It Baffles Me

First, the update on my workouts...they are going great! The day after every workout I have soreness right in the glute muscle, which tells me I'm doing all the glute exercises right. My butt has never looked so good. Still on the big side (diet!) but nicely shaped and firm. I think my legs are starting to look firmer too. So I'm very pleased with the new workout and enjoying the hard work very much.

I wish I were as pleased with the diet. Not that it's going badly but it's still a struggle. I had another overeating episode Tuesday night. I know I could have done something about it but didn't. As soon as my stomach started growling too much it was off to the kitchen for me. For some reason that baffles me, the physical signs of hunger seem to trigger an almost panicked response in my brain. As soon as I feel stomach pain or lightheadedness, I want to fix it so it stops. Instead of just waiting it out, I want to put food in my mouth.

I've decided I need to train my brain just like I train my muscles. I need to train my brain not to panic at the first sign of hunger. I need to train my brain to stay calm, breathe, use a non-food coping mechanism and wait it out. Yesterday and today I skipped my planned afternoon snack. Well, not skipped so much as delayed it. I'm working on extending the time between two meals from 3 hours to 6 hours. Yesterday and today it was between lunch and dinner. I'm taking the snack I planned in the afternoon, moving it to after dinner and working on dealing with the longer period between the meals. Yesterday I had a couple of moments of panic and had to breathe to calm myself. Once I relaxed I was able to move past it. But I'll tell you I was looking at the clock pretty regularly until dinner!

I want to get to the point where I can do this between any two meals that I decide. Once I'm able to delay my food without going into terrors then I'll be better able to reduce my calories a little further without worrying about it all collapsing. I can see this is going to take some time and isn't helped by beating myself up. It's going to take as long as it takes.