Short story of what's been going on: Foggy brain. INCESSANT foggy brain. And since I've been talking about how the brain + food are more connected than we think, this foggy brain DOES NOT help on the food front.
I started about 3 weeks ago when, after I fought nerves teaching a yoga class (usually the nerves cease as soon as I start the class), and I went to a store right after and all I saw was the display of boxes on top of boxes of donuts. Beautiful, glazed maple donuts. I wanted to buy EVERY box and eat ALLOFTHEM. After feeling ZERO needs for anything 'bad' or bad habits in the past few months, this caught me off guard. I managed to hold off, keeping up my meditation to try to get my brain back on the straight and narrow. The next day? I felt myself being sad. Did I have anything to be sad about? Nope. And the rational part of my brain knew that I had nothing to particularly feel sad about, but I just did and I started to wonder what the hell was going on after MONTHS of feeling completely clear-headed. I even have a LIST of subjects I've wanted to write about on here about mental weight loss issues and haven't been able to formulate ONE thought into a clear post, which you may have noticed in the last couple weeks. I've still been meditating and eating well (albeit, struggling!) and since I felt like they were the 2 kingpins for me to mentally feel good, I couldn't understand why I couldn't get my head straight.
Now here's where a lot of you will probably roll your eyes and slam the computer shut (and again, I GET IT) But considering I've noticed this SAME pattern in my life MANY times and never saw the actual reason, I feel like this gave MYSELF (I'm not saying this is the case for anyone else) a bit of a reason.
So here goes ~> right when I was in the throws of trying to figure out why I was so off-kilter, one of my yoga teacher happened to post on his Facebook page that Mercury was in retrograde. Something I knew really absolutely NOTHING about, but that info about it had also come across my path back in January, when it was also going on and I was ALSO feeling 'foggy brained' and couldn't figure out why I couldn't get my feet under me and get my eating in order. (especially in January when I'm usually UNBELIEVABLY READY to eat ALL THE SALAD, ALL THE TIME!) So now I'm beginning to wonder if this could be a HUGE reason in understanding all of those OTHER moments in my life where I've felt 'out of control,' keep reaching for foods, but not really tasting any of them, but HOPING BEYOND HOPE that ONE OF THEM will be THE THING you're really 'wanting/needing,' so then you can finally feel satisfied and ready to go back to eating normal. Could it be that even when I was completely UNAWARE of this retrograde thing, that it was still affecting me?? I've said for YEARS that there are times when I can literally have 2 BITES of dessert, like cake or ice cream, and I am FINE. Other times? I can eat 8 cakes and 9 gallons of ice cream and STILL not feel like I've had enough. It is the ROOT of my 'satisfaction vs. deprevation' post. And on top of not feeling satisfied by ANYTHING I'm eating during these phases, we can also throw in the 'default setting' of just going back to craving all of my 'old habits' of unhealthy foods with the added 'bonus' of my brain not being able to shut off at the incessant YELLING of reminding me there are tortilla chips in the cabinet that just go SOWELL with melty cheese.
Spoiler alert: I had to ask Scott to HIDE the chips. HIDE. THE. CHIPS. Like a child. I had to tell him to give them to me ONLY when I need them for a recipe. But a month ago? The bag could have stared at me from the counter and I wouldn't have given them a second glance.
So I know that I know ZILCH about this whole Mercury thing and have only spent the last few weeks relentlessly Googling it to see if I could find any answers between food/the mind & this phenomenon. I haven't found much, but I can tell you this: Like I mentioned, I've been doing the EXACT same things the last few weeks (meditating daily, yoga, eating well) and I'm STILL dealing with this food battle and really having no understanding why, so I'm very interested in the correlation. Even more interesting since back in January I struggled for a similar 3-week time frame and come February, I got back to eating so well with NO brain noise and just felt completely calm and aware of all my food choices that I was almost shocked at how it felt to eat well at that time. And that I've DEFINITELY dealt with this EXACT same scenario ever so often through the years and I've always felt them come out of seemingly nowhere. I'll be curious to see what next week brings and plan on definitely writing a follow-up, given that that damn planet is supposed to go back to normal next week...HALLELUJAH.
And long story just getting increasingly longer, if this IS the cause, there is one thing I know I can do: PREPARE. (here are the other dates for 2016) As in:
- keep up my daily habits & meditation (keeping honing the 'awareness')
- keeping myself OVERLY busy during those times when my brain seems to scream LOUDEST to remind me of ALLTHESNACKS (usually after lunch, between 1-4 is the HARDEST for me)
- Not have any of those 'trigger foods' (aka-those tortilla chips) around the house during those times when I feel like I have NO control.
So that's my crazy, WAY out there post and like I said, I TOTALLY get it if you're reading this with raised eyebrows and rolled eyes. I probably would be too, to be quite honest (hell, if next week doesn't 'righten itself up', I'll be rolling my eyes at this post FOR SUREJ). But since it's what I've been researching for my own sanity the last few weeks, I felt it would be remiss not to mention it on here, especially since I've been dealing so much with this whole food/brain connection. And much like any other issue in life, I'm wondering what the effects of shining AWARENESS on the subject will help me be able to handle it better. Here's hopingJ
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