Tag: awareness

“Be Grateful”

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Happy New Year, albeit a few days late 😉 My sister came to visit us for an impromptu weekend over New Year’s Eve and then we went back to work Tuesday so I’ve been getting my groove back and trying to catch up in the blogosphere.

I’ve seen lots of great new year’s resolutions — including anti-resolutions (i.e., bloggers who refuse to make any) and I decided to share my singular resolution here.

BE GRATEFUL.

Looking at it, it sounds simple. “Be grateful.” DUH.

Yet I feel like in the whirlwind frenzy of the average day, I have so many things to be grateful for — things that go unnoticed … but shouldn’t. And I intend to change that in 2012. Continue reading ““Be Grateful”” →

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One Moment in Time …

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Life isn’t about the number of breaths you take but rather about the moments that take your breath away.

Last night took my breath away. I felt like all the world was right.

After a day of cleaning and arranging the house after our new couches arrived, my husband and I were laying on the couch with Rocco, with the baby moving around inside of me. Such a simple moment — one we’ve probably done a thousand times just the two of us, but suddenly last night it felt different. Special.

I swear, I’ve never felt this heightened sense of awareness about my physical and emotional self in all my life. It was a moment I wish I could have frozen in time. I felt completely, wholly present.

I wasn’t concerned with what anyone else was doing except us in that moment, and with the three of us (four of us!) lying there … it felt like we were much more than just a couple, but rather, truly … a family.

I’m smiling just typing that out and remembering how nice it sounds. Family.

Eyes Wide Open

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I’ve always believed whatever your challenge in life, awareness is half the battle.

I know that until I was able to admit I had a problem — i.e., an obsession with food and exercise that led to disordered eating behaviors — I wasn’t going to get better.

I needed to see disordered eating as a problem before I could tackle it head-on.

Once you acknowledge a problem, situation, challenge …the rest is up to you. The next step in the process is to take action. In some cases, that might mean inaction. But for the most part, it means making a change of some sort, be it a behavioral change or a thought-process change. And this is the hardest part. Believe me, I know!

Speaking of awareness, today I read a great post by my new heroine, Bethenny Frankel, called Lesser Evils. She talks about how she doesn’t judge or qualify food, but sometimes we’re all forced to make a decision as to what is the “lesser evil” and how sometimes it can be surprising that what “seems” healthier might not be. I liked all that, but what really resonated was this:

She goes on to say, “Eat real foods. Your diet is a bank account. How are you going to invest?”

Reading that, I felt like I was hit with a bolt of lighting. I’ve definitely not been making good investments lately. Continue reading “Eyes Wide Open” →

Day One, Success

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Help me out here …

What defines “success” when, in a nutshell, you’re someone who started out dieting, developed humiliating disordered eating behaviors as a result of OCD/Type-A/perfectionist tendencies, conquered most of said behaviors but got lax, gained a little weight and still struggles with emotional eating?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially since my über-cathartic posts this week. Continue reading “Day One, Success” →

Musing About Awareness

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Awareness_SmallIf awareness is half the recovery battle (the other half being the change that ensues), then what is it when you are aware that your behavior isn’t helping any, and you know it, but continue to do it?

I hate to admit it, but lately I feel like I’ve been stuck in this cycle where I’m waking and eating again on autopilot (not every night, but all too often), which means I’m eating more than I need to be eating … and then exercising the next day to “undo” the damage.

It’s that disordered brain coming back, and I don’t like it one bit.  I can’t even blame it on anxiety or stress … this has been a very relaxing and fun summer, good on both personal and professional levels … so what gives?!

Continue reading “Musing About Awareness” →

The Greatest Gift: Presence

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candlelight-photography2Be present in your life.

It sounds like such an obvious statement, but in truth, often I feel detached from myself and my own thoughts … and sometimes even my own life.

I find it interesting that one of the biggest tenets of Judaism is that God is everywhere, in the here and now. Though I wouldn’t say I’m particularly religious, I do feel very spiritual. I interpret this to mean that by proxy, we, as humans, ought to be present in the here and now.

And I worry that this lack of presence could be sabatoging me.

I’m an excellent multi-tasker (many anxious people are) but it’s hard for me to sit still or just allow myself to be caught in a moment without thinking five steps ahead (I’d say it began when I was little — I can remember being on fantastic family vacations, wondering where we were headed next — if we were at Disney, when would we be going to SeaWorld? And if we had a lollipop now, could we still have a treat at night?!).

Even today, if I’m sitting in a meeting, my mind is thinking of the to-do list on my desk and the three things I forgot to check off, the email in my DRAFTS folder, the fact that the oatmeal I had that morning that was just “eh,” how I liked my husband’s new shoes we just bought but maybe we should have chosen them in the darker brown … My mind is so rarely in the here and now. Continue reading “The Greatest Gift: Presence” →