Tag: HCG

Baby Jiu Jitsu

A Dance of Appreciation and Avoidance

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Don't you want to be thin?, Fat is Just an Adjective, Flagrantly Feminist, Health at Every Size, Practicing in the Heart2 Comments

Baby Jiu JitsuOne of my other weekend activities was to get a somewhat-overdue haircut (and a color touch-up, though that was more on-time).

I had a haircut scheduled two weeks ago, but my hairdresser got sick, and I just decided to grit my teeth and wait till the Saturday coloring appointment I already had on the books.

The upshot of all this scheduling information is that my last haircut prior to this one was the weekend before I flew down to begin the HCG protocol. So, my hairdresser hadn’t seen me since this whole journey began. And I guess I look different enough now for it to be noticeable.

“You look great! Have you lost weight?”

Welcome to the compliment minefield.

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[HAES/FA Basics Break]

Just for clarity, let’s recap some of the reasons why this particular “compliment” is deeply problematic and not very complimentary.

As a start, here’s Regan Chastain at Dances with Fat:

People who undertake weight loss attempts are often encouraged to motivate themselves by hating their current bodies.  When they are successful at short term weight loss, they are encouraged to look back at their “old body” with shame, scorn, and hatred.  And that’s a big problem.

Not just because at some point the person will probably start to think “if everyone is talking about how great I look now, how did they think I looked before?” but also because the vast majority of people gain back their weight in two to five years.  Then they are living in a body that they taught themselves to hate and be ashamed of, remembering all of those compliments. Yikes.

Tracy I at Fit, Feminist, and (almost) Fifty unpacks some of the deeper implications of this compliment, and its collusion within a structure of the Foucauldian panopticon:*

It reinforces the idea that it’s okay to let people know that we are monitoring and judging their bodies. One thing that shocked my friend in the story I opened with was that she really didn’t even know the person who commented on her weight.  And yet the person felt completely entitled to say something. What kind of a twisted world do we live in where the state of our bodies is fair game for comments from whoever feels like making them?

Finally, here’s a meditation from Michelle Parrinello-Cason at Balancing Jane on the question of what exactly we’re praising when we compliment weight loss.

What if I say “Have you lost weight? You’re looking great!” to someone who has been starving himself for weeks. Now I’ve reinforced that behavior.

What if I tell someone she looks great when she’s actually suffering weight loss as a side effect from a deadly disease (as happened to this woman’s friend who was suffering from Lupus).

We don’t know what we’re praising if we’re only praising a result. If our goal is to encourage people to take care of themselves and to be healthy, then shouldn’t we make sure that we’re actually encouraging people to, you know, take care of themselves and be healthy?

If someone gets up an hour early and went for a run, we should praise that. That’s hard work.

If someone cooked healthy meals all week long for themselves and their family, we should praise that. That’s hard work. [. . .]

If we rethink the way that we give praise, we can begin to restructure our norms. If we praise hard work instead of outcomes and acknowledge beauty wherever we see it and the people who are doing that hard work don’t get any thinner, we’re still reinforcing positive, healthy changes. Isn’t that what we really want to value as a culture?

[/Break]

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For all that I agree with these multiple analyses about the problems behind my hairdresser’s statement, I also agree with Golda Poretsky at Body Love Wellness about the root cause of these “compliments”:

I think people are, in some ways, nearly literally blinded by weight loss culture. So when they read something or someone as beautiful they make an automatic connection between beauty and weight loss. I really don’t blame people for that. I think that most of us who have woken up from weight loss culture have been truly hurt by it (or have great empathy for someone close to us who has been hurt by it), so people who haven’t had that experience often just see our current weight loss culture as normal.

So the question becomes, what do you do in the moment? Depending on the context and your relationship to that person, you can handle the compliment of “You look great. Did you lose weight?” in many ways.

Among the options Poretsky lists are saying a simple thanks, setting a boundary against public discussion of your weight, or using humor to redirect the conversation. In the moment on Saturday morning, I didn’t select any of those precise options, though I feel as if I kind of rolled them all together, a bit.

I thanked her and said I’d been doing this detox diet for a number of weeks, limiting my food to lean proteins and fresh produce. I was sure some weight loss had occurred as a side effect of the detoxing, but that’s not my focus.

