Tag Archives: sleep

Radical Self Care

I am so excited to announce our new challenge on the Fit Fatties Forum called the RASCAL challenge. This stands for Radical Activist for Self Care and Love. In this challenge, we encourage you to think outside the box about what self-care means and we challenge you to prioritize self care in your life. Given my current focus on healing, this challenge just could not have come at a better time.

One of the reasons I’m so excited about this challenge is that it helps us broaden our definition of what is included in the definition for “health”. Some of us believe that being healthy means being thin. If we are thin, we are healthy. If we are not thin, we can’t be healthy. I’ve talked quite a bit about this in the past. There are lots of studies that indicate that simply isn’t true. In particular, this study shows that healthy behavior is a better predictor of future health than BMI. But this begs the question, what is healthy behavior?

Of course joyfully moving your body is a wonderful healthy behavior. Of course eating in a way that is in tune with your body’s needs as well as your spiritual and emotional needs is a healthy behavior. But is that all there is to wellness? Eat an apple and go for a walk and you’ve got it covered? I don’t think so. To me health is nuanced and multidimensional. And health involves self-care. (Insert deep sigh here…) Why is it that so many of us are so good at taking care of other people and so lousy at taking care of ourselves? Are we conditioned that way from birth? I don’t know. But I DO know that self care gives us the strength to help others. Think about what the flight attendant says before you take off. “First secure your own oxygen mask, then you can help small children and those around you.” In other words, breathe. Take a moment to care for yourself.

And that moment may involve eating something wonderful or going for a walk. Or it may involve simply breathing. Maybe your self-care moment is spending just a few seconds of your day simply being. Maybe it means getting a little extra sleep. Maybe it involves asking for help. Maybe it involves doing a booty-shaking victory dance. Maybe it means calling a friend and reconnecting. Maybe it means writing a letter to someone who wronged you. Maybe it just requires 5 minutes of quiet and a cup of tea.

Self-care is different for each of us. But it is absolutely critical to our well being. That’s why I’m so excited about the RASCAL challenge. We’ve come up with over 100 official Radical Acts of Self Care and Love, and we’re challenging folks to do one of those acts every single day. Aside from the intrinsic rewards that come from self love, we are ACTUALLY rewarding you with badges and encouragement and prizes for taking care of yourself. Seriously. How cool is that?

I hope you’ll join me in spending some time to take care of yourself this month, either by taking the challenge or simply choosing to do it on your own. Because the world needs you to take care of you.

Love, Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

Want to book me to speak to your group about radical self care? Click here!

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Time for a Little Self Care

Loving Your Body by Listening to Your Body

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I’ve been married for nearly 20 years, and that’s quite a while. If I’ve learned anything over this past 20 years about relationships, it’s this–if you love somebody you have to take time to listen to them. Sure, it’s important to buy each other presents, and show affection. And yeah, sex is pretty important too. But few things are as important as taking time to really hear what your partner has to say.

Today is Love Your Body Day, and I think that’s wonderful. It’s a day which encourages us to celebrate the bodies we have as they are. It’s a day which encourages us to put diets aside and to spend at least 24 hours not comparing ourselves to unrealistic media ideals of bodies and not beating ourselves up for failing to “measure up”.

But I think we can take this relationship with our bodies a little further than failing to beat ourselves up. And I think one of the most important things we can do to show our bodies love is to learn to listen to them.

Our bodies are mysterious and magical and wondrous. So much of it works without our having to think consciously about it at all. Our hearts beat, and breathing happens. Our stomachs digest food and our bodies break it into nutrients that fuel movements both conscious and unconscious. But for things that we need to do consciously like find food and move our limbs, and lay down to sleep our bodies have a very sophisticated built-in wiring system intricately connected with our brains. And if we become attuned to that wiring system, we can learn so much about what our bodies need.

So many of us have learned to be frustrated by the fact that our bodies get hungry. But I for one, am deeply grateful for it. I am a busy person who is easily distracted. Were it not for hunger, I think I might find myself stranded on the side of the road somewhere completely out of fuel and without roadside assistance. Luckily, I get hungry often and in no uncertain terms. So even if I find it really annoying, I find that I have to take the time to find food on the regular. What’s more, I find that if I take the time to listen, my body is pretty specific about what food it wants. The more carefully I listen to my body, the more attuned I am to what nutrients I am lacking and what foods might best top off my nutritional tank. Sometimes my body craves carrots and sometimes (well most of the time) it craves chocolate. And it seems the more carefully that I follow my body’s menu choices (rather than my brain’s dictates about what I should eat) the better I feel. And when I really listen to what my body wants to eat, and give in by eating precisely as much of those things as my body wants, I am rewarded. My body feels warm, wonderful and satisfied.

Another area where I’m learning to finally listen to my loud-talking body is in movement. Our bodies are capable of amazing abilities to move through space. Not only can we walk across a room or catch a ball without thinking about it, but we can also hike and swim in the ocean and dance. And this is another place where the highly sophisticated wiring in our bodies has a lot to tell us. If I sit too long, my body protests. My back and knees stiffen. I feel pain in my head and neck. On the other hand, if I move too much or too long or in a way that is too intense for my current fitness level, my body sends me messages of pain and fatigue. Now just like hunger, pain and fatigue can be deeply annoying. My schedule may convince my conscious mind that it does not want to get up and move or it may not want to stop moving or it may find it extremely inconvenient to sleep. Thankfully, my body sends signals that are difficult to ignore and I try to find ways to meet my body’s demands by moving or resting or sleeping. And when I get this right, my body rewards me. I feel a lightness in my limbs and a glowing sense of energy when I am well-exercised and well rested.

