I started a book a few days ago after listening to a few podcasts featuring Dr. Tara Swart, Neuroscientist, Psychiatrist and Senior Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The book is titled The Source.
The first principle is about changing your thoughts from negative “lack” thinking (negative) to abundance (positive). My all-time life-long nemesis is my body image and weight battle. I have 55 years of lack-thinking and I say 55 because I didn’t begin to think of myself of fat until I went through puberty around age 12.
I don’t overeat. In fact, only once in my life did I ever “overeat”. While I was in university, I went through a bad depression and I ate ice cream for months ballooning to an obese 183 pounds. After I snapped out of that, I got myself back to “just” overweight, graduated and moved to Toronto to work. The subway system kept my weight in check – up the stairs and down the stairs.
After I gave birth to my daughter, I again went from overweight to obese and back to overweight, letting the Toronto transit system keep my body in check. But I never got back to my lower overweight weight.
Then I went through another depression where I felt I needed wine daily because I deserved it! I left my job and “partied” with myself everyday. Without the daily transit exercise, my weight crept up slowly as I eased into semi-retirement, eventually adding daily snacks to have with my wine, and the weight just kept piling on and now (April 29, 2024) I’m sitting at 192.
Since I was 12, I called myself fat. I hated my body, hated walking past a mirror, hated clothes shopping. The negative self-talk never stopped, later adding negative self-talk about drinking too much. I love to drink, but hate myself after. I love snacking, but hate myself after. I see my reflection and hate what I see.
I don’t want to focus on my health. It’s boring. I ignore my weight issue by finding other things more exciting to focus my attention on, such as looking at and buying houses. Talk about extreme, but its way more fun than thinking about chow I should be burning 100 calories by walking 1 mile, especially when 1 pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. That’s 35 miles – UG!! Boring.
Its way more fun to sit at my computer playing bridge and doing genealogical/family history research. And Wine’clock comes at 3pm with my bowl of mixed nuts. YUM! I celebrate daily.
I found an article about a 64 year old, 5’ 1” woman who was 198 lbs and lost 80 lbs. there were before and after pictures. I printed them out and printed a picture of myself. I cut out my head and pasted it on her body and put this on my vision board. I look at this picture many times a day and something unfamiliar echoed in my head.
”I love that! I look awesome! Holy crap!”
September 21, 2024 – Update
I haven’t finished this book yet. I even downloaded the digital version so I could read on a flight to BC. I only get a few pages in before my mind goes down a rabbit hole of thoughts. I’ll keep going though, as I really do love the book.