I feel like I have tried everything. All the diets. All the working out. All the things. Yet I’ve not managed to drop weight, keep it off or do much at all that is significant overall in changing my weight.
Here’s my pattern. I get frustrated at the size of my clothing and the fact my thighs will rub together. I notice something about my arms or face that gives me a surge of gotta do something about thinking. The logical answer is to clean up my eating right? Go on a diet. Break old habits and put new ones in their place. Basically get my shit together and stop doing the things that are resulting in what I see in the mirror.
Well ok then. Diet it is.
I immediately go to the grocery store and buy all the food that are healthy. No chips, cookies, snacks or anything that is outside this healthy food me and the family will not be eating. We are all going to benefit from this change. I can’t wait for how good we’re going to feel and how much better we’ll be eating.
For the first few days there’s arguments with our son about not eating his vegetables. My husband supports me by quietly eating his own salad drenched in ranch dressing. I crunch the veggies and act like it all tastes great so I don’t understand what they are complaining about. After the dishes are done and the salad bowl put up with commitment to eat salad again for lunch tomorrow we start to settle down for the night. The TV goes on, hot water for showers gets used up and pjs put on.
Here is where it all goes wrong.
We’re feeling snacky. We’re a little hungry from the light dinner. Ice cream sounds great, who’s getting up to get it? While you’re at it grab some crackers, fruit snacks, cookies hidden at the back of the pantry and maybe an orange because well we are trying to be healthy after all.
After about 3 weeks, I can’t see the point of continuing. My son refuses to eat dinner, we’re all snacking at night anyway so why bother? I have a few late nights at work and we’re all back eating hot dogs, cereal and whatever is quick because who had time to prepare anything?
Time and again.
In talking with my friends, they also struggle with keeping up the expectations of dieting and getting the family to eat better too. They too have a hard time getting meals fixed and having them be healthy when you’re running from long days at work to soccer practice to homework and bedtimes.
Somewhere in there you need to feed everyone and it’s just easier to have something than something we don’t have time to prepare and serve that no one wants to eat.
What gives?
Well, for me and friends I’ve spoken to about this it was our pant size going up. What other options were there? We’ve tried them all and at the end of the day, nothing fits into our life and our pants we have don’t fit at all without cutting off our breath. Sometimes you just have to admit it isn’t going to work and move on.
Yet I’m supposed to know better. I’ve spent a lot of time, energy, brain matter and money on education teaching me holistic health and natural health which is largely based on nutrition to heal the body. When I work with clients it is easy to give them the advice, guidance and information I know will help them. Yet they too are right where I am in trying to juggle it all and figure it out and do this new improved me thing on top of it all. It doesn’t work for them either.
We have all tried it all, bought it all, been there and done that. What else is there?
I had to rethink this for my own health and that of my clients. What kind of natural health doctor would I be if I couldn’t even help myself and my own family? Really hard to take advice from the fat girl who’s telling you to eat celery while admitting she can’t get it to work for herself right? This is completely the conversation I had regularly with myself too. It deeply had me questioning why I had even invested in the education which I believed in fully but couldn’t get to work in my own life.
Where to even begin.
It hasn’t been easy first of all. Namely, because I had to get real with myself. I believe we are naturally programmed to not do that. You know feel deeply, love and see ourselves as we truly are and admit where we need to grow. It is so much more fun to ignore it and blame the stress in our lives. Which yes who doesn’t have stress?
What it does all boil down to is stress too. A lot of it in fact is directly related to the amount of stress we have in our life. What we’ve chosen and what we didn’t, it all matters. Stress is too often underplayed as just the way life is and as a result you get to be fat, low energy and not sleep worth a darn. You go-go-go and then find yourself sitting in a Chick-Fil-A drive though doing a mobile order for dinner, again this week. Yes that’s the fabulous adult lifestyle we call stress.
So, aside from admitting I have stress of my own and that wasn’t really contributing positively to a desired healthy lifestyle that obviously seemed the closet to clean out first.
Or was it?
Where to start when your life is a mess and you want improvements can be an overwhelming place. Some advice would tell you to just start somewhere but I believe that too can leave us just doing a surface level job ignoring the really big problem that should be resolved first. This is where my natural health training kicked in because I know firmly, all problems have a root cause.
You can’t continue to pull buckets of water out of your life or health and not realize you should really plug the leak first. – Amy Kramer, Dragonspit Apothecary
Yes, truth be told and it is a hard truth sometimes, we have to figure out what is making the mess in our life and health and deal with that at the root. Otherwise all the other changes we make will be just touching the surface. Relieving probably but not long term fixes that support long term, life lasting goals of a desired weight and healthy lifestyle.
Ok, root cause it is. So let’s dig through all the crap in my life and figure that out. Is it the job I work at some days 12 to 13 hours a day? Is it the lifestyle that I created from the paycheck I earn to have the job I do? Is it my own laziness to just not want to do it all? Do I have emotional trauma that is holding me back? Is it feelings I’m not experiencing deep enough to process in a healthy way? I could spend years in therapy trying answer some of these questions.
The truth is the root cause is going to be different for all of us. Life gives us all different circumstances that create the life we have. We do our best with what we are dealt right? So when it comes to tagging something as the root cause we have to consider not only our health but our finances, relationships, emotional well-being, stress management style, goals, values, guilt level and so much more! We may not be able to solve all of the root cause quickly but at least feeling like we know what it is gives us the opportunity to figure out how to eradicate, fix, resolve, mitigate or at least support healing from that point forward.
In my own situation, that root was overwhelm. There were days it just becomes too much and I can’t do it all, yet I try like hell. It wears me out at times and it stops me from feeling like I can support what I physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually need at times too. I remember describing a time in my life where every major area of it was on fire in big heaping piles of you know what. I probably lit it up but at the time it didn’t feel like I had as I was standing in the middle of it watching it all burn. That’s what overwhelm feels like to me. Big piles, big things and too much all together.
Dealing with that strategically was the best way for me to setup the resolution for how to make the rest of my life better and more consistent when I tried to do crazy things like lose weight.
Consistency really is the best health habit we can create in our life. It provides the stamina to do the hard things well and generate the progress to keep going. – Amy Kramer, Dragonspit Apothecary
With a root cause identified and understanding that my goal was consistency not smaller jeans, it became easier to find the path forward. What met me head on that path was the clarity that this had to be a personalized journey. Diets are not personalized therefore there wasn’t a book, script, meal plan or established program I would fit in. That was ok too.
Equipping ourselves to journey in new direction is liberating because we get to figure out what works best for us. I want to imagine all the great diets we know about today started as a single step by someone in this same place. We get to create that for ourselves.
Where there is value in having guidance and support is from natural resources that encourage that
deeper learning about ourselves so we can further customize what we need for a solution. It doesn’t mean its all perfect, beautiful or easy but it fits well. It feels good to do it without restriction, punishment, severity and guilt.
I have failed at so many diets where I just tried to apply to my lifestyle or on top of a mountain of stress.
No more.
To work with me, schedule a consultation at dragonspitapothecary.com
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