In this post from about six weeks ago, I wrote about making my health a priority. I scheduled five appointments to use a fancy sauna with my doctor to help detox my body and accelerate my weight loss journey. I also decided to return to therapy. Now seems like a good time for an update on that front.

Let’s start with the sauna.

I tried the sauna a few weeks ago. It was intense. My doctor has an examination room dedicate to the sauna. The sauna is kind of like a coffin, but not as long, and it’s made of plastic, and it doesn’t look like a comfortable place for a vampire. (But otherwise, totally the same.) To use the sauna, you get naked, open the doors, feel the assault of intense jungle steam, wonder whether you have completely lost your mind, and then get inside anyway, sit on a little bench, and close the doors. Your head pokes out of a hole at the top.

The sauna starts out around 105 degrees and slowly works its way up to 116 degrees. Once I was naked and settled inside the sauna, my doctor’s assistant joined me for the duration of the twenty minute treatment. She gave me sips of ice water and held a fan up to my face. Most importantly, we talked. I can’t remember what we talked about, I just remember it was a wonderful distraction.

I lasted the entire treatment at full intensity. I was a little tired afterwards but felt great, like I had gone on a long run at the beach. I was fully committed to doing another four sessions to help my body detox.

Or so I thought.

If I had been completely honest with myself at the time, I would have admitted that my mind was excited for the sauna but my intuition was less than enthused. In fact, it was completely opposed to using the sauna. But my mind prevailed and kicked my intuition to the side. The sauna was good! It was going to jumpstart my weight loss! Yeah, sauna! My intuition kept whispering, the sauna is not going to fix emotional eating, but I resolutely ignored the treacherous whispers.

I couldn’t see it at the time, but I wanted an easy fix to my weight loss. I have about fifty pounds to lose, and wouldn’t it be nice if I could just sweat it off?

I was determined to attend all the sauna appointments but fortunately the scheduling gods intervened. Long story short, Julian’s preschool had to temporarily close in March due to an asbestos crisis. He had been in school three days a week and spent a fourth day with his babysitter. With school gone (it’s closed until end of August), I increased babysitting to twice each week. The other three days I spent with Julian. We had a lot of fun and went on lots of outings, and we conquered the potty training beast together, but then Julian was invited to join a summer playground organized by three preschool teachers. It took me all of three minutes to jump on that invitation.

The playgroup meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which were our babysitting days, but I was able to switch our babysitter to Mondays and Wednesdays, so for the next six weeks, I actually have enough time to do all the writing and walking my soul desires. Heaven! Bliss!

But I had scheduled my sauna appointments on Tuesdays.

I considered rescheduling the sauna appointments to Mondays or Wednesdays, but my intuition put down her foot and said, quite loudly, That’s quite enough of this sauna quick fix business, you are just avoiding the hard work, no more sauna, thank you very much.

I cancelled the sauna appointments. I may at some point decide to reschedule the appointments but I know that if I do the sauna this summer, I might lose five or even ten pounds, but I’ll be glossing over emotional and spiritual work that I need to do. I know I am overweight because I eat too much, and I know I eat too much because I’m avoiding various uncomfortable feelings. I don’t need to sweat toxins out in a sauna. At least, not yet. I need to face whatever it is I have been avoiding and learn how to eat the way I am meant to eat.

That’s where therapy comes in. Today I am going to therapy for the third time this year. Hooray for emotional work! I am only seeing my therapist every two or three weeks. So far, this feels great. I have a lot I could write about therapy (how good it was to take a nearly two break from therapy, the things I learned during the therapy hiatus, my goals for this next round of therapy, etc.), and I think I will. Eventually. But not today because (a) this post has gotten long enough and (b) I need to run to Target now because hey, life is more than therapy and writing about therapy. Sometimes a woman just needs to replenish her household’s toilet paper supplies.