Playing in my head...

I just had a lovely lunch with my boss/mentor and her 13-month-old boy. I had a vegetarian sandwich, because it was what I wanted. The intuitive eating voice in my head was proud of myself for getting what I wanted, and was grooving on the yummy mushrooms and melted cheese and various veggies. It also warned me that this was a very yummy sandwich but not much in the "stick with you" department, so I was thinking ahead to what/whether I had anything to snack on later in the day. All very sane and healthy (my definition of healthy, not corrupt "healthy=dieting").

But then there was the little diet devil on my shoulder telling me to feel guilty for all the yummy cheese (even though I had no meat, and very little bread!), and the dessert-wanting voice, not bad in herself -- wanting dessert is A-OK with me, or at least I want to get to the point where it is! -- but since the diet devil thinks dessert is bad, the dessert-wanting voice caved to the pressure and twisted herself in knots, arguing in a burst of spurious logic and ugly old definitions of virtue that "since I'd had a vegetarian lunch, it was OK to have ice cream now." If I'm going to have ice cream, I'd like to decide to because I want it, and it sounds good to my tummy/mouth/body - not because I've "earned" it by some bizarre deprivation-world logic. Sigh. But hey - the shake was quite tasty! And it did, in fact, settle well in my vegetable-occupied tummy landscape. So that's good, anyway.

I wish I hadn't had those couple of clutter-y diet thoughts. But really, I need to see that there's a lot more intuitive eating WIN than FAIL in today's lunch: I ate what I wanted to eat, instead of eating more/differently than I wanted in fear of future hunger, I got dessert because it sounded good but I also knew it would settle well and there was room in my tummy, etc. A couple of the messages my brain has on auto-play are bad, but the decisions made were right and in tune.

End of an era...

Well, it's the end of a massively important era in my Fat Acceptance life. Last night was my last night in the body positive/fat acceptance/HAES support group I've attended every Wednesday evening for - gosh, like 5 years or something.

It's given me a lot. Moral support, companionship, some good friends, lots and lots of "really? I'm not the only one who feels like this?" moments, some wonderful, positive/supportive voices in my head to call on when the old demon-voices from culture/childhood/etc. try to pop in and rule me, and so much more. It was a hard decision to leave. But I know it was the right one. I'm looking forward to choosing what I want to do on Wednesday nights, and to "leaving the nest" so to speak. The most surprising feeling I had on leaving was realizing that in a way, leaving was an affirmation. As in, "I'm feeling OK enough in my life that I can comfortably walk away from this major source of support I've really needed for so long." After 5 years of training wheels, I'm ready to try the two-wheeler all on my own!

Of course, I'm not really on my own. The Fatstudies List, the Notes from the Fatosphere feed, the great friends and mentors I have made in the FA community, the NAAFA convention coming up in August - all of these connections and support systems are still in my life, and I'm feeling very aware of how grateful I am to have found them.

Here's to graduating to a two-wheeler!