Belle's Journey

week 30 -workbook-WFG- Prologue

5. From page 16: “Not sure what you really believe? Pay attention to the way you act—and to what you do when things don’t go the way you think they should. Just for today, pay attention to what you value. Reflect on how you spend your time and your money. Pay attention to what you
eat.” What do you do when things don’t go the way you want them to go? What do you really believe about your place here on earth? Do you think your life has meaning? Do you believe you are doomed to fail or that you are worthy no matter what you weigh?



Which begs the question what is it that I value today? It’s Sunday and normally it would mean I want to be in a quiet place meditate and write, loads of candles and a clean space, but honestly this perpetual cleaning must be symptomatic of something else.



But since I need to be in because I am expecting a phone call, I would say what I value most today would be a clean house and doing it in a meditative fashion so as to leave this space immaculate


I would also have loved some chicken broth. Not the chicken. I thought about the meal I had and to be frank, I did not enjoy the chicken as much as I thought I did A spicy chicken broth no meat would have been perfect. I did like the baby spinach salad but actually I found the dressing cloying and sweet and some lime juice and sesame seed and sea salt would have been better and as for the rice, must as I like rice and even though I only had a little, beyond the first spoonful I actually found it way too heavy? This surprised me because I had assumed that I had really really enjoyed that.


Well, that’s what happens when I do not pay attention, I assume I want the things I want, when I do not want them, I am simply wanting/acting out of habit.
 
Reflect on how you spend your time

I go round in circles a lot even when I feel I am making progress. It feels like a circle relative to my goals . I feel I live and create day today.

Except where I have things, classes appointments , usually structured from outside of myself, that I have to do, I can drift. This is mainly because I do not plan my week in advance. And then I feel over whelmed . Funnily enough it is one of the things on my list today- plan the week. But I often plan to plan the week .


I feel because my week often is not planned I have more difficulty getting into strong ketosis because at least for me strong ketosis implies activityand focus .





Reflect on how you spend your money.

I am much better at spending but there is still a type of aimlessness to it and I always feel I could be spending my money with more focus if only I had clear goals. In truth food and eating and dieting have been allowed to occupy all available brain space and I have little sections reserved for other things but I rarely visit those spaces .



Part of the reason might be that honestly I do need to pay attention to body food and eating and even this diary, but if I do not wake on time to do it and I try to do it say at around 5 a.m, I am generally too late to get to the gym first thing. Likewise if I do not do it and just dash out in the mornings I feel ungrounded and then I spend in a silly manner e.g too much at starbucks in an attempt to ground myself. What I really need is to get off the merry go round




lifesaver-merry-go-round.jpg


Pay attention to what you
eat.”


Well I have just written about that and going over the chicken salad and rice meal I am surprised at how unsatisfactory it all was. But I do remember I fell upon that meal as if it was manna from heaven.


There is something about the speed of it all and paying attention and being mindful involves slowing down……slowing right down. Even the way I drink my CD is too fast. Not that I want to drag it out, its not that, but it is this rush to get no where fast as if somehow if I hurry up, I can hurry up and get there. But where is there?
 
;)/12





I once though I would simply do a 400 cal diet. Which is a VLCD and I would just eat 400 cals worth of whatever I wanted, but the key was it had to be what I really wanted and no matter the trouble it took I had to get that and only that. So some days it would be 4 oranges or 8 apples or a tomato and basil and garlic sold or 2 glasses of wine, but I have to take multi vitamins and minerals and I had to have one glass of green juice about 100 cal a day in the morning.

It’s still attractive in some ways and is more in alignment with the principles of the book Women Food and God.

Then why did it not work?


1) I had to pay attention to what I really wanted and I wasn’t used to that, it felt like too much hard work

2) I approached it as a diet rather than as a spiritual and emotional practise which I was doing because I was trying to teach myself something, retouching myself my own loveliness.

3) I did not have a practise laid with it which would make it easier for myself such as writing. I felt I could do ‘it’ in my head.

4) I got nervous when I saw how little I really wanted. One day in Seattle I realised all I wanted that day was two huge peaches and pot after pot of green tea. That’s it. And it scared me, or rather I scared myself instead of listening to my body and enjoying that lightness of being and so I ate more to fill a non-existent gap…I ate because I thought so little could not be enough and surely I was depriving myself.

