Time And Relative Dimensions In Space

I didn't post yesterday. I went online a couple times, but I just couldn't find anything to write about yesterday, and didn't feel like sitting down with my notes from "The Power of Now" and copying/analyzing them here.

It wasn't due to laziness -- I did my morning walk, and I got a lot of housework and laundry done, too. I did get caught up in a "Doctor Who" marathon running on the Sci Fi Channel, but I managed to fold laundry and get things done during the show and the commercials. Last night was the American premiere of the newest season, so I had my evening plans set.

I adore "Doctor Who," at least the last three series with the newest Doctors, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. Americans may know Eccleston as Claude the Invisible Man on the NBC show "Heroes," and Tennant as bad guy Bartie Crouch Jr. in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." My friend SS got me and Mabel into the show, and now we can hardly imagine life without it.

The Doctor is a Time Lord who can travel through space and time in his spaceship the TARDIS, which stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. It looks like an innocent British police call box (like a phone booth for us Americans) but it contains a very large space craft that has incredible power. As I'm thinking about it today, I can see a correlation to the TARDIS and Doctor Who to the work I'm doing with conscious living. In some ways I'm striving to be a little like the Doctor -- he's living in his own time, his own Now, and the past and future cannot hold him down. The TARDIS can also be a representation of ourselves and our identities. On the outside we may look ordinary, even dumpy, but our true selves, contained within our exterior coverings, is so vast, beautiful and powerful.

I think I didn't post yesterday because I was finally taking some of what I've been learning and applying it. I was living consciously, working on the immediate tasks in front of me and not worrying about yesterday or tomorrow. I didn't want to analyze, didn't want to fret about things. I was simply in the moment, Being.

And my eating reflected that. Once in a while I'd get these pangs that I should eat something. But unless I could immediately pinpoint exactly what I wanted to eat, I pushed it away, because it wasn't real hunger to me. It was my old behaviors wanting to engage (it's my day off from work, let's "treat" myself by eating lots of crap), and I wasn't having it. Once I could determine exactly what I was hungry for, I ate it, hence my lunch of a PB&J with a glass of milk for lunch.

It wasn't a perfect day -- I ate to the upper end of my full feeling at supper -- but I know now I had gone too long without eating, making myself extra hungry. I am happy that I recognized the exact moment that if I ate another bite, I would move from full to stuffed and be a miserable person indeed. And I'm equally thrilled that I was able to stop at that moment, while everyone else was still eating, and didn't feel driven to keep picking at things I wasn't hungry for anymore. And besides, I'm not aiming for perfect, am I?

What I am aiming for is traveling through my life like I'm in the TARDIS -- I'm not held down by the past or waiting for something to happen in the future. If I want to do something, I've got to do it now, because the Now is the only place where I exist, just like Doctor Who. Pretty cool!

Just A Muffin

Still fighting whatever it is I have-- I'm still not sure if it's a cold or allergies. But my throat's better today, which is good.

A few minutes ago I did what up until, oh, today, was the unthinkable: I walked away from a half eaten double chocolate muffin, one of my current favorite foods to "indulge" (i.e. binge) on when I'm "bad." I'm still kind of amazed and dazed by it. But I really paid attention to my body, and halfway through I knew I had eaten enough to satisfy me.

It was almost like someone else was steering the controls as I watched myself put the muffin down on the table and walk away. I am a charter member of the Clean Your Plate Club, so to leave something behind is working against a behavior I've had since childhood.

I purposely didn't throw the rest of the muffin away, pour dish soap on it, etc., because that would have smacked of diet mentality to me. Besides the fact that I can't stand the thought of "wasting" food, tossing it or soaping it makes me think I've done something wrong by eating it and I'm now either hiding or destroying the evidence. Knowing that I can go back and finish the muffin when I'm hungry again was half the reason why I could walk away.

I feel kind of silly posting about eating half a muffin, but this simple act is revolutionary to me. Before IE, this muffin probably would have been the start of a binge that would last the rest of the day, even the rest of the weekend. The following Monday morning I would promise myself I'd never buy those muffins again, declaring them evil and off limits. But of course, a few weeks or months down the line, after a lot more dieting and deprivation, I would be driven to buy them once again. Now, it's just a muffin.

Yesterday in my comments, Tree Lover asked, "Are you sure you have only been at this IE thing for a few weeks? Every time I read your blog I am amazed by your insights."

