Affirmation: Creating new habits do work
hey ya all,
I was sitting here at my desk journaling about yesterday and thought maybe I would share with you all too. After my doc's apt I had to go grocery shopping. Now I consistently in the past year have made sure that I didn't go with out a list on paper or hungry. Neither of which happened yesterday. I thought I was just going to pick up some bags of salad on the way home from the doc to have for lunches.
I guess I didn't really realise how upset and frustrating it was for me to have to say yes to the cortisone shots. Anyway I went into the store and got the lettuce, added some bananas then some watermelon.. .so far so good. Then on the way to the check out counter I passed the deli....didn't want to make salad for lunch, got some of their (logli's) ham salad and potato salad - "mom likes this...ya and so do I...ah the lies we can convince ourselves of! Then that was it...I got potato chips and dip to have with the sandwich.
That in itself is not so bad, I very occasionally will have a small bag of chips - the individual serving bag size and a small carton of dip (and throw away what is left over after the bag of chips is gone. and only if I am particularly craving it and know it is not "comfort food" or "celebration food".
But yesterday it was comfort food...and I knew it and bought it anyway. And I bought the BIG carton and the BIG bag.
But here is the interesting thing that happened.
Without consciously thinking about it I ate only until I was full, but the stuff away and didn't get it out again until I was hungry again. I did this several times throughout the day. And late in the eventing I went to the kitchen to snack before bed and wandered around the kitchen and said to myself...I am not hungry now I will just go to bed...it will be there tomorrow if I still want it.
Now I didn't realise the importance of what happened until I started to journal, I was in a fog yesterday... .I was frustrated and I gave into the pain too and just allowed myself to live with sinking into the pain rather than trying to distract my mind and body from it (which has been really helpful in pain management for me). So this morning I decided to journal first thing rather than eat. the exciting thing is that the whole body awareness; the full/hungry thing happened unconsciously, almost I guess by habit. So I called it in my journal a "controlled binge". I realised that the past two or three years of practicing "eating when hungry/stopping when full" dialogueing with my self and asking myself and my body if I am hungry/full has finally turned into a habit...something that seems to be happening on a deeper level than before.
When I started it all felt so fake and contrived, but thanks to all your encouragement to keep going I can finally say that it works!
O and by the way, because of it I don't feel "hung over" from overeating or guilty. I found myself taking it for what it was...a moment of having a pity party for myself...and now it is today and I am OK, I have journaled and worked through the emotions and have refocused.
Sorry it was so long...has anyone else experienced anything like this?
