Life Without Diet Coke. . .

[qos]

. . . is definitely better than life with it.

I have significantly more energy than I've had in I-don't-know-how-long. I get hungry less often, and less intensely. My mind is more clear. I've lost two pounds in the past week, partially due to eating less, but partially due to having the energy to actually take care of myself and cook decently healthy food and do yoga. I even got on the Wii and played fitness games for half an hour last night.

The other aspect of my relationship with my hunger has been a side effect of the book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, by Stephen Cope, which I strongly recommend to anyone with the least bit of interest in the intersection of the body and spirituality. I don't tend to connect with the Eastern traditions very much, but most of the spiritual aspects Cope discusses in the book strongly resonate with what I've been learning in my Qabalah studies.

Cope's discussion of non-attachment hit home in a particularly powerful way. He wrote about observing physical sensations that come up and not judging them as "good" or "bad" or something to be embraced or avoided, but just experienced. This finally connected to my deeply irrational fear of being hungry. For years I've realized that when I'm hungry it's not just a physical sensation, some part of me is afraid of the consequences of hunger: of physical weakness, loss of concentration and mental acuity, of pain, of all kinds of non-specific but potent Bad Things.

Last week when I was driving to the grocery store after work I felt familiar after-work hunger pangs. Usually this means that I'll go to the drive-through and get at least a small hamburger (I've cut *way* down on my drive-through consumption). This time I simply observed that I was hungry, and didn't judge or experience it as something bad to be avoided or eliminated as soon as possible. I was hungry, that was all. I didn't grab a snack; I simply went to the grocery store then came home and cooked a healthy dinner.

It was a quietly powerful paradigm shifting experience.

Comments

[watcher457.livejournal.com]

Huzzah on the loss of diet coke! My problem is not so much as drinking soda (because I have recently developed a distinct lack of dislike for diet. I think its the taste of the aspartame or something and I refuse to drink most normal sodas), it's the fact that I don't like water. I'm very picky about what water I drink, and I get bored with it quickly. I like the expensive SmartWater which is a habit I can't afford to get into, but I don't usually want hot tea, don't like any coffee that doesn't half taste like candy, and only drink a few kinds of juice. This turns into me not drinking anything, so then I get thirsty and dehydrated and reach for the easiest, tastiest thing on hand. *sigh* I'm working on a plan for this, though.