Our bodies strive for something that is so difficult for us to achieve in modern life–balance. Our bodies tell us when we are eating more food than we need or not enough. Our bodies tell us when we need more broccoli, and when we need buns. Our bodies tell us when to leap and when to laugh and when to rest and when to run. And when I listen, truly listen, to my body, it sings. The energy flows through me and I feel a hum that runs from my toes to the top of my head. That’s what it feels like to be in a loving relationship with my body. It feels wonderful. It’s enough to make me strive to make every day love my body day.

Love,

Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)

Desires–What I Wanna

Right Now Show Episode 005: The Big Fat Cookie Cycle

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In Episode 005 of the Right Now Show, we explore the cycle of dieting, deprivation and desperation that I have dubbed “The Big Fat Cookie Cycle”. Learn a few reasons why dieting typically fails and why the Health At Every Size(R) approach seems to be so much more successful.

Here are some important references offering more information on Health At Every Size:

The Fat Chick Works Out! Book and DVD

The Association for Size Diversity and Health

Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight

Big Fat Stats

And finally, if you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe at: http://www.youtube.com/jeanettedepatie.

Thanks so much!

Love,
Jeanette
AKA The Fat Chick
http://www.thefatchick.com

Love Your Body Week TRAVEL Edition (sigh…)

Tucking Myself In

1 Reply

Truth be told, I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep. So I’m writing my blog tonight, turning in nice and early and planning to get up when my body says it’s time to get up. For the past few weeks, I’ve been caught up in the pre-holiday frenzy and I’ve been staying up late. For most people, this isn’t a big problem. But when you’re an early riser, like a 4:30 or 5:00 A.M. early riser, going to bed after midnight is problematic.

So tonight, I plan to engage in a little self care. I’m finishing up my blog. I’m taking a bath. I’m putting on the comfy jammies. I’m drinking a glass of warm milk. I’m telling myself a story. And then I’m tucking myself in for the night.

Because you know what? I’m finding that just like a small child, when I don’t get enough sleep, I get cranky. I get irritable. I find myself inching ever closer to a total meltdown in the candy aisle at Target. So before I throw a complete and utter tantrum and get taken out of the store and told to wait in the car, I’m taking a little preemptive action and going the heck to bed. I choose not to be another one of those drivers on the California highways who is perpetually running late, engaging in complex multitasking, frustrated, angry and focusing on everything but the road. I’m setting my intention tonight and catching some ZZZzzzs so I feel inclined to make a space and wave for other cars to merge in front of me while I sing Christmas carols at the top of my lungs.

I’m making space for an awesome day tomorrow, by simply putting things aside and crashing tonight. *YAAAaaaawn* I’ll let you know how it goes.

Nighty night.

Love,

The Fat Chick

By the way, interested in getting a little extra help as you plan your fitness efforts for the new year? Why not join one of the special fitness groups on the Fit Fatties Forum? Ragen and I are creating four special groups to help you get and stay fit. See you there!

Cranky Cookies

1 Reply

As you can see, my awesome husband and I went down and used the church kitchen and made a few cookies yesterday. And by a few, I mean about 60 dozen. Every year, we make cookies to give away as Christmas gifts. It’s a holiday tradition. Another holiday tradition is to start out having a really great time making cookies and end up really annoyed at one another. Best I can figure, the main problem is that we end up getting tired and cranky. And despite my best efforts to end our baking session sooner this year, and to be the one to say “enough is enough.” I still didn’t say “enough is enough” quite soon enough. Hence we had some very cranky Christmas elves in the holiday baking tree.

We can look at our kids and figure out that they just need to go down for a nap. We understand that no appeal to logic or pleading for better behavior will work. That kid just needs to go night-night for half an hour or it’s GAME OVER. Why is it that we can’t figure this out for ourselves? I know my hubby and I get cranky when we are both hungry. That’s why we instituted the sandwich rule. But we haven’t figured out a “nap” rule or a “time out” rule for ourselves. I have some friends that have asked me point blank to please be the adult in their lives to tell them, as it says in the book, to go the f#@k to sleep! I haven’t agreed to do that yet, because I can’t even figure it out for my ownself.

I want nap time back, like in kindergarten. I want to eat a cookie and drink a chocolate milk and then lie on a mat in a darkened room and have 30 minutes of quiet time while my teacher contemplates her impending nervous breakdown or next career move (to an easier job like CIA agent). I want to lie there in a quiet room and just listen to myself breathe. Can we have nap time again?

I know I can actually do this myself. I know that I can sit quietly in a chair and meditate. I know that I can take a few minutes to do a progressive relaxation. But honestly, who the heck remembers to do that? Not me! What about you readers out there–do you have any advice? Or can you meet me every day about 2:00 PM with a carton of chocolate milk, a cookie and a blankie and tell me to lie down on my mat for an hour? Please? Thanks!

Love,

The Fat Chick

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