Learning not to bolt

One of those days.  Hangin' on but barely.  I don't know whether it's the change in weather (just saw the first snowflake and the wind is howling up a storm) or just it's too good to be true that I had so many feelin'-good days in a row!  (I think part of it is also that I didn't go for my walk today - I had a chiropractor visit last night for my back/hip and this morning I woke up with the realization that I had better take at least this one day off.)

One thing I AM hyper-aware of is that I used to drown my blues in food.  Maybe that's exactly why I'm hyper-aware! lol  Without the food to keep me occupied I'm noticing my mood.  Well, I've always noticed my moods - what is different is that I'm noticing that I'm not running to food as a way to obliterate it (and I didn't really notice that part of the equation before!).  Normally by now I would have made a trip to the vending machine, which in turn would have made the rest of the day totally downhill - probably stopping for Chinese food on the way home, with or without the doughnut or burger & fries appetizer.  How many times just this past week was I aware of the deep feeling to bolt whatever it was I was doing and head for food?  A lot!

I found that this morning I was just overwhelmed with how much I have to do in the house.  I always say that I wish I could clean my house as if I was moving.  And, not the type of move where you throw the contents of the junk drawer into a box to be dealt with at the new house.  The type of move like when we had to close my mother's apartment and I realized that it really was not necessary to keep a jar of thumbtacks for a non-existent cork bulletin board, or a box of cards with mismatched envelopes. 

So today after lunch, instead of topping it off with something that I neither needed, nor really wanted, I sat and made a drawer by drawer, cabinet by cabinet and closet by closet list of every single nook and cranny that I wanted to clean in the upstairs of the house.  (I'll deal with the basement later.)

What I realized is that it doesn't have to all be done at once (which is where the overwhelm comes in).  Instead I can tackle one drawer a day, or a closet over a weekend.  It made me think about why Intuitive Eating and dieting can seem so overwhelming.  We all want to lose the weight NOW, or even better... YESTERDAY.  The saying that it didn't come on all at once you're not going to lose it all at once, is very true.  But with dieting you are mainly just looking at those results.  With IE it is so much deeper than that.  It's making small progress with all 10 principles, but mostly making progress with no longer feeling the need to bolt (in the direction of food or other avoidance behavior) when there is an unpleasant activity or emotion that pops up or is looming in the future.  It's also the acknowledgment that it is not black and white, but very much rainbow.

Just today by not taking my walk I had that lesson.  I was almost on the verge of beating myself up for not walking, but then, first of all, decided to be kind to myself and realized that the decision not to walk was best for my body today.  Second, I thought back how, with black and white thinking, I would use today's missed walk as an excuse to say the heck with it, and not walk again until maybe Monday, and certainly use it as an excuse to eat randomly.  Really - if I missed a day of a cleaning project would I go to the cabinets and drawers I had already cleaned and just empty everything out on to the floor? 

Each and every day is a lesson with IE - so much more than just sticking to an "eat this not that" type of list.  It's harder than a diet.  There are bleak days I am hanging on by my fingernails.  But then there are days I am able to just hang in the sunlight with all four paws, so I can take a day like this every once in a while - as long as I use it as a lesson and not as an excuse.

What do YOU do when you are hanging on like that little kitten above?

Miriam