My holiday was spectacularly peaceful. We had planned a mellow Christmas, no fuss and no muss, a very Ramie vibe, each year we dial up the chill. It's usually just us 4 in our snazzy new pajamas paired with the perfect fuzzy socks. Last year we invented the transition of Christmas Eve "picky's", we get "picky" foods that we wouldn't usually have. Our family favorite is traditional Italian antipasto, a platter filled with cured meats and salty cheese, the saltier the better. This year we decided to treat ourselves to a lavish platter from our favorite Italian restaurant, they feature marinated fennel, mushrooms, eggplant and leeks, all kinds of beans and mushrooms each marinated in some sort of liquid gold (drool). Antipasto is the one thing I really yearn for every Christmas Eve. If I am doing all the damn Christmas shopping and wrapping somebody better hand me some damn eggplant and prosciutto. Needless to say, I drink gallons of water to offset the amount of salt in the stuff.
Here is where this blog gets weird, buckle up.
I get embarrassingly overly enthusiastic when I am onto a new awareness, I get a little, okay a lot, I get a lot obsessed. This year I noticed how good it felt to drink so much water. I am on a kick of almost hyper awareness of all of my eating and drinking patterns, I am paying attention to everything. When I am excited about something I tend to repeat my excitement many times over, it's something that I am teased about constantly in my house. So as Christmas Day rolled around and I was still enjoying the refreshing experience of this new water drinking ritual, I wasn't surprised when my kids started teasing me about the attention I was paying to my cool discovery. I was being kind of ridiculous, it wasn't as though I invented the art of water drinking. My muchness can be quite a lot sometimes.
Today it was back to my regular scheduled program, my daily structure. I wake up and immediately begin the days coffee consumption as I write in my journal, review my to do list and create my daily plan. Today's schedule included a few coaching calls with clients. I truly enjoy my Sunday morning client lineup. Each person on my Sunday morning call roster feeds my soul. I recently acquired this fantastic human, let's call him Bob. You may hear about him again in future pieces because, well, he is intriguing and fabulous. Today's call with bob would address his last week, any obstacles, observations and a review of last weeks goal. Last week Bob decided that he wanted to increase his daily water intake. Our call this morning revealed some incredible progress. He is working on closing his book of destructive emotional eating and introducing new patterns like learning to be present when he is eating, savoring his food, honoring himself with quality (the good shit) almost like food meditations. This is incredibly healing work for him, he is attempting to change his quality of life, a lot more than a typical weight diet would have been able to address. It was an invigorating call and toward the end we checked in on the goal he had set for himself the last week. He reported that he didn't hit the water mark but that he would try harder this week, I am not a fan of trying harder. Let's try differently I thought.
Trying differently is a skill I got obsessed with a few months back. I am not sure why we think that if we just bang our head into the wall with more force the result will be different. In my life and in my career, I am a fan of a side door, a different approach. When I hit a wall I dig into my pocket and pull out all of my values then I dig into the other pocket and search through my overall big picture goals and then I match them up, that is how I find the side door and do it differently. I encourage everyone to keep their values in their pocket, close at hand. Anyway back to bob.
Bob is an artistic mind and values education and self awareness so I thought lets explore this, why not make our goal this week to explore hydration and how water makes him feel using daily writing. He was all in for the idea. Ironically, he mentioned that he had some water before our call and noted that it was refreshing. Perfect I thought, we would spend the week exploring.
Yes, my work can appear weird to an outside eye. Nutrition coaching in the manner I have been trained to coach, requires a deeper level of awareness, the removal of judgement and lots of listening. I think of myself as more of a tour guide than a coach. As with any tour guide I have to be familiar with several tours. The tour we go on depends on where a person may want to go and what they want to see. Some of my clients go on the bodybuilding/physique tor, some enjoy the intentional eating tour, others are interested in a fat loss tour while others want to increase their overall health and wellness. As a guide its not my job to pick the tour. My job is to help a person enjoy their tour, learn the path for themselves and help them safely reach the end.
Some folks may wonder why in gods name am I writing a blog about water, I am not though. I am writing a blog about awareness, mindfulness, health, healing, nutrition and self care. My coaching uses many side doors to get to the work that is begging to be done with folks. This little water experiment with Bob is an opportunity to bring awareness to daily practices, it has little to do with the water itself and more to do with education, digging a bit and having the audacity to believe that we can grow past harmful imbalanced health practices. We can.