title

so much has been happening the past couple of days. sorry if this blog becomes rather long...

Saturday we had a nice time at my niece's tea party. There were about 15 people there. They served 4 different types of tea - I tried the two that were herbal and both were nice. They gave everyone a plate of fruit & cookies. Mine had fruit & veggies :) My favorite part of the whole thing was that my sister in law had placed small silver frames at each place setting, and you found your seat by finding your picture. Each one was a picture of the individual holding the baby (b-day girl). They were so cute and we got to take them home with us.

This weekend I decided to try sprouting quinoa. It worked, but I did not like it. Saturday evening I put a few spoonfuls of the sprouted quinoa into a bowl with some tomato, red pepper and asparagus. I took a few bites and almost instantly didn't feel well. My face got all flushed and so I stopped eating right away. I threw it all in the garbage. Apparantly no sprouted quinoa for me...I threw out the rest of the bag. Oh well.

Saturday night I had a weird dream. I dreamed that my husband and I were at my parent's house and my mom was trying to get me to eat spaghetti. I said "you know I don't eat that" and my husband said "come on, why don't you just have some? she made it with love." I started getting mad at him for siding with my mom instead of me. Then my dad came home and they started explaining what was going onto him. I screamed out "why does anyone f'ing care what I eat anyway?" ...and then I woke up

The dream was completely irrational - both my husband and my parents are fully supportive of me and would never do this (plus I would never swear at their house I told my husband the dream and he laughed.

What I took away from the dream is that somewhere I am still holding onto some irrational fears. Not a specific fear, just fear in general.

Last week was a really successful week for me. Usually what happens after success is that I end up falling down and going back to where I started. I have always labeled this as "self sabotoge" but I think what I am discovering, is that it is actually unresolved fear. I think I feeling fear, but rather than recognizing it and dealing with it, I grip onto it and keep it inside of me. That turns it into something else and I react out of instinct based on what I've always done in the past.

It's really interesting because all weekend I worked on identifying fear when I felt it. Each time I did so, I would acknowledge the feeling, and then release it. Just that simple act allowed me to make a conscious decision about whatever it was that was happening at that time. It's been incredible!

One area I'm seeing this in is weight loss. As a side bonus to fasting, I released some weight. I'm now down to what I consider my happy weight - where I can fit into my clothes again and when I look in the mirror I smile instead of cringing. I was able to put on my favorite pair of jeans and zip them up!!! They were still too tight to wear in public quite yet, but I'm super close.

In the past when I have gotten to this point, fear has taken over and I start gripping onto the idea that I'm going to screw up yet again. I really am starting to think more about the power of our thoughts. I was always so focused on "I don't want to gain it back like last time" and then of course I did. That thought is a thought of fear and it was consuming everything I did. No wonder my body reacts and tries to revert to homeostasis - it was just trying to feel safe!

Right now I feel different though. I don't feel afraid of my weight. I am happy where I am at and I know how hard I worked to get here. I don't feel like I need to hide behind the weight, so I don't feel exposed now that it's gone. I know that I am in a safe place in my relationships and I don't have fear about being criticised or judged.

Wow - I could keep writing so much more, but I know this is getting long and I am running out of time...I'm not even all the way through Saturday yet. I'm going to run to a meeting and then write part 2 of my weekend.