Here’s to a healthy, whole, and weightless 2012!
This is the time of year when throngs of people have made the decision to finally lose those last few pounds. This year their resolutions will not fall by the wayside. You will exercise regularly. You will reach for fruits and veggies instead of potato chips. You will fit into those skinny jeans. This – you know it, you feel it! - is the year of change.
You are vulnerable right now. You need a plan to back up your resolutions and good intentions. The health and beauty industry knows it, too. Now’s the time to capitalize on us making our litany of self-improvement goals. How nice of them. They only want to help us along with our resolutions, right?
Personally, I resist the temptation to make goals related to my weight or health given my body image history, but after sifting through one of my email accounts that is susceptible to a ridiculous amount of SPAM this morning, I began to see just why it is so very difficult not to buy into the belief that a “new” me is dependent on looking swell. First up: A message about a teeth whitening product that was guaranteed to make my smile brighter. Delete. There were discount coupons for the Nutrisystem program as well as a set of portion control containers that help you eat the right amount because, you know, listening to my internal cues isn’t enough. I can’t be healthy on my own. I need the help of plastic containers and restrictive calorie plans. Delete. Then there was an email promoting a cute baby contest. Snag ‘em while they’re young! Delete. Oh, and I discovered the secret to spotless, smooth, and elastic skin. All I have to do is invest a few hundred bucks in an anti-aging “miracle.” Delete.
The messages are ubiquitous and powerful, too.
Want to be happier? Want to live a more fulfilling life? Want to feel better about yourself? Want 2012 to be the best year ever? Forget cultivating virtue. Forget prayer. Forget taking care of your temple because it is a gift of God. Forget loving your spouse and children. Forget simplifying your life. Here’s the real secret to a better, happier, more beautiful future: Brighten your smile. Capitalize on your kids’ cuteness. While you’re at it, capitalize on your own potential for cuteness. You’re not there yet, but you do have POTENTIAL! Control your portions. Slather on miracle skin cream. Pretty up. Slim down. Buy these boots, this flattering sweater, and this lipstick. Smile!
Don’t buy into it, my friends. Feel free to exercise and eat more veggies. Don’t feel guilty about using Crest whitening strips or applying a good skin cream. But as I wrote in a guest post for the lovely Elizabeth Foss (talk about real beauty!!!), don’t allow an honorable, hopeful desire to morph into an unhealthy need.
Turn to Him if you really want a makeover. You were created to be a reflection of God’s love and beauty, and it is prayer – more than another fad diet – that will restore you to His likeness.
Please join me over at Elizabeth Foss’s place where I share a part of my soul and my hope for all of us in finding a healthy, Godward path to wholeness in 2012.
Just Popping In
This will be quick. I’m really enjoying my break from blogging. This morning I wrote in my sorely ignored journal. I felt happy sitting at my daughter’s desk in her room while the girls played and I scribbled away. Despite the technology-laden world I live in and usually embrace, the most soothing way to write for me is still often the old-fashioned way with a pretty notebook and slender pen in hand.
Our weekend was magical, joyful, and exhausting. That’s just the way it is with littles underfoot. Mary Elizabeth and I were fighting colds. Now Thomas is bit on the snotty side.
Anyway, I just wanted to pop in here really quickly to let you guys know about an interview I have scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll be on Radio Maria chatting about Weightless
Related to this and my anti-dieting position, the Brave Lass (AKA Kamilla) recently brought an interesting article from the New York Times to my attention. “The Fat Trap” explores why so many people lose weight only to gain it back again. In the first few paragraphs the article discusses a study that involved obese people going on a low-calorie diet. Most of the participants were very motivated to slim down and lost an average of 30 pounds 10 weeks in to the diet. Yet, despite their efforts to maintain the weight loss, they slowly gained the pounds back, and many reported feeling hungrier and being more preoccupied with food than before.
The dieters experienced significant biological changes as well:
“…a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the ‘hunger hormone’ was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study. Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.”
What seemed odd to me is the diet these poor people embraced to lose those 30 pounds was only around 500 calories a day. Of course, their bodies felt starved. Of course, they couldn’t maintain that kind of restrictive meal plan (they weren’t asked to maintain it and while it might make sense that they wouldn’t gain weight if they were simply burning the same amount of calories as they were taking in, other factors were clearly at play).
I’ve never been obese. I understand there are some very real physical and oftentimes emotional obstacles to overcome, and genetics can play a big role in how much weight we carry. The article delves into genetic factors as well and shares a study that involved twins embracing an “experimental binge,” and discovering that the weight gain varied widely among the participants, suggesting a sort of “biological determinism” that “can make a person susceptible to weight gain or weight loss. However, I also didn’t understand why the author and researchers purported it to be so surprising that participants gained their weight back and appeared to have altered their metabolisms and hormone levels even a year after the low calorie eating plan. I don’t care how much weight a person has to lose; limiting someone to 500 calories – many consumed as liquids – is no way to set him or her up for long-term weight loss success. Nor does it seem overly shocking to me that such a restrictive plan would mess with the body on a physical level.
