Nutritionst appointment / hilarious movie

I SAW THE MOST HILARIOUS MOVIE EVERRRRRRR LAST NIGHT! Everyone, you MUST go see THE HANGOVER. Oh. My. Gosh. Seriously, the funniest movie I've ever seen in my entire life. I thought it would be dumb, sophomoric, jim carey/will farrel type of humor (which I really don't think is funny at al), but it wasn't stupid like that. IT WAS SO SO FUNNY. I was laughing so hard I couldn't even keep up with my own laughter. I was trying to laugh harder than my body was capable. OH MY GOSH. GO SEE IT, YOU GUYS!

Went on my 20 min walk. About 9 min into the walk I decided I would let myself run for 1 minute. Bad idea. Back to following doctor's directions. I finished out walking. I guess I'll follow his orders so that, when 6 weeks is up, I really can run. Also took my 4 advil and did the heat pad thing too.

I talked to the nutritionist today. She told me I was doing great - better than she has ever seen me do, she said. She said that I'm doing a great job at listening to my hunger and I need to continue to put attention towards making my food look normal (portion wise). My goals from her are to continue to not count calories, to continue to focus on "food normalcy," and to eat a Chipotle bowl and a bagel (two food items I have specifically denied myself for years).

She asked how, all of the sudden, I was able to "let go." I told her it was a combination of three things coming together at once. I've realized it really boils down to these 3 things.

1. I no longer feared that bad things might happen if I "let go" (bad things = fatness, laziness, too much down time, unproductiveness, worthlessness, boredom). Things that I value (like activeness and productiveness and business and health) don't go away by "letting go." Rather, they stay and, with them, I get other positive qualities (a more engaging spirit, a reasonableness, an openness, generosity, etc.) I always was afraid that if I "let go" then I'll get fat and become lazy slob or something. By talking to J, I realized this isn't true.

2. I gave up any lingering hope that my old restrictive ways work. After hearing my weight, I finally gave into the idea that restricting doesn't work for me anymore and calorie counting isn't even effective. I can't do it anymore. It's worth nothing. Also, I saw the anorexic girl at my training. I saw how consumed she was with pacing the halls and not eating heavy things. It thought, "I'd rather be a little overweight and not like that than I would be her size and that obsessed and withdrawn."

3. I had a better idea of, practically/concretely, what "letting go" looks like (N helped me understand it food-wise; J helped me understand it in terms of thoughts and behavior). I understood HOW to let go.

Summary: I no longer feared the potential side effects (fatness/laziness) of "letting go", I gave up any hope that my old ways do any good, I understood how to "let go."

Nutritionists wants to keep a careful eye on the scale thing. J also does. J said to me, "Normally, I'd be really emphasizing how you should only weigh yourself every other day at the most. It's so important. But with all these positive changes you're making, well, do what you need to do for now."

It feels good to have been given permission to not follow a meal plan anymore but to be able to tread this water on my own listening to my own body. Finally, straying from the meal plan is not me falling off track. Rather, it's me advancing on the right track.

I don't really have anything else to say. I'm tired. Food was good today. There was no calorie counting. I ate what I wanted to eat when I was hungry for it. I didn't measure anthing either. And I caught some restrictive ("I shouldn't ...") type of thoughts, but acted against them.

The scale still isn't getting in the way. It went up 2.6 pounds today - woah! But I know that there's no good way to respond except for to just keep listening to my body. And I know 2.6 pounds isn't all real. It also went down 2.8 pounds a day earlier this week. That's just what scales do I guess.

Tomorrow (Thursday), I have a lot of free time and I don't work:
-Exercise (of what I'm allowed to do of it anyway - ha)
-Do some errands (submit Americorps paper work, kickball registration confirmation, change address, call a couple friends)
-Meet my friend + roommate to paint pottery
-Meet some old coworkers for happy hour
-Got to kickball practice (yes, AFTER happy hour haha. I won't drink anything
-Eat dinner
-Chill

K, gotta go to bed. I'm muy sleepy.