Skinny

Once a criminal, always a criminal.  Once a loser, always a loser.  Once a success, always a success. Once we get to be something or somebody, we seem to get stuck there.  I’ve read a million “skinny” books and I’m still fat.  I know exactly what to do to be skinny, but I can’t get myself to do it or at least not for very long.  I get myself skinny, then gain all the weight back.  The studies show most people gain it all back and some more.  

It’s like the diets makes us even fatter, a strategy for fatness.  At least, that’s what they say.  They claim all you have to do is get a new lifestyle, whatever that means.  It’s like you are supposed to become a different person.  The old person, whatever that is has to go, and this new person has to step in.  This is not diet stuff.  This is something different.  

Hey, do you know your favorite color, me too!  It’s like you are supposed to get a new favorite color.  I like food, it’s important or has special meanings, tastes, marker of events or people.  For thin people, food is not a big deal.  They have other things that mean stuff.  Other things that excite their senses.   Other things that are little trophies or happenings to mark events.  

How can you change all that?  It’s like changing all this stuff is more important than a diet.  My kids liked to play around with chopsticks when we ate Chinese food.  Me, I’m hungry.  There’s a fork and chopsticks.  Let’s see, no brainer, I choose fork!  I tried chopsticks once, but my hunger got the best of me and down went the chopsticks and I loaded up the fork.  

I’ve been trying to go from normal subvocalizing reading to just looking at the words and understanding the meaning.  I think this will end up being speed reading.  I hate it.  I want to know what the book is saying and just looking at it, is not doing the job.  Just attempting this speedreading stuff is so frustrating.  Very frustrating and I always go back to my slow old way of reading, just to know what it says.  

It’s like when you change who you are, you have this way that works and you have to trash it!  Trash a perfectly good way of doing something.  If it aint broke, don’t fix it.   Along comes this new way, even one you know will work better, but the training of it is so hard and frustrating.  You can’t just stop living and have things not work.  Especially, when you have a way that works.  

I just can’t see myself as that new person.  Me being thin, WOW, I can see that.  Food, not being important, NO WAY!  I can’t see that. You have to eat for energy and satisfaction, don’t you?  They claim, that satisfaction, I could get another way,.... I hear you but, ... I just can’t see it, for me!  Food does the job.  I just can’t see anything else doing such a great job.  Read a book, socialize, relax and meditate, …  it would take some serious training to get them even in the same room of satisfaction as food.  I guess there have been times I was so caught up talking and being with a friend, I forgot to eat and it wasn’t a big deal.  Maybe, these rare events  could play a little role in training, but what?

They say it’s from those rare events, that trainers train whales to do tricks.  They make that rare event important somehow.  I guess with a fish or something, food of course. Then the whale wants to do it again. They say great coaches are like that, they catch their player doing the most insignificant thing of a champion and make it important so the player feels they are a champion, .. for an instant.  Now they want to do it again and are looking for other ways to get that feeling as well.  Trainers and coaches just keep doing that until they have whales doing tricks and players becoming champions.  

So if I catch myself, caught up with a friend and not thinking about food, I’m like a skinny person for an instant,  For an instant I have something more important than food:  my friendship.  So I have to figure out all these little “skinny” habits or behaviors and catch myself doing them. Then I have to make them important enough so I see myself, only for an instant, as a skinny person and make this feel compelling.

Hey, when a skinny person pigs out, they can see themselves as a meatier person, if they want to.  WOW, for an instant, that’s not very long.  How long until you become the meatier or skinny person? …how do these instances add up and can you hurry up the process?  Instant plus another instant doesn’t seem like much.  It seems like it would take a long time for these instances to add up.  How would you hold onto theses instances so they add up, anyway?  

Losing weight doesn’t happen overnight, nor does gaining weight.  That is the problem with diets, New Year’s resolutions, goals, …. They all take time.  And not just waiting time.  They take focused, conscious effort.  Run, push ourselves away from the table, suffer, suffer, no satisfaction, tired, grumpy …. It’s not easy.  And now you want to add being on the alert for being or doing some tiny act of a skinny person, catching it…… AND making a big deal of it.  

What if we prepared and designed our training or practice like our version of a skinny person. Dance or walk with a friend and get engaged in a project that is satisfying at dinner time. Catch yourself doing it and feel like a skinny person. You know, design and set it up like a trap to catch me caught up with a friend and not eating food.  There still is going to be the conscious control and the chopstick events that don’t work as good as a fork, but we are in training.   We are losing the weight and becoming the new person, the trained whale, the champion!

It seems like a possibility, but what if I don’t want to be trained.  I mean I want to be skinny, but I want to enjoy food, not miss meals or be late and not diet and exercising so much.  This seems like a tougher training than cold turkey. It seems easier to just get off food, like alcoholics, as a pleasure source.  This means we have to train some very solid triggers and interrupters.  We creatures of habit love to get captured by a rewarding habit or behavior.  Food is rewarding >> captured.  

Discipline is said to be the solidly triggered interrupter.  I’ve had two cookies, I’m good, interrupted, and taken to a pre-designed habit or behavior to be capture by.  An new capturing habit has to be rewarding and capture you.  It might be conversation; a book, a walk, brushing your teeth and going to another room to work on a project.  It’s all in the interruption and quickly getting to “Next!” >> brush teeth and start reading a book or going for a walk;  ….. or whatever skinny rewarding habit you can get to capture you.  

