How To Fill Your Days with Negative Energy (that's a good thing)

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

OOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm

Ooooommmmmm....

Oh, hello! I see you've caught me meditating.

No! Wait! I said MEDITATING. Geeze.

Anyway. I have learned the importance of calm as a powerful dietary suppliment. It's pretty astonishing really. Regard the following graph so I can illustrate how meditation and calm can help fill your days with Negative Energy.

Hmmm...that sounded bad. Negative Energy Balance is a technical term for using more calories than you take in. It's a good thing.



This is a graph of my day to day calorie intake. Each bar represents a new day. The green ones going down are days I used more calories than I took in (Weight Loss) and the red ones...those are days I took in more calories than I used (weight gain).

Overall I'm doing pretty good. My weight is steadily declining...slowly, slowly, slowly. But it's going down. And that's good.

I've circled, in purple, a specific day. That red day. That day I took in quite a few more calories than I burned. Here's the interesting thing...that's the day I had a pressing deadline and a gagillion things I needed to get done. The kids weren't being terribly cooperative. People were calling to pile on more tasks for the day.

That was a stressful day. The thing is, I don't precisely remember eating more that day. It just turns out that I did.

A few diaries back I showed some research about how the analytical part of our brains can be easily overloaded, and when that happens, the salt-fat-sugar-hungry id part of the brain is no longer kept in check. It literally takes over, like some Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde sort of thing...or like a Cheeto crazed Incredible Hulk/David Banner sort of thing.

The research I talked about merely had test subjects memorizing numbers, and showed that JUST that task made people statistically MORE likely to choose chocolate cake over a fruit up

Now imagine if you have a million things to do over the course of a day and you're stressing out like crazy. A million little things to worry about. If your analytical mind is busy enumerating a To Do list and worrying about a set of crisies, your id is going to sneak a few bags of Swiss Cake Rolls while the super-ego is flailing around.

Weird, right?

I have found that it helps to relieve the mind of the To-Do list. Instead, I write things down. I try to get that crap out of my head. The moment I start listing off in my head all the things I need to do, I try to get it written down as soon as possible. That includes if I'm trying to remember what I ate during the day.

Get it out of your head. Clear the mind. That's why some caveman invented paper and a ball point pen.

And just as important....relax. Breathe. I'm sure I'll be talking more specifically about calm over time. It's something I stuggle to maintain.