Why Less is More When Snacking

Wednesday. Hmpf day. Middle of the afternoon. Two skillion issues that are really probably only about five.
I think about all the people all over the world. What they have in common. In what ways they are dissimilar.
I ponder the things I can do well, and the things I'm not so good at doing. How to respond to being bulled takes up a lot of my bandwidth. Memories of me being teased at the dining room table and flying off to my room for solace haunt me. The world is a bullying kind of place.

I think about the people who voted Hitler into power. The people who say they didn't see something happen when they did. In business, in schools, in healthcare institutions.

Before me stretches a list of 'to do's' involving everything from personal care through volunteer responsibilities, new skills to acquire to talents to invest.

Then I think about what not eating has been like. I am pretty present in my own life and feelings. And yet, removing certain snacks from my life has given me an even deeper connection with what I  experience in my interior life.

I'm not used to it yet, so I can't say I like it, this going without.  But I like the feeling of connection. I like being more aware.

Quite frankly I am attempting about eight different impossible things. There was this poem that was popular in my late twenties and thirties written by a woman who wrote all in lower case. It was considered very trendy to do that. It was called "I love the word Impossible". It was actually the title of a whole book. Came out about the same time as this book that was all about a caterpillar becoming a butterfly that was also all the rage.

I'm am becoming a butterfly. Isn't that just so trite, but ohmygoodness, it is so true.  In the place of thoughts about the challenges, I see myself at a piano for the first time in my life playing what is within me without written music before me, not what was within someone else. I see myself on a surgical table getting a new hip, and then doing rehab and then dancing. I see my children all together at a dining room table with their partners, spouses and children laughing and enjoying each other, healed from every bruise and wound they ever experienced because their dad made a promise he could not keep, to be married forever to me.

I see a butterfly garden in a home I own in a place I love. I see people listening to me read and asking me how to feel encouraged and have hope when there is obviously no reason. I see myself singing, alone. I see my plays on stage and my stories on TV and my books in stores.

I see someone beside me, smiling at me, taking me only unto himself and feeling like I am a gift he never thought he would get or give himself. I see myself healed and free to be so loved.

I see more, when I eat less.

The Challenge of Choices

This morning I read a post about the French Women's Diet. It's all about balance and portion control with the exception of the Vichyssoise two week fast that's  supposed to start the whole thing. 

Our family's favourite holiday soup is Vichyssoise and believe me eating potato leek soup for two weeks is an odd fast. I could do it much more easily than the juice diet, but that is one boatload of potatoes and cream and leeks.

When I was being examined by my physical medicine doctor and we were mapping out the road to a new hip to replace the one long ago injured in the car accident, she made a pointed statement that all the studies affirm the way to weight loss is first of all portion control.

Well that may be. Easier said than done. Years of unconscious eating while raising children with occasional stabs at dieting which yo-yo-ed me up to enormous, kept me from even connecting with portion control let alone practicing it. 

Yet, back when I was seventeen and thought I was as big as a house ( to be blogged about later), I lost thirty pounds in six weeks by simply eating less. Mind you I only needed to lose about fifteen of those pounds, if that. But nonetheless, I remember the simplicity of eating a half sandwich for lunch and having a snack of one orange each evening. Other than that I ate what I regularly ate. Not a big deal and the weight melted off.

Recently, I've found myself eating less again in a most natural way. I knew that with such a big goal to prepare for my new hip, I couldn't diet again because it only meant fifteen or twenty new pounds. Once again the weight is coming off. This time apparently for good, meaning longlasting loss as well.

Mindfulness is the big term now. Mindful eating, mindful parenting, and for me mindful portion control. I'm never one to be particularly trendy, but it does seem to be working. It also means I have to keep it up, one bite at a time, for the rest of my life.

The irony? I know, soon it will be habit, unconscious habit. Ah me....conundrum to be dealt with later.
Love,
Deborah