Intuitive Eating Monday & Removing Labels

Breakfast was served at the kitchen table, sans computer, but with my book. Baby steps people. I did pause and become aware of my raisin toast, the smell of the almond butter, the crunch of the bread, the taste of the milk.

Since I was going to be out of the house for lunch, I had to figure out what to do about the "eat what you want when you want it" since I was preemptively trying to figure out what I'd want. I packed some broccoli soup (with extra broccoli!), 2 slices of olive bread, and a piece of cheese. Chances were high that I would want those things when I got hungry because they are tasty and awesome.

I was right. I got hungry for lunch around noon, and heated the soup and ate it with the bread and cheese. I did eat in front of my computer. And I would say my mindfulness level was about 60%.

It's about an hour later and I'm noticing some slight hunger. I'm also noticing that my lukewarm water is not very appealing, so I fetched a cold bottle from the work fridge. Probably bringing a bottle with some ice in it and keeping it in the fridge will be a good plan going forward.

I have an apple here, too.

There are some deadlines coming up for things that have consequences and I'm a bit fuzzy on some of them and waiting for responses from people has my stomach feeling weird, and my mind going on about things. Making room for and acknowledging those physical sensations and thoughts and moving forward with my work and commitments. The same way I feel the physical sensation of pain and tingling in my arm and hand (not heart attack type) and acknowledge it and move forward. And call the acupuncturist again.

I'm trying to move away from "Oh god this is so stressful" towards taking the label off of things and looking at the ingredients. "Stressful" is the label of something, like tax time. But if you take the label off and look at the ingredients you'll see: due date, paperwork, gathering of information, necessity of hiring professional for assistance, financial outlay, increased financial outlay and increased communication from government entity if due date not respected. You also see that you can deal with each one of those ingredients, and some of them are only optional and within your control.

The same way I try to move away from "Oh god I'm anxious." I just pull of the label and look inside - yeah, your stomach feels weird, your heart is beating faster than normal, your arms feel heavy your mind is alerting you to Danger. WTF else is new? Seriously. Enough of that shit. I've got a life to live.

"You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound." — Mary Oliver