just to check out the late-night record shop

Well, I'm feeling particularly hung-up on the food today. Maybe it's more body stuff than food, and I don't know if it's just aftermath of last night's cookie meal, or if it's just been rising to the surface more and more lately. It's not a restriction thing (or perhaps it is a little bit, but certainly nothing drastic) so much as it feels like just my dieter's thinking always always getting in the way. Always noise about my food...that busy chatter getting just a little louder lately. Again, I've had a substantial amount of progress here, and I'm not completely blind to that. I remember a thousand times when Clint would decide he wanted some ice cream, and the two of us would walk up to the corner store (Tufts Conveniences, it's called) and get a pint of Ben and Jerrys with the soft brownies in it. I would usually wander, looking for something that I wanted, would feel defeated by not finding anything I felt I could allow myself, and then we'd head back home where I'd inevitably eat half his ice cream. And not even so much because I wanted it, but because I couldn't handle knowing he was having a treat and I wasn't. I'm definitely in a place where I can have treats when other people are not inviting me to join them, although the reverse isn't as solid for me: I have a difficult time not having a treat if you are, too. For example, if I'm with a group of friends (hah...when am I EVER with a group of friends?) okay, if I'm with Kate, Eric, Emma and Josh, and they were to decide "Hey, lets go out for Cheeseburgers!", and I'd been thinking earlier that a salad sounded nice (not restrictively, but that I wasn't starving and I wanted something crisp and clean), that salad idea would be out the window all I would have registered was PERMISSION TO EAT CHEESEBURGER GRANTED! -- not what my body was telling me to eat. Even now, if I were to order that salad, there would be a very small part of me mourning the loss of the potential cheeseburger despite being able to acknowledge that it wasn't what my body wanted. Thankfully, that small part is so much smaller now than it ever has been, so much softer than I've ever heard it. Right now, every moment I'm not eating “bad” food is no longer a moment of deep personal sacrifice.
I do absolutely still think with a dieter's head though. I wish I didn't know how many calories were in every food choice. I can look at a meal and eyeball it's calorie count within about 100. I wish my first impulse at the grocery store wasn’t still to flip an item over and check out the calories per serving, knowing that my decision to buy it will still be based largely around my approval of that number. I look forward to the day that I can thoughtlessly drink a glass of orange juice without reminding myself that water could just as easily have quenched my thirst and I should just eat an orange because it has 1/4 the calories and all that fiber that will satiate me for hours. I still think like that, I'm just trying to make choices that don't validate that kind of thinking.
When I woke up this morning after all those cookies, my body felt hugely warm as it was still metabolizing what I'd eaten last night (I just deleted a comment here that I realized was written because I was embarrassed about having had cookies for dinner and was worried that mom and anyone else reading would think I was in trouble and was gaining wait. I'm not, and I refuse to apologize for wanting cookies for dinner), and I was incredibly thirsty and hungry for something other than carbohydrates. See, that's cool. That's where I can appreciate what my body does for me- it's handling what I've eaten, and, without asking me to correct for it, she's asking for the things she needs in order to continue functioning well, which is NOT, by the way, 25 more cookies as I would have assumed a year ago, but some food that packs a little more nutritional punch. I so appreciate learning to trust that my body can handle everything I eat, and then make accommodations accordingly. My difficulty is actually listening to what it's asking for. My brilliant head can easily talk over the voice of my body, and tell me that what my she really wants is not to eat until dinner time because it's had plenty of calories, thank you. That's, um, not at all what my body's askin' for. She wants food...just not cookies. Fiber. Vitamins. Non-processed things, today. Tomorrow she may want processed things again, maybe even another cookie, but today that's not necessary.