moving out of your comfort zone

as strange it that sounds, once we start to change the way we live, get healthy and lose weight we will begin to move out of our comfort zone. we will no longer be the ordinary person on the street, eating at a fast burger place and watching tv. we will be the extra-ordinary person who eats an enlightened diet, is conscious of who she is and where he's going and active pursuing dreams and passions not watching them on tv. prepare yourself for this. prepare yourself for how great you are becoming every day. breathe into the moment, like a broadway star about to go on stage. this is your moment.

i am worthy, grateful, mindful and strong.

knowing i am on the right path in my head is one thing. knowing it in my body is another. i struggle sometimes, so i am dedicating today's blog post to the ideas i need to internalize. i am about to begin the process, a new one for me, of quieting my mind. some call this meditation. i will call it my "practice". please share with me and others exeriences you have had with meditation in the comments area below. and if you haven't done so already, join our community by signing up for email at the top of the column on the right. peace!

reconfiguring our actions to manifest a new success

in a world that's faster and faster, and where "more and more" becomes the mantra of the people, perhaps it's time to consider how we fit in and what works for us in the long run. in order to change our perception of what success looks like, we may have to change our relationship to it. in sri sri ravi shankar's 2010 blog post entitled "our connection to nature",  he talks about how ancient wisdom describes human beings as having five layers of experience: the environment, the physical body, the mind, the intuition and our self or spirit.

sri sri ravi shankar says this:

Our connection with the environment is our first level of experience, and one of the most important. If our environment is clean and positive, it has a positive impact on all the other layers of our existence. As a result, they come into balance and we experience a greater sense of peace and connection within ourselves and with others around us.

Today we live in a world where many have become greedy and want to make quick profits and achieve quick results. Their actions disrupt the ecological balance, and not only pollute the physical environment, but also stimulate negative emotions on a subtle level, within themselves and also in those around them. These negative energies expanded and compounded again and again are the root cause of much of the violence and misery in this world. Most wars and conflicts are triggered by such feelings, and result in damage to the environment, which then takes a long time to restore and repair. We need to attend to the human psyche which is the root cause of pollution, both physical and emotional. If compassion and care are kindled within our selves, they will form the basis for a deeper connection to, and care for, both others and the environment.

so! this is about taking care of ourselves and our planet on a daily basis...NOT greedily grabbing all we can and hoarding for the future. seth godin, the original and helpful voice on the new landscape of digital connection for which there are no maps, is a singular thought leader and innovator in what he describes as our post-industrial, post-geography "connection economy."

seth godin says:

"rather than merely tolerate change, we are all called now to rise to it. we are invited and stretched in whatever we do to be artists — to create in ways that matter to other people."

HOW DO THESE TWO CONCEPTS RELATE?  sri sri ravi shankar talks about how greed in its many forms disrupt the ecologial balance and seth godin talks about how greed for mass market share disrupts community balance. the new reality has got to be one of eco balance and community.

step one: take the thorn out of your own eye.
step two:take the thorn out of your neighbor's eye.

the art of practice

practice isn't necessarily fun. but spending time consciously working on improving a skill has one of the biggest productivity payoffs around. that makes intuitive sense with music and athletics. but I think that's the case with many life skills as well. practicing the art of getting up and taking a walk, practicing the art of buy smart foods, practicing the one thing that you are particularly bad at and that might be holding you back (for me that's negotiation). making these things part of your day helps you to grow. and growing helps keep you young and vibrant. it is also true that when something is practiced it becomes second nature. so when life throws you a curve ball, and your distracted, you still have the skills you have developed through daily practice. practice may not always make perfect, but the art of practice is perfect in and of itself.

wsj article on practice
a video: matisse-and-the-art-of-practice

full stop. full start.

well. here i am again. not feeling so alone now, knowing that i have at least one faithful follower named calamity jane. thanks for the note CJ!

after so many weeks of working so hard to eat right, exercise and lose weight i took a 24 hour break for it all and gained 5 pounds back. that's 8 weeks to lose 10 pounds and one day to gain half of it back again. i was dismayed.
disillusioned. i gave up.

then the next morning, i went for my walk and made some fresh lentil soup with red peppers and turmeric and started a new batch of sprouts. today i weighed myself and that 5 pounds is gone again. i'm back on track.

but things are different now. now that i have some new healthy habits in place like walking and sprouting and eating mostly stuff without labels, i am going to focus less on food and start working on my mind and spirit too. the idea from the start has always been about balance, not just weight loss. i have to remind myself of these things. so less focus on loss and more focus on the now.

