Always with my mind focusing on the need to lose weight on my obese body, I had the opportunity recently to attend a webinar to learn how to organize the food in my kitchen and I realized that I needed to let go of the food that had no use to me in my life.
As they say if you fail to plan, you plan to fail and that I was. As an autistic person who can have hoarding tendencies, it has gotten a little extreme as far as food. It is not that I had been grateful for the food that I have had, but with the fact that I had not been properly organizing meals so that I used food from all the food groups as much as I could with the food that I thought that I did have. The fact was that I never used any of it and never had any true meals where I could eat a balanced meal. It was usually meat or meat and starch. It was never a truly balanced meal.
As such, having a huge walk in pantry in my home, as suggested in the webinar, if you are not using the food, then why are you having it in your home? So my mother and I began our separate cleanouts and as I moved forward, I discovered that I had foods that I could tolerate, but just such an excess of food that I could never consume by its throwout date like some sort of doomsday prepper or something. It was not going any good being there and as one who advocates against food insecurity, it was sad that this was happening to me. An astonishing fact was the fact that I found a pack of King Size Oreos that were still good but never realized were there.
Then there was all the food that was past its bad time or that was partially opened or destroyed in some sort of way. It hurt me so bad that I had to throw it away as a person who tries to make sure it is put to good use before it expires, yet it was sad that I had to dispose of all of this food that no one could use.
I have had to accept the fact that I need to focus on food that I can indeed eat and tolerate as part of my sensory palate. I know there are just things that I will never eat due to gag reflexes, etc., so why am I keeping them? What good are they doing to me when they can help someone else? As one who advocates about remedying food insecurity, I was certainly not leading by example by having out of date food just laying around willy nilly.
As autistic people, we often like to plan, yet I became lazy in this area until gradually picking it up gradually this year as it is becoming a priority to my health. It is important to be healthy and a goal for me is to be healthier in the future, but having a disregard for the food in my kitchen by just letting it sit around and not making things match up to balanced meals, is only compounding the problem, not making it better. I must realize this and slowly I am.
I knew the last few weeks that my weight was going the other direction that it needed to. I was again careless about what I was putting in my body (yes, I know the same old excuses.) This not only affects me physically, but also mentally as well. I have to understand the benefits of taking care of me before it is too late. I have been given too many close scares in recent weeks and 2023 is the time that I have to make that change once and for all before it becomes too late. I know that if I have the determination that I can do it once I put my mind to it. 2023 is the year for me to shine and I know that I can do it by being grateful for the life that I have and that I do not need to take it for granted, thus I need to work on making it better.
Dustin's Dynasty 