This year has been a complete bag of surrendering, leaving, grieving, learning, becoming and being all wadded up in a huge ball of emotions.

As a matter of fact, it’s been a Feast of change.  Through it all, I’ve been following Martha Beck’s Joy Diet and writing about how to create positive change rather than just survive it.  How appropriate that “Feasting” is the final chapter at the end of 2009!  Because that’s just the type of year it has been.

Quick Clarification:  Not “Feasting” as in joyful food consumption.  Feasting as in savoring life.  Celebrating the good and the sad, embracing your feelings (rather than stuffing them down with food) and being grateful for each morsel of laughter.

For kicks, let’s recap.

During 2009, I…

• Gave up the “golden handcuffs,” left my safe, life-long career and launched my own business. 
  (Favorite questions: “In this economy?  Are you crazy?”)
• Became a Certified Weight Coach. 
  (After coaching, being coached and shedding 25 pounds in 2008.)
• Watched the “safe” company I just left fold.
  (Security blanket named “I-can-go-back-if-this-doesn’t-work-out” gone.)
• Became a Certified Martha Beck Life Coach. 
  (Again… after coaching, being coached and dissolving 75 pounds of mental garbage in 2008.)
• Fell totally in love with my clients, fellow coaches and the art of coaching. 
  (And not in a weird, co-dependent way.  In an “I love seeing people do their thing” way.)
• Lost another 8 pounds by being in love with life (as opposed to dieting).
• Grieved the passing of my Grandfather.
• Co-authored and launched The Grown-Up Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss with fellow coach Bridgette Boudreau.
• Spent a summer with flexible work hours and playing with my kids! 
  (For an ex-workaholic, this was as frightening as it was joyful.)
• Launched Square3Coaching.com with fellow coach Nona Jordan.
• Enrolled in Pam Slim and Michele Woodward’s Kick Ass Mentoring to help ramp up my marketing.
• Got mired in a brief, yet uncomfortable, state of stuckness.

Stuckness.

One day, after I rambled about being in this state of stuck, Michele innocently blurted that there is a big mental shift between “becoming” a coach and “being” one.

Eureka.

This phase of career transition is very obvious unless it’s hiding in your blind spot.  Being stuck in the middle of “becoming” something new and “being” that new thing is like having one foot in a canoe and another in a kayak and wondering why it’s tough to stay steady.  You do your thing and look calm on the outside, but your core being is continuously working to not get wet.

This, in a nutshell, is why I believe the art of coaching is so powerful.  With that fleeting comment, the act of “naming the stuck” transported me mentally from the cocoon of “becoming” to the flight of “being.”  The roadblock vanished and I was on a path where I really owned my new career.

Note that it was a path and not a destination.  There’s a lot of “becoming” that I still want to do and I pray that never changes.  There is, though, a relief in “being” where I am in this moment and knowing that is perfect and sufficient.

So for the year to come…

I heard a brilliant coach (Martha Beck) say (dozens of times) that to be great at something, you have to “live it to give it.”  Seek out learning, grow with experience and pass it on.  Which sounds, to me, like rolling “becoming” and “being” into a business plan grounded with integrity.

And that’s exactly what I plan to do in 2010.

It doesn’t escape me that

1. I’ve maintained a 33 pound weight loss through some major life changes. 
   – EVEN BETTER –
2. It never occurred to me that I might regain it again.  My day is no longer eaten up with a battle in my brain around food and my body.**
   – AND –
3. I am still working down to my “natural weight.”
   – AND –
4. I plan to get there (wherever “there” is) in 2010.

It’s a perfect spot for the New Year!

My 2010 intention is to revamp and share all of the tools that are working for me as I use them.  They worked for the first 33 pounds.  They’ll work for you too.

I’ll also share any wild hair experiments that succeed or fail.  I’m human and curious and still get off the beaten path to try a new idea or read a hot book.

My hunch, though, is that the good, sound coaching methods will create success again.  That’s where I’d place my wagers.

What are your intentions for 2010?  How do you plan to Feast?
I’d love to know so I can place my wagers on them too!

** This is, honestly, why I chose to begin with Weight Coaching even though it made more sense (on paper) for me to be a Career Reinvention Coach.*  Undoing my overeating and overworking habits were the first step in following my dreams.  It works.  And I believe in paying things forward that work.

* Part of my “becoming” plan for 2010.  Seems logical to do both!  First get your road blocks out of the way (your over-eating or your over-working or your over-whatever-your-drug-of-choice-is).  Then go after your real work in the world.  And you can do this part before reaching your “natural weight.”  I’m living proof. 

How much better do you feel after a good belly laugh?

