Category: mental health

Feasting on the Personal Plate

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Italians eat well to live well. Or as we say: mangia bene vivere bene.

One day as I was editing and revising the second recovery guidebook that I aim to publish the idea of filling and getting sustenance from what I call The Personal Plate hit me in an instant.

In my life I’ve found that choosing from the four “Food Groups” each day helps me live life well. Every day would ideally contain a “serving” of these foods on each of our plates.

The Food Groups are the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual balanced on each day’s Personal Plate to choose from. The mental is the helping of thoughts that you serve yourself so that you can attend to the task for that given day. The emotional part of the plate is checking in with yourself through the day to contact how you’re feeling.

The physical portion is comprised of the food and fitness you get in while going about the hours from morning to evening. The spiritual is taking time for gratitude and reflection on what’s sacred for you, I say engage in a spiritual micro-habit every day.

The four food groups would optimally work in harmony with each other. On the days when it’s hard to achieve balance it’s okay for one portion to get attention over the other.

Plating our lives with delicious and healthy meals this way can make all the difference in how we feel and think about ourselves.

Cooking is soul care. As an Italian woman, I’ve taken up using recipes that I find in cookbooks, magazines, and online blogs.

I’ll end here with a recipe that my health coach recommended that I call a Protein Shake It Up!

12-oz almond milk

1 Tbsp almond butter

1 scoop vanilla protein powder

Mix in blender until smooth and creamy.

The Triangle of Recovery

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A friend posted the article I’m publishing here below on his website circa two years ago. I’m reposting it on my blog as the kickoff of my new focus on mental health not solely our physical bodies:

Five years ago after interacting with a narcissist I was struck with insight one night. That’s when the words The Triangle of Recovery burst into my head. Right then the three sides of the Triangle hit me in thirty seconds:

Fostering healthy relationships as the gateway to recovery. Giving and receiving love compassion and forgiveness as modes of healing. Honoring and accepting each person’s individuality as their superpower for living well and whole.

As regards healthy relationships:

The undeniable effect of trauma on a person, like having a mother or father who is a narcissist, was what got me to promote healthy relationships as the new focus of my Advocate work.

We can’t change other people’s behavior. We can vow to treat ourselves and everyone else the way we want to be treated. Kinder and gentler is the way to go. This is on us to do regardless of how others act.

Interestingly, near the time of my Triangle epiphany I met a kind and caring person. This reinforced that being in a healthy relationship can be curative for the individuals coming together.

As regards love compassion and forgiveness:

Without these healing modes illness worsens. Giving and receiving love compassion and forgiveness is required for us to heal from illness trauma or injustice. Oppression thrives in a loveless world.

Forgiveness exists on a continuum: It can come and go. It’s possible to have anger at what a person has done to us even though we’ve forgiven them.

Confronting them with how you feel isn’t always viable. Writing the person an unsent letter reading it aloud then ripping it up and throwing it away could help you come to terms with what happened.

As regards individuality being a superpower:

Often expressing our individuality is what other people like narcissists don’t like. What causes illness is being cut off from our true selves out in a society where we’re judged and criticized for being different. Living in a buttoned-up family can shred our self-worth when we think dress and love differently from an early age.

Illness sets in when we’re denied the right to express ourselves freely and without fear. The famous quote is: “Genetics is the gun. Environment pulls the trigger.”

Healing is possible when we commit to expressing our feelings. The act of showing up as ourselves I call “self-presentation.” Hiding who we are can cause emotional distress. The only thing hanging out in a closet should be a fabulous frock not our identity.

This is why our individuality is our superpower: Our gifts traits and strengths help us recover. Part of why I speak out is to fight stigma with velvet boxing gloves.

Using the Triangle of Recovery on our journey of healing can allow us to have a happier and healthier life. What if God or the Universe or a Higher Power is saving the best for last for us.

I hope that talking about the Triangle of Recovery sparks ideas for you about how to heal and recover.

New Focus of Blog

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As ever I will talk about physical fitness in the blog. However going forward in this winter season I’m focusing on mental health more so. For a couple of years now I’ve been thinking about the truth: a person who is not in peak health in terms of illness can have a full and robust life.

Acting as a caregiver for an old person I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like for an individual NOT to roll over and passively give up faced with physical limitations.

It’s our mental state that impacts physical disease. Emotional wellbeing really needs to be talked about in what I’ve called in Our One Big Messed Up World.

