, I feel down. When I feel, down I am likely to eat or binge. Forovereating and binging have been my coping mechanisms. They are well wornneural pathways that offer safe, quick passage away from feeling downtrodden,from feeling depressed. Coping mechanisms are ingrained and very resistant tochange. We know this from research on disorders such as OCD (obsessivecompulsive disorder).

Think of a road in your town. Maybe you have seenpictures of what it looked like one hundred years ago. The one in my mind iscalled Grove Avenue. Years ago it started as nothing more than a path worn carriages,as cars were not even a hopeful thought. However, as technology developed andthe town grew so did the path. Eventually the path may have been laid withcobblestone, then paved. Maybe even widened once, twice, or even more. In yourtown, this path could have been made into more than a road, a highway. Taketime to reflect on how much time, energy, and planning was put into thedevelopment of that road. It was built to last and offer safe, quick passagefrom one place to another.

Neural pathways are not much different. As children, ourbrain is relatively undeveloped. Through genetic and environmental triggers paths turn to roads and roads tohighways. For me, trauma was the environmental trigger which allowed copingmechanisms like binge eating and eating in secret to create a very well paved,safe neural highway – a coping interstate.

When I wake up tomorrow morning and I do not want to gofor a walk or I want to eat an off plan breakfast, I will try to take a momentand reflect. I feel this way because of years of habits which originallyoffered me solace but now are creating suffering. I will still be frustratedtomorrow, but maybe I can smile to myself and give myself a break. Drawing from the spirit of motivational interviewing - my thoughtpatterns are old, they are ingrained, and there are good reasons for thesethoughts to be in my head. My brain is doing nothing more than helping me cope,and it is not its fault that it takes physiology longer to change than theenvironment around it.

I am no longer in a volatile situation. I am safe. I havea very special group of friends and family. I have two great trainers helpingme. Within a year I will be a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and I enjoy thispractice tremendously. I truly have much to be thankful for. Yet, my wellproven coping mechanisms, like a well build road, will take a while toovergrow.

Constant diligence and mindfulness are the remedies forstopping these thought patterns, allowing old roads to grow over and new neuralpathways to form. This is will take some time to accomplish. This process isphysiological, and neuro-physiological restructuring takes time. The time thistakes and the set backs, “using the old roads”, waylay us on our journey,increasing frustration and decreasing resolve.

However, it is important to remember that I do want change.I do want to change. Also, these impulsive desires to eat, not exercise, orfollow other now problematic neurological coping pathways did serve a purpose.My brain needs time to catch up, and I would do well to cut it some slack.These old coping mechanisms, now today’s struggles, say nothing about who I amand what I want to be. If anything, I should smile to them; they have been goodfriends. They have helped me through hard times and are still doing the same. Iwill therefore take a lesson from my own book. I will smile to these thoughts,recognize them for what they are – coping mechanisms that shielded me fromoverwhelming emotional burdens.

I practice what I preach. I breath, reflect, smile atwhat is in my heart, and move forward. I am ready for new coping mechanism. Iam not letting go of my goals. I am ready to train for a 70.3!

Jingle Bell 5k - Goal Setting and Non-Action

2011-10-12T20:14:00.000-04:00

I have neither written about nor made a goal in a long time. Upon reflection over the past few days, I think there may be several reason behind this. First, the race and weight loss goals I made early this year, I did not meet. Second, most times I make a goal I also tend to sabotage, possibly as a reaction to the stress of goals that are too ambition. Last, I have found more success recently by taking each day at a time. I let go of making promises about where I would be, and I focused my energy on making healthy choices for each meal and getting in most of my exercise plan each week. This I will call my non-action method or effortless effort. While this has not resulted in perfection, it has resulted in a loss of about 20 pounds in the past 10 weeks and I have gotten back on track with regular exercise.

This is a great accomplishment, but I have also felt recently it was time to become a more serious. I spoke with my coach, Kate, and she has been encouraging me to be more consistent with my run/walks especially with my midterm runny goal of the Monument 10k next year. We discussed where I am psychologically, the success of my non-action method, and the need to start being even more consistent with both training and nutrition. These factors led to a simple, short distance run event on December 5th - The Jingle Bell Run for the Arthritis Foundation.

I have already noticed that I am tending to make too much of this race in my head. I am creating worry in my mind with unrealistic weight loss and time expectations. This has result in sabotage for my first two days of training, a pattern I cannot let continue. I want to do this 5k, I want to improve my training and nutrition consistency, and I think this will be best accomplished by merging the goal setting with my previous non-action success.

What does this all mean? It means that I need to simultaneously have a 5k goal but at the same time feel the psychological relaxation that came from just focusing on eating and exercise one day at a time. This I see as being accomplished by diminishing the humming of weight loss / training thoughts that is running in my head all day. Simply, if I can forget about the goals except for the times I need to remember, i.e., meals and exercise, I will have a perfect combination of goal setting and non-action. Through this process, I may slowly make peace with the daily consistency in my training and nutrition that I need to continue this path of a Lifestyle Change.

Last, I cannot finish without my goals. The race is 7.5 weeks away. I have been doing 10min run/walks for 2 weeks (15min miles) and losing about 2.2 pounds per week. With this in mind, my goals will then be to run the 5k in less than 44 min and lose 20lbs by Dec 5. This is equal to a pace of about 14 miles/min and loss of 2.6lbs per week. These goals I believe are a fair merger of ambition and reasonableness.

Please donate if you feel so inclined. I will keep the updates coming.

The Politics of Fat: Chris Christie, Weight Loss, and Discipline

2011-10-07T15:27:00.001-04:00

While I am passionate about politics, thegrassinheaven isnot the forum for that discussion. I devote my time here to synthesizing myweight loss thoughts, into coherent and sometimes insightful expressions.However, politics and weight loss have crossed in a unique fashion with ChrisChristie, Governor of New Jersey. In this crossing, some of my thoughts are starting to synthesize regarding weight loss and discipline.

Regarding Christie, Megan McCardle writes that she finally agrees with Johnathan Chait that Micheal Kinsley is wrong - that Chris Christie is somehow unqualified to be president because he is fat is absolutely ridiculous." Other pundits have also begun to weigh in: Ezra Klein who brings in good analysis of the difference between mortality and morbidity, and Eugene Robinson who takes an opposite health concern argument

Chait writes regarding Robinson "to categorize obesity as a character flaw...ignores the extreme difficulty of sustained weight loss". Both persons have a point, and I do not just feel this truth, I know it. Losing weight extraordinarily difficult.

Some would argue that weight loss is currently the most treatment resistant medical condition. A blog I highly recomend, Weightology Weekly did a report on Americans ability to keep weight off.

The above graph was included but not without caveats. First, the graph, taken from NHANES data has far more positive results than other studies that show after 5 years only 3% of people have kept significant amounts of weight off. And, Weightology's author, James Krieger notes that the NHANES data only "looked at one point in time". There is just limited information about long term weight loss success, but in clinical trials the data is abysmal. In fact, people are more likely to recover from alcoholism and drug addiction than obesity.

With such low recovery rates, a strong correlation argument can be made that their must be some genetic component. Klein pointed out there does appear to be a link, yet the link is not enough to abandon the importance of free will. In fact, there is much emerging promising research regarding OCD and free will as noted in the book The Mind and The Brain. Were individuals to be able to have access to individualized therapy like the OCD patient in the book, weight loss results might be somewhat different. Or, at least, the results might reflect the success that short term clinical trials show for cognitive/behavioral modifications plus diet/exercise education programs.

Based on numerous clinical trials, will power is a tremendous component to weight loss. This would lend credence to the anti-Christie's argument that he lacks personal discipline and this reflects his moral shortcomings to be president. However, most of these successes are 'in vitro' and are mostly lost once the patients are removed from the structured clinical trial setting. In fact, many people do not even finish the clinical trial to begin with (I have actually been one of those people).

I was too embarrassed to finish the clinical trial of a University of Richmond study, because I was actually gaining weight. I had not yet come to the point where I am today. For me, I had too many pressing emotional issues to resolve before I could turn my focus to sustained weight loss and lifestyle changes. However, I hit my 50lb marker today, but I have made sacrifices in order to get here:

1) Free Time: Possibly the most important recent change is to cut back on work outside of school. This allows me about 1 more day of free time per week spread out over the whole week. This has been a crucial psychological balance for me. It allows me time to push myself and recover, or extra recovery if I pushed to far, or to recover if I am just feeling down. This mental space is crucial.

2) Psychiatry: I have upped my Prozac and also take Wellbutrin. As I have written about before, this is to fight depression which, in my case, is exacerbated by being overweight but is not caused by it. I also see a counselor each week, and we are not almost exclusively focusing on weight loss discussion.

3) Training: I have two different trainers: 1) Julia at FIT Richmond who I see almost once per week for an individual session, which might be just as much psychiatry as exercise, 2) Kate Lucas owner of Charlottesville Multisports who I see once per week to discuss and plan my long term 1/2 Ironman strategy, and again, is an integral psychiatric component. I also swim with a masters group at the YMCA once or twice per week, and I have started also going to Peluso Open Water when I cannot get these swims in.

4) Social Support: My friends and family are very supportive. I have a great walking buddy who keeps me going throughout the week. I have two friends that go to group training sessions at FIT Richmond with me.

5) Financial: This is the kicker. Between the one day less work per week, the psychiatric medications, weekly therapy sessions, two trainers, and YMCA and Peluso fees, I am spending a significant amount per month. And this leads me to my last and greatest resource - my Mom.

6) Mom: My mother may be the most remarkable person I know. During my darkest depression when I could barely work, was lying about going to class, starting to flounder in school, barely got out of bed, she stuck by me personally and financially. I have lived with her at home for many years which has been probably as important as all the other steps combined. It has saved me financially, personally and spiritually. The love that my mother has for me is something hard to recognize at first. She has had a steadfast, quite belief in me which has never wavered. She has seen in me what all of my friends have seen, and something that I am just barely coming to understand. That I am a good person, and I can and will and am accomplishing my weight loss objectives. I am forever indebted to her.

What does all this mean about Chris Christie? I am not really sure, except to say that I know what it has taken me to make a real change, and I am not going to fault Christie for his struggle. As Klein points out, even with vast resources, Oprah Winfrey has struggled with weight loss and she has tremendous success and discipline in her career. More important, research behind Motivational Interviewing shows that fact giving, confrontation, and problem solving do not yield the desired health changes like reflective listening, positive reinforcement, and helping the client to bring out, in his/her own time frame, his/her intrinsic wisdom and desire for change. So whatever the case, the eat a salad take a walk encouragement of Eugine Robinson is actually counter productive.

I am sure Gov. Christie, like myself, know that walks and salads are better choices than Big Macs and TV. However, for most Americans, this decision seems to be an extremely difficult choice to make day in and day out. As noted, it can be sustained shortly in clinical trials, but once out of the lab, the results melt away like butter between a warm stack of pancakes.

Lifestyle Changes – The Necessity of Small Changes and Neuroplasticity

2011-09-25T11:15:00.002-04:00

Over the past 7 weeks, I have been making microscopicimprovements. This turtle-ing along provides my life with a persistent sense offrustration. The frustration arises from the waiting caused by changes being sosmall. Weight loss is no different than watching a pot boil. While it canhappen quickly, as in the Biggest Loser, usually it happens incrementally. Infact, research supports that 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week is ideal. It isideal slow weight lost is the kind most correlated with keeping it off.

When I became focused in my weight loss effort inJanuary, each week was increasingly frustrating. The effort of not eating toomuch, as well as eating healthier and smaller portions, and also gettingexercise in especially when I was tired took energy and left frustration. Theenergy of course was from the effort, and the frustration was the discrepancy apsychological feeling cause by the chasm between how much effort I felt I wasputting in and the minutia of the results.

Slowly though this exacerbating feeling cause by suchslow change has become manageable, probably for 2 reasons. First, I havesteadily become more consistent over the year. Even during a long 3 monthplateau, I never put too much weight back on – just a few pounds. During thattime, I oscillated just around 355lbs, +/- 5lbs. Finally, a few weeks ago Irestructured and was back on track making my microscopic improvements. However,I also began appreciating something the snail paced changes.

