I’m technically on leave this afternoon, so I’m gonna sneak in this quick at-work post before I leave to pick up my aunt at the airport. We’re off to a family reunion week on Friday, so posts will likely be sparse until I return June 4th.
I got an email ad for a book from the […]

I love serendipity. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been looking at the paradoxical issue of supporting both fat politics and weight loss. Today’s topic on Oprah was part two of have you let yourself go? (see this post re part 1) and I had a bit of an “a ha” re the paradox.

Today’s […]

Earlier this week, I talked about my a ha moments in my journey of choosing health. A number of people had very interesting comments, and a discussion about the pros and cons of “personal responsibility” led me to consider a different concept: one of personal power.
Here’s the difference I see:
personal responsibility: Accepting responsibility for […]

So, Wayne Dyer is back with a new book and a new PBS show called Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling.
I’m not sure why, but I thought his previous program, on intention, was better. Maybe it’s because the former program wound up being really instrumental in my progress this past year (as I’ve mentioned before).
Anyways, I […]

I meant to make a note of the Chinese New Year yesterday. This is the Year of the Dog. According to the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco:

People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best traits of human nature. They have a deep sense of loyalty, are honest, and inspire other people’s […]

Wow. What she said! From Zazen in the Moonlight:

Simply stated, Buddha said there are four kinds of action. Things that we like to do that are good for us, things we don’t like to do that are bad for us, things we like to do that are bad for us, and things we don’t like […]

The Diet Cure arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I started skimming this afternoon. What I read was really very interesting, so I’m going to experiment with its recommendations and report back later this week.
In the meantime, I’ve been holding on to a couple of snippets related to comfort that I thought worth logging here. Now, […]

I was doing some cleaning Monday night (it’s my exercise), and came across an old article I’d saved from Yoga Journal on meditating using the Buddha’s Five Remembrances.
I was getting ready to toss it, but in scanning, I re-read the remembrances and was struck by the relevance of the last one in my current […]

Debra has a great post today about eating to soothe. It’s very interesting when put this up against yesterday’s Oprah, which was about a country music star (Mindy McCready) whose boyfriend had nearly killed her a few months back.
Did she leave him? Nope. She loves him, and in fact is pregnant with his […]

Deepak Chopra has a great post about the spiritual Catch-22 in our lives, and how it relates to addictions and compulsions. More importantly, he also provides a very interesting nugget (see emphasis below) that suggests one possible way out:

The basic question is how to escape the paradox that resisting fear (or evil or neurosis) only […]

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the aspects of my “plan” is working to find a positive answer to Einstein’s reputed question: “Is the universe friendly?”

Albert Einstein once said the most important question a human being can ask is “Is the universe friendly?” Think of that for a moment. How […]

Over on advoc84justice, Grace is describing her experiences with OA and its version of the 12-step program. Re step 1 (We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable.), Grace writes:

Can anyone who weighs 350 pounds really believe they are in control of their eating? …
I was not in control […]

There’s another great post from Deepak Chopra over on Huffington Post that’s really interesting. Any amateur psychologist knows that part of our problem on Earth is our sometimes ornery ego. The highest aspiration for a Buddhist is to basically meditate so that one realizes there is no ego–that there is no “I” (a realization I […]

One somewhat sad thing about being perilously overweight is that you have to lose an obscene amount of weight before people might mention it to you. I’m down 70lbs (about 20% of my starting weight) and I think I’ve had three, maybe four, people say something about it to me. And the later they wait […]

One of the things that has been very helpful to me in my struggle with overeating has been my exploration of ideas of consciousness, particularly of the Eastern kind. I was born and raised Catholic, but as a bleeding-heart liberal, lost any use for a religion that was so (IMO) women-unfriendly. Having been accidentally exposed […]