Our world is beautiful too not just messed up. What’s dis-ordered is what I read in an email newsletter: the use of conversion therapy on individuals who are not heterosexual.

Controlling and trying to repress a person’s identity causes real harm like emotional and mental distress.

Thinking of all this I was keen to take up the cause of mental health. As the stigma of being “different” hasn’t gone away it appears.

For awhile now I haven’t wanted to glorify physical bodies that are in elite shape. So, I will be taking a hard pass on writing anything that insinuates that being in ideal health is the goal.

Becoming and being whole and well while living with illness or any kind of ill-ness is possible. I will focus on this: finding wellness for ourselves while living with whatever challenges we face.

Coming up: recipes that are simple and easy and healthy and tasty to use.

Weight a Minute

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The winter issue of Women’s Health magazine features an article with information about how to approach getting the right healthcare.

Fact No. 4 of the article talks about the weight stigma that often prevents women from seeking medical help.

We’re all used to getting on the doctor’s scale pre-visit. Per the WH editors you can tell your doctor to not have the assistant weigh you at all. Or at least weigh you after the exam.

No grown girl should weigh 97 pounds in only a hospital gown when she’s going for a procedure. And even though I weighed 102 pounds recently I don’t think any adult women should weigh less than 110 pounds unless they weigh that much naturally.

And if you’re thin but flabby—what one M.D. calls TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside) that’s another thing entirely. Either way the obsession with the number on the scale is terrible. Who wants to be humiliated when an M.D. is fixated on that number too?

Weight sensitivity training and a HAES—Healthy at Every Size approach—should begin in medical school coursework.

Do you know what it’s like to be told you’re too thin? I have. And though I don’t weigh 200 pounds I don’t like people commenting on my weight either. Other women not men are the ones who do this.

I say: tone down the talk about weight. Use reflexive statements as in: “I weigh 155 pounds, and that’s OK.” Instead of referring to how much someone else weighs or used to weigh.

We don’t know their story. The issue I take with the WH Fact No. 4 is that they talk about what if you consider yourself a “normal weight.” I detest that they used the word normal. Even if it was in quotation marks.

The perpetual hang-up people have with being normal must end. Today I don’t weigh 102 pounds anymore and I think this is far better. I’m going to have the Caramel Apple Pie Sizzle dessert at Applebee’s when friends gather for lunch.

What heated me up–and I care even though others think I’m thin–is the Netflix series Virgin River. I watched a couple episodes then quit tuning in. The love interest characters were extremely thin. Maybe like I referred to above they were naturally a lower weight. Okay–fine.

Why can’t we see 200-pound love interests on Netflix?–or anywhere else for that matter. People who love each other love each other. And that’s a beautiful thing in our One Big Messed Up World where people tend to hate and judge in evergreen expressions of belief about the worth of you and me.

Let’s throw the critical caustic comments in the garbage can. Those of us on the receiving end of body-weight barbs shouldn’t have to develop the thick skin needed to let those digs roll off our backs. The haters should not be flaming us to begin with.

“You’d be so pretty if you lost the weight” is not a compliment. It’s like a microaggression. Everyone is pretty darn beautiful even if our pounds are the source of other people’s pain. Why do they care?

This is their problem not ours. So fire away–order the Caramel Apple Pie Sizzle and have fun with friends.

Finding Good Habits

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I’m pulled in a magnetic way to buy special edition magazines. To read to get information that can help me have a better life.

The latest issue was the Real Simple Finding Good Habits: Simple Keys to Feeling Happier, Healthier, and More Fulfilled. I quote from the guide to encourage followers to buy and read it.

Though I haven’t read every article yet one stands out about The Power of Habits. In the feature it describes making your bed in the morning as a “keystone habit.”

In fact if this can be believed:

“Bed making is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger money management skills.”

Do millionaires make their beds every morning then? Could this be a hidden secret to wealth-building?

In Small Changes Big Results:

Adding a tiny micro-habit to our daily routines can give us joy. Rather than take a once-a-year Cozumel vacation to an azure beach (that we might not afford to pay off) happiness can be had for a song every day of the year for free or low-cost.

One study reported in the article that adding a food ritual can help us. It’s why wine drinkers who swirl their glass before drinking are apparently more satisfied.

Making it convenient to perform a habit is the key. Fill a 23-ounce aluminum water bottle before going to bed. Keep it on your night table. Voila–it’s easy to start the day with imbibing what I’ve called The Drink of Life.

