July is for Healing

As we enter August, I want to take a moment to journal down my thoughts from July.

July was a month of patience and stress management.

It was also a time of slow recovery for my mind and body. I became more diligent with food journaling; I can't remember when's the last time I jotted down my food intake, followed daily calorie requirements, weighed myself and track my water volume. I believe I had been so resistant to these small but important action steps in my weight loss journey because I did not want to hold myself accountable for the results. I wanted to leave room for blame:
1. The external stressors that caused the need (and not want) for me to binge eat/drink;
2. I have eaten healthy food but my body just isn't built for weight loss;
3. My metabolism is slowing down as I'm aging;
4. I don't mind that I'm not as lean as I want to be (this is a big self lie);
5. Uncomfortable body symptoms are present because I'm sick and not because I caused it to be and the list goes on, you get the idea of how defensive I was.

To be honest, I think it is alright that I was like that. Looking back and reflecting, I was not ready to fully step into the role who's responsible for change. I was preoccupied with other sorts of healing and that comfort of denial was what I needed in my life then. Had I forced myself to be one hundred percent in on changing everything for good all at once, I certainly would have burnt out. Burn outs are not good speaking from first hand experience. They undo all the hard work I have done to make good habits stick.

So here we are, one month in with MyFitnessPal. What struck me the most was how deprived my diet was when it comes to carbohydrate, sugar and fiber and how excessive my consumption was in protein and fats. I have always thought I was doing so well with maintaining a healthy diet. Then as I flipped back through years of food photos I've taken, it shocked me just how unhealthy my diet actually was. I ate plenty of easy to access processed food, fried food (fries are frequent companions), consumed lots of fatty protein (wagyu, pork belly, mala hotpot, lard...), drank heavily almost every month and certainly ate too much/too little at the wrong times. This realization was a light bulb moment, a major contributor to how well I feel now one month into change:
1. I can smell again, fully, and it does not take immense effort to breathe in the scent of the world around me;
2. My pressured ears, hard to swallow, breathing difficulty are body signals shouting to me that I have taken in the wrong food, too much food, starved myself for too long or consumed at the wrong time;
3. The 80/20 golden rule is not a hype. I can enjoy anything I want 20% of the time as long as I am committed to consuming whole foods 80% of the time.
4. Moving my body is in direct proportion to how much I can eat that day. If I move less, my body can't process as much food. If I moved around plenty, I have to feed myself more. Accurate mindful listening comes from practice but I'm starting to pick up queues on how much or when I should be eating.
5. My body can heal. She is healing. She heals the most when I am sleeping. So I make it a mission to fall asleep before midnight everyday.

Look, my body is in no way at her peak condition. In my honest opinion, I believe she is still quite inflamed. However, she is recovering. I am grateful to be able to participate fully in this recovery process and I carry this beautiful vessel with pride everyday.