The Lard Arms

Thin Is The New Happy

I am convinced that somewhere in this blog is a post with the very same title because I was recommending Valerie Frankel's new book, Thin Is The New Happy months and months ago.  Of course, as with Eat, Pray, Love, I hadn't actually read it when passing on the details.  Instead, I had heard about it and thought, 'that sounds interesting' but not actually opened it.

Well, something must have been clicking with me since I returned home - after living away for most of the year - and I am finally reading all the things I recommended.

I have just finished Valerie Frankel's memoir and I can thoroughly, thoroughly recommend it.  There's so much in there - I won't spoil the read for you - but since this blog is about achieving smaller dimensions, there are a couple of paragraphs that jumped out at me.

After years of dieting, the author decides to stop.  To see what happens.

"As far as I was concerned, my theory was now proven fact.  Excess weight was the physical accumulation of past hurts, insults, disappointments, and resentments that, once released from the mind and soul, were freed from the body.  I'd purged big-time.  The ancient anger, blame and shame were out of my system.  In their place was a glut of self-awareness.  I was convinced that any woman - and I do mean any - could melt down to her genetically predetermined true weight by (1) stopping dieting today, (2) silencing her negative inner voice, (3) forgiving everyone who'd contributed to her forming a bad body image, and (4) working out four times a week."

This really chimes with me.  So much of it makes sense.  I am not brave enough to ditch dieting per se. Just yet.  What I do know, however, is that my relationship with food is still pretty unhealthy and I'm eating for all the wrong (emotional) reasons.

Ms Frankel's life experiences mean that she had plenty of reasons (excuses) to comfort eat and/or binge. But she has finally worked out what works for her.

Read the book.  I think you'll like it.  I loved it.  I loved her honesty.  Her humour. And her lust for life.  In spite of what life threw at her.

Enjoy, friends, enjoy.  And you can also check out her website, Valerie Frankel's Palace of Love.

Eat, Pray, Love - II

I can't believe it but a little check back on my own blog proves it to be the truth but I have only - finally - read a book that I was recommending 19 months ago.  Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert has blown me away.  It has made me cry and laugh out loud.  I can't remember a book having the same impact on me for quite some time.  I'm going to create a link direct from the blog straight to amazon.  I got my copy for the price of a latte and a croissant and I know which one was better value.  In the long run.

It is jam-packed (sorry, I am still using food descriptions unconsciously) with so much that I probably will go back and read it again real soon.

If you have read the book, Elizabeth Gilbert's website puts some faces to the characters ie the people she met along the way.

Eat, Pray, Love  does have a happy ending but as the author points out, maybe it was meant to be all along and rather than be "rescued by a prince" she was "the administrator" of her own rescue.  Which leads me to another post that I need to write...

Some New Year Reading...

The Times is running its annual New Year, New You stuff.  I thought this article looked interesting - thanks to a tip-off from my mother who gave me CBT for Dummies at Christmas - and their series by Max Kirsten (surving and thriving in 2009) resonated (on the anxiety side of things).

I also keep meaning to say how much I loved Shauna's - aka Dietgirl - interview with Sparkpeople

Again, it was just tick, tick, tick.  I've not gone big on the resolutions this year - YET - if that isn't a contradiction but the inclusion of exercise will be right there at the top of the list.  The challenge will be to find something that really doesn't make my skin go ballistic AND that I can do wherever I am.  I've been secretly hoping that the exercise habit would happen with a routine.  But my life still doesn't have a routine so I need to change my thinking on that one.

So, happy reading.  It costs nothing, after all.

Third Time Lucky?

Now, I've got to be 100% honest and say that this post has not been inspired by me but by fellow Dietgirl fan and LighterLifer, Sandra kiwirevo.livejournal.com/ whose blog I caught up with this afternoon when I should be clearing out my loft ready for the final push (I had to switch painters as the first lot have done a crap job!). I am so easily distracted.

Anyway, Sandra has signed herself up for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo - www.nanowrimo.org, which kicks off on November 1 2007.

In short, you agree to write 50,000 words by the end of the month, which should be more than enough copy to submit to an agent or a publisher.

My expert friend introduced me to nanowrimo two years ago and I thought it was such a great idea for those of us who respond to deadlines. I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines. My expert friend and I used to live near each other and both work from home so we based ourselves first in Cafe Nero and then in Starbucks, directly opposite, which had huge windows onto the street. I used my husband's old PC laptop, which had a battery life of about three minutes and surprise, surprise, I gave up after about five days. My expert friend continued! I also had a work crisis, which provided the perfect excuse to stop. I realise if I had been really committed, I would have done 50,000 words.

Fast forward a year and I roped in my mother! We have had an idea for a novel for AGES and decided we'd try a two hander. Guess what? I dropped out and blamed whatever it was that I could. I think the cloud of depression was hovering pretty low, which may be the reason.

So, THIS year, and what? The house will be more or less ready. I've even got my own work/writing space. My mother will be here from November 3rd. Could this be the year I actually finish something? After all, Chris (livelifelighter.blogspot.com) - massive welcome back, by the way - is always commenting that I write TOO much! One of my goals in Foundation was to write a book. I never wrote the goal down, of course, but we discussed it in class. Like Foundation, which I never thought I would finish, I was too afraid to commit to another goal that I thought I would fail to achieve.

I know I am really messing around with Route to Management BUT I haven't given up, I really haven't and however much my crooked thinking is trying desperately hard (and sometimes with success) to trip me up and sabotage my efforts, I am hanging on in there. I still can't get my head round the fact that I have lost the weight. And most of the time, I really don't feel any different. The point of me saying this is that LighterLife could be something I could succeed at (there will be gasps of frustration, I know but you know what I mean);if I can nail Route to Management, I might have done something that I never thought I could. And I need to translate that feeling into other areas of my life. I can't let the old patterns of quitting (or crooked thinking) when the going gets tough. I need to sit it out, ride the storm and let the feelings pass - be they addictive cravings for food, feelings of being totally overwhelmed. I need to start accessing my adult state on a regular basis. LighterLife has given me a glimpse of who that adult is.

So, fellow bloggers - if you think you've got it in you (and my guess is, as a blogger and a LighterLifer you have) - why not check out National Novel Writing Month www.nanowrimo.org?

Happy writing and big thanks to Sandra for reminding me.