How do you see yourself?

It was a lovely and rewarding weekend that began on Saturday with our group (minus one) meeting to discuss group health strategies. I have found it to be energizing to meet with the group and to get to know each other a bit at a time. Where we were all pretty guarded at first about our more personally held worries, now we are feeling a bit safer I would say. Some of us have sleep issues, some weight issues, and some other health issues. I always spend some of the time coming and going from the Hotel thinking about the program, where it is going and why I am there and how I am best going to take advantage of all there is to learn, to partake of, and to do. So on Saturday we talked about goals and measurements of success. Hearing everyone's ideas is such a help, and everyone is so generous with encouragement and good feeling. I think that we are becoming an actual group rather than just a gathering of people. I feel so good when I am at the gym and run into someone. Every now and then I see Kristy working hard, and Dave and I were the sole users of the gym on a recent Saturday nite. I've learned that Sophia finds the treadmill boring so she walks outside, and an injured foot caused Bill some slowdown. I saw Kristin after a workout and found out her hair is really wavy, and Percy had a wonderful trip and is starting later, but with equal enthusiasm. Casi's hours make it unlikely I will run into her except when we have group meetings, but all the same it's like learning about the people who live on the same floor in a dorm, or getting together with a new book club or something. We are learning about each other and finding differences and similarities that make us real to each other.
I thought that I was the only one for whom the first blush of excitement has worn off and who now has to buckle down and make it work. But I found out on Saturday that I'm not. At first it was the excitement and disbelief about our great good luck at being winners that made us sail along in the deep waters of new experiences, new ways of doing things and looking ar our time and our exercise and our food commitments. Now, I think that we are all aware that the hard work sets in. It is the scheduling, the fitting in of blocks of time to do what needs to be done, the changes in lifestyle and eating styles on a more or less permnent basis that makes it a challenge. After all, we have been doing what we did to get the way we are for a lot of years. Now is the time for change and so now we face challenges, and I am sure that each of us faces different ones.
Meditations on body image, diets, all kinds of programs that are geared to weight loss or change ask the practitioner to visualize him/herself the way they hope to be. If it is thin, to hold that image of themselves in the mind''s eye. I use "thin" and "weight loss" here as examples because that is my issue. If it is fitness for others, they have other images to hold. This morning I realized that when those meditations asked for a "picture", I have just kind of been glossing over that. I realized that I don't have or haven't been able to conjure that picture. I know that I want to be wearing slim fitting jeans with a tucked in blouse and a belt, but my own head, my own face is never in that picture. So when I say "what's wrong with this picture?" the answer is that I don't recognize it as me. That's a real challenge. The ability to see myself as I want to be. I wonder if any of the others have that problem, the ability to visualize themselves as they want to be.
So does it, do you think, as my cousin suggests, have something to do with feeling deserving? It's an important question for me and one I really have to ponder. I have always been the kind of person who felt that I could have what I wanted if I just worked harder at it. Not always the case as we know. You can't make someone love you by working harder. You can't keep someone alive by working harder at it. But I guess those two examples can be refuted. We can keep ourselves healthier and presumably alive longer by getting healthier with this program as the CHLI teaches us. And I guess we can learn to love ourselves by giving this golden opportunity everything we've got.
I'm learing that there are personal weak spots that I have to plan for in order to overcome them. I am getting better at it, but it needs work. Isn't it nice that there are things to do and learn and improve no matter how old you are? And isn't it delightful when you find a group of people that happened to come together through no fault or effort of their own and yet find a way to be friendly, encourage each other, learn from each other, laugh together, and work toward personal goals in concert with each other. In concert, I like that. By the time we finish this program, we could be a symphony. Wouldn't that be terrific?

Getting started: Day of consultations

I am poised and ready to begin my Personal Transformation from frog into princess now that I have spent a whole day being examined, Reiki'd, and treated to consultations about nutrition, fitness, life/work balance and motivation, not to mention a delicious lunch. Being in such beautiful surroundings and treated as if you are already a princess deserving of all of this attention and pampering is quite an experience. One that is all new to me. Sometimes I really enjoy it, and sometimes I have to admit that I am a bit intimidated. Dr. Barr, who did my physical was just so nice, and so attentive as if everything I said was important to hom and to me. It is the way all doctors should be, but simply do not have the time to be. Everyone else I deal with at the CHLI is equally nice, from the receptionists onward. Even the lady who served my lunch at the pool was sweet and helpful. ♠
People are really helpful and friendly and interested in my well-being. I can't even begin to imagine how tired they are at the end of the day, even though the surroundings are beautiful-- an exquisite vista from every window, luxurious seating groups and furnishings and every detail that has been attended to. I have been given the OK to move ahead on my program and now I will consult my schedule to see what the next big programmatic highlight is. We will finally come to gether as a group for pictures and a class on Tuesday night at 6pm on a book that we were given to read called The Kaizen Way. It is about using the philosophy of taking one step at a time in order to accomplish big change. Sometimes when we contemplate large changes, they are so overwhelming that it throws us into a state of fear. But if we deconstruct it down to manageable and no-so-scarey steps, put it in the form of simple questions that the brain then can think about and provide answers to, because the brain will rise to the bait of a puzzle, then we can accomplish more. I am really looking forward to meeting and getting to know the other people who will be on the journey with me. I hope that we will be friends and that we will be able to help each other along the way.
To take you through the day with me, first I had a cardio gram and spirometry (measure of lung function), then a very complete history and physical. The medical facility there at the CHLI is amazing. It seems to be very self contained, with its own digital mammography, MRI, many consulting rooms, and rooms for specialized consults. Later in the morning, after I met with my nutritionist, I cam back to the medical facility to meet with their Healer and hypnotherapist. After talking for a while, she brought me to a quiet room, darkened and heated, with soft music. She explained that she was going to pass hands over various parts of my body where she would clear the way. It is as if several past surgeries had created blockages, and by working this way, she was able to open up the way for healing. It was wonderful and relaxing. I look forward to seeing her again and doing some hypnotherapy as well.
Nutrition is the door which opened up this process for me. Paulette, my nutritionist, gave me a chart to keep, but the most important thing is how to view your eating patterns. If you take your weight and multiply by 10, that is the number of calories you need for maintenance of your weight. If you want to lose, then you would take your desired weight, multiply by ten, and take in only that number of calories. The deficit from your actual weight maintenance to your desired weight maintenance is how you will lose the weight. Add in exercise, in other words, calorie burning activity, and it adds to the deficit and the amount of weight you will lose. But the real kicker was, the chart she wanted me to keep and how to keep it. For each day, you record either a dash (meaning a good diet day), an 0 (meaning you may have added a cookie, or a treat or some other overage) or an X (meaning a binge day). If you look at the chart, it is easy to see graphically that you are being OK most days, with a binge now and then, but the real gem for me was that having a treat does not make a bad day, (or me a bad person), it just may be a maintenance day, rather than a day that the deficit will mean a weight loss. What I really want to pass on to you is the concept that have something out of the parameters of your diet, what ever that may be is a day that you are maintaining rather than losing. It will take two diet days to make up for a binge day, but remembering that one cooking, or one cupcake, or a few chips does not a disaster make, so you don't have to just throw the whole day away. Stick with the diet day, even if you have stepped out of bounds for a minute. After all the whole game is not lost when the volley ball goes out of bounds once. You just move on to the next serve. So keep that in mind. It was a real revelation to me. I have lots of other tips and interesting things I have learned to pass on, but for another blog. I hope you are well and learning too.