“Do you have an ultimate weight loss goal?”**

“Nope,” I repeated, “that’s not my focus.“

And that’s where we left the topic. Me wanting to acknowledge and appreciate her desire to say something nice and kind, while also jiu-jitsuing my way out of the specific value proposition (thin=beautiful=virtuous; fat=ugly=lazy cow) she was unconsciously peddling.

* I stumbled across this blog tonight looking for good links to use here and I am already head over heels in love with Tracy’s intelligence and insights.

** You see, this bit shows as much as anything how deeply unconscious and blinded we are by the weight loss culture. When an otherwise lovely young woman hears a statement about how weight loss isn’t my focus and then without blinking an eye disregards that assertion to ask me my weight loss goal, there’s nothing else to call that but a symptom of cultural insanity.

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Image credit: http://www.groundnevermisses.com/2012/02/striking-grappling-traditional-mma.html

 

Osho Zen Tarot: Letting Go

Releasing Old Selves

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, Stuff about Stuff1 Comment

Quick HCG update: my ketosis levels limped through the weekend at “small,” so I made it to today’s final shot, as scheduled. Since I still have a couple more days of transition from this phase to the next, I don’t have a whole lot else I want to say about the topic for now. It’s a little bit like reaching my birthday and searching within myself, expecting to feel different — but I’m not really feeling all that different.

Instead, after skipping out on JALC for the whole weekend, I feel like writing about some of those weekend activities. Call it the “Endless Unpacking Weather Report.”

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As is my wont, I got some more boxes unpacked this weekend. The process for each box is slower than you might think, because of all the clutter that got boxed up in random assortments when we in such a hurry to pack up a year ago.

In my effort to make this new start a fresh one, I’m trying to be very deliberate during the UNpacking, assessing every item to feel into whether or not to keep it, and, if I’m keeping it, whether or not I have a sense where it will be living. (If I don’t have a sense if where the item will live, I sometimes invite myself to rethink whether it’s really something to keep.)

Osho Zen Tarot: Letting GoAnother technique I’ve been using is to pull cards on things to get some guidance about whether an “on the fence” item should be kept or added to the Goodwill pile.*

And for the record, there’s a LOT of “on the fence” items. I read something somewhere about how a tendency towards indecision can actually be a precursor to hoarding behaviors, and I would say that pattern has played out to some degree in my own life. I can definitely tie myself into knots now and again, agonizing about what decision is the “right” one — and I mean that in all sorts of life’s corners, not just with possessions.

With possessions, though, there’s often an extra charge to it. The things speak to me so strongly about different phases of my life when I was involved in particular endeavors or activities. Music studies, theater, my Ph.D. program, studying belly dance, leading an earth-based rituals group at Philly’s UU church. And so on and so forth.

It doesn’t make sense, but it’s hard for me to contemplate letting go of those old selves. There’s part of me that hangs on to the fantasy that I might re-engage with one of these old passions, so the old supplies might be needed, down the line.** And then, even with former paths where I know the door has closed, it still feels like an act of self-betrayal to let go of these talismans. Like somehow, if I release the objects, its as if I’m telling myself that that old path was a waste of time and energy.

So, by turning to card-pulling, I’m practicing my level of trust in Spirit, and reminding myself of the faith — the knowing, really — that every “wrong turn,” “abandoned direction,” or “closed door” has been an essential ingredient in bringing me to the self and place where I am today. As one of my consciousness teachers once reminded me: “You’re never NOT on your life’s path.”

And for the most part, it’s been a successful experiment. There’s still been a weird moment or two, when the cards have guided me to let go of something unexpected. Like when the guidance came through to put my copy of Canterbury Tales on the Goodwill pile. It was deeply puzzling, like becoming slightly unrecognizable to myself: as a Lit major, of course I should have Canterbury Tales on the bookshelf.  So what does it mean to that identity when that book goes away?

I guess it’s time to find out.

* I [heart] my Osho Zen Tarot app.

** I still remember how, when I started graduate study in music history, I purged some of my literature collection, as a sign to myself (and the world?) about how I was dedicating myself to musicology. Two years later, when I transferred out of musicology into a literature Ph.D. program, there were at least four novels I had to buy again. This has scarred me for life.