To be fair, the article later mentions that researchers are conducting a study using slower weight-loss to see if this is more sustainable; however, a quote from the article points out that “…the pace of weight loss is unlikely to make a difference, because the body’s warning system is based solely on how much fat a person loses, not how quickly he or she loses it.”The pace isn’t what concerns me so much as the extreme deprivation. On the other hand, as the author concludes in the last paragraph, it might be “somewhat liberating to learn there are factors other than [your] character at work when it comes to gaining and losing weight.” This is something I passionately believe. We have to separate our self-worth from our ability to lose weight.
I’m not a nutritionist or scientist. Much of what I believe is based on anecdotal truths I’ve mined in my own journey from having an eating disorder and struggling with how to eat the right amount. I’ve said it before, but I’ll keep repeating myself: Until we learn to eat real food, to listen to our bodies’ physical cues, to heal emotional wounds of the past that might be causing us to reach for more food than we need, and turn to God to satisfy our hunger pangs, to stop expressing our despair in food binges or extreme diets, we’re going to keep struggling, losing and gaining those same pounds over and over again.
Just some food for thought for you as we begin to look forward to a hopeful and healthful 2012.
I’ll be back with more regular posts soon.
7 Quick Takes: The Gratuitous Baby Shot, Time Marches On, & Other Random Tidbits Edition
We’ve been engaged in some serious germ warfare around here. I had the first fever I’ve had in ages, and it knocked me out. I felt like a Mack truck had rolled over me; I was so achy. I’m getting old. Good news is I got over it very quickly, and the baby and the rest of my gang have only had to endure drippy, faucet noses.
I’m so thankful to have guest post over at the Natural Parents Network on raising girls to have a healthy body image. Here’s an excerpt:
We live in a society where girls are constantly at risk of sacrificing their true selves – whether they try to find love in the arms of a boy who doesn’t really care about them, wear immodest or uncomfortable clothing to get attention and affirmation, or turn themselves into a shiny, pretty package using extreme dieting or obsessive exercising. Our daughters face a lot of pressures today, but with our guidance and prayers, we can help fight back against a culture that undermines their worth as women and help them hold onto their true selves.
NPN is also hosting a giveaway for my book. Leave a comment after this post for your chance to win one of two copies of Weightless. Thanks, too, to Laura of Walden Mommy for the encouraging review.
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So long as I’m on gratitude kick, many thanks to all the bloggers, friends, media outlets, etc. who have supported my book and me. I’m very, very grateful!
Madeline propped Thomas up here and called out to me, “Come see your royal highness!” It’s good to be king (especially such a well-fed one).
Spooky and silly wardrobe furnished by ever-so-thoughtful sister-in-law
Speaking of Thomas, his baptism day was perfect. The priest, a dear family friend, actually used water from the Jordan River to baptize our little man. Following the baptism was good food and even better company.
(And I think it’s wonderful that Charlotte’s Cupcake was also welcomed to God’s family this past weekend!)
I’m so honored and excited to be invited as the Keynote Speaker for the 2012 Behold Conference on March 10, 2012, and I’m really hoping I’ll get to see some of you at this exciting event. You’ll get to meet my mom and Thomas, too, since they’ll be joining me. This year’s theme is “From the Heart of God,” and the event will feature Ginny Baldridge as a guest speaker and musical talent Marie Miller. Saint Gianna Molla is the patron saint for this year’s conference.
I’m thrilled and incredibly humbled to be a part of this event and hope to see some of you there. Mark your calendars now!
One area (among many) I’m really trying to grow in is living in the moment. It’s such a trite saying to embrace the now but not doing so really can rob you of a lot of joy and fill you with pangs of regret when the future comes and the past is just a sketchy blur. I’d been forced to slow down during pregnancy bed rest and had every intention of taking with me the lessons I learned once I was back on my feet and had my little one in my arms, but the baby and fall arrived and whoooosh.…it feels like we’ve been going nonstop ever since. (I’m so very thankful for those quiet nursing sessions when I can just sit, be still, listen to the sweet gulps of my boy, and watch those round cheeks wiggle.)
I recently saw this quote from Literary Mama, and it reminded me of how, as parents, we can be so invested in our children’s future that we forget to slow down enough to enjoy the child they are now.
“We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.”
- Stacia Tauscher
All the veteran moms I know look wistfully at Thomas and my little girls and say things like, “Enjoy them now. They grow up so quickly.”
“Uh-huh,” I nod through my bleary, sleep-deprived fogginess. Yet, I know they’re right. I can’t believe my big girl will be turning 7 soon. Seven seems so old. So did five, actually. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what she was like when she was a baby, how her solid, roly-poly body felt in my arms. Did she sigh those happy sighs when she nursed like her baby brother? (I know she didn’t sleep like him. He’s been a pretty chill baby.) Not my high-energy Madeline. Then there are Rae and Mary Elizabeth, turning into big girls every day, surprising me with the funny things they say and their emerging talents. It really does go by so quickly, so why do I sometimes have such a hard time pausing to savor all the small moments that make a lifetime? I want every day to be intentional. I want to enjoy these littles with all their quirks, irrational outbursts, and their sweetness. But life with little kids, the messes, the sniffles, the tantrums, the sleep deprivation, they sometimes have their way with me. But I’m willing to keep plugging away at this living in the moment. Thank goodness for these children of mine, these precious timepieces marching on who are always prodding me to look at the child they are now and to not be too wistful of the baby they once were or too focused on the person they are to become.
Thomas hasn’t peed on me in over a week. Woo-hoo!
Have a good weekend!
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
