The slow road
I decided recently to stop showing people my crochet projects before they are done. There is some science behind it. That the praise of others gives you the same reward chemicals as actually finishing the project.
There is a thing that people who do what I do with food say. “If you want what I have, do what I do.” Mostly we mean, “if I look happy and peaceful to you then maybe you should try giving up sugar and put boundaries around your eating.”
And sometimes we say it outside of the group. A little inside joke. When someone says they could never do what we do, one person I know always tells them “that’s fine. I don’t want what you have.”
But sometimes it means something *within* the group. There are people who are doing all of the same things with food that I am. But they have a life I don’t want. I am not saying it’s not a good life. Just one not good for me. So I don’t take life advice from them. Food help, absolutely. Life advice? Absolutely not.
Getting my eating under control let me see how specific I could start to be about what I wanted for myself. Every specificity was a little more authenticity. And authenticity, not praise or popularity, was the goal.
Because it’s the knowing what I want that is often the sticking point. In getting my eating under control, I started to realize that the way I had lived, what I *wanted* up until that point was just reward chemicals in my brain. Very much short term gratification.
Denying myself reward chemicals in the form of food was the first step to delayed gratification for me. Eventually I would start my slow hobbies. Set positively unrealistic expectations for myself that I would actually end up meeting in a very realistic time frames. (I wanted to be able to design crochet as a beginner 15+ years ago. Before I could read a pattern…But yes. I now design my own dolls and art pieces.) And fail and persevere repeatedly for over a decade.
There are many things I dislike about perimenopause, but one thing I love is how self aware and self involved I am becoming. Caring more for pleasing myself than others. And yet I am so much less selfish than I was when I was in the food.
What I want is a rich and satisfying life of contentment and creative expression. And the road to that is slow by nature.
onceafatgirl 