The Ongoing Battle I Fight

Let me get one thing straight before I begin: I LOVE FOOD. My whole life I have been a foodie. I know this may sound weird because I grew up in a small town and the opportunities to try new things were limited. But I collected cookbooks and watched food shows dreaming of food adventures. We would eat at a “fancy” restaurant twice a year for my mom’s birthday and again on Mother’s Day, and I was always adventurous. Nowadays, eating adventurously is the norm for me, especially since my boyfriend of nine months is a chef. However, there’s one problem… I love food, but food does not love me.

Let’s talk genetics. Can we fight genetics? It’s similar to fate, right? I talked about my genetics in a previous blog and how unfortunate they were. For many years, being fat has been equated with being lazy or unhealthy. I can imagine people thinking “all she probably does is sit around and eat.” Until about 20 years ago, genetics wasn’t considered a reason some people were obese, especially healthy and athletic people. According to the article “Obesity and Genetics: Nature and Nurture,” about 43% of the population have the FTO gene that “predisposes them to gain excess weight.” In other words, if you are not careful to balance your life choices, you could easily gain weight. I used to joke that if I even looked at food, I would gain weight. If you looked at my family, you would see that many of them have fought the battle and lost.

These days, it is all about female empowerment and fat acceptance. Women are freer with their bodies, and they no longer feel like they need to cover up or wear a wardrobe that hides their curves. Growing up in small-town Texas, that wasn’t always the case. My grandmother saw early on that I had the predisposition to be a bigger child and she tried her hardest to steer me in the right direction. By the time I hit middle school, I had been through so many fad diets, and it grew worse as I got older. Aside from my weight gain, it was always a struggle to find nice outfits for a large female that weren’t geared toward an older woman. When I hit high school, I had no fashion sense. I wore “big and tall” t-shirts and bike shorts from the men’s section or oversized shirts with outdated flowers from the women’s department. The closest plus-size store for women was three hours away from where I lived, and we could only afford to drive that far once a year. A single shirt there usually cost around $50 and my family struggled financially, so, I made do.

Despite being overweight and bullied for it growing up, I was a pretty athletic child. The only sport I didn’t play (because it wasn’t offered) was soccer. I was even part of a running club in school called the “Elite Fleet.” None of this athleticism helped me lose weight. Aside from genetics, my family was poor, so we didn’t have the healthiest diet. My mom worked two jobs and oftentimes chose McDonald’s or cup noodles over cooking meals at home. If my mom worked late, I usually had cereal for dinner. Needless to say, my childhood was carb-heavy.

Because I was athletic and healthy, I maintained my weight throughout high school and continued to be pushed through fad diets by my grandma. For example, I was taken to weight-loss seminars, and hypnotherapists, and I was even taken to get my ear stapled once because it was said that the ear staple curbs hunger. According to the Mayo Clinic, “proponents of ear stapling claim that the staples stimulate a pressure point that controls appetite, leading to weight loss.” However, the Mayo Clinic says that ear stapling probably won’t work and it may cause ear infections. As I grew older, I developed a sense of body dysmorphia and depression that led to secret binge eating. I began to feel ashamed of my body, which worsened my depression and binge eating.

Throughout my life, I tried a few diets that did work, but they were never long-term solutions. For example, I tried Weight Watchers twice in my life, and both times it worked well. Weight Watchers is all about accountability and fellowship. If you are not familiar with the concept, you track your food using a point system. You go to weekly meetings and have weekly weigh-ins. The meetings and the weigh-ins held me accountable, and I lost weight doing the program. Unfortunately, programs like Weight Watchers can be costly, and after a time on the program, I wasn’t able to afford it anymore. I tried to keep up with the principles after I left the program, but the accountability was what originally kept me on the diet, and once on my own, I eventually lost my way.

Other diets/weight loss tricks I have tried unsuccessfully:

• Am 300
• Garcinia Cambogia
• Stacker 3000
• Adkins Diet
• Genesis Diet
• Juice Diet
• Herbalife
• Levell

 

In 2018, I started a low carbohydrate diet. The bane of my existence has always been sweets. Both of my parents were diabetic, and I knew I was headed toward that path. A low carbohydrate diet has been the most successful diet that I have been on to date. I don’t consider it a diet but more of a lifestyle change. I cut back drastically on eating sweets and added sugars, I focus mostly on getting protein in my diet and leafy green vegetables but that was only the stepping stone on my path to better health. I was slowly losing weight but not quick enough to better my health. 

