Aisle of Doom

Last night I went to the store and it took me 5 minutes to figure out what kind of bread to buy. 5 minutes!

I stood there looking at every option and tried to find which was the best choice. Did I want the nuts & seeds, the highest fiber, lowest carbs, etc. It's been a really really long time since I've just bought the bread I wanted to eat and not paid to attention to the nutritional information.

I was really frustrated with myself for not being able to make such a simple choice. It felt like I was trying to decide my life's career -- no wait, that was a little easier.

I ended up getting mad at myself for my inability to just choose a stupid loaf of bread and so I just grabbed the cheapy bread, which makes great grilled cheese sandwiches, and left the aisle. I'm happy with my choice though because I like that kind of bread and it makes all sandwiches good.

Whereas ezekiel, which is something else I enjoy, is only good for certain types of sandwiches so it feels limited to me and why should I buy bread that only works for certain things? It seems strange ...

Bread aisle conquered .. for now.

Regarding the quality famine, I definitely agree it's way easier to think it's the amount of food being taken in rather than the type of food.

I understand that quality plays an important role but there is still a very large part of my head that doesn't believe that food is as big an issue as mindset. Meaning, if I can just trust that my body knows what it is doing and feed it when it asks, that the quality of food shouldn't matter because at some point my body will kick in and tell me what it needs.

Geneen Roth gives the example of how she ate chocolate chip cookies and cookie dough for 14 days straight because that's what she wanted and then on the 15th day she wanted broccoli or some such food.

I suppose I'm still trying to have the best of both worlds. I'm still clinging to the fact that one can "have it all", meaning eating what they want as long as they eat in accordance to their body.

That said, I'm shifting back into my real food phase w here the junk food doesn't appeal as much. I think I just go to extremes too much which is why I bounce around. Like right now, if I could just maintain this balance of eating some junk but wanting good food instead of feeling I must dive into eating all good food I think I'd be better off. But it seems as though I must go to extremes.

Today was a good day though. I feel mentally more relaxed and let me just say that I looked really hot today. *G* I'm wearing my favorite jeans and honestly, I look damn good and I love those days. I have them a lot actually but it never fails to make me happy when I see myself in the mirror ( room sized mirror no less ) and think about how good I look.

I think that's the one downside of reading these self-help books. On one side they give you perspective on how it is for others but the downside/flip side is that they can make you start to over analyze yourself and compare yourself and even be more harsh.

I've come a LONG way in the past two years in figuring out who I am and what I want. I realize that I'll never look like everyone else but that's OK because there are a lot of women out there that even though they are thin, look like death. My cousin is one of them, she had the gastric bypass and she always looks like she's one step away from dying and yeah, she's thin but at what price?

So today was a good day .. I tried to slow down when I ate so that I could pay more attention to how I was feeling and just mindlessly eat whatever portion I'd served myself. It seemed to work out well. I tend to eat and read and when I do that, one of two things happens .. I either eat really slowly and still eat it all or I eat really fast/mindless and eat it all. I think I need to combine the slowing down part and the paying attention part and see what I get.

Anyway, it's a process, an evolution if you will and I think it's a good thing.

I think though one of the more discouraging things is to re-read this journal and see the highs and lows I've had in the past 9 months. I don't have all the answers, I've never had all the answers, but now I think I've got the faith to take it one step at a time instead of trying to traverse the entire journey in one giant step.

WARNING

Warning: this is REALLY long and rambling.

I finished reading 'Breaking out of Food Jail' last night and something really struck me .. you can be in a quality famine as much as a quantity famine.

I don't think I ever picked up that bit from NT before or if it was even written since I seem to have lost my NT book *again*. Of all the books I own, I spend more time looking for that book than any other book I own.

Anyway, I never really consider what I do on a daily basis as a diet so I never really identified with the quantity famine since I tend to eat a lot all the time. The only times I don’t eat a lot are when I’m officially dieting. Even when I low-carb I still eat plenty of food, just not of all foods. I don’t feel hungry when doing low-carb, only deprived.

