How to Stop Saying “I Only Have Myself to Blame” (What we haven’t known has hurt us)

It might sound dramatic, but there are external forces who have no interest in our success.

Hi Everyone!

This week I’m knee-deep in New York City. (When I say yes to writing jobs, I tend to overlook how much research is involved.)

For that reason, pearl one and two are from the past but updated. I wrote both around the holidays one year, so pretend we’re in mid-November.

Pearl One

I bet you and I can score a dozen donuts, an incredible Thai meal and fifteen different flavors of high-caloric lattes within five to ten minutes tops (that in a blind taste-test our grandparents wouldn’t recognize as coffee).

Like me years ago, I know you’ve long thought, “I only have myself to blame.” And, you would be wrong. Not just a little wrong. I mean, wrong-wrong.

To lose weight in our food-saturated world we first need to understand the giants that we’re dealing with.

Let’s start today with Big Fast-Food. Take Starbucks and Papa Johns; the two are very different in presentation, but they’re both selling junk-food. No, I’m not saying that the entire fast-food industry is having special midnight-meetings about how they’ll fatten us up, but (funny enough) that’s been the result. (It would be as if cigarettes were everywhere, and we’re trying to quit.)

Take the season we’re currently in. Starbucks makes 100-million dollars in one season (according to Forbes) from the pumpkin spice so-called “craze” they created, and then marketed to us.

The Glue

I don’t care how cozy their shop is or what their clown is like, Big Fast-Food is not ofriend. Take this truism and write it on five stickies and post them in your kitchen, on your steering wheel, on your laptop, in your purse and on the bathroom mirror for starters. Be creative where you stick them. If you spend a lot of time in the laundry room, stick one on the dryer.

I’m not suggesting that we don’t play a key role in our own healthy weight, but I am saying that we can’t be long-game successful until we first understand what we’re dealing with.

But We Aren’t Victims

Big Fast-Food needs to evolve into selling good nutritious food. But nothing will really change if you and I insist on change You and I can vote with our feet. Chick-fil-A currently leads the way with their exceptional salads (hold the dressing).

Eliminate fast-food from your life. We can create a counter-force to the lure of fast-food by making it a habit to not use their product. ♥

Pearl Two

Let me first say that I’m guilty of this very activity I’m railing against here. Arriving home from running errands, I press the remote button and up my automatic garage door goes. I park inside, walk up the steps to my house, and close the garage door with another button on the wall.

And I see no one: no people walking by, no neighbors, not even the mail carrier. Nobody.

Even though we’ve lived in Atlanta for seven years, I’ve made one good friend. And she’s now moved to Orlando. I’ll visit her, but it’s not the same.

Point is, humans are social creatures. And given our upwardly mobile lifestyle, the preponderance of screens, and the loss of the front porch, our social needs are not being met. (Maybe Facebook is our way to reach out?)

Yes, we have online friends – and I’m not discounting online friendships for a second –, but we can’t gather around the fire pit, drink a cup of coffee together, and just being together.

Could this be One Reason Why?

Could it be that we’re social beings who don’t get our social needs met? Could it be that we have a giant hole in our hearts where at one time long chats IRL were the norm, people engaged with their neighbors regularly, and grandparents didn’t live a state away.

Are we trying to fill the hole with pretty clothes, jewelry, cars and the like?

Or in our case are we trying to fill the hole with food?

Join me in journal-writing about this topic: how do I get my social needs met? Go deep and try to give at least three examples. (You’ll be surprised at what surfaces.)

• In what way do I reach out to others?
• Conversely, how do I keep people at arm’s length?
• Am I super formal with others? Or more down-home?
• What’s one thing I could do this week to engage with someone?
• Am I watching too much Hulu and eating poorly because I’m lonely?
• How do I connect food with being lonely?

I have to add that I lost 55 and maintained for 18 years now, because I fixed my loneliness and then I lost all of the weight. That’s not how losing and preserving works, but it is a part of the trek we’re on.

 My grandma lived her entire life surrounded by seven siblings and their spouses, kids, her mother, and a few close friends she’d known for decades. Neither she nor my grandpa lived a consumer-lifestyle. Their social needs were met so they didn’t need a fancy car.

The days of neighbors strolling by our front porch and hanging out for a bit, are likely over, but lets start learning modern ways of filling our loneliness versus feeding it. ♥

Pearl Three

It’s our new “sequence” pearl! Please send a sequence from your own life and we’ll work it out on here, totally anonymously. I love hearing from you guys. Wendy@theInspiredEater.com.

My sequence from this week:

Situation: (something concrete) I’m writing an article for Costco and it’s not going quickly like I thought it would.

My thought: “I went down too many rabbit holes over the weekend as I wrote the first part of the article. If I hadn’t done all that “rabbit-holing” last weekend. I’d be close to done by now.”

My feeling: annoyed with myself because of two whole wasted days.

My action: Bum around thinking “I’ve been caught out, I’m not really a writer at all!!” (Drama.)

My result: Haranguing myself saying, “another wasted day.” (Additionally, I have to rejigger my self-esteem problem and that takes up time too.)

My new sequence using my chosen thought:

Situation: (something concrete) I’m writing an article for Costco and it’s not going quickly like I thought it would.

Chosen thought: Yes, I go down rabbit holes to learn all I can before writing my article. I’ve learned a lot about the cities I’ve written about. I also need to gain background info for the article. Part of this writing articles going down rabbit holes to really understand as much as possible about what’s going on Christmas-market wise in NYC.

My feeling: Very pleased. I did learn a lot and writing is so much easier when you’ve done the research.

My action: Got back to it, but this time stayed more focused. In the end, I thought that losing myself on the internet was just part of writing, and it is, but I also brought a lack of focus that I need to work on.

My result: Written articles!!! ♥

Pearl Four

Pearl four is an amazing book recommendation; not a review, just an awesome book I want to share

Being completely transparent I went through several books that I thought would make phenomenal book-desserts, but not a one of them passed the test.  So I picked my three spectacular reads in 2024, so far.

Life after Life: a Novel by Kate Atkinson is a book-dessert of the highest caliber think: book version of tiramisu cheese cake (made by someone who wasn’t you). ♥

Awesome, awesome, awesome on the awesome-o-meter. One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin is the book-dessert superstar fiction of 2024 (at least so far). ♥

Loved this book. Total Book-Dessert: I know that I’m probably one of the last on the planet to read this marvel of a story but I finally got to The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. ♥

Pearl Five

Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.” — Travis Bradberry ♥

Okey-doke, it’s back to NYC at Christmastime for me.

♥, Wendy

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I am not an expert, a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse or a nutritionist: the information within TheInspiredEater.com is based solely on my personal experience and is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. ♥