Tuesday Morning Check In

I am feeling better this morning. Not hungry so I am not eating breakfast until I get hungry. This eating only when I am hungry is a scary thing. It is weird to go against years of eating at certain times of the day just because it is breakfast-time or lunchtime. It brings up feelings of "not enough". If I don't eat now, will I have enough later, will I even be able to eat later? Honestly, how can someone who had lived all her life in the midst of such plenty worry about food like someone who has starved all her life? Perhaps I have been starving...but not for food.

Last night I was reading in the book "It's not about Food" and the author suggested that an eating disorder should be honored because it was our body's way of surviving. That, honoring my eating disorder, is something I will have a bit of trouble wrapping my brain around. I have been at war with both my eating and my body for I don't know how many years; I am having a hard time thinking of honoring it. Maybe it is like any other fight, if one stops and disengages, then there can be no more fight. I know that I am more than ready to have my life be about more than food, weight, fat, people's well intentioned but hurtful comments, feeling so shitty physically all the time.... I am ready to live my life again. I know that this is a process, and I intend to try to not to get ahead of or discouraged with the process.

Lately I have been looking for and reading other's blogs on their weight loss journeys, mostly hoping for insight and encouragement. It is sad how many of them started out full of enthusiasm and hope and yet, so many have not been written in for months, years in some cases. Most had experienced some success in the beginnings only to have hit a bump and gained and tried to get back on track and ultimately quit writing in the blog. I know the feeling, I have, am still sometimes, there - fighting those bumps in the road that call out to me saying it is easier to quit, to stay defeated, fat, that it is just too hard to change my life. How many times have I tried, do I have to try before change happens? But I am convinced that it is not how many times you stumble, fall, fail that counts, it is how many times you get up. I am coming up on almost a year of concentrated effort in changing my life style. For almost 20 years I had given up on diets and loosing weight, I had lost hope. But since going through CHIP, and more importantly since becoming part of group - there has been in some ways, tremendous progress, some ways you can't tell any difference - especially if you only count outward appearances. But inside, in my heart, mind and emotions I am changing. And I have always believed that if I could find the courage and the help to face the WHY of eating and food, then the how would take care of itself. I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are days that I can see a mind shift in how I am thinking about food and how I am choosing to handle stress. There are moments when it is not about food. There are even moments when I can visualize a life where it is not consumed by this disorder, and all that means...there are even minutes, sometimes hours where I am actually living it out. And there have been times when I have actually been able to not use food to comfort or handle stress. I am finding my voice and speaking out. I am beginning to put myself first and choosing not to be so influenced by worrying about what others are thinking. Moments. And if moments can happen so can hours, days, months, years and finally a lifetime of living free.Well off to work and a victorious day.jackie