Small Update

Hey all,

Just an update on the whole Intuitive Eating thing.

I'm doing really well!

I'm surprised at how quickly my body and brain are adapting to a new way of thinking.

The hardest part so far has been training my brain to not beat my body up. I have terrible self talk. If I ate a cookie the response always came into my head, "You shouldn't be eating it, that's a lot of calories. It's going to go to your butt." In the book it teaches you to allow yourself to eat what you want. It's a terrifying thought at first, because the whole time you're thinking, if I let myself eat what I want, I'll end up overeating and I'll gain more weight! Well here's the thing, when you allow yourself to eat whatever you want, the first thing you're going to want to eat is all the things you told yourself was "bad" to eat. That's totally acceptable, it's acutally what's supposed to happen! Once you allow yourself to eat what you want, the rebellion inside yourself stops and eventually you stop craving the things you wouldn't let yourself eat.

For instance, I've been a life long soda lover. Over the last 3 years I've been telling myself that I shouldn't be drinking it and the inner rebellion would start and I would binge and drink lots of it. Then I would feel terrible for drinking it and the cycle would continue. But since I've allowed myself to drink soda when I please, I've discovered I don't want to drink it. Every Tuesday and Thursday I eat lunch on Campus. Usually my lunches have consisted of fried chicken strips with french fries and a 7up. But yesterday I didn't crave the chicken strips, the fries OR the soda. In fact, I had a salad and a bottle of water. And I wasn't sad that I didn't get what I normally got, I didn't binge and get something fattening on the way home from school. I was pleased. It was such a great feeling.

Today I had an epiphany. I haven't craved soda. I haven't wanted soda. I don't even crave chocolate anymore or french fries. I've allowed myself to eat what I wanted and now the urge to want them all the time has died. I want to drink water, I want to eat things that are good for me because they sound better to me. I WANT TO EXERCISE, which is something I've never been super keen on. I want to go on bike rides. Not because it's going to help me lose weight, but because it makes me feel good when I go, I like the feeling of the tired muscles afterward, I like the feeling of the cool breeze after a tougher hill. I like it all.

And yesterday for the first time in months, I looked in the mirror and felt skinny. Which to me is a big deal. I complimented myself and started to notice the change that I've wanted for so long. Not to lose weight to be the skinniest thing on the planet, but to get to the weight I'm comfortable at and the one my body was programmed to be at. That' s such a great feeling. I can only imagine things getting better from here. (:

Wow. This was supposed to be a small update. But then I word vomited. Sorry, friends.

New Plan

For a long time, longer than I would like to admit, I've had some issues with my body image. Growing up in a world where the ideal body image is a girl that's 5'6" weighing in at a whopping 32 pounds is tough. Not just for me but for other girls, too.

This has lead to me having a bad outlook on my body, and on food as well.

I love food, don't get me wrong. But I've turned into the girl that thinks, "I shouldn't be eating this, it has 10987 calories and you'll regret it when you can't see your feet because your thighs are getting too big."

Now, obviously that's an over exaggeration but the idea is there.

I know, I know. I've heard it a thousand times, "You're tiny!"

I am, I agree. But I know where I feel comfortable with my body, and like the way I look. and I'm not there right now. I haven't been in a while.

I'm tired of not feeling good about my body.

I'm exhausted from food being the enemy and having a bad relationship with.

I'm done.

My friend McKella started a way of eating called Intuitive Eating.

When I met her at work she was (from my understanding) just getting into it and she ate really healthy things.

I was pretty jealous, by nature I'm a garbage gut. My favorite things in the world to eat together are soda and potato chips. I'm a sucker for them.

Anyway, by the end of the summer, McKella came to find that she had lost 23 pounds just by eating intuitively and exercising. That was over a 4 month time frame, which is pretty awesome.

Now, my main goal here is to get down to the weight I feel best about myself in. Don't worry, I'm that weight isn't 90 pounds.

