No Eating After Dinner Challenge: Days 29, 30 & 31

As we wrap up this month’s challenge of no eating after dinner, the simplicity of this task was more difficult to journal about daily than when I gave up social media for a month. The last week came with more temptations to want to snack with the added bonus of spring break and having my daughter’s friend spend the week with us. The cravings were out of control but I didn’t waver and give in. I wanted to, especially when I began day dreaming about ice cream with hot fudge.

That still sounds really good right now. 

But that meant getting out of my jammies, leaving my warm blanket and driving to the store. It was enough time to realize, it wasn’t a necessity and I was going to feed an emotion instead of true hunger.

When this month began, I was clear this had nothing to do with weight loss but of course it does because everything health related boomerangs back to body image. Even though I wasn’t vocal about it, I was measuring myself once a week to see if anything was happening. It was. I was losing inches in my waist and lower belly which was a whole lot of positive reinforcement. I was salivating when the tape measure came out conditioned like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Somewhere in the middle of last week, I was reading a book that triggered something in my brain. She was talking about always being the “good girl” and how she spent her life pleasing others. Enter. Me. It was like she wrote that part of her book for my eyes only. The light switched on when I realized my body image issues directly correlate with how I want others to perceive me in other areas of my life. From that moment on, I wanted to figure out how to truly love every part of my body especially the ones that I normally talk to like a piece of trash.

When Friday morning came, I had gotten dressed to go to the gym and out of pure shock remembered that I hadn’t measured myself. The question now became: do I take off my clothes and measure or forego it all together? I mean, there must have been an underlying reason I forgot and I don’t think it had anything to do with being awake at 5:15am. I passed on the chance to check and everything was ok.

Per the usual, I still stand in front of the mirror and evaluate my body every day before hopping into the shower, standing sideways and making sure my belly doesn’t look too big. This week I set the intention to start speaking kinder to myself so I went ahead and named my arms North Carolina and Ohio respectively to signify the long distance moves we have made over the last couple years. Then I named my whole midsection FOUR BABIES. These three things are positive memories in my life but they definitely changed the structure of my body and for that I am grateful for those experiences.

This month taught me to stop measuring myself and living up to a standard but instead to remember the good parts of my life that got my body to now. To realize that this is my body as it is today and everything I do in the present will lead to my future body as it is then and the amazing experiences to follow.

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