Autobiographical

A Weighty Experiment

/ Bethany / 5 Comments

I sometimes struggle with whether, when, and how I should mention bodyweight changes on this blog.

I have been very grateful for online support in my healthy habits practice. Some of my favorite groups have a lot in common. They recommend focusing on:

  • the process of creating healthy habits, as opposed to the outcome
  •  loving your body as it is, now
  • finding a form of movement you enjoy doing consistently
  • learning to pay attention to your hunger and satiety signals, and recognizing factors that might prevent you from doing this
  • getting enough rest
  • taking care of mental and emotional health
  • getting treatment for any medical conditions you may have
  • setting healthy boundaries
  • cultivating patience and long term, sustainable habits that fit into your life

But when it comes to the question of “should we discuss bodyweight / weight loss?” ,  there is definitely a difference of opinion. Of course there are shades of gray in everything, but I’ve noticed that the support groups I love tend to fall into one of two camps: the “HAES/no weight loss talk allowed” camp, and the “discussion about habits that encourage weight loss is allowed and encouraged” camp.

Since I learn from and benefit from groups in both of these camps, I sometimes struggle with “what direction do I take for this blog?”

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Eeeek, A Food Post! (Intuitive Eating Progress)

/ Bethany / 7 Comments

In the past couple months I’ve had a lot of changes going on in my relationship with food. I’ve been making a lot of progress with eating intuitively. I’ve been hesitant to blog about this, but I wanted to at least document these changes for my own processing. And I kiiiinda want to share it, because I feel like it might help somebody, but I feel REALLY nervous about it, too.

One of the things I have been asking myself lately is “why am I hesitant to share publicly about food relationship developments?” A few answers come to mind:

  • I want to focus on healthy behaviors, not weight. Due to MANY years of conditioning, talking about food and nutrition still feels dangerously close to talking about body weight, for me. (Phew! Just acknowledging that helps a little bit.) I am afraid of people reading into the fact that I am talking about food and automatically think that I am promoting dieting or intentional weight loss.
  • As I am learning is common with kids who have their food micromanaged, I still have some internalized shame and guilt about food. It makes me feel incredibly vulnerable. It makes me feel like I am inviting commentary on my body weight or my food choices.
  • I think women in general are culturally programmed to hide the fact that they actually enjoy eating, so they feel shame and guilt when talking about food.

So, just to put all my cards on the table: In my food posts, I’m talking about my own personal relationship to food. I am not suggesting other people do what I do. I am not promoting dieting or intentional weight loss, regardless of what happens to my own body weight as a result of changes in my relationship with food. Even if my body weight changes as a result of changes in my relationship with food, I have no reason to believe that the new body weight will be permanent (as evidence shows that lasting weight loss is very uncommon).  I do enjoy eating. I think the cultural expectation that all women eat like birds is fucked up (nothing against people who are naturally small and naturally have bird-like appetites. You people carry on and keep doing you).

Okay then! Let’s begin.

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Happy Habitiversary to Me!

/ Bethany / 9 Comments

Today marks the one year point for when I set my first habit goals and set up a spreadsheet to track them . I’m calling it my habitiversary. I’m not sure I like the term; let me know if you think of something catchier ;).

I started with a just a couple, and now I have a color-coded rainbow spreadsheet to track many habits across many areas of my self-care. Not to mention a blog, and a series on how to help others get started making successful habit changes.

When I started last year, deciding to track healthy habits instead of a number on a scale or clothing size was unfamiliar territory for me. I decided I wanted to be open to whatever outcomes would come.

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As it Turns Out, The Water Is Fine.

/ Bethany / 4 Comments

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about a new habit I had started that was provoking some conflicted feelings. A month has gone by since I started this habit, and I’ve been having some thoughts and feelings I wanted to document before I forget about them. So, you get a post! Yay!

The habit goal I am writing about is “finish my food by 8pm, 25 times by the end of the year.” I was experiencing both optimism and apprehension about adopting this habit. My biggest fear was that a habit like this would send me back into a dieting/restriction oriented mindset.

Overall, this habit is going a lot better than I expected, both in terms of emotional response and implementation.

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Dear Parents Who Struggle With Self-Care

/ Bethany / 4 Comments

Dear Parents Who Struggle With Self-Care:

Are you feeling guilty about not taking better care of yourself (whatever that means to YOU)? Maybe you took great care of yourself (whatever that means to YOU) before you had kids, but now you feel pretty far off course?

