Reframing your suffering

I'm guessing that this is a big zen no-no, but I'm doing it anyway, 'cause if it works....yahoo!

So, for the last couple of weeks, I have been sick. When I'm sick, my go-to remedy seems to be to eat whatever appeals to me- regardless of its nutritional content- and to eat as much of it as my body wants (except dairy and sugar which always set me back at least two days in the healing process). About 90% of the time, what appeals to me is protein and soups. Also, I tend to eat these meals of meat and carbs much more frequently than I would normally do. Rather than eating based on the time of day or the meal I am having, I eat based on my desire at that moment. I will often eat an entire bowl of soup and then, because I feel like it, eat another full meal within an hour.
I had always thought that the protein was some sort "feed a cold" remedy or some wisdom on my body's part about needing protein to heal. And I thought that the frequent eating part was because my body was burning so many calories trying to heal itself that it needed to eat more frequently.
But last week, I felt what was going on while I was eating 5 or 7 meals a day of meat and carbs. What I felt, was full. And to me, full, felt cared for, safe, nourished. While sick felt weak, vulnerable, and like I had to fight against some big bad world, feeling full felt like someone was taking care of me, like even though I was going through this cold, I was safe and loved.
"Oh!" I thought. "It has nothing to do with protein or your body's wisdom, you just want to feel warm and safe. Eating big meals fills you up, makes you feel like you don't have to worry about your next meal. It's not about the soup or the meat, it's about your body feeling warm and full- a physical feeling that you associate with warmth and being cared for. It's not physiological, it's psychological."

Then this weekend, after enjoying a lovely Thanksgiving meal with my family, I went on a run. After my run, before my shower, I noticed my body in the mirror. What I noticed was the apparent storage of those extra meals from last week on my lower abdomen and sides.
"I'm not so excited about that extra storage. I'm not all that excited about how that looks in the mirror nor how it feels when I walk around."
And I thought, "I need to start exercising again. I need to get healthy again. I need to get rid of that extra storage on my abdomen and sides."

Now, I have to admit that I have been trying to "be healthy" for awhile. I have told myself that I feel better when I exercise, that this is all about being healthy, that it is really about exercising regardless of the outcome. But then, when I come back from my run, I still look at myself in the mirror and am disappointed- those storage areas (of baked goods, chocolate, macaroni and cheese) are still there. And again, I remind myself that this is all about being healthy, not about how you look, but this time, I was true with myself: you want to look different than you do, you want to lose those storage areas, you just do- admit it.
And so I did- I admitted that I wanted to lose them. In doing that I realized that if I wanted to remove those storage areas, I needed to stop eating those things that get stored (things that your body does not need: chocolate, cheese, Halloween candy). And so I agreed: if I wanted to get rid of those storage areas, I needed to stop eating those things: baked goods, chocolate, cheese.

That afternoon, as dinner time rolled around, I realized that I wasn't hungry. I had eaten several slices of my sister's pumpkin bread, leftover macaroni and cheese for lunch, and a small bag of Fritos in the car ride home from my uncle's house.
"Bummer," I thought. "I was looking forward to making that dish of leftover mashed potatoes and eggs and prosciutto." But then I remembered that I could make it another night, when I was actually hungry.
A couple of hours later, I came back to the kitchen to get a glass of water and had this feeling in my stomach. "Oooh, I'm hungry!" I thought.
But then I felt it a little more clearly.
It wasn't hungry. But it also wasn't full like I had wanted to feel last week when I was sick.
So then I felt it a little more, and it was familiar.
"Oh," I noticed. "This is how I feel when I come back from vacation. This is how I feel when I eat what my body needs and when I am walking around all day seeing new places. This is how I feel when I am kind of in alignment with my body and how it feels, not when I eat based on meal time or eating that treat because it's free or because it's in front of me."
"This... is fit." I thought to myself. "You think this is hungry, you think this is wanting food but when you feel it, it is the feeling of having eaten enough, just enough."
And then I didn't actually want a big meal of leftover mashed potatoes and prosciuttos and eggs. I just wanted water. I was okay, I wasn't hungry, I wasn't needing food. I was just fine.
"This is so cool!" I thought. "I just reframed my feeling of "hunger" into a feeling of "fit." I wonder where else I could do this..."

And I thought, "Oooh, single, not in relationship, alone... how could I reframe that....?"
I thought, "Proud to be alone on a Saturday night"
Nope, that's not how I feel.
"Excited to be finally finishing that quilt that's taken 12 years to finish?"
Sort of, but not really.
"Darnit," I thought. "Apparently you can only reframe your suffering if the new perception of it is more true than the old one- darnit."

But who knows, maybe I can reframe my "suffering" around not being in a relationship by looking at it honestly too.