What if you could look at your regain as the best thing that ever happened?

Because it is true.

You COULD think this. You could be grateful now that you see how your regain opened up the rest of your life. Your regain, it is an invitation to understanding you, your mind, the way you move through the world not just with the food. Not with just another pouch reset. It happened for a reason.

You get to decide if it is proof of your character, your willpower, your lack of following the plan OR if it happened for an amazing reason. To show you how you think - and then you see, its not ONLY how you think about food, its how you think about everything.

Outsourcing your weight loss ability to your restriction - it is not sustainable for most of us.

Outsourcing how you feel about yourself to your loss, your gain, your extra skin - it is OPTIONAL. It is. Letting your resisting "temptation" with food leak out in overspending, overdrinking, overscrolling these are optional too.

Loves, deciding that the realization that restriction alone, food rules alone, endlessly counting carbs and calories alone was NEVER going to be the thing that saved us, can be the most amazing gift of our lives. We

can decide this. We can. We can change our minds about it and change our lives.

Happy Saturday.

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.

I spent so many years being a people pleaser and ignoring myself while I took care of other people.\

I looked at how I cared for others and I called it kindness. I heard myself say "there is not enough time in my life for MY LIFE." "I am so tired." "I do ALL THIS for other folks and I no one ever asks me what I need."

When I wanted to be a person who actually cared for me, I had a hard time with other people's reactions.

Or - more like - MY thoughts about what other people's reactions would be.

I hadn't even gotten to the part where I actually changed my behavior - I was playing out scenarios about what they would say, what they would do, how I would have to argue for myself, stand up for myself, because they would, OF COURSE not be okay with me not doing for them like I had done before.

Before I could experience myself as a person who had boundaries in *real life* I experienced myself as a person who let people down by my having boundaries IN MY MIND.

Did you hear me, love? I fought with people IN MY MIND and I LOST.

And I stayed the same.

And I ate because "this is all I have for me."

And I drank because "this is all I have for me."

And I over spent because of all the little ways I was trying to do for others, or save myself time - because I had no time because I CHOSE to spend my time and my mental energy either thinking about how I could do more for other people (so I could feel good about myself) OR fighting with them about the person I would become - the person who stood up for themselves, who they surely would not like.

And if I was not a "nice person" would no one liked me, love me, want me around?

This is a brain. A sweet, loving, human brain who is ONLY trying to protect me. A brain that only knew to keep myself safe by focusing on other people, and then when I wanted to focus on me - would remind me of how dangerous it was.

A brain who whispered to me that it was better to say the same and suck it up and stay in my circles, than to do anything else. Might as well eat. Might as well spend. Might as well drink. Might as well look for tiny crumbs of "mine."

It was how I was. It was how I always had been. It was how I had been trained by my upbringing. It was how I was molded by society.

It was how I stayed comfortably miserable on the inside.

They were only thoughts. Thoughts I could decide to change. Thoughts about other people, their thoughts, their feelings.

I was a hoarder. I was a hoarder of responsibility for other people's thoughts, feelings, and a hoarder of ****ty feelings for myself.

It doesn't have to be this way. There is another way. It takes work and its worth every bit of effort. We start with compassion and "of course." Of course our brain thinks this. Of course.

You are loved. You are worthy. You get to decide how you want to feel about them and about you.

Experience yourself differently. You can. You can choose.