No graze days of summer

May - what a great month! It was, well, less hot; I made my very first bagels ever; and "Mindfulness in May" was keeping my fingers out of the proverbial cookie jar. Then came June. I can't walk to the mailbox without breaking a sweat; I still love my bagels; but I can't keep my grubby little fingers out of anything! What happened?

Let's see. I had some rules there somewhere. They were:

1. Meditate
2. Enjoy one meal in the company of someone else
   
3. Slow down while eating
4. No multi-tasking while eating
5. Sit down while eating

So "meditation" - check. I don't meditate every day, but almost. "Enjoy one meal in the company of someone else" - check. Actually it's more like 2 meals a day now and I'm loving it! "Slow down" - check. No stuffing my face on the run. "No multi-tasking" - check. Not perfect, but for the most part, it's just me and the food. If I'm eating by myself, I might grab my laptop for a little blog reading. "Sit down when I eat" - ch - Ahh! that's it! I totally slipped back into my old habit of grazing my way through the afternoon (or morning, or evening). Ugh! 

I've had a lot of success in the last year as I focus on mindfulness in my daily life, but this whole grazing thing has really latched on. There are a lot of years of habit ingrained in these nibble-grabbing little fingers. What makes things worse is that 1) all this grazing makes my digestive disorder worse - I mean, I'm supposed to be allowing my system to heal, not overloading it; and 2) after a day of grazing (and subsequent tummy aches), I'm upset with myself for jeopardizing my recovery! Geez, Heather, get with the program already! 

But something about May kept me accountable, and I'm betting it's the fact that I had to fess up each Friday. So, enough is enough. We're taking this show back on the road! I'm calling it the "No Graze Days of Summer." There's only one rule and it's pretty straight forward:

Rule: Sit down when I eat.

That's it. Of course that means, no nibbles while I'm cooking, no nibbles while standing in front of the fridge trying to figure out what to really eat for dinner, and no nibbles as I'm scraping leftovers into tupperware. Yep! No nibbles if I'm not sitting down. I suppose I could take my chair to the fridge and sit down while doing these things, but I'm guessing that somewhere in the effort of getting the chair, I've broken the grazing hypnosis and no longer want that nibble. Please tell me I'm not the only one that eats like this...

Of course, the point here is not to be perfect (I'm not going to wig out if I lick a spoon), but rather to establish new, sustainable, healthy habits of eating (and reinforce my healing tummy in the process). I proved I could do it before and, dang it, I can do it again - for good!

If you'd like to join me, I'd love the company. If you're all challenged out, the moral support would be awesome. Let's do this - the No Graze Days of Summer begins!

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