Quelling the Diet Mentality

Beula asked in my earlier post about the book I read on Friday. It's The Rules of "Normal" Eating: A Commonsense Approach for Dieters, Overeaters, Emotional Eaters and Everyone In Between! by Karen R. Koenig. I picked up the book last year when I saw the title and realized I'm pretty much a combination of everything listed!

I am now starting the arduous process of getting through her workbook, The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health. I say arduous because it forces you to stop every few minutes and concentrate on your feelings at that moment. It also has other exercises that really push you to feel feelings you may usually avoid or try to forget. I think doing the first chapter yesterday helped contribute to my mini meltdown last night, because I had a lot of emotions churned up that needed some place to go.

I must say, however, that all the books I've been reading have been adding more fodder to this project. They all have slightly different perspectives and opinions, and I don't buy in to every single person's viewpoints, but I'm definitely picking out the best ideas that apply to me.

One thing has been trying to shut down the Food Police in my head. Ever since I started reading about this, I've got my homage to Cheap Trick in my head (my apologies for its cheesiness ahead of time):
"The Food Police, they live inside of my head;
The Food Police, they come to me when I've fed;
The Food Police, they're coming to arrest me, oh no!"

It's hard not to read labels, to calculate calories, to weigh my portions. I still do it a little bit, but it's much less than a week ago. I do it more now because I now those portions usually satisfy me, and I don't want to put a lot of excess on my plate. Again, more food issues-- waste not want not! But I tell myself each time that if I'm still hungry after I eat that, I can have more. It's rare that I do, but having that "permission" seems to help keep me from feeling deprived and restricted.

The most difficult thing that I haven't been able to break yet is my daily weighing. Every single book says to get rid of the scale, hide it, throw it away, even! But I haven't been able to bring myself to do that. There's just too much anxiety there yet about gaining weight. The good news is, my weight has stayed relatively stable, which is giving me a lot of relief. So maybe I can soon start going once a week, then once a month. I don't know if I can ever stop cold turkey, but a monthly weigh in would be reasonable and not obsessive.

I'm going to end tonight's post with two positive things about my body that happened to me in the last 24 hours.
1. This morning I took Mabel's lunchbox to school because she left it in my car. I was in a rush to get back to work so I jogged from the school to my car in the parking lot. When I sat down in the car I realized I wasn't breathless at all. For me, an asthmatic since I was 8, this was a big deal.

2. Last night Hubby reached over to me in bed and after a moment said, "What part of your body am I touching?"
"My butt," I answered. "Why?"
"I don't know if you're going to take this as a compliment or an insult, but it feels too firm to be a butt!"
"Well," I replied with a laugh, "those Pilates must really be working!"