The left hand does what the left hand has to do
I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting. What I'm trying to do is not eat after 8 pm at night and then not again until noon the next day, except for once a week when I can do a refeed/free eating. I'm experimenting with doing a super light calorie day on Mondays, too. And, as usual, I try to avoid all flour and sugar and food not made of food.
So what this looks like is on Monday I eat maybe 900 calories, on Tuesday I eat more like 1600, but only between the windows of noon to eight. A typical day's eating might be a 500 calorie leftover for lunch (curry with rice and fish is what I just ate, for example, leftover from dinner) and a snack might be a cut up apple or a bowl of cherries, and dinner might be a 600 calorie SunBasket from the Paleo menu, and I might have a 100 calorie cookie at some point and 100 calories of almonds at some point... it's fine. I eat when I'm hungry after noon and before 8. But after 8 I try not to snack (I tended to eat crackers then) and on days when I'm not eating until noon I don't have breakfast, either.
What I've discovered is that I need breakfast on Wednesdays with this model. In fact, I'm super fine doing a sharp limit on food on Monday, and super fine doing a sharp limit on eating windows on Tuesday, but Wednesday morning I wake up hungry. I can get my workout in first, but then I MUST eat. And here's what that looks like.
The first Wednesday I did this I had a doctor's appointment early. It was right after we returned from camping and we didn't have much food in the house, so I stopped at the store on my way home to pick up some groceries. I texted my guys to ask what they needed. Small Boy needed sandwich bread. So I headed over to the bread section and saw.... (insert duh duh DUM music here) SOUR DOUGH BREAD. My nemesis, my love, my addiction. Warm, morning fresh sour dough bread. And - hold your applause - I did NOT buy it. I used grit and resolve to walk away. I wasn't going to eat until noon, I thought. I certainly wasn't going to go home and eat sour dough bread. Nope, not this fat lady. So I bought my super healthy foods and I went home and started to put them away. And, as I put the sandwich bread in the bread drawer, I saw, MAGICALLY APPEARING, a half loaf of sour dough bread. Stunned, I watched in a sort of confused out of body experience as my left hand grabbed it, opened it up to discover it was pre-sliced on one end in a slice just the size of the toaster, and I grabbed it (again, with my left hand) and put it in the toaster. Then I bargained "okay, I'll let myself have one bite." But, of course, that's not what happened. I scarfed that piece of bread down exactly the same way my dog would have done if she'd been starved for a few days. (I later discovered that Small Boy's boyfriend had brought it over when he made dinner for Small Boy while we were camping. But, seriously, that thing appeared like a magic wish granted to me!)
The next Wednesday I had a shorter but similar thing happen. It was 7:30 and my husband was making breakfast and I had no intention of eating until noon. But he had out the fruit salad and I watched, again, in a sort of "what did I just do?!?" kind of way as my LEFT HAND reached out and snagged a delicious piece of fruit and put it in my mouth. I am right handed.
So I sat down to meditate on this, and I'm really thinking that my right brain, my feeling brain, is using the left hand it controls to take care of my body. It's vetoing letting me get too hungry. It's weird to talk about half of me as "it", but it feels like I'm a rider on an animal and the animal just took off on a bolt to the barn.
A similar thing happened yesterday. I was sitting at my desk working and noticed that my left hand was mindlessly rubbing my right knee. I stopped to check in and realized that my right knee was hurting. I honestly hadn't been paying attention. I went and got my ice pack.
Between mindfulness training and living with a labrador retriever, I feel like I'm getting better at listening to and honoring what my right brain has to say to me.
I have one more story like this. I was at a conference in Las Vegas recently. I still did my morning meditation and yoga each day in my hotel room. One of the mornings I was checking in with my body, just sort of leaning in to listen just like I would if I wanted to check in to see how my dog is doing. I scanned up my body from my feet upwards, and then checked in on my emotional well-being. And the weirdest thing happened. A tear started falling down from my left eye, just rolling down my cheek. My body HATED being in an air-conditioned 17th floor hotel room, sleeping alone, being indoors all day sitting. I was there for a really cerebral reason and my body's opinion wouldn't normally have been asked about this, but since I *DID* ask, it was telling me. I'm not overjoyed to hear that my right brain has a vastly different agenda than my left brain, but I *am* happy to be able to spot it rather than feel like I'm undermining myself somehow. It's all me, and I will do what I have to do. I can work with these parameters.
