I’m still in Chicago and feeling all sorts of inspired. It’s so energizing to be around so many women doing their thing, and the older I get the more I appreciate this type of environment.
Tonight was the second annual BlogHer Fashion Show and I shed a tear of happiness. There is nothing I love more than to see women of all shapes and sizes celebrate and OWN who they are.
Ive known Brett for years. Ive stalked her successes enjoyed watching her succeed & reading her book. BookS. She’s got a new one out. Ive already gots a copy…
SO thrilled to be providing a guest post on Mizfit. Carla, as all of you know, is such an inspiration and I hold her in the highest of regards.
It has been such an honor to get to know her over the last few years, to have her in my circle, and most recently, to have her fabulous endorsement of my newest book – A Whole New You: Six Steps to Ignite Change for Your Best Life. And so, by way of association, that means I’m honored to have all of YOU reading this post.
Almost everyone I know wants to change something about themselves or their life, but so many of us struggle to actually do it. And so, I wrote A Whole New You to help inspire others to take the leap and create the life they want. Call it personal transformation, reinvention, or just plain old, change, I believe in it. I’ve morphed myself numerous times over the years, trying to become better in one area or another.
My passion for personal transformation started when I was 18. For as long as I can remember, I was the child picked last in gym class. As a result, anything sports- or exercise-oriented became synonymous with embarrassment. Unfortunately, this daily humiliation over a decade of time had a huge impact on my self-confidence and self-esteem. Not good.
When I got to college, however, I went through a series of events that made me realize I was tired of the way I was perceived in junior and senior high schools, and desperately wanted to change my image. I wanted to feel and look fit and strong. It was then that I started exercising regularly and eating well. In very little time, I felt empowered and confident, and I started to shed some of the hang-ups I hauled around for years.
My success relied on several factors, including my ability to let go of the negativity of the past, to make a commitment to something new, and to stick with it for the longer term. Yet, the most important factor to my success was simply that I wanted to change…that I was passionate about making my life different.
In A Whole New You, I discuss how change and transformation require some very basic principles, with the first and foremost being that you must WANT to make the change:
“Discontent + PASSION Drive Change”It is a burning desire and a fire within that will carry you through the challenges that come with attempting change. Change is never easy, and if you don’t wholeheartedly want it, it just isn’t going to happen.
Now that the New Year has begun, many of us have resolved to change something. If you are one of these people, I want you to ask yourself one very simple question:
“How much do I want to make this change?”
Maybe you have considered losing weight. Maybe you’ve considered a job change. Or, maybe you feel it is time to quit smoking. Whatever it is, do you really want it? Can you feel a burning desire for it? If so, you are setting yourself up for success. If not, it might be time to reevaluate your decision.
Changing for other people, or because we feel we have to or should is never a successful way to begin any transformation.
Think about what YOU want.
Think about what is going to make YOU happy.
Shut out external voices telling you all of the “shoulds” and “have tos,” or worse, the “can’ts” and “don’ts.”
Only you know what is best for you and only you know what you are capable of.
Believe in yourself and be who YOU want to be and transform to build the life YOU want.
What are you waiting for?
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at any time…you can find me on my own site at SheerBalance.com, on Facebook and via Twitter/brettblumenthal. I hope to connect with you!
And remember how I shared with you how I incorporate green tea drinking into my Shakeology 3-Day Cleanses with good success?
Welp, I’m not blogging live from the Pediatrician’s office and not currently on a Cleanse, but something interesting is still happening. I started drinking 1 cup of green tea per day since the cold weather is back again. I’m not doing anything else different. And I gotta tell you, that measly 1 cup-o green tea is making me go pee-pee more. Black tea does NOT have this same affect on me.
Turn outs green tea acts as a diuretic. Lots of people have experienced the same pee-peeing thing as me. Is this how green tea partly accomplishes its proclaimed weight loss wonders? Welp, maybe, I guess. Green tea can obviously be good for people who need to let go of excess water weight that no doubt skews the number on the scale.
But there’s more to the green tea weight loss story….
From University of Maryland Medical Center:
Clinical studies suggest that green tea extract may boost metabolism and help burn fat. One study confirmed that the combination of green tea and caffeine improved weight loss and maintenance in overweight and moderately obese individuals. Some researchers speculate that substances in green tea known as polyphenols, specifically the catechins, are responsible for the herb’s fat-burning effect… [full article]
When I hear phrases like “fat burning effect” I tend to get skeptical, but green tea is a natural substance we’re talking about here. Green tea is food for our bodies. And the right food at that! Foods such as this truly have the power to heal, restore and make whole. This is a plus for me since love green tea so much, but which brands I am drinking? There are two green teas I prefer and recommend.
