Can You Dare To Eat?

Can you feel your hunger? I am so sick of diets. And I don't mean food restriction diets either. There are so many different kinds of diets that we are either put on, or put ourselves on. There are financial diets (we call them budgets), There are sexual diets (often we are put on these by partners who cannot meet us erotically, or by our own stubbornness in not being willing to get to know our own bodies and feed ourselves), there are emotional diets (where we settle for "emotional crumbs" given out by friends, lovers and ourselves when love is parceled out in tiny bits and pieces - often just enough for us to "stay in") and then there are food diets where we restrict according to the latest information about how to be oh so beautiful.

Damn, I could go on and on - because I have been on every diet known to mankind. And if I wasn't on a diet, I was numbing my desire out with food addiction or shopping. Anything not to feel the absolute need in my body for things that I felt were not for me, or just out of reach. And then I had to stop the addiction, because there was no choice. My eating disorder had to go, and in it's place came lots and lots of big powerful feelings.

In the Shameless Community right now, so many of our close to 700 members are writing about our own re-birthing process out of numbness into being fully erotic creatures again. The blogs are raw, sexy and stunning, and they inspired me to write this blog!

No matter how far we are into this journey - it is an always process. I believe if you think you have arrived, you probably have gone back to numbing again in some way. We are always growing and changing - we are always in some stage of growing into and out of our skin).

The good news is that there are plateaus of coming home to yourself where you just get to roll around in the sheer joy of it all. And sometimes the process of getting back truly into our bodies is full of incredible pleasure and unbounded playful self discovery.

I would love to invite you to take a minute and be still. Allow yourself to feel the hunger of desire in your beautiful body and then close your eyes and ask yourself two questions:

1. What do you want?

2. What is getting in your way?

You may need to ask this question of yourself ten times for each question! Write down your responses. These are deep soul questions. And then look at the "diets" you have put yourself on. Are you ready to eat?

Loving you from here,

Pamela

Facing My Fears: A Little Back Story

Deciding to make a commitment to myself, to a year of rejuvenation in public, feels both exciting and daunting. What if I fall miserably? Let's start with weight loss. All of my past attempts at formal boot camps of self deprivation and exercise has been mostly miserable failures. My only success happened when I was wasn’t really trying during my Shameless Journey when I found out that what I was really missing, was living a sexually integrated and whole life. It was on and off a massage table, that the pounds slipped away because I was finally feeding myself what I really needed which was sensual touch that was all about me.

And so, I went from being a plus size two, to a mere “Large” or a size 14/16. And that is where my body stayed.

Frankly, I am not miserable at all at this current weight even if it is bigger than some. The mountain of flesh that I hid behind had melted into curves and valleys. I feel pretty damn sexy.

But when I think back to the body that I once had, way back before I had kids, I kind of feel cheated. I had no idea how physically beautiful I was in my younger years - but it didn't matter. I didn't feel hot at all. In fact, I didn't even feel warm. Introduce the expression "Youth is wasted on the young". Right now I so get that!

Now switch up the conversation from my cliche to the next! You know the expression,"If you don’t have your health – you don’t have anything?"

Well, hyper-tension¸acid and non acid reflux and a stomach that is not empty properly is now creating major health problems that are starting to get in the way of my new found “hotness" in the imperfectly perfect skin I am in.

It is hard to feel really sexy in the middle of a dinner when you are choking on your steak! I had to do something – and I really didn’t know what.

I started where most of us start when we are in the midst of a health crisis – I googled my symptoms and I didn’t like what I had to read. Apparently, the diet Coke that was my mainstay may have actually contributed to the swallowing issues. I had to give up diet Coke? Really? And drink what? Water? Like from the sink?Everyone knew that plastic wasn't good for you either!

I was immediately unhappy. I loved my diet Coke, but in that moment I knew that I had popped my last can. Then it was off to the specialist. Guess what? More diets and more restrictions. I was given the GERD Diet. Now, how sexy was this? I was a hot smoking mama – and I was now on a GERD Diet?

What that meant is that I now unable to eat or had to deeply curtail my consumption of chocolate and red wine!

Okay – now they were talking sex food! Were they kidding? And my afternoon Starbucks latte? Gone. I had to lift the head of my bed so I didn’t die in the middle of the night from reflux into my lungs, and I had to stop eating about three hours before bed. Fabulous – sign me up for the early bird special! Now…I must be honest – none of this was fitting with my hot, sexy, shameless image. I was starting to feel pulled down. And then came the clinker…I had to lose weight if I really wanted to get better. Apparently my belly fat that I had finally made peace  with was pushing on my stomach and making all of the health issues worse.

Diets have never worked for me. The doctor started to talk about putting a rubber band around my stomach to help me diet. That made me feel like an even bigger failure – but I started to consider it – and then rejected it again. People diet. People lose weight on their own – I was a smart girl – why couldn’t’ I see this as dieting in a completely new way. For the first time I was not going to dieting to look or feel sexy – I got that already. This was for my health. But I started to wonder about the changes in my body.

What about losing 40 pounds at 50? Wouldn’t I hang or sag? What was I going to be left with if on the off chance that I was successful? I became clear that if I was going to do this I was going to lose weight as the completion of my journey to a healthy second half of life that was filled with being sexuality alive.

Could I really do that for myself?

Let’s face it – I still had some body images – could I move past the rest of it?

But was dieting the only answer? The more I thought about this crusade, the more I thought about this being a year of rejuvenation.

What would I need to build a team to really bring in all the aspects of rejuvenation? Yoga? Walking? A Food Coach? Massage? Plastic Surgery? Vitamins? What would a total plan look like? The one thing I am clear about is that in order for me to be successful - I need a team! I started in two places....one obvious place - Weight Watchers. I felt main-stream and as if just the signing up for the program signaled doom and failure. What was I doing? Is this the food plan I want to be on? I am not sure - but it was cheap and easy and on line so I am a member.

