Mourning the Loss of Food - Part One

I've heard about people mourning the loss of food, and today I think I experienced it. I've been doing some talking and reading lately finding out tips on what needs to change in my life to see a more consistent weight loss. I'm ready for a seriously focused plan, no matter how hard. This has included beginning to track my food and calories to see just how much I'm eating and finding out what needs to be tweaked.

I've already begun to cut back in certain areas this week and am getting that water in like it's going out of style. So why was I vexed this afternoon? My scale has shown me up every single day since my weigh-in of 200.0 last Friday, so I thought maybe that was it.

However, the more I thought on it I realized when my attitude took a dive for the negative. It was this afternoon when I was hungry and realized I needed to be careful what I ate or I wouldn't leave myself enough calories for dinner. I was scared of going over for the day and sabotoging myself, but I was truly hungry. I made myself a light snack and it was good for an hour or so. Then I started to feel a little bummed again, but I couldn't put my finger on why.

My husband grilled a yummy dinner with chicken and some beef steaks, adding zucchini, yellow squash, bell peppers and onions on the side grilled in his grill basket. It was so good and I enjoyed every bite!

But my attitude didn't get any better. I voiced to him that I was worried I ate too much for my weigh-in tomorrow. He suggested I go for another walk, but I really didn't want to. I already worked out today and it would mean taking a second shower and not getting some things done around here (like blogging out my feelings and researching why I was bummed).

I took a minute of privacy in my bedroom to really think about where in my day did my attitude go from bright and cheery to sad. I thought about a relationship issue that was bothering me earlier this week, and my mom starting chemo on Monday, or my brother in the hospital with an issue related to his cancer, or my preteens who have bad attitudes, but none of these things seemed to be the reason for my sad emotions. They all have their places in my life right now and can each bring sadness, but none of them seemed to resonate with what I was feeling.

Suddenly I remembered hearing about mourning the loss of food. Aha. That hit home with my emotions. So, I took myself to the internet and searched some articles on the subject. There wasn't a whole lot out there, or I didn't find it all. If you're interested you can read some of what I found here , here and here.

It sounds so dramatic, but I'm sure that's what my problem was. As I've been refocusing I've been realizing that there are certain foods I need to stay away from during the weight loss part of my journey.

I had also just finished reading a book my Jillian Michaels (more on that later) that laid out a very strict eating plan to see quick weight loss and it left me reeling thinking I'll never be able to lose the weight, because I'll never be able to live like that.

I still feel that I can have anything in moderation, once in a while, but I know that there are foods that will no longer be a regular part of my diet. For some strange reason this made me sad for a bit.

Journaling this all out on my blog has helped the feelings to dissipate and I'm doing better now. Looking back over what I wrote I'm seeing some things that may have had more of a part to play in my mourning of food than I originally suspected.

Have any of you been through this in your weight loss journeys? I'd love to hear from you.