Small, Important Realizations

About a month after I started blogging I wrote a whiny post about how slowly I was losing weight. It's strange looking back on those first posts that I had essentially just written to myself.

Well, I've continued to lose weight at a pace slightly slower than watching paint dry, molasses run (l0l)...you get the idea. But there has been a change: how I feel about this. Now, I'm proud.

I'm proud that despite my inability to do serious exercise (at the moment, I'm even being super careful about walking too much), those tenths of a kilo are slowly coming off.

I'm proud that despite the fact that I really hate to eat without reading the paper or a book, I have been getting better and better at hearing the physical cues my body sends me concerning fullness. I now religiously put down my sandwich or my fork between bites and wait a few moments before picking it up again. No, I don't eat particularly slowly and yes, I still read or do the crossword while I eat, but I have changed the way I eat.

I'm proud that I eat what I want and when I want. Last Sunday, my second day of bedrest, I really wasn't hungry. I had breakfast around 10 a.m. but I had barely moved and I heard my body telling me that it really didn't want to eat much. At about 2:30, I had my son bring me a toasted bagel with butter, a glass of milk and half a pear. I left about a quarter of my bagel on the plate.

Another wonderful change is that I feel less and less deprived. When I first started out in January, I still felt really resentful about not being able to eat like a "normal" person. My acupuncturist's assistant had calculated that just to maintain my weight, I would have to eat no more than 1,275 calories per day. You read that right: 1,275 calories if I didn't want to gain weight, less if I wanted to lose weight. Now, I'm eating pretty much what I want. I don't often indulge in sweets but when the sweet is worth it, yes I'll have a small piece.

I'm still often surprised to hear my "little voice" reminding me that I'm full and that I can have some more later if I really want. After a lifetime of dieting, or beating myself up because I wasn't dieting, it's still a novel experience. I suspect it will continue to be a novel experience for a long time to come. And that's OK.