happiness

i have spent a great deal of time focusing on food and nutrition on this blog so far, and that is a good start. but as the intention of 50 POUNDS TO PASSION is to release the stuff of weight that holds us back to embrace the stuff which is the now. by eating right and staying in motion i will lose unwanted pounds, and that is good and natural. and as this process unfolds i need to also focus on my mind + spirit. keeping in balance is the way i choose to be.

the root chakra

in the past i have resisted many of the things i am learning to embrace now as i progress on my path to wellness. i may have rolled my eyes at friends who had specialty dietary concerns or indulged in eastern spiritual practices. however now, i no longer have the luxury of ignoring the classic ways to wellness. so when one of my nutritional advisors beging talking in detail about chakras, i listened. she advised me to work on my "root chakra". so today i did some new age searching and found "the mystic banana" website and what i discovered there has been helpful:

The Basics
There are seven main chakras, located along the center line of our body, from the base of the spine to the top of the head.   Each chakra is associated with different glands, organs, body regions, and aspects of our life, personality, and spiritual development. The chakras are critical to our physical health, the quality of our life, and our ability to develop spiritually.

The Healthy Chakra
A healthy chakra is open, allowing energy to flow freely both horizontally, in an exchange of energy with the universe, and vertically, connecting it with the other chakras. It’s very common–almost universal–to have one or more chakras that is somewhat blocked or imbalanced.  An under-functioning chakra can cause disruptions in a person’s body, mind, spirit, and life. These disruptions can range from a sense of unwellness and unease, to more serious problems–actual dis-ease in one’s body or dysfunction in one’s life.

What is the Root  Chakra?
The muladhara, or first chakra is located at the base of the spine.  It’s keyword is “survival.”  It relates to the physical self, self-preservation, survival instincts, our connection to our bodies and the earth, and our sense of safety, security, and belonging in the world.  Its related color is red, and its related element is earth.

Find out The 10 Ways to Clear Your Root Chakra at the mystic banana website.

when did you stop dancing?

as i continue my zealous quest for health and balance in my life, i have discovered that some days i can grow weary. changing habits is, it turns out, takes a lot of energy. establishing new routines takes focus and commitment. that's why i was please when i came across this inspirational quote by gabrielle roth. it reminded me to enjoy the process and to make some of the new habits in my new world really fun ones. after all, all work and no play make jack a very dull boy.

the connection between philosophy & a good walk

The Gymnasiums of the Mind

In this Decenber 2012 article in Philosophy Now Christopher Orlet wanders down literary paths merrily swinging his arms and pondering the happy connection between philosophy and a good brisk walk.

If there is one idea intellectuals can agree upon it is that the act of ambulation – or as we say in the midwest, walking – often serves as a catalyst to creative contemplation and thought. It is a belief as old as the dust that powders the Acropolis, and no less fine. Followers of the Greek Aristotle were known as peripatetics because they passed their days strolling and mind-wrestling through the groves of the Academe. The Romans’ equally high opinion of walking was summed up pithily in the Latin proverb: “It is solved by walking.”

Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind.” (continue reading here)

risk and pain

risk and pain? gosh! who wants to talk about or think about that! we spent so much time seeking comfort and safety in this complicated world, we sometime forget that pain and risk are the elements that create that comfort. without pain and risk there would be no olympic champions to marvel over and respect, there would be no nobel peace prize winners, and yet we tend resist risk and pain in out own personal lives.

i attended a kundalini yoga class yesterday, for the first time in a long time and learned a great deal. firstly, i learned that i am a lot more out of shape that i thought i was (but that is about to change) and secondly, that yoga is painful! it hurts to hold a pose for a long time, and breathe and focus. it is difficult. no getting around that. but that is part of the point: yoga can be painful, just as life can be painful. it is how we deal with that pain that is important.

yoga is a "practice". the definition of practice is a repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency. one practices, dealing with or managing pain so that when painful situations arise in daily living one is better prepared at handling it. 

yoga is also sometime referred to as a "discipline". i'm interested in this word too as it applies to the process of life and personal development. wikipedia has this to say about discipline: 

Discipline is the assertion of willpower over more base desires, and is usually understood to be synonymous with self control. Self-discipline is to some extent a substitute for motivation, when one uses reason to determine the best course of action that opposes one's desires.

