Maintenance

I have been reading a book called "When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies". It's about overcoming overeating and realizing that you can live a life without using food as a drug. I just read the chapter about how we associate shame and intimacy with food. Like some women don't like to eat in front of people because of fear of judgment... or it feels like you are letting people in on some very personal part of self-care for you. We food addicts associate our feedings with the kindest, most comforting thing we can do for ourselves...it's love in the form of nourishment. I have experienced that shame. I didn't eat in front of people for a long time... still don't like to really-at least people I don't know. And when I feed myself for comfort I am VERY self-conscious about who sees or realizes what I'm doing... as if I am doing something illicit and bad. When I want to veg out and eat even a healthy snack... I want to do it alone in the bedroom...I won't get what I need out of the experience if I do it in front of people. It's a weird thing.

I read last night about women who decide they are never dieting again and they let themselves eat whatever they want to. They are SUPPOSED to FILL their cupboards with foods that they love and seek out and rely on to get by. ANYTHING THEY WANT. It is SUCH a scary concept. Scary because if I were to do that, I might gain all my weight back. I might eat till I burst. Which isn't true with my lapband-obviously... but still the idea that NO food is illegal- even icecream- even cheetos- even fried things... it would be hard to feel THAT out of control.... to be surrounded by foods that I want all the time.

The point to living this way is for the foods to become commonplace and no longer a special ocassion item. To make these items so commonplace that you stop looking for them. That you stop yearning for them, and pay attention to what your body wants. Because you will start wanting real food...you will yearn for a salad and a lean cut of chicken. Even with all that booty around. It will no longer hold any power over you. I am afraid to conduct this experiment, yet I am oddly entranced by it.

I have to get ready for work now. I blogged instead of getting on my elliptical. Guess I'll be doing it when I get home tonight. GAH! The GUILT!