The idea that I have begun to accept and slowlyappreciate is that in making LifestyleChanges needs to take a long time.My hypothesis rests within readings I have done about the brain. In the book, TheMind and the Brain, the concept of neuroplascticity is discussed. Dr. Schwartz,the author, suggests that research including brain imagining studies shows thatwe can, through persistent mindfulness, change the neuronal pathways that affectour behavior. Dr. Schwartz’s research is with OCD (obsessive compulsivedisorder) patients who struggle with constant interfering thoughts andcompulsions that they are almost paralyzed to stop intruding into their mindand life.

While I am not sure scientifically, I would argue thatindividuals, like myself, trying to lose weight, especially significantamounts, may have similar characteristics to patients with OCD. Experientially,I know that earlier in the year, I could think of little else all day besideswhat I was going to eat next, was it on plan or close to plan, could I get myexercise in, etc. My brain was consumed with fighting my compulsion to eat andnot exercise.

Day after day I focused on pushing through. I worked eachweek in therapy to find a deeper sense of motivation in my heart. I looked into the feelings and possibletriggers that would cause me to move off plan. And, I learned to give myself abreak. This last piece in combination with continued persistence is whatbrought me to appreciate the slow pace. I began to think that the slow pace isnecessary because it is this repeated process that creates the new neuronalpathways that will result in a lifestyle change.

In the end, I think a lifestyle change should feel or bevery close to habit. Of course there will be days of struggle, but more daysthan not the changes must almost be unconscious. I get up, I exercise, I work,I rest or do whatever other things need to be done. This consciousness shift ifprobably what confidence is – the knowledge that I will continue to life acertain way even though there are many days in the past during which I did not.To feel this way, I think is when our brain structure will have changed and theold pathways, the old habits of eating for emotion, will have been vanquished.Those pathways, like a path in the forest will have grown over, and we willhave created through hard work, mindfulness, and the gift of neuroplasticity anew life. We will have made a lifestyle change!

PS: The pic at the top is the cover of King Lines, a documentary about climber Chris Sharma. Sharma is a sick climber, but related to this post is how long he spends on some of his routes he puts up. It takes him not months but sometimes years.

A Ride for Remembrance - Remembering Sept 11, 2001

2011-09-10T09:50:00.000-04:00

Ride for Remembrance Poster

Ten years ago the World Trade Centers were attacked. As aresult of such savagery, Alicia Basmajian’s life was tragically cut short.Alicia was married to a good friend of mine, Anthony, and together they had abeautiful young daughter.

Anthony was not my only Basmajian friend. Over the years,I had become friends with Aaron, one of the middle of the four Basmajian boys.At the time of this tragedy, I had been cycling a lot and was training for myfirst marathon. Aaron approached me with an idea. He wanted to commemorateAlicia’s memory by donating enough money Willliam and Mary College that an artscholarship, Alicia’s first love, could be started in her name. Aaron’s ideawas to raise the money and then commemorate the scholarship by cycling fromRichmond to Ground Zero. Anthony still lived in New York, and he would meet usthere for the commemoration of the Alicia’s memory.

All Aaron wanted me to do was ride with him. I really didnot take time to think about it, I just said yes and kept on riding as usual. Ibought a book about long distance cycling, but I had no real idea what I wasdoing. I rode several times a week anywhere from 35-60 miles per ride for atotal of 250 plus miles per week. It was a lot of riding, but it kept my bingeeating habits from piling on pounds. Furthermore, I believe it held mydepression at bay allowing me to function.

St. Christopher's Send Off

The Ride for Remembrance was not only myself and Aaron.Both of the younger Basmajian boys also participated. Alden, just younger thanAaron, was going to cycle with us, and Allen would ride in a donated supportvehicle driven by Brendan, a friend of Alden’s.

The ride was truly an powerful experience.

The Ride for Remembrance began from St. Christopher’sSchool, where we had met each other. St. Chris had a wonderful send off party.Channel 12 news was there for the send off and had a reporter who would bechecking in with us periodically along the way. In typical style, theBasmajian’s showed up fashionably late and Aaron had a flat tire before we evengot on our bikes. Amazingly, this was to be our only flat tire for the entire600 plus mile ride. In fact, it was our only real bike problem.

Day 1 was about 85 miles from Richmond to Fredericksburg.The ride was through countryside of Virginia along a designated bike road, theold route 1. A granola bar snack was my saving grace that day, and it is stillmy snack of choice before and during rides. Unfortunately, we stayed up latethat evening watching the World Cup and so we began our late 11am starts forthe rest of the ride. Somehow I seemed to be blamed for the late starts, but Istill deny that to this day.

Day 2 - Taking a Mid-day Break

Whoever was the late start culprit, our rides quicklyfell into a routine – Aaron would lead for most of the day, Alden in themiddle, and towards the last 40 miles of the ride I would get my “second wind”and pull the two smaller boys for the last remaining part. A day 3 highlightwas my first Red Bull experience which was an essential discovery after day 2.

Day 2 was a ride from Fredericksburg to the Pentagon,which had also been attacked. This ride was also supposed to be about 85 miles,but it turned into 118 miles (my, and I think everyone’s, longest ride ever).It turns out that post 911 we were not able to ride through military baseswithout valid id’s, and at the time none of us carried identification with us(I now always carry identification). In the process of finding our way aroundthe military base, Aaron continually promised me that we were “just a few milesaway” from a gas station so many times we ended up stopping at a day carecenter to get water. I had been without water for several hours and it was wellover 90 degrees. Nevertheless, around dusk we finally made our way to thePentagon where we were met by 12 News and one of Anthony’s good friends. I wasdelirious, Aaron said he barely made it, and Alden started putting Icy-Hot onhis knee from then on.

Mason Dixon Line

Starting day 3, I remember sitting in a McDonald’sbathroom, almost in tears, praying that I would be able to finish the day.Maybe my prayers were answered because half way through the day, we took a reststop at Food Lion somewhere near Pennsylvania. In the parking lot, I spotted aRed Bull truck and cycled over to see if I could get some free samples. Iexplained to two refreshingly lovely Red Bull employees what we were doing, andthey gave us a couple Red Bull’s each. I pounded one immediately, and 15 minuteslater I felt like I had woken from the best sleep of my life. This began aritual for the rest of the ride during which I think I tried at least 10different kinds of energy drinks.

Day 4 was a great ride and ended up near this beautifullittle town in Maryland called Ellicott City.However, day 5 was a different story. For me, it was the toughest day. We roadthrough Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The rolling hills destroyed my legs. And, eventhough I was riding faster than the Amish in their horse and buggy, I wasfalling behind Aaron and Alden. They road like champions that day, and theirspirit kept the negative thoughts and anxiety of failure from consuming mymind. In fact, if the last 30 miles had not been almost exclusively downhill, Idon’t know if I would have made it.

Day 6 was much improved. Of course we started late, itwas hot, but I felt better. I ended the day very strong pulling both boys into thecity Anthony, his daughter, and Mr. and Mrs. B were waiting for us with heartfelt congratulations. I think we ate 7 pizzas that night along with salad andplenty of soft drinks.

Day 7 was Sunday, and we took a day of rest. We startedthe day with mass and then went to Anthony’s aunts house in Long Island where Ihad two new experiences. First, the experience of traffic from the city to longisland, and second fresh made pasta which was to this day the best I have everhad. Thank you!

Ground Zero - Seeing the Devastation for the 1st Time

The finally day was just a very short trip via ferry tothe city where we stopped at Ground Zero for the a while. I had to part wayswith my crew and take a train back to Richmond so I did not continue to missmore summer school. The rest of the team spent more time at Ground Zero andtraveled back in the support vehicle to Richmond the follow day.

No adequate sympathy can be expressed to the families wholost loved ones on that fateful day, nor can any amount of gratitude be givenwhich can pay for the sacrifices of the men and women of the United StatesArmed Forces who have protected our freedoms since that day. May theirsacrifices appreciated and not forgotten as the years pass since 9-11.

I am grateful to Aaron for including me on such anhonorable journey, and his family for being so supportive over the years. Theyare truly great people, and I am blessed to call them friends.

Walking Meditation - Revaluing for Weight Loss

2011-08-16T11:55:00.004-04:00

I used to meditate a lot. For about 6 years during college and just after, I would put in about 1.5+ hours of meditation each day. My initial formal instruction started my junior year during college when I traveled to India, a student with Antioch College’s Buddhist Studies Program. Even though I had been forging my own meditation technique for well over a year, it was in India that I was first introduced to walking meditation.

Walking meditation is a technique through which a person brings the same sort of meditative quality of mind to a moving activity. The reasoning behind this is because most practitioners live ‘real life’ lives, and they will never be nor have the desire to be sanyasi’s living in caves. Zen practice focuses heavily on walking meditation, and it uses it as a bridge to bring meditation to every other moment of a person’s life from washing dishes to having a conversation.

During the 7^th century when Chan Buddhism, Chinese Zen, was brought to Japan, the intensive meditation of Chan met with the busy life of the common folk of Japan, most of whom were farmers or merchants. This combination gave rise to a unique focus of meditation – bringing the meditative mind to every daily task. Simply put, the Japanese people did not have enough time to always be practicing sitting meditation, so the Chan tradition adapted to the lifestyle of the Japanese people.

The practice of being meditative during every activity is the root of mindfulness. I practice this type of mindfulness often, but my longest opportunity was during a month long stay at The San Francisco Zen Center. Here I learned through practice, what I already knew through reading, that Zen was not really about sitting meditation. Zen was everything, every moment, and this understanding comes through grasping the bridge that walking meditation creates between sitting meditation and everyday life. In short, walking meditation is practiced so we can carry the stillness of mind created during sitting meditation out of the Zendo and into the street. Zen is about meditation in every moment – a constant mindfulness.

This transition is important not just because it makes us more aware, but practicing it has regularly has the potential to restructure our brain. In the book, The Mind & The Brain, Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz researches the power of a 4 step mindfulness approach to OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). His research demonstrated that “refocusing strengthens new automatic circuits and weakens the old, pathological one – training the brain, in effect, to replace old habits…with healthy new ones.”

Dr. Schwartz took mindfulness one step further for his OCD patients. He integrated a revaluing component into the practice. This was an important step because OCD individuals know their hands are not dirty, but are driven by faulty brain activity to compulsively wash (note: washing is just one of many compulsions). Dr. Schwartz, a practitioner of Theravada Buddhism, another form of Buddhism that uses walking meditation as a bridge to everyday life, brought this practice to his patients. He trained them in meditative awareness of their thoughts and emotions in order to give them the keen awareness necessary to notice each compulsion when it arises, not that it is not the patient’s fault but caused an overactive caudate nucleus in the prefrontal cortex, let go the worry about the compulsion because the patient knows his/her hands are clean, and then revalue this impulse as senseless brain activity. Schwartz found that revaluing the compulsion was a critical step in the patient’s ability to stop acting on it.

For me, revaluing is becoming an integral part of my weight loss therapy. Much of my weight gain has been caused by depression and anxiety. While these emotions have specific roots in my past, they also have been occurring for so long that my brain is potentially stuck in this pattern. I have used talk therapy to face my sufferings, and this alleviated a significant amount of depression and anxiety. Yet, the more consistent I become in my training, i.e., following my meal and exercise plan, I am discovering that I still have a residual underlying vestiges of these two emotions.

My theory, though I do not have evidence, is that these emotions are like chronic pain. Chronic pain, pain lasting more than 6 months, can cause the neurons to get stuck in a permanent on mode. This results in an individual feeling pain even when there is nothing actually physically wrong anymore. I suspect that the emotional pain (sadness and anxiety) I experience as I increase my consistency is exactly this, brain pathways that are still firing from prolonged exposure to intense long lasting and recurrent depression and anxiety.

My current emotional experience, Dr. Schwartz’s research, and my background in meditation have merged in the past few weeks. Much of this occurred because I led several group therapy sessions on meditation and mindfulness. I had not practiced regularly in so long, I felt out of touch with the experience of meditation. This loss of touch has brought me recently to start sitting again.

While the hours I used to sit during my college years are not possible anymore, that training allows my current sessions to be significantly more productive. I have started sitting every other day now for just 5 minutes at a time. I will slowly increase this over time and also incorporate walking meditation into my life again. But most importantly, I will begin to use this rediscovered mindfulness to start revaluing the residual sadness and anxiety I have been feeling with the final goal of diminishing my useless negative thoughts and building new neuronal pathways to positive thoughts and an awesome healthy lifestyle.

