Interesting and unexpected things happen when your BFF is a librarian. You have automatic Cliffs Notes to any book at Barnes and Noble. Well, any book that you're interested in, anyway. You don't have to read the latest 500-page Harry Potter because, when the movie comes out, said BFF will sit next to you and quietly whisper each and every necessary plot detail at precisely the right moment. As you share the California rolls and box of Milk Duds you've smuggled in. You become obsessed with Post-its. In books, that is. Because you know they leave a residue that threatens the integrity of the paper and must be specially removed by library staff (who I imagine look something like oompa loompas dressed in white onezies working in a CSI lab but can't be sure because I've never actually seen them). Seriously, I saw someone with Post-its in a book the other day. Not one Post-it, but three! My body literally reacted with the "fight" in "fight or flight" response and prepared itself for offensive tackle before my brain stopped it and reasoned "You're in a church, girlie. Tackling? Not really appropriate."
And when your BFF is a librarian, you learn that yellow highlighters are from the devil. You have to sneak them. And hang your head in shame when she finds the offensive contraband. God help you if she finds the Sharpie evidence in a book you've accidently left lying around. So wait until she sees what I've done to the book that I'm currently reading. (Whispering)...I highlighted one whole page. And pretty much something on every page. And (yipes!) it even bled through in some spots. Don't look, Kara! Don't look!!!!!!!
But I couldn't help myself. There are books and then there are books. And this is a book. Sure, in every book, there is a seasoning of profound mixed in with the "whah whah, whah whahhh whah whahhh" that Charlie Brown heard. But this one has more profoundness than most. It's Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. If you haven't read it...please run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore and get it. Or order it on Amazon for half the price. If you have read it, then you smell what I'm steppin' in when I say it is 211 pages of life changing.
As you know, this blog has never focused on the specifics of my weight loss. I don't know...it seems tedious and...yawn...boring to ramble ad nauseam about calories and workouts. And I gotta say...I just don't believe it's that simple. How can millions of informed, educated, successful, well-meaning women and men be stumped by something as insignificant as little white doughnuts? Or (fill-in-the-blank)? I had been wondering how to tell all of you that I've been struggling to reach even the half mark of my goal, teetering between 30 pounds lost, up to 23 pounds lost, back down to 27 pounds lost. Blah blah blah. Then I turned on The Oprah Show and saw this:
http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprah-Discusses-a-Time-She-Forgot-to-Remember-Her-Loveliness-Video_1
I almost knocked myself out getting to the laptop to order a copy. Seriously, it was like the opening of the Dick Van Dyke Show, only I tripped over my own feet and not a suspiciously placed ottoman. Which leads me to the...(whispering)...highlighting. I'm only on page 100, and I'm tellin' you, people...there are too many spine tingling passages to quote. But listen to this:
"...Until you understand who you take yourself to be, true change is not possible. Even if you are lucky enough to get every single thing you want, the person who gets those things - your sense of self - will still be poverty stricken and miserable and fat. You can be showered with money or love or thin thighs and still feel as if you are separate from all that is good about being alive. Despite present day circumstances, your deepest beliefs will always - 100 percent of the time - reconfigure you into the familiar patterns you associate with being yourself. Being at your natural weight will be impossible to maintain. Having what you want will not seem real. When someone loves you, you will dismiss him or her as unattractive or shallow or dumb. You will feel like an imposter living someone else's life. And you will once again inhabit the skin and the life of unlove in whatever forms you find most familiar."
O. M. G!!! Can I get a hallelujah?!? Tell me that doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand up! PS...I'm taking Geneen's 6-week online retreat starting on Tuesday (if you are interested in knowing more about it, feel free to contact me or go to www.geneenroth.com).
So, beloved readers...friends...two questions: 1) Anyone wanna read the book with me? And 2) Can you deal with reading a blog that is shifting its focus from "losing 60 pounds in 6 haircuts" to "how one big-hair-lovin-West-Texas-turned-Los-Angeles girl finds what she's really made of and then looks down one day to realize she's lost 60 pounds?" It'll be like "I was in the middle of Nordstrom's one day and noticed I was missing something. Oh yeah! 60 pounds!" Until that moment comes, I promise it will be a mix of real, raw, funny, not so funny, and entertaining. Next time, more on Women Food and God. And I'll tell you how I dressed Willoughby up to play "Fiddler-on-the-Roof ball." Photos included.