The Cinnamon Fairy

Sugar and Spice in a Zany-Mundane Life


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Whys and Rewards

I believe you must consider appropriate motivation when talking about a sustainable plan for change, and you really have to look to the internal, rather than the external. Things will be hard, time will be short, the weather will be bad, people will be unsupportive, etc. What will keep you moving when everything else encourages you to inaction?

Beyond all the noise of daily living, I have to focus on my “why.” Why am I doing this? What is motivating me to try to make changes that last this time? How will this be different from all the other times? The truth is, I don’t know if it will be. But I have to try.

There’s different levels of “why,” of course, from the superficial to the ones so deep in the psyche that they’re painful to chip it. In my case, I don’t want to say that it’s to be thin or to be hot. Those come too close to making changes for other people, not me, and I don’t trust my body to fit so neatly in those parameters anyway. I haven’t been thin since I was a preteen, and I may or may not already be hot. That’s kind of an eye of the beholder thing.

But I think I want to be “more” than I am now. I want to be stronger and have more stamina. Speed doesn’t matter to me that much, and I’m fairly flexible as I am. (That one tends to surprise people. No one expects the big girl to be bendy. Oh, the gymnast I might have been with a bit of training.) I want to be healthier and more confident and able to do things that I can’t (or can’t do well) right now.

So my “whys” at this moment include:

Better Health
I am now in my mid-30s, with future health problems skipping up the sidewalk to knock on my door. I have high cholesterol, which is genetic, and per my cardiologist requires me to be on medication the rest of my life, regardless of diet or exercise. I can resign myself to that, because my un-medicated 5 and 10-year heart attack risk charts were super fun to look at. I cried in the doctor’s office; don’t really want to do that again. However, there’s a host of other health problems I can ward off through lifestyle changes. Most of my immediate family is diabetic; don’t really want to do that either. Additionally, with the recent changes to the ACC/AHA blood pressure guidelines, I am perilously close to a high blood pressure diagnosis if nothing changes.

Better Mood
As I said in the last post, I default to self-loathing. It’s interesting looking back at my classmates in my counseling program and recognizing how many of us have struggled with depression, anxiety, and/or an eating disorder at one point or another. Exercise makes me feel good, makes me more confident, and so does developing more appropriate eating habits. I’m working on avoiding emotional eating or eating when I’m bored.

More Endurance
I’ve mentioned before that attempting to keep up with kids on a playground served as a mental turning point for me. I contrast that experience to hanging and swinging across jungle gyms myself when I was a kid, and dancing for hours when I was in my teens and 20s and still hanging or swinging from poles or streetlights for the sheer joy and exhilaration of the movement (also, to prove that I could, because no one ever expected it of me). The entire world was a dance floor and, my friends, shorty got low. I want to dance again with reckless abandon and have my body be able to do the things I want it to do.

Clearer Sense of Self
I want to feel connected to my body and fully inhabit myself. I want to reduce the skewed perception I have about my appearance. I remember once looking at some high school pictures that I had not taken — and thus not committed to memory through bouts of nostalgia — and asking my friend who “that one girl” was. Well, it was me. I didn’t even recognize myself. That’s not what my mental image of myself at that time had been. Recently, even now, sometimes I see a stranger in the mirror or in photographs.

And then there’s the concept of acknowledging and rewarding progress as it’s made to help keep that commitment and momentum going. Traditionally, I’ve rewarded myself with food, generally a dessert or carb-heavy meal of some kind. And while I can’t say I’ll never do that again, it is something I’m aware I need to minimize.

I’m basing this initial reward system off of pounds lost. Weight alone is an incomplete measure of progress, but it’s something that’s easily measured and understood, and I can work with that right now. Maybe eventually I’ll add in rewards for longer miles, higher weights, smaller clothes, etc. I’ve also chosen to tie my rewards to activities that help with further increasing health and wellness. I may end up adding something for a 5 lb increment to keep me going, but we’ll see.

Rewards
10 – Facial
20 – Reflexology foot massage
30 – Thai yoga massage
40 – Swiss or deep tissue massage
50 – Treetop adventure course
60 – Horse riding lessons
70 – Acrobat/aerial lessons

What are your current goals, what are your “whys” for changing, and in what ways do you reward yourself for accomplishing a goal?


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My Mind Is a Liar. How ’bout Yours?

I’ve found myself with so much to say that I’ve floundered a bit about where to start. I have lots to process and plenty of insights that may be of dubious worth to anyone else but me, but I guess today I’ll talk about beliefs.

I am a master of negative self talk. People think I’m joking when I say self-loathing is my default state, but I’m not and it is. Now, I’ve learned to deal with myself over the years (that counseling degree ought to be good for something) and I was also gifted with a heaping helping of resilience, but this is a struggle that will probably never completely go away for me. Joy and optimism are deliberate choices that I make on a daily basis. I have to be very careful about the narrative that I allow to run through my head. My mind is a liar. I know my mind is a liar, but it still tricks me sometimes.

