#14

It's Friday! Thursday completely flew by without a chance to post.

I met with Kaleo, an LCSW, on Tuesday. I had hoped to meet with someone who was knowledgeable, approachable, and experienced in dealing with eating addictions. Kaleo is all that! I am so blessed. She has a passion for this topic and has conquered her own battle with eating addictions. Since it was the first visit, it was predictably about my past experiences with food, my attempts at weight loss, my current attitude about dieting, and why I am so ready to tackle this. She assigned me to get five books to begin this journey (she's an avid bibliotherapy proponent). I promptly ordered them all from Amazon and can't wait for them to arrive! Here are the titles:
Life is Hard, Food is Easy (Spangle)
Shrink Yourself (Gould)
Breaking Free From Emotional Eating (Roth)
Women, Food, God (Roth)
Normal Eating for Normal Weight (?)

One interesting assignment Kaleo gave me was to wake up one morning and not eat until I was truly stomach-growling, head-aching, food-needing hungry. The purpose of this was to pay attention to my body and recognize true hunger, then to feed the hunger, not the emotion. I couldn't believe that I wasn't hungry until about 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday! I took an energy bar with me to each meeting just in case the hunger appeared suddenly. CAUTION: This is NOT a recommended weight loss plan-it's an exercise in paying attention to your body-that's it. Don't skip breakfast. I mean it!

I have so much to learn. I can only work short term with Kaleo, so I'm dedicated to maximizing this experience.

In other news, today's my day off and I'm doing three of my favorite things; swimming, stamping and hanging out with friends. Doesn't get better than this!

I need to be food vigilant...powers of Bonnie and weight loss unite! Vvvvvh!