Cleopatra_Nik

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I am going to assume at this point that those who choose to read my inspirations are either spiritual or open to spiritual messages so I am no longer going to disclaimer messages with prayers or spirituality. I’m a Christian. It’s part of who I am. I do vow, however, not to disperse messages that promote bigotry or hatred and if anything I post offends you, please comment on it.

Ok, now that the public service announcement is out of the way, a prayer:

“Lord, do to me and for me today as I have done to and for others yesterday.”

My mother uses this as a prayer to help her with selfishness. I think it’s brilliant. At first glance this may look like a spin on the golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) but it’s actually a lot different and it is in that difference that I draw my inspiration this week.

The Golden Rule. It’s nice in a “kumbaya” kind of way, but what is it really saying? What we draw from it is that we should treat each other with humanity and respect, but the actual rule is flawed.

My main concern is that it puts you in the driver’s seat, commanding you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, how each of us would have others do unto us varies. We each have different sets of standards. My biggest beef, however, is that most of us don’t live up to it. How many of us put others first? How many of us neglect ourselves in favor of caring for others? How many of us hate ourselves yet worship others? And if you don’t now…how many of us have in the past? And how many people in our lives have taken and taken because of those tendencies in us and not given anything back. So how you have people do unto you may not be so great. And if you do unto others as you have others do unto you, you may just be fostering an extremely cyclical and unhealthy relationship.

So the above prayer. It takes you out of control. It puts it in God’s hands. What does that do? Well first of all it holds you to task about how you actually treat other people. As humans, naturally we act differently when our actions are being observed than when they are unobserved. And we especially react differently when the actions we perform are the actions that will also be performed upon us. That is what this prayer gets at. It is basically saying, “ok, you want me to treat you good? I am only going to treat you as well today as you treated others yesterday…” and suddenly, as if by some miracle, you start to treat others much, much better. Because, as the bible says ad nauseum, and as is highlighted especially in the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi “it is in giving that we receive; it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” It is in blessing others that we are blessed.

I get PM’s from lots of people who thank me for posting recipes, or my inspirations, or some other thing I said or did. What I have to say right here and right now is thank you to all of you. Because writing these inspirations, posting the recipes, being on the boards, helping others…I would argue it blesses me as much, if not more, than it blesses those whom I claim to help.

I highlight this because it is important to make sure you are practicing the spirit of assistance if you claim to be assisting someone. If you come to a helping task and it feels burdensome, you are not of the spirit of assistance. If you come to a task of helping and you find yourself thanking God (or your chosen higher power) for the opportunity to be able to do this, you are in the spirit of assistance. Y’all can argue me down on that one and I am not budging!

So as you go through your lives this weekend and beyond, make sure your heart is right when going to help someone. It’s ok to say no if your heart is not in the right place. Because if the above prayer is answered, then someone will give you that respect today (in being straightforward and by not making things worse by trying to “help” with an off-spirit) that you showed someone else yesterday.

Have a great weekend.

How’s this for over-simplification. My wisdom for this week is this:

Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we want to do it.

Ok, so that seems really simple but let’s unpack that. I’ll use myself as an example. I can run a mile in about 10 minutes. At the end of the 10 minutes I won’t be out of breath, I won’t be clutching my chest, I will be mildly sweaty but not overly so. Now ask me how often I actually do that.

But if I can do it, why don’t I? Well…because I don’t want to.

I think it’s important to point this out because there is this misconception that when we get smaller (or because we’ve gotten smaller) we will automatically love to do things like exercise or eat healthy. To believe this is setting yourself up for potential disappointment.

You may or you may not love to exercise. You may or you may not embrace healthy eating. The only true way to tell is to walk the walk. Still, we have had this surgery and there are requirements we must follow. So let’s say you have your surgery and you don’t like to exercise or you don’t like the healthier foods. What do you do?

There are some I’ve seen who don’t change a thing about their habits even after surgery. And they do lose weight. I will admit that. Some have lost even more than I have. So what’s the incentive?

My friends, if you’ve been following my inspirations and taking them to heart you will know that it is not about individual actions. It is about collective investment. It’s not about “did you go to the gym today?” it is about “do you find yourself worthy enough to take care of your body?” That needn’t be hard. I think sometimes we overcomplicate this thing. Things like activity (because not everyone needs to be an athlete), healthy eating choices, drinking water, quitting smoking, or WHATEVER…flows naturally from a healthy sense of self preservation. Self preservation is the foundation of self love. If you do not have self love, or if you are not developing self love, you will find the concepts of taking truly good care of yourself very difficult.

You’ll think “what harm will it do if I eat chips and ice cream? I don’t dump and I can’t eat as much of it as before…” or “I am way more active than I used to be before…I don’t really need to do anything more…”

If you think this way and you are truly happy and satisfied with your life and health…you are a rare bird indeed. For the rest of us, I empower you to ask yourself the hard questions. “Why do I not find myself worth the effort of change?” and “what can I do to begin to see myself as worthy?” Because the lifestyle changes that will make you successful in your new life in the long-term will at first feel laborious. It is like medicine. We don’t like taking it, but we do because we know we need it. If you are fortunate (or tenacious) eventually it becomes more like food was in our old life. We enjoy it and we can’t get enough.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you will like doing it.

So don’t set yourself up for disappointment if you find that you don’t like the post-op requirements. The surgery was not a magic wand. You are still you. But DO make a plan to get around your preferences, your road blocks, your self esteem issues, your fears and do what you need to do. If it was your child, you would do that right? If it was your husband/wife, you would do that right? So why not do it for you?

Have a great week.

I talk a lot about trusting the surgery, seeing the changes in yourself, emerging with an identity intact with which you are comfortable.

Now let’s talk about when the shit hits the fan (yes, as a Christian woman I do swear from time to time when I feel that the swear word is the most efficient word I can use).

