So, I am learning to honor my hunger. I am trying to eat only when I am hungry and trying to eat what my body tells me it wants. Yesterday, I took a small cookie to eat after my lunch (a colleague brought them in), but found that I was no longer hungry after finishing my PB & apple butter sandwich. So I set it aside. However, it took 3 hours before I was hungry again. When the hunger returned, I took a small bite of the cookie. Ha! To my disappointment, it did not taste good. So I through it away. But then I was still hungry. Thankfully, I always pack snacks and I ate one of those.

My other thought about hunger is that I am finding that I am not usually hungry at 5:30am (when I need to be eating – I leave home around 7am). This makes it hard to decide what I want to eat. When I was on a diet or meal plan, I planned these things. Now that I am eating intuitively, I am working to listen to my body and my body is saying “…not hungry. Don’t really want to eat.” However, I have to eat because I take medication with my meal and have an hour commute. Waiting until 8am to eat at work is neither appropriate nor really an option. Funny, I never knew I wasn’t hungry. I just ate because I was supposed to. The end result, I am eating less for breakfast and am feeling satisfied for about 4 hours afterwards.

Chatty Kathy. She has been really noisy today. She has told me things like: “Your thighs are too big”, “I can’t believe you wore that, it makes you look fat”, “Look how thin she is (a coworker)” and “How many calories are in that?” Then I found myself singing music in my head – apparently to drown her out. It didn’t really work, just added to the noise. (again, I am not really hearing voices, this is my unhealthy eater/bad body image inner voice)

As for the dieting mentality…I still find myself trying to mentally tally calories, carbs, etc. That part is going to take some time.

What I have noticed is that I get angry when I see ads for miracle diets and weight loss programs. It makes me sad to see the way our culture and media set women (and men) up for failure and send so many negative messages.

And…I have a jar of caramels and a jar of candy corn at home. One on the island in the kitchen and one on an end table. These are two favorites. And since I bought them and placed them there, I have had very little interest in them. I have made them accessible, I know there are plenty and that I can have them whenever I want. And since the first day (when I had a few of each) I have not wanted. Nice! I wrote nice and then realized that was Chatty Kathy and my dieting mentality. So, instead…Interesting!