I'm allowed to eat... now what on earth should I eat?!

For real this is actually going to be a short post.

Today was my first full day of really thinking about what I really want to eat when I was hungry. I found this harder to assess than expected. On a few occasions, I found myself standing in front of the fridge, hungry - and totally unable to decide what to eat. On other days, when I didn't allow myself to think about what I really wanted to eat, I would have just eaten the same things I always eat (something originally introduced into my life because of the meal plan). I would have eaten random deli turkey. Or I would have made an egg or something. But I seriously didn't want ANY of the foods I normally eat - at all. So I find myself having no clue what I want to eat. I keep wanting fruit, but I can't just eat fruit all day long. I can think of lots of foods I love that are warm (but I tend to want those more for dinner - so I'm left clueless at lunch time, when I usually want something cold).

Anyway, besides having a hard time figuring out what I wanted to eat, today was a good food day because I felt allowed to eat anything I wanted (I just couldn't figure out what I wanted). I did have a really yummy and totally satisfying dinner (and, if I add the calories up - the calories actually surpass Tracy's rule of how many calories need to be in a meal).

I noticed something, too. When my mind feels truly allowed to eat whatever, all weird little eating ideas that I get disappear. I no longer want to do things like eat the crust off of bread. I no longer want to buy a bag of trail mix and eat 5 peanuts and throw the bag away. I no longer want to buy ice cream bars and take one bite out of each one. All those weird ideas that I get - I no longer want to do them. Normally I want to do those weird things because they are a way to get some food without it seeming like I'm really eating. They're a way to have a taste of the foods I really want. But if I am fully allowed to eat, then I don't need to devise weird ways to go about eating. I can simply.... eat.

For example, tonight, it was 11:30pm. I had just gotten off work (late night tonight) and I was starving. The kind of hungry that I knew would wake me up in the middle of the night. I was shaky hungry. I didn't want to be hungry, but I was too hungry to just be able to ignore it. I went to the grocery store because I didn't have food for breakfast. When I'm in the not-allowed-to-eat mindset, I would been at the grocery store and maybe have bought a snickers bar and decided to eat 5 peanuts out of it and then thrown it away. Or maybe I would have bought a loaf of bread and eaten the crust off of 3 slices and then thrown it away. But, tonight, I was in an I'm-allowed-to-eat mindset. I was hungry. IT was okay to eat. I walked past the snickers and noticed I had no urge to eat it and pick random peanuts out of it. I walked past the frozen aisle and had no desire whatsoever to buy ice cream bars so that I could just have a bite. I looked at the trail mix and thought about what I could do with it (Should I eat 3 m and ms and 3 raisins? should I eat 6 peanuts? Should I buy it and separate the peanuts, m and ms and raisins into individual piles?). But I realized I didn't ant to do ANYTHING with the trail mix. I just wasn't tempted to do weird things with food! It wasn't even one bit alluring or compelling!!!! So, I tried to figure out what I wanted. Well, I wanted PB on bread, but I can't do that (someday....). So I decided to buy a box of granola bars that had PB drizzled on them. My first thought was, "Should I eat the perimeter of 3 granola bars?" Then I thought, "Should I eat the peanuts out of each of the granola bars?" Then I thought, "Hey! Maybe I should just eat one entire whole granola bar in normal fashion. So I did. And it felt so indulgent :) To eat an entire granola bar regularly like that. And, 20 min later, I was still hungry - so I ate another granola bar. And then I put them away b/c I'm not hungry anymore and they're not tempting or anything. It's okay taht they're in my house with me. I ended up calorie counting and I got a higher number today (xxxx) than I normally shoot for -- a higher number BY A LOT. But the logical part of me knows that this number is a normal number. It's not an overeating number. It's a normal, healthy number. So that's okay. My body, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A LONG TIME, feels good going to bed. I don't feel empty, but I don't feel too full. I don't feel hungry. I feel fed. I feel fed and it feels good. Maybe xxxx is just a better-for-me number. I'm not going to now "aim" for xxxx (but I now know that it's a fine number to end up at). Really, I'm just not going to "aim" for anything. No more calorie celings in the back of my mind, please. I'm going to try to stop aiming for anything... but I'm just observing that I feel way better (and no fatter) at xxxx. And.... drum-a-roll please.... I don't feel guilty either. I kind of know this is a good thing.

Positive things from today:
-delicious dinner
-enjoyable run
-a good coworker
-some of my favorite customers
-found out i got a follow up interview for this place
-a guy asked for my number (and he seemed nice)

Plan tomorrow:
-Run
-prep for an interview
-email professors for the grad program i'm intersted in
-prep my dinner/snacks so I can take it with me to the fro yo store
-work at 4:30

You know what I'm getting sick of? Turkey and fro yo. Yeah. Getting sick of them.

you know what else? I don't miss teaching but I REAAAALALLLLYYYY miss my kids. I see middle schoolers on the sidewalk, walking home from school, and my heart melts. Some of my kids have been calling and texting me quite frequently. Man I miss them BADLY.