One that catches your breath and you have a hard time breathing.  Which just makes everyone else laugh harder, to the point that it becomes contagious.  Tables across the room in the restaurant can’t help but turn around and wonder what’s up.  And in the “When Harry Met Sally” fashion, they pronounce… “I’ll have what she’s having.”

It’s sad that we, as adults, sometimes forget to play, and subsequently, forget to laugh.  Yet, it’s so important that Martha Beck dedicated menu item #8 in The Joy Diet to a good guffaw.  Not a single giggle, though.  Thirty or more a day.

That good fun energy does more than just make you smile.  There’s all kinds of scientific evidence that it will simply make you healthier.  Laughter will stimulate the brain to release feel good hormones that will help your mind and body function more efficiently.

An abundance of laughter can also help you lose weight.

When you ask for the Super Size or eat anything made by Little Debbie, it’s usually not due to physical hunger, but because you’re on a quest to feel better.  Next time you’re looking for something to emotionally feed you, try consuming laughter instead.

Two of those feel good hormones are dopamine and endorphins.  Endorphins are capable of a pain relieving narcotic effect and dopamine raises your happiness levels.  The more you replace emotional food inhalation with laughter, the more these hormones will help reinforce in your brain that laughter is an excellent substitute for Cinnamon Buns ice cream.

Better yet… laughter doesn’t come with that nasty sugar crash and mental backlash that a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints will induce.

So…

How do you come up with thirty things to laugh at a day?
Especially when Thanksgiving is right around the corner and many of us get to endure family drama that puts the fun back into dysfunctional.

First – Change your mind. Look at the pieces of the dysfunction or the things that cause you stress.  Which pieces are actually funny when you detach the facts from the embellished stories?  Can you laugh at how predictably each member in the drama assumes his or her role?

Second – Stop taking yourself so seriously. This doesn’t mean that you love yourself less.  Laughing at yourself actually allows you release the perfection hook and love yourself more.

Third – Surround yourself with laugh outlets. You know what makes you chuckle.  Seek it out.  Ellen DeGeneres makes a living making people laugh every afternoon.  Here’s one clip that I love because it pokes fun at the crazy things we buy in an attempt to beat ourselves thin.

If this is your type of funny, meet me back here often.  Join the “Lite Thoughts for a Lite Life” group on Facebook for other links.  When I find something that makes me laugh, I’ll pass it along.  If you find something, e-mail it to me and I’ll share.  (jennifer (at) litethoughts (dot) com)

Laughing sounds so much more fun than dieting, doesn’t it?

ps – Non-family friendly stuff will still help my daily laugh ration, but it might not get published.

pps – This is the 9th installment in the “Diet for Your Soul” blog series.  I was ready for some title variety.

Play is the place where, if you’re doing it right, you stop taking life so damn seriously. 

It is also essential to maintaining your sanity and losing weight. 

I forgot this minor detail for about twenty years.  Menu item #7 in Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet* reminded me that I could think of 99% of my daily routine as play.  So I changed my thinking.

You can too. 

If you engage in play, or lighten your thoughts, your mind become less heavy.  Do this consistently and your body will lighten too.  Life becomes more about the happy and less about the struggle.

So…
How do you increase your play when you have to work every waking hour?

Here are three of the steps from The Joy Diet:

First, define your real career. 
Not what you do in the cubicle.  What you do in life.  Ask yourself these questions:

• “When your life is over, how do you want the world to be different – in large ways or small – because you have lived?”
• “What experiences must you have to feel you’ve lived a completely satisfying life?”

Make a list.  The things on that list are what make up your REAL career.  Only these activities.  Everything else is stuff you do to prepare for it, ignore it, sabotage or support it.

Second, surrender to the idea that life is a game.
Just because there’s a paycheck attached doesn’t mean it can’t be play. Almost everything (outside of death and taxes) can be like playing a game if you reframe your thoughts around it.   Think about it…

• Your REAL Career – the game of meaning
• Work – the game of strategy
• Marriage – the game of love
• Parenting – the game of learning, diapers and teenage drama

Step back and think of the strategy you use to navigate the games you play each day.  When played with integrity and laughter, the games in your world can be less stressful and more joyful.  Even in that cubicle.

Third, ask whether the games you are playing serve you.
If you are not having fun or it’s distracting you from your real life’s work, consider switching games.  If it’s your teammates ruining the fun, switch to another team.   It’s not play if you don’t love the ones you’re with.

And… I added one more point since I like to play infinite games.

Fourth, are you playing for the sake of winning or for the joy of the game?
Either is fine and both can be fun.  Yet, how often have you found that playing to win creates a lot of stress and only fleeting joy?  I’m after something more sustainable.  

