tamarjacobson

For the past seven months I have been trying an experiment on myself:

• To take notice of the times that loneliness and emotional-hunger rise up within and send me running to the refrigerator to desperately try and fill the hole in my soul with food.
• Inspired by Jean‘s goal to walk 1000 miles this year, walk as often as possible…
• Eat whatever I feel like eating.

Here are the preliminary results:

While I will not make the 1000 miles this year, I am pretty close to making 600 by the end of the year. I have been working hard to average four to six times a week running and walking on my treadmill for 40 minutes (2.6 miles at a time). So, to date, on my seven month anniversary, I have reached 366 miles total. This is exciting to me for a number of reasons:

1. I am now able to walk uphill from Valley Green and the Wissahickon to my home on that terribly steep incline without gasping and spluttering like some dying fool,
2. I am becoming fit enough to perhaps participate in an English hike with my sister next June,
3. My body feels healthier and stronger, and,
4. I am losing weight.

While I have not been keeping a journal or writing down my thoughts about emotional eating, I have begun to notice correlations between feelings of boredom, anger, frustration, loneliness, and my hunger. In fact, there are times when I ache with hunger even after having just eaten a splendidly, good meal. If I allow myself to hold still and experience my feelings, quite often I discover an emotional versus physical source to being ravenous. Sometimes it prevents me from eating to try fill the void. At others I allow myself the food as an experiment in comfort, and then, in those instances, I invariably notice that hunger is abated only briefly. Fascinating!

What is more fascinating is that I have begun to eat smaller portions, healthier foods and am becoming aware of who I am and what I feel about all sorts of things. In addition, I have become more compassionate and not as insulting towards myself as I used to be. For example, I less often call myself names, like "fat pig," when I look in the mirror. And, what is even more exciting for me is that I am slowly becoming less afraid of painful feelings.

I have lost 12 pounds in weight. Yes, I know, it has taken seven months instead of all those crash diets I tried all my life where I lost tens of pounds in two or three minutes. But who cares? I have all my life to lose the weight I need to lose to die healthy. Yes indeed. I think that for the first time in my life I am taking care of myself in a kinder, gentler, healthier, and more respectful way.

Yesterday I went out and bought a few new clothes. It felt good.

So, thank you Jean, and Geneen. It is not that I have followed all your rules. It is that you have joined a line of inspirational role models for me, who have affected, influenced and supported me over the years, so that I might choose the path I want to take, and do it my way.

… and now off I go … up on my treadmill once again …

A year ago on Tamarika: A Pause for Reflection.