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Image credit: http://sourceofmichael.com/2013/04/19/3123/

full glass of water

Watching My Levels, Listening to My Body

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, The Subtle Body, Topics of Study1 Comment

Certain aspects of the HCG protocol are designed around the reality that one’s body will build up a tolerance to the hormone. This is why the protocol lasts only six weeks,* and also why you take a “day off” from your HCG injection every week — this helps lengthen the amount of time before your body goes into what I’ve been calling “HCG saturation.”

full glass of water
All full up…

Obviously, the idea of “HCG saturation” is rather significant because once you’ve built up HCG tolerance, then your body can’t use the hormone to sustain ketosis, which means that instead of drawing energy out of your body’s fat stores, you’re just trying to extract it from your super-low calorie diet — which means that, given enough days, you could start going into ugly starvation mode with your hair falling out, etc.

This has been on my mind because the last few days, I have been feeling a much higher level of physical hunger than I’d had during the rest of my HCG journey. Now I’ve talked at other times about having emotional food cravings and habitual ones, but in those cases I was always able to distinct between those cravings and the level of physical satiation I was feeling. This week, not so much. The feelings of hunger have been genuinely rooted in the physical body, and I’ve been watching this carefully to try and figure out if I’ve hit “HCG saturation” a couple days early.

Another indicator I’ve been watching is my morning pee-stick. I talked about this briefly before, but I don’t think I explained that the purpose of said pee-stick is to check/confirm the level of ketosis your body is in. Well, after the first few days of the protocol, my ketosis levels have been consistently reading as either “medium” or “large” throughout my entire HCG experience. Until yesterday morning and today, that is, when my ketosis level read as “small” instead.

So there is some evidence that my body might be reaching this finish line a tad earlier than expected.

As of tonight, my intention is to finish out this phase of the HCG journey pretty much as originally scheduled: shots ending Monday, and (mostly) staying on the low-calorie diet till the end of Wednesday. (I am going to be giving myself some extra leeway to have some additional vegetable or protein during these days, if my body needs it — staying strictly within this phase’s rules about which foods are allowed, but taking a little flexibility as needed around the amount of said foods).

But if my morning ketosis level goes down to “trace” or — more significantly — to “negative”? All bets may be off, and I might be hitting the next HCG phase ahead of schedule.

———-

One extra fascinating aspect to this is how my detox/consciousness center is currently running a weekend course, which means my coaches are deeply occupied in the important work of running said course and taking care of that group of students. And Mr. Mezzo is out of town for the weekend.

So if my levels drop to the stage where I need to make a call about staying the course or making a pivot, I’m pretty much on my own.**

Given all the ways this journey has been about accepting help, guidance, and support, that’s really kind of ironic. On the other hand, considering my ultimate goal with the detoxing and the consciousness work is to become a stronger mother to myself and my world, there could also be something very fitting about reaching this decision point on my own, in centeredness and maturity.

* “Only” six weeks, she says. (Have I gone mad?!?)

** I say “pretty much” because I can imagine some text-message consultation happening: certainly with Mr. Mezzo, even if that’s not possible with the center staff. And I can always pull cards to help guide my next steps.

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Image credit: http://moodahocka.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/a-full-glass/

Reading the Signs

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Stuff about Stuff, The Subtle Body, Topics of Study3 Comments

ant-manA few weeks ago when I was assaulted by my breakfast apple, I shared my own personal belief that there are signs and messages from Spirit everywhere, and that I’m working to grow my practice of noticing them.

Part of this decision stems from the ways I am naturally someone who watches and contemplates and studies life’s energies. After all, if you use a muscle instinctively, you might as well consciously grow its strength and stamina.

Part of my ongoing process stems from a corollary belief to “there are signs everywhere” about the progressive nature of ignored signs: Spirit may first speak to you in a whisper, but if you ignore that whisper, it’ll be followed by a shout —  and then perhaps a brick to the head. (Here’s two formulations of a quote where Oprah has shared a similar sense of trajectory: it’s highly possible her statements helped me see this pattern more clearly for myself.)

But sometimes there are days when the whispers come through loud and clear.

This morning at the coffee machine, I found myself in a conversation about a co-worker’s whose been out sick — turns out she’s having a gallbladder attack, and she’s currently resisting her doctor’s advice to have the organ removed because “the stones are too big to be treated any other way.”

