"It ain't easy but it ain't hard" weight loss program: 'Emotions'

This is installment 3 of my series depicting my beginning of my wellness journey, and culminated in my loss of 30 pounds and gain of a new sense of fresh air.

Everyone has emotions, right?  Well apparently after having two back-to-back kids, I had a lot of them.  

After Xavi was born, I was having some pretty annoying pain in my pubic symphasis every time I sat down.  Imagine that: a new mom who wants to sit down; pretty rare huh?  Every time I tried to sit or tried to stand a dull ache would go through my pelvis and reverberate in my bones.  Add a (pretty heavy) nursing baby and an excited toddler and things were um, strained, to say the least.  I mentioned this to my chiropractor, of course, because it felt like a bone problem.  

She had fortunately just been to a new seminar for a method called "Neuro-Emotional Technique" (or NET).  It operates on the principle that improperly processed emotions create stress in the body and can manifest as malfunction or pain.  She adjusted my pelvis and then remembered about the new method she learned over the weekend.  She had me place my hand over my forehead and then tested my muscle.  It went weak.  

"Um, there's an emotion associated with that.  Do you want to deal with it?"  This being a new, exciting, scary realm of ideas, I said 

"yeah, I guess."

"have you had any trauma to this area?"

"well I had a baby."

"That concept?" She asked my limbic system.

weak muscle.

She placed her hand on all the major acupuncture points of the organs: lung, spleen, heart, adrenals, and finally liver.  My body wanted to deal with emotions associated with the liver.  

"anger."  

My muscle went weak

"your anger."

weak again.

"So how would you relate your anger with the trauma associated with having a baby?" she asked

"well, maybe I am angry about my body changing because I had a baby?"

Bingo.  Weak muscle.

"But I don't feel angry.  I thought I was over that."

"well, you may not have finished processing through that emotion, and now it is manifesting as pain instead of anger.  Anyway, we can do this one of two ways.  We can do the two-minute stress relief method or we can go through the original event from conception to present and process through it that way.  Which one do you prefer?"

The two-minute stress relief method sounded like an easy way out.  Besides, this was too intriguing to gloss over.  "ehh, let's try the second one."

Through another series of muscle tests, it came out that a part of me was angry at my daughter (who is my first baby) for changing my body.  Once I had a clear picture of this, I sat up and placed one hand over my forehead and the other on the spot where my liver point is.  I hunched over and let the emotions wash over me while she did some gentle adjustments and rubbed my back.  Pictures of my stretch marks flashed through my head, so did my ever-growing pant sizes and the monthly/weekly weigh-ins at the dr's office during pregnancy.  I let it all go.

That night I slept like a rock.  The next day, I had no more pain in my pelvis.  Then that turned into the next week.  That pain that used to ache through my bones every time I sat down and stood up was gone for good.  And I was hooked to this processing through emotions as a way of long-lasting healing.

This post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays, February 1, 2013 edition.

It ain't easy but it ain't hard weight loss program: episode 2

The second installment of the series, "It ain't easy but it ain't hard weight loss program."  The first installment can be found here.


So let's rewind.

I mentioned that I was feeling exhausted and spent from my second pregnancy in two years, and that I had already suspected the nutritional information distributed by the government was kinda weird or something.  It didn't line up.  But I suspected this long before I ever got pregnant.  How did I get off track?  What caused me to completely throw in the towel and listen to the FDA and USDA?  Well, in short, a nutritionist and an ever-ballooning body.

My body had already become stretched far enough past my liking with my first pregnancy, and I never touched back down to my pre-pregnancy weight before I was--yes--pregnant again.  By month 6.5 into pregnancy number two, I was larger than I had wanted to be.  Not overtly down on myself, but small inklings of doubt in my body and its ability to take care of itself.  So I won a free month of nutritional advice from an RD and thought this would be the chance I needed to learn what my body needed.  They even included weekly meetings to help with accountability.  She said she would help me not gain too much weight.  Well, they say you get what you pay for...

The nutritionist gave me a website and told me to enter in everything I eat.  I was obsessed with this website.  I would nitpick every single thing I ate, entering it into the website, making little recipes on the website, googleing the fast food places I went to and finding their nutritional information (best thing I learned from this is the tortilla at Chipotle is 280 calories, taking off of which makes a 900-cal meal into 600.  I didn't like that tortilla anyway...).  It was exhausting and took about 3 hours per day.  I found myself changing my diet based more on what was easiest to put into the computer than what my body needed.

The nutritionist came back and said to me, "you are eating too much fat."  She gave me the plan of 50% carbohydrate, 25% protein, 25% fat.  I was eating 30% and that was me eating everything "fat-free."  Wasn't avocado and nut fat okay? Then I had this weird idea that more protein equals more healthy so I would add protein powder to everything.  I had a goal of 150-180 grams of protein per day.  Whole grains were a must-have.  Whole grains and protein.  Some fruit and vegetables.  Then ice cream--or frozen yogurt for healthy twist.

 I became depressed.  I was obsessed with an obligation to a website.  My body was changing constantly and I felt like I had to control every calorie or else face permanent weight gain.  Two pounds per pregnancy. That's what the media had touted.  After six weeks on this plan and tracking my food, I went to my midwife. My weight had leveled off.  I had not gained a pound.  Wait a minute, I thought.  Aren't I supposed to gain weight?  Maybe this isn't useful for right now.  Maybe this is not healthy to my baby.  I stopped tracking my food and just started eating whatever.  It was still sugar and protein powders.  Some vegetables and whole grains.  Her advice was still ringing in my ears...