Okay, technically it's Thursday, one hour past the deadline I had imposed on myself to post my week's results, but I did get up at 4 A.M. the day before to run 4 miles. So, I think I have a good excuse for falling asleep with one of my boys and stumbling out of bed just now.

My first week of meeting my 2013 goals went well. I give myself an A for effort. My main aim was to record what I ate, how I felt, and my hunger level for every meal and snack. Most importantly, whether I waited several minutes before eating, even when my hunger felt acute. And, for the most part I did do that. Because I did that, I was able on probably five occasions to put dessert back in the fridge. This pause really made me calm down before eating to switch on my consciousness while I eat so that it stops becoming an animalistic action of reactively eating the food, attacking it.

I also learned about myself, that I am somewhat addicted to sugar. Watching my reaction as I sat before various foods this week, the pull from sweet foods was twice as strong as any other food item. My mouth would begin watering and the discomfort at times felt acute. I could tell my dopamine was really firing away in response to the visual cues of dessert or even my kids' gummy vitamins. It made me realize I needed to curb my sugar intake.

In general, this commitment to pause before I ate, created a presence during meals and snacks so that I did not over eat (except for yesterday's dinner) and was able to decide ahead of time what and how much to eat (for example, sitting down to a meal with a friend). But, I did notice toward the end of the week (I'm on a Thursday - Wednesday schedule), my commitment was not as strong. I felt vulnerable to food's pull. So, last night I ended up eating the biggest meal of the week. In fact, my stomach is not feeling great now. As I was cleaning up after dinner, thoughts of food in the fridge began emerging, tempting me. And, I felt that familiar fear. Seems silly, right? Unless you are a binge eater or have an eating disorder. It's the fear of binging, of losing to the food and of the the self-judge coming down on me. So, for the first time, I turned the tables. I said to my self-judge, "So what if I binge?? I can eat the whole fridge if I want and I'd still be a good person. You don't get to judge me! You don't get to berate me!" And, the burden lifted quite a bit. I removed the guilt which then seemed to lift the fear. I went off to brush my teeth and head upstairs.

As for running/exercise, yay, I ran 4 days which was my goal. One of the runs was 8 miles! I have a March half marathon approaching, so I'm in training. Saturday will be a long run as well, hopefully. Stay tuned for that. I also met my goal of brushing my teeth every night before taking the kids up to bed and not coming back down to the kitchen. I was better at general body awareness (throughout the day) and being present earlier in the week, so I need to refocus on that. But, I did pretty much Tweet all I ate which is a great tool. It really does break the chain. And, when I felt the urge, tweeing it also seemed to help. It's like releasing a pressure valve. Finally, I did not make the time to meditate and stretch in the morning and evenings. So, that's another one I'll have to work on next week. I did manage to blog here Sunday and now, so thanks all! Onward!