Experiment #7

I skipped experiment #6 in E-Squared. For now. #6 is about planting beans and making the ones you think about grow faster than ones you neglect. I know all about neglecting plants. Some thrive on it. Some don’t. I’ll get around to doing this eventually, but I do have a Burnt Umber Thumb when it comes to plants. I’m sure it’s all in the attitude and if I am nice to my plants, they will be nice to me. If I weren’t convinced I’d kill them upon sight, they might thrive. And remembering to water them probably wouldn’t hurt, either. (And in my BUT blog, I have shown that I can make tomatoes and garlic sprout from parts of the food that I already have. I just need to experiment to carry this out to growing a full plant.)

And here is where I segue into thinking about cats and how while I can’t keep plants alive, I can keep cats alive for a long time. They scream for food and follow me around, for one thing. If plants did that, I’d probably keep them longer. Or they’d rebel and develop opposable thumbs and open the cats’ food cans and they could oust all the humans and rule the world. And my cat is already plotting to take over the world. I’m sure she’d love minions in the form of sentient plants to assist her.

And then, thinking about cats, I realize cats seem to pick up on intentions. They seem to have a sixth sense and just know when you want them to come to you for food and when you are trying to trick them because you want to take them to the V-E-T. Is there something in your tone or manner that changes? Or do they actually read your thoughts? Maybe they heard the phone call to the vet and can tell time and just know when their appointment is.

Anyway, I digress. Experiment #7 in E-Squared is about losing weight. It’s about intention and telling your food that it will do a body good and not make you fat, that it won’t go immediately past your lips and to your hips. And you give your food three days to do its thing and help you lose weight – all without changing anything about your diet (I know, “diet” is a four-letter word, one to be avoided, but all it really means is what you eat). You can eat anything you want and you won’t gain weight, according to the experiment. In fact, you will lose two pounds. Or, if you don’t need to lose, you will get healthier (or maybe, if you need to gain, you could make that your intention).

So, anyway, the idea is to tell the food that it is healthful and nourishing, even if it isn’t, such as soft serve ice cream or chocolate cake. That it won’t cause weight gain. It’s rather like saying grace before a meal, to bless the food. And you are not supposed to say things like, “I don’t need this” or “oh, gosh, I can feel the pounds adding up just by looking at this cake.” The theory says that food can hear what you say and think and will act accordingly. And the theory says that the food can’t tell when you are joking, so it takes everything you say very seriously. (Take that, Vegetarians – your veggies are sentient, too.)

So I weighed myself at the start of the experiment. I weighed 1.4 pounds below my goal weight, and I have been using SparkPeople to maintain my goal weight. I didn’t particularly want to lose two pounds. I told myself I would be happy to maintain that weight.

I forgot to tell the food I ate that I appreciated it. If forgot to bless it. It’s just not a habit. But neither did I stress over what I was eating and worry about calories or anything else. Which is normal for me. I rarely count calories for my own food, though I do consider them for the foods of the people I support in the group homes I run.

On the morning of day three, I weighed myself again. No change. Since my intention was to see no change in the scale, I must declare the experiment a rousing success. But I have to wonder about the people in the group homes my agency oversees. Why are so many of our clients overweight? Most of them find it perfectly acceptable to eat the foods they like, the extra helping of chocolate cake, and to shun the vegetables they don’t like. I don’t think they are thinking they shouldn’t be eating this food, I think they are thinking they are enjoying this food. It’s the staff telling them they shouldn’t be eating this, but should be eating that. I must wonder – does the food hear that and not distinguish between where the thoughts are coming from? Maybe a better experiment would be to do some sort of blessing of whatever food is eaten in the group homes to see if the clients can lose weight by thoughts alone. To change our approach to the clients and food.

I'm back!

I was on call for a week back in October. I wrote out my manifestations before taking the beeper and cell phone. And I wrote them as if they had already happened, the way you are supposed to with affirmations. "All staff are healthy," I wrote. I had a call-out due to staff injury. And another due to a staff’s family member's illness. I must be careful how I word what I wish for. "Staff are healthy and fit for work. Staff will not call out." I have to be careful about wishing for no calls at all, though, because while some staff call about stupid stuff ("I'm having trouble faxing my time sheet"), some don't call about important things I need to know about (falls, choking).

And then one of the houses I manage was inspected by the local housing authority. This is a yearly inspection and announced well in advance. I mopped up all the standing water in the basement and made sure all the windows had screens. Screens are important to them, for some reason. While the guy was in the house, I thought, "pass, pass, pass," a mantra running constantly in my head as I followed the Mr. Inspector Guy through the house. We were just leaving the bathroom when he backed up and said there was a loose tile (which was off by a fraction of a millimeter), so we failed the inspection for one loose tile. Seriously?

We had a huge state inspection in early November. This wasn’t a surprise, either. We’ve been anticipating (read: dreading) this all year. Life got put on hold. I manifested and affirmed that I would not get picked for inspection. Or that the houses I run would not get picked in their random sample. Except ... In the back of my mind, I did think that if I did get picked, they should pick House B and not House A, because House A had more paperwork problems. House B was picked. It's my fault, I guess, for throwing that possibility out there to the Universe. But we had a few days' notice, and the paperwork was in place, and we did well in the inspection. In fact, the whole agency did well, as all the houses picked passed. This is excellent news, because this is our licensing source. We have been blessed by the State to keep operating for two more years. (Paperwork is huge at my agency. If something isn't documented, it didn't happen. We need to show that stuff happens. We show progress toward goals, and we also we document any bad stuff that happens, such as falls and health concerns.

So anyway, my life was on hold from October until now. My calendar at home is still on October. It is now the middle of January. I haven't read much for pleasure. I haven't read any more in the book on getting better organized. I haven't read any more in E-Squared. I have recently learned that Pam Grout will soon have a new book published: E-Cubed. A must get, for sure. But first, I want to get through E-Squared.

So I’m on call again this weekend. I was just about to write that I have a different attitude about it, that I will not worry about it (though I have found that what I worry about doesn’t happen – for the most part) and that I haven’t had many calls – when the phone rang. All is well … all is well …