How It's Going

Subbing was strange yesterday. I have no training in elementary school teaching, only college (was surprised they hired me to sub, actually!)... I thought I was proctoring a state test at the school, turns out I was subbing KINDERGARTEN. Holy.... wow. It's an inner city school and I had 19 five year olds. I was exhausted when I came home, oh boy.

Spring weather is starting to be more common around here - I took the dog on two walks yesterday just to enjoy being outside. Only had to wear a hoodie - no bundling up to look like an Eskimo for me! Supposed to get up to 60 today, so I wore a bright yellow shirt to work to welcome spring home:

Not much to report. Weight is holding steady at 122.4, which is fine by me! I don't have a lot of "wiggle room" in my happy range at 122, but it is a happy medium. So I am just continuing to eat clean and focus on physical hunger.

I will say that I gave in to non-physical hunger yesterday... I was tired! And I knew it. But I ate an extra tablespoon of sunflower seed butter just for freaking pleasure. Oh well. Not a huge warning sign to me. I realize that sometimes I WILL eat for pleasure or soothing. But it cannot be my go-to way of dealing with emotions or situations. I limited myself to that spoonful of SF seed butter, though, even though there was a dark chocolate bar sitting in my cabinet, looking so tasty. I wasn't truly hungry, so I stopped where I was and went and rested.

The book of "Normal Eating" that I have been reading... it goes into how sometimes "normal" eaters overeat (like at Thanksgiving) or eat for pleasure (eating a pint of ice cream) or make a choice to go with an unhealthy option because they are craving it. However, because they are more in tune with their bodies, those situations don't happen all of the time - they mostly eat when hungry, stop when full, don't eat emotionally, etc. 

And as an anthropologist, I definitely think there is something in our human coding and a long past of not ONLY eating for fuel. People have eaten for pleasure for 1000s of years. They've feasted (sometimes until they vomit only to start eating again, I'm looking at you, ancient Romans), they've celebrated with food, etc. However, because of a limited amount of food, those situations were few and far between. This happened only on very special days.

So... what?

I think about these things.

How I am trying to look at food as ONLY fuel. When I listen to the Jillian Michaels podcast, she says time and time again that it is okay to take pleasure from food. She says we are physical creatures in a physical world and pleasure is a nice thing. But, so is moderation.

I want to live fully in the physical world - see, taste, smell, hear and touch all the amazing things. 

I also want to bolster my spirit and my mind, and that is where regulation and moderation comes in.

Balance.

Feast rarely, but feast nonetheless! 

Just ranting on this early spring morning, sipping on my coffee and wearing my bright yellow shirt :)

Namaste <3