I've made Wednesdays a refeed day now. ;-)
So what this looks like is on Monday I eat maybe 900 calories, on Tuesday I eat more like 1600, but only between the windows of noon to eight. A typical day's eating might be a 500 calorie leftover for lunch (curry with rice and fish is what I just ate, for example, leftover from dinner) and a snack might be a cut up apple or a bowl of cherries, and dinner might be a 600 calorie SunBasket from the Paleo menu, and I might have a 100 calorie cookie at some point and 100 calories of almonds at some point... it's fine. I eat when I'm hungry after noon and before 8. But after 8 I try not to snack (I tended to eat crackers then) and on days when I'm not eating until noon I don't have breakfast, either.
What I've discovered is that I need breakfast on Wednesdays with this model. In fact, I'm super fine doing a sharp limit on food on Monday, and super fine doing a sharp limit on eating windows on Tuesday, but Wednesday morning I wake up hungry. I can get my workout in first, but then I MUST eat. And here's what that looks like.
The first Wednesday I did this I had a doctor's appointment early. It was right after we returned from camping and we didn't have much food in the house, so I stopped at the store on my way home to pick up some groceries. I texted my guys to ask what they needed. Small Boy needed sandwich bread. So I headed over to the bread section and saw.... (insert duh duh DUM music here) SOUR DOUGH BREAD. My nemesis, my love, my addiction. Warm, morning fresh sour dough bread. And - hold your applause - I did NOT buy it. I used grit and resolve to walk away. I wasn't going to eat until noon, I thought. I certainly wasn't going to go home and eat sour dough bread. Nope, not this fat lady. So I bought my super healthy foods and I went home and started to put them away. And, as I put the sandwich bread in the bread drawer, I saw, MAGICALLY APPEARING, a half loaf of sour dough bread. Stunned, I watched in a sort of confused out of body experience as my left hand grabbed it, opened it up to discover it was pre-sliced on one end in a slice just the size of the toaster, and I grabbed it (again, with my left hand) and put it in the toaster. Then I bargained "okay, I'll let myself have one bite." But, of course, that's not what happened. I scarfed that piece of bread down exactly the same way my dog would have done if she'd been starved for a few days. (I later discovered that Small Boy's boyfriend had brought it over when he made dinner for Small Boy while we were camping. But, seriously, that thing appeared like a magic wish granted to me!)
The next Wednesday I had a shorter but similar thing happen. It was 7:30 and my husband was making breakfast and I had no intention of eating until noon. But he had out the fruit salad and I watched, again, in a sort of "what did I just do?!?" kind of way as my LEFT HAND reached out and snagged a delicious piece of fruit and put it in my mouth. I am right handed.
So I sat down to meditate on this, and I'm really thinking that my right brain, my feeling brain, is using the left hand it controls to take care of my body. It's vetoing letting me get too hungry. It's weird to talk about half of me as "it", but it feels like I'm a rider on an animal and the animal just took off on a bolt to the barn.
A similar thing happened yesterday. I was sitting at my desk working and noticed that my left hand was mindlessly rubbing my right knee. I stopped to check in and realized that my right knee was hurting. I honestly hadn't been paying attention. I went and got my ice pack.
Between mindfulness training and living with a labrador retriever, I feel like I'm getting better at listening to and honoring what my right brain has to say to me.
I have one more story like this. I was at a conference in Las Vegas recently. I still did my morning meditation and yoga each day in my hotel room. One of the mornings I was checking in with my body, just sort of leaning in to listen just like I would if I wanted to check in to see how my dog is doing. I scanned up my body from my feet upwards, and then checked in on my emotional well-being. And the weirdest thing happened. A tear started falling down from my left eye, just rolling down my cheek. My body HATED being in an air-conditioned 17th floor hotel room, sleeping alone, being indoors all day sitting. I was there for a really cerebral reason and my body's opinion wouldn't normally have been asked about this, but since I *DID* ask, it was telling me. I'm not overjoyed to hear that my right brain has a vastly different agenda than my left brain, but I *am* happy to be able to spot it rather than feel like I'm undermining myself somehow. It's all me, and I will do what I have to do. I can work with these parameters.
I've made Wednesdays a refeed day now. ;-)