Getting More Focused Again

Finally, I've been discharged from the PHP [Partial Hospitalization Program] this past week. It was a pretty intense few weeks, that's for sure... And its taking me awhile to unwind from it and let go of some of the stress and tension that I was carrying with me throughout the past month.  It's time to get back into the swing of my 'normal' day to day stuff so then I can more effectively deal with not only the healthier eating but to learn how to deal with all of the stressers that led me into the PHP to begin with.

In the food program, I'm still working on step one--doing the breakfast thing.  I'm definitely not consistent with eating within an hour of getting up, that's for sure. But I've done a LOT better on including protein with my meals [more on that, perhaps, in another post in the near future]. Still not getting in what's recommended but I really CAN feel the difference of when I do include protein vs those meals and/or days where I'm doing the easier sugar thing instead.

When I was in the PHP, we got lunch for free which made the healthy eating so easy. I wish it was that easy all of the time... :-)   Most days, they sent over a tray with various kinds of deli meats, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, bread [including whole wheat], plus soup as well as various kinds of pre-made salads.  Various drinks and a few other things were available, too [juice, milk, carnation instant breakfast, yogurt, fruit, etc].  So on those days where I did have breakfast before arriving at the hospital and a good lunch, I certainly felt a huge difference from what's in the normal eating routine for me.

So at least I'm at the stage now where the whole awareness thing is creeping into my brain. I'm still not consistently making good choices but I guess there's a reason why they said that for this program to work, it's going to take TIME [something that I'm not good with; I want it ALL now!].

Starting the first step

I started with parts of step one; so far, I'm working on:

-eating breakfast every morning [something I usually don't do]

-have it within an hour of getting up

-include a protein [I usually didn't do]

I officially started this on 8/1/08, though I did have breakfast several mornings  before 8/1. Most days, I do have breakfast but not always within an hour of getting up. I'm wondering it this hour starts when I wake up in the morning, or when I get up? I almost always stay in bed for awhile until I'm more awake as I very frequently have problems with sleeping during the night.  Then I need to take my shower if I take one that day and get dressed before going downstairs. Maybe I should TRY and switch to showering at night so it won't take me so long to go downstairs and find something.  Since I've started eating in the morning, for the most part, I've been having some protein.

One problem I'm having right now is that it seems that I'm more hungry throughout the day than before [though before, I was better at suppressing the hunger; maybe I'm just more aware of it now].  I *have* read about the idea of 'false' hunger that's talked about a bit later in the book--so I'm going to have to figure out what's real and what's not as in MY mind right now is that it's all hunger. A couple years ago in reading about fluid intake, sometimes we think we're hungry when in fact, we're a bit dehydrated and thus, drinking water will take care of that...

Have I had breakfast yet today? Well, kind of. I haven't been downstairs yet but HAVE been eating some of my home made trail mix that includes nuts, yogurt covered raisins, sunflower seeds, broken up pretzels, and a few M&Ms thrown in [I haven't gotten to the sugar 'detox' yet, that comes quite a bit later in the program.