June 2014

I shared my astonishment yesterday over my discovery of how much protein I was eating. My discovery thrilled me. When I shared my insight with Bob, his comment was: “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Hard on myself? I’m beside myself with joy and you think I’m being hard on myself? I may have discovered a major key to help me be healthier than I’ve ever been, and you think I’m beating myself up? Huh?

One of my readers made a similar comment about yesterday’s post. I read her words and again, thought, huh?

My perception wasn’t closely aligned with reality. Acknowledging that isn’t being hard on myself. My intuition serves me well in most things, and in this area, it’s time to get a better sense of facts.

I bit the bullet yesterday and tracked my meals. My target for protein was 50 grams. I limited my protein consumption considerably, and still ended up at 60 grams. What would it have totaled if I had just eaten what had become a normal amount of protein for me? How much had I been eating?

I don’t know, and I don’t plan to eat more heavily to see. I feel much lighter today. The noble experiment continues, but early indications are that I really did find a key contributor to a challenge I’ve been wrestling with for years.

I’m facing facts. I don’t intend to track my meals for long. I plan to track long enough to get a clear sense of what balance is for me. I plan to track long enough to establish a new habit – which I suspect will only take a few days, because what I’m learning is shifting everything. 

My main style is and will remain intuitive. That trait has served me well in many ways throughout my life. So does coming down from the rafters at times, and taking a clear look at the facts/numbers/data to align my sense of things with reality.

Facing facts can be uncomfortable. Not facing facts can be much worse. I feel great today.

Where could you face facts and deal more closely with reality? Or, if your style isn’t intuitive, where could a little swing from the rafters give you perspective and joy? What is balance for you?

When I told Evan, he said, “I love the way you delight in acknowledging the obvious.” 

When I told Angela, she laughed. It was a sweet laugh – the laugh of someone who cares and is happy when a dear friend discovers her own folly – and a key to moving forward.  

What will happen when I tell you?

From one angle, a logical, linear angle, many of my recent life discoveries seem so obvious that I’m tempted to stay silent about them. I’m sure some of my readers (or former readers) have written me off as being in life-kindergarten – which is, in fact true. From another angle, these discoveries are transformational. Maybe I “should have known” this before, but I’m delighted to know it now. My inner circle buddies share my delight. Angela considers it cause for celebration. Okay, here’s the story. 

I had wondered from time to time if I might be overloading my system with too much protein. Just recently, I mentioned that concern to a friend. She said she thought I might be, and recommended I limit my daily intake to 50 grams.

I had never paid attention to nutritional numbers, so 50 grams meant nothing to me. After my friend and I spoke, I resolved to eat less protein, but it took a few days for me to make the effort to get a more clear sense of how much 50 grams of protein really is.

Tuesday, as I pulled out a chicken breast to cook, I checked the protein content. It said 24 grams per serving. I was stunned to think that one serving was half my daily protein recommended maximum.

Then it occurred to me to check serving size. 4 ounces. I had assumed the whole piece of chicken was a single serving. I had concluded the whole piece of chicken was 24 grams. Was I ever wrong! The chicken breast was over a pound. The chicken breast was over four servings.  I had planned to eat the whole thing. That would have been more than twice my daily allotment. And it would have only been one of three meals containing protein.

There are lots of ways to respond to discoveries like this one. My response was excitement. I could have beaten myself up to think of how I have been perpetuating my digestive issues. Instead, I felt joy because I believed (and believe) I found an essential key to health. I called Angela immediately so we could talk about it while I was still flying high. She delayed her dinner a few minutes to be able to share that joy with me. 

Angela knows, as do I, that this isn’t just about food (although it would still be significant even if it were.) It’s also about:

• a hundred ways I overload myself and am learning to moderate my choices
• being aware of what is right in front of me
• declining when Bob puts too much protein on my plate – or recommends anything that would overload me
• relating to numbers and measurements
• paying attention to intuition and to inner questions like: am I eating too much protein?
• reading my body’s signals

I’m sure I’ll discover many more implications from this awareness. 

I had a BFO yesterday. A Blinding Flash of the Obvious. Was I being an idiot not to figure this out sooner? I’ll gladly cop to that. Is this self-care kindergarten? I think so. It’s also a breakthrough awareness with implications that will ripple throughout my life. It’s a huge stream of learning from looking at the label on a package of chicken.  That’s pretty exciting, don’t you think?

I posted yesterday about how I ate more fat and protein than my system could handle, and I wanted to get at the root of why. I mentioned that cheap and easy answers won’t change anything. 

Of course, it’s important to be fair to myself about the circumstance. The same meal that sits well with me one day might not sit well at all on another. Hindsight is 20-20, and there can be plenty of days where I eat the same way with impunity. It won’t occur to me that I had the same warning voice that day as I did the day I paid a price for my meal.

I want to be fair, but my goal isn’t to let myself off the hook – nor is it to chastise myself unfairly. My goal is to figure out why I overload my system so I can remove the obstacles that prevent me from eating in ways that promote health and healing. That requires me to understand what happens and what I want to have happen. It requires that I help myself stay completely conscious at the decision points of eating. 

This principle applies to any way we overload our systems and for any decision that is less than optimal. 

Angela made an important point. She says she’ll make a less nurturing choice when her “yes” isn’t big enough. To make it easier to make the most optimal choice, she cultivates a bigger “YES.“

Yesterday, when I tasted my lunch, I noticed it tasted like it had more fat than usual. I had the thought that I should probably just eat half of what was on my plate. That would have been a good time to put half in the fridge. 

Instead, I ate it all.

What did I trade off for the pleasure of eating the whole thing? I traded a Sunday of enjoyment for a Sunday of discomfort. Sounds like a devil’s bargain to me.  

Seems obvious to me now. Why didn’t it seem obvious at the choice point? How can I make it more obvious next time? How can I make my YES to eating without overloading my system big enough that it will be bigger than my desire to keep eating?

I’m still working with that one. I mentioned yesterday, cheap and easy answers won’t change life-long patterns. I’m aiming at root cause here.

I invite you to work one of your own challenges through in a similar way. Bob and I just now explored his overloading his day yesterday, leading to restless sleep. Oh, and the extra handful of sunflower seeds didn’t help. He has made remarkable strides thanks to his big YES to creating Space for Grace. He is one step closer to creating that reality. 

When will we ever learn? Now. It’s just that it’s a process to go deep into the root cause. 

Why do I eat too much? Not a question you would expect a 105-pound woman with a total of five pounds of body fat to be asking. But I do.

Why did I push the limits and eat more fat and protein than my system could handle yesterday? Why did I set myself up for the agony of The Gall Bladder Blues? I don’t ask this question disparagingly. It’s a real question. I don’t assume the answers are all negative. We do what we do for a reason. 

Or for many reasons.

We learn more from mistakes than from our successes. When I keep making the same mistake over and over, I figure I’m setting myself up for a big learning.

But what?

Quick, cheap answers won’t work with this kind of inner conversation. It takes deep listening, careful noticing and reflection to get anything likely to unravel a long-standing habit. 

Why do you do what you do?