I forgot

Yesterday, a rare thing occurred.

I forgot to snack and binge.

Do you get that? I FORGOT. Meaning, for the first time in many, many weeks, the idea of snacking or gorging myself on junk I don't need NEVER OCCURRED TO ME. Not once.

I realized this as I was in bed, getting ready to do my daily meditation. Which I am still not doing at the same time every day (mornings really would be best, but I have to say it's really relaxing doing it at night, so perhaps ideally I'll do it twice daily). But which I have consistently done EVERY DAY for the past 11 days (today is Day 11 and I am about to do the meditation as soon as I finish typing).

And what I can't help wondering is: Is the meditation already having that kind of positive effect on my health? After all, the program IS entitled "Perfect Health". But it's only with TODAY'S meditation -- which I have not yet done -- that the program seems to be getting around to dealing with overeating. Because of course Perfect Health is going to mean different things to different people and this is not, per se, a weight loss meditation program.

Yesterday, I ate the following:

• Breakfast: juice, coffee with non-fat milk and 1 1/2 sugar cubes, Special K cereal with red berries and a few cranberries. This is a normal breakfast for me. One thing I did differently was use a smaller cereal bowl than I am accustomed to choosing.
• Lunch: I was out running errands when I realized it was lunch time and I was getting hungry. I had just bought some rotisserie chicken legs and potatoes (deep fried) for dinner, something my husband had requested. The smell of the chicken wafting up from my shopping bag was encouraging my hunger, so I stopped into a bakery and bought a sandwich made from a fresh baguette with Camembert and lettuce (and I think I tasted some unsalted butter), and for dessert I got a red berry crumble. And a bottle of water (a lot of French bakeries sell lunchtime menus that include a sandwich, pastry and beverage, and you save a euro or two). It was delicious; my favorite sandwich in France is a soft cheese, like Brie or Camembert on a baguette. Maybe that has something to do with my first-ever trip to Paris where I ate this type of sandwich ever day while strolling around, sightseeing. And yet I don't actually eat cheese very often, even though living here I am surrounded by it, so this felt like a treat!
• Dinner: 2 of the chicken legs (rather large and very delicious, being free-range and all that), a small portion of the potatoes with a bit of ketchup (I buy a reduced sugar ketchup). For dessert, I had a small ice cream bar on a stick, child-sized.
• Snack: I think I ate a banana at some point during the day, and that was my ONLY "snack". 
• I also drank several glasses of store-bought iced tea that was sweetened. I normally make my own decaf Crystal Light iced tea but every so often I need to replace the plastic bottle, and I like these 2-liter bottles from the store. It means I have to drink the sweetened, caffeinated tea for a day or so, but then I go for weeks making my own tea and reusing the plastic bottle. 

Was this a "perfect" choice of foods during the day? Perhaps not: bread, sugar, cheese, butter, fried potatoes, chicken legs instead of the skinless white meat, and so on. But you know what? I enjoyed everything I ate and didn't feel guilty about it. I didn't even think about it much other than "wow, this tastes quite good, isn't that nice" before going on with my day.

I also, in retrospect, didn't feel hungry all day. Nor did I feel edgy, the kind of edgy that makes me run for the chocolate or cookies. It's like, I ate my 3 meals and my banana-snack, and it was enough. I didn't go to bed hungry, either. I was satisfied. And had I WANTED to binge, it would have been simple: I've got chocolate in my bedside table. Cookies in the kitchen cupboard. And I know where my step-son's stash of candy is kept, in case I feel desperate.

But binging simply wasn't on my radar yesterday, and THAT is the miracle du jour. I had a totally, normal, Inside Skinny day.

THAT is how I would like to be living EVERY SINGLE DAY. Just enjoying whatever I AM eating, without overeating and without eating too much of something. And best of all, not really thinking much about the food when I was NOT actually sitting down to a meal. The French adore food; they love eating it, preparing it, and talking about it together. But when they're not at the table or actively preparing a meal, a typical French person is not obsessing about food. Food has it's proper time and place, and it is meant to be thoroughly enjoyed, but there is also more to life than the food -- THAT is how the French do it. And I think this is a very healthy philosophy. The food-addicted me thinks about food ALL THE DAMN TIME, and mostly what I think about is how I shouldn't be eating THIS or THAT and how fat it's making me when I DO eat those things. It's a huge time-sucker, this obsession with food.

So it was wonderful to go through a whole day NOT being obsessed. Just living my life like a normal person. Just... LIVING.

I want more of THAT. And if this meditation is what is helping me to get to that place, then I'm going to meditate my ass off.

Literally.