An Unconventional Day

Yesterday was a real experiment in Intuitive Eating. Before lunch my Mom stopped by my office with my daughter (she babysat Mabel while Hubby was at his last day of school), and they stayed and hung out for a while. Mom had just gone to the dollar store and cracked open a can of cashews, and since I was beginning to get hungry, I took a handful and slowly ate them as I finished up my work for the day. Nuts have always been a "danger" food for me in my dieting/restricting days, one of those high calorie no-nos that often became a trigger food. But I was determined to break that old association with nuts and teach myself that I can eat a handful of nuts without starting binge mentality.

The nuts tided me over a little while, but when I got home I was still hungry and I threw together a fish sandwich to eat before Mabel and I went shopping. I normally eat a larger lunch, but the nuts had apparently taken care of some of my usual appetite and I was content with the sandwich.

Several hours later after some shopping at the mall, Mabel was finally hungry for lunch, and she wanted to go to the food court. She decided on the Japanese hibachi place and ordered the chicken teriyaki with rice and vegetables. I grabbed two forks, feeling kind of hungry but not ravenous. She and I split the meal, and when we were done I felt satisfied, not full.

By the time we got home it was 5 o'clock. Hubby called and asked if it was okay if he grabbed a bite to eat with some teacher friends of his, and I told him that was great, because Mabel and I were quite content with our early supper.

An hour later, however, Mabel wanted ice cream, and I decided I could go for some, too, so we went and I got one of my favorite sundaes. I ate it all, felt comfortably full when I was done, and that was it for the rest of the day.

While it may have not have been the healthiest food in the world, I was pleased that I was able to eat "unconventionally" for the day. If I had been in "free" (not dieting or overeating) mode, I would have eaten half the container of cashews, or if I didn't, I would have felt deprived or triggered and eaten a big lunch. I would have ordered my own meal or something equivalent from the food court when Mabel ordered hers , then very likely would have had supper on top of that. And ice cream? Hey, at that point, what the heck? And I might have topped that off later that evening with whatever "bad" food was lying around the house.

There's something nice about what I consider eating like a kid. I didn't eat according to a schedule, I ate what I wanted and didn't think about fat grams or sodium, and I didn't sit around afterwards feeling stuffed and bloated.

And I wasn't worrying about how I'd fit in my bathing suit next week. In fact, I was actually pleased that during my clothes shopping that the L size (14-16 in this certain store) in the misses' section fit the best. It's so odd for me to walk past the women's section now, and even more bizarre that I'm bypassing the XLs in the regular section. Crazy!

I even had another one of those light bulb moments last night about emotional triggers. My Hubby made a comment that instantly made me defensive, angry, and sad, and sent me into the "I can't do anything right" martyr mode. But it only took just a few short minutes for me to dissect this and realize what was going on. My rational side told me that Hubby didn't make the comment to criticize and degrade me. In fact, he was talking about an inanimate object, but I was connecting myself to it and associating myself with the criticism because I was the one who bought it. While he does have this habit of speaking in a tone that comes off harsh and critical, I've been around him enough to know that this often isn't his intention.

I looked at the incident and statement objectively and tried to find a reason why it triggered this emotional response. I immediately realized that his tone was very reminiscent of my father, and my reaction to him in those moments was to always feel hurt, rejected and that I couldn't do anything right.

Once I put these things together, I was intrigued to find that while I had solved why I felt this way, all of those feelings didn't magically disappear. Although the feelings of anger and hurt had dissipated, I was still a little defensive and irritated. I thought about this and realized I would just have to ride them out -- as I've learned, there are no emotions that I can't handle. The funniest thing was, while I was irritated, I actually found myself laughing to myself about it, because I knew it was based on ancient history and that my feelings would quickly pass.

The best part was when Hubby and I finally went to bed. He asked me if I was all right, and instead of taking the passive route of saying "Yeah, I'm fine," I began to tell him about what he did and my response to it. He immediately tried to defend himself and I interrupted him, telling him it wasn't necessary, because I already knew he didn't say it to attack me. I explained to him how I recognized the trigger and figured out why it brought out these emotions in me.

Not only was I able to share my feelings, which is huge progress for me, I was able to do it in a way that didn't cause an argument or make Hubby feel defensive. Hopefully he realized that sometimes the way he talks has this old association for me, and perhaps in the future he just might remember that and try to tone it down a little.

I guess it was an unconventional day all around. While this feels so new and exciting right now, I'm hoping this becomes the norm and those old days of dieting and binge eating become a thing of the distant past.

The IE Challenge

(This morning)
The good news is, I just found a major typo in my Sunday church bulletin. The bad news is I have to reprint 180 copies and now I'm behind, but at least it never made it to the congregation.
I had to go clothes shopping yesterday. I know, most people love it, but those of us who've lost a lot of weight have a lot of trepidation about this. I've talked before about being in that clothing limbo land, where I often can't find clothes small enough in the plus size stores or big enough in the "regular" stores. In addition, I'm at that age (35) where I don't want to dress like a 20 year-old hoochie mama, but I don't want to look like a dowdy old woman, either. It's hard to find clothes in between.

