Thoughts on Changing My Mindset, Concepts, and Behavior

I am 4.5 days into my 14-day fast! I feel good, and awoke a bit before 6am. For the most part I slept well, although I did wake up a few times during the night.  I do not feel deyhdrated this morning, which is a relief.  I attribute this to the increased teaspoon of salt I ingested yesterday, upping my intake from 2 tsp. to 3. Days 4 and 5 have been the toughest during my previous fasts of 5 and 7 days. My body is crying out for some movement as I feel stiff and my rib pain has returned.  I am going to take it easy, though, and wait until day 6 before I try yoga.  Maybe I'll take a walk later.

Last night and this morning, I contemplated how I wanted to eat when I end this fast.  Whether I make it through tonight, 10, 14, or 21 days, I want to change my mindset, behavior, and relationship to eating and food.  As each day of fasting passes, I feel stronger in my resolve, my determination, my willpower.  "Food is a powerful thing. What do you do with that power?" or something like that (I missed the last part of the group, but heard Terri's quote from someone else). Well, I'm powerful too, but it does not need to be a struggle or a war any longer.  One of my issues is fighting What IS, which creates misery. Innumerable misery for all of my adult life! :unamused:  Part of this process is making peace with eating, food, my body... acceptance, awareness, mindfulness. I will continue fasting, but it's time to visualize how I want my future behavior to look: rebuilding duration (eating), food choices, attitudes and actions before/during/after eating, and facing painful emotions and fear with awareness instead of numbing with sugar. There may be more! 

Visualizations for Rebuilding Days:

1. I want eat mindfully, which I have been practicing: no phone, no laptop, no telly.
2. I want to chew my food slowly, thoroughly (32x as prescribed by my TCM Doc), with awareness, gratitude, enjoyment, and savouring of each bit.
3. When I decide on the IF interval that works best for me, I want to achieve consistency, for at least one week at a time, and build up to one month of consistency with the same IF.
4. I want to eat within a TRE window; 12-6pm has worked thus far.  
5. I want to find emotional/mental satiation in 2 small meals or one larger meal: change concepts of 
6. small quantity = deprivation, fear of not getting to eat everything I want, resentment that I can't eat more frequently and larger quantities, and feelings of restriction, to acceptance of new WOL, that I can eat again the following day, that I can eat what I want (keto) and enjoy the food in smaller quantities, that I can eat the other foods (when I get full) at my next meal, feelings of abundance...
7. Stop eating when full!
8. Fat fast between healing EFs.
9. Transition to strict keto
10. Moderate "sweet" fat bombs.

This morning I was visualizing some of this behavior: eating smaller quantities (only because my stomach shrinks from EFs, not for restriction) and being satisfied because I could eat more later, being mindful and aware while eating, experiencing mental/emotional satiation with smaller amounts, enjoying my food fully, eating what I want (meaning Keto--I really like Keto and LCHF because I have deprived myself my entire life!), investing in the foods I enjoy, and making sure I have food I enjoy.

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