My energy level was zero. I thought I knew what I needed to do to get it back to where I wanted and needed it to be. Then it occurred to me that my body was telling me what it needed, but I wasn't listening.
Has this ever happened to you?
Note: This is a computer-generated transcript. That means it's pretty good, but not perfect. If you read something weird or confusing, first laugh, then use the time stamp to hop into the podcast to find out what I REALLY said. 🙂
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Welcome to another episode of Reflections of a Recovering Ugly Duckling, a podcast dedicated to helping you discover and develop your full potential as a unique individual. Each week I'll share my experience, experiences, challenges, doubts and fears, as well as the lessons I've learned that keep me moving forward toward my dreams. This is Episode 91, and I'm your host, Donna Doyon. Once upon a time, there was a delightful 55 year old woman who decided it was time to make changes to the lead actor in her life story. No, she wasn't going to give her handsome robe Paladin a vial of poison to drink or push him off a mountain cliff, although she did have many opportunities to do the latter.
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His position was safe and well secure in her home and in her heart. Instead, she knew it was time to recast her own role or step into it fully. She needed a physically healthy person to play the part of a physically healthy person, not someone who outwardly appeared to be one or talked about how to be one. So she began the process of transforming herself from a lifelong vegetable hater to a new vegetable eater. Her first week as a healthier eater was quite successful.
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She ate a spinach salad with Mandarin oranges each day for lunch. She also had a Turkey wrap and a small serving of potato chips. Her intent was to add vegetables to her diet while not restricting herself from her usual meal choices. She did not notice a change in how she felt after that first week, but she was wise enough to know not to expect one. It was during her second week that she noticed a change.
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On Monday, she skipped the spinach salad. At lunchtime. She overdosed on sugary cookies, but her energy level was high and she had a very productive day. On Tuesday, she dragged herself out of bed, but all of her energy snuggled deep into the pillow and enveloped itself in the warm quilt. No matter how hard this delightful woman tried, she could not get her energy out of bed.
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She pulled an Oracle card at the start of her work day. The message was renewal of peace, the need to correct inner imbalances in your life. These imbalances might be mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual. She was reminded that balance is best achieved by listening to her body. All her body wanted to do was crawl back into bed, snuggle deep into her pillow, and envelop herself in the warm quilt.
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But she had work to do. Feeling frustrated and out of sorts, the woman sat at her computer and pounded out some work that was not too creatively or intellectually demanding. And although she ate a healthier lunch, she also fell back into the comfortably comforting pattern of snacking on crackers while she worked. When it was time to go to her part time bakery job, she felt sleepy at the wheel of her car. She wasn't sure how she would make it through her shift.
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She considered snarfing down one of the power bars she kept in her work locker for a midshift treat. Before she even started her shift, she pulled into the store's parking lot, locked her car, and began walking across the lot. She couldn't shake the feeling that she just needed to eat more sugar to feel better, to restore her energy. And that's when the insight hit her. She didn't need more sugar.
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She needed less sugar. Her lack of energy was due to the sugar crash. She knew about intellectually, but always denied emotionally. She'd experienced it before, but not at the level she had that particular day. And so this delightful woman decided to listen to her body.
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She did not eat the protein bar before she began her shift. Instead, she drank some water. She recommitted her efforts to adding healthy vegetables to her daily diet and slowly reducing her sugar intake. She made a mental note to start paying more attention to the messages her body was sending her with the cautionary note to not try to finish her body's sentences, for that is what she had been doing, thinking she knew what her body was saying and reacting to that incorrect or incomplete message. Now, when her body spoke, she would stop, she would breathe, and she would feel what her body wanted her to know.
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After all, correcting the inner balances of your life. That's one secret to living happily ever after. This week's episode is going to be an unintentional part two to last week's episode in which I shared the story of my decision to start to invite and change my relationship with vegetables. If you haven't listened to that episode, you can hear it@donadoyon.com. Today we're going to continue.
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I had a successful first week of adding vegetables to my diet every single day. I felt absolutely no changes in my body in my emotional mental status state regarding vegetables. However, I did manage to eat them every day and it wasn't quite as bad as I expected as I anticipated it to be. So a few things have happened and that's what I want to talk about in this week's episode. But first, I want to talk about why I had a package of sugary delicious marshmallow pinwheel cookies in my workspace to overdose on.
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On Monday, when I first started thinking about the need to add more vegetables to my diet, I started thinking about creating a fun ritual around this transformation process. I had purchased these pinwheel cookies. Now if you're not familiar with them, they are chocolate covered cookies that have a cookie base and then a marshmallow kind of like a bundt cake design marshmallow on top. And again, the whole thing is coated with chocolate and their ooey gooey goodness. Sugar overload and just a couple of cookies.
