In which I pick myself up, dust myself off, and move into the future smiling

I'm tempted not to blog about the last couple days, but I will anyway, because if this blog is all sunshine and roses then it's just going to be an overexposed photograph of what's really going on with me. For the past week, I've been drawn very strongly to eat All The Things -- both emotionally and physically -- and the last couple days, I've basically just let myself.

There are obvious triggering factors going on: my birthday and some not-so-great work stuff and falling prey to that whole marketing-driven "treat yourself" mentality, yes, but even more prominently, where I am in my menstrual cycle. I've had cravings and stronger than normal emotion-body interaction during my period and the few days before it for as long as I can remember, and I'll spare you the boring minutiae of how and why, but my cycle length varies between 1.5 and 2 months, so this is my first period since starting on the Plan. And it was, as they say, a learning experience.

So what did I learn?

• I crave dairy and protein far more than normal during this time. I need to arrange things so that I can meet those needs.
• I also crave sugar/chocolate on a more emotional level.
• I fortunately don't typically have physical symptoms that limit my exercise, so keeping my activity levels constant or even increasing them seems like a Very Good Idea.
• I'm particularly prone to forgetting my antidepressant during this time, so I need to be extra-vigilant about that. (I'm on a medication with an irritatingly short half-life, so missing a dose causes emotional upheaval and makes me way less able to deal with stresses and make thoughtful choices.)
• I'm also particularly given to "fuck the rules" thinking, so it's much easier for me to say things like "well, fuck it, I'm just not going to track this."
• Oh, and something fun and psychological: I eat WAY less food if I look at it more closely and change the shape of container it's in before deciding how much to eat. I was eating dark chocolate pieces compulsively out of their opaque bag; I took them out and put them into a different container, and damn if I didn't get a much stronger sense of their size and shape and number. 

And taking all that information in hand, I feel like there's actual meaning behind my getting up this morning and saying "ok, back on the wagon now." Yes, I broke my tracking streak of almost seven weeks because of a couple days of petulance. Yes, I probably won't make my stupid 5% goal this week either (turns out it was listed in my online tracker incorrectly). Who the fuck cares? The question of "am I changing the way I live my life in positive ways" is way bigger and more important than the niggling details of "did I follow semi-arbitrary rules perfectly every single day" or "did I, on a particular week in May, manage to make a scale register a certain number".

So on that note, here's some awesomespiration (there's got to be a cleverer portmanteau than that, but i haven't found it yet, so we're stuck with it for now). So here are some words from Stephanie Vincent about the intersection of self-acceptance and self-improvement. I don't agree with all the language she chooses, or all her ideas in general, but I'm glad she's being another voice in this uncomfortable but exciting space I inhabit.

My outlook for the next week is as follows: it is summer and it is BEAUTIFUL and I will return to enjoying in moderation the delights of food, particularly of summer cookouts with the assistance of my four-dot turkey brats. And they may have canceled my water aerobics class, but they can't cancel my good mood.