Happy New Year

So,  I've had a few days off - no work, not hustle and bustle.  Just peace and quiet.  I'm beginning to remember myself.   I've started to think about how I can make some changes so that I can start taking care of myself.  How to get my head in the right place and keep it there.

I know WHAT to eat.  I can even eye ball HOW MUCH to eat.  But I haven't been doing either.  Lots of excuses and no need to go into them because they are just that, excuses.  I came up with unsubstainable plans, impossible goals.  Why?  In all honesty, I think I wanted to fail.

Yep, I wanted to fail.  It's safer being pudgy.  I don't feel the pressure I did when I first came off OPTIFAST.  It's easier (it seems, but really isn't) to deal with my own self-loathing.  But my self-loathing no longer just impacts me.  It impacts D as well.  And it is painful for him to watch me hurting myself.  And yes, every time, I don't listen to my body and take care of it's needs, I'm hurting myself.

I've been thinking about how I want to live the rest of my life.  Do I want to be tied to calorie counting?  Do I want to be tied to hours of tortuous exercise?  No - that wasn't sustainable either.  It was for a year or so, but that was it.

I've decided to make listening to my body my guide for eating.  Really listening.  Not eating when I'm not hungry and stopping eating when I am no longer hungry.  The first part of that isn't so hard.  It's the stopping part that is really going to be my challenge.  But learning to do, and doing that one thing will help me more than anything else in my weight management journey.

For now, I'm calling it intuitive eating.  And I'll measure my success with each eating event.  Each event will be an occasion for me to learn to savor each bite - eating slowly, deliberately, and stopping to assess my hunger/satiety levels.  The goal will be to eat only when my hunger levels are between 3 and 5 (on a 5 pt scale with 5 being the hungriest) and to stop eating when my satiety level is also between 3 and 5.

Exercise - movement of the body - is critical to managing stress and staying healthy.  I've decided to start getting up earlier, going to work earlier and leaving work earlier so that I can get home in time to work out.

And that's it.  No New Year's Resolution - except to take care of myself, my family and my home to the best of my ability.