What types of things does my lying mind say? Some of you have probably heard these before, too:

  • I’m ugly
  • I’m repulsive
  • No one likes me
  • No one could love me OR No one will ever love me for long
  • I’m a horrible person
  • I’m the worst friend
  • I’m a failure
  • I’ll never be able to do this OR I’ll never be as good as so-and-so

Doesn’t that make you feel bad just reading it? It made me feel bad typing it, and I’m being objective right now rather than all up in my feelings. Of course, you’re going to feel bad if you talk to yourself like you hate yourself!

The worst part isn’t even necessarily when my mind tells me “you can’t.” Far more insidious are the whispers of “so what?” or “what will it matter?” or “nothing I do will make a difference” because those phrases take away hope.

Look, it’s not hopeless. You’re not hopeless. I’m not hopeless. Our minds are LIARS. That type of all-or-nothing, catastrophizing, demanding perfection, personalizing everything, etc., that is irrational thinking. Irrational thinking helps no one. Irrational thinking will sabotage your efforts and damage your relationships.

There’s a type of therapy called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy or REBT. It helps people learn how to self-manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by deconstructing them and teaches people how to change. REBT says that the way we think about events and the meanings we give them affect how we feel and behave, and if you know you’re doing that, you have the tools to fight. If you know the pattern, you can break the pattern = one of my favorite sayings.

So, how does it work? Break what you’re experiencing down into a few component parts:
A = Activating Event
Some horrible, traumatic, damaging, whatever experience, or even a fairly innocuous one, that triggers you to form an irrational belief.

B = Beliefs (these could be rational or irrational)
The beliefs that you use to cope with the event. How are you explaining the event to yourself? Sometimes having a negative belief, or making up a negative reason that something happened, is easier than having no idea at all why it happened.

C = Consequences (emotional and behavioral)
The consequences of your irrational belief. They could be emotional, behavioral, or both. What are you doing because you believe what you believe? Think hard here: do your reactions and these consequences serve you? Do they help you grow in any kind of meaningful way? Is this what you want? Is this how you want to feel?

D = Disputing
Questioning and arguing against your irrational beliefs and your assumptions. Where’s the evidence that what you believe is true? Keep asking that question. I think it’s a pretty damn powerful question.

E = More Effective Ways to Think, Feel, Behave
Now that you have countered your irrational beliefs, hopefully you will develop new, more positive, and more functional beliefs and consequences based in rational thought. These will help you be more resilient, more hopeful, and they’ll help you act and grow in the ways that you want to.

Accept yourself as you are and move forward from there. My thoughts and feelings are certainly real to me, but they do not always reflect the actual reality of my situation. I’ve learned to confront myself and to ask, “Mind, where’s the evidence that these things you say are true?” Typically, my mind can’t give me that. Not when I break it down and keep asking and keep pushing. The argument falls apart because it’s not true. And even if some piece of the argument is true, well, so what? Flaws aren’t irreversible. People who keep trying aren’t irredeemable. I have to believe that.

Sometimes you will be the only one who’s going to believe in you, and that’s okay. Sometimes you will be incapable of believing in yourself, and you’ll have to rely on others to carry you along and help you dispute your lying mind. That’s also okay. The continued movement is the important part. Momentum broken is momentum that will be a struggle to regain. Been there, done that, bought that t-shirt. Honestly, I’ll probably buy a few more before my time has fully run its course. Like I said, I know this stuff, and I still have trouble sometimes.

But get up. Keep getting up. Keep trying. Fall down seven times, get up eight. Maybe try a different approach or change the goal a bit if what you’re doing just isn’t working, but don’t give up. Fight those inclinations to tell yourself it won’t work or you’re not worth it. You are worth it, and if you push hard enough, something is going to change.


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Admitting I Have a Problem Is the First Step

Well, here we are again. It’s been awhile. I regret that I have not been more diligent in my journaling (both public and private) over the last few years. Now there are precious moments lost to time and fading in memory due to my failure to write them down. I’ve actually been poking at this particular post for several weeks. Some of those old words (since removed) now seem presentient. Things I feared may have come true. It happens, I guess. Nevertheless, we keep going, one foot in front of the other, and try to do better in the future.

So, here’s the deal: I get wrapped up in my head. I like for things to be decided, to be settled in my mind, but it’s the actual implementation into reality that I sometimes have trouble with. I am more thought than action, and I suspect that has backfired against me recently.

Today, I want to talk about action and lack of action specifically as they relate to health, activity, and weight loss. (No, I am not removing the cinnamon roll picture at the top of this journal. Looking at it makes me happy, and I believe a full, well-balanced life can include the occasional dessert.)

