Today’s note to self (from the drafts folder in my work e-mail account), is one I’ve referred to often over the past few years. I found it on this site. These questions are definitely helpful on the eating/exercise front, but I imagine they’d work for almost anything.
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Today, when you are out of balance, ask yourself the following questions in this order:
1. How do I feel? I feel angry, sad, afraid, guilty (explore and express each one at a time)
2. Are my expectations reasonable?
3. Is my thinking positive and powerful?
4. What is the essential pain and the earned reward?
5. What do I need?
6. Do I need support?
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I love these questions. They feel like something a therapist might say to you; carefully worded, logically arranged, and (for lack of a better term), thought-provoking. Especially the progression from question 5. to 6. (I bet most people have trouble answering question 5.!). And each time I’ve looked at the list of questions, I’ve been surprised by how I answered the question about “essential pain,” because it’s never what I think it’s going to be. The things that are really bothering me, the things that are often the hardest to change, often surprise me.
Over the years, I’ve answered these questions, on various occasions at work when I was feeling completely lost on the food front. All the answers are in the same e-mail. For example, on Oct. 31, 2006 (a few months after I’d joined WW for the first time), I wrote the following:
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- 1. How do I feel? I feel angry, sad, afraid, guilty (explore and express each one at a time) I feel pretty mellow, but I feel overstuffed and a little lost too.
- 2. Are my expectations reasonable? I want to be better about overeating than I used to be. I want to allow myself to overeat when I need to. But I also want to be free of these urges and find newer, more powerful ways to deal with these feelings. I’m doing this because I started the day by stuffing myself. If I’d started the day lighter, I would have had a feeling I wanted to maintain. Or, at least, WAITED until I was hungry to eat a big breakfast.
- 3. Is my thinking positive and powerful? My thinking is vague and unclear. I am planning on making brownies tonight, but I don’t have a clear plan for how I’ll deal with having them around (and whether I’ll eat the batter, etc.)
- 4. What is the essential pain and the earned reward? Essential pain is figuring out what’s really bothering me. Spending time digging a little deeper. Maybe exercising more than walking home after work, so I won’t feel so guilty for eating afterward.
- 5. What do I need? I need the new week to begin so I can be free of this one, but mostly I need a hug, to be with Sonny, to not be stressed out and feel responsible for us having a fun Halloween, to not be mad at myself for not allocating points for tonight, to deal with all the preppy housewives in my building if I go to the building’s party tonight, to not be jealous of Katie for having such an awesome fun group of friends in VA, to not be jealous of surfers/skaters in California [I'd just watched the movie LORDS OF DOGTOWN, hehe] and wish I had that drive and ambition and singular focus. To not be preoccupied by the fact that I haven’t exercised today and all this energy jumping out of my pores. Morning exercise has gotta be it.
- 6. Do I need support? Mostly I just need time to think and cook and decompress and let my stomach return to its natural state. Right now it is completely overfull… and it has been this way for the past week.
* * *
SO many of the emotions here are alien to me now, and it makes me realize that—although I ultimately stopped going to WW before starting up again this past summer—I learned a lot in the interim. Namely:
- [Question 2]—I don’t need to overeat. I don’t need to feel overstuffed. I was overeating because I wasn’t eating enough at my other meals! And since I’ve started eating my “forbidden foods”—like cookies and ice cream—more often and in smaller portions, the need to go crazy on them has almost disappeared.
- [Question 3]—Baking should be fun, not something I overthink! I didn’t need to make brownies just because it was Halloween. I shouldn’t bake if I’m in an emotionally “off” place, because then I’m more likely to eat too many and feel guilty. And that guilt is not worth it.
- [Question 4]—Exercise should not be a tool to minimize food guilt!! Exercise should not be “essential pain” !!! The “essential pain,” though I didn’t see it then, was facing the things I talk about in Question 5. The essential pain is TALKING to someone about the food stress, however uncomfortable I might feel about it.The essential pain is realizing that my life is lacking in focus and ambition, because I’m not doing what I’m meant to be doing.
Phew. I don’t mean to spend a whole post praising myself for the progress I’ve made, but maybe seeing this will help one of you. And I need to remember that I am changing, slowly, year after year, simply becuase I decided I didn’t want to be a food stress case anymore. I often forget this, because physically, I’ve remained pretty much the same in the past few years. Part of this process has been realizing that the real change is invisible, and my self-worth is no longer based on the way I look.
April 29, 2009 at 5:26 pm
that’s awesome that you kept those answers so you can see how far you’ve come! What great motivation
April 29, 2009 at 5:42 pm
What fun way to look at the progress you’ve made!
I need to start asking myself these questions sometimes!
April 29, 2009 at 8:25 pm
so cool that you’re able to see this progress!! i even see such a change in your approach to food in general over the past few months. you’re so good at taking your own reflections and advise into consideration.
April 29, 2009 at 9:40 pm
That’s great!! Way to go with your progress
April 30, 2009 at 1:19 am
I love that you shared this progress. I feel the same way when I look back at my diaries from years ago. It’s great to see how we’ve changed and grown and there’s always room for more
April 30, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Wow ho awesome to see that progress. I recently read back a diary entry where I was talking about going out into the freezing cold in a t-shirt, as I didn’t deserve to be warm, coz I was disgusting :-S I’m so glad I don’t feel that way anymore! It’s so sad.
April 30, 2009 at 2:15 pm
We all need to reflect back and give ourselves a BIG pat on the back when we deserve it. You have come a long way. I didn’t know you back then, but as I was reading it I thought – not the same person.
It is so wonderful to see how your thoughts have changed!
April 30, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I am so grooving on your notes to self. It’s so interesting to read then-and-now perspectives, even when they’re not my own! I certainly identify with aspects of your own progress.
So great to meet you last night! Hope to repeat it again soon.
May 1, 2009 at 12:35 am
I am really enjoying these posts Vani! You have made a lot of progress and I like to hear your perspective.
May 1, 2009 at 4:12 pm
[...] I have in my work drafts folder. It’s from July 8, 2008—a couple years after the one from this post was written. I think the changes are pretty obvious—even if they weren’t apparent to me at [...]
May 1, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Vani, thanks so much for posting this. I feel kind of emotional reading this because I feel like it describes me so much right now.
I love those questions. I’m jotting them down so I can refer back to them, although I am SO BAD at answering things like that! I have a really really hard time sitting and deciding/realizing what is actually going on that is triggering overeating. You have made great progress.
Finally, I love what you said at the end, about how the real change happens within and how you realized that self-worth was not based on how you look on the outside. I think that is why after 8 months of successful eating, I reverted back to my old ways…my eating was much more peaceful, but because I hadn’t changed much on the outside, it was hard to actually realize that I was making progress and that I HAD changed. You’ve given me much to think about!!