But again, this does not happen overnight.  It also doesn’t happen, if you don’t want it.  You can’t be skinny and meaty at the same time.  There is a conflict.  You can’t want money, but also think it is bad to have and go for.  You can’t be happy and want to be angry at the same time.  These conflicts bounce people back and forth.  It leads to frustration and confusion.  Getting clear and deciding is a training and a habit as well.  A training we may not have.  We sort of just happen or accidentally end up who we are depending on our influences and situations.  We probably never really developed this “get clear and decide” habit.  We didn’t have to.  It was decided for us and we just followed the training or pressure.  That’s what most of us do. We need to intentionally train the “get clear and decide” habit. It’s part of being responsible or your responsibility habit machine.

We are creatures of habit, mainly trained and guided by the family, culture, society, situations and accidents that happen to us.  Yes, getting captured by rewarding habits and running or finding habits to take us away from pain is what we creatures of habit do.  Whatever works, we get used to.  Then, just like speed reading, a better method may exist, but it’s hard for us to change.  We have a way that works and this new way we see, is better, but we don’t know how to stop living and make the change.  

When I babysit for my grand nieces, we get playing and having fun, and all of a sudden it is bedtime.  I am disciplined and when it’s bedtime, I brush my teeth and go to bed.  So, I say, “time to brush your teeth and go to bed.”  They stop what they are doing and jump up, ……. You have to be kidding (LOL).  They don't’ want to stop.  They are captured in play.  They have another story to read, dance to dance, toy animal to talk to, place to hide and be found, song to sing, drink or water to drink, story to tell me, puzzle to do, …. They are captured in play and don’t want to stop.  Me, I don’t want to stop either, but I’m an adult and must make this happen!  They are powerful, I am weak.  This is just like the old me and that new and better me.

They are just like the “I like my food person” I didn’t want to stop liking food.  Do you know how good chocolate chip cookies and milk are.  Cookie Monster, look out, I’m coming through.  Do you know how good my wife’s cooking is?  Fast food when you are hungry is so good: burritos, hamburgers, fries, shakes, …. And our course diet coke!  I don’t want to really give that up.  Would you? Are you seeing the challenge?  

We all know we have to give up somethings to allow for others.  Give up the old to make room for the new.  Throw out your old clothes and new ones will show up.  Give up is the focus here.  What are you getting?  Regular reading going to faster and higher comprehension speed reading.  It’s better and I am all focused on giving up.  But there is also that time when nothing makes sense and it takes forever to understand anything.  The chopstick thing  when you are hungry.  

Shifting the focus away from giving up to getting something better.  Kids do it.  They want to be grown up.  The focus on it and try to throw away being a kid.  They play being an adult and for those instances they are in their minds.  They catch themselves and then back to being  a kid.  It’s training the slow and steady marketing of the person you are becoming to yourself while you train the behavior of doing it.  But you’ve got to want it, ... and be willing to trash or give up the old stuff.  

It’s “the best is yet to come” plan.  If you think now is the best, then you need to work on the design and plan of what you are creating.  What you are creating is going to be “the best”.  Then the next thing, the best.  The best is always yet to come!  I didn’t think there was anything better than a chocolate shake, I couldn’t imagine it.  Then came all those mixes with candy and a nuts, that was the best.  But it wasn’t! Add hot warm fries and YUMMY!  There is always a new best!  

We always tell our children to enjoy and love their childhood, it will be gone all too soon.  Then the graduation romance years come and are so wonderful.  The family years are full of adventure and memories!  ..amazing!  The do something great years, the grandparent years, the pre-rocker rocket years, the satisfying sage years all have their bests! Each season of life it’s our job to make it “the best” knowing “the best is still  yet to come”.

Limits, restriction, of course, they have always existed.  We have to become masters and adept at still designing, strategizing, planning, building, creating within the limits and restrictions we find ourselves.  Yes, even the pressure to do it now.  That pressure is going to surface and we need patience.  Just as the child enjoys their childhood as they casually prepare for their future.  

If we get caught, unprepared, the preparation seems to take forever.  The pressure takes over and sometimes we give up.  It’s said many people die within a few years of their retirement.  It’s like they don’t know what to do with themselves or who they are, so they die.  It’s not easy let go of who you are, but when you are forced to and you don’t have anyone else to be, what do you do?  You are unprepared.  This preparing and creating is not an easy task, if you’ve never done it before.  Most of us haven’t done it before, as our culture and society has mainly done it for us.  

Design a future, that is the best yet (to come).  You want it and are willing to give up your past life and person.  You see the behaviors, thinking, feelings that would power it and you catch yourself doing or being that person for an instant.  Then back to being you.  You set up more and more traps to catch yourself and the next thing you know you are the person.  Not overnight, but soon.  

You will have times when the pressure to just be the new person seems overwhelming and you are not that new person, yet.  You can't do that person, yet.  You aren’t captured and rewarded by these new habits,yet.  It just isn't’ working and you want to give up, like the chopsticks and the fork when you are hungry.  Deep breath, slow down, and keep training and practicing .  It doesn’t happen overnight.  Get into play and pretend, practice and train.  It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is coming.  The best is yet to come!