day 45 - getting the hang of it

This morning, we had a meeting with our Executive Director. It was a large group meeting (about 40 of us) and it turned out to be an end-of-the-year get-together. They had hot cider and fresh baked home made treats (baked by a coworker). I sat there feeling all proud of myself for not having eaten anything.

Everytime I go to a party type event, something that it outside of my comfort level, somewhere full of tempting foods that are full of fat and/or sugar, I get so impressed with myself for not indulging. I was thinking about yesterday and how I didn't have the mashed potatoes and gravy or the nanaimo bars. It was definitely good of me to make healthy choices but this shouldn't surprise me, this is what I should be doing all_of_the_time.

Recently, whenever I'm in a restaurant or just generally around other people at meals, I've caught myself watching their plates. I read that if you pay attention to what thin folks eat, you'll figure out what you should be eating. Logically, I know what to eat, realistically, it's not always so easy. Over the summer months, it was a lot easier for me to give into my stress and eat large amounts of stuff that I shouldn't. It takes a long time to retrain your brain when it comes to food. It does me anyway. I remember back in January '03, it took me weeks of white knuckling things before food choices became habits. I'm working on getting to that point again. I want to eat like a thin person and, eventually, become one myself. Thinner than I am right now anyway, much thinner.

Oh, by the way, I heard something really interesting yesterday. I was in this workshop in the afternoon which dealt with conflict resolution. At one point someone brought up the notion of "fight or flight" when dealing with work conflicts. The facilitator mentioned something she'd heard recently, "stew and chew." She was talking about the link between the obesity epidemic and stress. She's absolutely right, instead of just fleeing a bad situation, we all (well some of us anyway) head for the fridge or the treat drawer or wherever and comfort ourselves with food. Interesting huh??