I’ve maintained roughly the same weight and clothing size for at least the last 5 or 6 years, but I haven’t been happy with the way I look or the way I feel, especially recently. I’ve lost confidence, not that I had that much to start with (issues and insecurities, I have them), and in some ways I feel like a stranger who’s residing inside my own body. I’ve been disconnected from myself. Nothing has brought that home more clearly than attempting to play on a playground set with children and realizing how little faith I had that my body would perform the feats I wanted it to do.

I’ve made pretenses at action. I’ve made a few actual actions, but I haven’t tended to follow through and keep up with them. To give you some idea of what I’m talking about:

Things I Have Done That Constituted Taking Action in My Mind But Typically Required Very Little or No Real Action on My Part

  • October 2013: Added the Runkeeper app to my phone (as an aside, I’ve been starting and failing to finish various Couch-to-5k programs since at least 2009; I know this because I’ve helpfully saved dated Word documents of my old browser bookmarks)
  • October 2015: Joined Moon Joggers (have since logged 249 miles, not diligently or probably completely)
  • April 2016: Bought the Supreme 90 Day DVD series from Goodwill (it’s like a stripped down P90X knockoff and I actually get results pretty quickly when I use them… but then for some reason I quit)
  • May 2016: Bought a FitBit Charge HR (which I do still wear regularly, and I am tracking food in it again, too)
  • July 2016: Splurged on three pairs of running shoes at one time
  • January 2017: Paid to became an investor in From Fat to Finish Line (the idea being maybe I’d put my body where my money was)
  • March 2017: Started and failed to finish (I dropped it four weeks in; I don’t remember why now) the FFTFL Run Your First Mile Training Plan; also bought several strength training books
  • October 23-25, 2017: Conducted a comparison of local CrossFit boxes’ class times and membership prices
  • November 2, 2017: Paid to join Nerd Fitness Academy (which I have recently requested to cancel because I’m completely uninterested in the whole quest module thing and I really won’t ever use it; I guess I’m not the right kind of nerd)
  • November 25, 2017: Signed up for a free three-month trial of Slimming World (recommended by my boss)
  • Et cetera, ad infinitum.

There’ve been other false starts, of course, probably lots of them, that are not as easily remembered or documented. So, now I’m trying to figure out where and why I become stuck, but unpacking baggage can be hard. There’s parts of myself that I don’t really like facing.

During the three times before in my life that I have lost significant weight, it was for a man, not for me. I didn’t do it because I wanted it for myself. I thought if I was thinner and more traditionally attractive, I would be more loved and more desired. It never worked out that way, of course, and I think part of my struggle recently has been being afraid to fall into that pattern again. I wanted this time to be for me, not for anyone else. I think it has to be for me if there’s to be any hope of sustaining it.

Meanwhile, my mind has always fought against me. It tells me that I will no longer be held in esteem, be liked, be loved, if I am seen to stress, to struggle, to–worst of all–fail. I know that’s not true. I don’t lose affection for other people when I see them struggle and try. If anything, it swells my heart and makes me love them more. But believing the same for myself is difficult. So, in large part, I’ve pretended not to try, let words go unsaid, because that way I haven’t had to admit that I’ve tried, struggled, failed. I’ve set myself up for rejection by being afraid of it, and I haven’t always been authentic and genuine with the people who’ve deserved it most.

But! I have been trying! Ahem, again. As you can sort of tell from the list above. If the scale is to be believed, which I’m not always sure it is, I’ve lost about 10 lbs since the end of October/beginning of November. I don’t think I look like I have, I don’t think I feel like I have (if anything I feel more squishy), but some items of clothing do fit a bit differently. Zippers that once “rode down with wear” now stay where I put them. Of course, how many times have I lost and gained that same 10 lbs over the years? Too many. It’s too soon to trust it yet. Also, I would prefer to talk in terms of health and activity, not just weight, but the scale is certainly the easiest marker of change right now.

This last month and some few days, I’ve been more active, and I’ve been more mindful about what I’m eating. It’s a work in progress. I only started tracking my food intake and exercise activities with anything like dedication this last week. It’s not that I didn’t do anything before. I just didn’t track it or talk about. It seemed personal, something to keep more closely guarded, but that’s how I’ve always end up failing.

I’m tired of failing. I’m tired of being a stranger in my own skin. I’m not quite sure yet who I’m going to be, but I’m stumbling down the road to get there. This is my journey; I have to move at my own pace, but I’m tired of doing it all alone. I can’t keep failing to turn up to my own life out of fear or discomfort. Will I suddenly be magically braver and over all my hangups? Probably not. Probably definitely not, but I’m self aware, I’m looking at the patterns, and I believe patterns that are known can be broken or reworked.