The 1st tea I recommend is Twinings of London Mint Green Tea
The 2nd tea I recommend is Sencha Organic Green Tea.
I’m obviously going continue with my green tea drinking for warmth and leisurely enjoyment, but now I’ll also be paying close attention to how green tea possibly ushers me into my fitness goals faster.
I sweeten my tea with Stevia in the Raw, which you can definitely get at the grocery store. It’s a natural, zero calorie sweetener (not a chemical) derived from the Stevia Rebaudiana plant. But please, don’t buy the Truvia brand of Stevia – it’s got extra stuff added into it.
One word of caution: Drinking green tea on an empty stomach makes my tummy hurt. This may not happen to you, but if it does, just know that you have to eat something first (problem solved). There’s a ton of health benefits to green tea, including cardiovascular health and cancer prevention. Green tea is even linked to flu prevention, so drink up!
Happy tea sloshing, baby.
The guy yells back, “Yeah! 40 pounds!”
“Awesome, dude!”
“Thanks!”
You know me. I couldn’t NOT ask the guy how he did it. After all, if he was willing to yell his weight loss across a crowded bar, I figured I could ask him his story.
“I got my driver’s license picture taken and I didn’t like my face,” he said. “So I decided to lose weight.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Diet and exercise,” he said.
Two weeks later, I was with some friends in a different bar. Two guys walked in. One ordered a Guinness and the other a Coors Light. I heard Mr. Guinness (rail-thin) ask Mr. Coors Light (slightly overweight) when he had to leave to go work out. Mr. Coors Light said he could have two beers and then he would go home. Work out? On a Friday night?
“Wow, that’s discipline,” I said. “Working out on a Friday night?”
Mr. Guinness jumped in. “This guy here’s lost 40 pounds! Come on, man, tell her.”
“I lost 40 pounds,” Mr. Coors Light laughed. “I’m gonna lose 20 more.”
“Wow, that’s great!” I said. “How did you do it?”
He shrugged and looked at me like, Duh, lady.
“Diet and exercise,” he said.
After his second beer, Mr. Coors Light ordered a hoagie to go for his wife (so sweet!) and said he’d only nibble on a bit of it on the way home, then he was going to hit the treadmill while watching ESPN.
Both men got me thinking, ‘Is this a guy thing?’ Both lost weight just because they decided to, and they did it without Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, LA Weight Loss, NutriSystem, or Optifast. No zone/beach/acai/colon/miracle-pill diets, they just cut back on the hoagies and started working out.
And what about those conversations in public? I know I’ve told my story on Oprah and sundry other places including my blogs, but not without a certain degree of shame, fear and, yes, embarrassment. Even now I cringe when I watch the videos of the shows I’ve been on. If someone yelled from across a crowded room that I looked great and asked if I’d lost weight, I’d be mortified. And I certainly wouldn’t yell back, “Yeah! 170 pounds!” If one of my friends flat out announced to a stranger in a bar that I’d lost weight…again, instant mortification. Yet, the two guys who lost weight seemed completely unfazed by the questions or my inquiries. In fact, they were down right giddy about it. Didn’t bother them one bit.
Go them!
I want to be like them one day – fearless, accepting, and genuinely proud of my accomplishments among strangers who aren’t interested in weight issues. It’s easy to be comfortable talking about weight with people who “get it,” but it’s another to discuss it with, oh say, a potential date. Sure, if I meet someone, I wouldn’t have to tell him about my weight loss, but in this Google-able world, it doesn’t take much to learn my story.
So I need to put on my big girl panties and get comfortable. It can’t be just a guy thing. It has to be a Lynn thing, too.
While I journaled and thought long and hard about why I wanted to lose weight this last time, my “One Thing” that put me on this journey was a photograph on the night of my daughter’s 20th birthday.
It was December 12, 2004. I’d offered to cook Cassie one of her favorite meals, but she insisted we go out.
“It’s snowing,” I said.
“Mom…,” she said, like a finger snap.
“Fine,” I sighed.