Off Plan Advice - Be Friend's with Yourself

2011-08-10T12:09:00.002-04:00

Eating off plan is distracting (Note – Off plan is considered eating a meal that significantly exceeds the planned caloric intake for that particular meal). When I eat off plan, a familiar cycle begins. While consuming the food, I have a feeling of pleasure. This feeling may last for about 350 calories above plan. About this point, a meager voice begins to send warning signals that this is not “what I really want”. If I stop, the problem is averted. If I do not, then the initial pleasure fades as excuses begin, positive thoughts about myself are suppressed, and the potential for a culinary calamity is created.

Afterwards, there is a brief period of disappointment which can turn into shame which is proportionate to the number of calories over plan I have gone. Post shame, there can be a prolonged period during which other poor choices can be made. This period of time can last for hours and often includes the famous excuse “I’ll restart tomorrow”. This excuse allows for a plethora of other not-on-plan activities including skipping a workout, having another off plan meal later, watching TV I don’t really like, not getting work done, etc. The problem here is that these choices perpetuate the same disappointment/shame cycle possibly extending it into tomorrow, causing tomorrow’s restart not to come. And, the cycle perpetuates.

Another trap is to try to the next meal or two or three in an attempt to balance out the calories. This increased time between meals often either leads to increased hunger or increased psychological cravings, either way the asceticism backfires leading potentially to another off plan meal experience. And, the cycle perpetuates.

Over the past two weeks, I have had two of these off plan days both of which became disasters. These days were Saturday and Sunday. It is now Wednesday, and I have almost recuperated the loses from the weekend. This cycle cannot be allowed to continue. I cannot allow it to continue. I will not allow it to continue.

This progression of from cannot to will not implies a development of determination. To develop determination, I have been working very hard over the past two weeks to analyze the thought/emotional process I go through during my weight loss. Most importantly, I have been trying to feel deeply what emotions and/or thoughts are present during these off plan times. This reflection allowed me the insight that gave the above analysis of the cycle. Through the process of analyzing the cycle, I learned several things. Most important, if an off plan meal happens get right back on plan: 1) Do not skip meals to make up the calorie difference, 2) Do not skip exercise, and 3) Do not listen to the “I’ll restart tomorrow excuse”.

I have already explained the problems of skipping meals, it may seem righteous but it is a form of punishment. Study after study suggest punishment is not the most effective means of motivation. Furthermore, this is a double whammy because it is both punishment and an ascetic fast which has depriving psychological ramifications which defeat the intended purpose of the punishment. The purpose of any punishment is to get better, but this asceticism will likely create more shame, reinforcing a yummy food = shame relationship (which is absurd and will be blogged about another time) and in creating more shame, not improvement will occur. Instead, as I have blogged before, and as my first meditation teacher would asked us “Can you be friends with yourself?” Meaning, I need to offer myself a smile (a hug), realize I made a mistake, know & feel this is ok, and get back on track at the next meal. If I am not so hungry, I should just eat a smaller version, keep my physically and psychologically satisfied, smile one more time, and move on to the plan I already made. If this does not work initially, try to implement this strategy as soon as possible.

Second, upon observation skipping exercise is another layer of avoidance. For me, and I imagine for any person losing weight, getting out there at a gym, park, or group workout can feel intimidating or worse – humiliating. My exercise shirt says Get Fit, thanks Julia, and I am a big man, struggling to complete some simple exercises at the gym, drenched in sweat, and hoping all the time no one notices. Ha ha ha, who could not possibly notice. Like wearing baggy pants or a jacket so people don’t notice how fat you are. What a joke! Being overweight is so obvious, the only one my jacket really hides me from is myself. Similarly, skipping the next scheduled exercise allows me not to confront the disappointment/shame from my off plan meal calamity, and it allows me to perpetuate the cycle of avoidance. This cycle must be broken if the consistency needed to lose weight is to be obtained. And, I come back to the same technique. Can we be friends with ourselves, our whole self, which includes our smiles, joys, fat rolls, and shameful moments. When I am trying to avoid by not exercising, I need to smile, be friends with, what the underlying cause – embarrassment. It is ok to be where I am, it is ok to be embarrassed about being overweight, it is ok to want to hide, and when I realize it is ok, usually I smile spontaneously and then get up and go for my planned exercise. And, I always feel better after exercise.

Last, it should be obvious why the “restart tomorrow” excuse needs to be avoided. Most pertinent are the problems discussed in the second paragraph above. More subtly, it is a prolonged avoidance of the emotions discussed in the above paragraph. Worse, though is that it seems so ‘rational’ and feels very relaxing. “Restarting tomorrow” allows me to feel confident about myself b/c I envision myself doing all the right things tomorrow. It allows me to feel ok with the mistakes that have transpired, mimicking the feeling of being friends with my shame. Third, the combination of the two previous effects, makes ‘restarting tomorrow’ feel so rational. It feels like it makes sense. This feeling of making sense, of being rational, is the worst possibly association I, we, can make. It allows us to associate avoidance with rationality. It allows us to associate the illusion of accomplishment, i.e., envisioning success tomorrow, with the reality of accomplishment, i.e., getting back on track immediately. And, it allows us to trick ourselves into feeling we ‘let go’ of the negative emotions, when in fact we have done none of this. Letting go of negative thoughts can only be done by feeling them fully, feeling the encompassing oblivion that is sadness, letting it consume us for a moment and then smiling at the overwhelming nature of it all. This is being friends with ourselves, our whole self, and ‘restarting tomorrow’ has nothing to do with insight, recovery, or finding your strong. We need to have a foundation that comes with loving our self, of believing in ourselves. And, this starts when we become friends with our self.

Anger - A Motivation for Weight Loss?

2011-07-31T19:25:00.004-04:00

My feelings were hurt today, and I became angry. Rarely does my anger get the best of me causing me to say or do things I later regret, and fortunately, today was no exception. However, during this initial process of controlling my anger I often miss an opportunity to fully experience and thus let go of the emotion.

To me, being fully angry means feeling the effects of the rage both physical and psychological, and not try to change anything. By not trying to change anything, all of the emotion becomes conscious and none of it is left over. In such a moment, there is no avoidance of the emotion, no embarrassment caused by being enraged. There is no space in our minds at such a moment, because we are ok with being angry. We are, as I have blogged about before, friends with ourself which includes being friends with our anger.

Unfortunately, I find this experience difficult to have; however, through a conversation with a friend today, I was able to let my emotions, my anger, out fully. Through my anger, and its cause, became the catalyst for a cathartic stress relieving moment. All too often, I miss the catharsis and I am left with a residual. This residual, i.e., unprocessed emotions, can become an exhausting burden. The burden is created because the process that created the anger, being hurt, has not fully been expressed.

As my moment of transcendence through anger climaxed, I was motivated to get up and go for a walk. The fury that raced through my veins as I allowed myself to feel deeply my hurt and its child, my anger, my heart had started to beat faster, my vision seemed more crisp, and my motivation increased multiple fold. Several times in the past year, I have been able to have a moment during which I tapped into my anger, let the burden go, and was highly motivated to do what I needed to do. And, I am going to work on this over the next few weeks to try to understand its relationship to weight loss.

I overeat for two reasons: 1) emotions and 2) habit. These reasons are so intertwined that I have yet been able to break the pattern, but this past week, several times when eat I noticed something. I noticed that the psychological process I was going through was one of hurt and anger. These two emotions were not necessarily caused by external stimuli, as I know I carry a lot of hurt and anger around with me daily, but it is the recognition of the process that was important. The recognition was and is important, because most of the time I do not allow these emotions the full expression they need to burn themselves up. Instead, I eat. After eating, I feel bad, less motivated for exercise, and the spiral begins.

Instead of eating, this week, I am going to give myself a chance to be angry. Anger is often motivating and I need the motivation. I have been angry for weeks at myself for f’ing around and not fulfilling my exercise obligations. It is really quite foolish. I am angry because I know I am better than this, but unless I am willing to open up to hurt, to anger, I am not sure how much progress I will really make for my the flame of my will is extinguished by the suppression of my anger.

PS - The picture is of a wrathful diety, a wrathful Buddha. Metaphysics aside, some meditation techniques use these types of images in order to help individuals process their anger. This is because anger, like other emotions, are all apart of our lives, need expression, and should not be swept aside, repressed, or forgotten.

Perspectives - Meal Choices

2011-07-30T10:08:00.002-04:00

I have been watching this show on the science channel called Through the Wormhole. It is narrated by Morgan Freeman and focuses on some cutting edge scientific research on reality, space, time, and consciousness. One of the experiments, shooting a photon (i.e., light) through a slit of paper yields interesting results. Interesting because if observed the photon makes a certain pattern on the wall and if not monitored the photon makes another pattern. This is problematic because it suggests that at the smallest levels of reality, matter seems to behave in different ways depending on whether it is observed or not. In short, the behavior of matter seems to be based on perspective.

Similarly, some of my food choices seems to be based on perspective. I went on a date to The Boathouse a few nights ago. As I am finally getting back into training, I wanted to make a choice for dinner that I would both enjoy and which would be satisfying. Having been to The Boathouse before, I wanted to steer away from the ½ lb cheeseburger and fries. This dish would have meant that I could not enjoy my favorite part, the pizzokie. I chose a salad, a few French fries, 3 crabpuppies, and split the desert with my date. Then I went to FIT Richmond on Friday morning where my trainer quipped, “You chose two different fried options and a desert? What were you thinking?” My jaw dropped, I smiled, and realized I had not thought of it that way. My perspective about every choice I made that evening was – It is certainly better than the cheeseburger and fries.

From one perspective, my choice was correct. I did chose an option that was significantly fewer calories that the burger. From that perspective, my choice was healthy. But from my trainer’s perspective, my choice needed some work. She suggested next time I choose only one of the two – a fried option or a desert, not both (this also took into account that my salad did not have a cream based dressing). This choice based on overall look at the meal would have saved me a significantly higher number of calories, probably around 850. Three meals out with Julia’s choices and I would be one pound lighter. Weeks of these choices and I would be able to see and feel a significant weight change.

While both perspective were healthier options, my choice was based solely on what I could not have, the cheeseburger. Her perspective was based on all options available and choosing only one off plan option for an aggregate calorie deficit which will be necessary for my continued success as I begin to get my act together again.

The Non-Action of Weight Loss

2011-06-21T09:14:00.006-04:00

There is an idea in Buddhism called non-action. This idea is important because it describes the mindset a practitioner brings to each action. In Zen, non-action is especially important because Zen focuses on cultivating and bringing a certain type of mind, i.e., attitude, to every action. The idea is for a practitioner to be so present in each action, so concentrated on what he/she is doing, that all thoughts of one's self are forgotten.

Initially, the practitioner develops this type of concentration through different types of meditation - first sitting and then walking. The attitude, the concentration developed in sitting and walking meditation are then incorporated into other activities: washing dishes, gardening, and other daily chores. Through this practice, the Zen student is attempting to focus 100% on the task at hand, and in doing so he may forget himself.

To forget one's self may sound complicated, but it is not. Many of us have had an experience of forgetting ourselves when something frightening is happening. In such situations, our senses become heightened, time seems to slow down, and we are very focused. We are so focused that we are thinking of doing nothing but avoiding and/or controlling the situation we fear - maybe a spider on the floor, a car swerving in front of us, or seeing our child fall on the playground.

In such instances, we forget ourself because the normal humming of thoughts in our mind stops. It must stop in such cases, because we all our resources focused in one direction. In a sense, meditation is the practice of replicating this level of concentration, but bringing it to each moment. Of course, an essential difference is that during meditation we are in a safe and comfortable environment. And, experiencing this heightened state of concentration while in a safe environment, brings about the opposite of the fight or flight - it brings about a deep, rewarding sense of calmness.

The calmness is brought about because through meditation, whether sitting or walking, we learn to concentrate so much on one particular moment that our mind settles. For example, during walking meditation one may focus so much on each sensation of moving one foot in front of the other that there is no 'room' in our mind for other thoughts. There is no 'room' because as humans we can only focus on a certain number of things at once.

