Desire: What exactly do you want?
Defense: How are you prepared for the temptations that are bound to come your way?
Dedication: How hard are you willing to work?
Determination: How long are you willing to keep working?
Decision-Making: Are you willing to take total responsibility for the choices you make?
I'm thinking that I would like to ask myself these questions daily - kind of like a morning meditation. And I would like to answer them very specifically with what I'm thinking about at the time.
Like.... right now, my answers are:
Desire: What exactly do I want? I want to be able to easily get up and down off the floor. I want to weigh under 200.
Defense: How am I prepared for the temptations that are bound to come my way tomorrow? Tomorrow is a normal day with no specific food challenges. I'll have oatmeal for breakfast, chicken stew and veggies for lunch, Subway for dinner, and blueberries for dessert.
Dedication: How hard am I willing to work? This is an interesting questions to me because I think I'm willing to work hard - but the fact is that I haven't exercised ANY since trying to find my way back to sane eating. I've made a commitment to myself to rejoin Curves. I will go and do that tomorrow after work.
Determination: How long am I willing to keep working? For this question, I have to go back to lessons learned in Twelve Step programs. I am determined to stick to my plan tomorrow. One day at a time. When I think about the possibility of always having to be so diligent, I think "oh, never mind! It's not worth it!" But I can do it just for tomorrow. I can do anything for one day.
Decision-Making: Am I willing to take total responsibility for the choices I make tomorrow? I do recognize that I am the only person who controls what and how much goes into my mouth. I alone am responsible for the choices I make. Well, I believe me and God. God, if I let Him. I have to remember what I once knew and blogged about. The fact that my success is made of hundreds of little decisions I make throughout the day. Decisions not just about what goes into my mouth but about how I feel, how I react, where I go, what I look at, what I read, who I talk to, what I do, how I spend my time........ All those little decisions do, in fact, affect how I eat. Because how I eat is a snapshot of how I live my life.
Whoa. That's an interesting statement that came out of my fingers without conscious thought.
"How I eat is a snapshot of how I live my life."
What does that mean?
Ways I eat:
sometimes consciously
sometimes what the fuck
sometimes who cares
sometimes controlled
sometimes uncontrolled
sometimes with abandon
sometimes with guilt and shame
sometimes ravenously
sometimes because I think if I don't something must be wrong with me
sometimes without thought
sometimes in boredom
sometimes in celebration
That kind of threw me for a loop. Gotta think about it more.
What do you think?
Love,
Jenny the Ponderer
Interesting...You never mentioned that you ever eat because of hunger, which is the only reason humans must eat. I think the other times we eat are not "must" reasons, they are "want" reasons that could might be postponed, substituted, or controlled.
ReplyDeleteOh.. good point, Mary Nelle. I didn't even notice that. And yes, I need to think about hunger. I don't think I get to that point very often at all. And that's what I was taught in Weigh Down - to wait until you feel the hunger.
Delete