Thinking out loud...

[Guest guest]

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