What really got me was the quality famine. I'm frequently eating foods that aren't quality foods. I eat plenty of food and yet I don't eat great foods. I never thought that was a problem, I assumed that when I was eating what I term "normal" that I was in what most would consider a feast but I'm beginning to think that isn't the case.

I only saw two sides of the coin: feast or famine.

When I do low-fat or low-carb I end up bingeing (I suppose that’s what it’s called) on sweet fatty foods to compensate for what I’m not getting in my daily eating. I eat what I want for a day or two and then I’m able to get back on the plan. The problem is that I can only stay on plan for 3 months at the most and then I don’t get back on the plan from one of my binges.

I have such negative connotations with the word binge so I don’t like to use it. I don’t feel that I’m like those in the NT books or in Geneen Roth’s books. I don’t feel like what I do is binge. I don’t eat a carton of ice-cream, a box of cookies, a bag of chips etc, in one sitting. I often felt confused about this because how could I have an “eating disorder” when I didn’t DO what those people had done?

A typical day of food for me, when eating normal and in my ‘I don’t care’ phase goes something like this, at least lately:

Cereal with full fat milk – one of the single serve kinds, we have them at work. Sometimes I’ll have a banana with it if have one. I like the raisin bran. Or I’ll make a grilled cheese sandwich and maybe a yogurt.

Lots of mineral water during the day and a couple diet sodas. I have snacks through the day sometimes like a bag of chips, or mini candy bars. Not every day though.

Lunch will be something at the sushi place like california rolls and miso soup, a burrito bowl (about ½ of it), two slices of pizza, or a sandwich depending on what was catered. If there is a dessert offered, I will almost always take one or two.

Dinner lately has been some frozen entrée and then a large amount of ice-cream with magic shell on it. I will go through a quart of ice-cream in three days. If not a frozen meal then I’ll have a combo from a fast food place with French fries and a burger of some sort. I almost always drink diet soda and rarely upsize the combo.

I don’t always eat everything on my place. Sometimes I leave one bite and sometimes I leave ten, it really has no rhyme or reason.

I don’t feel I’m not eating enough. I don’t feel I’m bingeing either. I just feel I’m eating “normal” and similar to what everyone else eats.

I have days when I feel like my eating is out of control and I can’t stop eating but not as often anymore.

I suppose there are levels of bingeing and that what I do is bingeing for me, particularly when I have so much ice-cream on top of a full stomach, even though it makes my stomach hurt and gives me gas. *G*

I would normally consider my everyday eating as ‘feasting’ but I realized that I do still put limits on what I eat, even subconsciously.

I will only take a half sandwich or half a burrito that is offered. I will eat all or most of it but I rarely take another half. I tell myself I don’t need it. I almost always eat all the sweets that I can but limit the good foods. I don’t like to be seen eating a lot of food, that’s something I’ve noticed a lot recently. Another girl at work is my size or larger and she eats 3x what I eat and I wonder how she can do it. She says she’s that hungry and I don’t understand how she can be that hungry.

I think I’m more tied up in servings and portions, right and wrong, that I thought I was.

I’m guessing that I’m more in quality famine than feasting most of the time and I vacillate between quantity and quality with every meal.

If I truly was feasting then I wouldn’t be conscious of what others thought and I would eat as much as I wanted.

-=-

I think one of the hardest things to do is determine if what you are doing is because you want to do it and because you were told it was good to do.

Who Knew?

Life has been busy at work. I'm learning more and more every day about being a good manager. It's really challenging to me and some days I wonder why I wanted to be a manager in the first place. *G*

I think the hardest part is not beating yourself up over things that you can't control. I have an employee who challenges me so much and I feel as though I'm failing her because I'm not able to get her to see what she's got inside her. I feel as though if she leaves the company, and she's on thin ice, that I will have failed. I know that we can't change people and we can only be a positive influence and that she makes her own choices. But I will always wonder if I could have done more.

But, at what point is too much?

I think that being a manager is easily the hardest thing I've ever done -- it's even harder than changing my own beliefs which I thought was pretty difficult!

I like the challenge though. I appreciate the opportunities that I have and I'm happy that I am successful at it, even when it's tough.