One of the other blogs for which I write, A Frugal Housewife, has instituted something kind of neat.  One of my fellow writers has started Kick the Habit Mondays.  Every Monday we’ll write about a habit we’re trying to break.  All the blogs link together in a carnival and we can all support and cheer each other on.  You can learn more about how it all works over at A Frugal Housewife.

One of the habits that I’ve wanted to break for a long time is emotional eating.  I used food as my comforter and as my feeling smotherer for a lot of years.  If I felt sad I ate.  If I felt angry I ate.  If I felt like celebrating, I l made something especially yummy and ate all of it.  I didn’t always get the support I needed when I was growing up, so I learned to count on food instead of people.

Now that I’m older, and I’m learning to build healthier relationships, I’d like to put food into it’s proper place.  I want to turn to a person, not cheesecake when I’m feeling sad.  I want to talk about my anger with the person who made me mad, not smother it with a plate of nachos.  I want my celebrations to involve a room full of friends, not a bowl full of popcorn.

So, this Monday, I’m committing to changing my relationship with food.  I won’t be using it as a crutch or as a way to avoid how I feel.  I’ll be using food for what it is, a fuel that keeps my body going and gives me energy.

So that’s the habit I’m going to kick.  If you have a habit you’d like to kick, come and join the group.

There was a time when I loved the night. The wee hours of the morning were my favorite time of day. I wasn’t bothered. I knew no one was going to call me or come knocking at my door. While the rest of the world slept I was free to do as I liked. I didn’t even mind being sleepy the next day. For me, the freedom of the night was worth it.

When I was having issues back in January and February, the night took on a whole different complexion. I couldn’t breathe and thus couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The night time was the time I felt most alone and most vulnerable. All I wanted to do was be healthy and sleep. All I could do was wait out the dark and hope to get better.

Since I was diagnosed, the nights have three patterns. There are the nights I get myself stressed and twisted in knots and I don’t sleep. There are the nights when I take a Xanax and sleep the sleep of the drugged. There are also the nights when I fall asleep and stay asleep on my own. I like those nights the best. I wish I had more of them.

I think, for me, the night has become when I feel most alone and vulnerable. When I roll over in bed there’s no one lying next to me. If something happens in the night it feels like help is further away. Lying down to go to sleep is also when my mind wanders to all the things that could happen. Before I know it, I’ve created some nightmare scenario that keeps me awake half the night.

One of my goals is to be less stressed. Another goal is to take life as it comes, and to work at expecting good instead of ill. Sleep helps with all of this, so I guess another of my goals is to sleep better and more consistently. I’m really going to work on that. If anyone has any suggestions for how to sleep better, I’d appreciate hearing them.

I’ve never much loved my body. Ever since I was a kid it has had problems. My heart didn’t work right. My skin broke out. My spine was slightly curved. I got migraines. I burned almost every time I went out into the sun. My body weighed too much and didn’t always want to sleep and just plain seemed like a lot of trouble. I generally felt liked I’d been put together by blind factor workers who got their parts out of the reject bin.

Lately, however, I’m starting to realize how miraculous my body really is. Despite all the handicaps it started with, and despite the somewhat less than benign neglect I’ve visited upon it, my good old body has kept on chugging along. Given that, I thought today would be a nice time to list the things I love about my body. It has after all not done so badly by me.

The first thing I love is my skin. I have the very fair, clear skin of a redhead. I’ve been complimented on my complexion many times. I do freckle some, but not an excessive amount, and I almost never get pimples and have never had acne. I know a lot of people who spend a lot of money to get the complexion I have naturally. I’m grateful for that.

I also love my legs. I have great calves and should probably wear a skirt more often than I do. When I do where I skirt I often get complimented on my legs. As I get more and more fit, my legs should get even better. I can’t wait for that.

I love my hair, I can safely say there aren’t many people who have hair like it. I was born a redhead, copper red to be exact, but as I’ve gotten older my hair has faded out to a unique color. There’s some red and some gray and some blonde. It’s been characterized as platinum blonde or strawberry blonde. I’m really not sure what color it is, but it curls with abandon and people seem to like to color so I suppose it really doesn’t matter.

I love my eyes. I have hazel eyes and they change color depending on what I wear. People have told me they’re penetrating eyes. Mostly, I just think the color is pretty.

It’s funny, but spending time thinking about what I like about my body really does help me feel more positive about my health and my fitness. I may not be perfect, and probably never well be perfect, but there’s more raw material there to work with than I usually allow myself to acknowledge. That’s very comforting.

So, I set a new goal for myself.  The area where I live has an extensive system of hiking, biking and walking trails.  Many are interconnected and almost all of them pass through some pretty scenery.   I’ve been thinking for a long time that I should start hiking some of these trails, but I never really got motivated to do something about it. 

Since my afib episode I’ve become seriously motivated to get healthier.  I do some sort of exercise tape about 5 days out of the week.  The tapes are great and varied and I always know I’m getting a good workout, but there is something missing.  I can’t feel the sun on my face.  I can’t hear the birds singing.  I don’t come into contact with other people, if only for the space of time it takes to say “Hello”. 

I’ve been wanting to do something in the outdoors and something that offers the potential to be at least a bit more social.  Hiking the local trails seems a good way to do that.  I’m also planning to buy a relatively inexpensive digital camera so I can take pictures as well.  Hopefully I’ll be able to post some photo essays of my hikes and document my progress in losing weight at the same time.  I’m generally camera shy and don’t care for pictures of myself, so I’m not sure about the second part, but I know the first will definitely happen.

I’m excited about this.  I think this is really the first physical challenge I’ve ever set for myself that I have a reasonable expectation of carrying through to the finish.  I can’t tell you how proud I will be if I really do see it through until the end. 

Well, it appears that the free weight loss train is gliding to a stop.  I knew, as I’ve said in previous posts that it would have to end some time.  I appears that time is now. 

I’m a little discouraged today, mostly because the thankfulness that I came through everything all right is starting to wear off a bit.  I’m still grateful that the consequences of my a-fib weren’t worse.  I’m incredibly lucky and I know that.  It is just that now I start the hard part, where I have to stay motivated to eat right and exercise.  Where, perhaps more importantly, I have to believe I can accomplish my goals.

When it comes to anything work related, or accomplishing things for other people, I’m a dynamo.  When it comes to accomplishing things that would make my life better, putting myself first, I guess, I’m don’t do so well.  I have so much emotion and feeling and past experience wrapped up in my weight, that it just seems too simple to say I have to get thin or I’m going to stay unhealthy.

I do want to be thin.  I can’t remember a time when I was thin, when I felt thin.  I guess my concern is that wanting isn’t the same as doing and I’ve been saying I wanted to be thin for more years than I can count.  Now that I’m facing a situation where it is vital that I get thinner, I guess my worry is more that somehow I’ll still think I’m not worth it, or that I won’t be able to find other coping mechanisms besides food.

I know being thin will make my life better.  I’ll certainly be healthier.  I think feeling better about my appearance will give me more self confidence and it will certainly make accomplishing things easier.  I guess I just need to have confidence that I will value myself enough to do what I need to do to get healthy and thin.   I think I also need to concentrate less on the process and more on the end result.  Being thinner certainly won’t solve all my problems, but it will make certain things better and that’s a good thing.