I may have only been following IE for a few weeks, but the truth is I've been reading about it for at least 15 years. Each time I'd read another book I would nod my head, intellectually getting what the author was trying to say. But each time I was nowhere near ready to put it into practice. Before I lost my weight I was still too dependent on the eating and shut down to my emotions and body signals, and when I was dieting I kept telling myself "When I lose xx more pounds, then maybe I could try this as maintenance." (If I've posted this before, I apologize for repeating myself)

I suppose I could compare it to the way my weight loss happened; I had tried to lose weight several times before, but in 2004 all the elements came together and clicked, and I shed the weight. Of course, as you know, by 2007 I'd dieted myself into a diet/binge cycle. I hate to say that it was this series of events that made everything click for me with IE, because I certainly wouldn't recommend everyone mess up their heads with dieting in order to "get" IE. But I suppose in my case I did need to "hit bottom," so to speak, to reach that desperation level when I knew I had to find another way to deal with eating and food.

But the most crucial thing I've learned in the last couple weeks is this: the actual food we eat is truly secondary. This is all about our bodies and minds. So many of us learn to shut down our emotions and ignore what our bodies are trying to tell us. I definitely have, and I'm learning a lot of the why and how of that through Karen Koenig's "The Food & Feelings Workbook." Every time I pick it up I think, "Yep, that happened to me," or "Oh yeah, I do that all the time." And best of all, I'm learning how to work through these issues and replace all the screwy beliefs in my head to more rational and nurturing ones.

Do I still have my fears and doubts? Yeah, sometimes. I'm still holding on to some concerns about gaining weight, although they are decreasing. I'm realizing more and more that my sanity is more important to me than my clothing size, and this is the only way I know of that I can find that sanity when it comes to food and eating. While I'm still proud of the weight I've lost, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the idea of being content where I am. All the books I've read say that if you follow IE you will most likely lose pounds and get to your "natural" weight, whatever that may be. However, I'm not going to hang all my hopes on that possibility. If I would happen to lose weight, so be it. But it's going to be much more of an accomplishment to me when I can reach the day when I can't remember the last time I binged. Now that would be truly wonderful.

In The Moment

Yesterday was such a long day. Between having Mabel sick at home and PMS/beginning of my time of the month, it was a stressful and tiring. Then there were some other little irritants that built up until I was pretty strung out. It was interesting now in hindsight to feel the emotions churning in me and how they gel into this heavy vest of anxiety across my chest.

It was an opportunity to start using some of the techniques I've been learning in my IE reading. One relaxation technique that really works for me is a breathing and counting exercise. You get in a comfortable position (seated, lying down, whatever works best for you), then you close your eyes and slowly inhale and exhale through your nose. The first inhale and exhale, you count to four each time, then for each set you increase to five, six, seven and eight. Then you go back down to four. This borders on meditation, I suppose, because you're focusing on your breathing and the numbers instead of the thoughts that are causing your emotions.

Once I did this, the anxiety eased and I was able to break it apart into the separate emotions that were at the cause of it. I could then look at each of these and find the thoughts behind them. Like yesterday's post, I could then pick apart what was irrational about these thoughts and replace them with more rational statements.

What's great about this is that I'm not avoiding the emotions or distracting myself, which is what I've always done in the past, whether it was with food, cleaning, TV, you name it. That worked to calm me down at first, but the issues never got resolved and would linger around to bite me in the hind end later down the road -- namely, compensating later with compulsive overeating.

This new way is great because I don't have to be afraid of feeling these "scary" emotions; I now have the tools to really explore them, and I'm pleased to find out that these techniques really deflate the impact and make me feel so empowered instead of feeling out of control and helpless.

So, the good news is, last night when I got hungry for an evening snack, I wasn't propelled by my feelings (or the avoidance of them) to eat a whole box of cookies. I ate three, savored them thoroughly instead of inhaling them in a compulsive need to fill myself up, and I was completely satisfied.

The other big thing I did yesterday was pay close attention to my mood at meal times and how it affected my eating. Before lunch I was particularly stressed trying to juggle taking care of my daughter and my responsibilities at work. This rushed feeling carried over into my noontime meal, and I realized I wasn't enjoying my salad because of this keyed up feeling. I put my fork down and made a conscious effort to slow down my mind, and this helped to get back into the moment.

At supper time I was still coming down off the anxiety that had taken over me, and I noticed I wasn't thoroughly enjoying my meal then, either. Again, I stopped and did my best to clear my mind before I continued eating, and again, this helped.

I realize today that what I was doing was trying to become a Conscious Eater. Tree Lover talks about this a lot on her blog, and I didn't truly "get it" until yesterday when I made these observations. When we use food for emotional purposes, or let other distractions cloud our eating experiences, it takes away from the satisfaction and enjoyment of the food. When that happens for me, I usually wind up eating more, thinking this will help. But now I understand that what I need to do is stop and make sure I'm in the moment. I don't want to be fretting over the past or worrying about the future, I want to be in the now, living in the present and staying in touch with my body. This will lead me to eating intuitively.