First Observations

This is the first post in my new blog!  I'm pretty excited about this, guys.  I have high hopes for this blog, and high hopes for a healthy future.  I really want my life to be full of adventure.  I love to explore new places, meet new people, and search out wonderful things in the world to see.  My weight has held me back from that for a long time, and it's time for that to stop.

For example, I really do love to be outside.  I spent my whole childhood outside, and if I could I would spend every weekend hiking in the nearby state park or taking trips to beautiful natural places, but I don't because I'm not fit enough.  I'm in no shape to do hiking of any kind, and I don't like beaches because I'm so uncomfortable in swimsuits.  I've suffered from being overweight, but there's no reason it needs to continue.  I can observe my bad habits, and then understand how to change them.

I have rarely spent time being mindful of my food-related behaviors in the past, but recently I've really been observing how I act around food.  These are some of the things I've realized just over the past few days:

• When I crave something unhealthy to eat, it's all I want.  But often, if I have to go out of the house to get it, I will try as hard as I can to get someone to go with me, as if eating out with someone else legitimizes overeating and makes it okay.  
• I'm thrilled whenever I get time to myself because I can eat whatever I want without anybody seeing me do it.  I often seek out food when I feel like I'm less than someone else (example: in my photography class this week, I saw another girl's pictures and thought they were better than mine.  I was disappointed in myself because I would like to be a good photographer. For lunch after class I stopped by my old workplace and ate two of their leftover donuts).  And when I eat food alone, I tend to be pretty focused on eating it, rarely getting distracted by the tv or the internet.

Yesterday and today I've eaten a lot of cheap, fried drive-through food and right now I feel like crap.  I really feel drained and kind of apathetic.  If I didn't have plans tonight to go out with friends, I know that later I would probably start to feel lonely and then depressed and as if I'm always going to overeat.

I know that overeating makes me feel awful, and that eating whole, healthy foods makes me feel great.  I learned that last year.  I just need to make healthy eating a habit, and spend time reminding myself that I deserve to feel happier.  I'm going to pay attention to my behavior this week, and whenever I feel myself gravitating toward food out of emotion, to remind myself that overeating is only going to make me feel worse.  Relating to my example above, I really like the pictures I've taken so far in my photography class.  In fact, the background image on this blog is one I took in my university's greenhouse.  As long as I'm happy with my work and myself, that's all that matters.