Clutter and Weight

I noticed a review for a recently published book that's worth noting. It's called Does this Clutter Make my Butt Look Fat? and it's written by Peter Walsh. I haven't read the book, but it speaks to something that I've noticed for a long time: clutter is a reflection of disorder in our lives and so is extra weight, and there's a large overlap in the Venn diagram between these two. Address one, and it shows up in the other. One of my own weight loss coaches, Kathrine Brown, introduced me to this concept, and I've seen it in my own clients. Pamela and I have an entire session of our 30+ podcast devoted to it.

In the People magazine interview with Peter Walsh, he makes the point about clutter and weight: "Diets aren't about food; they're about decisions. If you have a messy, disorganized kitchen, you will always default to the easy. You'll get takeout. If your dining room table is piled with bills, you won't want to sit and have a healthy family meal there."

His point is worth extending. If you're surrounded by piles of clutter, it's a mirror back to yourself, and it reinforces an underlying belief. Usually the underlying belief is something like, "I'm not worth getting my stuff together." As you're constantly presented with evidence of this underlying belief, competing new beliefs can't make much headway. Address your clutter and you address your weight. It's got some other layers, too. Get some support as you meet your clutter so that you can process the emotions that emerge. It'll help you get to the root of what's plaguing you.

Change is not a requirement

My friend Scott sent this Rainer Maria Rilke poem in his newsletter, and I want to include it here because it reminds me of my latest "aha!"

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring
clear without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

As I've worked with Mary O'Malley, one thing she's taught me is that I don't have to change how I feel. I just need to acknowledge it, and then it can float on down the river. As I sit at the computer, and my thighs press together, I think "yuck! I don't want to feel this way," and I want to scurry on to another experience, another emotion. But I can't leave here, I can't move on. What's being asked of me is to just experience what's here. Breath in, breath out. It's not my job to shift the feeling right now. Aha, I think. No, Mary would say, let go of the thinking, too. Okay. Breath in, breath out.

The irony that I'm discovering is that by being present to the "I'm stuck" or "I'm sad" or "I'm lonely" experiences allow them to move on. Instead of wrestling these yuckies, I let them drift by like a cloud on the wind. By not forcing them out, they leave more readily. And I wave goodbye, strangely grateful now for their presence.