Intuitive Eating

I had the best sleep ever last night! Wow that felt good. I woke up at 10 am this morning! That's 4 hours later than I normally wake up (and I never woke up in the middle of the night), and, given the state of my sheets, I'm pretty sure I barely moved a muscle while sleeping last night.

I didn't wake up feeling that anxious/nervous feeling that I had been feeling for the last couple of days, so that's nice.

I did weigh myself and I still really don't like my weight and hate my body and blah blah blah. I have several pairs of pants that I haven't tried on since early June because I'm too scared that they won't fit anymore. I think less/no running combined with knowing my weight has really taken a toll on my body image (not like it was even good to begin with). I'm trying to remind myself of the following things:

1) Calorie counting + meal plan obsession + lots of exercise DID NOT make me weigh less; rather, I weighed about the same as I do now.

2) What makes me me isn't my weight (I can intellectually say this, and I'm starting to believe it, but it takes a lot of conscious effort

3) Being down about my weight, isolating myself from the public because of my weight (I have definitely gone that route before at times that I weighed much less than now), focusing on how fat I am does not serve to make me thinner.

4) What I do need to focus on are:

a) Having a life no matter my weight (continue to do fun things and try to build social connections etc. even on days that I hate myself because of my body)

b) Other people I know who are AMAZING individuals and make the world a better place and have a positive influence on everyone around them AND are on the heavier side. Their weight makes zero bit of difference.

b) Good weight management --> eating healthy things when I'm hungry until I'm full enough to stop thinking about food for the next few hours.

When I first started this "intuitive eating" thing, I was really giving myself permission to eat whatever I wanted when I was hungry. This translated into eating more in the first half of the day than I was used to. This also translated into eating less in the evening than I was used to. Doing this, the scale went up and down but the overall trend was that it was going down a bit.

I think lately (like in this past week), I am claiming to be "intuitively eating" simply because I truly haven't been calorie counting. However, I am actually not eating when I'm hungry (mostly in the mornings and afternoons. Usually by evening I can't stand it anymore and I can't go to bed hungry so I eat something). I spend a lot of time knowing full well I'm hungry, getting pretty extremely hungry, and purposely not eating. I'm not starving myself or anything, but I am hungry pretty much all of the time. Because - when I have been eating - I haven't been eating enough to actually take away the amount of hunger that I've worked up by not listening to my huner in the first place all day long. And the scale has gone back up.

Intuitive eating doesn't just mean not calorie counting. IT means truly eating every time I'm hungry no matter what time it is. That's what I need to continue to do I think.

So I'm going to give myself some goals:
1) Eat every time I am hungry
2) Pick healthy things to eat 90% of the time
3) Before eating ask myself, Am I hungry? Is this what I want?
4) When I feel hunger ask myself, why are you not eating? (There won't be a good answer usually).

I have trapeze lessons today! Quite excited about this! I love all things acrobatic. After trapeze, I work, 7pm - 11pm. I don't feel like working. I wouldn't mind working, but I don't like working in the evening. Unfortunately, i pretty much always work in the evening in July.