So, let’s say weekly, I get introspective, I get vulnerable, and I get you guys to help keep me accountable. I become responsible and accountable to my own words and thoughts when I share them. This is pretty uncomfortable (read: scary as hell) and in some ways feels like the ultimate in narcissistic, navel-gazing self indulgence, but what the hell? Let’s do it.


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Money talks

Hmm, it seems I’m not doing so well with this regular posting thing. The last time I tried blogging on a regular basis was years ago; I was younger and more interesting then and had more energy. Regardless, I’ll keep trying.

I do have good news though!

I am very, extremely, exceptionally, oh-my-god-I-could-lick-its-eyeball close to paying off my car. THAT’S SO EXCITING!! Then I’ll be able to redirect that money over to my remaining student loans and knock them out in another year or two. And then I’ll get to figure out a brand new, bigger way to go into debt! There are plenty of options out there, I’m sure.

I’m just kidding, probably. Maybe. Who knows what the future holds?

My financial management strategy basically consists of feeling horrible about being in debt to anyone, and throwing as much money as possible at the debt as quickly as possible. (Once upon a time, my parents kept a running tally of how much I owed them on the front of the refrigerator for all the world to see. Talk about demoralizing. But effective. Obviously!) This sense of shame is especially strong with credit cards. I feel like I have failed as an adult and a human being if I carry any balance at all over on one of my credit cards.

Sidenote: Your mileage may vary. We can’t and probably shouldn’t all be illogical in the same ways.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my credit cards. They’re so accessible and convenient. They give me points and I earn cashback, and there are way more protections built into them than if I were just wandering around waving a handful cash or my debit card. However, I don’t trust them. My total available credit at this point is only a little less than my annual income. (A well established credit history is one of the ways I know I’ve gotten old.) It’s too easy to pretend I have money when I don’t actually have money.

On the flip side, credit is certainly a godsend if something unexpected comes up. Hello, surgeries, vet bills, car repairs, replacement electronics, etc., I wasn’t planning to see you anytime soon! I actually recommend breaking into savings to pay off credit cards (related to emergency purchases, because that’s what emergency funds are for), if you’ve got a large enough savings to cushion that blow. In my case, the few times I’ve done it I was nowhere close to wiping out my savings. Ultimately, it was probably the more fiscally responsible move since the interest I owe on my credit card purchases is higher than the interest my savings account generates. World, you are so screwed up.

I am concerned about retirement though, which is yet another way I know I’ve gotten old. I don’t feel like I’ve done enough on that end of things because of my focus on eliminating current debt. Will I be comfortable? Will I even be able to retire? How long is my lifespan likely to be?

Big questions, no easy answers. It’s on my mind today a bit more than usual though, so I thought I’d share.


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It’s silly, but I’ve felt guilty

I’m not sure what to write here, but I feel like I need to get down something, if only to get the ball rolling. Overcoming that initial inertia is the hardest part of forward movement, right?

I don’t want this little space of mine to be limited to a certain topic. I’m confident I can’t (and don’t want to) be the kind of blogger who churns out tons of content devoted to the same topic. I wouldn’t speculate that my interests are more wide-ranging than those other bloggers, but I know I don’t have that kind of attention span or dedication.

I haven’t written–really written–anything in ages. Years. Once upon a time I had a reasonably sized readership and name recognition that still echoes today in certain circles. (And if you don’t already know that name, I’m not going to tell you. Sorry, not sorry. A sense of mystery makes life worth living.) I gave that up to focus on me in the physical world.

I’m not always sure that was the right choice.

I grew so accustomed to being in graduate school and either swamped with work and pressing deadlines or just absolutely exhausted that somewhere along the way I quit writing for myself, stopped drawing and painting and–in some ways–dreaming for myself. I’ve been done for three years now, but something in me shies away whenever I try to start back into old hobbies. I think part of it is a (misplaced) sense of guilt. Surely there are better things I could be doing than indulging in self-serving hobbies? Reading is still okay, though, so perhaps that’s not it.

One potential barrier that I’ve encountered is the ridiculous notion that one has to be a “real writer” or a “real author” in order to make the efforts worthwhile. Writing seems unique among the hobbies that way. No one tells fantasy football aficionados that they need to get a job managing real teams or quit wasting their time. It’s fun, okay. That’s why I did it and why I’d like to do it again. Once upon a time, I wanted to be published. I wanted to be bestselling author, and I wanted people to be able to walk into a bookstore and walk out with something with my name on it. Now, that’s not a driving force for me anymore. It’d be nice if it happens, but it’s not necessary.

Another factor is, of course, time. I’ve got more obligations and self-imposed commitments now, and writing isn’t easy like it used to be. Do you know how long it’s taken me just to put this together? That’s how many pages of a book or extra minutes of sleep or talks with friends or whatever else that I could have been doing instead?

Regardless, here we are: baby steps back into rusty water from a long-unused spigot.


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2nd

Do I know what is happening? No, I do not.