Cassie's first poast

Well hello! This is my first post!

I'm going to cut to the chase here.
I've been pretty obese my entire life. My entire life I've tried diets and programs and shakes and bars.

None of them work.

I've realized that I need a lifestyle change.

I'm currently reading this book that my dad gave to me, called Eating Awareness Training.

It gives me things to do to help me realize that my body is a natural thing. It has its own system, along with timers, alerts that tell you that it's had enough or it wants more, and it has feelings.

Somehow during the process of my life, my mind took control of my body and substituted a system that was learned through habits of my parents and people around me.

Thus, my mind taught me how to ignore my body's signals and told me that it's okay to eat when I'm not hungry. It told me to find the closest parking space because my 'foot hurt'. It told me that I should be ashamed of my body, but then told me that if I eat this cake I should feel temporarily better.

This book is training me to unlearn all of my bad eating habits, and listen to what my body needs.

I've gotten into habits of eating breakfast as soon as I wake up. Even if I'm not hungry. Sure you needs the energy, but why eat if your body tells you that it doesn't want anything, just for the sake of eating?
Another habit was finishing what's on my plate- to make matters worse, the average plate size has increased to about double in size(I'm afraid I don't remember where I heart that from, but I read it on a blog where they quoted a reliable source, so I trust them).
The whole, "You can have dessert once you finish all of your dinner; you can't leave the house without eating something; the children in Africa are starving" bit that I was 'fed' when I was younger should never be applied to anyone. This was one of the things that taught me to ignore my body's signals and hints and to do what I was told. Therefore setting up probably one of the worst habits.

The one thing I've learned from reading this book that has helped me the most, is to not eat when I'm not hungry, and not to judge myself when I eat when I'm not supposed to.

It sounds simple enough, yeah?

It takes a decent amount of willpower I suppose to keep from eating when I've grown to eating as a way to keep from getting bored, and to avoid getting stressed. It's comforting.

To say to yourself that you're going to have to deal with being uncomfortable for a while until it passes is a hard thing to do.

It's an addiction. A habit. An eating disorder. Unhealthy.

But I found in the last week that not eating when I wasn't hungry really helped me realize that I'm not as hungry as I used to think I was.

For instance, I woke up around 8am this morning. I asked myself if I was hungry for breakfast, and said no. It's now around 12pm, and I'm just beginning to feel like I should get something in my stomach.

On a regular day by this time, I probably would have had three cups of tea, a few pieces of toast, some eggs, maybe some cereal, and I'd probably try to find something else to snack on. And then by this time I'd probably feel like such shit because my stomach would be weighed down by all this stuff, and then I'd feel like "it's lunch time" so I'd have to eat again.

It feels so amazing to respond to my body and how it's feeling.

I don't normally eat unhealthy things but in the past few months I've gotten into the habit of buying chocolate whenever I felt like eating it. And you know how that goes. I love chocolate.

That's one thing I have to work on.

Oh, by the way.
I weighed myself around 3 days ago. I was: 230.8

I weighed myself today before I took a shower, and I was: 231.0
on the nose.

I know that the whole womanly cycle thing messes with weight, which is a rough thing to deal with when all of the sudden one week you've gained 3 lbs out of nowhere, but to take that into account is important I guess.

I went out to lunch with my mom yesterday and ate more than I was used to, so that probably contributed to this.

I am so motivated and so ready to do this.

I want to live in the body I was meant to have. I want to have a natural shape and I want to be able to do something with all this built up energy I seem to have. Weighing this much is keeping me from doing so many things, due to self-consciousness or just not physically being able to.

I'm readyyy