Normally, this number of things is tremendous. For me, just one incessant worry is about weight loss - can I follow my meal plan, what will my trainer think of me if I fail, what will others think of me, how do I deal with constantly wanting to break plan - and these are just about weight loss. There are many, many more thoughts racing through my mind than that. With this constant hum of thoughts, there is little room for relaxation. The practice of the different forms of mediation is a way that a person can learn to focus on the moment and let go, to differing degrees, of all of these thoughts. Sometimes in meditation, the humming of the thoughts in our mind, is keeps moving right along but we are not bothered. At such wonderful moments like this we are relaxed and we are focused even amidst our anxieties. This type of relaxed focus in non-action.

Non-action is the type of mind that a Zen student is supposed to bring to everything he/she does. It is an endlessly serene yet heightened form of awareness that allows us to be as completely present as possible in each task. For goals like weight loss, I think it will be especially important. This is because there is so many extra thoughts that come with creating a weight loss goal. I already have stated some, but there are numerous others. These thoughts and worries are like the commercial where the lady is chained to the scale and drags it clanking around with her all day. Thoughts = energy, and if our minds are chattering like that all day we are going to be exhausted. And, if we are exhausted from our mind chattering, our weight loss worries, then there will be little left over for the extra effort we will need to get to the gym. And, there begins the cycle.

So, take 5 minutes today, sit down, make sure your posture is straight, look about 3 feet in front of you, and breath in and out. Let your mind settle by focusing on nothing more but sitting straight. Do not move one millimeter to the right or the left. Sit straight. Think of no other goal but sitting straight. Concentrate completely on sitting straight. Do not let any thoughts distract you for feeling the serene experience of sitting straight, breathing in and out for 5 minutes. And, when your 5 minutes is up, get up, stretch, and take that relaxed mind to each activity for the rest of the day. This is the beginning of non-action.

Is Happiness Difficult?

2011-06-15T20:18:00.011-04:00

I work with psychologically traumatized children, and much of the day can be spent playing basketball, throwing football, or some other activity. Tonight one of the children asked me to shoot some hoops, and so I got up, took the ball, and uncharacteristically drained a perimeter shot. After just a few seconds of playing, I noticed something - I was smiling.

This was not the first time that I had noticed smile come to my face from playing sports with the kids. So, I took a moment to reflect on this experience. First, I noticed that this smile, the deep and penetrating kind, alleviated most all the stress I had that day. Even now, while writing this, I feel a lightness in my shoulders from stress dissipating. The second thought I had was - if this makes me feel good, and I have noticed this experience on repeated occasions - why would I not engage in this type of activity more often?

This question made me think of my weight loss efforts. Recently, as I have posted, I have felt deeply sad. Cognitive modifications and positive self-talk only did so much, it was not until I exercised two days in a row that my melancholy ended. This experience was too much to ignore, and highlighted the intrinsic good of physical activity in an painfully obvious manner. Exercise was/is as essential to my happiness, my well being as the medication I take.

In short, asking myself why I am not more consistent in my exercise efforts is not different from asking another but more painful question - why is happiness difficult?

If exercise results in a better flourishing, a better psychological state, there should be no reason I do not engage in it regularly. This could mean something more disturbing, and thus I must address the following syllogism: Exercise makes me happier, I avoid exercising consistently, therefore, I avoid being happy.

What a disheartening, but important contemplation. It is confusing that the telos of my initial contemplation, a contemplation that began with a smile, could end with such a dark thought. But I might even ask if the thought is not an opportunity, an opportunity to look deeper. The depth that needs to be search is nothing more than my heart, and the question asked no more complex than - do I want to be happy?

In conclusion, there were times in my life when I do not think this was the case. Those times were many, and I have the weight on my body to prove it. Yet, the slap-in-my-face obviousness of what exercise did to a prolonged melancholy cannot be denied. However, it is important to note that there were times in the past when even exercise could not penetrate the perpetual night of depression. So while I am not addressing the reasons for this at this time, and I will need to visit more the idea of is happiness difficult, I can, with a decent amount of confidence say, I want to be happy. In stating this, I imply that I understand that this means, syllogistically, that I want to exercise. And, I take this thought with me, as well as the reminder of today's smile into my many tomorrow's when I am sure I may want to shirk of the responsibility of exercise, the responsibility of my happiness.

Post script - The above picture is of Chrissie Wellington. She won the Hawaii Ironman World Championship 3 times in a row and would have won again last year, but she was sick. Her athleticism in triathlon is unparalleled and inspiring, but I chose her for this blog post because it is said that she smile her way through the entire Ironman. How awesome is that!

Simplicity: I Went to Triathlon To Live Deliberately

2011-06-11T21:24:00.007-04:00

This entry will be simple and short.
Tri-coach Kate wants me to run the Jefferson Sprint Triathlon. This is to get me back into the swing of things, what it is like to be in a race psychologically, and give me a goal to work towards. The problem is that I am not doing my part with either training or nutrition. I find myself at a loss for words. I am not doing my part, and it is important to note that I can do this. As tremendous as the goal of losing over 100+ pounds will be, no matter what statistics say about weight loss success, and even if my chances are nothing more than a fool's hope, I think...no, I know, that it is my time to succeed in this endeavor.

The sword for this battle is simply - simplicity. Like HDT said about his Walden Pond experiment, "Simplify, simplify, simplify." For me, simplicity clears my mind and opens my heart to the fire of possibility, the strength of hope and belief. So, I go to this refuge for the next 3 months, the refuge of simplicity. To play on Thoreau's own words, simplicity in this goal is to live deliberately with three daily goals: 1) Make a meal plan, 2) Follow the meal plan, and 3) Complete each training session.

Even more, the deliberateness of which Thoreau intended to discover was no different that my goal. The full quote from HDT is:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

And so, I ask myself - am I any different? Excess weight and lack of physical prowess dampens my experience of life, it sucks the vibrance from its colors, and casts an artificial veil, similar to that of depression, across the inevitable joys that life offers each moment. To live overweight means to not live fully; it is to live a life where "the railroad, it rides on us." It is unnecessary, and so as Thoreau went to the woods, I go to triathlon - I go to triathlon to live deliberately!

γνῶθι σεαυτόν - Depression is Different from Sadness and its Effect on Free Will and Weight Loss

2011-06-10T13:43:00.000-04:00

Two of my best friends live in Israel. They moved there several years ago to live in the same country as their daughter and son. I have had the opportunity to visit them once, and I plan to return again next May. They are truly insightful and loving people. They are a fount of wisdom both philosophical and through their actions. Probably most important is that they have shown through their unintended actions what the true potential of marriage and family is. Love is real, it does exist, and given the right parameters can be nurtured in the darkest of places. In more ways than I understand, I believe Mike and Rene are, for me, the good soil Jesus alludes to in The Parable of the Sower.

I wrote them a recent email, as seen below, that turned out to be an excellent blog post. Here it is:

As I have told you before, I struggle to not look at internet pornography. While I remember Mike offering the idea of using the psalms, and I did try something similar, it does not work for long. So I have lent my computers out to people who know about my struggle, and it has been a great idea. It is following a modality of therapy that I will be learning more about next semester, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). Essentially the idea is to find a way to restructure our lives through external or internal (positive self talk, reframing of ideas) so that our brain has a chance, a respite, from the constant bombardment of negative thoughts that so deeply affect persons with mental illness. For me, not having my computers, while annoying at times, has been essential for my next step in therapy. Let me explain.

Based on what I am learning about psychology, psychiatry (essentially psychopharmacology), and neurology, our brain develops very rapidly from a young age. In the case of personality, our brains, as infants, have a mirror neuronal development process. This means that the synaptic pathways that will form the basis for our underlying personality are formed because babies mirror the environment around them, i.e., they smile when their parents smile at them, the laugh at what their parents laugh at. Simply put, a baby’s brain responds to love by building links in the brain, synapses, that will trigger a certain reaction given certain stimuli, i.e., mom smiles and baby smiles back or mom smiles at dad and dad smiles back at mom so baby forms a pathway, that will cause baby to smile and understand such situations to be good (good in this case being nothing more than the feeling of safety, a release of certain chemicals in the brain, at the same time that visual/environmental stimuli cause that release).

However, what if when mom smiles dad does not reciprocate, or what if mom never smiles at baby, or never holds baby, or even worse hits or abuses baby. What happens then is that the same mirror neuron forming process is in place in the baby’s brain, but the synapses create pathways that will lead probably lead to morally errant or worse behavior later on. This is because if the baby does not feel safe when mom smiles that means that different chemicals are being released in the baby’s brain. These chemicals instead of slowing down heart rate, relaxing muscles, and slowing down thoughts, do the opposite. The baby in an unstable or abuse environment, has chemicals released which trigger the sympathetic nervous system’s “fight or flight” response causing increased heart rate, shunting of blood away from bodily organs to muscles so that they are able to respond rapidly, i.e., run and or fight. Repeated environmental stimuli over time, not even very long amounts of time, causes the brain to adapt to this unstable/unsafe environment meaning the brain is always on edge, always ready to “fight or flight.” This causes traumatized children to always be on edge and have hyper-reactions to small stimuli that would not bother most children. Thus, on the playground, the traumatized child is always ready for a fight, b/c his/her focus is on safety b/c his/her brain has not had a safe place and has become hyper sensitized.

The understanding of this process is also essentially what is happening to the PTSD soldiers or any person who has experience trauma. Research is showing that trauma to children, even small amounts, has far more significant effects than trauma for adults specifically because children’s brains are developing through the mirror system explained before, have little to no coping skills, and thus develop bad brain connections, and so more dramatically affected than adults (all of this is something Rabbi could greatly benefit from knowing about given his Yeshiva kids, but I am not sure he would not just shrug it off?) In a sense then, the traumatized child on the playground who hauls off and hits another kid for doing something seemingly minor or trivial should be seen in a very different light as to his “motivations” for hitting. In fact, I would even argue (though I am taking time on this argument) that motivation itself needs to be understood very differently.

I tell you all of this because I believed I may have developed a habit of pornography many years ago, as a way of coping with my childhood trauma. This habit, along with eating persisted for so very long that it became something that I was not able to stop mentally on my own. I needed a different cognitive approach, and so cutting off my access was/is the right solution. Since I have let go of my computers (about 2 months now) many positive things have happened. I started reading again, and I am on my 3^rd book, closing of the Closing of the American Mind. My exercise is becoming more consistent and my nutrition is improving. I also am able to concentrate better, have more energy, and feel happier. This brings me back to the point I was implying about motivation in the above paragraph about motivation.

I have never not wanted to get back to reading more (and not short internet snippets), nor have I actually wanted to eat garbage and not exercise, and I most certainly did not want to feel unhappy; however, so much of my energy was spent either avoiding pornography or dealing with the emotional fallout from looking at it that I had little energy left over. This leads me to suggest that we only have a certain, limited capacity for motivation, and I also think this applies to the philosophical discussion of ‘Free Will’. For the mentally ill, and I would now group myself in this category in a certain sense at least, the capacity of Free Will or motivation is consumed just trying to get through effects of depression, bipolar, and/or psychosis that there is little left over for regular things – a job, stable relationships, or even personal hygiene. This is one of the underlying reasons that depressed or other mental ill patients so often are self-neglectful in appearance and attitude. I certainly know that during my most dark period was when I put on all the weight I now have to lose, started really losing control of pornography, and could barely get out of bed to go to class or teach, and would almost break into tears when I had to do simple tasks like take out the trash.

Another CBT thing I did was lock myself out the kitchen at night, and this over the course of this year has resulting in me nearly eradicating my eating at night habit (I would consume anywhere between 1,000 – 3,000 or sometimes more calories at night). Both these CBT endeavors, especially the recent pornography one have, as already stated resulted in more stable sense of self, one that is much happier, and has a spontaneous belief that I am ok and I am worth something. Two feelings I have not previously experienced, again related to the development of the traumatized brain that I discussed early compounded by years of bad habits (and explaining why bad habits are normal to the traumatized brain will have to wait for another email).

Interestingly, in addition to these positive emotional developments, I have also become over the past few weeks deeply sad and emotional. Of course this does not feel good, but there is a great positive in it also. The positive is that I am not depressed any longer, and because I am not medicating my depression with pornography and food, I am able to feel all the feelings that normally people feel, both good and bad. You see, depression shadows or masks a person not just from feeling good about himself and his relationships, it also inhibits our ability to feel sad, vulnerable because we are not able to truly experience love. To experience Love, I must also be able to experience loss, and the traumatized child who often results in a mental illness like major depressive disorder or bipolar or worse, feels so awful and so depressed that normal emotions cannot, and I emphasize cannot actually be experienced.