And of the three colleagues discussing this situation with me, two of them have had their gallbladders removed, and the third served as closest geographical relative/convalescence site for her niece who goes to college up here in Boston and needed to have her gallbladder removed mid-academic-term.

By the end of the conversation, I was very clear on one point. Whatever else may remain in consideration for detoxing next steps, I am certainly going to be doing a gallbladder/liver cleanse in the next few weeks!

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It may be my imagining, but I do think some of the signs life brings me these days are clearer than they used to be. Or I’m gaining practice in listening for them, or something.

As I understand it, that’s one of the purposes of detoxing one’s physical and energetic system — to clear the channel for receiving and listening to spirit’s guidance (or one’s inner wisdom, whichever phraseology more closely resonates with your understanding of the world). I’d like to think that the clarity of today’s message about giving some loving attention to my gallbladder is a result of the detoxing I’ve been doing during the HCG journey.

Some messages remain less easily scrutable. Or, at least, they carry a bit more annoyance here in the physical plane, even if the spiritual meaning is pretty clear.

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With the turn to warmer weather, we’re having a bit of an ant invasion in the house. Since I turn to Professor Google in so many other circumstances, I figured I’d do the same here:

From shamanicjourney.com:

Each ant does his bit to ensure the survival of the whole community, no matter what role it has in society. Activities include gathering and hunting. They work hard, are patient and co-operative. An ant is able to carry a leaf, a crumb or a dead ant for miles – just to get back home to the anthill, requiring a load of stamina and patience. . . . As well as being extremely hard working they possess an extraordinary ability to work as a team – the power of their medicine – to build their homes, to feed and protect all members of their colony. There may be a social order in ant colonies, but all ants honour and respect each other and work toward their common goal – the good of the community. Worker ants are great architects and can show us how to construct our dreams into reality. They are also very persistent and can teach this skill as well.

From spirit-animals.com:

Encountering an ant you should consider that all good things come with time, and effort. Work with diligence, with conviction, and work with others in order to forge your dreams and turn them into reality. Despite their tiny size these little spirits are immensely strong, great strength of will and accomplishment can come even in the smallest of packages.

Alternatively it may be time to consider your own role, concentrate on your specialties and make sure you are making the most of your natural gifts. However, remain aware that nothing can be accomplished without the unity of the whole. Think about how your own contributions in your career, your family, and day to day life fit into the larger picture. No matter how small your task, or your contribution, it is still essential.

Message received, lovely ants. Now, please get off my kitchen counter and into the beautiful outdoors. Kthxbai!

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Image credit: http://culture.pagannewswirecollective.com/2013/06/super-heroes-totem-animals-and-pagans/

Keep Calm and Make Informed Choices

Journeying, Not Arriving

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

One of the commitments I made to myself when I started planning to do the HCG protocol was that I was not going to treat my HCG detox as a completion point. My teachers and coaches have been raising my awareness to the idea that detoxing can best be considered as a lifelong practice. Obviously, there may be times — like when one does HCG, for example — when you choose a stronger detox movement than others. But the trick is that once that strong movement has been completed, not to treat it too much as an arrival point.

In other words: no need to tell myself “I’ve done this HCG thing, so now I’m all detoxed and don’t need to do anything else for a while.”

But the question of what to do next is very present with me right now. Many, many possibilities.

Keep Calm and Make Informed ChoicesIn addition to being nearly complete with my HCG shots, I’m almost near-completion with my first month of Blessed Herbs. That’s something you can do for 2-3 months at a time, so I’m considering that possibility. The company also makes an “Internal Cleansing Kit” that you do alongside the colon cleanse to help a whole other bunch of organs — liver, gall bladder, lungs, lymphatic system. I found one of these kits when I was unpacking over the weekend,* so I’m wondering if that’d be worth doing for the next month.

Or maybe, rather than sliding directly from one regimented program into another, it’ll feel better for me to spend some time taking advantage of the smaller, more “ad hoc” detox methodologies available to me. Epsom soaks, foot baths, castor oil packs, skin brushing, back to oil pulling (now that oils will soon be allowed to me again).

I could even do some research and find myself a colon hydrotherapist, acupuncturist, and/or massage place up here. Down in Philly, I had my go-to places for these services: after 13 months up north, it’s high time I started assembling those resources for myself again. (And hey, after my experiences in March, I might even look for someplace with an infrared sauna!)

