10 Things to Do Instead of Binging

One of the most popular posts I have ever made centered around binging.

I thought a repost was definitely in order.

I love inspirational lists. 

I used to make them myself when I was sorting out the chaos that was my life, my thoughts and my wellness.

Lists make order of things we can't seem to make order of.....for me, it is all about the visual. I just learn better that way and I feel far more centered organizing thoughts on paper.

I found this helpful list - and although I think that if you really do not want to learn the guitar, you shouldn't have to - this list is great! 

Replace the items in the list with something as appropriate. 

The list itself is only to give us an idea of the possibilities that can help curb cravings 

that lead to binge eating.

You can add or remove items from this list as you choose. It is YOUR LIST.

Heck, rewrite the whole thing - as long as you keep moving forward and feeling improvements - you'll know you're on the right track.

Rock your day!

Don't Quit

I have been called a go-getter, motivator, inspiration, good listener (I have my moments) and someone who tells it like it is.

I'm not sure how else to be, but I am who I am. I believe we all have moments where we experience all of everything (from the goodest of good to the baddest of bad) - but it is how we deal with these things and how much harm we do along the way that matters. If we continue to carry these negative  things through life, we will continue to do harm to ourselves and others. Not good.

We all will learn and experience love, loss, grief, pain, happiness and joy. How much of each we allow into our beings is up to each of us. Life throw's its curve balls - we still have to deal.

You can generally tell someone who doesn't like themselves very much - they point out all of the people that bother them, offend them or make their lives unliveable. Meanwhile, it is their own miserable existence that keeps them jabbering on about others as a distraction for what ails them.

Distraction means they don't have to look at themselves or deal with their own issues. It's a shame, but avoidance of these folks is best until they figure out how to circumvent the pubic bullying and deal with some stuff.....and even then, harm can be so damaging that reconciliation is futile. I have definitely been this person.

I wasn't always this nice - or this approachable. I have had my moments of down right bitchy as anyone who knows me can attest.....and although life happens, I have kept moving forward and surviving thriving life as it happens. We get better. We grow and hopefully not in ways we shouldn't - but even that happens. If we are lucky, those we have harmed in the past are willing to see us for who we are now, but that doesn't always happen. We have to be flexible and realize all of the aspects of a picture - and not just our one small piece.

When I weighed 266 pounds, I knew in my head nothing would change for me. It never changed. I knew how hard quitting smoking was - so I never tried. I thought that soda made a fair water replacement - so I drank tonnes of it and made myself horribly ill. I made up all of this ridiculous sh** in my head to get what I wanted. I wanted to be fat, lazy and full of phony cheese products, potato chips and tobacco smoke because they were my buddy.

When I felt like crap, these aspects of my life were my 'go to' items. I could get them anytime I wanted and they made me feel good all the time....until I didn't have them anymore......

It took some time and a whole lot of self reminders about what my goals actually were, but it happened. It happens slowly at first - we are searching for proof of effectiveness. We are so used to being 'duped' in the world of wellness that when someone claims something new to them, they immediately dismiss it as a lie. We need to know how to weed out the things that don't work for us and move toward the things that do.

If I had been honest with myself years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of health issues. Instead, I justified drinking in excess of 12 cans of soda a day, stuffing my face with every bad food going all the while growing more and more ill. We can lie to ourselves too.

In my book, The Fat Girl Now 50% Lighter, I explain how I learned to embrace change and grow through being flexible instead of believing everything I was told and defending it without proof. We learn that everything is not what it seems - and we have to remain open minded if we are going to adapt well.

There's nothing like the feeling of having epiphany after epiphany - every day! Joy comes back into life and smiling.....It can't be helped!

 

Embrace life - all it is and all it brings into your world. Some will be amazing - some not so significant and others yet - downright terrifying.....but embrace it. Life is meant to be lived - all of it.
 Always move forward and remain open to new experiences.

Rock your day!

Let's Make a Deal!

Hey - do you remember that old television game show called 'Let's Make a Deal?' It's on T.V these days with a new and popular celebrity host, but the old show was more fun. It was new - these days remakes, prequels and anything but originality reigns, and I've stopped watching television altogether. I keep saying, 'they don't call it programming for nothing.'

I was a kid when Let's Make a Deal was on and I remember feeling like if only get on that show, I could choose a curtain and all my dreams COULD come true. I could also end up with a goat or a giant tricycle and be mocked, laughed at and ridiculed forever - but it was worth the risk! I was excited and knew one day I would be on that show. I knew it.