One last key factor in this second article is to Rework your vocabulary. Quoting Seattle-based life coach Patricia Love: Repeating the phrase “I choose” or “I get to” “helps shift us into a happier state.”

Reworking our vocabulary this way can get us to see a healthy habit as a positive choice we’re making not a burden. This is why I believe too that not using the vocabulary of “I have to” is the key factor in transforming how we view what we need to do.

Framing what we need to do as something we want to do is the difference.

In the end changing our perception from negative to positive is what it’s all about. Those rituals we engage in might just keep us happier, healthier, and more fulfilled.

One habit I have is using a different ceramic mug each season to drink water from at the dining table with meals. I choose a mug whose color complements the table decor. This subtle change keeps me motivated to drink the water with every meal.

I’ll end here with this:

Like with anything I’ve recommended you could be fearful of doing something that appears to be strange or out of the ordinary. It can be unsettling for some of us to think that others will think we’re not normal. The question is: Why should we care about people who don’t care about us?

Our health and wellbeing count more than others’ opinion of how we choose to live and what we choose to do. If they’re really interested in being healthy, when they see how effective we are they’ll want to copy us!

Cooking as Therapy

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The photo is an image of a recipe in Cooking as Therapy book.

This month I checked out of the library the new book published last month: Cooking as Therapy: how to improve mental health through cooking. Each chapter on how to heal what you feel features three recipes: a Fast Lane, Easy Rider, and Scenic Route that take 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and an hour respectively.

You’re supposed to wash your hands before you begin and I forgot this.

In Session Four: Surviving Sadness I used the Fast Lane: Top It All Off Treat. I chose this recipe first not because I was depressed. Anyone who’s feeling ordinary sadness or is grieving could follow this recipe.

The ice cream sundae in the photo above is what I created to Top It All Off as my Treat. Who could resist having ice cream as a form of therapy?

In each chapter the author who is an LCSW features recipes she’s preplanned for readers to use. At the end of the book she gives readers a list of food ingredients and methods for using the food on your own. To create unique recipes customized to what you’re going through.

I recommend installing Cooking as Therapy on a Kindle or iPad or checking it out of the library if you can’t afford to buy it.

A library is a free college of knowledge. And hey today if you return a book late as long as it’s checked back in a lot of libraries will remove the fine you incurred.

I’m going to Top It All Off again every so often. My first foray into doing this sparked an ingenious idea I had for a celebration to host at the beginning of the year like Kwanzaa only for individuals living in recovery.

Stay tuned for the details on this coming up.

The Life-Changing Magic of Individuality

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Just reading about getting organized might throw some people into shame. To counter this I wanted to write in here about the life-changing magic of individuality. Of being imperfect beings with our beautiful quirks and traits and personalities.

Some of us are not really able to adhere to an always-tidy life ethic or living space. This is why self-acceptance comes in handy. Having the radical grace to accept that you’re doing the best you can with what you were given on any given day.

As the choice belongs to you and me whether we even want to change a certain behavior or can live with it.

Life is a dialectic state of being and doing. It’s not an “always” and “never” proposition of how to live. We can connect separate areas of our life with “and” as in “I’m neat at times and messy at other times.” Or even like this: “I’m happy and sad.”

Like a woman told me decades ago: “Perfection is a myth because it implies there can be no growth.” If we reached an ideal state that would be the end of our self-development.

Far better to believe that everyone’s work is in progress and that change, and growth are lifelong endeavors. Like I coined the approach decades ago the way to go is to give yourself a lifeline, not an impossible restrictive deadline.

Truly beauty lies in the imperfect. There’s a moral in the story of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the town of Pisa far off in Italy. The tower is leaning because multiple engineers designed and crafted each level of the tower over decades. Thus the building turned out leaning not straight.

Tourists flock to Pisa to see this magnificent imperfect structure that defies the logic of traditional architecture.

Ideas I give in this blog I seek to be a springboard for followers to consider. I intend that you can take my humble words as inspiration to find what works for you and to create your own methods too.

Get Organized Month

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New Year’s Eve is approaching quickly. The time to set a resolution that I think should be easy to achieve.

January is Get Organized Month all month. Per Google the focus is: Decluttering physical spaces, optimizing schedules, creating better habits, and boosting overall well-being. The themes are: Often ties into New Year’s resolutions, emphasizing fresh starts, productivity, and managing stress.

What better time than at the beginning of the year to Bring in the New Go out with the Old. I’ll write soon about ideas I have for getting organized in January.