Luckily, there’s no deadline by which I have to figure this next step out. If I have a new plan ready for the end of my shots, that’s cool. If I don’t, I can certainly follow the “ad hoc” approach while I’m deciding what my next detox phase will look like — even if that “next phase” turns out simply to be a longer commitment to the “ad hoc” approach.

But I know this much for sure: my HCG finish line is just and only that. The end of my time on HCG. Not the end of my detox journey.

* Another example of best intentions going astray.

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Image credit: http://theincompetentyouthworker.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/why-i-fell-out-of-love-with-two-ways-to-live-pt-4/

Breadcrumbs 2

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Self-Acceptance, Stuff about Stuff, The Subtle BodyLeave a comment

640px-BreadThis may become a recurring feature for days when I have a backlog of small thoughts and no big theme to pursue. I gotta admit, though, that I’m not even sure I have a collection of small thoughts to pursue.

Nevertheless, after “dropping the blogging ball” at the end of last week*, I’m strangely invested in the idea of getting a post in tonight. So: breadcrumbs it is.**

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Last time I did a “breadcrumbs” post, I talked about the immense desire to use lip balm during the winter months. Unexpectedly enough, that longing has only been increasing the last week or so as the seasons have shifted. I have no idea why my lips are feeling more chapped in the spring than they were in the winter. Is it the way that spring and winter keep handing off the meteorological baton on a 48-hour cycle? Have I been cooking more meals with cayenne or ginger?

Whatever the cause, my poor lips are hurting. Even if I do end up obeying the advice about being very slow to add fats and oils back when I’m transitioning to my next-phase eating regimen next week, I can promise you that I’ll be having my own one-woman festival of appreciation for (and liberal use of!) Burt’s Bees Lip Balm starting Thursday.

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Day 2 of Five by Five successfully completed, with a couple categories achieving the “more than 5” benchmark. Let’s see how long I can keep the streak alive!

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Six more days of shots, eight more days of way-strict eating regime. Counting down…

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Among the many restrictions of the HCG protocol is a suggestion not to take most over-the-counter medicines: especially painkillers. No ibuprofen, no naproxen, nothing in the family of NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-imflammatory drugs).

I’ve been lucky enough not to need anything during my HCG experience. At least, not till now — unfortunately that’s changing. I’d hoped the strange side benefit of getting old and having less frequent periods might be that I’d have one of those two-month cycles and completely miss facing the challenge of menstrual cramps sans painkillers. Alas, ’tis not to be.

Guess I’m in for a few days of playing mind over matter.

* Since I started up again this spring, had I ever missed two nights in a row before this past Friday-Saturday combo? Corollary question: why do I think of two nights off as such this huge lapse?

** Damn, I miss bread.

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Image credit: http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Bread

When Can You Call It the Home Stretch?

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head2 Comments

mac&cheese-genieI take my last HCG shot a week from tomorrow. After that it’s two more days of the super-low-calorie food regimen while the remaining hormone works its way out of my system, and then it’s three more weeks of a different food regime — larger quantities, adding fats and oils back in, but still avoiding sugars and starches.

So by one perspective, there’s still a long way to go. And yet, it also senses like enough of an accomplishment to be nearing the end of this initial six-week stretch that I’m kind of thinking of myself as being in the home stretch. At least, on some sort of home stretch.

And at this point, I am ready to reach the first finish line. Because, however fine my physical body is doing on this regime, the emotional body is currently a little worse for wear. All these little daggers of frustration adding up.*

  1. There was an upsetting happening yesterday afternoon, and the emotional craving to self-sooth with comfort food was as strong as it has been since this HCG journey began.  (I distracted myself from the craving with a footbath and a funny movie.)
  2. We let the food stores run very low in expectation of doing our grocery shopping today after church choir — only the last apple in the house turned out to have gone spoiled. So I didn’t have my usual apple on hand for today’s breakfast, which totally threw my morning off to a challenging start.
  3. Mr. Mezzo and I did our grocery shopping together, and as we walked into the aisle to pick up his loaf of bread and English muffins, I couldn’t help myself from lamenting, “I miss bread.” (Bought some spring tulips instead.)
  4. I’ve started reading up on the next phase of dietary restrictions, which are very clear in suggesting that the first week or so after HCG it is best to stay within the same limited list of allowed foods (lean proteins, plus certain veggies and fruits) and just increase one’s portions. Meanwhile, I’m obsessing over something I saw on GMA about shirataki noodles and how I could use those as a way to do “macaroni and cheese” within the new (and looser) restrictions. And I do think the shirataki mac & cheese would obey the letter of the new dietary laws, but it sure isn’t in the spirit of what’s recommended for this upcoming phase.