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So what my plan was to do? There are twelve cookies to a package over the course of two days. I was planning to have a ritual exchanging meeting of sugary treats, meats, healthy vegetables. And I had this worked out in my mind in a fun and creative way. I was going to videotape it and just have some fun with it.
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This event was going to happen over two days. The Thursday and the Friday before Earl and I went on our hiking vacation trip. I wanted to have this finished and behind me so that when I came back I could just begin living this healthier vegetable invited. I can't quite go to that loving word yet, but having vegetables in my daily meals. But here's what happened.
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Earl was sick on Thursday. He wasn't feeling well, so he stayed home from work. Well, I certainly couldn't do what I plan to do while he was in the home. Okay, I could have, but it would have been awkward. I would have had to explain to him what I was doing and it just would have really taken the specialness of it.
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It just wasn't something that I could do. I didn't want to do it just on Friday because I knew that my body would not react well to all of that sugar in one day before we were getting ready to leave on vacation. So we went on our vacation. Had a great time hiking, hiked miles, climbed mountains, slept outside, fresh air, some rain. It was amazing.
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The food I was eating was the food that I always eat when we're hiking. It's processed food. There's candy, there's treats, there's cookies, there's crackers, there's pop Tarts. There's beef jerky, tuna fish. So I did have some protein in there, but it's not a healthy meal.
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But when you're out hiking, you are expending so many calories that you really need to focus on just getting calories into your body. At least that's the story we tell ourselves. I'll be honest and say I have to look into that a little bit more because for a single day hike, I really shouldn't have to junk up my body with a lot of processed foods. I should be able to find another way. But that's another topic for probably not another episode.
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Don't worry, I don't think I'll be going there. But I won't promise we get back from hiking. I go to the grocery store and I buy some baby spinach, some green beans, I buy some fruit, and I'm ready to start inviting and eating vegetables with every meal. The first week was successful. I had a baby spinach salad for lunch with some Mandarin oranges.
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I was eating green beans. I've changed over from white rice to Brown rice. Definitely making progress. But then I had this package of pinwheel cookies sitting in my office and I just kept thinking about it and I wanted to do the ritual thing. But the ritual idea had somewhat lost its magic as I was hiking, because I had had these other epiphanies, these other insights that I shared in last week's episode.
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But they were still there. So Monday I decided I would have a couple and then the package was sitting open on my desk and before I knew it I had eaten all twelve cookies. I did the math calorie wise. I ate 1560 calories worth of cookies, pure sugar and oh my goodness, you know, I ate them paste throughout the day so I didn't really notice the amount of sugar that I was eating. But Tuesday morning, man, did I crash.
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I could not get out of my own way, energetically wise. So it was rather funny that I pulled the renewal of Peace card and as I read it it still didn't make sense. And I'm thinking. I was thinking there was my problem. I was thinking rather than feeling what my body was telling me and I was thinking about the sugar levels and probably I just needed to eat more sugar.
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I was thinking of people that have caffeine headaches because they haven't had their coffee or their soda. So on Tuesday I kept snacking on sugary treats and I wasn't feeling any better. I still was just feeling very lethargic and blah. And it was so funny when I got to work and I'm walking across the parking lot and I felt like I was being hit by a car because the realization came to me so instantly and so strongly. I had too much sugar in my system.
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I needed to wean myself off of sugar and I've done this in the past several times and then I just keep getting back on that sugar bandwagon. But it's the sugar that really was depleting my energy because I would go up and then I would go down and then I would go up and I would go down. It's a familiar pattern and maybe you're familiar with it too. But I knew in that moment I knew that this is my chance. This is my time to recast my role in my own life.
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I love talking to people about getting healthier and I always say do it in your way, in your time, based on what you want in life. Don't go by what anyone else is telling you you should be doing. Trust yourself to know what you can be doing. And that's the point that I reached on Tuesday afternoon walking across the parking lot realizing this is my choice, this is my chance. If I don't want to just play act in this role and offer suggestions to people that I freely admit that I am not following.
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But if I want to be that better example, that better role model for people, then it's time for me to change. So that's what I am focused on doing. It's a continuation of my evolution of enjoying vegetables to having more of them in my life. It's the realization that sugar really is harming me. Last week I had no problem with my energy level.
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This week, Monday and Tuesday. It was a problem. This morning I've had some Greek yogurt for breakfast. I've had some grapes. I have not had my typical mid morning protein bar snack, and we are going to see how the day plays out.
