Day Seven

A Week! The glorious and long awaited seventh day has come.  In the recent times, seven days between binges, or maybe a few more, has been the norm.  I have seen a LOT of day sevens end with me sitting on the couch finishing off my 5th bowl of cereal and wondering what exactly happened between the euphoria of the morning, and that moment.  So here is to hoping that this day goes a bit differently.

This week was an interesting one to be sure.  A few things I discovered:

-I am trying to eat only when I am hungry.  I THOUGHT that this would mean that I would be eating all of the time, but apparently not.  Initially I was really nervous to let myself eat whenever hunger struck, but now I am just pissed off that I don't get hungry as often as I would like.  I pretty much always want to eat something, so my body and my brain are a bit at odds on this one.  No surprise there I suppose.   Also, I am doing sort of a crap job at this, but I am trying.

-I am also trying to stop eating when I get full.  Again, I am doing a crap job.  I will start my meal with the intention of stopping when I get full, but as I get closer and closer to being done eating I get more desperate to eat everything on my plate.  I am finding that it is much easier to stop eating when I get full if I am actually hungry to begin with.  I will say it has been interesting to try, and I think I am improving on this one a bit.

-I am working on eating what I am craving when I get hungry in the hopes of ending each meal satisfied rather than looking for more food.  Eating what I actually want to eat is harder than I thought.  Primarily because what I want to eat is often something I don't have on hand.  It is also hard to let go of the mentality that I need to have a balanced, veggie full meal every time I sit down to eat.  Not that there is anything wrong with a balanced, veggie full meal!! They are the best (well, nutritionally) but if you are trying to listen to what your body or mind is asking for, that sort of meal does not always fit the bill.  I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I actually want vs what I think I should want.  Last night I was trying to convince myself that I wanted egg whites and veggies in a tortilla.  Turns out I wanted tortilla chips and hummus.  Let me tell you, tortilla chips and hummus (with cut up tomatoes for good measure!!) is pretty much the best dinner ever. 
Despite the occasional difficulty, I think it is safe to say that eating what I want to eat is proving to be my greatest area of success.

-Drinking.  What can I say about drinking. Generally speaking, I like to drink.  At our house dinner usually is accompanied by a drink, and a good deal of our weekend adventures include bars or restaurants with awesome beer lists.  As it turns out, alcohol is not super conducive to improving eating habits.  Duh.  Lets just say the weekend would have likely involved a bit less mindless snacking if it had also involved less wine tasting.  Long story short I have decided to limit myself to one drink a day for the month of April, from there I can decide what to do moving forward.

So, I'm off to real life land, hopefully to make it through a day seven without finding myself knee deep in leftover Easter candy.