PROGRESS!

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween - a Revelation!

I have to share a great revelation.

This morning as I busily got the kids and myself together to get out the door, I noticed the huge bag of Halloween candy sitting on my counter, as it had been sitting on my counter for days. I really didn’t pay a lot of attention until it really hit me: “I REALLY hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to it!!”

There has been no obsessing about “staying away” from the candy, and no obsession with “NEEDING to have ALL the candy”. It has simply sat there, unopened. Ignored.

Talk about JOY!

Talk about a BREAKTHROUGH!

This was very exciting for me to realize. I have come to see that since I started to treat food as food; Nothing more, nothing less; Not bad, not good, the hold that sugary things used to hold over me has fallen away. It’s really very freeing and liberating.

My focus for the last week specifically is mindfulness. I am striving to eat ONLY when I am hungry. It’s been hard at times! I have not always been mindful, for sure! But it has been very eye-opening. I often want to eat when I am anything BUT hungry (which I have known). But to give myself a moment to say “I know you want a snack, but you really aren’t hungry – what is it that you need?” has been very interesting.

Sometimes I know what I need (a break from my desk, for example) and sometimes I don’t. It’s not perfect, it never will be, and I’m OK with that! It’s a skill I am working very hard on and I have decided to really concentrate on it for a few weeks, just on its own, with no other eating-restriction-diet-mentality ideas. Just let it be about being mindful.

Mindfulness with eating is something I scoffed at for a long time. After all, I don’t want to think about WHY I want to eat – I just want food, dammit! But while immersing myself in information about it, I came across a new perspective.

-Make the mindfulness happen AFTER the food is consumed-

This, to start, made so much more sense to me. When I paid attention to my food, and how I felt AFTER I ate it, I discovered much more easily what made me feel good, and what made me feel crappy. Making THAT discovery more easily moves me into being mindful BEFORE I eat something. I have the knowledge of what how that food might affect me physically, so I have a totally informed decision to make.

When I type it out, it reads a little “obsess-y” but it really doesn’t feel that way at all. It feels good to be in tune with myself. Coming into my body is a very, very slow process for me. Coming into my mind is first.

Hooray for therapy! LOL

Have a sweet Halloween. Enjoy some candy, if that’s your thing. Stay away from it if you prefer. Whatever gives you JOY? Go for it!

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