There was no use arguing with her. It was only flurries, and she’d just trump me with the guilt card and make me feel even worse. I pulled my hair back in a ponytail like I always did. My haircut was uneven and the color was a combination of store-bought dye, dark roots, and strands of gray. I’d stopped going to the salon because the chair was as uncomfortable as staring at my reflection in the mirror. I trimmed my bangs when the hair grew past my eyes, and I lopped off the ends when they looked frayed. I bought a bottle of color every few months when the gray made me as depressed as my weight.
I pulled a stretchy red sweater over my stretchy black pants with the small hole and a permanent stain on the leg. Not much fit anymore and I didn’t have the money to upgrade my wardrobe another size. I had garbage bags full of clothes in every size from 16 to 28, but what fit now was 30/32 and I only had a few shirts and pants that size. I threw on some socks and boots but no jewelry. My goal was always to remain as unnoticed as possible.
“You look nice,” said Larry as he put on his winter coat.
“Whatever,” I said.
We met Cassie and my other daughter Carlene at the restaurant, and despite the weather, the place was filled with pre-holiday parties. Most of the diners didn’t notice I was there, but I imagined everyone thought as I walked in, Oh my, she’s big. And probably a few did. We were seated next to a window with a view of the snow falling into the Allegheny River and I eased into a chair, red-faced from the short walk from the parking lot.
The girls were animated, as usual, talking over each other and carrying on two conversations at once. My girls loved me at any weight, so I knew it was futile to say no to a photo when Cassie handed her camera to Larry and said, “Take a picture of me and Mom!”
“Smile,” he said, and I did.
“That’s a nice photo of us, Mom,” said Cassie as she scrolled through the photos.
“Yes, honey, it is,” I lied.
At first glance I did the usual, “How could you let yourself get that big?” self-flagellating ritual. Then something caught my eye. Something bigger than my third chin. Cassie had placed her cheek next to mine and she was beaming. She was happy because she was with her mother on her birthday. Not her morbidly obese mother, her ill-dressed mother, her isolated, guarded, self-loathing mother – those were my descriptors. Cassie loved me just the way I was. “Losing weight, really losing it,” my friend Frankie once told me, “demands that you cut the pounds away from your sense of self, not yourself away from your essence.”
I’d allowed weight to become my essence. That photo of Cassie and me – my final “One Thing” – challenged me to really see and feel the nearly 300-pound body in which I lived and to decide once and for all if I was going to allow my weight to be my personal judge and jury.
A few weeks later, I started my last descent down the scale. It had to be the last time because I knew if I didn’t figure out a way to lose weight and keep it off that I would die. Maybe not the next day or the next year, but young. It wasn’t just my daughter in that photo. It was Larry, Carlene, my stepsons, parents, siblings, and all the other people who loved me.
That photograph took me outside the world of my 300-pound body and showed me the real reason to lose weight.
Most of us have One Thing in common. What is yours?
While I journaled and thought long and hard about why I wanted to lose weight this last time, my “One Thing” that put me on this journey was a photograph on the night of my daughter’s 20th birthday.
It was December 12, 2004. I’d offered to cook Cassie one of her favorite meals, but she insisted we go out.
“It’s snowing,” I said.
“Mom…,” she said, like a finger snap.
“Fine,” I sighed.
There was no use arguing with her. It was only flurries, and she’d just trump me with the guilt card and make me feel even worse. I pulled my hair back in a ponytail like I always did. My haircut was uneven and the color was a combination of store-bought dye, dark roots, and strands of gray. I’d stopped going to the salon because the chair was as uncomfortable as staring at my reflection in the mirror. I trimmed my bangs when the hair grew past my eyes, and I lopped off the ends when they looked frayed. I bought a bottle of color every few months when the gray made me as depressed as my weight.
I pulled a stretchy red sweater over my stretchy black pants with the small hole and a permanent stain on the leg. Not much fit anymore and I didn’t have the money to upgrade my wardrobe another size. I had garbage bags full of clothes in every size from 16 to 28, but what fit now was 30/32 and I only had a few shirts and pants that size. I threw on some socks and boots but no jewelry. My goal was always to remain as unnoticed as possible.
“You look nice,” said Larry as he put on his winter coat.
“Whatever,” I said.
We met Cassie and my other daughter Carlene at the restaurant, and despite the weather, the place was filled with pre-holiday parties. Most of the diners didn’t notice I was there, but I imagined everyone thought as I walked in, Oh my, she’s big. And probably a few did. We were seated next to a window with a view of the snow falling into the Allegheny River and I eased into a chair, red-faced from the short walk from the parking lot.
