The Geek in Me

This post was originally published on February 16, 2006 at Weight of My World.

I had a few free hours yesterday, so after eating breakfast, checking my email and my favorite blogs, showering and feeding the cat, I grabbed my purse and headed out the door. Excitement rose in my chest as I started my car and put her into gear and headed out on the path of least resistance toward one of my favorite places--the library.

Yes, I said the library. The rows of shelves filled to the brim with stories. The sound of pages flipping gently. The quiet throat clearing and soft whispers. The silent thoughts of paper-writing students that purr in the air if you listen close enough. The smiles of the librarians, welcoming you to the one place they feel most comfortable. I love it all. And it strikes me that the only difference between myself and the librarian--that creature I once mocked and thought of as socially inadequate--is that she is assigned her time at the library and I get to choose the hours that I spend there.

I can easily spend a entire afternoon scanning the aisles of fiction and non-fiction, browsing the magazines and searching the online catalog for the newest releases. It's a sickness, this need to be around printed material. I desire words as much my body desires food.

It all started when I was a toddler and my mother read to me every time she had a chance. It grew into bedtime stories everynight before the lights went out. When I learned to read on my own, I started reading to my little sister. I read her books and then I'd read mine. I'd read out loud until I couldn't keep her attention any more and she'd move on to other toys and toddler activities. And then I'd curl up, in a chair or a corner or my bed, and I'd read silently to myself. I'd devour the stories of others, submerge myself in far away lands, live adventures through characters braver than I was, and when the story was over and the ending tied up in a perfect bow, I would mourn the loss of a new friend and long for more of his life.

My favorite bike rides ended at the town library that was housed in the Presbyterian church on the corner of Main Street. It was small and the selection was limited but it was enough for me. I read my way through the children's section and straight into the young adults aisles before I was old enough to really understand the subject matter. But my voracity for words had improved my reading skills far beyond the books that targeted my age group.

The book store became my second favorite place to be. I started visiting them with regularity, anticipating new releases, and buying them up with my allowance, developing a library of my own to supplement my limited choices at my local hangout.

This hunger for literature has never waned. In fact, at times it cripples me. I spend my entire day at work waiting for the moment I can get home, brew some tea and curl up with that book I couldn't bring myself to put down late the night before. I read away entire weekends, until it's Monday morning again and I don't know where my Saturday and Sunday have gone. But I love every moment of the escape that reading provides me. I love living vicariously through the characters, touching their lives briefly, and then returning to my own. I love learning from their mistakes and successes. I love talking about them with others and gaining new perspective from an intelligent discussion.

Does all of this make me a geek, a nerd to the nth degree? Probably. But ask me if I care.

The Weight Thing

When I moved over to Blogger, I planned to focus more on my writing and less on my weight. I guess I knew that my weight would be a subject I'd eventually broach, but I didn't want it to be a focus for my blog anymore. So I haven't talked about the weight thing much since I moved over here, despite the fact that it's often on my mind. Those of you who read me over at Spaces can attest to this. In fact, my initial goal in blogging was to track and discuss my weight loss journey. Unfortunately, this journey hasn't always been successful as far as the numbers on the scale are concerned. About a year ago (on December 9, 2006 to be exact), I decided to take a new approach to my health and I posted the following over at Weight of My World:

I've started a little experiment, and while it's not going all that great at the moment, I have a feeling it's going to be the most successful weight management and healthy lifestyle tool that I've ever used. The goal is not to diet. I know that may sound like a cop-out, and it's even a bit scary from where I'm standing, but it's beginning to make more and more sense.

I've been counting calories or Weight Watchers Points for so long I can barely eat anything without mentally calculating something in my head. I exercise not for the health benefits, the energy and the mood elevation, but for the calories it burns. I eat foods based on their calorie/points count instead of their nutritional value. And while I know this is all wrong thinking, it seems to be the only way I know how to go about losing weight. Then one day recently, I looked at my calorie calculator and had 300 calories available in my daily calorie range (1300-1600 calories). Instead of considering that I wasn't really hungry and therefore didn't need to use these calories, I immediately started thinking about what I could and couldn't do with them. After munching my way through the 300 and then some, I realized what I was doing. I wasn't eating because I was hungry, but rather because I had calories available to use. It was a wasted purchase, like buying a formal dress, not because I had an event to attend, but because I had the cash in my pocket.

I started wondering why I eat and exercise. I went over certain situations in my mind and it occurred to me (not for the first time) that I often eat when I'm not hungry. In fact, just last night, I continued to eat despite palpable stomach discomfort. So what's the deal? And how can I change this pattern? I also started thinking about what it would be like to have children and what kind of an example I would be. Would I teach them healthy habits naturally, or would I teach them to look at food as the enemy and exercise as a chore? Honestly, I don't know the answer to any of these questions yet. But I do know that even if counting every calorie I put in my mouth and writing down every food that I choose to eat causes me to lose weight in the short term, it's not a weight loss that I'm ever going to be able to maintain over the long term. If I don't first discover what is causing these binges and how I can disrupt them (and maybe even avoid them), then I'll always be bound by them. And I certainly won't be able to teach my children to have a healthy mindset about food and exercise. The last thing I want is to transfer my own obsessions and false ideas to others.

So my plan is simple. No more dieting. Instead, my focus is on getting in touch with myself. I need to understand why I am eating in every situation. I need to develop skills to decrease my tendency to eat everything but the kitchen sink. I need to figure out what it is that allows me to be satisfied with a single bowl of cereal some mornings, and what causes me to crave four or five bowls, and to give in to that craving, on other days. While the plan seems simple, none of this is going to be easy. And it's clear to me from last night's fiasco that I may lose sight of my goals and fall into old habits while I'm learning. But I think that this way may be the best way for me to learn what I need to know in order to accomplish my ultimate goal of living a healthy life, instead of just becoming successful at a lifetime of dieting.