This is always the mental pattern that I most hated about times I would try to diet or “get myself in shape” by “eating right”: the part where my attempts to eat healthy burgeon into a full-blown food obsession. Ugh.

I was in a detox class yesterday where the teacher talked really eloquently about the ways it can sometimes be unhelpful to approach detoxing through the lens of “eating the right things” in order to prevent the ingestion of toxicity. Instead, it could be possible to acknowledge the fact that one’s system has already ingested some decades’ worth of environmental, energetic, and yes, food-borne toxins, and thus place a stronger emphasis on ridding the system from that accumulation.

I’m holding this teaching very close to my heart today as I try to imagine my remaining weeks in the current and future phases of the HCG experience. I aspire to get back to that more balanced perspective on things.

But right now, I’m feeling a bit on the edge of a precipice. Feeling the grip, the gravitational pull of that food obsession. Thinking about food all the time, maintaining routines and rituals as a way to stay on track (see: today’s upset re: the spoiled apple). Chafing against the restrictions, trying to figure out every clever trick I can to stay just a hair’s breadth within the rules (see: my shirataki noodle obsession), tempted now and again to just say “fuck it” and eat a whole package of Kraft macaroni & cheese with a microwave popcorn and Ben & Jerry’s chaser.

I’m still holding within the boundaries of the protocol. But if this is really meant to be a detox journey for me, then the way any possible other insights have been swept away by all the food obsession hits me as just a tiny bit problematic. Okay, hugely problematic.

But it’s all I got tonight.

* Phrasing inspired by Henry Rollins, Airport Hell: “That’s two minutes of time I don’t get for myself. It’s like he’s murdering me — just a little. Like he’s murdering me with a very tiny knife.”

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Image credit: http://bingeeatingtherapy.com/2013/11/15/friday-a-help-obsessed-food/

 

receiving

Not Just Ridding, but Receiving

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, Self-AcceptanceLeave a comment

It was a full day of bodywork sessions — colon hydrotherapy, oxygen chamber, magnesium wrap, the “heart bed,” and some sauna time. As we were going over today’s schedule last night, my coach said we had a choice about what to do during the day’s first session: the sauna or a raindrop kinesi session.

A card pull on the question pointed me towards the sauna, and as I shared that result with my coach, I told her how the result didn’t surprise me at all. “I love the raindrop and it was great to get one last weekend. But the tone of last weekend was more about taking in care and getting off to a good start with the HCG, while this weekend is more like I’m in it now, so let’s get this shit out!”

And there is some of that tone on things. After all, that quite literally is what a colonic is for, as well as the footbaths (which have been uber-yucky in a great way) and the sauna.

receivingBut midday today I started contemplating how in parallel to the “get this shit out!” movement, this weekend is still — just like last one — deeply about the process of taking in care and nurturance.

The signs have interwoven throughout the sessions. Yesterday, I was part of a castor oil sandwich, and the first observation the practitioner made at the end of the session was how much of the oil I had absorbed into me. That theme continued through today’s sessions with the magnesium aloe mix from the wrap, and even with all the water my body absorbed during the colonic session. So at a very obvious, physiological level, my system is still drinking in lots of nutrients.

And that’s also functioning on an energetic level, with the numerous gestures of care and caretaking that I am experiencing. Everything from Mr. Mezzo’s generosity in giving me rides to the airport, to letting one of the center staff members help rinse and dry my feet after one of these uber-yucky footbaths.

Now I’ve written a little bit before about how I see the HCG journey as one about taking in nurturance. But the reality is that a lot of my focus in these first few weeks of the process has been about the discipline of the movement and about the notion of toxicity leaving my system.

This weekend’s juxtapositions have me thinking a little more deeply about how clearing out the toxicity isn’t about purifying my “dirtied” being. It’s a means of allowing more space for good nutrients (literally and metaphorically) to come into my system, and to nurture the authentic flowering of my true nature.

