TIPS & TRICKS
Release, not loss
It’s not a loss, you’re not sad that the fat that’s been stored on your body is being alternatively utilized.
You personally are making the choice to take the stored energy you have and release it. You are in control. Fat isn’t something that can be stolen or lost, it’s just something that can be stored and released.
It helps me to think of weight release as a binary choice like that. Either I’m engaging in behaviors that aid my body in stored energy release, or I’m engaging in behaviors that contribute to my body storing energy.
YOU SHOULD JUST…
Whether you’ve recently stored enough energy to think of yourself as “fat” when you don’t want to be, or you’ve been that way most of your life, odds are if you look bigger than people are generally comfortable with, then someone close to you may end up saying something to you about your weight, and they may also give you “advice” that you didn’t ask for.
When anyone does this, try to remember that their “advice” is probably coming from one of two very different places. Either they’re genuinely concerned about your health and well-being, or, they’re trying to make themselves feel better. I’ve found that most of the time I’m confronted it’s more of the latter rather than the former.
Here’s how you spot the difference.
Someone who is genuinely concerned about your health and well-being will have taken the time to thoughtfully plan out how they’re going to approach you and discuss your weight with you. They’ll start a conversation where they’ll listen and respond to you, and then later they’ll follow up with you.
Someone who is trying to make themselves feel better will not have done any of those things. They’ll see you and quickly say something, or maybe they’ll try to start a conversation with you about your weight in the moment. That conversation will be less about listening to you and more about them responding. Often they’ll say something like, “You should just stop eating/drinking X and exercise more!”, which might be frustratingly true, but those are also only two steps out of several that will need to be done to effectively release weight. There’s a difficult voyage of self discovery through professional therapy that will need to be reckoned with. The person confronting you to make themselves feel better will not understand that the behaviors that come easily for them don’t necessarily come as easily for everyone else. It’s their own cognitive bias that they’re indulging in. It makes them feel better because they think they’re somehow more qualified to instruct you on “weight loss” based only on the fact that you weigh more than them.
I find that the classiest thing you can do in that moment is thank that person for the concern, move on to another conversation, and forget about what you just successfully tolerated. They will almost certainly be doing the same thing.
Your guts
The discipline you apply to your ideals and weight release goals will fade in the face of uncomfortable, persistent, hunger. So I decided to try and look at hunger from a completely physiological standpoint. What is happening when you feel your stomach rumble?
In the simplest terms, it’s your digestive tract rubbing against itself. When you don’t have that feeling of “hunger” it’s because there’s food or liquid to muffle those sounds inside of your digestive tract. That’s it. For instance, if you were to rub two pieces of sandpaper against one another, you can hear the grit rubbing together, but if you put a peeled banana in between those pieces of sandpaper and rub them together again, you won’t hear the same harsh sound anymore.
Once I learned that, I decided to watch the simulated process of food and liquid being broken down by acid and enzymes, and pushed through the digestive tract. No matter what you put into your body, it all goes through the same process as the body sorts what it needs from your meal and discards, or stores, the rest.
Cornu-”cope”-ia.
Once you begin your weight release voyage, eating and drinking as a coping mechanism will begin to fade as a viable option. It may be a good idea to begin cultivating new coping mechanisms. This may mean that you’ll have to put yourself “out there” and begin interacting with people, which I know the thought of can be terrifying especially if you have personal challenges that may prevent you from organically executing that.
Coping mechanisms that force you to interact with other people, I think, are good. Often the anxiety surrounding an interaction is worse than dealing with the actual negative consequences of that interaction, which is important to remember as you cultivate a new coping mechanism into something viable, and pleasant, for you.
If you don’t attempt to cultivate new coping mechanisms, as in plural, then you run the risk of relying on whatever your brain gets comfortable with. As I began my own weight release voyage, I realized while my brain was phasing out food and drink as a coping mechanism that it was also my main way of dealing with life. I used it as a panacea for every emotion I had, negative or positive. I then realized that if I only relied on one coping mechanism again, then I would use that coping mechanism as much as a person would use food and drink to get to 600+ pounds.
Now, I have several coping mechanisms including but not limited to…
The gym, where I say hello and take an interest in people.
A therapist I say hello to and speak with every other week.
A mental health support group, where I say hello and talk to people.
Comedy club open mics, where I say hello and poorly tell jokes.
A semi weekly dinner with friends.
Cooking healthy meals for myself and others.
Video games, movies, and other media I enjoy alone.
M2
Manifesting
Motivation
You know what you want to do, but you just can’t seem to get around to it. You need to find a way to motivate yourself, but how? Everyone finds that part of the process difficult. The answer is simple, but it’s not easy.
Start.
Force yourself to start whatever it is you think you want to do. Start several times if you have to, but if you don’t take the time to get started on whatever it is you want to accomplish then you will never find yourself being motivated to follow through.
That’s the secret to manifesting motivation, you have to begin and force yourself to get invested in the outcome of what it is you want to accomplish, whether that’s a weight release voyage, or a new skill you want to learn.
food, in marvelous color!
This tip/trick is easy. Try to add as many bright colors to your meal as you can. You may find yourself craving your meal more, and you may find it more satiating as well. I personally like to utilize tri-colored bell peppers because I enjoy the way they both look and taste.
Try cutting a few up and then mixing a cup of greek yogurt with some ranch seasoning and fresh cracked pepper as a snack. It’s not exactly what you may be used to, but as a healthy alternative to a buttermilk based condiment, it’s not half bad.
STAYING LIT
I like to watch movies and TV shows while I eat, I always have. That meant most of the time I was eating I was also in a dark room with food that I couldn’t see well.
I began to think about the other things that humans do in the dark. Occasionally, we use the dark to hunt, but I found that most of the time I was using the dark to keep myself and my actions obfuscated from judgement. I was eating large pizzas I’d have delivered to my home, something I was ashamed of, and I was doing it in the dark because it felt more comfortable.
I didn’t want to continue to associate eating meals with behavior that I was ashamed of, so at that point I began to eat all of my meals with all of the lights on.
Did it work? Maybe. Is it kind of wacky? Yeah. Do you have much to lose by trying it for a while? Probably not.
DEMONS
They’re not “demons”, they’re behavior patterns that you want to modify. Calling them “demons” implies that they’re somehow supernatural and require some kind of supernatural solution, which isn’t true.
Call them what they are. They’re behaviors that you’ve decided you want to put real effort into modifying so you can live a better version of the life you’re living now.
Don’t psych yourself out by giving those behaviors scary names that breathe fire and kill for fun.
You can’t naturally breathe fire, right? Neither can any of the learned behaviors that were created inside of your non fire-breathing head. The most you could call them are forces of nature, and we build defenses to deal with forces of nature.