Struggling to Get Back to Conscious, Intuitive Eating

I’ve finally restarted having my every other Friday night babysitter (who picks up C from school so I don’t have to go home first – two separate separations from the kids would never work for them).

What a difference it makes to have some time away from children! I feel positively jubilant, just walking around the city alone as darkness falls. Very much awake and alive in a way I didn’t realize I was missing. Both times, I’ve gone to see an early movie in our local independent movie house, then met a friend for dinner afterwards.

I’d like to do more things to get that alive feeling back. I’ve just started taking Vitamin D again because I feel SO tired after work. It’s like I go go go all day long and the adrenaline keeps me strong but then I get home and collapse.

I’ve been reading and listening to book by Geneen Roth. I find that I eat when I’m tired. I love the feeling of lying on the couch and reading and snacking. But then I feel bad about myself the next morning. Just a couple of days of NOT doing this and I feel a noticeable different in my body. But now I’m back to it for the last two nights and I feel a very noticeable difference in the other direction.

Geneen Roth says that compulsive eating is a result of trauma in our childhood. When we didn’t have enough love, we learned to turn to food for love. But now that we are adults, we have other tools in our toolkits. I don’t binge to the extent of getting sick, but still, I think I’m eating when what I really need is emotional nurturing and rest. I’m trying to find ways to get that rest and refilling.

My best idea so far is to just get into bed as soon as I finish cleaning the kitchen once the kids are in bed. I think I feel more tired than I feel I am “supposed” to and so it feels crazy to get into bed before 8 pm. But reading makes me feel refilled, emotionally, and if I was in bed reading then the kitchen would be that much further away and I could just go to sleep if I felt sleepy. Right now, being sleepy makes me feel hungry.

I want to have a rule that I only eat at the kitchen table and only without reading (or watching) but that feels so hard sometimes and I don’t want to feel like I am punishing myself. I think healing has to come from a kind and gentle, non-punitive place. But on the other hand, those couple of days when I didn’t snack, I felt so good about myself. But last night was a bad night for it. I snacked too much and felt bad about myself and then stayed up even later in a self destructive way as a result.

Anyone else struggle with this?