Becoming Right Sized...by Liimu

Well, my baby is turning one in exactly one week and I have lost a total of three pounds since I came home from the hospital. Three pounds! Well, that's not exactly true. I've lost and gained the same ten pounds at least twice. Which is why I've been working very hard to re-learn how to eat intuitively. I've apparently come to the end of the line as far as diets are concerned. They simply no longer work for me.

I actually grieved this fact in my therapist's office this week. Cried big, fat alligator tears over the fact that I had to mourn the loss of the illusion of control. That's what I held on to all those years I tried the latest and greatest fad diet - the grapefruit diet, the 9-day diet, the Scarsdale diet, SlimFast, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Body for Life, you name it...I've tried it. Don't get me wrong. They all worked - temporarily. But the problem is that none of them taught me what I really needed to know, which is how to learn to trust my body and feed it when, what and how much it actually needs. What I'm learning now is that it's not about being in control, it's about being in charge. (Thank you, Michelle May.) There's a huge difference between the two, no pun intended.

So, I've been trying to relearn all over again how to trust my body's hunger and satiety cues the way I did when I was, oh, I don't know...seven? I've been doing a lot of reading, which seems to be helping, albeit slowly. I've read Naturally Thin, by Bethenny Frankel, Women, Food and God, by Geneen Roth, Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, and most recently, Eat What You Love, Love What you Eat, by Michelle May. They all have been extemely helpful and enlightening and slowly but surely, I feel like the diet fog is lifting. For the first time in a very long time, I'm actually hearing the voice in my head that's talking crazy to me all the time, telling me I need to eat twice as much as I need or that chocolate will solve all my problems. For the first time in a very long time, I'm actually waiting to eat until I'm hungry and paying attention while I do it, rather than reading a book. Because of that, I'm able to tell when I'm full and I don't mind stopping.

Unlike all those wonderful women, however, it hasn't yet led me to some miraculous weight loss, I'm not going to lie. Because of this, I have been tempted time and time again to fall back on a diet - maybe one of the really good ones, I tell myself, like Weight Watchers or Body for Life. Or, maybe I'll just count calories. Up till now, I have resisted the urge. It feels like I was on this roller coaster ride for years that was way more scary than fun and I finally got off. And even though I can look at the people at the top of the hill and hear their screams and tell myself it's thrilling, I know if it were me, it would just be screaming. I can't do it anymore. It was making me sick. It was making me unhappy. And the truth is, I'd rather be fat, sane and happy than thin, crazy and miserable.

So just for today, I'm a little thick around the middle. I still have beautiful hair, great cheekbones and sexy legs (even if they are supersized at the moment). But on any given day, I am making wonderfully healthy choices for my body - like juicing green vegetables, beets and carrots every day, roasting cauliflower and cabbage and eating that for lunch and dinner, using my crockpot to make yummy soups, and adding new foods like ezekiel bread and avocado to my diet on a regular basis. So, whatever size I end up becoming is just going to have to be good enough. I'd love if it were a size 10, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Week Whatever Update...Feeling GOOD!! by Liimu

Lots of changes have been happening since I last posted.

First, I changed trainers. Don't get me wrong, I still stand behind Dreambodies as probably the most effective virtual body transformation program on the planet. However, it does require a certain mindset, as I've explained previously - a go-hard-or-go-home mindset that just isn't aligned with where I am these days.

I have had four kids, people. FOUR. KIDS. The last one came out via fourth c-section just a couple months before I turned 41. I'm not really feeling like pushing this body beyond its limits in any other way these days - I kinda already feel like I've done that. What I have needed is to be gentle with myself, to enjoy my kids, enjoy my workouts, enjoy my life. So, I have found a trainer who can support me in that goal and I am SO excited! Her name is Chrissy and she is just the cutest bundle of energy...ever. If you want to check out her site, click here. The cool thing is that not only does she understand that time is of the essence for me - most of her workouts are insanely intense, fun and under 30 minutes - but she also gets that I need a holistic solution. So, she's been introducing me to all kinds of new ideas for my body, including digestive enzymes, dark chocolate covered cherries, Ezekiel bread, and on and on. She doesn't go easy on me but at the same time, I feel like I can stay in the flow of things without losing ground.

Here's the other kicker - we're not going to be weighing in for awhile. So, I hope to have a weigh in report for you guys before I go to Jamaica at the end of January, but for now, you'll just have to be satisfied with my report of being happy and feeling fit. Oh, and here's a picture from my gig last night. I think I looked pretty good, don't you? :) To find out more about our upcoming events and latest music, check us out at www.reverbnation.com/liiimu.