After a year of trying not to diet, and getting out of the habit of exercising, I've put on many of the pounds I had lost. I tend to reevaluate my goals around this time every year, and rereading this post gave me pause. Turns out, I'm still dealing with the same issues. I've learned a lot about my eating habits and have a better understanding of who I am, but change is hard. My behaviors haven't really changed. That is the bottom line. I've decided to keep trying, though. I haven't failed unless I give up, right? And I know that not dieting, that learning to eat based on my body's needs and not on my emotional state or the number of calories I've allowed myself for the day, may be one of the most important things I'll learn in my lifetime.

So I'm tracking what I eat and counting calories again, but I'm trying to do it while focusing on hunger rather than numbers. The goal is not so much the number of calories I consume, as the understanding of how food affects my body and what foods provide me with the nutrition I require. I don't plan to always do this, but I needed a refresher on what and how much I should be eating to fuel my body.

I've also rejoined the gym and am working to regain the muscular and cardiovascular fitness I was so proud of a year ago. I'm not dieting, but I am trying to reprogram my brain and my body to eat and exercise differently. I'm working with a friend who's a dietitian, and when I joined the gym again, I got three free sessions with a trainer. I plan to use these tools to the best of my ability.

Most importantly, I am trying to change how I think about food, exercise and my body. Negative thoughts are not allowed. Bad foods do not exist. Overeating at one meal does not mean all is lost--not for the day, and definitely not for the week or month. Every moment is a moment to make a healthy choice. I can chose to eat well for my body and mind, to love myself no matter what the scale says or what the media tells me I should look like. This time, I'm not rewarding myself for pounds lost or calories eaten. I'm rewarding myself for consistency: regular exercise sessions get me iTunes downloads; each day I track what I eat gets me a dollar toward a manicure and pedicure.

All of this may seem obvious to you. It may seem like a small step or a basic understanding, it may seem like more empty commitments. Believe me, sometimes I see it the same way. This is a struggle I have dealt with since I was very young. But I've come to realize (again?) that moving forward, one day at a time, is all I can do. Today, I choose happiness and health. Tomorrow I hope to do the same.

Review: Eat, Pray, Love

I've been meaning to transfer some of my better posts from my Spaces blog to this one, and since Eat, Pray, Love was recently featured on Oprah and seems to be the talk of the town, I figured I'd start the transfer with this one.

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This review was originally posted on August 25, 2006 at Weight of My World.

I know I promised a full review when I finished this book, which I actually did more than a week ago, but I’ve been allowing it to marinate in my mind and heart for a while, and I decided a typical book review won’t do it justice.

Elizabeth Gilbert opened herself up to what the world (and God) had to offer her, and it’s because of that openness that I can honestly say I learned something about myself through her journey. I may not have been able to travel with her physically, but I found myself taking a trip of my own as I flipped the pages and wandered through the chapters of her life. So, instead of doing a typical review, where I tell you how great this book was (and it was great) or talk about its themes and literary value, I want to tell you what I learned:

1. I want to travel and experience other cultures and places, not as a tourist does, but as a native does. I want to live here and there, for months at a time, and learn the daily routines and rituals of those who have walked the streets long before I arrived and will continue to do so long after I’m gone.
2. Sometimes we’ll experience pain and loss so great that we’ll believe we can’t go on. But somewhere in the midst of it all, something will push us forward, and when we start to move, amazing, miraculous things will happen for us. It will take time and it will take work, but healing and life will begin to flow in our veins again if we follow that gentle prodding.
3. It’s ok to experience pleasure. In fact, it’s negligent and abusive not to provide yourself with a little tender-loving-care every now and then. “You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”
4. Learning to be free is hard work. It’s tough for some people to discover their own freedom to experience life, to laugh, to dream, to succeed, to discover, to travel, to just be.
5. Yoga is about union. It’s about connecting—connecting your mind with your body, your spirit with your God, your energy with that of your neighbor’s or your community’s. As a Christian, I used to believe that practicing Yoga would draw me away from God. I now realize that Yoga isn’t a religion meant to replace my current belief system. Instead, I learned that it’s the practice of uniting yourself with the world around you, be that spiritual, physical, emotional or otherwise. I can use Yoga to connect with whomever or whatever I choose—Jesus, Buddha, or the ground under my feet.
6. I’ve already written too much, so I won’t get into the specifics, but I learned a lot about faith and devotion. I learned about prayer and peace, diligence and restfulness, confidence and humility, love and living. I learned that we each have “the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible.”

I didn’t start reading this book with the expectation of having some sort of religious experience or spiritual awakening. I bought it because the idea of traveling for a year caught my attention, and the quality and style of the writing held it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of the struggles I’m going through, Elizabeth Gilbert has been through, too. Our situations may not have been the same, but as I read, I was reminded that there is a cord of humanity that binds each and every one of us together. Knowing that there are others who question and struggle and dig their way out of the holes they’ve buried themselves in gives me at least a little comfort when I find myself pulling out my own handy-dandy shovel, yet again.

So, if you’ve ever been through a tough divorce, experienced a major loss, or found yourself in the midst of a spiritual crisis, I’d suggest you check out this book. I believe that there's something for everyone in its pages. It’s full of fantastic images (some unique and some clichéd) and raw emotion, experiences of the senses and of the heart and soul. I won’t say that everyone will enjoy every part of it, but I think you just might find a nugget of wisdom, a guiding word, or a gently written nudge at the exact moment you need it. I know I did.