Speaking of emotion, the goal of the emotionally focussed eating program is for me to be able to make sense of my emotions. In order to begin to make sense of my experience, I need to pay attention to my bodily felt sensations. I need to be able to be aware of my bodily sensations and then I need to be able to articulate those bodily felt sensations. By being able to articulate them I thereby get to construct new personal meaning for myself. By reorganizing my own emotional experience and integrating by the use of reason along with the emotion.
This is how I get to construct new “adaptive” meaning from my previous maladaptive experience. So basically, what I am trying to say is; my body speaks to me and I need to begin to listen to what it is trying to say to me. I have an intelligent brain that also speaks to me. I need to pay attention to this feeling knowledge, and make sense of it. By doing this I get to learn to override my automatic physiological responses of past experience. Speaking of maladaptive experiences, my brother and I got to eat whatever it is that we wanted over the Christmas break. Actually that isn’t totally true because we directed most of our meals to that of being low carb and we just added in the usual sweets and treats from our past. When I think back of my experiences of previous Christmases, there were actually no limits to our carbohydrate intake. So really, now when I think of it, this experience for me, was actually an adaptive experience, because I was actually able to stay in control of what it was that I was wanting to eat. Only here is the rub, over the break I gained 15 pounds. Now before you go all crazy on me, in the last couple of days I have lost five of those 15, because another adaptive experience iI have gained recently is that, just like I said, I went right back on the diet. What I learned through this experience was that my system really does have an intolerance for food such as; potatoes, squash, bread (stuffing), trifle, chocolate, chips, pie, etc. It is clear that my metabolism really can’t handle it. I am actually shocked. Not because I gained 15 pounds, but because I now realize what I was doing to my body for so many years. This Christmas had my usual experiences, including all of the usual sweets and treats of my past, but I didn’t get one chocolate present, which is part of my traditional past experience. In the past I would receive tons of chocolates as presents but this year I just shared what the family received. I was sharing with three other people and still I gained those pounds. Before, I would share with my family and then I would have my own treats to indulge in. Wow, what a realization. Do I regret eating all those things? Yes and no. If I had a chance to do it over again would I change what I ate? I wish I could say yes, but in reality probably would not. I felt included, I felt happy, I felt the need to celebrate and I fulfilled that need. I am a little frustrated about the gain in weight because in the end I didn’t reach my goal of 30 pounds lost by Christmas. I was damn close though, 25 pounds lost, is pretty good in my books. However, there is an entire year to go until Christmas comes around again, so, I will continue to lose weight. will continue the diet, and it will continue to be a struggle. Luckily I have already proved that I can do it. Now it’s just the matter of detox… and avoiding the sugar still left in the cupboard, God I wish my brother would hurry up and eat it already!
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Emerald HillOn the quest to lose 50 pounds in a year. Can she do it? Only time will tell....with the help of this blog. Archives
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