5) I had no one to talk to about it, or at least I felt I had no one, it probably was not true, there were meetings and people within my orbit I could have spoken to about my issues with and how odd I felt to want so little so I did not avail myself of any support system

6) ) Sometimes I set the bar too high, I would decide that I wanted something which really was a pain to go and get or which could only be bought in a larger quantity than I needed and then I would be overly concerned with issues of waste or effort.

I failed also to take into account that once I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted but not over 400 cals for the day, that naturally would initially want everything under the sun including things like truffles and the finest French pastries and Belgium chocolate, even though I do not like chocolate that much. I saw these desires and thoughts as troublesome or thing I was compelled to act on, none of which was true, in Buddhist circles they would simple be naturally phenomena arsing from the mind and nothing to get excited about, certainly nothing to get frightened about and nothing to get into a battle with. Also I could choose to act or not act. But it was not a drama



In short I underestimated what it would take to do the 400 ca eat what I want programme, because it would taken more discipline, mindfulness, attention and willing ness to go get what I wanted one day at a time than I was used to. I was totally unprepared .In fairness I had never done it before, so the attempt was great, but the structure was not in place to support my endeavours. The effort was not wasted because even looking at the last full meal I had and realising that I did not enjoy it as much as thought I had means part of me is paying close attention.

To do the 400 cal mindfulness progress would have required a daily practise of journaling.


The last thing is that really was concerned that I might not be getting enough nutrients and so I decided to go back to CD, because deciding what I wanted to eat meant I was thinking about food too much and I wanted peace of mind . I can’t say that so far I have had that, though things have been better.


​
 
WFG-prologue-question 6

bellefrogette said:
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The Road Not Taken

​
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost


6. How has food served in your life? What do you think it would take for you to really change your relationship with food?




The first that comes to mind is that i would have to quit playing small and drop all my stories which have me playing small and which have me in in the staring role as victim.

I am not saying that there aren't things that have happened that i feel deeply upset about or which I feel are wrong, but no matter how I feel or what I think most of them are past and are not fixable and with those that are present, well, if I am feeling like I am powerless or acting like a mouse then i won't change what i can.


My relationship with food is just an expression of my relationship with my self.As i told some folks in a meeting yesterday..the food is not to blame and the food is not the culprit.

The eating is not to blame and the eating is not the culprit.

the fat or excess is not to blame and the fat and excess weight is not the culprit


and my beautiful body yes beautiful at any size is not to blame and is definitely never ever the culprit.


The relationship that I need to change is the one I have with power and empowerment, the road not taken is the one I have with strength and allowing myself to be strong and strength takes many forms..even vulnerability can be a strength and a powerful thing to allow myself to be.



 
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WFG workbook -Chapter 1-About God

women-food-and-god-book.jpg




Chapter 1: About God
1. On page 22, author Geneen Roth writes that she turned to Hostess Sno Balls the same year she gave up on God. Do you turn to food for comfort, sweetness and the feeling that you matter?



2. What does going on a diet mean to you? Does it give you a feeling of taking control and doing something for yourself? If you have been on many diets, do you honestly believe this one is different, or do you diet because you are discouraged and don't know what else to do?



3. On page 23, Geneen describes dieting like praying and that "making the decision to stop dieting was like committing heresy, like breaking a vow that was never supposed to be broken." Are you ready to stop dieting? What feelings does thinking about this bring up for you?



4. From page 25: Geneen writes: "I don't believe in the God that most people call God, but I do know that the only definition of God that makes sense is one that uses this human life and its suffering—the very things we believe we need to hide or fix—as a path to the heart of love itself. Which is why the relationship with food is so important." What do you believe about God, love and your life?



5. Do you believe you deserve kindness and beauty? If other people deserve it—if your children deserve it—why not you? Why is it so hard to treat yourself lovingly?



6. In Women, Food and God, Geneen says your relationship to food is a doorway to your true nature, your deepest self. Do you believe you have a true nature and a higher self? Are you willing to use your relationship with food as the doorway to that?



7.What is in Your Personal Space now ?
 
bellefrogette said:
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Click to expand...

Chapter 1: About God
1. On page 22, author Geneen Roth writes that she turned to Hostess Sno Balls the same year she gave up on God. Do you turn to food for comfort, sweetness and the feeling that you matter?