I don't want to live the rest of my life like I have since middle school. I don't to be thinking about how I spent the rest of my life not happy about the body I'm stuck in. That would truly be a big regret I would carry with me for a long time.

So I'm going to try it.

I've got McKella's book on Intuitive Eating and I'm ready to start a quest on feeling better about myself.

(:

I just wanted to say that today is looking like it's going to be a good day. I woke up this morning and it was nice to sleep in. I walked out to my car and the ground was still wet from last night's rain storm and the sun was shining. I could finally see the road in front of my house for the first time in MONTHS. The past month there has either been a hole in the middle of the road in the front of my house or a tractor blocking the driveway/intersection. I could see our little street and all the pretty trees that surround the streets. I looked down the street and there were cars parked on the side of the road and people standing out in their front yards talking. Everything felt like it was falling into place. It was so nice. I felt like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I love that feeling.

Today's going to be a good day. I can feel it.

Yeah.... So........

About that whole blog challenge.

Ooops.

Well, I've done two and did alright.

So I'd say that's pretty good.

This one got the best of me.

So did the cold, followed by another illness, followed by another illness, followed by school.

I've been a busy woman.

ANYWAY.

I had a discussion with Rachael the other day about new and old souls. Since then I've been thinking about the idea of new and old souls on this planet even more.

My opinion on myself is that I'm a new soul.

I feel like I'm a very new soul, matter of fact. I firmly believe that everyone on this planet is either a new one or an old one.

I feel like this is my first time being on this planet. I feel like there is SO MUCH I have to learn and some people have already learned it because they learned it in a previous life.

Then a few days ago I realized I have accidentally surrounded myself with a lot of people I believe are old souls.

My mom is an old soul.

Rachael is an old soul.

Kandice is an older soul (not as old as my mom or Rachael)

Jessie is an old soul.

Kyle is a newer soul, but older than me.

I think God plans for us to have an abundance of the kind of soul we need.

I think he put a lot of old souls around me because I'm so new and I don't have the wisdom some people do. God put a lot of old souls around me to lead a new soul like me around into doing the right things.

Otherwise I'd be the 2 year old wondering around a floor covered in glass.

Deep thoughts, no?

Involuntary Sabbatical

Wow.

I so didn't want to take time off my challenge.

I have a really good excuse though, I swear.

First of all, I got really sick over the weekend.

I had a cough, stuffy nose, headache, the works.

I felt like shiz.

Even ask Rachael, I was a hot mess for most of the weekend.

I was supposed to work Friday 1-10 and ended up leaving at 8:00 because I was feeling so awful.

Then I was supposed to work Saturday from 10-6 and ended up going in from 10- 12. I felt pretty icky.

OH. And then Saturday afternoon, my computer just up and decided to crash.

It wasn't just my hard drive or anything.
It was the full shebang.

My motherboard crapped the bed AND my hard drive did, too.

Thankfully, McKella has a wonderful husband that had an old Dell computer sitting around that he wasn't using and was partially broken as well and fixed my computer up.

What a gem.

He saved me about 2394839 dollars by helping me out.

I've already sworn my life over to him. (Kidding.)

He'll be receiving cupcakes and coca cola for a lifetime.

And a dinner to PF Chang's.

He deserves a lot more. He was up pretty late getting it working.

I'm pretty pleased with the outcome, my computer is now faster, works better, and it didn't take nearly as long as he anticipated. He thought I'd be out a computer for a few weeks. We dodged a bullet.

So yeah, I'm still not feeling 100% today, so I'm taking the rest of the day off to chill out and get feeling better.

But I'll get back to blogging tomorrow.

As far as the 25 day challenge... Well I guess I failed it.

I had good reason, though!!

Day 11: A Song from the Soundtrack of your Favorite Movie

Young Frankenstein will always be the greatest movie of all time in my book. I don't have a favorite movie movie, really. I just have one that's a classic in my mind. I have almost this entire movie memorized word for word.