My Cup Runneth Over
This is what January looks like. As I pulled my second cup of coffee out of the Keurig this morning, I realized what I was looking at is exactly how I feel.
Here’s the thing: This cup is too small. I know this. I was reminded of it, two and a half hours ago, when I had my first cup of coffee … in this cup! When I pulled it out of the cupboard, I said to myself, this is the cup that doesn’t hold a full 12 ounces of coffee with creamer. But then I started second guessing. And instead of playing it safe, I selected the 12 ounce button. Is it laziness? Stupidity? Is this just what I’ve been trained to do?
Maybe I’ve been conditioned to let my cup run over. Metaphorically, we women do it all the time.
I could excuse myself for that first cup, after all, I was still half asleep, but what excuse do I have now?
I think with the first cup, routine overtook reason. I just grabbed the first one I saw. And even with its known shortcomings, I stuck with it. Because that was the cup I had committed to.
So I’m left to clean up the mess and slurp the coffee without picking up the cup until it’s at a safe point for me to drink like a normal person.
The overflowing cup is a great metaphor for how I’m feeling this week. Mothering (two out of three sick children) and writing and marketing has left me feeling like the too small coffee cup. Not enough to contain everything coming at me. And I’m excited but also fried. So I let things slide, like housework and bike rides. I don’t sleep as well as I need to. I’m not as patient or as kind or as contained as I normally am. I need a nap, but my mind is racing.
On the plus side, I realize that I am spending less and less time worrying about my body.
When I first gave up dieting, that was all I thought about. It was almost still like dieting and that phase you enter when you’ve been good, really good, with your diet for a while and you’ve been restricting for enough time that your survival mechanism kicks in and your mind now wants to remind you — needs to remind you — dammit, you need to eat!
Lately, I’ve been having this thought that maybe the weight gain has come to an end and I am starting to level out. My appetite hasn’t changed and my fitness hasn’t changed. I eat when I’m hungry. I play the neutral detective when I detect hunger and then decide what it is I need or want to eat, and I don’t overthink it (too much, at least not as much as I did in the beginning). I stop when I’ve had enough and again don’t overthink it too much. I think this is a good place for me. I’m sort of in a zen phase, just repeating the process.
I even had breakfast at an actual restaurant Tuesday, an early lunch technically, since I had already had one breakfast. When I was done, I actually wished there had been more food. In my past life, eating at a restaurant for breakfast or lunch felt like a blowout, wasting calories that should be saved for nighttime when the real cravings took over. Eating out for breakfast or lunch would make me feel guilty and ashamed for the rest of the day because of the indulgence and presume extra calories. Of course, I would then vow to eat like a bird for dinner to make up for it, and I almost certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t remember what I had for dinner Tuesday, but I sure as hell wasn’t restricting because of that brunch. In fact, when I ate it all up — a veggie omelet and a biscuit — I wasn’t feeling guilty. I was wishing I had one more biscuit. Maybe I should have asked for it, the really attuned intuitive eater might have, but I let it go and figured I could get something else later. I guess this is intuitive eating. Or intuitive eating right now. Or just me right now. I’m ok with it. Which I think is a sign of progress. Or that I’m just too busy with other stuff.
The big question is which cup will I use for my afternoon coffee?