 

My doctor suggested I have bariatric surgery and it was the hardest thing a binge eater could do, both emotionally and psychologically, which I will talk about in a future blog. Post-surgery I have consistently kept a low-carbohydrate diet and I have been successful at losing and maintaining since surgery, but every day is a constant struggle to go back to my comfort zone.

Things I do to try and maintain and continue to lose weight:

• Meal replacement shakes: This is mainly to keep my protein up, but a high protein shake in the morning helps me have a great start to my day.
• Small meals instead of large ones: Before surgery, I preferred to eat this way as well. If I eat small meals, I can maintain my energy and stay more alert.
• Limit what I drink to mostly water: I try to drink as much water as I can throughout the day. If I drink something besides water, it will be coffee or tea. Getting enough water is important to me because I feel crappy if I don’t drink enough of it.
• Cheat days are okay: One thing I’ve learned over the years is that an extremely strict diet will only backfire. So, I reward myself occasionally.
• If you fall off the wagon, pick yourself up: Every day is a new day! Don’t beat yourself up for gaining a pound or giving in and eating that slice of cake. You can start again tomorrow.
• Stay active even for a little bit: As a teacher, I move around a lot at work, which keeps me active. When I worked from home during quarantine, it was hard to stay active while sitting at a desk all day. Even if you just walk a little bit, staying active is important.

In conclusion, I am still learning the ins and outs of my body as I gain, lose, or maintain. There is never an exact science to weight loss that I have found. There also isn’t a quick fix. My best advice is to stay positive and always leave room for self-care. One of the biggest things I’ve learned throughout this journey is to love myself and the mess my body is and to strive for inner peace and not perfection.

I want to hear from our readers. What diets have you tried and failed at? Do you have any tips and tricks you would like to share? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments and on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

House of Cards

My eyes are open and the alarm is blaring. I’m staring at the ceiling in the darkness. Breathing. Just breathing. I’m staring. My alarm…snooze. Nine more minutes and I’ll get up, I promise myself this every morning. Nine more minutes. I swear I’ll get up this time.

Everyone hits snooze, right? Generally, they fall back to sleep. Were they awake half the night making lists in their heads? Endless lists of things they worry about… things they need to buy at the store…or things they want to do to their house? I was. I was laying there thinking of everything in the world but sleep because that’s what I do. Sometimes I can read, work on crossword puzzles, or tell myself stories to put myself asleep. So, when I hit snooze, I’m awake, but I just don’t want to get out of bed. It’s not because I’m lazy. I mentally can’t get out of bed. I’m trapped in my head, unable to move. Every morning I have to untrap myself. I have to convince myself that getting out of bed is the right thing to do. It’s a vicious cycle.

I’m ill. I have a mental illness that I try to overcome every day of my life.

That’s not a normal thing to say, is it? What is normal? I can think of various instances from my childhood that point to the fact that I was not normal and that things were not okay. For example, I became so angry over something trivial that I ripped the bedpost off my bed and threw it across the room. Does that seem normal?

My generation grew up with the stigma that everything deemed “different” was bad, especially if you grew up in a small, conservative town in the south. Growing up, I quickly learned that to be a fully functional member of society, I had to hide the parts of myself that were considered “not okay.” In other words, “fake it until you make it.” So, that’s what I did. I became a master of my reality, and my only outlet growing up was through my writing. Throughout my adolescence, I went out of my way to not be noticed and to appear “normal.”

As I grew older, it was harder to fake. In my third year of college, circa 2004, I began to slowly give in to mania and depression. I stayed up all night, I stopped going to class, and I began sleeping all day until I had to get up to go to work. About halfway through my first semester, I was failing most of my classes except my creative writing class. It was the only one I enjoyed attending. The next semester wasn’t any better. I was on academic probation, and I still had a hard time making myself attend most of my classes other than my poetry writing elective. By that time, my mania/depression had turned into self-destructive behaviors. I quit my job to focus on college, but in reality, I was having a hard time making myself go to work and school. I figured that if I eliminated work, I would attend school. I was wrong. That summer, I was told I had to take a semester off from college due to my academic performance. At that point, I gave in and started seeing an on-campus psychiatrist.

After a few sessions, he diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder is “a mental disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks,” according to the National Institute of Mental Health. This diagnosis did not come as a shock to me. In fact, it made sense. I knew there was something wrong. I had always known, that people with mental illnesses were considered “crazy.” Was I crazy?