Everything is eclipsed by depression, but since I have largely move out of this phase, I can now begin to feel what it feels to say, and to have the accompanying and appropriate emotion of sadness, the trauma I experienced as a child really makes me sad. In short, I was hurt and now I am able to feel this pain. Now I am able to cry, now I am able to feel sad. And, while sadness is not fun and I have a lot of that to work through now, it is not depression and that is awesome. Possibly more importantly is that sadness does not take the energy to cope with that depression does, and thus I have more energy, “more free will,” to put into other things: reading, exercise, nutrition, and personal relationships.

The latter of which has allowed me, for the first time in my life, to actually be ready to share myself with someone. Previously, I was so blunted by depression that I could feel some connection in relationships, but this connected ability was limited because I was not truly able to love and to feel sadness as explained above. Without this ability, a true relationship is not possible; however, a sexual relationship is because sex, like drugs, pornography, violence, alcohol, and binge eating, create such a intense experience, such an excessive release of chemicals in the brain, that a depressed or mentally ill person is actually able to feel/experience a certain type, although warped and morally degenerate, sense of pleasure from it resulting (this of course should explain the formation of some types of addictions).

Now that I have gone on, far longer than I intended to, I will just wrap up with a concluding thought. All of the above, while it may sounds disheartening is not actually. I am gaining tremendous insight into myself and also my patients. The insight into myself is allowing me to take the next steps in my therapy of not spending time talking about why I am depressed, but spending time on what I really want to work on – weigh loss, school, and life in general. Though I am still sad, I am also happy that I am making such great progress. In the end, my goal of losing significant weight, which is a crucial next step in my therapy process will only lead to another massive release of energy, new struggles and also a new and deeper appreciation of myself. In short, it will lead to even a more intense experience of what it means to be human and what it means to Love. And I do not mean just trivial love, but both the deeper physical and philosophical experiences of Eros and Agape.

Depression is terrible, but I really am not sure of whether I would want to give this part of my life up. I just don’t know yet what life would have been without it. I have lost 10 years of my life to depression, but it may turn out that I am able to experience the rest of my life on such a raw, and or visceral level that it might truly, and only because I have come out of it, be a blessing.

I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know that my experience and ability to come out of it, is giving me a tremendous insight into my patients. Not being afraid of being open about my own mental illness allows me to connect with them on a level that I did not realize until this week. It is truly a special connection, one which I will be able to rely on again and again in the clinical setting. Also, it is a connection that may allow for others, since I am generally not afraid of sharing my story to gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of not just the mentally ill, but more importantly themselves and what it means to be a human, what it means to Love.

It is Love above all else that I am so blessed to be able to enjoy now. Coming from depression, being able to experience Love allows me, I think, to also experience the deeply religious nature of this emotion. Again, depression may just have been a true blessing?

The CEO Ironman - A Thought Project

2011-06-08T05:37:00.000-04:00

What a difference exercise makes!

An article in the Journal of Preventative Medicine suggests that "Aerobic exercise at a dose consistent with public health recommendations is an effective treatment for MDD of mild to moderate severity" (See here). A quick Google scholar search gives good results (see here), as well as a short aside on Livestrong (see here). In addition, exercise seems to have a prophylactic effect with research showing that those already exercise are less likely to suffer from depression in the future. Livestrong notes an important caveat, that exercise is not a panacea or even a substitute for medical management of depression, but is a adjunct (additive) therapy. However, there is also some research to suggest that the results, while significant, may only offer moderate gains (Meade, Morley, 2009).

I have finally exercised for two days in a row, which in the scheme of my overall goal probably dries only a tear in an ocean of sadness. Yet, at the end of the second day, even with faltering nutrition, I noticed a significant change in my mood. This change was much needed as I have been sad for about a week and a half an unmotivated. This lack of motivation is another one of the exceptions pointed out in the depression and exercise literature, as it is often pointed out that exercise as an additive treatment is best utilized in highly motivated but depressed individuals.

On this last point, I have to ask - am I highly motivated individual? To answer this it is important to point out that exercise compliance in research studies is traditionally low. To be consistent, for depression relief, 3-4 days a week of moderate exercise for 20-30 min is understood as consistent while more intense programs for specific individuals yield higher results (Strohle, 2009). Given these criteria, I would not be considered consistent, if consistence = motivation then I am not equal to highly motivated.

I brought this, and my general recently sad mood, up with my tri-coach Kate who said to me - "I want you to visualize being an Ironman CEO." To that I responded with one word - Wow!

My second thought was that I have read about the people she is talking about. They are highly motivated, excel at time management, and their workouts and personal time function on a level of optimized efficiency that I can only imagine. My last thought, which is contains both an excuse and a truth, is that I do not know if I would even want to live a life like a CEO Ironman. This last thought aside (which I will come back to in another blog post), the point of the statement was not to induce too much contemplation. The point of the coach Kate's thought was to rearrange my way of thinking. To not only imagine myself at my best, but to have a specific idea of what that best would look, feel, and behave like. The specific project was to understand the Ironman CEO mentality.

I told Kate I would give that some thought and meditate over it. It has been ruminating in my mind for the past few days, and I think I am coming up with some ideas. The first idea is that the iron CEO would be exercising. I got this much done the past two days which sparked this blog and alleviated a stupor I had been in. Next, is to begin a deeper meditation into this visualization, and I know just where I am going to start, but that is for another blog...

References
1. Mead GE, Morley W, Campbell P, Greig CA, McMurdo M, Lawlor DA. (2009) Exercise for depression. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 3.

2. Strohle, Andreas. (2009). Physical activity, exercise, depression and anxiety disorders
Andreas Strohle J Neural Transm (2009) 116:777–784.

The CEO Ironman - A Thought Project

2011-06-07T18:31:00.007-04:00

12 Weeks - Jefferson Sprint Triathlon

2011-06-03T17:42:00.018-04:00

Obesity and weight loss are complicated problems that as of now appear to be rather treatment resistant. Yet, even finding good research on the topic of weight loss is difficult (see here).

As I have stated in a previous blog post, I have never finished a 12 week Body-for-Life challenge. This year I made it through about 6 weeks and lost close to 20 lbs. Since then my weight loss has become stagnant. I would in fact say that I have become increasingly discouraged. I have not been doing my homework properly, nutrition planning and tracking as well as completing all scheduledworkouts.

I have now hired a triathlon coach who is making excellent workouts for me which I have started to integrate into my life this week. However, nutrition is still not on target, and I am angry and upset. The constant nagging in my mind to eat off plan is returning, and I have, as of yet not been able to resist enough to make significant weight loss gains. It turns out that the first race that Kate wants me to prepare for on my way to a 1/2 iron next fall is exactly 12 weeks from today. The race is the Jefferson Sprint Triathlon on August 27th.

Therefore, my blogging will begin to focus on the psychology behind my attempt to train for this race and lose 35lbs in the process. I am currently deeply struggling to find motivation to exercise. I have missed two days of training this week and nutrition has been off. Today, I made a meal plan which I have followed for the half day that has passed thus far. I am not sure the underlying causes of my current recidivism, but I am very focused on this struggle in therapy.

In short, weight loss is difficult and much of the research is thin. The diet industry driven by marketing suggest that it is possibly, but most of the statistics I have read suggest that 90% or more of dieters fail, with long term statistics being worse. There is even a new movement emphasizing health at all sizes (See Nutrition Journal). Much of the information can be misleading, and I will do some investigation in the next 12 weeks into weight loss research and see how it compares to my life. I will also be systematically investigating my own weight loss efforts as I head towards the Jefferson Sprint Triathlon.

The Emotional Scientist - Science, Questions, and Fulfillment

2011-06-01T14:53:00.001-04:00

The title of this post is not about questioning goals, because I am not questioning the goals that I have set for myself. Instead, I want to think openly about the relationship between asking questions and setting and/or attaining goals.

In science, answers are found through experimentation based on a hypothesis. A scientist, based on previous knowledge, makes an educated guess about the outcome of an experiment. Next, he or she conducts repeated trials, the same experiment many times. Finally, the scientists uses this data, the reoccurring outcome, to make a statement about a scientific truth. Theoretically, scientific "truths" are unique. They are unique because they are supposed to be based solely on the outcome of experiments, i.e., hard data that can be repeated over and over again by anyone from anywhere that wants to conduct the experiment. This is unique, because scientific truths are dispassionate, meaning - they are not based on emotions, desires, or wants. The outcome will be the same no matter how badly the scientist wants the outcome to be different.

In theory, the scientist should take from this a certain philosophy about truth. This philosophy would be that one's personal desire should be focused on discovering truth and not on being correct. Therefore, the scientist is one who would rather demonstrate the limits of his/her knowledge than posit philosophical outcomes based on collected data that may or may not be true. Unfortunately, most scientists are not true scientists, and their desire to be correct or the desire to philosophize gains control what exactly science can prove to be true is often misunderstood.

As I understand then, the central core to the scientists philosophy is honesty. The scientist would rather be wrong, or state that he/she does not know the answer, than get involved in speculating about answers about which there is no real data. And, if the scientist must speculate and become a philosopher, he/or she must be hyper-aware and able to distinguish during any conversation that which is science "physical truth" and that which is philosophy "speculated truth". In short, the scientist is always honest about what he/she can and cannot prove to be true.

Taking this type of inquiry to philosophy and/or psychology is very helpful. In the realms of philosophy and psychology, hard science, at this time, has only limited offerings. However, the honesty of the scientific method, putting the desire for the truth far above the desire to be or appear correct, can help tremendously in philosophy and psychology. And, for me, I find that this mindset is helping me in my weight loss journey.

Currently, I am stuck at 35lbs weight loss. I have made drastic changes recently to move mental/emotional obstacles out of my life (internet pornography being a tremendous hurdle about which I will write a post about later), and I find myself in a new place. Being in a new place means that I do not know what will come next. I understand that the previous coping strategies that I have used to lose weight did not work, resulting in only more weight gain. Previous strategies I had used did not work to meat my goals, resulting in a laundry list of failed attempts. And, thus I am left with questions for which I do not know the answers - what coping strategies will work, what goals are really good ones to strive for, and how do I even figure all this out.

The way this relates to the above scientific discussion is simple. I want to find answers even if they hurt. Like a scientist wants the real truth about the physical world, I want the real truths about my emotional world. A scientist asks questions about the physical world that may cause him/her to be come disillusioned with previous beliefs. Similarly, I ask questions of myself that have caused and will continue to cause me to be disillusioned. Currently, this disillusionment comes in the form or realizing that I do not have the answers for my weight gain. I am at a new place and like a person who has moved to a new city, I do not yet know my way around this area. Psychologically, this means I do not know my way around a mind and/or a body that is healthy and physically fit. When discussing this with my therapist today, she said "you held on to this weight [and depression] for so long" it is not suprising that you now feel disorientated.

While I do feel disorientated, I was able today to work through some of my feelings of being discouraged. Much of this ability, is because I am an emotional scientist. I want to know the reasons and/or causes of my struggles. I want to know the truth of these struggles, because I want to live a fuller, brighter, and a deeper more religious life (I specifically use the word religious not spiritual and will blog about that at another time). To find fulfillment, a person must first realize that he/she is not currently fulfilled. Similarly, to heal emotionally a person must first accept that he/she is injured, damaged, or emotionally broken. Also, and maybe most difficult, to become a better person, you must feel the truth that you are not actually a good person. To change, a person must always and without exception know that you were previously flawed. Unfortunately, this crucial and necessary step, is often too debilitating, too degrading, and too frightening to approach. Because of this, most of us may never come upon what we truly want most - a rich, rewarding, and fulfilling life.

To opine in a Nietzschean manner, to enrich one's soul and deepen one's fulfillment in life, we must become emotional scientists. Meaning, we must want the truth about fulfillment and what it means for us, more than we want to look good in front of others or to feel good about ourselves. Because as I have stated, to find fulfillment we will need to ask questions, to hypothesize, about what it is in our life that is leading us to sadness, emptiness, and lack of fulfillment. In short, we must ask questions that may cause us to be disillusioned with ourself. We must ask questions which will hurt.

