Todays Word is: Victory

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Victory,

Well Courtney is really challenging me. Each post is becoming more personal and more personal. First you find out about my boobs and Cross Dresser and Trans Gender and how I used to help them float their boat, and now I have to speak of Victory.

To me Victory is the end of a very long process of self change I am going through as a means to an end.

For those who have been following along since the spring you will know I am on a metabolic diet as my final part of my recovery from my brain injury. The diet itself has not been a problem at all. It is simple and I only required the removal of two things from my diet as I knew it to accomplish weight loss. So I am good with that.

I mentioned that in the future I would talk about a choice I made to also coincide hypnosis into the mix of things.

It became apparent during the treatment of my brain injury and permanent trigeminal nerve damage that there were some things I just had to accept and own. One was that I would never be the same again, and it was up to me to find a new normal so I could be comfortable with my limitations and to feel well about my situation.

I came into the brain injury sporting a long term auto immune disease that the Dr said is a high clue about what is happening to me. She said that I have to accept and own this injury and not try to push it aside or belittle it.

I had to come to terms with my own personality issues that could throughout my life have made me much more susceptible to problems reguarding my auto immune disease, and my subsiquent issues with Shingles of the brain that finally damaged the nerve deep in my brain and throughout my head.. And in feeding these personality issues was definitely taking away from my health.

I spent years and years working on self. I thought that I had covered everything. I missed one clear thing that was easy to see from a medical practitioners point of view. Sometime in my life I seeded a message that to be successful one must push through everything. Work through exhaustion, work through hunger and thirst, and having to pee even for the end result.

You will read this blog and see what I do and say geeze she is a be-all kinda girl. Must be a great friend, and a fun Mom and wife and an exciting person to know. Well, I am kind and I do care way too much about people than necessary. I am exciting because I shift and change and re-invent myself all time. My instincts are cunning and I am a highly competitive businesswoman who just couldn't be good at stuff. I had to be the best. My biggest competitor is myself. In business I chew and spit out people because I expect only of people what I can do myself. Yet to be this high end achiever I shut down my needs to get there, so of course I could never understand why others can't push themselves that one more inch like I can.

Can you see where I am going with this?
If I want to live and stay well and just achieve life, I now have to retrain my whole personality to listen to my body and only live within my physical means. I knew I could not do this alone. This means shedding my ego and listening to my heartbeat. For over 40 years my ego has screamed the rules, it is hard to shut off.

I had to look at the series of events that started way before I stopped driving the transport truck (and being the best darn female truck driver on the face of the earth...said tongue in cheek) and see how they snowballed into my autoimmune disease making me susceptable to a rare form of shingles saved only for those over 60 years of age. When I was 41 years old.

I also had to look at when I gained weight this last time, and what I was doing in my life that put me on the obesity team once more. And when I looked at all this with honest, instead of rose coloured glasses, I knew I was in real trouble.

What good was two years of recovery work, ending with an extreme weight loss if I still had issues that were plaguing me and pushing my body into survivor mode. (Oh look! one of the earlier words)

So now I am ready to tell you about the hardest work I have ever done. And in doing this work I have been burned by my own personality quirks to set me back again and again. I will also tell you about my successes that affirms that this personality shift is doable, and VICTORY is 30 days or so away.

After several attempts to lose weight the right way (exercise and diet adjustment) with limited success, I knew that when it came to the end of my recovery and it was time for the weight loss, I had to have a trump card. I needed that knowledge I could draw upon to ensure that I would not have to go do this weight loss more than once over the age of 40. Once you hit 40 as a woman the body chemistry sets up against you. It is calming down and slowing down to ready you for menopause, and once this starts every body change accomplishment has a really high price tag.

The lady who hypnotizes me is hypnotizing my negative and destructive personality right out of me. The first appointment was to talk about goals and to start a script for the hypnosis.
My script identifies my push through behaviors and quashes them. It enhances my desire to recreationally walk and exercise. It compels me to drink water and to get a very positive feeling from the act, and to not wait wait and wait to go to the bathroom, or sleep or rest. Plus helps me stay focused to accomplish tasks in a timely fashion. And when I don't I pay a price, because my body is being hypnotized to Yell at me very loudly with pain, or sickness or exhaustion. It sounds like a punishment but it is breaking of a vicious cycle.

Who knows when I got this idea that I needed to put ME last for the sake of the doing or the task. I could have been a small child, a teen or an adult. It doesn't really matter, as long as recognize I do have the ability to change all for the better.

So I set out with my intentions in place. I say my script and I write my cue cards for the in-between days when I use self hypnosis, and on the days I see Silvana for hypnosis I just let go in pure trust.

I still compel myself to press on. The last three weeks is a good example. I had at least three times inwhich I chose not to listen to my body and I paid the price with pain, sickness, and exhaustion in a slap in the back of the head kind of action.

But on the days I listen: I exercise, I drink alot of water, I don't hold off going to the bathroom or sleeping or resting or saying no to people, and my life is smooth and I see attainable goals and I get rewarded with energy and weight loss and feelings of wellness.

Can anyone do this? I think so, but the hardest part is accepting that you own it all and only you can control it or fix it, and even when you do fix it, you have to be ready to see and be a different person.

It has been a hard lesson. One that could have cost me my life.
We usually hear that from folks who go through AA or NA and rehab.
Not usually from folks who have a life changing illness, that will block their every move unless they rehabilitate from being themselves.

So what I have accomplished since May? I have a small VICTORY each day.
What do I win? Life, and not just an existence.

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http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2007/07/todays-word-is-victory-so-if-you-have.html

The Metabolic Diet Progress


Ok, so it has been almost 5 weeks since I started the Metabolic Poon Diet. I have lost close to 25 lbs. I have never starved. I eat a lot (every two hours cuz my diabetes) and I have more and more energy each day.

