Not eating is good self-care too.
Loving myself and taking care of myself is hard work. Instead of waiting for DH to suggest something to do, I am responsible for making my own dreams come true. But I’m finding it quite difficult to know what I want.
Last week a radio station was advertising that they will fulfill a wish for some selected people. One of the last winners got an in-vitro fertilization treatment.
As people called in to make their proposals, I searched for a wild wish of my own. Nothing came up. Funny to think that I can’t articulate any fanciful dreams.
Afterward, I started paying attention to my language. I realized that I don’t use words like “I want” or label things for what they are, like “he’s a jerk for doing that” or “I didn’t enjoy that at all.” Like Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride, I don’t even have an opinion on many of the simplest things. Sometimes I eat too much because I can’t decide what to eat, so I choose a lot of different things, and eat them all, eating way past full.
Tonight I managed to choose to eat just soup, and let the rest of the evening take care of itself. Then I found myself still thinking about a particular muffin I bought today, that I haven’t eaten in over a year. When I realized that the obsessive thinking wasn’t stopping, I ate the muffin. Tasted great!
Even with DH, I’m using my words of “I want” more often. It’s very different from “Would you do x for me?” because that’s very disempowering. I want simply makes a statement. I can do it myself, because no one takes better care of me than I do, or he can do it if he feels like it.
And I choose to not eat sometimes, because feeling good about my body also means feeling good about what I put into it. Putting too much food into my body, makes it easy to not feel good about myself. I want to feel good about myself as often as I can.