Life is messy. Maybe you lost your job. Or your dog died. Or your mom died. Or your husband/wife wants to divorce you. Or your car broke down. Or you only have 32 cents left in your bank account and the mortgage is due. Unfortunately life does not have an “easy button” all the time and you have to deal with that even after having come through a dramatic weight loss surgery.

Unfortunate also is the fact that for many of us, those life stressors are what drives us to eat things we are not supposed to eat and behave in ways we are not supposed to behave.

Why do we do this?

I have a theory: food is comfortable. It tastes good. That doesn’t change. Even in a world where people, places and things (along with our respective relationship to them) can change, what tastes good has always tasted good and always will. So when we are stressed out we need something familiar. We need something to feel good. Eating feels good. We are hardwired that way and, frankly, there ain’t a damn thing we can do about that short of lobotomy. So what do you do?

I could give you a list of things you can do instead of eating but we’re all grown folks. I’d rather talk about how we approach these situations rather than dictating to you what you should do. My mom always taught me there is a lesson and a blessing in every hardship. I would go even further and say there is an opportunity. Yes, in every hardship there is an opportunity, no matter the severity.

Universally I can say the opportunity is to use the tools in your toolbox. And all of us have a toolbox whether we know it or not. We don’t have to be superheroes. There are people who will help us if only we put out the call. There are things we can let go of if only we had the courage. Learning how to not only be strong but to be vulnerable, and vocally vulnerable, is important when trying to cope. Others cannot know you are suffering if you are suffering in silence. And if they don’t know, they can’t help you.

So this week I empower you to utilize your tools to deal with the adversities of life. Food is for fuel and for enjoyment. It should not be the thing that makes our world right when things go wrong. It should not be the line between insanity and calm. The real work of this surgery, the hard work, is finding what truly is that great corrector…that clear line…and using the tools in your toolbox I have every confidence you have the ability to figure that out for yourselves.

Have a great week.

Hello Friends~

Sorry about the sporadic inspirations but it’s like this: if I don’t feel inspired or if my thinking is particularly convoluted, I don’t think I’m doing any great service to you to write something just to write something. So I wait until I am actually inspired to write, hoping that whatever God puts in my heart to write to you will benefit you in some way!

A programming note—I’m going to stop PM’ing my inspirations. OH refuses to make a function to have a group mailing list and keeping up with who wants it and who doesn’t is cumbersome. I will post on the RNY board when there is a new inspiration and keep an eye on your OH profile start page! Keep the comments coming, I love them! It helps me to hear your thoughts and feedback on what I am thinking and saying.

Ok, enough of that…down to business.

Trust. What do you know about it?

Trust is an issue that I struggle with a lot and I would argue a lot of us struggle with it. That is why we see so many posts that are titled as follows, “Stall at only two weeks???” or “Is this all I am going to lose???” Because in reality there is nothing wrong with our bodies or our pouches. Our bodies are a near-perfect machine and work the way they were designed to work. The surgery, while not perfect, works the way it is supposed to work. So why do we panic? We panic because we don’t trust in the process. We think (quite self-centeredly I might add) that we are that ONE person in the world for whom this surgery won’t work. That even though we are doing everything right, success will elude us.

And then as you get further along in the process, you start to post things like, “XXX food is the DEVIL!” or, to put another spin on it you post things like “WOW moment!” Both of those come from places of mistrust (although the latter is a positive outcome whereas the former is a negative). Food is not the devil and slip-ups happen mainly because we don’t work the tools in our toolbox and we don’t work the tools in the toolbox because we don’t fully trust them all the time. We think we should be able to “wing it.” We think that that makes us normal. We don’t trust the rigidness that must be observed to be vigilant when in reality all we really need to do is accept that we are human and fallible and that sometimes we are just simply going to mess up. 

The WOW moment is a result of mistrust. If you trusted the process and trusted that YOU can do it, the wow moment would not exist. I’m not saying the wow moment is a bad thing. It’s a WONDERFUL thing and we should all have them. Not everything bourne of shaky habits results in a bad thing. It’s kinda like a dandelion. It’s comes from a weed, but it’s still pretty and we can recognize that.

Then you get to where I am sitting currently. I’ve been struggling these last few weeks with trust. To give a real life example, I overpack food and I over portion food sometimes because I don’t trust that my little pouch will be satisfied with the proper portion sizes. So in real life, how do you get around that? I was talking to my mother about that today. And I told her sometimes you just have do a “hard switch.” You have to say to yourself (out loud or in your head), “stop it. This is not what you are supposed to be doing. It’s not healthy and you need to stop.” That simple admonishment most of the time will get me back in line but if it doesn’t I remember the following.

I don’t have to trust anything of this world. I don’t have to trust my family, I don’t have to trust my friends, I don’t even have to trust this surgery. I trust God (and for those of you that are atheists, maybe you have some other thing that you trust like universal truth…whatever it is that you trust that is your logic and reason—mine is God). I trust that He brought me to this place with the intention that I succeed. I trust that He’s given me every tool I need to succeed. I trust that even on the hard days He still walks beside me, but that it is up to ME to make the changes. So that leads me to ask myself, “what is the worst that could possibly happen if I portion out my food properly?” “what’s the worst that can happen if I go and do my workouts as I am supposed to?” “what’s the worst that can happen if I say no to overextending myself and focusing on me for a change?” Truly, what is the worst that can happen? And then I imagine it and I ask myself, “is this worst case scenario bigger than God and God’s ability to handle it?” Then my little obstacle seems kinda ridiculous. And I get through it.

So this week I challenge you to look at where you are with trust. Does mistrust hold you back in any way? How can YOU get around that? Most importantly, what’s stopping you?

Have a great rest of the week.