Praise Eywa! I have seen the light once again!
It’s been a sickeningly long time since I have felt such a strong sense of myself. My legs are strong, my mind is engaged, and I can once again tell the difference between hunger and sheer boredom.
Feeling connected to my body once again, I am now comfortable, content, and positively jazzed at the thought of eating healthy and exercising. I don’t really know exactly how long it has been, but for quite a while I was carrying on with my exercise out of reluctant obligation rather than religious devotion. A healthy lifestyle can be so gloriously addicting!
When you make a strong effort toward achieving a healthy body, your life sort of falls into place and you feel like you’ve got (or are at least getting) your shit together. A typical day for me looks like this: walk half a mile to class, participate in the learning process, have a light lunch, more learning, walk home, relax, go for a run, make a healthy dinner at a decent hour, socialize with friends. My life feels complete. It feels well-rounded, productive, structured, and fruitful.
As much as I’d LOVE to bash my head into a giant cake, eating healthy is now more satisfying than eating pizza, cake, and candy. It’s so empowering to know I’m disciplined enough to resist this junk.
However, it’s not all brute strength of the mind. I’m a sucker for cake and ice cream. A lot of the time it takes some premeditation and trickery. Meaning, I have to make plans to trick my brain into eating healthy. Because I am well aware of what I will be craving around 1 am (ice cream), I can manipulate myself into choosing healthier options like a Skinny Cow (which only has 1.5g of fat per sandwich!) by making sure that the fridge is always stocked with low-fat treats. (Oh, and on a side note, I just found out that you can get little tubs of Skinny Cow ice cream…Ben and Jerry’s Style! You know, when you have your individual bucket of ice cream that no one else is allowed to eat. And it’s low-fat!)
If I think I want to eat, but am not sure if I’m actually hungry, I usually try drinking water, or eating a small but filling snack to tide me over until dinner time.
My new favorite thing is almond butter. Between meals and before my workout, I usually need a little extra energy. So I toast half of a whole wheat english muffin and put about a table-spoon of all natural almond butter on it. Although it’s a small snack, it still fills me up so that I won’t binge, and it gives me enough energy for my workout. It’s also quite scrumptious.
Reassigning the meaning of the word “treat” to mean anything ‘good tasting’ can make you feel like you had a treat when, in fact, you ate something worthwhile. I now consider raspberries a treat and shamelessly eat a container(s) every day. And yes, I’m addicted to those too.
The difficulties of cutting out sweets, fat, and complex carbohydrates can be painful. But once you get over the hump and get all those unfortunate instances of weakness out of the way, you can get into a nice little rhythm. It’s kind of like when you get up to running two miles, and then if you keep going you just get in a nice little groove and it’s as if you could sustain it forever.
No Moore Muffins 