Staying on track

My theme for this week is focusing on staying on track and not getting distracted by fear and thoughts of failure. Last week was a difficult week for me in terms of mindful eating. While I have not binged, I was not proud of the amounts of food I was eating. Also, two weeks ago when I weight myself I found that I have lost 10 pounds within the last 3-4 weeks. I knew I would not be seeing such a drastic change last week, but I still wanted to see more pounds shed. That did not happen. I have maintained 205 pounds, but I haven’t lost anymore. In my mind I felt like a failure. I have not been ordering Grubhub, I have been biking to work every day in this horrible Chicago winter. I have been running 2-3 times a week. I have been volunteering at a cat shelter to distract me from destructive behaviors, but still I feel like I have failed. Yesterday I did not even want to write a post because I did not want to think about my feelings of not doing enough. As I look back on my daily journal entries I found there is a strong correlation between feeling like I am not working hard enough and eating carelessly. All my good work the previous week on eating mindfully gave way to eating emotionally, which lead to eating more. I wrote that on Tuesday of last week I was ¾ done with my meal when I felt physically full, yet I kept eating. I am not quite sure why, but I think I was looking for some comfort. So I continued eating.

In my eating group, the concepts of physical and emotional hunger were discussed. Physical hunger is when your body is in need of nourishment and emotional hunger is when your mind is in need of nourishment. I think most over eaters use emotional hunger as means of discerning if we need more food or not. This is a very difficult thing to me to internalize because it is very difficult for me to distinguish emotional hunger from physical hunger since I have been using emotional hunger to guide my eating habits. I found that eating slowly and taking breaks between bites helps me focus on whether I am physically full or not. Last week, I just did not do that. I ate quickly and did not take the time to savor my food. I found that I have a sense of panic when I eat quickly because I feel that somehow the food in my plate will disappear and I would be left hungry. I have no idea why I would think that, I live alone and the only one who would eat my food is my dog, Godiva. Even she would have to be pretty brazen to steal food off my plate while I was still eating it.

So, this week my main goal is to stay positive to stay on track. In times of distress, it is very easy to get let negative feelings guide your thoughts, but it is rewarding and healthier for you to work harder and focus on the things you were able to accomplish. Eating less is a long journey; it is not something that will happen overnight. Losing weight also takes time, hard work, and infinite patience. What sabotages weight lost often is giving up too soon. Even if no weight is lost, being able to eat healthy and eat moderately is a huge accomplishment that does affect health in a positive way. It might take a lot of little steps to accomplish that goal, but those little steps are infinitely better than throwing in the towel and going back to destructive habits.

To conclude, I want to share a story about my friend. Yesterday, one of my friends finished an Ironman completion. The Ironman is a race that consist of 3 mile swim, 110 mile bike ride, and 26 mile run. In other words, a race for crazy people :). This was my friend's third attempt to finish the race and yesterday minutes before the 14 hour cut off time, he finished. He has worked so hard to do this and even thought he did not finish the other two times, he did not give up. He did not get distracted from his goal, he just kept working, kept training, and kept thinking positively. I can't imagine how he feels right now, but I do know his journey is so inspiring, so mind blowing. Many people doubted that he could do it, but he did it and that's just lovely!