HALT! Who goes there?

Due to last night's Mediterranean food, followed by two hours of general tummy ickiness, followed by a sore hip and a bad night's sleep, this might be a little on the incoherent side. I actually have that heavy-headed, foggy feeling of exhaustion and I could lay down on this desk and fall asleep with very little problem. You know ... if it weren't for the "I'm at work" thing.

Yesterday was my rest day from running, and despite the truly bizarre feeling of wanting to run, I managed to control myself and instead go out to dinner with my family and consume copious amounts of kebabs and hummus and falafel. :) I even had a Baclava and Turkish coffee for dessert without too much guilt, though I paid for it later (see above, re: tummy). I did really need the night off. My right hip has been sore for the past few days, to the point where even laying down on my right side makes it hurt at the point it presses into the bed, and this makes me anxious and irritable. First, because I don't do pain, and second because it would be just like me to actually find myself loving to run only to have to stop. I read up about the hip pain online and it does sound like a simple overuse injury, which is comforting. The night off seems to have helped a bit, as did the steaming bath I took last night where I lay with a cup of hot milky tea and read 0prah magazine. I confess to being a magazine whore. The way I know that I'm financially secure is when I have magazine subscriptions. *g*

So O magazine was all about food this month, and I read a decent article about COE in there and it got me thinking about my own (legion) food issues. The old addage about eating was to tell yourself to HALT before eating, to see if you were preparing to eat for reasons other than hunger. HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. I used to joke that I had to tell myself "Halt! Who goes there?!" (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Weepy, Hungover, Oversensitive, Glum, Overwrought, Estatic, Sad, Thoughtful, Happy, Excluded, Rebellious, Exanimate, or any emotion not named herein, etc, etc.)

I tread a fine line between trying to truly figure out what my food issues are, and trying not to pathologe myself, which I don't think is healthy either. It took me years to admit I was a compulsive overeater, mainly because I was a "high bottom" eater (meaning that my life wasn't out of control, per se) and because I hated the tendency to break down the fundamental relationship between me and food into its corresponding psychology. I just wanted food, dammit. I liked the taste. End of story.

Well, not quite. But I spend a lot of time telling myself that, and all I got for it was fatter and less sure of my own motivations. With one breath I'd be telling myself that I was sick of being overweight and with the next I'd unwrap an Oatmeal Cream Pie. You see the problem. Eventually I had to be willing to deal with my own issues or I was going to have to widen the doors.

So I did, and you know, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sure, I had to learn to admit some things to myself about the way I handle stress, and love, and grief and fear, but ultimately it became a lot easier to just admit those things than to live blindly with the consequences of them every day. A. would call this Individuation - Jung's term for learning oneself - and I suppose she'd be right. Trust the poet to have all the answers. :)