OK, so I've yet to be on that show, but it doesn't mean that I've given up on that dream. So, back to the point.....

If you think about it, our lives are exactly like a game of Let's Make a Deal. We each have our own versions of it, but essentially all of the elements are there.

We each get 'choices' all of the time - and we each make choices all day every day. How will you wake up? Cheery? Crabby? How will you start your day? A greasy heavy breakfast versus a filling, nutritious breakfast to get your body working right. Notice how I slipped the wellness aspect of choice in there? One choice gets us things we want, like and dream of - and one gets us a bunch of negativity and all that it entails.

The point hits home not when we think of the choices we face during a day, but when we use the same 'template' to address the past issues we have yet to work through.

When people decide that something from the past has to be 'fixed' because it left an emotion in them that they don't know what to do with, it puts them in a continual 'pattern of the past' until that emotion is dealt with.

Imagine someone who had a junky past - bad stuff happened (as it does to us all at some time). We judge 'worst' and 'best' based on our own experiences - so when someone has difficulty moving away from an experience in their past....I suggest Let's Make a Deal.

Take the experience from the past (that you are having trouble moving past) and bring it up....again. We get tired of replaying the same scenarios, yet we have nothing to 'replace' it with so we do nothing. We each will have something unique to us to deal with, work on or work through - and I've found this is the least 'therapy' type avenue to understanding how to do that I could come up with. I'm not a 'medical jargon' type of gal, I learn much better this way. Perhaps others do too.


We need to create 3 curtains. Behind each curtain are choices we had at the time. Remembering that we have always tried to do the best we could with what we had where we were at the time, the curtains represent real results that could have happened. One of the curtains must be the choice you actually made.

If anyone is having a difficult time understanding this, here is how I demonstrate this lesson visually:

Find three pieces of the same paper. On each one, write a choice you had regarding the situation.

Take the 3 pieces of paper, flip them over and randomly shuffle them around......then give each one a number (1 to 3). Now it's time to play! Feel free to make more curtains depending on choices available to you at the time.....it's your deal!

First, without looking under each 'curtain' - set them up like the show, in order from #1 to #3. There's no particular reason for this, I just thought the game should be orderly.

Choose a 'curtain.' Flip it over - this is going to be the choice you WOULD have made in the situation. What is the first feeling you get about the choice you selected at random? Remember, you have to trade everything you have in this present time for that choice and you must realize that a.> you can't actually do that and b.> it may not have been a good choice and you understand that now.

If the choice you selected is one you would rather not have made, great news! There's another option to choose from! Select another 'curtain' to reveal the choice you COULD have made. Is it better than the first curtain? Can you come up with every consequence of every different action to make the best choice for yourself now?

Do you keep the first curtain or trade for the second? Choices aren't tough - think about how many you actually make in a day. We all do very well!

So if you dislike both of your options at this point, there is always that last curtain. Awww, go on - open it! Get the full experience - and remember this.....one of those curtains was your present consequence to a 'choice' you wrote down. Looking back on our lives, we know we can never trade experiences and memories and go back to certain places in time......we have to close the curtains on the 'what if's' and know 'what is.'

A secondary lesson:

Flip all of the papers so that the choices are facing up. Looking at 'the big picture' now, knowing what you know and having lived what you have lived - make your choice again as though you were back when fill in your own thing here. Is it the same choice you made back then? If it is, you are holding emotion for no good reason besides maybe needing a little company. You can relax and let it go - the right choice was made for you at the time.

Always remember too, that our present day perspectives are much different (and more experienced by the second) than they were in the past. The more time that passes, the more distant some memories and facts may get.

If you see that another choice (that was available back when __________) then you have only two simple things left to do. Forgive yourself and move on. You can see clearly now, time has moved forward and you have seen the consequence of a choice you made. Again, we cannot revisit this place and we can't stand in front of an imaginary screen reliving the past. It's unhealthy and futile.

Perspective and experience of the 'here and now' looking back are different than perspective and experience of living back 'then.' I remember thinking how normal certain things used to be to me and now, they just aren't a part of my life. There are reasons for everything.

Living life in the here and now is the only thing that matters - and if we still feel that we owe the past anything (or that it owes us), then the awareness that we can only live our best life now is key. Happiness doesn't lie in the past, it should tornado around the present with the intention of leaping into the future.

Today will soon be our past, and if you happen to look back on today 5 years from now, what will you see? How will it make you feel?

Make it surreal! Rock your day!