;)/10


 When I read about this incident in Geneen Roth life I felt no resonance. The line between one incident and another. On the one hand the giving up on God and on the other turning to food. Though I do feel that having identified the ‘cause-effect’ in her life Geneen Roth was able to return her self to sanity.

So the question for me would be whether or not I can find key ‘cause-effect’ incident in my life.


Likewise she states 3 emotions sensations that might be sought, comfort, sweetness and feelings of mattering. Again I see things in terms of what are the primary feelings or effects I sought or seek with food, rather than ‘it’ being about the issues, which she has specifically identified.


When I have over eaten what I have sought is

To calm down and soothe myself (the stresses and strain arising from a sense of an inability to cope with or feel my emotions or to make empowered choices)

To stimulate myself (boredom)

Reward and treat myself-self pleasuring (joy and celebration)


That is pretty much each; there there is a world in all 3.And in
All 3 cases my actions represent a type of self-care, not self-sabotage. A lot of the former however misguided and even immature is about care and love of self and there is none of the latter, no self loathing, no self hate, no self disgust, no self put down. None

Now that is a surprise.and there was me for years thinking I simply did not love me enough, I did not respect me enough, that I lacked self esteem or self worth…. Nope, not a bit of it, the acting was always a distorted and somewhat ineffectual means to express all of the self-loving and self-affirming virtues. It was not that food was love, but that out of love I tried to use food for something that food is really not equipped to do over the long term and even where it is, its not substitute for other things which are even more appropriate to the situation.

But I cannot think if an originating cause-effect in the way that Geneen Roth can identify her God loss-Snow ball event.

I think it matters that I can identify an event but it is so far back, that It might take a while for the even to surface in my waking consciousness, what I do know is that such an even exists and that I can retrieve it and that I will retrieve it today. How do I know? Well I am not a mystery to myself. I might behave as if I am, but I am not.
 
bellefrogette said:
Chapter 1: About God
1.Do you turn to food for comfort....
Click to expand...


Yesterday I was looking for my culminating event ‘event’ in a similar fashion to Geneen Roth’s ‘loss of God-picking-up –hostess-snow-ball incident. I could not find a single event. I did find a sequence of events and they all had at their core loneliness, confusion and seeking a way to make myself feel better.


The first I can recall was feeling acutely lonely at primary school and being one of the last to be served on school dinners and being given more food and that ‘more food’ enabling me to feel better. More solid. And sweets enabling me to feel better. Better than… The sweetness being a balm.



56370748.jpg




Yet I am not convinced that I liked all sweets so much. I remember icky sweet pink fairy cakes and the icing sticking to my teeth and feeling like throwing up.

Growing up I recall an ever-present sense of aloneness that I found very difficult to cope with and I learnt to use sweets or cakes or eating took the edge off, and lets be frank, what options did I have so young to wrought this change. In that respect I was quite resourceful. I recall children’s parties with sweets sweets and more sweets. Again I am not sure I liked all the jelly sweets and ice cream, I certainly did not like the chocolate.
 
I was lonelier growing up that I had any right to be and as a child I could not process such a huge and ever present emotion. Matters were not helped by the fact that I was naturally quiet and naturally introspective.

I would not have been interested in the company of my peers anyway, not really. I recall going to the house of one school friend, not a friend either, just the daughter of my mothers child minder and seeing her dolls house and thinking, how strange. This was her pride and joy. Her parents bought it for her. She seemed so happy with it. Kids my age were boring and I could not have been more than 7 or 8, and I did not know why they were boring. The upshot was loneliness. I leant to read and read widely but could not speak of what I felt when I read. More loneliness and then I discovered knickerbockerglories and one knicker bocker glory was worth my school dinner money.
 
So I now think on the incidents and events that culminated in that knickerbocker glory, which showed that food could be a source of pleasure and delight and newness, not just soothing and comfort. Food thus took on properties that were magical, certainly to a little girl. Food took on alchemical properties, I could change my mood and perspective with the right combination of ingredients and then I could go on into this thing called life. So at 7 I was already the alchemist. And this well before any of life’s travails. It was not this incident or that that created my use of food in my teens or adulthood. And I think I have been trying to cure something that did not exist. I had learnt to use food for its psychological alchemical effect a lot younger and guess what. There was nothing compulsive or ill in that. Nothing.

