My body after losing 200 lbs

My body once weighed 430 lbs.

Can you imagine?

Perhaps you can.

I understand if you can’t.

For typical people it’s unfathomable…

If you’ve been there you know all the secrets.

Hygiene was a challenge.

Relationships seemed impossible.

Clothes cost twice as much and stylish threads were hard to come by.

As a child, kids were cruel.

As an grown up, adults were ignorant. (and sometimes cruel)

I learned to cope.

I learned to manage.

I learned to love myself, find my motivation and change.

Now I’d like to give you the skinny on the extra skin.

There’s a lot of it.

It sags…

It ripples…

It rolls…

The stretch marks that used to bum me out are a distant afterthought now.

Think about how hard my skin had to work.

How it stretched beyond its job description and yet still did its job.

Imagine the pain it felt when being crammed into a seat in a theater.

For those of you who have been there I’ll say two words.

“Arm rests”

I realized the other day that for all the loving, accepting space I hold for clients as a life coach, my thoughts towards my new body are not always very loving or accepting.

Part of my personal work this year is about shifting perspectives on how I see my new body.

My body is not gross and my skin is not disgusting.

If I see it as those things what I’m really saying is “I’m gross” and “I’m disgusting”.

I’m not…

Neither are you…

How I am moving towards loving my body?

1. Giving thanks daily for one part of my body that served me well that day. It could be my hands on a guitar, my feet that got me from here to there or my heart that kept beating without me even thinking about it.

2. Eating really healthy, delicious food as an act of self love rather than a torturous chore.

3. Seeing my body as a dear friend. To be here for it and listen to what it has to say. To be trustworthy and to encourage it through thick and thin. (Pardon the pun) Like a true friend, to never give up on it.

I’ll close this piece with a quote from the great Leonard Cohen.

“Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

May your seemingly broken places create passage ways for light to shine on your beauty and goodness.

To learn more about overcoming the challenge of change, check out my first book, co-authored with Brant Menswar. Click here for more information.

Jim Trick is a certified life & professional coach, passionate about working with individuals longing to live with greater freedom, fulfillment and success. For more information or to schedule a session email ThatLifeNow@gmail.com  All sessions are held over the phone or video with people from all over the globe.

How to lose a bunch of weight & make a bunch of money! Part 1

A schmear, by yiddish definition, is a little bit of something tasty applied to something big and tasty.  (a bagel with a schmear of cream cheese for example)

When you ask for a schmear of chopped liver on a pastrami sandwich at the 2nd Ave deli, they will translate that into about a quarter lb of some of the best stuff on earth on a sandwich the size of your head.

You won't lose weight, but you may die with a smile on your face.

I’ve digressed before I’ve even begun…

Ok, here we go...

Imagine if I called you on Thursday morning and left a voicemail saying “Meet me in New York City on Monday” and then offered no further information.

Driving to Manhattan and wandering the streets in the hope that we would just find each other?

You wouldn’t even get in the car for that prospect.

The unanswered questions regarding time, location,  and the reason for the meeting, really matter.

The absence of information not only creates a vacuum but feels pretty frustrating.

If I want to meet you in New York, I promise to get specific.

See where I’m going?

Oh the things you want to accomplish, acquire and change…

Oh the frustration of longing, wishing and hoping…

I get it…

Seriously…

The first step to getting what you want is about getting specific.

Telling yourself that you want to lose a “bunch” of weight is likesaying “meet me in New York on Saturday”.

How many lbs do you want to lose in the next two weeks?

How many dollars do you want to be earning weekly in the next six months?

Why do you want to lose the weight?

What do you want the money for????

What will it be like if you don’t reach your goal?

What food must you eliminate to reach your goal and is it really worth it to you?

What one thing could you do in the next hour to get you closer to what you want?

Determining the details of what you actually want, why you want in and when, is a great place to start.

What do Michael Jordan and Mother Theresa have in common?   They both used coaching as a way to be the best at what they were compelled to accomplish.

 Email ThatLifeNow@gmail.com or call 978-994-0431 to get started in life coaching with Jim Trick.

Were you ever wounded?

I wasn’t a stupid kid.

Well, that may depend on who you ask or who you are comparing me to.

What’s more, after I unload this on you, there’s a good chance you will take issue with my first point.

For those of you who don’t know, I spent most of my life morbidly obese.

The first time I lost a bunch of weight, it was because I elected to have surgery.

Between gastric bypass and regaining most of the weight back, I had a year or so of skinny.

(Yes, you can easily re-gain weight after gastric bypass.  Some of you know that all too well.)

So, I was in my skinny year and, for the first time ever, I could do what skinny people do.

Sit in booths…

Buy clothes at normal stores…

Pee standing up…

You know, the stuff all you fit-for-life types do without thinking about it.

It was bliss!

One afternoon, while chatting on the phone, I rested my head on my free hand and felt a lump in my cheek.

It wasn’t a pimple, a bug bite or anything else identifiable.

It was a lump and I was concerned.

My Dr. didn’t know what it was and he was concerned too.

The specialist he sent me to was also concerned and requested a CAT scan.

Can you even imagine???

The thought that kept going through my mind was, I finally got my life back and now I have cancer.

When I arrived at the hospital for my scan, my sister in law’s sister, Jean, who I thought sold real estate, greeted me.

On my back, in a tube, amidst lights and noise…

My heart pounded and, with every worried thought spinning in my head, suddenly the machine stopped.

Through the intercom I heard Jean ask, “Jimmy, can you hear me?”.

“Yes Jean, I can… What’s up?”

“Jimmy, did you ever get shot in the face with a BB gun?”

“STEVE FOURNIER!” I replied…

“What?” she asked.

“Never mind. Yes, I was once shot with a BB gun, but it bounced off…”

“That’s what you think,” she exclaimed with a chuckle.

Before paintball, laser tag and common sense, I was a teenager.

This where I sound like the old man, lamenting: “When I was your age…” things were different.

We didn’t have your fancy paintball nonsense. We had BB guns, bottle rockets and the woods near Dave McCormick’s house.

I think I had safety glasses, but that didn’t protect my face and when Danny Cruise and I realized we were out of ammo, we made a run for it.

Fournier hid behind a tree and yelled, “Sneak attack!” Like a slow motion war movie scene, where a guy gets shot and falls to the ground, I was a man down.

I graduated from dear old Haverhill High with a welt on the left side of my face. When the swelling went down, I was so chubby I couldn’t tell that the BB was still inside.

As I write to you, I am 45, which makes the BB twenty-seven years old.

No, I didn’t have it removed…

Why?

I kept the BB to remind me of the fact that, sometimes in life we think something that wounded us years ago bounced off, only to find we were carrying it around the whole time.

No friends, you are not alone.

Are you ready to try life coaching on for size?  Email ThatLifeNow@gmail.com today! If this post was helpful like it, share it, subscribe and live it.  Follow Jim Trick on twitter @JimTrick