This Can't Surprise You!

I'm sorry about Friday but my niece Meredith ended up coming out and visiting for a bit and then she left for an appointment and then she came back.  By the time she left to go to the airport to get Shannon and Patrick Mark got home from work and I just never got back out here.

Today, Mark worked and I bought some unlimited time for a game I love and I never made it back here and now it is in the wee hours of Sunday morning and I can't sleep and here I am finally getting to write.

I just have really been in a funk lately.  Learning to live with a eating disorder sure isn't what I thought it would be.  It has been freeing at times, frustrating at times and has really had my emotions all over the place.  But truly I can say that the journey so far has been worth it and learning what all I have learned I do know that I will never go back to dieting.  It truly just didn't work for me.  I'm starting to grasp that this journey isn't about numbers but more about trusting the process.  Trusting to rely on my own body cues for when I need to eat and what I need to eat.  I have enjoyed having so many foods that I treated as 'bad" while I dieted and learning that they are not bad but there are ways to have them and also how to be mindful about them.  I would have never believed for a minute that I could stop eating queso at a mexican restaurant and actually just visit with Mark and watch him eat it.  I never would have believed that less than half way through my favorite enchiladas that I would just be able to see that I had eaten enough and put down my fork and take close to 2/3rds of it home.  Never, ever, ever but it is happening for me now.  I can have M&M's in my house and not eat the bag in a day but a small salsa cup full mixed with dry roasted peanuts is a great snack.  In less than 2 weeks I'm over the M&M's and now I'm wanting strawberries and greek yogurt.  Go figure.

I'm just coming out of a phase where I literally did not want to eat.  I was told that I would binge if I didn't eat by a clock and I had Kathy and Anna fretting to see what the outcome of this would be.  I don't know if because I finally did start eating what I could on schedule save me from binging or if I'm learning that binging isn't worth it.  I don't know, time will only tell.  Kathy tells me that I will never stop binging but it will be less and I will be able to recover very quickly from it.  So, you see I have to learn to trust the process.

You all know how I have struggled for a long time with cooking and not eating out.  Kathy and Anna (especially Anna) have done all but pull their hair out in trying to get me back in the kitchen.  Kathy has decided to take me back to square one and that is NO RECIPES.  I need to come up with a list of meals that I can make from the top of my head.  Things that are easy and quick to put together, things that I only need staples for and I need to cook at least 3 times a week which will give us left overs and she will let us eat out a couple times a week.  She wants to start monitoring my sodium intake because she believes that I am sodium sensitive and thus a reason why my weight isn't dropping quickly because it should be.  We'll see.  At least all I have to do is eat mindfully and record it and she does the rest and if something is not right she will address it.

I find that she keeps telling me to stop worrying about what I'm eating, she says if I am eating mindfully that I will be o.k.  I can't tell ya'll how different this mentality is.  Eating things like chicken fried steak and it being o.k.  She keeps telling me, it is the excessive eating of these types of foods that are bad.  Just this past Thursday when we were talking about simple meals I told her that I thought about buying the Crockin Girl's cookbook but I knew that it was pretty unhealthy.  She gave me her nasty mean look which tells me that all foods are good and none are bad.  She politely told me that she was confident that I could make changes to the recipes to be more mindful to my health.  I told her that I was wanting to make some casseroles but that I knew that they were bad.  (I really have to lose that word around her, she loses it when I say it!)  She told me to work on having them.  I asked her how did she work a full time job, have young children and a husband and go home and prepare meals every night.  She told me that she meal plans.  She told me that it is o.k. for me to do the same.  She explained to me that in the front of her meal planning notebook she has 2-3 pages of simple meals that she can pull from when time is real limited and she doesn't have much time to cook.

She gave me the assignment and I have to have this to her by Monday so I need your help quick!  I have to put together a list of simple meals that I can do easily and not have to follow a recipe.  So...send me the things that you do with your family.  I know ya'll don't comment here like you did on the old site so email me and tell me!  imahoot286@sbcglobal.net (quit laughing!!!) there is a story behind this email address and I have had it for 20 years!!!!

So...what are you waiting for....send me some of you quick, easy, no brains dinner ideas!!!

I'm waiting!!!!!  I will share with ya'll what I have come up with on Monday when I have to email her my list.