The first article I ever published was in the Women’s Forum of the local newspaper in January 1990. The column I wrote was titled Time to Start Spring Cleaning.

I was the first person back then to make the connection that the beginning of the year was the ideal time to clear out the mental cobwebs in our head as well as the physical clutter in our home.

Clearing out the clutter in January and “cleaning up” our negative thoughts about what we’re capable of are habits that can serve us well at this time of year.

The last sentence of Time to Start Spring Cleaning was: And when you open up a can of chowder you might just discover a whole new you.

Cheers! To having the courage to express ourselves. To having the capacity to let go of what’s no longer serving us. To having a life unencumbered by the stuff weighing us down.

Having It Your Way

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In the 1980s Burger King advertised that you could “Have It Your Way” with their hamburgers.

The special sauce for living life today I dare say is deciding for ourselves what kind of lifestyle is the best one for us. It might not be what others tell us is the only “right” way to live.

This comes down to having the radical grace to accept that none of us is infallible or perfect. We won’t always do what’s in our best interest. The goal is to create a lifestyle that is optimized for our own version of health wealth and happiness.

My definition of health is not going to be the same as yours. Nor is your kind of healthy going to be the same as another person’s.

For a so-called expert (as opposed to a credentialed expert) to tell us there’s only one “right” way to be healthy is what I’m here to counter.

A recent secondhand experience got me to see that in the throes of illness there can be inside a person a version of wellness. However ill that person might be they can live resilient.

We need to expand what constitutes health when so many of us have chronic health conditions. Isn’t it possible to feel good despite with and because you’ re living with a medical condition?

In what ways can each of us feel good should we live with any kind of limitation on our health? This is an area I want to explore in this blog. With an array of ideas re: “how-to” have that full and robust life when in the throes of a health issue or other setback or kind of challenge.

Let’s face it: Who among us can really live up to any other person’s expectations let alone an expert’s? Each of us is our own expert on our life.

This is not an endorsement of going AMA or against medical advice that is sound and proven and we’re asked to follow. No–do what the doctor ordered when it has the potential to cure you or alleviate your condition.

What I’m against is trying to live up to an impossible standard re: what is the only right way to live our lives. I for one couldn’t work in a corporate office for example.

The same goes re: having those chips every so often. Being okay when we’re not up to par or are not feeling up to par.

In the current climate of “scarcity” it should be reassuring to know that we have enough and we are enough.

In this coming winter of hibernating and some of us having SAD or seasonal depression this comes down to figuring out where we want to use our energy and what we want to devote our time to.

Coming up a question I was asked that I think can be the springboard for finding out the right course of action. The question posed to me was a game-changer.

Filming a Slow Beat Production

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In an instant one day the words Slow Beat Production streamed into my head.

All along I realized that slowing down was the way to go. To zhush up this philosophy I call filming and living in the video of life a Slow Beat Production.

Decades ago I coined the term of giving yourself a lifeline not a restrictive impossible deadline by which to achieve a goal. I’ve failed at creating 5-year plans. Every 5 years I was tackling the same goals onto a new 5-year plan because I failed to achieve those outcomes in the first 5 years.

It took me 13 years to publish my first book. Over 5 years to accomplish a current objective.

Our lives are going by fast enough. The older we get we don’t have the kind of time to waste beating ourselves up or expecting ourselves to be perfect and do the right things always.

I have an issue with using the word “right” to describe an action or behavior. In a coming post I’ll detail the distinction I make as to why there’s no one “right” way to think feel live act love and dress.

Living our lives in a slow beat is called for when yes we want to get the things we want to have that we’re supposed to get. I’ll refer followers to the book I reviewed in here years ago: Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions.

The guide is a 90-day action plan for replacing an unhealthy habit with a new behavior. Ninety days isn’t really a long time. It’s far more viable to embark on a 90-day practice then to fall prey to a magazine article that tells you how to: Drop One Dress Size by Tuesday.

Again the ultimate aim is to reduce the pressure we have to conform, whether that’s following along in having a societally-approved ideal weight, an acceptable lifestyle, or a standard operating procedure for how to interact with others to name a few.

It comes down to self-respect. If we can’t live with ourselves when we wake up in the morning that’s when it’s time to change. This is why I said Goodbye, Chips.

What others think of us should be of no concern. Our best lives are calling and are within reach. This life is attainable when we have the courage to think for ourselves about the kind of life we want to have.

Avanti! Forward!