“You are not crazy,” my mother told me after my diagnosis. “I work with people who have Bipolar Disorder. You can’t possibly have Bipolar Disorder.” My mom was a social worker for the criminally insane at the local state hospital. She, along with a lot of people I knew, equated mental illness with crime because the only confessed people with bipolar disorder she knew were her clients at the hospital, and most of them had committed violent crimes. I was not violent. I was not a criminal. How could I be mentally ill? This is one of the stigmas that followed people with mental illness seventeen years ago. After my mother’s reaction and subsequent denial, why would I want to confess to having such a monstrous disorder? 

So, I suffered in silence like so many others. I overcame my baser instincts. Medication helped, but it only takes a person so far when it comes to Bipolar Disorder. Living life is a constant struggle. Sudden changes can often break my day. My first reaction to something negative is always to throw something, break something, or scream, but I stop myself and channel that energy in a more positive way. Over the years, my disorder became easier to control with practice and patience. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have bad days or that a single push will not tumble my carefully constructed house of cards. If that happens, I rebuild. It may be hard, but I do it.

On our podcast this week, we talk about living with mental illness. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five Americans live with mental illness. If more people talked about their condition, they would not have to suffer in silence like I did most of my life. Carrie Fisher once said, “Bipolar Disorder can be a great teacher. It’s a challenge, but it can set you up to be able to do almost anything else in your life.” I accept the challenge. My condition is not a disability. I live with it and overcome it every day of my life, just like so many others.

I want to hear from our readers. Do you or a loved one suffer from mental illness? Let’s continue the conversation in our Facebook Group: MMC Chat.

Star Wars: Iconic Inspiration

Yesterday was May the 4th which is also known as Star Wars Day. In our Podcast, we talked about the age-old question, “Star Trek or Star Wars?” I don’t really see the debate. They are two completely different entities, to me. I didn’t grow up in a house divided. My parents were equally nerdy when it came to science fiction. I remember watching reruns of the original Star Trek on cable with my dad and the original Star Wars on VHS tapes with my mom.

That being said, I wasn’t a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise until the Phantom Menace came out in 1999. It was the summer after my freshman year in high school, and I saw it for the first time when I attended band camp in Wichita Falls, Texas. It wasn’t that the film was that great. Looking back on the second trilogy as an adult, I find some of the scenes to be cringeworthy (especially in Attack of the Clones), and I think the original trilogy is more iconic and long-lasting. However, the special effects in the Phantom Menace were groundbreaking at the time. I know when you think of 1999 you don’t really think of groundbreaking special effects in movies but it was the Phantom Menace that paved the way for modern digital effects and CGI monsters. 

It was those special effects in the Phantom Menace that mesmerized me and interested me in the original trilogy and science fiction in general, which heavily influenced my future writing and interest in world-building. I went out and bought World-Building by Steven Gillett and the Dictionary of Imaginary Places. My writing became heavily influenced by planet exploration and the idea of building my own space opera. Star Wars also influenced my reading trends as I grew older. I began to read science fiction works such as Fahrenheit 451 and Ender’s Game. To this day, I credit Star Wars for my interest in science fiction writing.

Aside from my new love for Star Wars as the prequel trilogy started to hit the movie theaters, I didn’t think much about the Star Trek franchise until the movie remake starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto hit the big screen. As stated before, I had seen many Star Trek episodes with my father growing up, but I never sat down and watched all of them. So, I suppose you could say, if I had to choose, I would choose Star Wars over Star Trek.

I want to hear from my readers. Do you prefer Star Wars over Star Trek? How do you celebrate Star Wars Day? Please, let’s continue the conversation in our Facebook Group: MMC Chat. Also, check out our Facebook Page.

See you next time for Revenge of the Fifth…

Finding the Fire

I am new to the subject of PowerSheets®. I recently received my first ever PowerSheets® goal planner for my birthday from Cindy. We can all agree that for most, 2020 was chaotic and I’m not proud to say that I didn’t come out of my quarantine a more well-rounded/creative person as most of my friends did. It was a very dark and revealing time for me. At the end of the year, Christen took me aside and introduced me to a creative outlet I could bring with me into 2021 which was the idea of creative goal setting.

PowerSheets® teaches you that to live your passion, it means to live for something worthwhile, knowing that it may cost you something. Living your passion is making bold decisions and enduring challenges, but experiencing the happiness that it brings you afterward.

When you are first setting up your PowerSheets®, it asks you “What makes you come alive?” When you use these worksheets, you really have to sit down and think. It takes goal setting to a new level. 

First, let’s break this down: what makes you come alive? When I see this, it makes me think, what gets me up out of my chair/bed and motivates me to live my day. What are my passions? PowerSheets® then asks you a series of questions to come up with the right answers. When answering these questions, keep your one word in mind. In a previous blog, I told you my one word is “inspire.”