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But my focus is going to be on making those healthier food choices. I may not feel a difference in my body, and it occurred to me that that can be a good thing. Think about when you're feeling healthy and strong. Do you notice your body parts? Are you aware of your arms, your feet, your legs, your belly, your mind, your head, your brain, your neck as you just sit there and you're listening to this?
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Are you aware of any of your body parts? My guess is that the only parts you might be aware of are the ones that feel pain, that feel discomfort. The rest you take for granted. They're doing their job. They're supporting you as they need to support you.
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They'll do whatever you need them to do. When you call upon them to do it, they just are. Because that's their purpose. And it made me realize that the superficial highs and lows that happen with sugar, I shouldn't be feeling that. I shouldn't be feeling those energy waves.
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As far as my food intake, it should be balanced. It should be on an even keel. That's how I felt last week. And last week it was. Now that I'm looking back, I was aware that I didn't have the high energy level, but it just felt balanced.
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It felt natural, it felt calm. Dare I say it felt peaceful. It just was with no real consciousness about how I was feeling physically. So I'm really intrigued to see how this continues to go on. So that was the story.
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And a little bit of extra stuff about the cookies, of why I had them. And now I'm really glad that things worked out the way that they did because I don't know that I would have had this epiphany, this strong connection with how that really impacted me. Granted, that was on a large scale, that was an overdose level of sugar. But if I can remember and hold on to how that felt because we learn so much more when we're working from our feelings. If I can remember and hold on to how that felt, that energy crash and remind myself of that feeling when I go to reach for those sugary processed treats, hopefully I will make a different decision.
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Some other parts in this story that I wanted to talk about is the fact that our bodies do talk to us and we need to listen to them more. They tell us when things are off balance, but so many times we think we know what's best for ourselves. We live in these comfortable patterns, these familiar routines. We have our habits and we fall into the comfortable cycle of day to day living our bodies may be trying to talk to us and we may be talking over them. From a relationship standpoint, perhaps you've experienced this, perhaps you've been guilty of it, or perhaps you know someone who has experienced it or been guilty of it.
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Frequently when Earl and I are having a conversation, I will ask him a question or make a statement. He starts to respond before I've even finished my thought. Frequently I won't say most of the time, but frequently his response has nothing to do with the question or the comment I was going to make, but because he thinks he knows what I was going to say, he just jumps in and answers it. More than one time this has become a problem for us. More than one time I've said no wrong answer and then refused to repeat the question or statement, and he'll try to cajole me and, oh, come on, don't be that way, come on, I want to know what you're going to say.
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Then you should have listened the first time. And his response sometimes is, but you speak too slowly. I am a hesitant speaker. I pause a lot. I like to formulate my thoughts and to choose the correct words, the right words, the impactful words.
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Earl takes the sign of any pause as a place for him to jump in and fill up the quiet. And frequently he's wrong. And many times, probably more often than not, I'll just let it go because it really wasn't that big of a deal. He's being who he is in response to who I am being who I am. The other day when we were out hiking, he made a comment, you talk too slowly.
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And I said, and we've been together for five years. You know this about me. Accept me and love me, who I am and stop jumping in to fill in my pauses. We'll see how that works out, relating it back to how our bodies speak to us. Sometimes our bodies are sending us messages, but we're denying them or we're not listening.
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We're thinking. We know what it's saying to us and we don't. So this week I encourage you. I challenge you. When you feel your body speaking to you, whether it's through an ache or a pain or a sensation, whatever you are feeling, stop take a breath and try to listen to what your body is saying.
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When you're feeling good and your body is feeling healthy and strong, it's probably going to be very quiet. It just is. It's content, it's peaceful. During those times, it probably doesn't have much to say to you. But when you're feeling a little bit out of balance, spiritually, mentally, emotionally or physically, your body is going to give you the signs of things that you can change to restore that balance.
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It's up to you to listen. It's up to you to be willing to make the changes necessary to restore that balance so that you can experience those feelings of peaceful contentment correcting the inner balances in your life listening to your body when it speaks to you. That's one secret to living happily ever after.
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Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Reflections of a Recovering ugly Duckling. If you like what you just heard, I hope you'll stop by my web address donnadoyon.com that's D-O-N-N-A sit and feel free to bring along your friends and colleagues. You can listen to past episodes from the Podcast Podcast Tab The music for this podcast is called Drifting Upstream by Hyson.
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The music for this podcast is Drifting Upstream by Hyson. The music was slightly remixed and fit to needed duration.
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