Curiouser and Curiouser

Exercise is bringing all sorts of interesting information into my life… some annoying, some validating…

I’ll start with the validating stuff:  no wonder I have hated working out for so many years!  I was killing myself (not literally… well… maybe…).  I used the heart rate monitor thingy to check my heart rate against what the workout felt like.  What was my heart rate when I felt that I was working very hard?  What was my heart rate when I was cooling down/warming up?  etc…   Holy cripes!  No wonder my workouts have felt like such torture (in previous years)!!!  I was running my heart rate very high, apparently… something like 100% (or more) for my age.  Sheesh. 

What do you know?  My body was sending me EXACTLY the right signals.  Pushing my body too hard felt like crap.  Go figure.  What is a bit scary is that in the few workouts I watched these numbers, I was doing a far more gentle workout than I ever allowed myself in my exercise obsessed (and thin obsessed) years.  I count myself lucky that I didn’t hurt myself more than I did in my over-exercising years.  At the same time, I am really happy to have reinforced the lesson that I can trust my body.  My body knows what it’s doing!  And, I am celebrating the fact that I now have more information on how to exercise in a way that isn’t abusive to my body.

The annoying bit is how since I started exercising, I seem to have food on the mind far more often even though I have taken care to eat when I’m hungry, eat until I’m satisfied and eat what my body really wants.  I wonder if the intrusive thoughts of food have something to do with the way I used to eat when I exercised…  I used to try to eat as little as possible when exercising to try to maximize weight loss.  I wonder if my body is having its own flashbacks to restriction…?  I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed the time off from being food obsessed that came with intuitive eating and an HAES way of life and I’m fairly annoyed that I’m dealing with near constant thoughts of food when I’m not restricting in any way.  Argh.  So, I will try to be patient.  Perhaps, in time, my body will realize that even though I have become more physically active that I am going to continue to nourish myself.   

All these food thoughts remind me of the days when I was very thinness obsessed and I realized that the easiest way for me to lose weight was to not exercise.  Exercising caused more appetite and made it harder to restrict.  All the old thoughts are coming out of the woodwork.  The nice bit is that I don’t put any stock in these thoughts.  I have found ways to make exercise FUN.  In fact, I don’t think of it as “exercise”… I think of it as going to have FUN.  It’s awesome.  If exercising makes me happier and healthier, but fatter – so be it.  😉  I’ve spent enough years trying to LOOK healthy (by chasing thinness), when in fact I was compromising my health in so many ways.  For example… I’m sure most of ya’all have seen that study floating around the fat-o-sphere about how women are pursuing thinness to the detriment of their health and how many of these women claim to pursue health, but hardly eaet any fruits or veggies.  It’s like someone read my mind from back in the day.  I always secretly wondered how my efforts towards thinness were supposed to be so healthy when I didn’t eat a balanced diet and merely focused on cutting calories as much as I possibly could.  I wish I would’ve trusted myself back then… but, I’m grateful that I at least figured it out eventually.  No one is born knowing everything.  😉

Have any of your reader folks been through this in your own IE and/or HAES efforts… this intrusive thoughts of food thing even when you’re eating exactly what you want when hungry after starting exercising? 

–AngryGrayRainbows

Update:

AHA!  I thnk I may have figured out some of the new and near constant intrusive food thoughts!  I’ve been actually hungry.  😉  However, I am not particularly good at recognizing hunger and it took me a few days to realize this was what was actually going on.  It was more a matter of not being used to being that hungry, so not expecting myself to be that hungry, so not being particularly attuned to the hunger signals – hence the body sending me extra signals to tell me to eat already! 

I discovered this by doing a body scan when those thoughts of food started to pop up.  Well… what do ya know?  Tummy was rumbling… felt hungry… felt lethargic… definite hunger.  🙂  So, I’ve been eating more and paying attention to my hunger signals more… and viola!  Constant food thoughts have eased hugely.  Whoo hoooo!