The September Monthly Project: Free Yourself! Once and For All!

Here at the Sisterhood, we are all about the health, the fitness, and you know, the  shrinking.

And I wish it were just that black and white. But it just is not.

With all this working out and the healthy eating and the shrinking comes issues and behaviors and concerns, insecurities and complications and guilt and what I like to call, “the fat goggles:” the problem that occurs when we’ve shrunk, but we don’t see the results in the mirror, we see only the “old” us. I have an ongoing battle with “fat goggles.” Some of the things we may or may not tackle in our daily lives are as follows:

We step on the scale sometimes once a week, sometimes once a day, sometimes 5 times a day.

We want that piece of cake and either we obsess about not eating it or we eat 5 pieces of it.

We make one tiny “slip-up” then throw all caution to the wind.

We refuse to make any so-called “slip-ups” but we’re surrounded with the guilt and agony of it.

We miss a workout day then it spirals into the whole week.

Or instead, we work out 6, 7, 8 times a week.

We cannot accept a compliment. Or we scour and push for compliments.

We beat ourselves up when we make a “mistake.” We sabotage our good work with poor eating and we lose control. We refuse to see the good in all of our efforts and refuse to reward or feel good about ourselves.

We become overwhelmed at the thought of the journey ahead. We become overwhelmed when the journey is coming to an end.

We compare our bodies to each other’s. We become angry that we’ve gotten to this place. We become angry and beat ourselves up when we become stuck and we don’t know where to go from there.

And there are so, so many more. The pressures we put on ourselves, the projection of these feelings onto other people in our lives like our families and our friends. Problems stem from not being able to find happiness within ourselves, no matter how far we’ve come on the journey.

Do you recognize any of these things within yourself? Because I sure do recognize a few of these things in myself.

This is why the journey is so hard.

It is not the eating. It is not the fitness (although getting through 30 minutes of cardio sure can feel like a struggle some days). It is not the shrinking (because we feel pretty good when this happens.) It is all the in-between.

Between all the shrinking and business of our lives and our daily routines, we are alone with our thoughts. We think about this journey and our place in it. We think about the how’s, the why’s and the when’s. And it all either just happens or it doesn’t and when it doesn’t or it doesn’t seem good enough, we think some more.

Sometimes it seems as if while we’re on the journey, it is all we can think about, talk about, revolve around.

Yes it takes a constant effort. But when do we draw the line? When does our behavior become obsessive? Destructive?

This is what our project for September is and you can go about it in any number of ways.

• Examine yourself.
• Examine the way you speak to yourself or think about yourself. Do you put yourself down? Do you believe you’re not good enough? Do you run away from risks or life experiences or job promotions or opportunities because you don’t believe you deserve them or you believe that people won’t like you or you believe you won’t get it anyway?
• Examine your obsessions. If you weigh yourself 100 times a day or obsess over the size 6 pants hanging in the closet and put them on every day (sometimes twice) to see if they fit or you work out and think you haven’t done enough and then you do it again and then again and then again, you might have an obsession.
• Examine who you surround yourself with. Do you have friends or family who constantly talk to you or put you down about your weight? Or talk constantly about their own weight? Or try to influence your food decisions or scrutinize every single bite of food you put in your mouth?
• Examine the way you project your healthy habits onto other people. Do you talk to other people about their weight or their food choices? Has your 5 year old asked you if he/she’s “fat?”
• Examine your thoughts about food: Do you measure food/count calories to the point where it interrupts your every thought and subsequently everyone else’s who’s around you? Do you overwhelm yourself with guilt for having pizza and tell everyone in the entire world while you’re eating it about how you shouldn’t be having it? Do you refrain from the pizza but obsess over each bite you wish you were having? Does the thought of food control you?
• Examine your thoughts about your own body: Do you constantly compare your body to other women’s bodies and wish you were them? Do you put your body down to other people or allow other people to put it down? Do you have negative feelings of dislike about yourself because you don’t like your body? Do your feelings about your appearance interrupt your hosting or going to social outings and events?
• Examine your thoughts about the journey itself: Are you at the beginning of the journey and find yourself overwhelmed? Are you at the end of the journey and scared to death about what’s next? Are you scared?
• Examine your habits: Do you eat yourself into oblivion during a crisis? Eat at night? Snack constantly? Have downfall foods?
• Examine just how destructive your current behavior is: Do you starve yourself — ever? Do you purge or think about purging? Do you try every fad diet or weight-loss pill?

There are a million and one destructive behaviors surrounding the journey to healthy living — these are just a few of them!

This month we’re going to talk about, share and examine our own insides, pinpoint our own issues and try our very best to become “one” with them and set them off into the big deep void of the universe. We are here to talk and discuss as little or as much as you wish to share but even if you don’t share all the details with us, will you be willing to share them all with yourself? Will you write down your thoughts, either in your blog or your journal and talk to yourself about all the ways you become healthier in your mind while on this journey?

During this month of September, we want to be able to cleanse our minds and our souls, find ways to love and respect our bodies, respect food and dissolve its power over us, accept ourselves with all our quirks, believe in our strength and our worth, and by God, accept a COMPLIMENT! And stop beating ourselves up into oblivion over every little thing. We want to find peace.

After all, destructive behavior only impedes our goals anyway, so every destructive behavior we can destroy right here and right now will only allow us a free-er path to getting there.

If you recognize even just one of these behaviors within yourself, you should work on this with us! Because the journey has so little do do with the actual physical part when we think about how we’ve gotten to where we currently are and how we are getting to where we want to go.

September is our month to cleanse, to finally wash away all that nasty behavior and all those deterrents to finding happiness within ourselves. September is our month to try to appreciate the journey with all of its wonderful highs and devastating lows and everything it teaches us about patience, motivation, and consistency.

Won’t you join us?

This week, think about those questions posed above along with any other behaviors that we have not discussed here and talk about them. Talk about the ways you sabotage yourself and your inner beauty and happiness and how you sell yourself short and all your destructive behaviors. Blog about it and if you don’t want to blog about all of it, please please please journal all the nitty gritty somewhere, anywhere, and just give a broad overview without specifics on your blog. Blog about how these behaviors affect your life, your thoughts and reflect upon how all of these things make you feel.

Link up in the comments below and if there is any one project in which you should visit your sisters, this is it! Because there will be a whole bunch of vulnerability hanging out there that will need some support. And then join us in the ‘Hood where the discussion continues!

Have a great September! And go on, FREE YOURSELF, ONCE AND FOR ALL!

Tags: featured, fitness, MIND IT, The Monthly Project

Category: Christie O., Fitness, MIND IT, The Monday Project, The Sisterhood