I Feel Skinny Inside 02 

Skinny inside is how I felt after my first 2-day back-to-back cleanse. What’s that? Well, that’s a type of fast, though not as strict as a water-only fast, but still I don’t eat – at least not the way I used to eat.  The 2-day back-to-back fast is teaching my body-brain just how little it really needs on a daily basis to maintain good health.

Yeah. The cleansing fasts and the reduced calories I’ve been consuming while on my weight-loss journey are teaching me  how much I’ve been over eating.

Over-eating. Over-indulging. Stuffing and then over-stuffing.

A friend recently confessed to me: “I eat to stuff down my emotions.” How many times have I heard/read that expression? How many times have I said that to myself, and dared not speak the words to someone else?  And what does it mean?

For me it means eating until the physical sensation of being full overwhelms the emotional sensation that started the eating. When I do the cleansing fasts, I learn what makes me want to eat.

During my first month of practicing consuming low cal, nutritionally balanced meals I wrote down four emotions that make me want to eat.  It’s almost a poem.

I eat when I’m disappointed

Eat when I feel let down

Eat when I self loathe

Eat when I’m all alone

To change those eating habits I have to find new, healthier ways of dealing with those emotions.  I need help managing my eating habits while I learn those new ways. That’s where my weight-loss plan comes in and takes over. Yes, takes over.  I’ve given my eating habits over to a plan devised by someone else. I’ve said I can’t do this on my own. I don’t know enough about nutrition and the complexities of the human body to ensure I get a balanced diet while I change my stuffing ways.

I am a pescatarian vegetarian (for lack of a better word), whole foods fanatic (read the recipes on this blog to get an idea of how I’ve been eating), and I love my own cooking.  After years of insisting that I eat healthy, and denying my sugar and simple carb binges, and getting fatter and fatter and fatter, I finally turned my eating plan over to a weight-management plan and started losing weight and feeling great.