I went to my old stand-by, Fashion Bug, although spring time is always a crap-shoot there because of that hoochy mama/grandma dilemma. But I was lucky this time. I found a couple outfits in the (gasp) regular section, size XL, that looked good, so I splurged. It wasn't all roses and sunshine, though; I had to put a few shirts back because my good ole' tavern ham upper arms wouldn't fit in the sleeves. Despite this, I found myself pleased as I looked in the three-way mirror in these new outfits. I may not be at my "ideal" weight (whatever that means), but by golly, I can appreciate where I've come from and I know I'm the best I can be at this specific point in my life.

I blew through the Intuitive Eating book last night. It was really good, but I felt a little lost afterwards. It was like going through a speed course on driving a car, someone plopping you in the driver's seat, giving you a pat on the shoulder and saying, "Good luck!" Where's my driver's education teacher in the passenger seat with his foot hovering over the second set of brakes? I need guidance!

Fortunately the next book in my pile is a workbook full of exercises to work through this process. It's by another author who has a book on "normal eating" that I read last summer. While I really connected to what she had to say back then, I was nowhere near ready to take the plunge to try it.

*****
(Got swamped at work and I'm finally getting back here.)

What's different now? Well, a year, for one thing. I've basically stalled out on the weight loss, rising and falling around 213 but not making any big progress. February was the third anniversary of my weight loss journey, and I think the diet mentality and the long-term calorie restrictions have finally worn me out. The rebound overeating (mostly on weekends) has gotten more frequent and more intense, and I found myself falling into despair about it and the lack of control and frustration I was feeling.

Throughout this week I've been trying to adopt the IE mind set, and I think I'm making progress. One big revelation is finding odd quirky things I've been doing in the name of weight loss, but in reality were not so good for my health.

Lack of calcium, for one thing. As a kid I used to drink tons of milk (almost always fat-free). And as a result I had good, strong teeth and healthy bones. In the past three years my consumption has decreased a lot, to the point in the last six months that I hardly touch it. The reasoning? I didn't want to "waste" 90 calories a cup on drinking it. To make things worse, I had those calcium chews sitting around the house, but I didn't take them because they were 1. too much like candy, which could be a binge trigger, and 2. added something like 20 calories per chew. How sad is that? I was depriving my poor bones of calcium for what, 110 calories a day?

Here's another one: I've read tons about the health benefits of flax seed oil, but I kept balking at the extra calories of the flax seed meal when put in recipes. Hubby bought me a jar of the flax seed oil gel tabs, but I didn't use them at first because it would have added an extra fifteen calories to my daily total. FIFTEEN CALORIES?!?!

So now I've been taking the flax seed pills every day, and guess what? This morning I drank a glass of milk. Calories be damned!

I still find myself portioning out food, eyeballing portions and even sometimes measuring. But I keep telling myself "you can have more if you're still hungry." And I haven't gone back for seconds yet.

Well, today for lunch I sort of did, but not really. I made myself a sandwich (with real cheese, heaven forbid), ate half of it, then stopped to gauge my hunger. Right at that moment there was a knock on my door; it was the guy we called to give us an estimate on fencing in the back section of our yard. My mother also showed up and distracted me, and by the time they both left it was half an hour later. I went back into the house, and there was my sandwich. I checked in on myself and still felt a little peckish, so I went ahead and finished it. So while I went back for more, it was just the last half of my portioned out sandwich, not a second sandwich.

In the past my lunch would have gone in two different ways: on a "good" day I would have scarfed it all down right away, since I was famished, and knowing that was all I was "allowed." And if it was a "bad" day? I would have already been mentally preparing myself for what I was going to eat next, if I didn't already have it laid out in front of me.

While I feel like it's going well so far, I know the real test will be this weekend, and what a whopper I've got. Tomorrow Mabel and I are going with Hubby and his physics students to Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh for Physics Day. The kids do experiments to determine velocity, momentum, etc., for credit in Hubby's class. I go along as a chaperon, and Mabel gets to ride the rides and get lots of attention from teen girls. Unfortunately I won't be riding much this year since I'm still counting my blessings that my neck surgery went well and the problems I was having with it a week or so ago went away. So I'll be strolling around the park, and you know there will be lots of amusement park/carnival food everywhere.

Then on Saturday we womenfolk are going to Annapolis, Md., to go to my cousin's wife's baby shower. I'm sure there will be lots of nibbles and sweets there. Plus we're stopping at Trader Joe's on our way home.

On Sunday my church is holding its annual Mother-Daughter Banquet, and Mabel and I are going. She's reading a verse about mothers, and we'll both be partaking of the turkey dinner.

So I've got three whole days of food temptations. Can I handle the IE challenge? Eat what I want, without guilt, but stop when I'm pleasantly full (not stuffed). I don't expect to be perfect, but I'm definitely curious about how it will go.

Because the next three days will be so hectic, blogging may be difficult to get to until Sunday. I'll try my best, though. If not, I hope everyone has a good weekend.