0.jpg



Thinking about it now it is just that, as I grew older I still had no way of learning how to express or understand my emotions. Patterns I learnt early in my life still served me well enough, I did not think consciously about it. And that pattern simply became ingrained in all emotions events afterwards. At a very basic level it was just a habit on the one hand and not knowing how to be with my emotions on the other. It was not deeply buried secret, or rather it was hidden in plain sight, though it has been around for so long that it appears like it was always there. Well, yes and no what I have found from sitting with the question is that this is not some representation of a deep psychic flaw and psychic disruption. Its nothing so complicated or esoteric.

It’s rather simple, as simple as a
knicker bocker glory.
 
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2. What does going on a diet mean to you? Does it give you a feeling of taking control and doing something for yourself? If you have been on many diets, do you honestly believe this one is different, or do you diet because you are discouraged and don't know what else to do?


293617_det.jpg




I’d like to believe that I am not on a diet. I don’t like diets but perhaps I am on a diet. And if I am my only sense is yuck and no wonder at times I feel so unhappy.

Diet is definitely a four-letter word. The mindset of a diet I find is one of unhappiness and while in a somewhat robotic sense I might well feel ‘this or that diet will be different’ I know that
‘ This or that diet will not be different’ because all diets are of a similar nature.

I do not want to be on a diet ‘ever’.

This is not about CD, which is neither here nor there. I do not want to say I am on CD or I am on a diet. I do not want to say I am doing CD. The idea, when I think of it now is pretty absurd, my whole being reduced to doing small scoops of skimmed milk?

I am not discouraged but am not sure that I do know what to do. But instincts point to the mindset of spiritual fasting.

What I take for nutrition is a different and considered choice and the Cambridge program is as good as any as base line nutrition on an extended fast.
 
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I have something swooshing about in my head..that would take me from where I am to where I want to be..it would take something like 100 days..well it would take

well 5 days + 100 days..but I need to think about it because what drives it can not be weight loss, cos that is diet talk


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[YOUTUBE]teXsyVIYivA[/YOUTUBE]
 
I like the impatientdieters youtube channel alot, do not need to buy her product but the basic message about subliminals I feel is spot on, especially subliminal adverts to get one to eat, to feel hunger or to accept one food or the other is magical

[YOUTUBE]mXYIa_eXiAg[/YOUTUBE]
 
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:queen:/-( and one day soon :queen:/10 ) so I'll be coming round to find myself all over again.


3. On page 23, Geneen describes dieting like praying and that "making the decision to stop dieting was like committing heresy, like breaking a vow that was never supposed to be broken." Are you ready to stop dieting?
Yes.



Having said that I do not have a model for what I want. The opposite of dieting as being ‘ not dieting’? The antidote to dieting being, according to Roth,’ eat what your body wants and stop when you have had enough/or are full.’ Her perspective has merit to it and more kindness to it than dieting, but what I want is not ‘dieting’ or ‘not dieting’. Nor do I want something, which embraces both, but transcends them. I just want something different, which acknowledges the past but is of a different order.


For instance I do not drink much. Alcohol I can take or leave. But if I have a bottle of any spirit in my home it can be there forever. I drink when I want to, a little, and that is that. I am aware that alcoholics think about alcohol all the time, and when they do not drink they often white knuckle it or are still sober drunks.


I do not want to be part of the dieting mindset or the anti dieting mindset. I want this time of diets, weight loss, fat and food, to become a distant memory, something that was part of my karma to go through and resolve, but something I am so done with.

Its not that I am ready to stop dieting, its that I am ready to stop dieting and not dieting. I just do not know what to replace the duality with. I am not sure of the way out, but I know there is something and someway. There is a doorway, its probably in plain sight?

The gesture towards fasting is an expression of that desire, not wanting to cook or deal with preparation and produce and shopping for food is all-apart of that desire.

What feelings does thinking about this bring up for you?


The feeling I have, looking for this doorway, is one of faith…and anxiousness.i.e...is there a doorway and if there is not one, how do I create one?

How do I create what I want when I do not know what it is exactly is. Is it enough to say it’s not this, or it’s not that? It’s not enough, but it’s enough to begin with and the search for that door or the creation of it might be the way. The way out is in looking for the way out is in recognising that I can leave this totally bizarre landscape of dieting/no-dieting food/body and attractiveness. A way, which gives me everything I ever, wanted and many of the things I could never have imagined.

