Intuitive Eating

So about two days after my last pity post, I got in to a weight loss challenge at my work. I was the second alternate on my preferred trainer's team and I found out about an hour before the workout that I was in. We weigh in weekly and meet for a group training session that is usually some kind of circuit.

Since joining I have lost about 11-12 pounds I guess. I am almost at the weight I saw in July, 2009. . . my lowest weight since having my birdie. That weight and physical condition is what I have aspired to find again ever since life kind of hit a hailstorm shortly after that point.

Well, I am there. Inches-wise I am smaller. I have been doing 3 sets of push-ups and sit-ups (15 reps each) every.single.day since February 7. I have two lines going down the side of my abdomen. . . like. . . abs are really starting to define. It is so weird to look at pics of me last summer with a huge belly and to see myself now. I feel so much better and truly think I have finally made healthiness a habit.

The BEST outcome lately is that I think I have really learned intuitive eating. Yesterday we had our weekly workout. I have only lost 1.5 pounds in the last two weeks, so I was discouraged afterwards. I also have a weird pain in my shin that didn't help matters. I felt my body begging me to rest and eat. I have been eating 6 meals a day and really sticking to my calories, and I pretty much go to bed hungry at night. Last night, though, I just couldn't shake the hunger and the cravings. I went to the grocery store hungry and ended up eating SO MUCH. I ate a few chips, I ate a few peanut butter M&Ms, I ate a doughnut. The thing is. . . I was done after a much smaller "binge" than ever in the past. My body rejected the stress eating and my mind actually heard the message. This has never happened to me before.

I walked away from that eating frenzy feeling good rather than guilty. I listened to my body's hunger and fed it poorly. . . it told me so. This is a good thing. This is proof that healthiness can become a habit that sticks if we stick with it. Healthiness starts as the sum-total of hundreds of good choices we make over and over and over. Eventually, they become instinct as they were in the beginning.