(Full disclosure: seeing the value of that true nature is still a place where I feel my limitations, but I will leave that exploration for another night. Right now: bedtime.)

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Image credit: http://tinybuddha.com/blog/the-art-of-receiving/

stick figure planting a flag on a mountaintop

Claiming the Choosing

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Practicing in the Heart, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

So the guidance I’m getting is to try and push on for the full six week experience of HCG, and to meet the places of fear and programming that are arising right now, rather than to flee from them. After all, it’s precisely this old programming, these areas of emotional and energetic residue, that I’m trying to detox during this journey.

That holds a lot of truth for me, so I’ll be trying for the six weeks.

stick figure planting a flag on a mountaintopI am aware, as I make this proclamation, that I am watching myself very carefully to distinct between a tone of full maturity in choosing this path, versus the child-tone of “I’m going the full six weeks because they told me to.”

It’s delicate and nuanced ground, because I absolutely want to honor and acknowledge the fact that I am receiving guidance in this. I mean, that’s why I’m working with these folks, because I have trust for them — their wisdom, their care, their listening, their compassion, their hearts. So it feels disrespectful not to acknowledge the part of this process that is about receiving care, nurturance, support — and yes, even advice — from the people down here at the center.

But there’s also a world of difference between putting a parental projection on the center and actively, maturely choosing to follow their advice.

In the first scenario, I’ve created a positionality where, if this next phase of the HCG journey gets tougher*, then I could possibly turn towards blaming the center for that difficulty. Directing anger and resentment towards them for “making me suffer” like this. Taking a source of nurturance and pushing it so hard through my internal filters around the assumption of non-nurturance that I mangle it through a sausage-grinder.

Needless to say, that isn’t a scenario I want to enact and experience.

Instead, I’m trying to hang onto the one inside me that is actively choosing this journey. The mature one that can reassure the anxiety fragments but hold the vision and momentum for moving forward. Yes, it’s scary, and I/we can get help and support in the fear — but we’re going forward because it’s well past time to claim the energetic space to live full-out and on-mission.

I’ve got her on board, for sure. The strength and ease of my access to this inner explorer is a little more on-and-off than I’d prefer, but even if she’s a little more background some moments than others, at least she’s present.

And so on we go…

* Which I do kinda feel is possible (likely?) considering the pieces I’m beginning to hit around body size, attractiveness, and the cultural patterns around reducing women to the place of sexual object.

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Image credit: http://jarredh.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/time-to-change-my-goal/

justice scales

Leaving on a Jet Plane

On By MezzoSherriIn Detox Journey, Don't you want to be thin?, The Voices in My HeadLeave a comment

So I’m heading back down to the detox center tomorrow morning for a mid-HCG check-in. I’ll have a chance to do some physical care & detox methods that either aren’t available to me at home (oxygen chamber, magnesium wrap), or that I just plain haven’t been taking the time to do (the perennially popular foot bath).

justice scalesWe’ll also consult to determine whether I’ll stay on HCG for a 4-week or a 6-week course.

Either length of time is customary for an HCG experience, so at that level, it’s a free choice. I started out assuming that I’d go the full six weeks, but now I’m not sure what I want.

Reasons to go the distance. If I set myself a task, I might as well go full out. The desire to feel as if I fully committed to the process rather than doing it half-assed. The mathematical expectation that staying longer on HCG will give my body more of a chance to burn off more old toxins. The worry that folks will be disappointed in me if I “chicken out early.”

Reasons to stop at four weeks. Part of me is getting tired of the dietary restrictions. HCG comes packaged in vials that contain four weeks’ dose and it expires, so if I go six full weeks, I’ll be letting a half a vial “go to waste,” when instead I could take a couple months off and then do four more weeks later. I’m already feeling a little weird in a smaller body, so the idea of pausing and acclimating before proceeding feels kind of tempting.

I’ll be curious to see how this all shakes out. What my advisors will hear and recommend to me, whether I’ll hear a clearer piece of guidance within myself. If nothing else, I’m glad I heard the question clearly within myself, so even if I stay with the original pan of six weeks, I’ll be doing it from a place of conscious choice and awake-ness.

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Image credit: http://robertjustinronald.edublogs.org/2013/05/17/chapter-5/justice-scales/