Unless we practice loving feelings toward everyone we meet, day in, day out, we’re missing out on the most joyous part of life. If we can actually open our hearts, there’s no difficulty in being happy.
-Ayya Khema, “Be an Island”
I’ve lost one jeans size since starting Weight Watchers. And I’m eating more than I ever have. That still seems odd to me.
Most of the credit, honestly, goes to sambear. He wanted to keep doing the food prep and shopping instead of letting me do it, but he’s really changed what he’s cooking. That means everyone is eating more healthily, although we still have lots of food. We’re retraining our taste buds. I have to say that pasta with pesto, while tasty, still isn’t as much of an “oh, yum!” for me as fettucine alfredo, but it’s only been a few weeks.
I did switch from cheese grits in the morning to oatmeal. It isn’t as emotionally satisfying, but it’s a bowl of something hot. I’m finding that I can’t eat nearly as much oatmeal anyway. It’s just too heavy!
Odd thing, though—I always made more grits than I could eat. I don’t know why. Something wasn’t psychologically satisfying unless I could see lots of food and eat my fill while having more left. It’s the same with the oatmeal. I can really only eat one serving, at the very most. I have to make two, though, or I feel deprived in some way. Fortunately, it’s cheap stuff.
I’m very lucky in that I’ve never gone through any time in my life when I truly didn’t have or couldn’t get enough to eat. I’ve certainly deprived myself of food often enough, but there’s never been an actual scarcity of it. A friend has mentioned someone she knows who cannot feel as if there’s enough food in the house unless she can see it all, due to scarcity when she was a child. That isn’t the case with me.
Now that I’m really paying attention to it, I’m finding that I’m much more of an emotional eater than I thought I was. I think about food more now. And I’m pretty good at knowing the difference between real hunger and mouth hunger, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying when I’m just “munchy” and know it. I’ve never been terribly prone to eating when I am just munchy, but for some reason NOW I feel deprived, and I don’t think I did before. I have no idea what that’s about.
