Lunch Break Post

Finishing up my lunch hour from my busy day of housework. The local bank had a customer appreciation day and had free hot dogs, potato salad, chips and cookies. I had a hot dog (with sauerkraut), potato salad and two cookies -- I'm not much of a potato chip fan.

Today's one of those days that I actually haven't been thinking about food that much. Cleaning does that to me. It's almost a meditative kind of thing -- I get caught up in the dusting, vacuuming and putting things away and my brain goes into autopilot.

For about the last 10 years I've noticed that when I get angry about something one of my favorite things to do to blow off steam or distract myself is cleaning. Even back in 1997, even though I was still in the midst of my compulsive overeating, I was beginning to make some progress and found that I usually couldn't eat when I was angry, and cleaning was one of the few things that helped.

I keep bringing up anger, so you're probably wondering if I'm angry. Well, yeah, I am. Something happened yesterday that has left me kind of hurt, a little down, but mostly angry. And it's the worst kind because I've been cornered into a situation that I'm not happy about but can't fix it to make myself happy without hurting someone else's feelings and causing all kinds of other problems for myself. The worst thing is, this wasn't even my own doing -- this situation was created without my knowledge, even though it affects me. That's what has me the angriest -- being left out of decisions I should be a part of, my thoughts not being considered before others go ahead and make plans for me, without me.

I did make sure the person who informed me of this decision was fully aware of the fact that I'm uncomfortable with this, and while I don't want to hurt or insult the other people involved, I am not happy about having to "suck it up and deal with it" (my actual quote). While I'm glad I made my feelings known, I still feel defeated and helpless because there doesn't seem to be a way to change it. Hence the anger.

So I've been cleaning since 6:20 this morning, when I got done with my morning walk with my sister-in-law. This was the second day in a row she's joined me for my walk, and it's nice to be able to talk to her without interruptions from husbands, kids, pets, etc. I don't know if she'll go every single day with me, but we'll walk together off and on until fall.

Tomorrow morning is my 5k race. I'm really not nervous at all about it because I did it last year and survived it, and since then walking 3.2 miles is a regular thing for me. I'm looking forward to it because I can then catch up with another friend who is also walking on my team. We don't get to see each other much, and this will give us some time to chat.

Last year I was hell bent on beating a 15 minute per mile pace, and I did that, and then some. But I also think walking as fast as I did on hard pavement made my neck problems worse, because two days later my left arm and hand were numb, and my shoulder was in agony. This year I'll probably still be close to walking 4 miles per hour, but I'm not not push myself too hard.

I noticed this post has very little to do about food and eating. I consider that real progress, because the goal is to quit being so obsessed and controlled by food, dieting and bingeing. It feels amazingly normal to have a day filled with activities and emotions and not fretting about what I can eat and what I'll weigh because of it.

Time to get back to work. I'll let you know how the race goes!