I get it! The other day I caught myself thinking  “It is crazy how far off course I was from living a lifestyle conducive to self-care.” If you knew me when I was in my 20s, you would probably say the same thing. I was the most health-fanatical person of anyone I knew! Now, I’ve been working on habits that I would have considered pretty basic back then.  I would have thought that these habits were not nearly enough to maintain my health.

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A New Habit. Somewhat conflicted, but it’s going well

/ Bethany / 10 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I added a new habit to my list: finishing my food for the day by 8pm. My goal was to do this 25 times by the end of the year.

Why did I choose this goal? I’ve been noticing that if I eat too much, too late, I feel uncomfortable while going to sleep. My sleep is not great and I thought this habit might improve it. Why only 25 times? Because I have a past history with any “rule” that sounds like a diet rule, and I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I just wanted to start experimenting with this habit to see how it felt. 25 times amounted to roughly 3 times per week.  I was uncertain  as to whether focusing on this habit is a good idea in the first place. What if it sends me back to a dieting mindset?

I noticed those feelings and tried to address them. You don’t have to do it every day. The goal is 3 times per week. That leaves plenty of room for listening to your body. If you are  hungry and need to eat, go for it. It won’t mean throwing in the towel. If you didn’t get home in time to finish eating by 8, the goal is flexible enough to accommodate that. If you are watching a movie and want a snack for pleasure, not hunger….well, there is room for that too.

This is not about restricting myself from eating food that my body is hungry for. It’s about encouraging me to finish all that food early enough in the day that my sleep won’t be compromised by a full belly. It’s about noticing where I am in this process/journey of developing an intuitive eating practice…and noticing that I have made great strides with it during the daytime, and not as much in the evening. Therefore, it’s about giving myself an external reminder (the clock) during the time of day when I feel least likely to remember to eat in tune with my hunger and satiety cues. And since the goal is not perfection (but rather, 25 times by the end of the year), there is room for me to check in with myself and decide that I DO want or need to eat after 8pm on any given night for any reason.

Even acknowledging all of this flexibility, I still notice some uneasiness with this idea. Not necessarily in a “red flag” sense…maybe just in a “notice the sensation” sense that yoga teachers talk about when holding a challenging pose.

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A Stream of Consciousness About Comparisons, Culture and Feminism

/ Bethany / 1 Comment

I wrote this post a few weeks ago when I was in a brooding/depressed mood. I was coming down with a cold, my friend’s mother had just been tragically murdered by an abusive boyfriend, and the weather was gray and cold and damp. I barely got up off the couch all day. The world felt heavy.

I say these things to give you an idea of the frame of mind I was in when I wrote this post. I was processing sad feelings all around. Since I’ve written the post, I haven’t felt like actually posting it, because the mood had passed and writing all of this out helped me process it to the point where I didn’t feel the need to share it. 

I’m posting it today. The reason why is too boring to write about, but I hope some of you enjoy or can relate to this!

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For Crying Out Loud: How I Woke Up From Natural Parenting Dogma About Crying

/ Bethany / 8 Comments

When I started this blog, I didn’t envision parenting being a primary topic. The description at the top of the page says “habit cultivation, body positivity, olympic style weightlifting, seasonal vegetable cooking, and an occasional side of parenting.” If the last couple months have been indicative, I should probably switch the last two topics. The description should read “an occasional side of vegetable cooking.”

Yesterday I read a post by Everyday Battles, and it struck a chord with me. I could relate to a lot of what she wrote.

I spent my entire pregnancy surrounding myself with empowering messages, images, resources, etc. I believed I was fit, strong, healthy, level headed, supported, etc. I was the “perfect candidate” for pregnancy, labor, delivery, mindset and motherhood. It was natural! Why should I be concerned? I’ll bounce back because of how healthy and educated I am about this process. This woman did it! That woman looks amazing! My head was filled with powerful affirmations and expectations. I was confident to a fault.

Well, fuck me. That mentality failed me big time…

I, too, spent my entire pregnancy surrounding myself with empowering messages, images, resources, etc. I, too, believed I was fit, strong, healthy, level headed, supported, etc. I, too, was the “perfect candidate” for pregnancy, labor, delivery, mindset and motherhood. My head, too, was filled with powerful affirmations and expectations. I, too, was confident to a fault. And like Brianna writes, that mentality failed me too, big time.

When faced with a very long, drawn out, prodromal labor, I was not unprepared for my mounting levels of fear and exhaustion. My birth was very different from the way I had envisioned it. The first few weeks of my son’s life were the darkest weeks of mine. I have never in my life doubted myself as much as I did then.

But birth expectations were not the only way in which I feel the natural parenting community fails parents and kids.

During my pregnancy, I was also immersing myself in beliefs that were not helpful to me at all about crying babies.

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