This is not easy to do, and even as I write this blog I have tears in my eyes from the questions I am asking myself about the reasons for my weight loss struggle. But this is the cost of fulfillment, this pain is that burden that we, those who truly seek fulfillment, the emotional scientists, must carry. To use Christian terminology, it is our Cross. For it is through the cross, the suffering of understanding that humans are sinners, that the Christian finds salvation. Similarly, it is through the suffering brought about by asking hard questions of oneself that one finds fulfillment. And, even with the tears in my eyes and the sadness in my heart, I have a deeper feeling that this journey is worth it.

Prozac and Nietzsche

2011-05-05T16:44:00.004-04:00

Friedrich Nietzsche was an 18th century philosopher that is often deeply misunderstood by even the smartest and most well intentioned scholars, let alone lay people like myself. Nietzsche had many profound ideas, much of which had been said previously by others, but Nietzsche had a way of writing that packaged his ideas into inspirational prose that could make one feel that unconquerable. This feeling is aptly embodied in what is probably his most quoted verse - "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" (Twilight of the Idols).

I would not be surprised if almost any reader of this has heard this quote, and we tend focus on the magnificent creation of strength and wisdom that suffering chisels out of us. However, for the clinically depressed person, there is a darker undertone to this verse. This verse contains the evil, not often discussed in self-help books, that some sufferings will kill us.

Based on current research, it is believed that clinically depressed individuals lack the proper amount of neurotransmitters needed for depression not to interfere with the function of day to day life. Depression can result in lack of pleasure in once enjoyed activities, feelings of deep abiding worthlessness, and/or dramatic changes in appetite, weight, and sleep. Each of these symptoms, especially in combination, leaves a person with little energy. Most of a depressed person's energy is spent keeping the tyranny of melancholy at bay long enough to get to work and get home. Life is about existing, thriving is a fool's hope.

Unfortunate, I have lived in these shadows. Too long did I languish believing that I could push through it, change, 'pick myself up by the bootstraps'. I would try diligently, but success was short lived only because the energy to sustain it was not there. Probably, the most memorable depression moment I had was when I would come home from work and almost be in tears because taking the trash to the street corner seemed like an insurmountable metaphor for the abismal lack of energy, hope, and joy that pervaded my life at the time.

Finally, after a series of unfortunate events, I went to talk to my doctor and started on Prozac, an SSRI and generally a first line treatment course for depression. The third day of Prozac was the first time in my life I ever had a positive thought about myself spontaneously arise without needing to do anything or prove anything. I just felt good, and this was simultaneously euphoric and confusing. I spent many weeks in disbelief that I was going to continue to feel this way. I actually thought I was a good person. I was able "to be friends with myself." for the first time ever. I can only imagine it is like a blind man seeing for the first time, for this was the first time my heart felt the lightness of being, the Joy that can come from life.

The euphoria of discovering self-worth eventually wears off as the desired Prozac levels are reached (approx 6wks - 16wks), but I was left with a new baseline from which I could begin to live. My life did not change overnight, but having the stability that Prozac gave me allowed me to start the self understanding process needed to move beyond my struggles and create a life that I should have had previously.

Before Prozac, suffering was too overwhelming to learn from. I just suffered, and it was begining to feel endless. This demonic type of suffering allowed me to see the very dark side of Nietzsche's quote - that sometimes we don't become stronger, we kill ourselves.

Suicide, the darkest moment of depression, is the penultimate victory suffering and the antithesis of virtually every use of Nietzsche's quote. I can still feel the horror of depression deep in my soul. It is a sad, lonely, and terrifying place that no one should experience. From this experience, I am convinced that Nietzsche's quote is not to be understood in the context of depression. Instead, Nietzsche should be understood once one has moved through depression, and can now face life's trials head on, with strength and potentially screeming as Nietzsche wants us to "Da Capo!"

In short, I take Prozac so that I can become stronger from what does not kill me. And, I think this is the point of the medication. It certainly did not fix me, but it brought me to the baseline that I am pretty sure, I could have never achieved through strength of arms alone. From this baseline, I have take the time to sort many basic life issues. This sorting has taken me about two years but with each step, my energy has increased. This year, it has increased to the point that I continually believe that I am going to meet my weight loss goals. Even as I type that sentence, I have a rush of excitement throughout my body. The medication has done its part, and I am doing my part - It is wonderful to know that I control my self, I make my life, and I will not be killed but I will become stronger!

Basecamp - An Adventure in Weight Loss Fundraising!

2011-04-26T11:39:00.003-04:00

Years ago, a friend of mine and I used to joke about me writing a self help book. The two names that we came up with were “Build your own Basecamp” and “K2 is Within You.” Obviously, these names were mean to be a bit cynical about the self-help movement, but there was also some truth to the joking.

While I am not an expert in self-help books, I often find them too formulaic. There is almost always a quote at the beginning of each chapter from some important thinker like Plato, Nietzsche, or Thomas Aquinas. While my knowledge of such giants is limited at best, I tend to have read enough to give me the suspicion that the writers of self help books have not spent much time with these thinkers.

The problem with giants such as those above is that they are, like actual self-help, an arduous undertaking. To read Nietzsche, a person has to read, ruminate over it, have a conversation about it with someone more knowledgeable to only learn that you missed most of what you read, then go back reread and start the process all over again. In the end, you may only just get a glimpse into what he or the others are talking about.

Similarly, for a person trying to change his/her life, just as much effort, investigation, mistake making, reworking, and discussing with others is needed to just make a small amount of progress. In fact, in the beginning stages, which often start in the office of a psychologist, psychiatrist, minister, or social worker, there just seems to be a lot of talking. In fact, this discussion process may look to those around you as not much more than an expensive wheel spinning, possibly useless endeavor.

The initial stages of therapy, for someone with serious changes to make, are about knowing oneself. I remember my initial therapeutic discussions were essentially unpackaging the issues that I had to focus on. This consisted of telling my story, again and again and again. During one of those agains, my therapist might say something that struck me and I would gain insight into my life and the reasons for my actions both good and bad. More often my therapist would shed some insight into a situation and it would just fly right past my understanding for that day. However, week after week she would point to that same insight out and eventually it started to sink in. Then we would move on to the next part of the issue, and then the next. Time would pass, and eventually I chipped away at the problem. But the roots of self-deprecation are deep, and quite a bit of time has passed since I began.

For the first time in my life, I feel as if I have uprooted enough of my major issue that it is not controlling my life. In fact, I am beginning to know myself well enough to anticipate when I am going to struggle and plan accordingly. These two in combination filling me with a feeling of confidence that I think is the solid emotional foundation on which to build something really great. In short, my pun has/is coming true – I have built my own basecamp!

With this as my start, I want to combine my person struggle with my weight loss efforts into a charity fundraising venture. My person demons derive their life from the self-hatred that comes from experiencing abuse when I was young and then the family fall out that ensued once I came out about my struggle. Therefore, I have started the process of developing a fundraiser that revolves around weight loss goal. At this point my tentative idea is to raise $10,000 over the next year for the charity SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now), and I will do this fundraising as a part of my personal goal of cutting my weight in ½ and competing in the Williamsburg Patriot’s ½ Ironman in 2012 with a time of about 6hrs.

Many things in my life have led me to develop this idea, not the least of which are child abuse and weight loss. I have started looking for a coach and I have received positive feedback so far. I will keep whoever reads this posted on how this venture materializes. Until next time…ride on!

Friends with Yourself?

2011-04-14T16:19:00.012-04:00

I studied meditation in Indian and Nepal in 1998. One of my teachers, Godwin Samararatne, had a question which he repeatedly used as a teaching tool. Godwin would say, "Can you be friend's with yourself?" Sometimes he would continue further saying, "Can you love yourself?" Of course, Godwin had many more things to say, but his teachings could be boiled down to these basic ideas. Because, it is from contemplation of these basic questions that all the rest of his teachings originated.

It is important to note that Godwin did not give a teaching, he asked a question. This is important because a questions brings us to inquire, to look deeper, and possibly to discover something new. In the context of weight loss, I am finding a question to be a more powerful motivator than a statement. For example, when I am struggling with a desire to eat off plan, in my case binge eat, I try to stop and ask myself - What is going on?

The importance of the question is that it brings us to stop and reflect briefly on our state of mind. A question invites us to look deeper, but a question does so in a non-threatening manner. Were I only to use imperative statements, statements of will, I may find the motivation through positive statements like "You don't have to eat", "You are better than this", "You can do it." While these are useful at times, they do not seem to have much effect over the long term. Furthermore, imperative statements such as these leave little room for self-discovery and true change.

When Godwin asked us "Can we be friend's with yourself", he was not telling us what to do. He was inviting us along on a journey. He was inviting us to open up. He knew, as I would learn on my own, that transformation of maladaptive coping mechanisms (ultimately bad behaviors that get us through tough times) requires a certain amount of understanding and exposing oneself to the root of the problem. And, this type of exposure creates an intense vulnerability that can be very frightening.

Further compounding the problem is that maladaptive behaviors, once they set in eventually create a narrative or deeply entrenched belief in our mind that we are not work being friends with. In the book "The Boy who was Raised as a Dog", it is even argued that our brains become fundamentally altered by trauma often resulting in maladaptive behaviors that persist for years. For me, I know this first hand, but I am also coming to know the immense beauty of emerging from the shadows.

One of my maladaptive behaviors is obviously overeating. There is not a time in my life when I do not remember hoarding and binging on food when no one was looking. Sadly, as much as I tried to hide overeating, I could not hide an expanding waist line. But my brain, like all brains, adapts rapidly to any situation. The adaptation for the fat individual is to push away, often even before consciousness, the feelings of depression and self loathing that come along with being over weight. Problematically, the original trauma that food and then literally fat, covers up is still there. With eating or any maladaptive coping strategy, the problem eventually is exacerbated because the increasing weight gives rise self-consciouness at first, embarrassment and eventually self-loathing. Now the problem is not just the emotions of the original trauma, but an expanding repertoire of self-defeating emotions. Sadly, this place is where most people looking to lose significant amount of weight are beginning, and that is ok.

Godwin's question has been with me for years and allowed me to gain insight into the situation in which I find/found myself in when starting this weight journey. In behavioral change, it is critical to be able to answer Godwin's question. I would even encourage you the reader to, as I just told a friend on the phone, close your eyes and take a deep breath - relax - and invite yourself to discover what emotions you have when you are relaxed and ask "Am I friends with myself, do I love myself?"

Does this question make you feel uncomfortable? I know this question still makes me uncomfortable, though not nearly as much as years ago. I know that sometimes I can be agitated by this question, because I think I am beyond it, it is childish, even trivial. I know that when I ask myself to feel an abiding love deep in my heart for myself that I can get the cold feeling of anxiety, I can get the tearful feeling of self doubt, anger, or hatred, or I can get the sadness that comes from not being able to change past events that led to my present state of being. However, I have always had a sense of something else.

In asking this question, I normally will feel a certain peace that comes when I consciously acknowledge the struggles that have cause me to gain so much weight. For sure, the fullness of the peace is only after pain, sorrow, and tears, but it is there. In fact, the Love, the friendship Godwin is talking about was there from the beginning, though greatly diminished. True self worth is often hidden by the scars of our past, but it can be brought out through practice. Through meditative self reflection on Godwin's simple question, it is possible for the seed of hope to be watered. And the first step in that process is admitting to oneself that you may not love yourself, you may not be able to be friends with yourself, and you may not know what to really do about that. This is what it is to be lost, and it is profoundly lonely.

Yet, to be lost, to feel it deeply and consciously, is the necessary first step. It is what has the potential to crack us open to expose the wounds that need to heal. And, without this openness there is no potential for true growth. In this process of exposure, we need to go slow, take our time, and make sure that we are truly honest with our self and our emotions. This emotional honesty is a key ingredient for change, and probably one of the most important aspects to being to be friends with yourself. Friendships with others are no different than friendships with oneself; they are built on trust, honesty, and caring. And without these, there are no seeds for change.

