Didn't Plan to Start This Way...

...with a little trip to the ER...

Without going into a whole lot of boring tedious detail, I had an episode of tachycardia (elevated/irregular heartbeat) that I thought I probably should get checked yesterday. 

I felt really foolish because I wasn't feeling ill...just very odd...and all the tests came back normal.  Around midnight my pulse was back into the normal range and I was sent home with instructions to follow up with the heart center and come back if it recurred.  And I was grateful for the medical personnel who'd told me I'd done the right thing by going down when I admitted to feeling rather foolish for being there.

Now, I'd planned to work my way through Lysa TerKeurst's Made to Crave while I was on the fast, but I picked it up on my way out of the door.

Y'all, I read The. Whole. Book.  Even went over the questions at the end of the chapters and mentally answered them; I didn't have my journal with me but I couldn't have written anything anyway owing to all the stuff attached to my right hand.

I probably had time to go back and read it again, but by the time  I finished My Sweet Baboo (who'd been on a business trip to Nashville) arrived and relieved The Artist, who'd played chauffeur,  and was admitted back to the little room so I had someone to talk to.

So the observations that I'd planned to share over a series of posts got pretty condensed and I really came away with two or three points that applied to me, specifically.

The first is that I really don't think  I use food as comfort.  I don't crave sweets when I'm stressed (actually, I lose my appetite under extreme stress) or needing validation or any of the other reasons folks use food to appease their emotions; I eat too much simply because I enjoy it.  "I deserve this" isn't the motivation for eating something, although I might joke that it is. The truth is I am simply indulging my flesh.  I need to substitute discipline for indulgence.  Lysa's statement that I hold the power, not the food applies to me more as My spirit makes the decisions, not my flesh.  I don't look at a 5 Guys Hamburgers sign and hear the siren song of the cheeseburgers, I hear my flesh saying,'Oh, that would taste so good!'.  Food is not my enemy.  My flesh...that pleasure-seeking, appetite-driven, self-centered human spirit...is the enemy.

And we have less than healthy meals because, well, it's quick and easy to make mac-and-cheese and hot dogs.  It takes PLANNING to eat healthy, both making the plan and executing the plan.

In other words, I need to be more responsible in the 'meal planning/grocery buying/ stopping what I'm doing and cooking a real dinner' department.

Not just for myself; my family deserves healthy meals, too (although they will likely prefer mac and cheese and hot dogs...)

And finally, she said that it was the fourth week that the sugar cravings peaked.  I gave up sugar and sweets for 12 weeks a couple of years ago, but not breads and pasta, so I don't think I've really walked through that before.  I'm at least forewarned that the 4th week may be rough.

But for the moment, the trip to the ER has pretty much killed my interest in food.  For at least the first few days, I shouldn't have too much of a battle.