Going Weightless!

How’d you like to go weightless with me this holiday season? I’m not talking anti-gravity or a space movie; I’m talking about being weightless in the sense of memories of a time before we weighed ourselves. How far back do you have to go? Childhood? Teens? Early twenties? Okay even I laughed at that last one.

Perhaps some have never been lucky enough to not be intimate with the scale, but I have memories of being a kid, running around in the woods or at the lake, never thinking twice about how I looked in my swimsuit or shorts. Sure, my Grandmother would often remind me to hold in my tummy so I wouldn’t grow up to be one of those ladies with a fat belly. “Gran, there was no way to prevent my Abcentricity I’m afraid, but you should know that wherever you are, if you’re looking down on me right now, I’m sucking it in.” Ha ha.

It seems as though somehow this weight-consciousness has just crept into our lives and become part of the every day. We watch what we eat. We feel guilty when we fail. We pretox, detox, diet, and binge. We workout. We work. We have families and fun. We never have time. Yet weekly, sometimes daily, we step on that damned scale and it determines our worth; if not our worth, at least our mood for the day. Since finding TAM and going on my first “diet” four years ago, (yikes has it been that long?) I feel like I have become a yoyo-er. My weight is up, it’s down, I feel good, I feel bad, I work hard, I slack off. I still workout five or six days a week but I am tired of spinning my wheels where diet and weight are concerned. Is this what mid-life is supposed to be like? Me thinks not! I am quoting Shakespeare or something like him there btw.

With five weeks until Christmas I have made a decision to do something different. I am going weightless. 

I’m putting away the bathroom scale and my Tracy Anderson tape measure and I am going to experience what it felt like to be a kid at holiday time. Fortunately I had a good mother when it came to the holidays. She baked and bought chocolates, but she also made sure there were fresh whole nuts on hand complete with a shiny nutcracker. She also stocked up on Mandarin oranges and fresh veggies. She was good about creating balance for us. Thanks for the memories, Mama. (It was no doubt harder on her this time of year since she used the bathroom scale and her Jane Fonda workouts et al). But we were allowed a cookie or two, perhaps one chocolate, but not the whole box, never the whole box, and we were encouraged to “fill up” on the other things. To this day I love those little easy to peel oranges and cracking a walnut or an almond from its shell.

Instead of looking outside of ourselves for comfort and joy this season, why not keep checking in within ourselves? Let's ask ourselves the questions that our parents might have asked when we were moody as kids. How do you feel? What do you really want? More importantly, what do you need? 

I don't know about you, but I don’t want to cross chocolate off my Christmas wish list; I no longer want to make an enemy of the things I love. But I certainly don’t want to have to purchase a pair of Fat Pants in the New Year either. Perhaps if we pay attention in the moment to what’s going on inside of us, we can intuitively guide ourselves through the season coming out on the other side with fond memories and some semblance of a waistline. 

Yes, I’ll no doubt still have to “suck it in” but at least maybe "it" won’t be bursting to get out.

I also like the idea of working toward a goal. The goal here being to see if I can keep trim and fit so that when I do next step in to weigh myself, the number I see there won’t be a shocker. Perhaps I can look forward to a little dip in that number instead, and thinking about that might keep me from guzzling the whole bottle of champagne. Oh who am I kidding, when it comes to champagne there's no stopping me and besides, I wasn't allowed champagne as a kid. I digress.

Weightless it is, starting today. So, dear scale, you get a break this holiday season too. Enjoy the warm comfort of being under the bed. Don’t get too used to it, you’ll be back to work in 2015.

Cheers.

Shan