Wednesday Food and Numbers

Here's a breakdown of my day:

Meal Type	Food	Time	BS
Tuesday Evening Snack	Special K, Cheese	Fasting	105
Breakfast	Cheerios with milk and strawberries, sausage	2 hours after bfast	84
Snack	Steel cut oats with half and half, banana, brown sugar	2 hours after snack	107
Lunch	Enchiladas with sour cream	2 hours after lunch	89
Snack	Banana and cheese
Dinner	Stuffed chicken
Snack	Cheese

Feelings and true needs - My Challenge

Feeling My Feelings

When I was a kid I was overwhelmed with emotion and remember the exact day when I learned how to turn off my emotions.  It was a powerful skill to learn and served me well while I was growing up but I know in my heart that I won't be able to become a normal eater until I allow my feelings to flow more naturally. 

I have been resisting this piece of normal eating and I know it.  It's not that I don't let myself feel but I find it difficult to do consistently and I am afraid of being overwhelmed.  In my mind I know that feelings fade if I let them out and that all feelings are important and give me important information about me, but living that on a daily basis is really tough! 

I am also afraid that I won't be able to figure out how I'm feeling or that it will be too hard and I will give up.  I don't try for very long even when I do try.  I am frustrated with this and will need to do some belief work around this because I think it's a deeper issue.  Something like:

Irrational Belief: I can't make change in my own life.
Rational Belief: I can make change in my life.
Rational Belief: Change is hard but I can do it.
Rational Belief: I can change with practice.
Rational Belief: It might be hard to make changes at first but it will get easier with practice.
Rational Belief: Change takes time and patience.
Rational Belief: Change may be slow.

My True Needs

In addition to that, using my feelings to determine what I truly need is a struggle.  Then sharing my feelings and asking for or giving myself what I need once I figure it out is also hard.  I am afraid that my feelings and needs might be upsetting to someone around me is a major trigger for me.  I want to learn to handle those feelings as well and look them right in the face. 

I had an issue with this recently and didn't share something because I was afraid of the reaction.  Once I did share, the reaction was far more damaging than if I had been honest in the first place.  I want to remember this and practice being honest regardless of the reaction.  This is also an important piece of my recovery.

I really want to do this.  I am going to be single-minded and dogged about it. 

Goals

1. Tune into my feelings every single day, every hour if need be until it gets easier
2. Figure out what I truly need and ask for it or give it to myself
3. Be honest, share even when I am scared of the reaction
4. Be brave, learn that I can handle whatever comes my way

Tools to help me:

• Come up with a goal, key phrase or mantra I can post and look at constantly
• I want to learn my true needs with curiosity and compassion.
• I am worth the work.
• Helpful quote: "There is, I have learned, all the difference between the desire and the act.  The one is written on water, the other carved in stone." Lawrence Block
• Reminder alarms to cue me to check in with myself
• Set!  Three times a day (and also if I want to eat when I'm not hungry)
• Question(s) I can ask myself periodically to help me tune in
• Close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and ask:
• What am I feeling?
• What do I need?
• Is there any action I should take?
• Blog about it!

Forward Steps

A few steps in the right direction lately:

Work - Related:

• I got a membership to the ASTD website and have asked to get certified which was met with enthusiasm!  I plan to get things started and scheduled and get this done before June 1.
• I've been really focused on doing a good job at work and trying not to get too distracted.  It does leave me feeling more satisfied at the end of the day.

Health

• My blood sugar seems to be coming down through diet modification and I couldn't be more thrilled! 
• I started a list of delicious meals that are low in carbs and sugar so I can eat things I like.
• I bought a heartrate monitor so I can start exercising within reason and still be healthy for baby.

Organization
We've been continuing our work on organizing the house and getting rid of things we don't use.  It will be a continual project but two great things are the bookshelf and the linen shelf that I have organized...oh! and the changing table/dresser.  We'll keep hacking away at it.  What I've discovered is that it's a continual process and the more I make it part of my lifestyle rather than a once/year or once/decade event, the better off we will be!

Living a full life

One of the more difficult (IMHO) parts of normal eating is building a life you love and that fulfills you.  This is so difficult because I don't know what it is that would fulfill me and it's a tough journey trying to figure it out.  It really shouldn't be that hard, or doesn't sound like it should be, but it is!  I find myself reading facebook and blogs and seeing how others are figuring this out and I get really frustrated because it appears they are doing so much to live a full life and I am doing nothing!