Learning to be friends with myself has been one, if not the most important aspects of my weight loss journey. In fact, it is only when I opened up and was honest enough to expose my wounds that I realized I needed help to sort them out. It was when I realized deeply that I did not like what I found when I asked myself "Can I be friends with myself, can I love myself?" that I began to change. And, that change has lasted, grown, and continues to grow. While I am not complete in my understanding of loving myself, I have come far enough along that I no longer need the weight to cover up old wounds. I am willing to bear them openly, albeit timidly at times, so that they can heal. While frightening, this openness to myself and my hurt brings about a deeper, profound and almost religious connection to the world around me. I am able to enjoy being happy, and amazingly enjoy others happiness as well.

It is truly remarkable that such a profound change can rise or grow from such a small question "Can you be friends with yourself?" Who knows, maybe this flowering of joy, is the leaven rising in my heart about which it is said, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."

Push Yourself - Anxiety and Transformation

2011-04-02T16:45:00.001-04:00

About a year ago, possibly more, I arrived to a Master’s swim practice. The practice was being led by a sick local triathlete, Karen Holloway (Pictured right). As she normally would Karen pointed to a faster lane than I felt comfortable in and said, “You are here.” I am sure my face was one of protest, but she is not one to say no to. When I made even more of a fussy face, she said, “You need to push yourself.”

Little can be said about that statement, because Karen is correct. If I want to lose a significant amount of weight, I am going to need to push myself. But, for some reason, I struggle with this, and I feel pathetic for it.

Recently each time I try to push myself, I find that I am all too easily defeated self chatter that induces a lackadaisical attitude. I become anxious and nervous, and at times I would say that I am on the verge of tears. Or, at least, I am crying internally. Losing weight is hard and I often do not want to do what I must.

The first bit of chatter in my head is “this is hard” and/or “I don’t want to.” Because I simultaneously do want to exercise and eat on meal plan, a sort of confusion arises in my mind. Through this confusion the victory is never certain. Sometimes, one side wins but often the other. I can say for certain that the side that Karen wanted me to be on that day is not winning enough. There are no two ways about it, I am not pushing myself like I should.

What do I do about this?

While I do have psychological trauma in my past and that has precipitated a self-concept tinged with shame, I have worked through a considerable amount of that problem. I do think this is still part of the underlying problem I am struggling with but the problem is not that I don’t think I am good enough anymore – the problem is that I actually am beginning to believe in myself.

For a person who has languished in the dessert without self belief, it is hard for the brain to accept the new concepts and emotions that are created through successful therapy. Trauma causes the brain to become hardwired in a maladaptive fashion, and the brain, trying to maintain homeostasis, has a hard time accepting the new connections, positive emotions, and deep calmness that comes from a non-hubristic belief in one’s self (For better understanding of these concepts read The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog). The process of mental change I am describing above is documented by science, whether that process is what I am personally experiencing is that process has to be left up to my clinical ability to understand myself. However, if I am to make a bold theory, I would wager that the anxiety and nervousness that occur each time I set out to create headway in my health goals is my brain having trouble adapting to the new self I am trying to create.

Trying to avoid this anxiety is one of the major causes of skipping an exercise routine or eating off plan. I would go even further to say that staying on plan creates a warped sense of psychological time because I am always watching the pot, waiting for it to boil (I will write more on this in my next blog). For now though, I believe that Karen’s advice is right on target – I need to push myself. But I need to do this in the proper way.

For me, the proper way to push myself is to use a meditative mind, allow my nervousness to be present, and then go out and bike with it, walk with it, swim with it. Because, when all is said and done, when I am calm, when I close my eyes, I know that I am ready to accomplish my goals. This is my time, this is my year, and I think I am ready to do what it takes to push myself.

Even in writing this blog, I have become nervous and anxious, but I think that is what this path is going to be. It is going to be hard. I am often going to want to quite. It is going to seem like it is taking forever, because noticing weight loss change is very slow. But I must endure, I will endure – I will push myself this week.

Last, and something to write about more, I will learn to make peace with the reality of what is necessary to bring about significant, permanent weight loss realization. I will make peace with pushing myself!

84 Todays – My Body for Life Plan

2011-03-27T17:26:00.006-04:00

The main reason I am trying once again to focus on the 12 week Body for Life challenge is that I want to finish something that I have not been able to in the past. I feel different this year, and while I have been not focused for a few weeks, I have not lost what I hope is a new baseline emotional self-belief. Therefore, my main goal is to deepen my sense of self belief by mastering a challenge which previously I have come up short. In anticipation of crushing the next 84 days, as any person who, I am excited and have already thought of what I want to do next. I will keep this under raps now, focus my energy on the next 12 weeks. Actually, I will focus on each of the 84 todays that make up the next 12 weeks. Now for my goals which are based on the four principles that I wrote about in the last blog.

First, setting goals is a major portion of the Body for Life plan. The plan is about transforming dreams into actualities – “Transform five of those dreams into goals by giving them a deadline, a way to measure them, and writing them down.” To keep it as simple as possible, I have boiled my goals down to four.

1. Sunday Plan – Plan meals, exercise, and studying for the week.

2. Meditate 5 – 10 min each morning on that day’s plan.

3. Lose 40 lbs

4. Pass the NCLEX

For simplicity’s sake, these three goals are all dependent on goal #1. This is all I need to do, there is nothing else that will help me get to where I want to be except being as successful at goal #1 as possible. Practically, I chose the weight loss goal by looking at how much individuals who have completed the challenge typically lost (see here). Many of the individuals are not as large as I and have lost 35+ pounds. I believe therefore that by following the plan, that 40 pounds is a very realistic goal.

During this challenge, I will also keep a record of my calories in using Livestrong, calories out using Bodybugg, and the percent at which I followed my plan each week. This is keeping with the second lesson that weight loss is a science. With the statistically information that tracking calories and meal plan following, I will gain a clear understanding of what creates success and what creates unrealized gain. Via contemplation of these statistics, goals, and my successful follow through,, I will be well on my way to cultivating the type of knowledge that I am truly seeking – Realization.

Now I am off to plan for the week . . .

Meditation - Its Importance to Weight Loss

2011-03-25T11:19:00.012-04:00

This blog edition, as I stated at the end of my last entry, will be about what I have learned thus far. I would say that I had 9 very successful weeks from Jan 1 until the 2nd week in March. During this time I lost about 20 lbs. As I stated last blog entry, since then I have not been consistent. I have already stated that one change was the NCLEX, and that I had noticed that overreaching goals leave me with little success. The first lesson for the year then is -

1) Goals - Make simple, realistic, & attainable goals.

I cannot truly grasp why it has been so long for me

to both make realistic goals and attain them. This is one of the main points that any trainer or weight loss research article I have read points out immediately. Sufficient for now, I will suggest impatience was a significant culprit. For now, I want to focus on getting back on track. To do this, I will take my first lesson and apply it. I will create a simple attainable goal. This goal will be to finally complete a 12 week Body-for-Life Challenge.

When deciding this week on what my attainable and realistic goal was, the Body-for-Life Challenge immediately popped into my head. The first reason was because I have failed this 12 weeks so many times, and the second was I thought it was attainable based on my initial 9 weeks of success this year. The Body-for-Life program has been around since 1996. It was created by Bill Phillips and has led him to create a spin off program called Transformation. WebMD points out that the quintessential element of the program is its exercise regimen (See here), while Josh Hillis, a favorite personal trainer blogger of mine, says the exercise routine could be better but the key is that the program inspires people to follow it 100%, especially the

eating program (See here).

From having read Bill Phillips Body-for-Life book, I know that there is a major emphasis on planning. Each workout has a reason, each meal has a reason, and each day has a reason. It is a bit like Zen, there is a form for everything so that our minds may calm on their own. This leads me to the second important lesson I learned this year.

2) Weight Loss is a Science - Everything needs to be planned and charted.

The first 9 weeks of the year I was had solid success. I charted more than 90% of my meals, planned many of them, and got in about 80% of my scheduled exercise routines. While these percentages are guesstimates, I know that the planning and charting was one of the keys to my success. Therefore, I will go back to this charting - Livestrong for meals and Bodybugg for calories, and in 12 weeks will have more than a guesstimate of my success. While I am not Lance Armstrong, I do know that one of the major contributions he made to cycling was to take all the guess work out of training. Lance quantified everything, he made cycling scientific. And, this is the essence of planning and charting. If there is a problem, it will show in the numbers.

Earlier in this post, I suggested that impatience was a significant culprit for making unrealistic goals, I also think there is more to it than that. I have found it helpful over the past few days to have a something related to my weight loss journey to meditate over. Meditation or

contemplation is an aspect of therapy and should always complement any medication regimen. Therapy is so significant that one psychiatrist writes, if a patient (adolescent in this case) "does not respond ot treatment with an SSRI alone (1st line depression medication), adding CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is probably a better course of action than simply changing medication" (See here). This leads to my last important lesson for this post, and one that is also discussed by trainers and in Body-for-Life

3) Realization - Through contemplation/meditation we become the change we want to see.

While I do not like the wording on my third lesson, it makes a point that a Tibetan

meditati on teacher I had spoke about often. Cho k yi Nyima Rinpoche, the holder of the Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist Lineage, said that realization is permanent. Realization, he taught, was the highest of three levels of knowledge. The first was intellectual knowledge through which a person grasps a concept on an conceptual level only. This knowledge is not part of one's self or memorized by heart. Through the process of meditation and contemplation, the student has glimpses of realization. These glimpses are called experience.

This experience is the yoking of intellectual knowledge and it emotional component so that the student begins to feel deeply about something. While experience of a concept can be a powerful moment, it is not enough. Chokyi Nyima often said that "Experience is like mist, it fades

away". Therefore, the diligent student is one who applies him or herself to bring the teachings in question deep inside, close to one's hearth, through the practice of meditation. In turn, the hope is, that through practice the student becomes one with the concept and a permanent change takes place in his or her mind. This permanent change is Realization.

Do not be fooled by the esoteric nature of this discussion of meditation. There is emerging research that shows that meditation can change the neuronal pathways in our brain. Similarly, there are studies in which medications for depression are shown to change or create new neuronal brain pathways. To me, this is the physiologic explanation of what Realization is. And, realization is what any person trying to lose a significant amount of weight needs, because at this time obesity is one of the most treatment resistant disorders in medicine. This leads me to my last lesson.

4) Psalms - Have a concept, a teaching, or a focus that one is meditating on each week.

The above is an integral part of creating realizations. A student of meditation in Zen has a Koan that he or she is thinking and meditating on day and night. The Christian has prayers in the form of psalms that can be used in a similar fashion to bring about changes in one's heart. Similarly, the student of weight loss must have something that he or she is constantly focused on to help bring about a realization of what has created hindrances in the past and what is a motivation for the future. Like prayer, these thoughts should be internalized, imagined to be in our heart, and as important to us as the very air we breath. This is what brings about transformation, realization and successful and sustained weight loss.

Last, the next blog post will be specific on my 84 day, 12 week, Body-for-Life plan and goals. Look for this post Sunday...

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Therapy - The Importance of a Good Clinician

2011-03-23T20:05:00.006-04:00

Therapy has been and continues to be an integral part of my weight loss journey. Therapy is important for many reasons. One of the most important is that a good therapist or clinician assists us to think about ourselves from angles and perspectives that we may, even with best intentions, overlook. The hope is to gain a certain amount of objectivity, resulting in an enlightened understanding of the way our emotions drive actions. This knowledge in turn, if felt deeply or repeatedly enough, has the potential to manifest into an insight that may create permanent change.
My therapist over the last two years has helped me to gain the above perspective. Recently, I have been ready to look even deeper into myself, so we have begun investigating the causes of the setbacks which hinder me from accomplishing my goals.

Today I discussed my lack of exercise and following a meal plan since my NCLEX failure. As she often does, she asks me to look past the surface, in this case the NCLEX, and determine if it was this or if this was more of an excuse for something deeper. As we continued our discussion, I told her that before the NCLEX I was beginning to have doubts about my ability to remain as consistent as I need to in order to make dramatic weight loss progress.

My therapist asked me why I did not discuss this doubt during our last session. I was a bit stumped, but I was reminded of a blog I like to read by a Josh Hillis, a personal trainer. The blog posts is on making and following through with resolutions. Josh points out that a problem with resolutions is not in making them, but in determining what limits our success. Hillis writes that, "Bad results come from strategies that don't work" and that he works with clients to identify what strategies don't work and "stop doing them." The flawed strategy that I was using became increasingly clear based on the conconversation I was having with my therapist.

