Realizations, Reality and Keeping it Real

Today was a test. It was my first day back at work after a week off. My test was to see, after a long day and 5 years of excuses, if I would keep a morning promise to workout when I got home. I passed the test if you were wondering...

Despite this great accomplishment, I had a set back- a student brought a late Christmas gift of chocolates and with out thinking twice, I instantly devoured 3. It got me thinking about the choices we make in life and how some of these choices are almost involuntary. Think about all the choices you have to make through out the day...what you wear, your path to work, who you decide to say hi to and those you just smile at as you walk by-those are all choices based on a rationale thought. Like "I'm wearing pants today because it will be cold" or "I will make a left at the light because I think the store is that direction." What about the choices you don't even realize you make? Like eating those pieces of chocolate. They may be so imbedded in ourselves, that we don't even realize they were 'choices' in the first place.

I realized today this may be one of my biggest issues with food. I do NOT pay attention to my eating habits, as in I DO NOT LISTEN TO MYSELF. When I said that out loud on the way home, I started asking why this is something I've never done when it came to food. I'm not sure I have a solid answer yet, but I have some ideas...

1. I'm too hard on myself. Living with OCD can be very incriminating. One mistake and I shoot myself down. I'm a loser, lazy, asshole-you name it, I've called myself it. I have spent my life setting myself up to fail at this. If my day of eating isn't perfect, I give up.

2. I put others before myself. This might be because I'm so hard on myself, that I feel I don't deserve the 'me time' and would rather invest my efforts into helping others. And added to that I worry too much what people think about me. Since I'm not giving myself love, I try to find it from others. Not good.

Therefore, step one in this "New Me" is:

LEARN TO SAY NO

Not because I want to be mean, but because I need to clear my 'palette' and listen to what my body is saying. If it's hungry, I need the clarity to ask it whether I've had enough water in the last hour, or whether I'm doing something that's stressing me out. If my mind, and calendar is filled with the needs of others, how can ever achieve this? And learning to say no to certain people will, hopefully, in turn teach me to say no to bad eating choices as well. At least it will let me see that they are, in fact, choices in the first place.

Does anyone else out there make choices involuntarily? Perhaps these choices aren't about eating, but other bad habits. If so:

What are the things that prevent you from listening to your body? And if you can hear your body talking, what is it saying?