I didn't panic. I felt like sleeping most of the day, again, and it was okay.
Typically, if I have two low energy days in a row, I start to look for causes and conditions. Do I have a cold? Did I overeat? Am I going back into a depression? I obsess about what could be the cause of this downturn. Thus, I do not rest, and then feel worse. I get resentful and impatient with my family, demanding that they respect that I feel yucky. They don't like this type of Some kind of mother. They like different kinds of Some.
Today, I thought, what would I tell a friend who called and said that they were tired and wanted to sleep all day? I would tell them to rest and see what happened.
I actually applied this idea to myself. I took a shower. Dealt with the phone man. Made an apple pie (frozen, thank you very much - though someone else's mom made it). I read a chick novel, and dosed on the couch while my kid played paper dolls.
Then I went to see the dietician. I have been trying eating when I am hungry and then eating what I am hungry for. This sounds rather elementary. Having spent 18 years attempting to heal from a nasty strain of bulemia/binge eating disorder, this is college level work. Eating food as fuel and for no other reason is radical.
Self, are you hungry? If yes, how hungry are you? Based on that answer, what do you want to eat?
Trusting the answer to those questions is a huge leap. My fears slap me in the head: what if I go back to mindless eating? What if I make myself sick? What if I get fat again? What if I end up in the mental hospital?
This line of thinking really takes the fun out of meals. It is exhausting. Anyway, all of those questions can be dodged if I simply eat whatever I want mindfully and stop when I am hungry.
The question of being hungry is interesting. I used to keep myself so busy that I wouldn't register I was hungry until I was about to pass out. It's like my belly was trying to tell me to eat, it was getting a busy signal from my brain. I was told that the feeling of impending death was not hunger. Oh. Now that I have stripped as much craziness out of my day as I can tolerate, I'm getting the message earlier.
This weekend, I enjoyed whatever I wanted to eat when I felt hungry. I had homemade brats & beef bourguignon. Old Dutch Carmel Corn Puffs & homemade blueberry pie. I ate red licorce, pancakes, scrambled eggs & toast. Chips & hummus. I ate until I felt I had enough, and then stopped. It was a glorious weekend.
After two days on the couch, I thought my weight would be up, and that the dietician was going to tell me to reel it in & go back to my exchanges. Quite the opposite. I lost weight. I do not understand this not dieting process at all.
What's more: I explained to her that I am premenstrual, and it seems that all I want to eat is bread & chocolate so maybe this eat what I want thing isn't such a good idea right now. She said, "Well, it's two days before your period. Why don't you try eating whatever sounds good to you and see what happens. Its just two days."
That was the most uncomfortable thing she could have possibly suggested. I felt terror. Oh no! This is too hard. What if I go nuts? What if I just go off the deep end? Is this really how normal people eat?
Yes, it is. Normal people do not use exchanges for all their meals. If they are hungry, they eat. If not, they don't. If they need a snack, they have one. They don't eat everything that is put in front of them just because they paid for it. Huh.
This just seems like entirely too much work. I am so used to following these prescribed plans that I have remained disconnected to what I really want in the moment. I have trusted the plan. I have defended the plan. I have forced my family to conform to my meal plan, which for most of 17 years has excluded sugar, flour, friend foods, with weighed and measured portions. When I started eating dessert, my husband had a spiritual awakening.
This eating thing is another extension of my mindfulness practice, and, let me tell you, letting go and trusting my body to let me know what to do is still uncharted territory a great lot of the time. After so many years of out of control and then over control, I am a rookie at feeding myself.
What I know for sure is that I am not hungry right now. I think I'll just stick with that until it changes.
I rested today. I did not die. We ate dessert first, before the lovely dinner my husband made for us. I did not die. Maybe this is part of living. I don't have to panic right now. Actually, some decaf sounds good. Maybe some water. Maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this feeding thing.
To sum it up for me today: sleep when tired, eat when hungry.
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