Day 21- Homework

It's been one of those days where things have alternated between difficult and easy. I've had a long and busy day at work resulting in me being all over the place with my packs. I've done well with my water though. As part of my job I took someone to McDonalds and sat there while they ate a large meal and a McFlurry. I then picked up some McDonalds later on for the mister and drove home with it with the smell taking over the car and driving me crazy!

An interesting thing happened when I went to McDonalds for the second time. It was late, I was hungry and feeling poorly, and I was sat at the drive through waiting to order, looking at the lovely photographs of the burgers and, well, salivating. I really really wanted a burger and told myself that having a burger without the bun would not knock me out of ketosis, which is true. Then another part of me told myself that actually what would happen if I let myself do that was that I would order several burgers and eat them, buns and all. Then another part of me decided that if I did eat lots of food right now, my body would probably not thank me for it and I'd feel really rough the next day, not to mention blowing my goal for 100 days of abstinence. I decided to not have the burgers.

This situation corresponds nicely with the homework for this week. This week was all about different messages we had as young children about food and how those influence our decisions now. I remember some interesting stuff which is a bit personal for an online blog. The homework talked about using different parts of us to make decisions: parent, child and adult mental states. So, using my earlier example, the child in me wanted the burgers and the parent part of me told me I'd have to eat them in secret so others wouldn't find me disgusting because of course I wouldn't just have one because I'm not capable of controlling myself. The adult in me decided that although I wanted the burgers, I want to complete my goals more. It's a very interesting way of dissecting your thoughts to promote better decision making.

The idea behind looking at this is of course to analyse why I make certain decisions which gives me an advantage when those situations come up again. I think it's going to take a lot of work to understand how these mind states work and how to put the adult mind state in the driving seat when it comes to food, but it feels like another eureka moment for me.