challenge: shamrock shake

challenging but delicious shamrock shake

 i posted here that i don't want this to be a recovery blog.  however, it is a slice of life blog and recovery is a slice of my life.  i see my dietitian about four times a year and i come up with challenges to do before our next meeting.  this time around i picked the shamrock shake as a challenge.  dessert challenges are my favorite.  they're always a little scary but the ones i enjoy the most because they're so delicious.  so saturday king louie and i went to mcdonald's.  i asked the different sizes and decided on the small.  it was madness in there because it was actually st. patrick's day and the last day to get one.  when our order came up i noticed right away that mine was not a small and my panic began to set in.  i asked our cashier and she said it was a medium.  i was thinking that she would take it back and make me a small.  instead she refunded the difference between the medium and small.  the panic completely took over.  unlike the majority of people in this world who would have been thrilled with the extra shake, i began to freak out.  i didn't want a medium, i wasn't comfortable with a medium and i was pretty sure that the world was going to spin off its axis because i had a medium.  i asked for a small cup and i got a small drink cup, not a small shake cup.  at this point i needed to leave and poor king louie just followed me out.  i got in the parking lot and started swearing and saying things always get messed up and that shamrock shakes were supposed to be fun and i wasn't having fun at all.  on the drive home i knew that i wasn't using my coping mechanisms.  i knew i should be thinking that orders are messed up in every day life all the time but i didn't want to be rational.  i wanted to freak out.

and now i know you must be on the edge of your seat of how the challenge went.  it actually went great.  my food philosophy (this is at leat what i'm striving for.  it is a major work in progress) is that i can eat what i want when i crave it.  i eat when i'm hungry and stop when i'm full.  this means it is okay to leave food on my plate and that it is okay to go back for seconds.  so, i scooped what i thought i wanted into the drink cup i got at mcdonald's and knew i could go back for more if i wanted it.  in a perfect world i would have eaten it straight out of the medium glass and stopped when i was full.  on saturday, i just wasn't ready for that and that is okay.  what is important is that i learned from the experience and realized that getting the wrong size wasn't a big deal.  it wasn't a big deal at all.  in fact, shamrock shakes will be a yearly tradition.  

challenge accepted, challenge completed.  what do you all of recovery posts?  i don't want to make anyone uncomfortable and i know eating disorders can be kind of a touchy subject.  let me know any thoughts, questions or concerns.