risk, pain, practice, discipline. these are heady concepts, but all part of the game when it comes to finding the path to better health in body, mind and spirit. take a deep breathe and plunge into the most rewarding time of you life: blossom!

making "the change"

in the age where everything is "available for purchase" online or from the driver's seat of the car, it may seem odd that something as simple as good health doesn't just pop out of a can. "presto!" is a term that came along with the advertising age of the 1940s and 50s, and with it all the gadgets and fast foods that helped lull the modern world into obesity. as a result, things that were naturally slow, solid or whole took on a sort of boring, dated look. what had once been valued in society began to evolve: fast became faster, big became bigger, cheap became cheaper and all at an invisible cost.
today we stand at the beginning of a new age! now that the mayan calendar has come to an end, let's let that old world of over-consumption end too. let's, together, make a new year's resolution to re-focus our attention (and intentions) away from what was weakening us, and poisoning us, and focus instead on what will make us stronger and healthier! you know, in every single article, blog post and testimonial i have read on the topic of "maintained, long term weight-loss" the secret to success is always the same:

eat more fruits & vegetables and exercise daily.

this is the elusive miracle pill! this is what is the core of all the fad diets that seem to work. this is the math! and getting one's head around this simple fact, finally getting this concept into ones bones, is what i call "the change". it's the KNOWING of what you want. it is the KNOWING of what's important. and best of all, it is the KNOWING of how to get it!
there is a famous quote by anais nin that i like, it goes, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” it may be helpful to bear this in mind as we begin making new, knowing choices in the new year!
i hope you will consider joining me on this important journey, and that together, through the process of this blog, we find ourselves 50 pounds lighter, 50 pounds stronger, and 50 pounds closer to our true passion.

letting go

"Two monks were on a pilgrimage. One day, they came to a deep river. At the edge of the river, a young woman sat weeping because she was afraid to cross the river without help. She begged the two monks to help her. The younger monk turned his back. The members of their order were forbidden to touch a woman.

But the older monk picked up the woman without a word and carried her across the river. He put her down on the far side and continued his journey. The younger monk came after him, scolding him and berating him for breaking his vows. He went on this way for a long time.

Finally, at the end of the day the older monk turned to the younger one. "I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her all day."

Letting go can be difficult. Letting go of people, ideas, expectations, desires; letting go of bad habits, false beliefs and unhealthy relationships... the list goes on. Every day, every moment presents an opportunity to create ourselves anew, to shrug off the baggage of the past, open ourselves up to the possibility of the moment and take action to create an incredible future.

response-ability

taking responsibility for our actions in nothing more than paying attention to what we see, hear, touch (external stimuli) and then react to the best of our ability. (response-ability). taking response ability seriously is important in many ways. when we go to see our doctors we are temporarily employing them to use their response-ability to assess our physical or mental needs. but it is our response-ability to make right choices every day ultimately determines if we flourish or perish?

hey this is funny: 
if we train ourselves to get fast at making good responses we could call it response-ajility! training our minds to make the right choice time after time in quick succession.

can't vs won't

do you remember when you were a child and asked "can i go to the bathroom" and the answer was not yes or no but rather a correction? because the proper way to ask is "may i go to the bathroom".
these distinctions are important.
bearing this in mind, consider how we are likely to speak when we are on a diet. one might say "oh i can't eat one of those frosted doughnuts. i'm on a diet!". but this is stinkin' thinkin'! because fact is, we can eat the doughnut (or whatever) if we want to...our mouths can chew, right?
when we say can't we are denying ourselves a pleasure we may think we deserve. and eventually we will build-up resentments which will culminate in a splurge or eat-fest or worse the end of our eating program.
the place we want to be in body/mind/spirit is to say "i won't eat that doughnut and further more, i don't want that doughnut. because my own good health is very important to me." or even "i respect myself too much to eat that doughnut". no denial there! just self empowerment, awareness, personal responsibility.
try it!

the obesity factor & stigmatization

for me, coming to terms with the fact that i am actually obese has help me begin to deal with my current weight in realistic terms. i started by looking up the ugly word OBESITY online. then i began to appreciate some of the complexities of the problem that i had been ignoring in the past. i was interested to know that: Obesity is stigmatized in much of the modern world, though it was widely perceived as a symbol of wealth and fertility at other times in history, and still is in some parts of the world. A person who is stigmatized possesses a weight that leads to a devalued social identity, and is often ascribed stereotypes or other labels denoting a perceived deviance which can lead to prejudice and discrimination. Common, “weight-based”, stereotypes are that obese persons are lazy, lack self-discipline, and have poor willpower, but also possess defects of intelligence and character.