What I did not recognize was the underlying reason that it was difficult for me to discuss the doubts I was having. Instead of looking into the cause, I was trying to remained focused on my goals. I was not intentionally avoiding discussing any deeper emotions. My thought was that the doubts would pass. However, in pushing through alone, I was not finding the determination I wanted and needed. As a friend of mine says, "You cannot 'white knuckle' your way through emotional problems."

While determination is important, there needs to be something stoking this fire of determination and developing new, more austere goals is not the answer. Here-to-fore, when I have had setbacks that is what I did - start over with new goals. These resolutions resulted in failures, and are the strategies that don't work that Josh Hillis writes about. Therefore, I have spent some time looking back over the year thus far at strategies that have been successful and not so successful. What I have learned will be my next blog entry...

Lent - A Meditation on NCLEX, Suffering, and Meaning.

2011-03-07T11:25:00.006-05:00

A flaw and also a blessing in the way I think is my desire to understand the Truth of a situation. And, in desiring Truth, I desire objectivity.

This is a blessing because it fosters a self reflective quality to my thinking. In turn, I am able to see rationalization for what it is – the mind reframing the meaning of an event. Unfortunately, to observe objectively the process of cognitive reframing also can mean that the impact, the meaning, which is the purpose of the reframing, is undermined.

For example, last week I failed the nursing board exam – the NCLEX. The immediate response when I found out was embarrassment and a feeling of impending doom. My skin was flush, I had some trouble breathing, and my thoughts raced towards a place I have worked hard to come from – failure and depression.

The reasoning behind my emotions of failure was sound – this puts me in the bottom 30% of all people who take the test. In and of itself that is pathetic, but stopping at that depressing feeling was not what happened. My mind, seemingly working autonomically like the vital organs that keep us alive, began to reframe my failure. I began to make sense of it, put it into perspective, and develop a plan based on what I wanted to learn from the event.

I knew I had to wait 45 days to retake the test, and this time period reminded me of the season of Lent. Lent this year is 46 days, and it starts this Wednesday. My life and the Christian season upon us resonated and created for me an opportunity – use the NCLEX waiting period and Lent as a time for self reflection, study, and…oh yes, increase my exercise routine.

I will have to stop one of my classes, and this will give me ample time to study and to get one extra exercise routine in per day. As my brain put these pieces together, I began to believe that the austere nature of these next 45 days of study, self-reflection, and exercise would be very good for me. Even more than that, my experience of failure began to transform into opportunity.

As I stated in my first sentence, I desire objectivity, and I am fully aware that the failure of the NCLEX sucks, is terrible, and I could throw some of those $#@% words around too. But I am equally aware that I feel that there is meaning to be taken from this experience, and this meaning is not something trivial, not something just made up by the biological organism we call our mind.

I am too aware of the process of cognitive reframing that occurs in times of setbacks, sadness, and tragedy. Because of awareness, I am forced to admit that I cannot know if there is any intrinsic meaning to events we suffer as humans. However, this does not and should not undermine the process of finding meaning in misery. And, in turn, finding meaning in misery should not undermine that terrifically awful quality that characterizes our sadness and depression.

As a human being we are blessed with being able to understand paradoxes, and that is what deriving meaning from tragedy is - a paradox. It is a paradox because we find something good, something helpful, and possibly pure, from an experience that left us fragile, raw, and injured. It is through the process of cognitive reframing of depression, sadness, and darkness that we find meaning, light, and possibly Truth.

To me, this paradox is one of the meanings of Lent. The meaning being that we should neither deny the full emotional expression of the tragedy of an event nor deny the full potential of the meaning we derive from it. As a human, we have the potential to avoid the full impact of the negative by seeing meaning in an event too quickly. And, we also have the potential to avoid seeing the meaning in an event by being consumed by the tragedy. Even worse, one could, as I have to often been consumed by the hubris of objectivity and thought that the meaning which can come out of tragedy was nothing more than a mirage our brain creates to shield us from suffering. To think this is false and only recognizes one side of the argument.

We cannot know for sure the purpose of our lives, but we can know for sure the process of our lives. For me, during this season of Lent, the process is being honest about both the power of suffering and its offspring – meaning.

Being Seen: The Mind Game of Embarrassment

2011-03-02T13:35:00.007-05:00

Today was my first bike of the year, a solid 40 min ride for 9 miles. Before I began the ride I thought I would just do a couple loops in my neighborhood for the same distance. I don't like short loops. I like the feeling I am going somewhere when I go for a ride. However, the reason behind the loop contemplation is that I would not have to leave my neighborhood. Staying in my neighborhood would do nothing but allow me to pretend that no one would notice that I am a fat man riding a small yellow bike.

Hiding behaviors or avoiding being seen is an important problem during the fat loss journey that must be overcome. I almost never ate too much food in front of other people. This means that most of the calories I consumed were in secret and alone. Sadly, consuming the calories alone, means the pounds pile on alone, and I end up being alone because the weight creates a sense of embarrassment leading to a decrease in social and/or other type of interactions with people.

Therefore, one of the components of my fat loss journey is, as my therapist says, being seen. My ride today is one of many steps I have taken along that path. I road out of my neighborhood and along part of a route I used to ride on. It was good to get out and once I am riding I do not think too much about what others may think about the large man, small bike combo.

And that is something to remember - The mind game of embarrassment that almost precluded you from starting an activity is vanquished by just getting started. This is crucial for me to remember. There will be many more times when I do not want to bike because of embarrassment of being big on a little bike. But seriously - what good will it do to give in to that embarrassment. It is a mind game, it is my anxiety keeping me from getting out, from doing what I want and from being who I want. This is not the way I want to live, and I doubt it is the way that any overweight person wants to live. So we need to look deep within ourselves, forgive ourselves for what has happened before, love ourselves right in this moment as we are, and then get up and get started. For once we are moving, the embarrassment will dry and leave us only with the pleasure of company others company or a good hot sweat.

200 Days to Get the Math Right

2011-03-01T10:45:00.006-05:00

There are 200 days until The Sandman Triathlon in VA Beach. I weighed, 356.4 lbs, this morning at F.I.T. Richmond. My goal from today is 100 lbs by the race which means I need to lose 3.5 lbs per week or 1750 calories per day. According to Livestrong, where I track my calories, I should have a target intake of 1945 calories per day.

My goal will be to have a caloric deficit of 2000 calories per day. I do not plan to start running until July, but to compensate I plan on getting in almost daily walks so that I burn an extra 500 - 600 calories per day.

Obviously, math is a large component of weight loss, and between Livestrong and my Bodybugg (gift from my cousin) I will be able to keep track of the math rather simply. In a way fat loss is only about doing what is necessary to get the math right. This of course does not mean that fat loss is only about hard work and tracking calories. I would argue (this is something I will research and post on in the future), that most of fat loss is an emotional/inner transformation. Simply put, it is getting our mind right and aligned with our heart. Even so, this still means that our emotional transformation is one of the three main components in the math equation of fat loss - The others: 1) Knowledge about food and fitness, and 2) Implementation, consistency, and fortitude.

Tomorrow, I will start back on the bike with a 10 mile morning ride followed by a one mile cool down walk. Get this in, and I will be ready for my therapy appointment (something to talk more about later - one of those three components). It has been some time since I have been on the bike, and I am looking forward to it.

A Watched Pot Never Boils

2011-02-25T09:03:00.003-05:00

It is not that a watched pot never boils. Instead, it is that watching a pot makes it seem like it takes forever. I think this is because our mind focuses on the end result and the waiting, something I am not very good at, gives us the psychological perspective that the end result will never come.

Similarly with weight loss, I tend to focus too much on the end result, losing the weight, and not enough on the steps to get there. If I were to focus on the details, i.e. - making a meal plan, planning my exercise, and following through, there is little more that needs to be worried about. Consistency in these small and simple efforts are what brings about weight loss. Weighing in on the scale every morning, or several times per day, only causes a stressful mind game to play out in my head. This is especially a problem, when I have had a calorie deficit every day, but because of something I ate the day before I do not lose weight or I even gain. This roller coaster of emotion, caused by watching the pot boil, can create an intolerable sense of frustration and lead to a feeling of helplessness, dissatisfaction, and desire to give up (which for me means eat a meal far off of the plan).

My trainer has suggested that I weigh in once per week, which will be on Friday when I visit her. So a few days ago, I got rid of my scale. It was simultaneously a relief and a cause of anxiety. Relief because I was no longer brooding over weight in my head all day, but anxiolitic since I don't know for sure what my weight is every day.

The end result is that I have to trust myself. I wear a Bodybugg everyday and track my calories on Livestrong. The difference between the two numbers is my approximate calorie deficit for the day and so far that has added up to about the weight that I lose that week. In short, there is no reason to weigh in so much. It is important that I trust myself and my choices, track my calories in and out, and focus on the details of my daily life. Eventually the weight will come off.

Essentially, my description of weight loss is very similar to Suzuki Roshi's explanation of proper Zen practice. He says -

"After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try to study very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, "Oh, this pace is terrible!" But actually it is not."

Suzuki Roshi would say this is the proper perspective on Zen, and I would say this is also the proper perspective on weight loss. I would like to lose 3.5 lbs per week, but 2 is probably closer to where I will be. It will take quit some time to make the changes I want, but if it happened tomorrow, my practice would be very shallow. To lose weight is to make a lifestyle change, and to change my life I must have a deep calm sense of certainty about my practice, about my lifestyle choices.

Such certainty takes time, because we need to learn to trust ourselves. I am overweight because I have made many small unhealthy choices along the way. Trying often to change my habits, I have previously failed. These failures eroded my confidence. I am building something new, and it will take some time for me to see real changes. While this is true, my 3lbs per week IS the real change I am looking for. My daily choices are the truly the only goals I need to worry about. And as I understand this better, I know that I must enjoy practicing in a fog!

Sandman Triathlon: Sept. 18, 2011

2011-02-20T09:05:00.005-05:00

My weight loss efforts are going very well. I am slightly over 19 lbs down for the year, and I am finding small goals each week to focus on. Overall, the biggest change for me has been that I have not binged on food once this year.

I have been eating a fair amount of processed foods because they are quick and efficient; however, over the next few weeks I want to move in the direction of more whole, fresh foods focusing on increasing my fruit and vegetable intake.

In addition, I have found a long term goal for the year - a sprint triathlon. The Sandman Triathlon is a race in Virginia Beach which I ran in 2002. My time was 1:32:04 and I was well over 100 lbs lighter than I am today. I spent the week thinking about whether I should undertake this challenge. It is not the triathlon that worries me, it is that all race goals for the past many years have been utter failures. I have felt different this year about weight loss in general, and it is time that I take that hope and confidence to a new race goal.

The Sandman is 209 days away, according to a countdown app on my phone. I have two goals for the race: 1) Lose 100 lbs by race day and 2) Beat my time from 2002. These are ambitious goals, but they are certainly attainable. As I feel now, the most important aspect of my training will be - time management (a topic I will write about in the future).

Practically, I have a great masters group to swim with, a solid trainer, Julia Bardrof, at FIT Richmond, and I know plenty of people to bike and run with as I get back into those disciplines.

Sign up for the race is April 15. I have all the tools I need for success. Now it is time for the training...

Ironman Distance Challenge

2011-01-30T18:19:00.004-05:00

I have lost 10lbs this year. My goal is to lose 10lbs per month and by this evening I will have met that goal for January 2011. I feel confident!

Having the suspicion of hope that this might be my year to achieve my weight loss goals is an interesting experience. I am less angry on a daily basis, less frustrated, and less distracted. Less distracted b/c there are fewer worries to fill my head. When I feel my weight, I am quickly reminded of the accomplishments I have made this past month and the confidence I feel everyday. The simplistic nature of this emotion is calming, and straightens out my mind allowing the tension that being overweight creates to dissipate.

VCU has an Ironman Incentive Challenge that starts tomorrow. It is a 9 Week - Ironman Challenge. The goal is to complete the Ironman distance (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) over the next 9 weeks. Since I like to swim, bike, and run (run/walk at this point), I am going to participate. I have my exercise planned out and entered into the Google Calendar, now it is time to execute!