What haunts you?
What I really want to say is …
What matters now?
What have you learned about yourself that you didn’t realize before?
These questions give a sneak peek into a course I took that helped me lose what feels like 100 pounds of mental weight in just three weeks.
Change the way you look at things
Before I share what happened and how it might help you during your weight loss journey, I want you to answer these two questions:
- Do you think it’s unrealistic to try a new approach to solving an old problem?
- Are we fools for thinking we have the ability to change our lives for the better?
Maybe there’s a piece of advice someone shared with you when you were a kid that became your mantra? My amazing mom would remind me and my two younger sisters about a famous quote from author and motivational speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer: “Change the way you look at things the things you look at change.”
Keeping that in mind, along with my history of losing and gaining 100+ pounds in each direction, I decided to change the way I look at the scale during this final weight loss journey. I have the power to create a better me, a better life – and so do you!
In late February and early March I took a live, online writing workshop ― along with six other women ― led by grief specialist, eulogist and comedian Terry Moore.
We all signed up for different reasons: One person was grieving the loss of her relationship with a relative, another recently suffered a miscarriage and grieved that along with her tumultuous dating life, another woman grieved the loss of the sale of her childhood home.
As for me, I grieved my helplessness over sugar and shared with the group how my mom would give me McDonald’s when I had intense period cramps as a preteen. During another week, I shared how junk food was given to me as a reward for big wins in life. I ended my written grief story with the line, “F— you, McDonalds!” Somehow, that became the mantra for everyone else in the workshop. As you might imagine, this one line would send us from crying to laughing almost instantly.
Now you might be wondering what this has to do with my 100-pound weight loss journey. First, I must admit that I had hoped the grief writing workshop would move the needle on my scale magically ― it did NOT. However, what DID happen was infinitely more valuable than shedding two pounds a week.
Decluttering the grief
See, it felt like a 100-pound “mental weight” had been lifted off my shoulders and out of my heart. The emotional clearing that took place created a wide field inside me to love myself exactly as I am, at my current weight and at my current size 20. I’m still on my 100-pound weight loss journey, it’s just that I realized I had a bigger issue to tackle: hidden grief that created unconscious limited beliefs about my self-worth.
The next thing you know, I had an explosion of self-love and a bolt of energy to do things that I wanted to do for years (and in some cases decades).
I renovated my nasty 1970’s laundry room… I gave my bedroom a romantic makeover … And I gave my screened porch some much-needed TLC. Now that I’ve decluttered my grief, decluttered my stinkin’ thinkin’ and decluttered my home, I reached out to my life coach, Kerri Richardson, author of “What Your Clutter is Trying to Tell You” and “From Clutter to Clarity,” to decode the messages in my messes and how they may reinforce an over-weight lifestyle. I’ll share videos of Kerri’s mind-blowing coaching in my next post, because I suspect that like me, you might be unaware of what the messes in your life are telling you! RELATED: Why a cluttered desk kills your productivity — and how to fix it So while I’m hovering at a 23-pound weight loss for now, I open my eyes and smile each morning when I look at my romantic room and the fresh flowers on my bureau that I buy myself each week. I take a deep breath and I stretch. I’m alive. I’m happy. Looking to make a change? Consider these two challenges this month: I’m sending you love as you think about your grief stories and how they may be impacting not only your weight loss journey, but the first breath and the first smile of your day.
Janine Driver
Janine Driver is a New York Times best-selling author, her newest book is titled, “You Can’t Lie to Me.” She is a body-language expert, motivational speaker and retired federal law enforcement officer. Follow her on Twitter @janinedriver. Recommended
