Unfooding myself

A couple of posts ago I wrote about choices. I've been thinking a lot about my choices lately. And with choices comes letting go of limits I've put on myself.

For years I've wanted to lose 10 pounds. I'm not counting pregnancy and post pregnancy weight here, just the basic weight that I am.

I hover around 140. I'm 5 foot 6 inches. I think that I would look and feel better if I could hover around 130. 125 would be even better, but I'd be happy if I could get that damn 10 pounds off as it seems like they are all right in the middle of body.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my body shape. I'm probably rare in that my goals are actually attainable, but for some reason, I simply can't get there. It's so close and yet, for the past 10-ish years, I've never managed to get down there.

I've gotten close. Sometimes I'm really good about eating right and exercising for a couple of weeks and I get down to 135. I'm not going to sit here and say that I've tried really really hard, counted calories, jogged, lifted weights, yoga-ed, spinned, boxed, tai chi-ed, you-name-it-ed. No, the truth is, I haven't tried that hard. The truth is, if I had tried that hard, I could probably lose that little bit of weight.

So why haven't I?

I really and truly don't know, but my brain keeps coming to this. Maybe I simply don't want to.

Maybe I'm happy with myself the way I am, gut and all.

Wait, I better check my birth certificate. Am I really an American woman?

It simply can't be! What? I'm not supermodel skinny! Can I be happy with my body even though it isn't perfect? Yes. I can. Because I choose to.

So, yeah.

The headline. Unfooding myself. Let me get to that before I start telling you how wonderful I think the rest of my imperfections are. (Tongue firmly planted in cheek.)

I'm a member on Sandra Dodd's Yahoo group called Always Learning. It's an unschooling listserv. I joined it a while back when I had heard about unschooling and was curious.

I wrote to the group last week and asked them about unfooding. I got some killer advice. One woman said she likes to keep a bowl of Dove chocolates in her kitchen so she can have it any time she wants it. I'm totally going to start doing that.

Another woman said she doesn't think of desserts as separate. They go on the plate along with the rest of the meal. I made brownies over the weekend and when I served Annika dinner the other night, I gave her the brownie along with her meal. She ate that first, but she ate the rest of her dinner too.

The point is, I have choices. And I'm going to stop putting ridiculous limits on myself. It's stupid to constantly tell yourself that that you can't have chocolate because you want to lose 10 pounds. But then after you have limited yourself for several weeks you buy a box of chocolate cookies and eat the whole box on the way home from the store and blame it on PMS.

Yeah, I've done that.

More than once.

Last week when I went shopping. I bought a box of cookies. I didn't eat it on the way home. But over the course of the next three days, Annika and I (mostly I) ate them all. I didn't feel guilty about it. I ate them whenever I wanted to. I did not save any for Toyin and I'm not even sure he knew they were in the pantry. (Sorry Toyin).

Then when they were gone. I made brownies. We ate them all over the weekend. And you know what? I don't want any more chocolate.

I can have it whenever I want it. I can. And I will.

Oh, and I weighed myself this morning.

135.