This past week has been a really good week. I forget how good I feel when I work out on a semi daily basis. I've gotten in 4 work outs and have lost a pound. It was a pound and a half but I ate out 2 times over the weekend and I've gained back a half a pound. Totally worth it.

I've started reading the book "Women Food and God" by Geneen Roth. I bought it a couple of months ago and it's been sitting on a shelf since then. Geneen was recently on Oprah again and I promised myself I would actually read the book. So far it's pretty good. There have been a few instances while reading it and I've thought "Oh my God, that's me!"

I have been thinking about how I use food as more than just energy for my body. I went to book club last week and there was a new person there. I am extremely nervous around people I don't know and especially hate talking around them. After I got home I started to dwell on all the things I said and thought "I can't believe I said that. I am so stupid" and started feeling bad about myself. What did I do? I reached for chocolate. After about 3 mini Hershey bars I stopped myself and asked "Why am I eating this?" I told myself that I was eating it because I was feeling embarrassed and stupid about some of the things I had said. Then I asked myself if I was really hungry, and the answer was no. Then I asked myself if eating chocolate would make me feel less embarrassed and the answer again was no. So, I stopped eating. I just walked away.

I felt so good about this afterwards. I'm really starting to link my mindless eating to other things. Maybe it really isn't about food. Maybe it's about something else and other feelings.

(pg 53) Geneen writes: "Sometimes people will say "But I just like the taste of food. In fact, I love the taste! Why can't it just be that simple? I overeat because I like food."

But.

When you like something, you pat attention to it. When you like something- love something- you take time with it. You want to be present for every second of the rapture.

Overeating does not lead to rapture. It leads to burping and farting and being so sick that you can't think of anything but how full you are. That's not love: that's suffering.

Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life. Even with aching joints, it's not about food. Even with arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. It's about your desire to flatten you life. It's about the fact that you've given up without saying so. It's about your belief that it's not possible to live any other way- and you're using food to act that out without ever having to admit it."

That page really got to me. So true. I know there are reasons I've over eaten. I know there are things in my past that I'm having a hard time overcoming and I numb myself with food. But, that was then. I am starting to work on getting into the "now." Another quick quote from the book "Staying means recognizing that when you want to bolt, you are living in the past. You are taking yourself to be someone who no longer exists. Staying requires being curious about who you actually are when you don't take yourself to be a collection of memories. When you don't infer your existence from replaying what happened to you, when you don't take yourself to be the girl your mother/father/brother/teacher/lover didn't see or adore. When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?"

I don't know if I've ever asked myself "Who am I now?" I've always seen myself as a girl with no parents. As a girl who was abandoned by her father. As a girl who would date anyone who pays her the slightest bit of attention to prove that she is worthy of love. But, "who" am I now? I'm not that person anymore. Why can't I see that? Why can't I move beyond all those labels I have placed on myself and see myself for who I am now?

This is what I'm working on. If this is the only thing I get from this book, it was worth the $10. At the very least I am starting to ask myself if I am really hungry when I reach for food. If not, I'm trying to figure out what other feeling I am pushing aside so I don't eat whatever it is I want to eat. I guess it really isn't about the food after all.