Mindset

Today was good, with a bit of crazy thrown in. I think most days are like that...

Good: Ate on plan for breakfast, snack, lunch, and *close* to plan for dinner (had a bit of mashed potatoes with my grass fed beef and salad). Went to physical therapy and worked my butt off. Got some cleaning and laundry done and ran errands. Feeling pretty good!

Not-so-good: ice cream. Yes I did. But I did not eat "junk" ice cream... I specifically went out to a shop I like and got the exact flavor I wanted, and ate too much of it. Man was it good...

Anyway, onward and hopefully downward (scale-wise).

I figured something out this evening, after I ate the ice cream and while I was looking over my new physical therapy exercise papers. I was thinking about how I feel like a different person depending on where I am and what I am doing. Let me give an example.

In the physical therapy office, doing those exercises on the weight machines, I feel strong. I feel "like a normal person" who is working on rehabilitating some messed up knees. I am happy and confident and proud of myself as I work. I smile when I tell the therapist that I lost a hundred pounds. I am focused on me, on my recovery, on getting as strong as I can so I can do the things I want to do, live the life I was meant to live. I am absolutely determined to do my very best. I feel open and excited and very much centered on taking care of ME.

When I am eating way too much ice cream, putting that spoon from bowl to mouth over and over and over, I feel absorbed in the ice cream. Nothing really exists except me and that taste... the coldness in my mouth, the creamy sensations, the flavor, the feeling of sugar coursing through my veins and the sensation of my stomach getting fuller and fuller. It is all about ME. It is the most self-centered, in fact selfish, place I can go.

But wait, what's the difference? In the first scene I am focused on ME. In the second scene I am focused on ME. Are they not both self centered? Well, yes, but in very different ways.

I am convinced that the first mindset is the healthy mindset. It is a new place for me: a place where I truly *want* to take care of myself. I want the best for myself. I think I deserve it and I am caring for myself by doing things like exercising, eating healthy, taking walks, relaxing, and going to bed earlier to get enough sleep. It bleeds over into things like better attention to dental care, taking the time to do little things like shave my legs (even in winter) and being sure to take my supplements.

In contrast, that second mindset, which, by the way, is the mindset I had lived in for over a decade, is an unhealthy one. I want the best ICE CREAM for myself. I think I deserve it and I am "caring' for myself by indulging every whim to whatever degree I desire. And it bleeds over into things like reading or watching TV instead of exercising because I "feel like it" or staying up late to "have fun" instead of getting the rest I need.

So you see the two mindsets? I see them. I never saw them so clearly before. I always thought these were two facets of myself that needed to somehow mesh. Now I see that they are two different LIFESTYLES that truly cannot coexist. I either take care of myself or I don't. I either respect myself or I don't. There is not "taking care" or "self respect" when I am eating a bowl of brownie batter. There just isn't. Sure, there is room for some ice cream in my life sometimes. Ice cream isn't bad in and of itself. But not here, not now, not in those quantities and certainly not in that exclusive, addict-getting-a-high, spoiled brat mindset.

The good news is that I think the healthy mindset is mine a good 85% of the time, if not more. I am surprised, actually, that I have changed so much that I now *want* to take proper care of myself and do what is truly best for me. I feel like a different person when I am in that mindset.. different from the person who became morbidly obese in the first place: a person who was trying to escape reality with food and find the pleasure that was missing in her life in a box of donuts. I am new, I am reborn. I just need to now foster and encourage that new healthy mindset so that I am living it every day, always.