The image that comes to mind is , or at least it is the first image.....


zen+oryoki+bowls.jpg

 
Ōryōki (応量器?, "Just enough") is a meditative form of eating that originated in Japan that emphasizes mindfulness awareness practice by abiding to a strict order of precise movements.

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Oryoki translates to "Just enough" which refers to the efficiency and accuracy of the form. Each movement is a simple reference point for the mind that encourages one to become present and not wonder in discursive thought.

[YOUTUBE]csyCrcpDs58[/YOUTUBE]



Zen teachers say that taking meals with ōryōki cultivates gratitude, mindfulness, and better understanding of self. (In this regard, it is not unlike zazen.) The intricacies of the form may require the practitioner to pay great attention to detail.
 
:queen:/3

4. From page 25: Geneen writes: "I don't believe in the God that most people call God, but I do know that the only definition of God that makes sense is one that uses this human life and its suffering—the very things we believe we need to hide or fix—as a path to the heart of love itself. Which is why the relationship with food is so important." What do you believe about God, love and your life?


 I can say that Geneen Roths concept of God, while better than the traditional concept of God is as useless to me as the traditional religious one. Infact her notion of God is rather bizarre to me, even more bizarre than the ‘angry god’ ‘ to be feared’ and who requires worship and a bended knee.

In a different program the indication around this matter is create a version and concept of God that makes sense to you, that would be your ideal and use that one to assist you on your journey.

I think that is an excellent instruction. :rolleyes:

The first thing would be the get rid of is the word ‘God’. And even the new agey ‘ Universe’.


The term I currently warm to is Creative Intelligence, or All-That-is.


C.I.

Rewriting the question it would read.


" I do know that the only definition of Creative Intelligence that feels true, beautiful and strong is one that expresses as me having this human experience with all it intensities, emotions, creativities, sensualities and experiences .The very things I erroneously believe I need to hide or fix, or wish away are expressions of the path of self knowledge, self recognisation, self creation and creativity and is the heart of beauty, strength and tenderness itself.

Thus even my expressions of self through food and eating and weight and body is as important as everything else, its information, it’s an expression of my creativities and intensitities of my emotionalities, which is why it is so important, its important and precious because I am.


This ‘matter’ has certainly been emotionally and persistently present for a decade, maybe even longer. Its valuable.

black-child.jpg


If I see Creative Intelligence, its expression as this focus self in this time space, then every thing changes to represents what I really believe about, beauty and strength, what I believe about creativity and safety, about love and fellowship and enoughness and support in my life.



[YOUTUBE]x4Qxe2lYz88[/YOUTUBE]
 
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Transformation

I have re-activated my profile with the Transformation website. The reason is quite simple.... I need fitness tips and that environment is very physical fitness focused.And I love that.Gym bunnies, work out warriors , runners,power walkers, strength trainers..the whole galmut.



athletes_3.jpg



Then
earlier , I called into my phone conference meetings, I often have them on in the background and meeting after meeting they were talking about fear. Fear and struggle, fear and struggle , not sticking to their diets and more fear ..and quite frankly I got frustrated and then angry.

angryblackwoman.jpg


Angry that I really wasn't hearing anything inspirational and aspirational ...it was the same story over again and all over again.

I think if some of the moderators of these meetings ever became positive and empowered they would lose most of their followings and call-ins.

It just seems that there is much more of a psychic and emotional charge in the 'problems' and only lip service is paid to the solution .

There is no short cut, even being on a VLCD is not a shortcut, all a VLCD does if one sticks to it ,is enable one to lose weight faster and with relative health.


My anger was such that I really had to find out what it was that I needed, after all the people on the meetings can talk about fear and the struggle 24/7 if they want to, but I simply wasn't being nourished by it all.

but its Freakin BRILLIANT that I was ANGRY at NOT being NOURISHED. It shows I am ALIVE to the fact. My BODY INTELLIGENCE has woken UP.


At times I have been so not nourished and I wasn't even aware, I wouldn't feel anything, I would just eat.:eek:

as for fear- blah


Face
E verything
A nd ( freakin)
R ecover
 
 
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