So many of us were taught to use fear and shame as our guides to how to do right, be right.

This is good food for thought for pre-surgery folks as well as folks who are trapped in fear and shame because of regain and transfer addictions.

When we use fear and shame as control measures what we end up doing is making our desire greater.

When we use someone else's rules about macros/micros, dont do this, only do that, we enforce our feeling that we dont know **** we are broken. We are not broken. We are powerful beings who, without knowing it, have strengthened our desire for the thing we know does not support us or the life we want to lead.

We can create a greater desire for what we ACTUALLY want for ourselves and turn the desire for the secondhand scraps down. It seems scary because what if we fail, again. What if it hurts us even more than we hurt now? We already hurt. We are already scared. What if what if our failure was actually a pathway to what it is we wanted? What it is we really desired.

Every disappointment, every failure, every regret has lead to this moment. We can decide to not be distracted. We are powerful and amazing. There is hope. The call is coming from inside the house, friends.

What if life was happening for us, not to us.

Happy Mardi Gras.

What if the answer was not that you needed to restrict your calories, what if the answer was you got to partner with your beautiful brain and learn to listen to your amazing body and what it actually needed, in terms of food?

Especially with menopause coming in hot. (ha!) The fuel we use to lose, is typically the fuel we need to use to stay there.

What if the answer was learning about how things drop into a brain, how they show up in a body in a feeling sense, and the behaviors a human uses to cover up those feelings?

What if you learned the skill of noticing where your nervous system gets hijacked and how to redirect the the clouds of thought that drop into your brain and then CHOOSE a behavior that is in alignment with what you really really really want? Which is the pride, satisfaction or just the plan ol freedom of not having to think about/judge/compare your body?

For me, menopause was the most beautiful invitation to see that what I thought about things, where I let my mind settle and spin - all of this changed everything down stream. Because my mind went ******g WILD.

For The Beloveds reading in - its the same with the drinking, spending, being mad with your partner, having fury with the world. All of the things we use against us, it starts in our minds - and, while brains are gonna think **** like hearts are gonna pump, we have a choice of what we let sit in there, spin around, change our body chemistry, and alter our behavior.

Imagine being able to trust your body. Imagine not having to outsource your sense of what is right to a professional or even need to suspect an on-line calculator.

I was weighed right before and a few hours after. I gained 19 pounds. The surgeon laughed and said to go home and pee it out.

Of course you did, you were pumped full of fluids during surgery.

What if nothing was wrong with you?

What if all of those thoughts are the beautiful mutterings of a human mind going about its business.

What if you dont have to "struggle to better yourself" - what if you could start to understand how your brain works, how you have been a GOOD human and not questioned the stuff as it dropped into your head?

The most amazing work I now have the chance to do is to show people that WE HAVE ****TY THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND NOTHING HAS GONE WRONG - and unlike the Nelly song "hot in heeeree" we actually dont have to think "I am getting so hot, I'm gonna take my clothes off.." just because someone said it.

Love, what if you are EXACTLY where you should be because what you have been so blessed to find out is - the calls are coming from inside the house! Your mind!

Learning how to manage my mind has lessened binge behaviors, over spending, over drinking, over food ruling, over all the things I was doing to run away from the resistance I had to, well. ME!

You are the beloved. You are exactly where you need to be. You and everyone who says Amen to what you have to say.

AND it does not have to be a struggle to better yourself, it can be a process of learning about how you think about things. We can be compassionate with and of our humanity.