Insights & Yutori

I have finally found a way to consistent weight loss... Like my experience with getting smober, no artificial means or substitutes are helpful i.e. drugs or nicotine patches... I guess the same is true for me for weight management... same food and minimal tracking or fussing. I've lost 15 pounds since 5/16 - 3 months. I managed to maintain for a couple of weeks on several occasions but never gained anything back.

Bottom line, I know I'll get there and I'll keep doing what I'm doing. That's no small thing, I wasn't sure at first imagining failure after failure and being stuck chubby forever against my will. My persistence paid off, as it always has!. Maybe this is a great analogy for getting older in general... the same results just take more time and more insight and patience. I definitely have a more intimate relationship with myself and my food. Partnership with Chris has been critical and tracking it on a big post it note each week has been indispensable. I've noticed myself being very tempted to cheat... what's up with that!? I've also noticed a huge pride in my appearance and I am very much looking forward to getting dressed and wearing fun and stylish clothes. I'm wearing cool stuff now but I'm really looking forward to being slimmer and how AWESOME it will be to wear basically the same outfits and have them look and feel differently. 

This is the insight I was referring to in the title of the blog. I have never, in my life, ever cared a lick about clothing... appearance... jewelry... etc. I'm tidy and well kept but didn't invest any further effort. For a while, when I lived with DeeAnne in the city, she provided major wardrobe support and guidance. I still didn't really get into it.  Lately I've noticed spurts of intentional outfit construction including shoes and accessories. It's also aided by yutori (see below). Anyhow, it's another step to enjoying each and every moment of each and every day and learning to love and respect myself in many different ways. 

Astonishing new grasp of everyday normal... like finding and understanding yutori. Awesome!!

YUTORI
TRANSCRIPT FOR NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
ON BEING - YOUR LIFE IS A POEM July 28, 2016

​"And a girl, in fact, wrote me a note in Yokohama on the day that I was leaving her school that has come to be the most significant note any student has written me in years. She said, “Well, here in Japan, we have a concept called ‘yutori.’” And it is spaciousness. It’s a kind of living with spaciousness. For example, it’s leaving early enough to get somewhere so that you know you’re going to arrive early, so when you get there, you have time to look around. Or — and then she gave all these different definitions of what yutori was to her.  But one of them was — and after you read a poem just knowing you can hold it, you can be in that space of the poem. And it can hold you in its space. And you don’t have to explain it. You don’t have to paraphrase it. You just hold it, and it allows you to see differently. And I just love that. I mean, I think that’s what I’ve been trying to say all these years. I should have studied Japanese. [laughs] Maybe that’s where all our answers are. In Japanese."

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