Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Starting to really be aware of the body again

Awareness is something that I learned a lot about in yoga. And it's something that I'm starting to realize I've lost a little bit of touch with over the past years. The past few days I have been feeling much better in my body than I have in a long time. Part of this is actually FEELing hungry, FEELing sore, FEELing sated. It feels GOOD...even the less pleasant feelings feel AWARE. I've been drowning this awareness feeling...with food, alcohol, the endorphins of falling in love, the stress of work/life/surgeries/body challenges. I have been giving lip service to a lot of things while DOING them half-heartedly. I am really trying now to DO it.

The hunger feelings are a challenge...I am slightly hypoglycemic so hunger can quickly turn into sick feeling and I have to balance how the hunger feels kind of good with letting it get too far out of hand so I overeat. I have to always be aware of where there is "safe" food before I get in trouble. And I'm having to plan ahead -- this Friday I'll be going up to DB's daughter's to help the night before the sale and I know how food is in their house: not good. I'll need to eat before I go and take some of MY food with me for the next day.

Last weekend was nuts. I did as promised on Friday night: ate very little, but drank WAY too much. I had to wake up to leave for a bar mitzvah at 8:30 on Saturday and I literally was still drunk when I woke up. :-( Luckily the friend going with me did the driving as I sobered up over the morning. I don't remember feeling that BAD from drinking in a very very long time. While it's embarrassing to have overdone like that, the good part of this is that I have NO desire to drink again until May when we're in Mexico.

After the bar mitzvah (my first orthodox one and only my third one ever -- in this one, the men and women are separated by a wall!), I had to go get a haircut, pick up my tax returns and then hit the gym to sweat out the remaining alcoholic toxins. When I got home, I cleaned out a couple of closets and boxes that were unpacked since we moved to get stuff ready for the rummage sale. Then I had a salad for dinner and went to bed with a movie (DB is in Nearby Town this week).

I slept almost 12 hours on Saturday night as my body healed from the abuse. Got up and went to yoga on Sunday morning, then packed up things to take up to Daughter's house for the sale (it's about a 50 minute drive away). My teeny car was full! When I got there, I took Princess out shopping for a few hours, then dropped her off and home to watch the Oscars. After having an Oscar party for literally over 20 years, the past few years I have actually watched with few to no people. This year it was NO people, but I had some Chinese take-out and worked around the house while I watched. I thought it was a pretty good show -- I haven't really seen enough of the movies to judge whether the right people won, but I did see and love La Vie En Rose so was very happy for Marion Cotillard (even though I also loved Julie Christie in Away from Her). I also ALWAYS love Daniel Day-Lewis so am sure he deserved it even though I haven't seen that flick yet. I've got them all on my Netflix queue... ;-) Another movie tip: saw Waitress last night and LOVED it. Quirky and sweet and DIFFERENT. I love that.

I've got a lot of things rolling around in my head these past days, but am so busy at work that I've got no time to get them into coherent form to type here, but here is one thing: I have NOT been feeling oh-so-much-better in the mornings since stopping drinking. DB has been on me about aspartame and has been sending me a lot of links about it. Do any of you have experience with this causing weight gain, joint pain, headaches? It sure would explain A LOT for me. I bought a bunch of lemons and limes last night and am going off the aspartame in my canned diet lemonade for a few days to see if that helps...

5 comments:

Grumpy Chair said...

Helen you write what I am thinking about drowing/numbing my self with snacking while full and the red wine.

I'm not a big diet soda or soda drinker so I can't help you with the sugar substitute.

Hope DB's daughter's fund raiser is very successful.

Oh, and I so want to see the movie Waitress. In fact, I might rent it tomorrow morning and watch while walking on treadmill.

Vickie said...

Have you tried fresh lemon or lime in WATER? I mean LOTS of it squeezed in. If you like it cold - crushed ice would be a treat.

Helen said...

Yes, Vickie, that's exactly what I'm going to do...I wasn't clear in my post!! ;-) P.S. THANK YOU for the reminder about cucumbers as cracker/chip substitutes...I've been using them like crazy...so much that I think my whole post tomorrow might be about that!!

Cindy said...

I love lime water, or lemon or even an orange. Also, a strawberry in the diet lemon lime soda is nice. And teas. I am trying to stay off of sugar as well. I also am trying to deal with stress and relax more so I don't go nuts with the food. Keeping the safe food available at all times is helping. Hang in there. Sounds liek you are doing good actually. Thanks for all of your support

Grumpy Chair said...

English cucumbers are seedless so I use those instead of regular cucumbers. Plus I think I read somewhere that they are more gentle on the stomach.