And the not so obvious place is Dr. Bart Rademaker, the plastic surgeon. That I wrote about the other day. Dr. Rademaker specializes in regenerative plastic surgery.  And yesterday I got this done!

Tomorrow I will write about the cookies and the needles! And for now- I am trying to unwind the story for you as I face my fears - and begin the process.  I promise to share all the steps on the journey....

If Shameless was any indication - this is going to be one hell of a ride!

My Year of Rejuvenation

On Friday, I began my year of rejuvenation.  It all started by accident, and suddenly I have landed once again in the land of Oz and like Dorothy I don't know quite where I am going - but I am determined to walk down the yellow brick road. The idea of rejuvenation started to kick in for me once I landed back from my exhausting book tour. I came home with health problems that seemed to need "healing" and restorative care.  I had to "diet".  Me diet? How could I do that? I am about not dieting! But I had never approached dieting from a place of personal rejuvenation before.  Before, it was always about me needing to look a certain way for somebody else to love me.  To be perfectly honest - dieting was even on the table as a way for me to love me.

It took my shameless journey to teach me how to love the body that I am in, and for the first time I could perhaps seeing dieting or changing my eating habits as a way to heal my body.  I never bought into that before...but that was before I had trouble swallowing!

And so I joined Weight Watchers as a way to heal myself - the same way that I climbed on the table of a Sacred Intimate to help heal myself. This was new to me.  To be perfectly frank - I felt some shame around it! How could I the shameless woman who thumbed her nose at all conventions do something as conventional as Weight Watchers? I could do it because now that I had healed the issues with my body - and I didn't want anything to stand in the way of that celebration!

Honestly, I am not interested in being skinny. I am a curvy girl - and proud of it. But I am also going to do what I need to do to live a healthy, fabulous life. And if going down ONE size will do it - I am in.  So, that was step one on my path to my year of rejuvenation. And then - quite by accident I met Dr. Bart Rademaker, a plastic surgeon -  at a wellness conference. We really hit it off and he invited me to come for a visit to Tampa, Florida to explore helping him with his website.  Being the marketing maven that I am - I accepted the ticket and headed to the very hot, hot weather of Florida in the summer.

To be perfectly honest - I have had a lot of judgement about people who did plastic surgeon or went the way of injections, botox and fillers.  The people that I knew who did this like celebrities, looked weird to me.  And I was determined to age gracefully - none of that was for me.

But that was so last week!

I had no idea what was going on in the world of plastic surgery until I met Dr. Rademaker - and spent the night listening to him wax poetic about stem cells and something called Selphyl where they take your own blood and extract your platelets and fibrin to rejuvenate your face! Organic plastic surgery? Really?

The more I talked to Dr. Rademaker, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee - the more I thought about this for myself. But it felt scary - and my own judgements about "just loving myself the way I am" came up for me.  I posted on Facebook about exploring Botox and some of the other bag of tricks that Dr. Rademaker had in this tool kit and it was met with mostly excitement. But a friend posted and said that it didn't fit with my brand....

I felt judged, just as I felt judged when I started out on my sexuality journey.

Why can't I go on a journey of rejuvenation if I choose to? After all, that is what I did on my Shameless Journey - didn't I?

I am feeling called to explore this - excited even! I want to know what is possible with the body that I have. When I was 20 years old, I had a gorgeous body but I didn't understand it.  Now, I understand my body - but it is aging in ways that does not always feel comfortable to me. So do I have the right to explore what it might feel like to have the entire package in the ways that feel comfortable for me? Or am I just setting myself up for more judgement?

We will see! But I have committed to this - and I am going to do it wide open and in public! I am committed to being Shameless and living my life as a woman in full according to me! Just as I encourage you to live your life in full according to you! You will be able to see You Tube videos - and lots of blogs.

So....I am beginning! Jumping off the cliff for my year of rejuvenation! What do you think?

A Shameless Diet

Life is full of ironies.  I ditched the diets years ago.  I found that by having nourishing touch - that I was less hungry and that I was able to full the void that was in my life in much more sexy ways than a chocolate chip cookie. Weight fell off of my plus size body naturally - no failed diets for me! I was free. I never got skinny - I simply left the plus sizes behind and became quite comfortable as a curvy size 14.  I actually like my round ass, full breasts and I can even see beauty in the softness of my belly.  I wear sexy clothes and flirt with the world - it took a long time to get me here - this place of self acceptance and internal sexy fire.  It's what most of my readers and coaching students want.

And then I developed a tightness in my throat.  It scared me. I flew to the doctors after choking at dinner at a conference - and after an extensive work up found out that I had a type of reflux.  ICK.  What to do?  Well - apparently my kind of reflux was not cured by a purple pill. Oh no - if I wanted to get rid of this tight around my collar feeling - I was going to have to go on a diet!

He was kidding right? No - actually he wasn't.  I had to give up some of the things that I love to eat - modify the quantities of things like coffee (one mug a day) and on top of THAT diet - I was going to need to size down again.

So here I sit - the author of a book that tells you how I ditched the diets.....and I did. Right now,  I am trying to look at dieting through a different lens.  Before dieting was about trying to look a certain way to feel better about myself. I found out that dieting didn't do that for me. Being thinner didn't make me sexier.  I was and am - sexy.  Instead diets always made me feel like I was less than.

I am on Weight Watchers on Line playing with points.  I am wondering if I can diet my way out of a tight throat. That would be a good use of a diet.

Feeling sexy? Accepting myself? Learning how to be a turned on woman? No diet can do that.