Weekend Roundup

Affirmation: I do not eat when I am bored.

This weekend has been pretty good. I got a lot of the major changes finished on the food journal I am working on to publish. I left a galley copy off for A. to look at, she is considering using them in the new groups that will start in the fall and I think with some of her other patients as well. It is exciting. I know that using this journal for the past month has really helped me see things that I haven't ever seen before.

Today has been a really "feel like normal" day for me. Really a first. I haven't thought about food most of the day, in fact I had breakfast and didn't eat again until supper - I just wasn't hungry. This reinforces that fact that I eat when I am bored. What this is tellling me is that I need to keep busy doing things I love to do, rather than sit around after work and veg and get bored and then think about eating. I have so many projects that should be no problem.

Although, this weekend has not been good as far as planing for the next week and getting lunches and stuff ready. I will have to be dilligent tomorrow night and make lunches and muffins for breakfast. It went so good the past few weeks to pre-bag raw veggies, fruit, and prep lunches for the whole week. Then all I have to do is throw everything in my lunch bag and it is done...no muss, no fuss. But I find that sometimes I am so resistant to that. Self-sabotage...a word that I have not been willing to explore...must do it soon though I think.

A note about the journal page I posted. This is from an old visual journal from Feb.2000. As much as most of my life has centered around getting a handle on this weight gain since moving back to my home town, not much has changed since then. Until now. This jounal entry was so much about picking up myself by my bootstraps and trying to convince myself that change could happen.; I don't think I believed that anything could change. It didn't, I didn't have the tools then, dieting didn't work, neither did any amount of trying to give myself pep talks either.

So what has changed? I am not sure that I can put that into words. Something has changed on a very deep spiritual level for me. For the first time I think I have truly understood how continuing to live this way dishonors God, and at the root of it all is lack of faith...I have put my love for food higher than my love for God, I made food an idol. I would go to food to solve problems, ease lonliness, ease boredom, comfort, what ever. The deeper my relationship with God has gone, the more I have understood how very much He loves me and how much He desires to be the touchstone and focus of my complete life; how He want's me to come to Him for all those kinds of things. What He thinks of me, desires for me are so completely different that what I believe about myself. Understanding who I am in Him brings such a different perspective into my life and the way that I see myself. Now, this doesn't mean that I don't have to do the work to change the way I relate to and use food. I have to face the issues behind why I use food, I have to take the steps to change...but the differnce this time is that there is a deep sadness in my heart for not understanding how destructive these choices I have made have been to me, on all levels, spiritually, physically, emotionally, metally, even socially. These are my choices, and I have the consequences of my choices to prove it; I no longer want to live in the consequences of those choices, I want to live a new and healthy life; a life that is within reach one decision at a time.