This thumb ring is one young woman’s way to remind herself to be tuned-in when she’s eating. Note the strategic placement of her symbol. Her nail polish is also significant. The color is symbolic of her true and powerful self. It’s working. This stuff can be fun.

Today, I’m gratefully entering my third day of my 4 day personal retreat. I cleared my schedule and put aside the guilt from not doing what I should be. I’m allowing myself the chance to do guided meditations, ballet classes, walk the beach and primarily write. I’ve been longing for longer stretches of time to just sit and write and get immersed. My Self has been pleading, “Please, can we just sit and write?!” I’m glad I listened.

I scheduled it for this week because my husband is out of town – good timing with the sunshine and low tides!

I got the inspiration to go on retreat years ago when I picked up my first Jennifer Louden book: The Woman’s Retreat Book. I consider Jennifer a pioneer coach. Basically, her delicious retreat activities are like being coached in that you play, explore, gain clarity, listen to yourself and cultivate intimacy and support within yourself. She was influential in helping me to cultivate self-honoring, develop my mindful eating practices and in recognizing that I want to become a coach.

Her books are likely to make an impact on you, too. To live more purposefully and passionately, besides her retreat books, I highly recommend, The Life Organizer.

Speaking of retreats, Jennifer has a contest to win a spot at her annual writing retreat in Taos, NM, titled: The Luscious, Nurturing Get Your Writing Done While Laughing Your Butt Off and Maybe Crying a Little Too Writer’s Retreat

Every year I read about how fabulous it is, get all excited and wish I could put up the tuition. Could this be my chance! Here’s my entry: http://ht.ly/4Pwka

In the past couple of weeks, I got to witness 3 more people discover that self-compassion works in preventing self-sabotage. Each person strayed a bit from eating as well as they had been. By letting it be OK, accepting it and forgiving themselves, they didn’t feel compelled to ‘blow it all’, as they would have in the past. They just continued onward as if it didn’t happen and didn’t set themselves back.

Their old way was perfectionism: “Since I’ve been bad, I’ll really be bad. If I can’t win, I don’t want to play. If I can’t be perfect, forget the whole thing.” After the binge, they’d beat themselves up and go on a strict diet. Then, they’d have to be naughty again to rebel from being treated disrespectfully, and the cycle continues.
The starts and stops are tiring, frustrating and discouraging. The body responds to these famines and feasts by getting particularly good at storing fat.

Self-compassion = Self-acceptance = Forgiveness = Patience = Success

The new way, of the middle ground, is a much more graceful, peaceful, enjoyable and efficient way to travel along your weight loss journey. It’s ultimately faster and more sustainable. It’s like the tortoise winning the race because she moved steadily, instead of the hare who ended up slower with her stops and starts.

Simply put, calling it fine when you’ve eaten too much makes you feel compelled to make it fine. Calling it bad makes you feel compelled to make it bad.

This could be helpful around Easter. The idea is to have big quality experiences with small quality treats. However, if that doesn’t happen, you can practice self-compassion as the antidote to blowing it completely.

The best book I’ve found on self-compassion is: The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion by Christopher Germer.
The Self-Compassion Diet by Jean Fain and her accompanying hypnosis CD are also worthwhile.

As people adopt self-compassion as a way of living all the time, they find they can handle their life without having to overeat. It’s the comfort we’re looking for when we turn to food.

“A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.” Christopher K. Germer

Today is the 7th anniversary of my weight loss coaching business. My heart is full that I get to do this job. I’m grateful to learn so much from the brave and willing people who have come out to play with me.
If someone was to ask, “Denise, you’ve been witnessing people’s process of transformation for 7 years now, what have you found to be the most important elements allowing them to change?” I’d say:

First and foremost is the element of self-acceptance, worthiness, feeling deserving – unconditionally!

Self- acceptance permits people to give up perfectionism and the all or nothing thinking that leads to having to be perfect on a diet; otherwise, open the flood gates for a binge. Once people allow themselves to feel that they’re good enough, they can live in the middle ground which allows them to become consistent, like the tortoise who wins the race.

Hope keeps people pointed toward the light. It allows them to keep going if they feel like they’re sledging through muck, or going backward before going forward again; to know they’re making progress; to believe in themselves and the process.

Self-compassion provides an inner environment that makes it softer and safer to look inside to see what’s there that needs to be healed and let more empowering thoughts and truths come in.

Awareness enables people to stop at the critical point before taking action and choose to make a different choice.

Identifying with their natural weight self makes it more automatic for people to choose as they would at their natural weight. They feel connected to their true body and know that it’s already here now within them.

With tunes still popping up in my head from having sung out at Seattle’s 5th Ave Theater’s Sound of Music Sing Along last weekend, I’d say that these are a few of my favorite things:)

The Gifts of Imperfection, Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, is the title of Brene Brown’s extraordinary new book. To me, this book provides the detailed ‘how-to’ toward the delicious life on the other side of emotional eating that Geneen Roth presents in her best seller, Women, Food and God.

Brene says in order to have peace, joy and live a wholehearted life, you first have to address what’s in the way: shame, perfectionism, caring what people think … Shame is at the root. We are ashamed of what we feel is not OK about us that makes us unlovable. In differentiating shame from guilt, she explains, that guilt says, “I did something bad.”, while shame says, “I am bad.”

“Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its effect is often positive while shame often is destructive. Guilt causes us to apologize, make amends, and replace negative behaviors with positive ones. I found that shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can change and do better.”

Brene goes on to explain that when we feel shame, we either: withdraw, hiding and silencing ourselves (and overeating); we try harder to please; or we try to gain power over others or try to shame them.

In her 10 years of researching shame she says what makes us shame resilient is to recognize when we’re feeling it, own our story of what we’re feeling ashamed of, and tell someone we can trust what we’re feeling and need. When we expose what is vulnerable to the right person and see that we are still OK to them and when we can sit with our imperfections and practice self-compassion, then we can diminish shame.

This is all important if you’re feeling shame over your body, because you feel compelled to act out more of what you’re feeling. You continue to be who you think you are and keep it true that you’re unworthy and not good enough.

“Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success.”, writes Brene. Perfectionism is not self-improvement, not striving to be your best. It’s based on being not good enough to win the approval of others. It comes from fear and the avoidance of shame and judgment. With, healthy achieving, on the other hand, the goal is to fulfill your authentic Self.

The Gifts of Imperfection is one of the best weight loss solution books I’ve ever read. It‘s speaking to shift the inner experiences leading to overweight. You’ll see what I mean when you read the table of contents.

On her blog, Brene Brown started a campaign to protest perfectionism. She asked for photos of protest such as with protest signs. The protest continues on Shutter Sisters where I submitted this photo of Charlie who wanted to have his say.