Health Trek Day 32

I spent the weekend trying to be mindful of what I ate. I read an article on the TOPS website about mindful eating and one phrase really made me think. "If a craving doesn't come from hunger, eating will NEVER satisfy it." I thought of all the times I just grazed through my kitchen eating one thing after another, and never feeling satisfied. Even when my stomach hurt from too much junk food, I still felt this void. If I investigate what the void is, maybe I can find another way to fill it. Perhaps I am a little bored, lonely or trying to avoid doing something I don't want to do. So this weekend, I tried to be present, live in the moment and not succumb to filling the void. I made sure I had healthy snacks around since we had that bucket of candy beckoning in the pantry. "The beckoning bucket" I like the alliteration...
but I was able to keep busy and to tune out the tempting voices in my head. I kept a picture in my mind of what I want to look like and planned meals that would be healthy but tasty. So all in all, I had a good weekend. Now I feel like I am ready for this week instead of having to do penance for binging all weekend. I am convinced that my yo-yo weight losses and gains are the direct result of my yo-yo eating patterns. It does not work for me to eat for three days and then starve for four so I can show a loss on Meeting night. What works for me is to eat about six times a day, healthy food and healthy portions. If I make eating the focus of my day, whether it is obsessing about dieting or binging, I tend to eat more. So this week, I am focusing on things I want to do that will fill my day and let food be just the fuel I need to keep going.
My mother used to cater parties and I was the one that cut up the food and arranged it prettily on the platters. I think that is when I first became obsessed with food. We had spent my early childhood with barely enough to eat and then just when I started puberty, my mother remarried a man who owned a restaurant and we could have anything on the menu. I used to snack on lobster and french fries. But I also ate them while I danced to American Band Stand, so the calories were being burned as I consumed them. But, I digress. The important message to myself today, is to live in the moment. Do what you enjoy doing and use food merely as a tool. Do not obsess about it. Giving it that much importance, keeps eating at the front of your mind.
Have a productive day, everyone and
ROCK ON!

One of the things I have given myself permission to do is to get serious about writing once again. I always tell myself I need to clean house first, but now I am allowing myself to write as I feel like it. The following poem is one I wrote ten years ago and I found in a drawer recently; this is how I need to fill my VOID...

Words
Words are waiting, marking time
Still strong- virile- in their prime
No matter my hair is streaked with gray
Still young and vital the words will stay
For ages now they have been stilled
Pushed aside by ones more willed
The tyranny of necessity
has kept the words from being free
But now the dam's about to break
No more these words I can forsake
In silent agony they scream
To make reality the dream
I find them coming out at night
In ways that fill my soul with fright
Demanding their own place to find
I must free them or lose my mind!
JPH
1999

Plan for today:
Breakfast: egg, toast and tea
Snack: yogurt
Lunch: Chicken quesadilla
Snack: carrot sticks, celery and light ranch dip
Dinner: cubed steak, sweet potatoes, zucchini and onions
Snack: low cal ice cream bar

Exercise: Vacuuming the house, walking with Ben, Yoga in the evening