"the bacchanal is over"

while speaking with my new (unbeknownst to her) mentor, who is about 80 now and freely speaks her mind, i was told on no uncertain terms that i was "too round" and "unhealthy". Then she moved in and almost whispered into my ear, "You've had a pretty good go of it! but look at you now, and if you don't make some kind of change in your diet and exercise where will you be when your 60?" She raised her eyebrow in a knowing way and then said,"For you... the Bacchanal is over!".

 "well!" i thought to myself, "that's quite a bold thing to say. and it's true!"
it suddenly struck me like a bag of bricks that what she was saying was true! my physical ailments were bound to start popping up as i age, and those ailments will only be complicated by my increasing morbid obesity. it was time to make some positive changes in my awful habits.

it was in that moment i decided that i would change! this was the beginning of a new me. a sensible me. a healthier me.
i'd start improving my health immediately. i'd discontinue my use of alcohol. unlike food, i don't need THAT to survive i rationed. it's would be a very clear and simple change. ending the bacchanal would be a sobering experience. no more happy-hour drink specials, accompanied by happy hour foods, which often lead to post-happy-hour binging, which could ultimately leads to feelings of guilt and self-loathing, followed by more drinking+eating and a sort of sluggish hang-over the next day that would not be conducive to an early morning walk, or swim or any other types of healthy exursion.

so be it! the bacchanal is over!

finding the balance

recently, when i was "home" visiting family for the holidays, i experienced some emotional upsets. it seems that i am still so sensitive about certain trigger issues after all these years. when talking to a brother later on about my experiences, suggested that i needed to address these unresolved emotional issues in an unusual way: by losing weight. he reasoned that getting my weight into balance may help resolve the other mind/spirit issues. this is something i never considered before. is my body out of balance because of the mind/spirit issues? or is my mind/spirit out of balance because of the body imbalance? just as in making adjustments to the colors on a painting, changing one thing changes everything else, perhaps making a few corrections in one or two areas can help bring the whole into correctness.

the "hoarder mentality"

in america today we are taught from a very early age that the more you have the better you are: more money=success. we were raised and live in the advertising age. fancy cars, huge burgers, the newest fashions, the biggest houses are all the symbols of success. it's no wonder that our culture is the first to develop a a thing called compulsive hoarding. although researchers have only recently begun to study hoarding, according to the mayo clinic, "It is not clear whether "compulsive" hoarding is a separate, isolated disorder, or rather a symptom of another condition, such as OCD".
like obesity, this is a complicated issue. but one thing is clear, there is a growing need in our society to have more. because not having enough is a sign of weakness. could these concepts be the under-pinnings of some people's desire to eat more, as if they cant get enough?
compulsive hoarding and compulsive eating are related enough for me to wonder about my insatiable desire to eat. does my compulsive eating attempt to fill the same empty hole inside me that compulsive hoarding fills? i am not an expert, but i do know that it sometimes feels that way.
for years i have said, "most people struggle to have more. but i struggle to have less".  and it's true, it is a struggle to have less. i live simply and believe in the power of austerity. as i am beginning to come to terms with my over-weight reality, i wonder if it would be possible for me to transfer my approach to "having less" to one of "eating less"?

the body+mind+spirit component

i am currently carrying 50 pounds of extra weight on my body (maybe 50x2).
you and i can see that easily in this photo taken just a few months ago.
but why? carrying this much extra weight can't possibly serve me in any way. can it? current studies show that the social stigma that is attached to overweight is incredibly negative. fat people are often considered to be lazy, sloppy and out of control. but the issue is more complex than first meets the eye. no one wants to be fat. but so many are!

most people of my size and age have been battling their weight for their entire lives. there are no easy answers. if there were, everyone would be thin and seemingly fabulous.

my prediction is that my "body weight" issues are inextricably associated with "spirit weight" and "mind weight" and therefore to achieve balance in one area, one needs to achieve balance in all three.

i recently saw an excellent film that introduces some of these concepts called, The Gift of Diabetes. if you are interested in making positive changes in your life and find your true passion, take the time to watch this film.

overveiw

"fifty pounds to passion" is an process of elimination to reveal the core essence of life. it is to be the summation of of various concepts that i am exploring to find the balance between body, mind and spirit.