Welcome to weight loss Wednesday!  In January 2018 I chose losing 70 pounds as one of my impossible goals for the year.  It seemed impossible because I thought I had tried every weight loss plan known to woman.  I thought because I am post-menopausal and insulin resistant, I was absolutely unable to lose weight.  Imagine my delight when I lost about 20 pounds, almost effortlessly.  It was amazing!  I stopped eating sugar and flour and started planning my meals – and eating what I planned.  I kept track of my food on an app.  Every day I wrote down what I ate, how I felt and what my plan for the next day was.  It was amazing.

Then my weight loss stopped.  I hit a plateau, and between August 2018 and December 2018 I gained and lost the same 5 pounds.  So, I changed things up, I started intermittent fasting, I ate less, I ate more, I worked on weight loss skills and I did a LOT of thought work.  Perhaps I was a special snowflake who was absolutely unable to lose weight? But I promised myself that I wasn’t going to quit, no matter what.  I was going to do whatever it took.

In January 2019 I again chose losing weight as one of my impossible goals.  I learned more weight loss skills and began using them, and I started losing weight again.  This time very slowly, about 1 to 1.25 pounds a month – and I was frustrated. I had two peer coaches at my coaching school help me identify some places I could be doing better. 

There was a long list of things I learned about myself:

• I wasn’t always honest about recording my food.
• I quit every weekend so Lee and I could enjoy eating together.
• I recognized that I had “diet Mentality” which is not surprising since I have been on some kind of diet my entire adult life. 
• I eat emotionally and use food to comfort myself. 
  I thought I could handle anything with a little bit of chocolate. 
• I didn’t recognize when I was hungry or full.
• Every time I thought about eating something – I ate it.   
• I learned that I was using will power instead of recognizing what was behind my eating and fixing it.

Here I am again in 2019 with losing weight as my impossible goal.  I’m still not giving up! I am not following a “diet” and I choose what I want to eat each, plan my meals and eat according to plan.  I mess up – a lot – but I don’t quit, and I don’t get mad at myself.  There are no restricted foods, there is no calorie counting.  I still use regular intermittent fasting, which I love and will probably continue the rest of my life.  I have lost a total of 8 pounds since January 2018.  I look good and I feel good.  I am strong and flexible, I have less inflammation in my body, I have discontinued all of my RA medication and my doctor told me that I am in remission from all my auto-immune conditions.  What a blessing!  

I decided that I couldn’t overcome all my bad habits without help, so I have hired a weight-loss coach to help me learn to overcome all the habits that aren’t working for me, and to develop new habits that will help me lose weight a little faster.  I can’t wait to see myself in December 2019.  Come along with me on my weight loss journey.  Every Wednesday for the rest of 2019, I am going to share a little of this journey. 

If you can relate to being over-weight most of your adult life and feeling like you have tried everything, maybe we can explore more options together. 

Do you see this weed?  I saw it in the back of my front flower bed this morning after my walk.  Do you know what I did with it?  I bent over and pulled it out – and a couple more of its friends.  Weeds are a part of gardening.  A weed is a plant growing where it is not wanted. When you leave weeds in a garden  they multiply, they put down roots, and crowd out what you DO want to grow

I found a rhyme that is true – Your mind is like a garden – your thoughts are the seeds.  You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.  We think thousands of thoughts every day, some are weeds and some are flowers.  Flowers bloom and grow and beautify or produce fruit.  Weeds are competitive, they interfere with your harvest by crowding out the good plants. 

How is this like your thoughts? Positive thoughts lead you to do more and become more, you feel useful and productive, you grow, you feel good.

Negative thoughts crowd out positive thoughts and they produce negative results. You feel anxious, overwhelmed and bad.

When I think of my mind being like a garden, what do I want to plant on purpose?  If some of our thoughts look like  weeds – take a moment pull them out, leave more room for flowers.

If you need help with your garden of thoughts – let me know. Send me a message and we can talk.

It’s May, and I’m planting. Every year I try something new. A new color, a new plant, something different. This year I planted a perennial bed in the back of my yard. I’ve tried planting perennials many times. This year is different. This year we fenced in a little triangle in the back of my yard. This year I made a list of the all the perennials I wanted. This year I prepared the soil. This year I took into account early, mid and late season plants. This year I put the tall plants in back and the short plants in front. This year I planted spashes of pink, purple and yellow. This year I had a vision of what it will look like during August and I planted from that vision. I know what it’s going to be like because I can see into the future in my mind.

My future self is much the same. I sat down this year and laid out plans for this year. This year’s fit neatly into my master life plan. I know who I want to become. This year is a special year – 2019 – I was born in 1959. I turn 60 this year. I have a lot that I want to accomplish. I’ve set goals and made plans. I am working on them. Nothing ever turns out quite like the plan, but I can see my future self – I’ve named her. She has two nicknames, JennieB and Skinny Ginny. I talk to her. Best of all I know what she is going to be like in December 2019, because I have a vision and I am “planting” from that vision. I am thinner and stronger. I am someone who has learned to control impulses. I am joyfully committed, I am a life coach working with LDS empty nesters to plant their own future selves. I am laying on a beach at the end of the year celebrating all the changes and growth that have come this year.