Thursday, November 18, 2010

Just Cleaning the Blood Splatter


Oh, hi! Nice to see you. Careful when you come in though: as you can see there's a lot of blood splatter on the wall and a bit on the floor. I wouldn't want you to track it out when you leave. I'm cleaning as fast as I can.

"Why all the blood?" you ask.

Let me explain with a story.

As you probably know, I have an artificial hip. The outcome of my first hip replacement was terrible and I started seeking out help on the Internet. I found two "hip boards"--self-help sites that provided me with lots of support and information. Some of the information was worthwhile, but some was not.

A number of people on the sites warned fellow hippies off doing yoga. The objective of yoga, in a very general sense, is to create "space" so the joints can move more freely. This is a great idea if you have normal, natural joints that are moving correctly and held in place by healthy muscles and ligaments. A healthy joint does not dislocate, unless an accident occurs.

On the other hand, dislocation can be a distinct possibility with an artificial joint. It's not all that common, but much more common than if you have a natural joint. And when there's too much space, well that just screams "come dislocate me"!

So I studiously avoided yoga, though I had greatly enjoyed doing it at several points earlier in my life.

One day, and despite my fear, I started doing yoga again because my back was falling apart and I really needed help. Not just any kind of yoga, though. I found a very skilled yoga therapist who specialized in working with people who had all kinds of physical problems. Over the past four years, she has found creative, unconventional ways to keep me as healthy as possible. She has been a godsend. I honestly don't think that my fragile orthopedic state would be as "good" as it is without her invaluable help.

Moral of the story: I didn't listen to the naysayers on the hip boards, and went out and found someone to help me who knew what she was doing.

So let's get back to all this blood on the wall.

I've been banging my head. Big time. And it hurts and no, I'm not going to do it anymore after this post is over.

Yesterday, while visiting one of the many weight blogs I read, I came upon yet another person who stated that all intuitive eating had done for her was make her gain weight. Ergo, it's a bad idea.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Ouch.

OK, friends. If you think eating mindfully means gorging, go right ahead. Keep listening to the ignorant and frightened people amongst us. Just don't call it intuitive eating, cause it's not. And it's certainly not mindful. If you think mindful/intuitive eating is eating until you're sick to your stomach, you've got a serious problem listening to your body's signals...which is--surprise, surprise--just what mindful eating is all about.

Geez, this wall is bloody.

Recently, I sent an e-mail to a blogging buddy of mine (you know who you are!) asking her to help me keep a promise to myself to go cold turkey and stop reading a blog that was making my blood boil, my BP rise and the walls of my house rather bloody. I have kept that promise, and don't even read the comments that blogger sometimes posts on other blogs.

Now, I have to go even further though and eliminate many more blogs from my daily bloggy diet. While I will continue to eat dark chocolate in small, "medicinal" doses and allow myself to sample all the wonders the world of real food has to offer (that means never letting an Eggbeater cross my doorstep), I am hereby eliminating diet blogs from my diet.

Go ahead and say "good riddance" if you want. That's fine. I won't be reading your blog to see you say it.

And with that, good luck to you all. Do whatever works for you, although I have serious doubts about how many of you will ever "succeed" (yes, there are always exceptions to the rule--I didn't say there weren't).

I'll continue to blog, albeit sporadically. Anyone who wants to drop by is welcome.

The walls and the floor are clean now.

7 comments:

  1. I'm all about real food. You know me...nothing is off limits. Hope you still hang around my place every now and again...

    My best always
    Sean

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ahhh, NewMe, I feel very ambivalent about most weight loss blogs. Some are like car wrecks and I don't *want* to look, but can't make myself stop looking. For now, I feel more empathy than sadness, and my angry reaction is long dead. At times, the similarities to the blogs of those suffering from anorexia are startling. In other words, I am witnessing desperation. Watching human beings who want to change their lives in a positive way and have seized on dieting and/or weight loss as the "magical" or miraculous "journey" away from their emotional or physical pain.

    Those who reach *goal* or *get close enough to taste goal weight* (sic) are often the hardest to witness. Their climb back up the scale is pathetic (I mean that in the most respectful way), and their confusion, feelings of betrayal, self-flaggelation, shame, rage, grief, pleas for help, etc., should be mandatory reading for health care providers who prescribe dieting to *improve* health. Also, some go into classic psychological denial, a coping mechanism for extreme conditions of emotional pain.

    The very few who *succeed* (and who knows what their lives are truly like), often sincerely believe that if they "can do it, then anybody can!!!!" Of course, most of them haven't gotten to that part of maintenance during which the binge-urge and hunger neurotransmitters start tap-dancing on their brains, day and night.

    O. goddess.

    I may join you. Or risk running out of sanity points and facing permanent bankruptcy.

    -Rebecca

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have found that a lot of weight loss blogs are counter-productive...at least to me. I tend to concentrate on blogs that talk about good healthy food (with recipes!) and stories about life in general. I am going the "mindful eating" route but it's more about finding out how I function inside and out than actually losing the weight. If I know how I operate, then I will be better able to feed myself properly and exercise in a way that makes me feel comfortable.
    Please keep blogging, your posts are always interesting and keep me thinking....which is a good thing!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow - your blog is always insightful - and fun to read!
    I think there's alot of bloody blogs out there....
    As in blood and as in "bloody hell!"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Like you, I gave up reading most weight loss blogs, though I did it because I didn't want to obsess on the topic. However, I also agree with you that most of them are ignorant and focus on dysfunction and judgment. I guess this is no surprise since many people who are overweight are that way because of their issues (me included). They don't heal or cure their issues, they just point them in a new direction, and they become almost hysterically adversarial when anyone says a method other than the one they are using is effective. I guess "different strokes for different folks" isn't one of their mantras.

    I still have a really negative and inflammatory post in my buffer on my old blog about the weight loss culture which I may dig out and post on the new blog some day. I do believe we are both better off tuning most of it out, though I do still follow some weight-related blogs and personal blogs on occasion. I think you're going to be happier overall for ditching so many of them.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Interesting post, and thought-provoking so this is one weight-loss blogger who will miss you (even if you don't miss us).

    I have a long-term goal of mindful eating. I'm actually really confident I'll get there & I know I'll be happier for it, but I think there are a LOT of skills to learn to get there & I'm not sure I've seen a lot in the 'intuitive/normal/mindful' eating world that encourages skill building and experimentation and not just prescribing one approach or another (in particular followers of Reis & Trout tend to talk quite rigidly about the steps in the book).

    For myself, I don't think mindful eating means eating everything you desire, but I think learning about "satisfaction" and "appreciation" are really really hard, and I do believe that to lose weight a lot of us need to cut back more than is comfortable. For myself I think mindful eating will be the path for maintenance but I'm not at all sure it will work for losing weight. I'd love to be wrong about this - I'm totally seduced by the concept, but at least right now I can't see it working to lose for myself.

    I'm committed to a long-term approach, to achievable goals, to taking it slow, to building up instead of jumping in to a crazy diet plan. I'm not an obsessive dieter nor an obsessive exerciser (all of which could explain why I'm still on the journey, of course).

    Your voice in the "lose weight quick" diet blog world was a welcome change, and will be missed.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I haven't been reading much in the way of diet blogs, not so applicable or interesting to me anymore. People believe all kinds of crazy things, not just re: food and exercise, but all else. I wouldn't argue religion with anyone, diet is becoming similar. If I have time, I read the scientists or doctors, occasionally trainers, also Charlotte and Greta Christina.

    Glad yoga is working for you.

    ReplyDelete