My headaches have not changed, but my joint pain is gone, and the sensory nerve in my leg that went on me is coming back, so that means it was jammed into my hip joint from some fat connected to a scar in my hip in the front of my leg! So if you are fat like me and you have weird joint pain or have numb spots don't shrug them off....or excuse them. They are because you are fat. Think of this as the common reason, and all the other stuff are the uncommon reasons.

I believe the joint pain reduction is because of two things. The loss of the excess weight the frame cannot hold well, and the fluid being held from too much salt.
I don't salt my food....never have, yet when I started the program I was holding 26lbs of water. I didn't lose all the water yet, and actually when we were stressed during the funeral, and having to eat restaurant salads I gained some water weight and lost fat. So it is important to understand how much hidden salt is in restaurant food. Apparently all restaurant meat is loaded with salt. And we won't even talk about the cheese and sauces! Wha!

I can eat as much as I want of lean beef, pork, chicken, fish and shellfish. I can stir fry with olive or canola oil. Olive oil is better because it is not genetically modified. Also my friend who is a holistic nutricianist said that deep frying should be done in pure coconut oil. So I switched the fryer to coconut oil for Cam and Carl's benefit. I don't eat deep fried anything now. Coconut oil cools hard like Crisco. If you cook or bake you can see the benefits of the coconut oil for other dishes as well (like cake icing).

I can eat as much as I want of green leafy vegetables and any vegetable from above the ground. Tomatoes should be eaten sparingly, and Cucumber and Broccoli should not be the entire amount of the veggies you eat in one sitting. There needs to be green leaves too, and they should be the majority of the portion.

The rule is you can eat as much as you want of the above meat and veggies but there must be two hours between the meals.

Things I can never have: peas, beans, butternut or acorn squash, corn, potatoes,
This is where this diet is very different from the diabetic diet.
The diabetic diet counts carbs as ok if they can rate 15g in a serving.
This is not ok for Metabolic Diseased people. They will still take those carbs and turn them into fat creating sugar.

Also notice I have not said anything about wheat or fruit.
On phase two of the diet I can have all the above good stuff, and I can add two servings of fruit or a grain product(that is not wheat) per day. A serving of fruit is 1/2 cup. The grain product I use is a special pita made of soy flour. One pita is a serving.
If you want to lose more weight then don't do phase two and save it for special days. Cuz phase two lists desserts and treats that I can have if they are in a measured portion.

A lot of folks like soda pop and flavoured drinks, and they are recommended in very limited quantities if they are diet ones. Apparently these empty carbs in diet drinks can cause carb cravings. So I don't drink them at all. I drink coffee (black), tea (black), mineral water(for the fizzz), water, and home made black iced tea. My majority of drinks is mineral water.

Since I started the diet I have been able to reduce my anti-seizure meds to one portion a day from two, remove my diabetic meds all together, and I am off my blood pressure meds, aaaannnd my arthritis meds are used only if I overwork myself exercising.

Yeah, I said it....EXERCISING....HA....HOW....'BOUT....THAT!? I am not constantly exhausted, and I can exercise! Carl and I did almost 3k on a walk to and from Chapters two nights ago and I kept a good pace. The reward was some new books and a coffee! Woo Hoo!

Yesterday I had my blood work, so I am really excited to see what that says.

I went into the Metabolic Diet program with the idea I wanted to feel better. I did not worry about the weight. After about the first 5 days I began to feel better and better. The first 5 days were hard because of carb cravings and withdrawl headaches. But it was a bearable hurdle for many more weeks feeling great!

My Rheumatologist was tickled pink with my progress, my family Dr. is cheering me on, and my pain Specialist is the one completely responsible for getting me into the program.

I truly believe that two things happen to me with foods. Some foods cause my body to react with inflammation (arthritic) pain because they trigger bad signals in my body. Those bad signals turn on the survival mode of my body and flick all the switches to store everything I eat into fat stores because the wrong switches got turned on by the reaction food.

So my reactors are wheat, corn, potatoes, excess salt, and by looking at that list is is easy to see gluten has no place in my body. Years ago I was off gluten and for those years I never gained weight. I just never correlated the gluten with slim for me. I used gluten-free products because when I got diagnosed with Sjogrens it was because I was unable to digest gluten or meat for a long time(6 yrs). Using a gluten free Asian vegetarian diet (which meant veggies, fish and eggs) I put myself in remission of my auto-immune disease. When I got the enzymes back to eat normally I jumped at the chance, but about a year later I started to gain weight, and never even thought it could be because of the gluten I began to ingest.

So far I see why the diabetic diet didn't work for me, and how some of my pains and vital statistics were greatly effected by my weight after my neurological injury. This knowledge is paramount to learning how to eat.

When I feel like I have an understanding of it...I will tell you about the second part of my weight loss program which I have done on my own, and is not part of the Poon Program.

The next part is using a very specific hypnosis to help me learn how to listen to my body, and to not work through pain, or tiredness or stress, and give my body time to heal up.

This will stop me from being a work-a-holic me so I can really hear the messages my body gives me so I won't overdo it and aggravate my head pain by being too type A for my own good.

This part is a very personal skill which has to do with changing a very entrained and ingrained part of my personality so I can stay healthy and keep recovered. This will have much more of an impact on my life than the weight loss for sure. But, the two definitely go hand and hand. This hypnosis is only for those who are not afraid to know their hidden truth. Which could be one's ugly side. So it is not for the faint of heart or the ones who don't like change.

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2007/06/metabolic-diet-progress-ok-so-it-has.html