Until next week, my friends...

A New Day is Dawning... by Liimu

Be careful what you wish for...you just might get it.

I have been an avid believer in the Law of Attraction since I read The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne (along with half of the world) back in 2008. I'm not sure what it did for anyone else, but it definitely changed my life on many levels.

First of all, I found myself on stage singing a solo backed up by a choir hand-picked by Patti Labelle (with Patti herself directing) live on NBC for 10 million viewers. (If you don't believe me, click here.) I couldn't really believe it myself at the time, which I guess you figured out if you watched the whole clip. It was a surreal moment, and the lyrics to the song - "I'm letting go...give me one more chance...cause I can't do this on my own..." were not lost on me.

Soon after the Patti Labelle experience, I ventured into starting my own business. I quit my six-figure day job to start my own consulting company, relying on my networking skills alone to get clients and keep them. I doubled my income the first year. I have had slumps here and there, but I have always made more than I made when I worked a traditional job and I never looked back. Similar to when I was in the process of auditioning for Clash of the Choirs, I refused to entertain even an inkling of doubt about whether or not I would be successful.

Flash forward to now. After having my baby, I have been wracked with doubts about whether or not I could lose the baby weight and if so, how fast. I have been obsessively counting calories, enduring punishing workouts (including the half-marathon I ran the Sunday before Thanksgiving, despite knee pain beginning at mile 2), talking about it so much I bore myself and my kids keep trying to reassure me by telling me I'm skinny, and even getting snarky at the weight loss success my friends have been having while I have circled around the same five pound marks for months.

That's not me. That's not what I know to be the Law of Attraction and how it works. Well, actually, I guess it is. The same way for years my beliefs about my inability to be a singer if I wasn't 19 years old and a size 0 kept me singing in my car and the occasional wedding band until I employed the Law of Attraction to realize my dreams of singing on a large scale. The same way I spent a good chunk of my day complaining about my job, thereby securing my spot, only to find that once I put that same energy into what I really wanted to do - work for myself - that it would be successful beyond even my own imaginings.

And so why would I think that doing things that keep me far from my sense of joy - things like talking about how "hard" it is to lose weight, depriving myself of all the foods I love, pushing through brutal workouts even when I'm exhausted or hormonal - would get me closer to the body of my dreams and achieving my weight loss goals? Newsflash - it won't. In my experience, the Law of Attraction is LAW. So, if I believe that it's going to be hard - guess what? It's going to be hard.

I know some people will think this is mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus, crunchy granola BS (like my trainer, for one). I don't really much care. I know what's real and true in my life and I know for a FACT the Law of Attraction is a law of the Universe and I am filled with joyous intent to employ it in my favor from here on out. And guess what? I'm really enjoying myself, while I'm at it.

Today was full of laughing and singing and snuggling my kids. I haven't been to the gym since Monday. Won't get there tomorrow, either, because I have the chance to spend time with a friend from Australia who is only here until Friday. We will go for a walk, though, so at least I'll get the body moving. I am loving taking deep breaths before I eat anything so I can get in better touch with what my body wants. I've been reading books about intuitive eating and resonate so strongly with Geneen Roth, author of Women, Food and God, who said, "But once the belief and the subsequent decisions are questioned, diets and being uncomfortable in your body lose their seductive allure. Only kindness makes sense. Anything else is excruciating. You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved." (To read more, click here.)

That was an aha moment for me. So, when my trainer asked me today how I was doing, I told him the truth. I said I was eating healthy, not exercising as intensely as he'd probably like me to but that I am no longer in a go-hard-or-go-home headspace, more of a be-gentle-be-healthy headspace. His response? "That's crap. You haven't been pushed hard enough by me. You're about to go off the cliff. Let's talk." I understand his concern. There have been many times I've used the idea of intuitive eating as an excuse to gorge myself only to come crawling back to him, tail between my legs. That's not what's happening now, and I told him so. I still believe he is one of the best trainers on the planet. He could get me there, if anyone could. I'm just not really in the mood to go. Does that mean I don't want a smaller body? Does that mean I'm opting to be this size the rest of my life? No, no more than it would mean that I didn't love the beach just because I decided to plan a mountain vacation instead. I'm opting to accept and love myself. Or, as one friend of mine put it - we can't beat ourselves into submission when what we really need to do is love and accept ourselves into surrender.

I surrender.