Let me first start out by saying this was supposed to be a private thing. This was written for two Facebook support groups. One called “Push For Your Better” and the other “Ketogenic Diet – motivation group”. It was denied approval by both groups. I am disgusted and will be leaving them both. Or maybe not, maybe when you are done reading you can explain to me why this would not be approved. *edit So, it appears that the link to my blog is the problem with the post and why it was not approved. In fact, it got me essentially kicked out of a third group.
My Keto Friends,
I have been watching, mostly from the sidelines, as I traversed my own Keto journey. Lately I have been feeling overwhelmed by the emotions behind the posts ‘I’ve been doing Keto since _______ and have only lost ___ pounds’. Some are super heartbreaking, in that they have been doing it a long time with proportionately little loss. While others seem to be skewed, being on the protocol a few weeks with what I would deem a proportionately significant weight loss.
This has been haunting me.
Why? Well, let me share a bit about myself so you can get the clearest picture. I am a Life Enhancement Specialist. I am an energy healer with a 30 year career of social work to go with it. What that means is I’ve taken all the experience from my years working with humans in their worst moments and combined it with my equally as long career of metaphysical healing work (sacred work) to facilitate opportunities of growth and healing for others. I help people connect what is going on with their bodies to what is going on in their mind and heart.
I have struggled with weight issues since I was 24 and started on birth control. I’ve struggled with body image issues though since I was 15, 5’2” and 115# when the doctor said, before even looking at me, “So, I see you’re carrying a little extra weight.” Though not particularly athletic, I had an athletic build. He changed his tune after examining me, but the seed was planted and took root.
I am a hippie-dippie, gypsy, tree-hugging, lie naked under the moon, health conscious, holistic, naturpathic and homeopathic woman of 53 years. I know that the physical body is only mirroring the emotional and energetic bodies. I have worked on my internal stuff religiously and openly, while assisting others on their path of healing. None of this work helped me lose weight, though. Not that I intended it to, but do you remember the time when the big tag line was ‘it’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating you’?
Well, sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes it is the food you are eating. Which is where I am now. Learning how the ‘healthy’ way of eating that we were taught, and that I’ve been following religiously, has made me sick. It started in January 2018, when I learned about the Whole30 protocol. I went 42 days. I only lost 10 pounds, but I also lost ‘Fibromyalgia’. Since day 21 I have not had a single Fibro symptom! FOOD! Food was the cause, but no doctor ever even suggested that could be an issue. They just offered me pills.
I stayed true to Whole30 for the next three months. I added back what I really wanted to, and what didn’t seem to affect me. Despite this by June I had only lost two more pounds. Something was still not right. Then I found Ketogenic. I was grateful for the Whole30 start because switching to Keto was a breeze. I had rid myself of most of the carbs and addictions by then. It was just a matter of letting go of the sweet potatoes and the high amount of veggies I was eating. Plus I got to add back in dairy, which I had missed. Easy.
Still the weight loss has been slow. It even prompted me to write about it in my blog, finally. The scale is not my friend. Everyone is different but the stories of rapid weight loss were weighing on me (pun intended). I didn’t get on the scale often but that almost made it worse, because I would think ‘after this long the scale must have moved a lot!’ It hadn’t, yet I was fitting into clothes that I was originally wearing at a lower weight. I found myself disappointed, de-motivated and ready to give up. But I don’t allow giving up, so that caused me to once again look inside.
Why was an arbitrary number holding so much value for me? I delved into it and wrote about that, here https://willowsongmedicine.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/its-not-about-the-diet-its-about-life/
What I realized is that I put more value in the number on that scale than the myriads of other evidence showing me that this is a resonant path for me. It revealed my dependence on external validation. It was a huge breakthrough for me. If you have the time, read the post. It was really powerful for me.
So, that brings me back to today and why I think so many of your ‘I’ve only lost____pounds….’ posts are haunting me.
This is a way of eating (WOE). It is not a diet. I see a lot of you saying that, but you aren’t living it. If you are relying on the scale for validation of a job well done, then regardless of what you say, you are looking at this as a diet. If you are looking at your life and seeing validation of a job well done in many places, then you are truly seeing it as a way of eating. Does that make sense?
It isn’t the scale or the protocol that is in question, its your perspective (which is developed from your programming.)
Our bodies, our minds and our spirits are intertwined. You can’t fix one and expect the others to magically align. You have to work on them all simultaneously. If you are looking for a scale ‘high’ to replace the ‘high’ from carbs/sugar you aren’t addressing the real issue…your need for a ‘high’. That’s addictive behavior. The need to see fast results (whatever ‘fast’ means to you) instead of realizing you are just doing something good for yourself. That’s a dependence on immediate gratification; the underlying premise of addiction.
When you are accepting a new way of eating you are changing your whole lifestyle to a more mindful experience. Without that awareness you are just doing a fad diet.
You are doing yourself a disservice if you are not doing your inside work along with the Keto WOE. I believe that it is those who do not do both sides of the work that gain the weight back or struggle the most (going off and on, can’t get back on etc.)
So there it is. My thoughts today. I hope they help.
*end
So, now this becomes a full on blog post rather than a little group post. Which is me being extremely transparent and breathing big.
I love you.
~Jade