The girls were animated, as usual, talking over each other and carrying on two conversations at once. My girls loved me at any weight, so I knew it was futile to say no to a photo when Cassie handed her camera to Larry and said, “Take a picture of me and Mom!”
“Smile,” he said, and I did.
“That’s a nice photo of us, Mom,” said Cassie as she scrolled through the photos.
“Yes, honey, it is,” I lied.
At first glance I did the usual, “How could you let yourself get that big?” self-flagellating ritual. Then something caught my eye. Something bigger than my third chin. Cassie had placed her cheek next to mine and she was beaming. She was happy because she was with her mother on her birthday. Not her morbidly obese mother, her ill-dressed mother, her isolated, guarded, self-loathing mother – those were my descriptors. Cassie loved me just the way I was. “Losing weight, really losing it,” my friend Frankie once told me, “demands that you cut the pounds away from your sense of self, not yourself away from your essence.”
I’d allowed weight to become my essence. That photo of Cassie and me – my final “One Thing” – challenged me to really see and feel the nearly 300-pound body in which I lived and to decide once and for all if I was going to allow my weight to be my personal judge and jury.
A few weeks later, I started my last descent down the scale. It had to be the last time because I knew if I didn’t figure out a way to lose weight and keep it off that I would die. Maybe not the next day or the next year, but young. It wasn’t just my daughter in that photo. It was Larry, Carlene, my stepsons, parents, siblings, and all the other people who loved me.
That photograph took me outside the world of my 300-pound body and showed me the real reason to lose weight.
Most of us have One Thing in common. What is yours?
Over the last month, I’ve instigated some major changes for my life; painfully necessary changes that will take me away from many of the comfort zones in which I’ve cloistered myself since losing weight. But why I’m forging ahead into this unknown is because if I’ve learned nothing else in the last six years it’s that the person I am inside – at any size – is the person most in need of my love and protection.
I believe this is true for everyone, even those of you who have children or other family or friends who you say “come first.” I used to feel that way, too. I used to put everyone and everything else first and me somewhere way down the list. But the only way I could start this path – this time – of weight loss was to accept the fact that if I didn’t acknowledge, value and protect my self-worth, I would be perpetually…in a word…screwed.
Every time I lost weight in the past, I thought when I got to goal, my problems would be solved. And every time I was wrong. This time was no different. I readily admit that I wanted to run away from 300 pounds as fast as I could; leave it buried somewhere in my past. But 300-pound me tagged along, and it was around 200 pounds that I learned that life was what I made of it, obese or not, and I couldn’t run away from 300-pound me, or the me who weighed 139 pounds for five minutes in 1990, or 170 in 1987, or 120 in junior high school. I was all of those weights yet only one person. Me.
When I was 300 pounds, I took comfort in the fact that no one really looked at me – not “that” way, anyway. I didn’t dress to impress, and the expectation of me stemmed usually above the neck. I was smart, I loved what I did for a living (I was an antiques dealer as well as being a writer), and my family loved me for me. Then I lost weight and people DID start looking at me “that” way, and for awhile I allowed the expectation of others to become my expectation: stay pretty and happy because that’s what thin is all about.
Wrong. Thin can solve or prevent a lot of physical ailments, but thin does not resolve issues of self-esteem.
For example, I still apologize excessively, and sometimes I feel I don’t have the right to ask for what I need. These behaviors stem from deep-seeded, long ago issues that I chip away at resolution year after year, the ones that can’t be solved in a few sessions with a psychologist or through ice cream or retail therapy.
And so here I am in 2010, thin and still chipping away at the me underneath.
But, as Martha says, “It’s a good thing.”
I’m not the keeper of the keys, or have all the answers for weight loss, maintenance and life. But I will continue to share here what I observe and know to be true for myself. I will also continue to do my best to stay at this weight because it feels like home to me, which is good because I’ll be moving soon and I need the comfort of the way I feel about myself in this body. We are one, after all, my body and my mind, and while we’re far from perfect, we’re all I’ve got.
From the outside, and even to me sometimes, it seems like I have everything I wanted at the beginning of my journey. But I don’t and that’s OK.
Maintaining this latest and largest weight loss is part of my life, but it is not my life. My life is me, and I’m taking care of me, even though this new path will be bumpy as hell. But it’s with a smile and only a little timidity that I say to the uncertainty of the next few months, “Ready or not, here I come!”
And I promise to take you all with me.