I’m on a quest for infinite games and players. 
The idea came from James P. Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games.”  Here are the phrases that struck me:

• “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”
• “Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”
• “Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.”
• “The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous.”
• “The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.”

That laughter of infinite play is menu item #8.  Meet you back here next week for some unending fun.

In the meantime…

Are you a player?

*  This is the 8th post in a blog series based on Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet.  Previous posts discussed:
Doing Nothing, Truth, Desire, Creativity, Risk and Treats.  The next post will be on Laughter.  My favorite!

For the record, I love Halloween and fully appreciate the creation of Special Dark Nuggets and Take 5 candy bars.  I also believe in never settling for sub-par joy food.  If you’re going to eat it, eat the stuff that makes you drool.  If you’re really in the mood to splurge, actually allow yourself to enjoy it.  Before, during and after.

The main reason why I’m not focusing on the candy treats of Halloween is because The Joy Diet definition is so much broader.  A treat, in this context, is anything that makes you spontaneously smile.  It doesn’t have to cost money, take much time or expand your waist line.

Here’s the idea:  Every day, give yourself at least three really good smile inducing treats.  One in the morning, one in the afternoon and one after every risk you take.  No excuses.  Especially if your first reaction is “How self indulgent is that?!”  If you feel guilty at the thought of treat abundance, you can smile in private.  It’s so much more fun, though, to share the smile with others.

In the pursuit of permanent weight loss, treats are a must.

But wait… don’t you generally “cut out” treats when you try to lose weight?
Yet, reducing your treat intake is NOT part of the Joy Diet.  What to do?

Increase your number of non-edible treats each day in direct proportion to the number of ”not-hungry-but-still-eating-for-some-reason” snacks you take out.

Since emotional eating is often disguised as a well deserved reward, advance preparation of a list of emotional calming treats is a must.  When you think “I deserve a tasty treat,” go to this list.  Often.

For example, I have found that listening to classical piano music works better than ice cream to calm my nerves.  (Despite my initial defiance that this couldn’t possibly be true.)

If you need some idea sparkers, here are some treats I’ve consumed this past week by using The Joy Diet’s “Catalog of Sensory Delights” outline.

I love the sight of:

• our camellias blooming in November.
• pictures of my kids with that “I love you mom” smile.
• my to do list written in silver Sharpie on bright red paper.
• our puppy running home at full speed, ears flying, for a treat.
• the sunrise over the mountains out our back window.

I love the feel of:

• a cool breeze.
• my son playing with my fingers as he falls asleep.
• “doing nothing” in the morning and feeling my brain relax.
• my muscles relax after doing yoga. (For the first time!)
• a bear hug from my husband.

I love the smell of:

• good coffee.
• a rose.
• firewood burning in the fire place.
• fresh baked pecan pie.
• fresh cut Fraser fir trees.

I love the sound of:

• classical piano music.
• my kids laughing.
• the whole family laughing at America’s Funniest Home Videos.
• firewood crackling in the fire place.
• toe tapping music.

I love the taste of:

• that fresh baked pecan pie.
• in season berries.
• a double tall soy latte.
• homemade, salted, hot sweet potato fries.
• my mom’s cheese grits.

Yes.  Include taste.  But sidetrack this piece of the list when the treat isn’t a treat, but a dodging device for a heavy emotion.

I also added
I love the thought of:

• pointing my snow skis over the edge and letting gravity take hold.
• how I’ve reinvented my life this past year.
• my new like-minded friends.
• the connections & reconnections with old friends.
• knowing that everything I decide to do from this moment on is my choice.

Note… what’s fun for me might not be fun for you.

Make up your own list.  What brings a smile to your face?

Lather in smiles.  Rinse.  Repeat.

The only rule for menu #5 on the Joy Diet is that it has to scare the pants off of you.  Or involve escape of some sort from the status quo.

Any tiny step will do.  As long as it includes walking up to fear, staring it in the eyeballs and saying hello.

Why in the world would you want to do that on purpose?

To break free from “comfortable” and make your dreams come true.

If you’ve been following this blog series on The Joy Diet, you have uncovered a heart’s desire and been noodling on some creative ideas about how to reach it.   Taking a risk and putting those ideas into action often comes coupled with the fear.  It’s where the rubber meets the road and the action toward your desire requires a leap of faith.  A leap of faith that might have already been met with stall tactics, stunted by fear and stuffed down with cookies.

For some people, allowing the feeling of fear to settle in their body is the first tiny step. Allowing any feeling to settle, for that matter, could be a starting point.

Let’s use the desire to lose weight permanently as an example.  If you gained weight due to emotional eating tendencies, my guess is that the idea of not eating to immediately calm a powerful emotion (like fear) can be just as scary as jumping out of a plane with an untested parachute.

