Little Lies We Tell Ourselves: Part One

To kick sugar and flour, I have to get my mind in the right place. Too many people come up with a bazillion excuses to stay sick and addicted.

I've used them myself, over and over. The little lies that keep me fat, shackled, and depressed.

So I want to bring my lies out into the open. No more hiding in the dark recesses of my mind. And with them, I am going to write down the responses that blow them out of the water.

Here we go:

Little Lie Number One:

This will be hard.

My response to that:

It is much easier to focus on getting healthy and recovering than to stay sick/addicted/slowly degrading your brain. Yes, change is hard at first. Any major change is hard at first. The human brain hates changes. Hates, hates, hates it.

So of course it will resist change and try hard to do what it has always done. But with the right attitude, strong strategies, and a firm commitment, it can be hugely rewarding.

Lie number two coming tomorrow ….

[Thanks to Daniel Amen's Memory Rescue book for the inspiration for writing down the little lies I tell myself]

When you’re afraid to resume BLE because you’re afraid to fail again

One of the biggest struggles I have faced in Bright Line Eating is how to resume after breaking my bright lines repeatedly. How do you get your bright lines back after you’ve broken them ... again and again and again.

And in the back of my brain was always the niggling thought, “What if I break my lines again? What if I fail again?”

For me, this usually quickly escalated into “I fail everything.” “Of course I’m going to fail again.” “Why should this be any different?”

So the other day, I sat down for a good chat with myself. I decided to do what I've read is good for when obsessive thoughts start wandering around in your brain. I challenged myself to turn those thoughts around.

Sure, I'm afraid of breaking my bright lines again. But that doesn’t mean this fear is a bad thing.

It’s perfectly OK - it could even be good -- to be nervous about trying again. That just means I know Bright Line Eating is a good idea. I know this is what I want.

For another, it means I know that overcoming food issues will be tough. I don’t think it’s going to be a breeze. That'll be helpful when a craving or challenge strikes.

And there will be cravings and there will be challenges. I know I’ll get stressed and want to eat. I know I’ll want to eat. These things are going to happen. That's just life. It's OK and it's not an excuse to break my bright lines.

And that means I can take the next step. I'm not doing BLE because I think I'll never be hungry and have cravings and want to eat like crazy again. I'm doing it because I don’t want all the crappy things that come with eating addictively — the constant thinking about food, the headaches, the low energy, the pasty skin, the obesity, the not being able to go on roller coaster rides, the needing seatbelt extenders on airplanes, the diabetes, the losing everything.

And you know what, it worked. I'm not so nervous about making resuming BLE again. As always, when I break my bright lines, I learn from the experience, pick myself up and start all over again.

Relapse sucks and it's great if it never happens. But fear of relapse isn’t bad. You can learn a lot if you sit down and listen to your fears.

Stop assuming that the new thing will suck

My father is getting ready to move soon. He and his wife are moving to a smaller place, about 10-20 miles south of where they currently live.

I asked him if he's excited about going to a new place.

"No," he said. "I've got all my favorite TV shows here. How do I know they'll have the same shows down there?"

Now, he is moving less than an hour away. I really doubt they won't have the same TV shows.

But I actually get it. He is afraid that the new place will suck. Sure, it will mean a smaller property tax bill and mortgage payment, less yardwork, and a lot of other great things, but it’s easy to worry about losing things you really, really love. It’s easy to assume the new thing will stink.

The conversation got me thinking about how when we cut sugar and flour and snacks and overeating out of our lives, we can easily assume, even in silly ways, it will be awful.

I remember listening to a telephone coaching call, early in my no-sugar-no-flour journey, where someone was saying she now felt doomed to never enjoy her food again. Never again would she enjoy a meal if she couldn't have her favorite pasta dish.

I knew exactly what she meant. What if all my meals sucked? What if I never, ever got a meal I enjoyed ever again? After all, when I was growing up, diets meant iceberg lettuce, carrots, cottage cheese, and celery. Boring boring boring. Unenjoyable and flat.

You know what? I love my meals now. I love the fresh, crispy vegetables. I've discovered roasted broccoli is fantastic. My supermarket is packed with great tasting vegetables that go waaayyy beyond iceberg lettuce and celery. We are so lucky, those of us who live in places where supermarkets offer a huge array of different fresh vegetables and fruits. Don’t even get me started on farmer’s markets.

Without my taste buds dulled through overly sweet foods, I can taste foods better than ever. I have begun seeking out local blueberries and tomatoes and corn because they taste so darn good. Lentils? Blackberries? Spinach? I love them.

In fact, I love my meals now more than I ever did when I was eating crap. If you had told me that even two years ago, I would have rolled my eyes and silently said, “Oh yeah right. What a nut.” Never never never would I have thought that was possible.

