Guest guest Posted December 27, 2011 Report Share Posted December 27, 2011 Sandarah you continually amaze and inspire me! What a fabulous post - so open, clear and honest. I love your sharing 'postcards' from your IE journey. ehugs, Katcha IEing since March 2007 > > Today I once again found myself buying these hand-made chocolate mints that are my new almost forbidden food. I wasn't hungry and didn't even want them - but I totally wanted them, if you know what I mean. I would have torn through the store to get them... > > So, as I purchased them I said to myself, " This is me learning to make peace with food - I don't understand this behavior, but I'm not going to judge it or fight it. I will allow myself to eat these chocolate mints without judgment. " > > I know that I want to forbid those mints and that chocolate has a ton of " you can't have its " attached to it. But - now I also know that I'm not addicted to chocolate and I'm not a pig because I eat it. I have also figured out that I don't have to earn the right to eat chocolate. > > As an aside, my mother restricted chocolate all my life and that restriction is an additional trigger that I need to make peace with. I realize now (just now, in fact) that she wasn't simply restricting it from me - she was restricting it from herself too. She restricted because she did not trust herself and was a life-long dieter who was crippled by osteoporosis later in life due to being chronically underweight, not drinking milk (too many calories) and drinking too much coffee (kept her from being hungry and sucked the calcium out of her bones). Her diet history was a complete success, I guess you'd say... and an utter failure because she never got to find peace with food or her body. For that, I am very sad. > > So, I am learning to accept that even eating when not really wanting to eat makes total sense because the diet rebel (who was born of restrictive rules around food and food urges) knows that I would still secretly take food away forever if I thought I could get away with it. That lack of trust and desire for control will also need time - and practice - to diminish. > > I'm figuring that it's especially important to practice supportive and realistic self-talk while doing behaviors that I want/hope to extinguish eventually but can't stop through will alone. > > I understand that I must continue allowing the old behaviors, with no judgment or recrimination around the effects of what I've eaten. The only way I can feel how it feels to eat when I'm not hungry or to have eaten foods that do not honor my body is to get my head out of the way. That isn't always easy either. > > Even now the first thing I think when I wake up in the morning is " what did I eat yesterday? " In the past that was the start of another day of self-recrimination but I'm much better at catching that pattern and turning my thinking around. But it all takes time, and practice. > > Part of me thinks I will never get IE and yet that part is shrinking in size as I learn to effectively confront the lies and distortions in my thinking and observe that my interest in food shifting. It also helps that I'm becoming and more convinced that my weight and my food obsession the result of a lifetime of dieting in a culture of dieters and not something inherently failed about me. > > I guess this is what you call becoming conscious. Thanks all. > > Sandarah > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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