Bloggy Beck Book Club – Celebrating Your Successes (Memory Cards)

It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for another “meeting” of the  Bloggy Beck Book Club.  SeattleRunnerGirl had tons going on this week, so she asked me to fill in on this week’s topic.

Since we’ve been reading the Beck book together for over a month now, we thought it would be a good time to pause and reflect on some of your successes that you’ve experienced while reading the book and following the cognitive behavioral therapy ideas found within it.

On page 38, Dr. Beck asks us to make a Memory Box and fill it with “diet-related experiences that are particularly meaningful” to us.  Some examples she includes are:

• When you get a compliment that is important to you
• When you feel really good about mastering a skill (ex: once you make yourself eat slowly)
• When you are so glad you resisted eating unplanned food
• When you suddenly notice that you are rarely experiencing cravings
• When you feel proud of yourself for getting right back on track after making a mistake
• When you realize you are not worried that others are judging you because of your weight
• When you are happy about an improvement in your health due to weight loss
• When you notice how much easier it is to perform a physical task
• When you stay in control of your eating at a restaurant or social event
• When you get through a weekend without overeating
• When you go shopping and fit into a smaller size
• When you get on the scale and see a number you haven’t seen in a long time

To be honest, I haven’t actually made a Memory Box or written Memory Cards.  Instead, I use this blog as my memory cards, which works better and is more natural for me.  I express and share all of my proudest and happiest moments here, and often look back on favorite posts. I love the whole concept of celebrating successes, and I think we should do it often throughout our weight loss journeys.  It helps keep up our motivation, and lets us realize just how far we’ve come.  All of the little things add up to huge experiences worth celebrating.

In particular, one of the biggest success I can think of came last summer, when I decided to overcome my fear of humiliation and shame about my weight and donned a swimsuit in public when I went to the pool at my parents’ townhouse complex.  I went into great detail in this post, if you’d like to read it.  The main gist of the post is that I silenced my InnerFatGirl, the little voice in my head that tells me that I’m way too fat to go out in public in a bathing suit.  Not only did I go to the pool by myself that day, I continued to do it throughout the summer, and really learned to love swimming – the solitude, the time for reflection, and the way I was able to move my body through the water.  It was a transcendent experience that I never would have had if I hadn’t gotten past my hangups about being in a swimsuit.

What are some of your recent successes?  Please leave a comment so that we can celebrate with you!

Next week Scale Warfare, SeattleRunnerGirl, and I will be writing concurrent posts about the 6 experiments within Success Skill 6 (overcoming hunger, cravings, and emotional eating), beginning on page 73.  Feel free to try some of these yourself so that you can share your experiences with us, too.

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A Bloggy Beck Book Club

I have some really exciting news to share with all of you!  Ever since Scale Warfare (SW) gave me the newest book from Dr. Judith Beck, The Beck Diet for Life, I’ve known that I wanted to do something really special with it.

Being a book-lover at heart, I thought of the idea of doing a bloggy book club with SW and Seattle Runner Girl (SRG). SRG was  the one who originally recommended the book to SW, and she says that it has really changed her life. I’ve heard so many positive comments about all of the Beck books, that I knew it was time to share the information with others as I read it myself.  What better way than through a book club? (I know now that this wasn’t as creative as I originally thought, as I later discovered that there are many, many other bloggers doing the same thing.  Still, none of the blogs I read daily are doing something like this, so I still think it’s a fairly original idea).

SW, SRG, and I are going to be hosting regular Bloggy Beck Book Club posts on each of our blogs, and we hope that you’ll join in on the discussion.  Each of us is going to “host” different bloggy book club meetings on our individual blogs, which we will all announce in advance so that you can “attend,” too.

Our 1st Bloggy Beck Book Club will meet on February 25th, and will be hosted by SRG.  We want you to have read pages 1-49 of the book by then. That’s three weeks people, I know you’ll be able to do it!  I’ll make sure to remind you to visit her blog (if you’re not already a daily reader, you should be!)

Because we’re all so excited about this book club, we’ve each also decided to do a giveaway of 1 copy of the book, as a gift from us to you.  To enter my giveaway, leave a comment to this post telling me why you’d like to win the book and confirming that you’d be able to commit to participation in the book club.  (I want my gift to go to someone who is excited to read and discuss this book with us).  If your name is selected by the randomizer I use, you’ll need to provide me with your name and home address so that I can have it sent to you.  My giveaway is open to addresses in the continental U.S. only, as I want to use my Amazon Prime membership to send it to you.  The deadline to enter is Wednesday, February 10th at 5pm Pacific time. (I’ll announce the winner in a post on  Thursday, Feb. 11th).

For those who want to participate in the  book club your “homework” between now and February 25th is:

1. Read pages 1-49 of the book
2. Take notes, highlight, underline – just make sure that you have some ideas and insights that you will be able to share with the group in comments to a blog post.
3. Complete all of the assignments that Dr. Beck gives on pages 1-49 (creating response cards, etc).

I can’t wait to get started reading this phenomenal and very inspiring book with all of you!

(We’ll announce the reading schedule for the remainder of the book in the February 25th post, but rest assured, we’ll give at least three weeks per section).

P.S. – today’s post is a milestone for this blog – my 500th post!

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