So be careful about being afraid to move forward because the new thing might be awful. Don't assume that in giving up sugar and flour you'll never enjoy a meal again. Don’t assume that birthdays and holidays will be unbearably awful because you can’t stuff yourself to the bursting point with crap. Don’t assume you’ll never enjoy a vacation again.

What if turns out to be awesome? What if you love the new thing even more than the old thing? What if the new thing doesn’t, in fact, suck at all?

My Three Biggest Fears About Giving Up Sugar and Flour: Fear #3

FEAR #3. I’M AFRAID OF FAILING.

In my first Bright Line Eating bootcamp, I went 8 weeks without breaking a bright line. And I was terrified the whole time. 

Not terrified that this might not work for me in helping me lose weight. I was terrified that if I broke a single bright line, I would be screwed. It would be impossible to resume. As soon as a single line broke, I’d be worse off.

And of course I did break a line. It was a special occasion. I was over-confident in my sparkling new “strength” and imagined I would just eat a treat “this one night” and then I’d get right back on course. 

And of course I didn’t get right back on course. I was a OK for a day or two and then broke again. And then again. Within a month, I found myself wandering the aisles of the grocery deciding how much NMF I could stuff myself with.

I went 18 months (yes, you read that right, 18 months) resuming and re-breaking, resuming and rebreaking, over and over and over. 

Resuming BLE after a relapse is scary. I couldn’t help but worry “what if” and I was startled at the quantity of food I could put away now. I’ve never been a binger, but my ‘you’ve eaten too much, stop eating and go do something’ button was now gone.

A month into my most recent sobriety, I hit a major holiday and told my husband I was terrified about it. He said to me, “So what? You’ve failed before and there’s always a chance you’ll fail again. You want this.”

He was totally correct. I wanted this. More than anything I’ve ever wanted, I want to be free of my food obsession. And the only thing I had to fear about this upcoming holiday – was fearing this holiday. If I failed, well by golly I’ll just try again. And again. And again. There are people who take 8-9 years of going to AA before sobriety clicks in. If that’s what it takes for me, well, that’s what it will take. There is no way I’m going back to the person I was before. No way am I going to forget how amazing it feels to be sober – to be happy, thin and free.

Failing just means I had the guts to try BLE in the first place. And therefore, I’ve got the guts to try it again.

Failure is always possible. But success is built on failure. If you do a “permission to be human” worksheet, learn from it, talk about it, make a WOOT for what to do next time. If you really want what is on the other side of a crappy relationship with food, then you have learned. You tried … and you learned. The only real failure is not trying in the first place.

Remember Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

My 3 Biggest Fears About Giving Up Sugar and Flour: Fear #2

#2 I HAVE A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH SUGAR (/FLOUR) AND AM TERRIFIED OF LOSING THE PART I LOVE.

It wasn’t until I was a few months into my BLE journey that I realized this. Long before I started to seriously consider cutting sugar out of my life, I knew something was wrong with how I ate. But the thought of never eating sugar again scared the bee-jeesus out of me.

And that’s because the thought of living the rest of my life without sugar and flour seemed to me totally unimaginable. My life was BUILT around sugar and flour. I knew all the best stops around town to get my favorite cookies and doughnuts and cake. Car trips were all about where I could stop to buy great food (OMG there’s a Culver’s here!). Visits with family members and friends were planned around restaurants and what we were going to eat. Vacations were excuses to eat everything I wanted. Holidays were all about eating certain favorites. I would drive miles out of the way to get a favorite food fix. The list went on and on and on.

Sure, I despised what it was doing to my body, my self-esteem, my time, my mental health, my emotional balance. I literally hated it. But living without it seemed like the end of the world. The thought of giving up the “good parts” of sugar/flour seemed unacceptable.

So I did what most people do. I tried to prove to myself that I could indulge moderately. I tried to limit my “fixes” to weekends or one cheat day a week, so I could keep sugar/flour in my life. Or I’d give up sugar/flour for a week or ten days. I’d try to limit the number of NMFs I’d eat in a day (“only 3 Oreos” or “only 5 of those tiny tea cookies I adore”). I even tried switching it up – eating “healthy” versions of my favorites so the sugar/flour would be diluted. None of this ever worked. Ever. Inevitably, I’d end up making exceptions or just throwing up my hands and going off the deep end.

No wonder some of the big weight-loss commercial plans appealed to me sooooo much. They’d say things like, “You can eat anything you want – just in moderation.” Yes! I didn’t have to give anything up. I just needed to learn how to moderate it.

The problem was, I’d already been trying to moderate my eating of crap for a long time. I’d spent years trying to “moderate” it and failing.

This is what has been so transforming about BLE for me – showing me that the only way to be free of my mess is to give it up entirely. The only way to eliminate the things I HATE about what sugar/flour does to me, is to give up the things I LOVE about sugar/flour. It’s that simple.