Part 2: The Wisdom in Twos, One at a Time

My instinct to grab another orange didn't come from hunger.  It had just tasted really good.  Why do I seek taste stimulation?  I learned last week that I have a tendency to eat in order to help me concentrate.  Since I wasn’t feeling hungry after the orange, my instinct to “have another” was not about eating food to satisfy hunger.  I apparently felt a need to feel an extra boost of "good". 

I had just been journaling.  This protocol, and the opportunity it gives me to explore my “real feelings” rather than masking them in any way with food drives me to write...obviously.  I had been exploring my life and past with my new and different perspective.  And, although truly enlightening, rummaging through my past to try and figure stuff out isn't always comfortable.

I had stopped writing because I had felt hunger—my first today.  I had eaten, and really enjoyed the taste of, my orange.

Within one minute, my mind/body sensory experience had moved from uncomfortable to DELICIOUS.  Emotionally, that felt refreshing.  “Delicious” is way more pleasant than “uncomfortable”.  That had made me want another orange.  At that moment, I was looking for happiness in food.  Ha!  Busted! 

Uncomfortable realization: My happiness needs to come from somewhere else. I need to deal with emotional discomfort better.  It's funny, because I typically eat so "healthily" (relative term), and I typically would have made a similar food-type choice.  Even if I were not on the HCG protocol, I typically would still have reached for a piece of fruit under these exact conditions.  Although I am eating way less, I am really enjoying my food and my hunger is completely satisfied—in fact, I often don’t feel like eating all 500 calories. 

The protocol is truly not making me feel “repressed”—it is making me feel more focused.  But, I definitely know now that I absolutely have been eating to feel happy because of my instincts with an orange. 

My “orange experience” provided me with another uncomfortable realization—I emotionally eat.  But this time, I'm not going to eat make me feel better.  I'm going to fix it.