Ask and the Universe Provides

Last weekend I was preparing a post for V-Day all about self-love. Of course that topic came from my understanding that I need to practice self-love. I was going to talk about how I was going to love myself better. Get in touch with my values, such as health and practice a cleansing. The kind that you clean up your eating allowing the body to eliminate waste and become healthier. Well, that was Sunday. Having not finished my post I planned to finish it Monday. Then the skies opened and the Universe bestowed upon me a fine detoxifying opportunity. I came down with the stomach bug my daughter had seemingly breezed through the previous week. Only I have not breezed through it. Quite the opposite. Yes, the Universe was laughing when she answered, only I was slow to get the joke.

My daughter came down with it last Thursday afternoon and by mid-morning the next day, she was asking for a BLT. Contrarily I've been out since Monday afternoon, and only today tried "real" food (not Jell-O, 7-Up, sorbet or toast) this afternoon. Ironically people pay oodles to do for them what nature did for me for FREE! Sometimes you just gotta make lemonade from those lemons. :)

And in answer to Treacle's question about how my February goals were going. Sadly, the better of them haven't gone well. A work situation exploded the first week leaving me excessively stressed. Unfortunately my primary reaction during such times is to hibernate or effectively zone out when given the chance. So I found myself as usual arriving home to burrow in. Aside from walking the dog regularly, I've done very little exercise. Very little cooking, very little sugar resistance, but did manage to do well respecting the 7pm eating limit.

As I wrote in an earlier post that I am reading Suzy Welch's book 10-10-10 about a strategy for decision making. Because the strategy is value-based, one person's decision may turn out differently than another person's. Of course the strategy only works well if you truly know your values. While reading the book, I realized that over the past few years I've gotten out of touch with my values. If fact, if someone were to come out and ask me about my values, I'd likely only be able to come up with one or two. This left me feeling not only sad, but somewhat disappointed and even ashamed of myself.

These thoughts brewing in my head combined with my standard reaction to high levels of stress, became a cue for me to take some time to re-examine and perhaps, re-orient, my values and how I'm living them. Then came the stomach bug which I suppose is a way to re-set my clock. Not to mention what blessing it is to have our health.

My Inner Chaperon

One of my intentions for this month is to restrict my refined sugar intake to once per week. I didn't fulfill that intention this past week as I ended up eating refined sugar 3 times this past week. Although I am a bit disappointed, I am pleased to have done as well as I did. Refined sugar is hard for me to resist, I'm a bit of an addict. I am pleased that I managed to only have it 3 times last week rather than the multiple times a day which I had been indulging in for the last several months. Mireille Guiliano speaks about moderation when indulging in such pleasurable treats. Now I understand moderation, but I don't execute it well.

Currently I am reading Victoria Moran's Living a Charmed Life. The author talks about the difference between one's inner epicure, who helps us to enjoy pleasure, and one's inner chaperon. It is our inner chaperon which differentiates between peak experience and the point where that peak experience dwindles into the ordinary. Ms. Moran tells the story of when she was a teenager at an airport speaking with a girl her age. She was hungry and munching on a bag of cookies in response to that hunger. She offered the cookies to her acquaintance who declined saying that she was much too hungry to eat sweets. Ms. Moran, though initially feeling annoyed, recognized that the girl cared enough about herself to wait to eat a proper meal.

This story has helped me to better understand the place of sweets in my diet and how they can be eaten in moderation. I've actually used this a few times when I have been very hungry and not only did it save me from what likely would have become binges, it helped me to understand that I can much more easily control myself around sweets if my hunger is satisfied by healthier choices. Because my hunger is either completely satisfied or mostly satisfied, I don't feel deprived if I have only a little bit of sweets.

Now when I'm ravenous and seeing a refined sugar option, I tell myself, "I am much too hungry to eat sweets" and I understand what moderation is all about. For me, it is primarily keeping myself out of situations that can quickly turn excessive.