PowerSheets® asks you if you’ve lost your passion. If you haven’t, that’s great! Make a list of your passions and motivations. If you have, begrudgingly admit it. I admit for several years I lost my passion for most things. I decided at the beginning of 2021 that I would get back to me and I DID.

Once you’ve answered that question, PowerSheets® asks you how you feel most days. Lately, aside from school, I feel tired, but I also feel like every day is a new day with new possibilities and new opportunities. Yes, I am overwhelmed and exhausted, but the day still brings possibilities. So back to that first question, what fires me up? What makes me excited?

• Education: I believe that everyone deserves an equally great education.
• Love: I love LOVE...definitely, a hopeless romantic.
• Family/friends: I couldn’t live without them.
• My cats: a huge motivation for me because they are my fur babies.
• The Boyfriend: as of this week, we are three months and going strong.
• My students: they motivate me every day in so many ways because I want to inspire them to be their best selves.
• Reading/Books: one of my favorite pastimes is reading.
• Makeup artistry: one of my new hobbies has been eye makeup artistry. I am still in the experimental stages.
• Writing/blogging: yes, this blog is motivating, as well as the poetry I actively write.
• Coffee: another one of my favorite things to do is try new coffee spots around the DFW area and post about them on my Instagram blog @Ms.Garvin.Writes.
• Cooking/baking: I am a huge fan of the show Top Chef and Food and Wine Magazine. I am always looking for new recipes to try. Years ago, when I was living with my mom and grandma, I would experiment with recipes. My grandma called it “gourmet” cooking because I cooked things that she didn’t normally eat like French Onion Soup from scratch.
• The Arts: without the arts, where would we be as a society?
• Trying new things: this is a broad category, but I am a life-experience junkie. I am always on the lookout for the next cool thing to try, whether it is a new restaurant or staying in a hotel treehouse (bucket list), I want to try it.
• Living a healthy lifestyle: this is a big one for me. Over the last three years, I have lost around 200 pounds and endless amounts of clothing sizes. I want to keep it off as well as maintain an active lifestyle.

Once you have your power list of motivations, you can begin your PowerSheets® journey. What are you passionate about? Let me know in the comments.

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Power Planning with PowerSheets®

Two weeks ago, we shared with you how we use a word of the year to enhance our lives. Rather than setting resolutions that will soon be broken, we choose a word to name our focus, and then incorporate it into everything we do. But having a power word is not enough. To manifest a better life, we can’t just think about what we want for the new year — we need to have a plan. This week, we are talking about building on that one little word by setting goals to cultivate our best life, particularly through the use of PowerSheets®.

I will admit, I’m pretty much a newbie to PowerSheets®. My friend, Brandi, tried to introduce them to me many times over the years, but I was reluctant to add yet another “hobby” or something more to keep up with, and I really didn’t understand the value of buying another “planner” or a bunch of worksheets. I felt like I already knew how to set goals and make task lists. But then our friend Susan introduced me to vlogger Cindy Guentert-Baldo (see links, below), and everything changed.

Cindy Guentert-Baldo can be found on YouTube.com. The videos I started with are 2021 Goal Setting – PowerSheets Prepwork and 2021 Goal Setting – My 2021 Goals.

Cindy has a YouTube channel where she shares her adventures in planning and goal setting — mistakes and all. But before you head off to watch her videos, let me warn you, CGB has a penchant for dropping the “F-bomb”, so if you are highly averse to cursing, Cindy is not for you. If you can get past that, or if you just don’t care, then you really should watch these videos I’ve linked below; Cindy has a great way of explaining the whole process while she walks you through her own work in her PowerSheets®. (And for the record, no, I’m not offended by cursing; I just warn you because I was caught completely off-guard by it in my first viewing.) She’s actually quite funny, and I enjoy watching her videos a lot.

I think I mentioned in our One Little Word® podcast that my word of the year for 2020 was “clarity”, and I started out (pre-COVID) with the intention of doing some deep soul-searching. I was at a crossroads, and I felt like I had no direction. But setting my sights on clarity and working on my OLW project just wasn’t enough. So many things changed, and the time I thought I would have to meditate and examine my navel just never came to be. By mid-January, I was already drowning in the responsibilities of caring for my mother who has dementia, and by March we were dealing with a world-wide pandemic that not only decimated my career as a travel agent and crafting event planner, but also wiped out my husband’s income as well. We were in a full-blown crisis. Needless to say, “clarity” did not do much for me that year except to make me realize that clarity isn’t something that just comes to you — it’s something you have to “Explore”.

