Days 34 & 35: Don’t Think About It

I took a little bit of a step back this week to tend to my mind more than my body, and I feel better than I did at the start of the week! Part of stepping back included not tracking my food intake as strictly. I was all over the place with my caloric intake and came in short on my protein intake a couple of times, but I’m working on not being too hard on myself about it.

I was reflecting this week about how my changing relationship with food is similar to how I used to teach painting and drawing classes. When I taught how to draw or paint from life, I told my students that they had to learn to see the shapes and values, etc., without thinking about what they were seeing. A common mistake starting artists make is thinking too much about what something should look like and not seeing and measuring what’s actually in front of them. People would draw eyes on the forehead of a portrait, for example, instead of seeing that eyes sit in the middle of the face and aren’t as big as we think they are. Once you stop thinking about it, you can start placing the pieces together more accurately.

I learned to eat when I’m hungry, but I have a hard time knowing if I’m hungry. When using the nutrition-tracking method I’ve been using for the Transformation Challenge, I’ve seen that I have to eat more than I feel like eating in order to properly refuel and nourish myself. It feels like unthinking about and following the drawing strategy—the app is set up to tell me what my body needs, even if I think I should wait until I’m hungry or I don’t feel like eating protein or think I need to eat protein. What I think I should do and what the scientifically based strategy instructs me to do don’t match, but the choice of what directs me will determine if I make a face with big eyes on the forehead or a more accurate rendering.