Follow the "Four Day Win" plan, noting my thoughts and experiences as I go.

I had a new experience with the Dictator and Wild Child last night that had nothing to do with weight loss. I had completed, a couple of hours earlier, a plan for the next couple of weeks. I was thinking about how pleased I was with my plan when I suddenly had a feeling of panic. And, I realized that this was a familiar feeling after I’ve just made a plan. In the past, I would have squashed the feeling but with recent experiences, I asked myself “what’s up with that?”

A few minutes later, I got the answer. When I have a new plan, my inner Dictator rubs his hands with glee over the opportunity to order all my inner minions around to accomplish this new plan. At the same time, my Wild Child is convinced that I’ll never do anything fun or spontaneous again (never mind that there are fun things in the plan—she can’t see that when the inner Dictator has that look in his eyes). The Wild Child’s response to the Dictator is “NO F-ing WAY!” It’s no wonder that my plans often disintegrate within 24 hours of putting them on paper.

I’m not sure what to do with this revelation, but I was able to get myself in the Watcher frame of mind, so maybe that’s all I need to do with it for now.

I’m at the pick a diet part of the book. Since SallyKitt looked at the French women book for us, I’m going to try Bob Greene’s latest book, The Best Life Diet. It’s three phases of many weeks each (well, phase three is “for the rest of your life”). I’ll report on my progress at this goal.

I’m also looking through The Slow Down Diet by Marc David. I failed at all but a couple of the 4 Day Wins in the Contemplation phase. So, I’m looking for ways to compensate. What Happy People Know by Dan Baker was good for that. I think the contemplative portions of The Slow Down Diet will be good, too, but I didn’t like the actual eating advice which was a lower carb mentality. I know from experience that I do better with higher carbs and more exercise so I didn’t choose it for my diet book.

I’m obsessed with 4 Day Wins, using them for all kinds of things: organizing stuff, moving stuff, reading other self-improvement books, small improvements in my eating. I fail to complete the 4 Day Win about half the time. But it’s working for me anyway. In my failure, I’ve succeeded in making one or two baby steps in the direction I want to go. Now that I’ve made those steps, I’m motivated to write up another 4 Day Win made up of smaller steps than the first time or extending things one more baby step. I don’t always succeed at that one either, but by the third or fourth time I rewrite a 4 Day Win, I’m making real progress.

During Body Whispering, when I’m supposed to use my mind to quiet and reassure my body, I tried this mantra: “My mind and body are one.” My body was fine with that, but my mind rebelled! Like, “ooo, your body has cooties!” Not the results I was looking for.

This bugs me on many levels. For years, I’ve consciously rejected the duality of dead white philosophers. The words of people like Plato and Paul, the Apostle, who equate light, man, and heaven with all that is good while dark, woman, and earth are equated with all that is low and immoral. That kind of thinking resulted in two millenia of racism, sexism, and a disturbing ability to treat our planet like rental property.

But, apparently, I was working hard to consciously reject dualism while ignoring the fact that my mind has completely bought into the philosophy. No wonder I don’t listen to anything my body has to say.

Not sure where to go with this. I can do the Body Whispering using other mantras because my mind is willing to be charitable and kind to my body as long as it’s allowed to maintain its illusion of separateness.

I’m watching Endless Feast on PBS as my reward for my first win. Setting up rewards proved to be less harrowing than I thought. I took someone’s advice to think about the ways that I don’t pamper myself and was able to come up with a few things that I keep saying I’ll do for fun, but don’t – like watching cooking shows on PBS. My daily rewards were to figure out what’s on, when it’s on, and visit the websites. Then my big reward was to watch one! And it was good: all about locally-grown food.

This was my pre-contemplation reading win, by the way.

I’m totally obsessed with 4 Day Wins – I’m using them for everything: clearing my email, putting in some flowers to enjoy this fall, measuring my breakfast cereal. In fact, I’m going to take a few days break from reading the book because I can’t handle any more 4 Day Wins from it, I’m keeping more than busy with the ones I keep making up on my own.

My famine brain is a fearmonger and worry wart—completely convinced that I was going to faint on the way home from the gym, wreck my car, and DIE. I ate when I got home and it’s saying “well, good, but let’s make sure that never happens again.”

A few weeks ago I was hungry in the middle of the night one night and my famine brain was sure I needed to have a snack before bed every night to prevent that from happening again. Because, what? I was going to starve to death in my sleep?

But I might need to buy it if I really get into it.

Will someone invite me to be on the team? Thanks!

I’m about 15 pages in and mostly what I’ve noticed is that I’m enjoying her writing style—it’s about the way I write on 43 Things. Even my blog is more formal! But I like it better than some weight loss books I’ve picked up, ones by trainers for the famous, where you can tell from the beginning that the author hasn’t been fat a day in his life and wouldn’t recognize a craving if it bit him in the butt. With Martha Beck’s style, it’s more like working this out with a friend, or with 43T friends.