Brandi bought my first PowerSheets® Intentional Goal Planner as a gift, and when I opened it, my first thought was, “Oh, geez, this is going to be a lot of work.” It took me a couple of weeks to get up the nerve to start working in it, but I took my time, watched CBG’s videos, and eventually got into the swing of it.  I think I caught up to the rest of the world in late January, and after that, I started happily setting and refreshing goals on a regular basis. The whole process has completely changed my outlook on goal setting, and has made a huge difference in my life.

PowerSheets® is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. Designed by Lara Casey, PowerSheets® takes you from the most basic brainstorming techniques right up through monthly, weekly, and daily action plans called “Tending Lists”. It’s all part of the “Cultivate What Matters” community that’s all about positive and powerful change in our lives and around the world. According to the website, the idea is to “uncover what truly matters and do something about it,” and “this powerful goal planner will help you set, plan, and track progress toward the goals that matter most—big or small, the things you’ve always wanted to do.”

I was hesitant at first, but as you can see, less than a year into this process, I am a full-blown proponent. I found the in-depth worksheets to be straightforward, practical, and convenient. The goals I’ve set using PowerSheets® have enabled me to start a family game night, plan several family campouts and outings, sell my mother’s house and get her settled into a long-term memory care facility, begin the process of rebuilding my travel business, pivot the focus of my crafting business into something much more enjoyable and sustainable, clean and reorganize my home, and focus more time and energy on my health, writing, crafts, and other forms of self-care. In short, it’s been pretty amazing. The whole system is so easy and effective! 

Whether you have one goal or many, big dreams or little plans, I heartily encourage you to take a look at PowerSheets®. You can see an unboxing video of my 2022 PowerSheets® workbook on my YouTube site. Now is a great time to get started for 2022, and you can go at your own pace. It’s a great way to manifest what you want in your life and really cultivate what matters most.

Cultivate What Matters® and PowerSheets® are the trademark of Lara Casey Media. You can learn more about both at CultivateWhatMatters.com

Excuse Me...

Hey this is Cindy Murray and I wanted to pop on here for a minute to tell you about a little segment that we will do from time to time that we call “Excuse Me While I Read My Tarot.” This series is a fun excursion into the art of tarot reading and the many ways we use it to look deeper inside ourselves and enhance our daily lives. But before we get started, let’s take a look at some common misconceptions about tarot cards and how they are used.

Reading tarot cards is a popular practice and different people use Tarot readings in different ways. Some historians speculate that tarot cards may have started in ancient Egypt, but in the strictest sense, tarot originated as playing cards in 15th century Italy, and were used to play games not unlike the traditional playing cards many people use today. In fact, the original cards are still used today in many parts of Europe to play various card games without occult associations, and other than a 15th century sermon by a Dominican preacher who condemned them for their use in gambling, they were not really censured at all until more modern times.

Fortune-telling with cards, called cartomancy, began some time in the 14th century and eventually found its way to the Tarot and other decks of cards, including the common playing cards used in America today. Sometime around the 18th century, Tarot decks began to be produced specifically for these card-reading purposes. One of these, the Rider-Waite tarot deck, is quite famous and is often the one that comes to mind for people here in the U.S. This deck was first published in 1909 and contains a bounty of religious symbolism, including Judeo-Christian icons, as did many of the preceding decks. Imagery includes the Pope (later renamed the Heirophant), the Papess (renamed the High Priestess), Adam and Eve, the Devil, angels, and crosses. The cards are really just a very elaborate “symbol code that depicts universal and natural laws and principles that are shared by all the world’s great religio-spiritual traditions.”

So enough of all that history! Let’s talk about what’s going on with tarot cards today! While many practitioners interpret the cards as a form of divination, or fortune-telling, just as many (or more) use the cards as a sort of cue or prompt for daily insight and enlightenment. Much in the same way a therapist might use a Rorschach ink blot, the interpretation of the symbolism on the cards can be a useful tool to examine the beliefs, behaviors, and thought patterns of the individual. As stated by the tarot for dummies website (cited below), “The purpose of a tarot reading is to help you see your past and present thoughts, words, and behaviors more objectively.”

For me, personally, I like to look at the cards as a good way to start my day with a little mindfulness and reflection. I certainly don’t see them as anything at odds with my Christian beliefs, and I know a good number of Christian faithful who use tarot cards. However you want to interpret the cards, we hope you will enjoy what we have to share and will accept our readings with the spirit in which they are given.

Information in this article came in part from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot

https://www.dummies.com/religion/paganism/correcting-major-misconceptions-about-tarot/

https://tiffanyleebrown.com/tarot-religion

If you would like to learn tarot, this is a great website:

https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/