Just took five deep breaths and reminded myself that I am doing my very best.  I want so many things and feel like the job I am in really stops me from doing what I want.  It's really me that stops me I suppose.

Maybe what I need is a little dose of what my life is right now and what I AM doing...

• I am raising a beautiful little 18 month old boy
• I am growing a baby girl to be born in June 2013
• I have written about 50 pages of a screenplay
• I have a good job doing something I am good at
• I am attempting to write a blog
• I am working on normal eating and my own emotional growth and development
• I am reading a book
• I just completed and continue to work on sleep training a toddler
• I am helping my husband find a job in another city and contemplating a move

Here are some things I would like:

• Complete my screenplay before the baby is born
• Get my training certification before the baby is born
• Apply to grad school
• Take lots of pictures
• Continue to work on blogging
• Attend a blogging conference, maybe BlogHer??

I know this is something I constantly battle with, I have this idea in my head that everyone else is living the life that they dream of and I am not.  Is this true?  When something is no longer working, that is when you have to take some risks and try something new and I feel like I am not taking any risks.  And that is what creates excitement, right?  And it does!  It has been a long time since I tried for something.  Now that's a thought I will continue to ponder.

Spring Cleaning

It's been warm where I live and I've been having the urge to clean out the house.  I feel like I see clutter everywhere I look and I have such little storage space that there's not a space for everything.  Which  means I need to get rid of things that I don't use.  I am so excited to do this because I feel like a clean, uncluttered house is a way of taking care of myself and brings such calm to my mind and soul.

We started with the kitchen last weekend although we still have some to do there.  I also cleaned out a closet which badly needed cleaning.  I love opening that closet now!

This weekend I'll tackle cords and our linen rack and a bookshelf.  I'm getting rid of everything we don't use.  I know that I won't miss it once it's gone, it's just tough to make the initial decision to get rid of something.  I have this urge to say, someday I might want or need it, but in reality, I probably won't.  And for those days of clutter-free living, it will be well worth repurchasing a few things if and when I truly need them.

I didn't take any before and after pictures but I will remedy that this weekend.

Fear

I am sitting here frustrated with the state of things in my career but so afraid to take a step in any direction.  I want so many things, I have so many ideas, but I lack the confidence to believe that any one of them will work out.  I think it's because there are so many things about my life that haven't worked out.  I look back on the many decisions that I regret.

On the flip side there are so many that I don't regret! 

And yet, here I sit in fear.  It's a new place for me and I am not comfortable with it.  I just don't want to take a risk and waste a bunch of money that I didn't have. 

How do I get over the fear?  How do I move forward?  I don't want to keep going on like I have been...I WANT change.  But the fear grips me.  How do I feel the fear and do it anyway?

Feelings of deprivation

Whenever I tried to diet I would always end up feeling rebellious, feeling deprived, and it would make me angry!  I would then go off and eat whatever I wanted and however much I wanted to eat.  It was so frustrating and one of the things that drove me to look for normal eating. 

Recently someone posed the question, what is the feeling of deprivation really about?  I gave it some thought and will give it much more but what I have come to so far is that I don't want to be told what to do.  I was told what to do for many many years and not given the space to figure things out for myself.  Someone else always had the answer for me and would give it right away without allowing me the time to mull it over and come to my own conclusion.  And rather than speak up, I would just follow along.

It takes me time to think about what I want and need, sometimes a LONG time, and those that surrounded me didn't need that time...at least not for telling ME what to do.  I would get frustrated because I wanted to know myself, to take all the time I needed to figure out my wants, even something as simple as what I wanted to eat.

I know now that this type of reflection is what builds self trust and was always stolen from me, like a rug being pulled out from underneath me.  I WANTED to figure things out for myself but people around me wanted to always fix it for me or choose for me because they were faster and thought they knew what I wanted/needed.

And how could they?  I didn't even know.

So now I have this kneejerk reaction when someone or something tells me what to do, even a diet, and that is to get angry and rebel, do the opposite, rather than take the time to figure it out for myself, no matter how long it takes, and if someone tries to jump in and figure it out for me, to speak up!

This is a skill that I want to work on building, even in simple day-to-day encounters.  It's hard for me because my natural instinct is just to go along, not to speak up,  but it's in the speaking up that my confidence will build.  SO hard and yet so important.