Listening to me

Thank you guys for your support and nice comments ! While it is each of our own responsibility to preform our own actions and do our own work, it makes the world a little bit nicer and less intimidating feeling when you find someone else at least understands how your thoughts are going.

Bob ,( my husband), took Nick (our son) with him to go get the brakes worked on and then some computer shopping. Nick thinks any place that does car work is a fun place and he adores looking at computers, so the itinerary for the morning sounded kind of like Disneyland to him. Bob does not get to spend long stretches of time with Nick on his own, so it makes for a treat for him as well.Meanwhile it gave me a chance to catch my breath, think, de-pressurize and just regroup. This was MY idea of Disneyland . I started thinking about this whole weight loss journey and trying hard to listen to exactly what my body was telling me. It seems more and more that we wind up following any weight loss approach, the further and further I get from hearing what my body is trying to say. There are days that I feel like the plan or the schedule is my warden, and my own instincts are the prisoner. Many, many times I am being forced to eat because it is on the schedule and NOT because I am hungry. That is one really bad result of living on a food budget with a solid menu plan. You save money, but your instincts are told to shut up. If you feel like you only need something light like a salad or an apple , but the menu plan says chicken breast and rice, the menu wins.You don't have salad makings in the house and you ran out of apples. So you tell your body it does not know what it is doing, listen to what your brain has determined because this is what experts have advised to become healthy, wealthy and just plain good. If you just ate an apple or a salad you would be missing xyz nutrients ,123 food groups and we all know how that is going to impact global warming. Your body is just NOT to be trusted.

Oh really ? I dare to defy that logic. My body is the only one that has the real owners manual for it , and if I want to be healthy, wealthy and wise , I would do best to listen to it. So my first decision of the day was to eat only when I am HUNGRY ( not according to the time) and eat what I was hungry for. No plan to do this every day no matter what, but just for the day to see what would happen. I made a bowl of modified "notmeal" ( ground flax, almond, pecans and walnuts with boiling water and peanut butter, cinnamon and splenda) and coffee. It was very satisfying,and it really filled me up. Then I went about the business of the day, including trying to ask myself why I was feeling so frumpy of late. That is a whole other story.

For the rest of the day there were opportunities to eat, but I just did not feel hungry in the least. About noontime I got a caving for an apple, and so I had one. The guys came back after that, and we headed out grocery shopping. While there we passed the bakery case and I looked for kolachki's to show Nick the cookie. We are going to make a plate to bring to my families Christmas Gathering and they have kind of been something we have been studying in school.Kolachkis, for those who are unaware , are a Polish cookie that are made with cream cheese, butter, flour and fillings, then dusted with powdered sugar. They are DELICIOUS, and the smell made me want some. I bought two each, and we ate them in the car. We finished shopping and talked about what we should make for dinner, but that was as far as it got. The guys were having too much fun fiddling with the new computer and I just was not hungry. 7 pm rolled around and I had a taste for some yogert, so I grabbed a carton of Chiobani yogert and that was that. About 9 Bob asked me if I was going to try some dish with whipped cream ( a recipie for an instant mousse), and the thought appealed to me so I tried it. Ready whip, cocoa powder and splenda mixed- an idea that is best not tried. About 11 pm I got a craving for an apple, ate one, and that was it.

The me previous to the melt down would be worried that I did not get in x amounts of servings of you name it, neither did my son, that we would have a surplus dinner who's ingredients may not have a shelf life and what kind of horrible example am I setting to my son with not providing meals and that I was a bad wife not providing them for my husband. I told that me that it was not welcomed for this day. It felt good. And I just may put that me on an extended leave of absence.

This morning my stomach is growling, and to be honest the sound of the rumbling is making me smile. It is not painful, but instead amazing how an organ without vocal chords can make so much noise ! I am going to wait a while to eat, just to see how this hunger thing progresses. My appetite is saying it wants bacon and eggs, so that is exactly what I am going to have.