If this is the case, allowing yourself to FEEL FEAR for a few minutes without eating can change your life.

Other tiny steps could include contacting someone you admire in your desired field if you want to change careers.

If you don’t want to go to a social engagement, say no.  Even if social pressure says you should.

If you do, say yes.  Even if you’re shy.

And, by all means, attend your next high school or college reunion.

I stepped twenty years back in time to my Rhodes College days this past weekend.  I relived memories that had been suppressed, faced friends who know way too much about my past and felt every insecure emotion well up as if I were 18 again.  All without the “I’m-going-to-live-forever” invincibleness of a teenager to offset those less than stable thoughts.

Sounds painful.  Why in the world would I do this?

One of my heart’s desires is to stay connected with my dear true friends.  I am learning not to let fear get in the way of an opportunity to hug them and have in-person, soul-filling catch up time.   Facebook is wonderful, but it just isn’t the same as laughing together over old and new memories.

As an added bonus, I was able to meet the grown up version of many wonderful people who I, otherwise, might have never seen again.  I also met the grown up version of me working backwards through my story of the past twenty years.  I am so grateful for that story… insecurities and all.

Take a risk.

As my friend and mentor Michele Woodward says, “Expand your comfort zone.”

Move toward something that fills your heart.

I dare you!

So we went with the “our body is a vehicle” theme to begin revving her self-care up a notch. We came up with this list of ten rules for the road.

Then we changed the name because neither one of us likes to follow rules.

Ten Tips for the Trip

Fill up before hitting Empty.
Skip the deprivation. Fill up when you hear those first whispers of hunger. At this point you still have enough fuel and time to find a good filling station for your tank. If you get too hungry, it becomes difficult to make wise food choices and you settle for junk food at the first open dive on the side of the road.

Topping off the tank is unnecessary.
Honor your body and don’t over fuel. It’s kind of like letting the gas run down the side of your car and onto the pavement. You’d never do that on purpose, would you!? And the thing about over-fueling your body is that it doesn’t hit the pavement, it hits your hips.

Use the right fuel for your engine.
Putting the wrong kind of fuel in your body will result in sputtering, pinging and, possibly, stalling out. Use high grade fuel foods 90% of the time and your engine should run at optimum performance. (That 10% allows for pure joy food. A little joy ride never hurt anyone!)

Check your fluid levels & tune up regularly.
Drink enough water. Practice preventative care. Enough said.

Drive at a safe speed.
Deprivation dieting for quick results won’t get you there more quickly. It often backfires and leads to detours down binge boulevard. Go at your own sustainable pace and you’ll end up getting there just as fast (or faster) than the guy weaving recklessly all over the place. (Note that he might not get there at all if he crashes & burns!)

Exceed the speed minimum.
There are Minimum Speed Limits in places for a reason. Set a minimum baseline for movement each day. If you cruise too slow, it’s dangerous and ife tends to pass you by in the fast lane. Put on your walking shoes or dance. Find a way to play. And if you don’t move out of the garage at all… well that’s just no fun. Your car’s made for driving!

Be wary of hitchhikers.
A fad diet sounds like a hitchhiker to me. You never know if they’re good for something or nothing at all. Listen to your intuition and play it safe. Don’t take risks with your health.

Pay attention to the road.
Notice that you constantly adjust the wheel as you drive, keeping the tires between the lines. You don’t just point the car forward and let go or let someone else steer. You move forward, evaluate progress and adjust – over and over again. The road isn’t always smooth or in a perfectly straight line. It’s a series of constant small tweaks that get you from where you are to where you want to be.

No trip is a success unless you’ve done at least one U-turn.
At least that’s my motto. Even with the best planning and maps, there are times when you encounter an unexpected detour. Expect and look forward to it. We learn the most about ourselves, and the scenery around us, if we make a wrong turn or two take the scenic route. Go gentle with yourself. Notice when you’re off the path, adjust and move on down the road.

And last, but not least…

Relax your grip on the wheel!
Relax period. Lean back, loosen your grip and trust your own internal wisdom to lead you to your final destination. If you fuel up, tune up, drive safely and navigate around the rough patches, you don’t have to stress over whether the car will get you where you’re going.

Maybe this is a simplified approach. Maybe “simplified” is your answer for sticking with it this time and not ever turning back. Once you really tune into how your motor runs most efficiently, my hunch is that you won’t want it to get out of alignment again.

As the old saying goes:  It’s not the destination. It’s the journey that brings en-lite-enment.

Did we miss anything obvious and fun?  What are your tips for the trip?