I wrote this last spring on my birthday and saved it until I had this site up. It just made me think.
Happy birthday!
Today is my birthday and when it falls on spring break it’s great because I usually get some time off from teaching. This year I had the morning off and finally got to take a ballet class for myself instead of teach one. What a great present! It felt good being in class. I have been taking private lessons with my teacher for about 5 months and I really felt like the lessons have paid off. I left the class feeling proud of myself and since it was my birthday as well of course my mind went to food. I thought, “What should my reward be for having a good class and it being my bday?” I should get to eat something fun for lunch. Something that I usually wouldn’t let myself have on a Monday. There is still plenty of birthday cake in the fridge! Then I started to think how absurd that was. I was going to reward myself with something unhealthy. I just took a class and felt good. I felt strong and now I was going to feed myself something that would not benefit my body. I’m not judging the fact that I want to eat something unhealthy it is just an observation. I don’t think there is anything wrong with having cake or foods like that every once in a while. I mean the cake is there and my husband and I will have a piece tonight. So what is my point. My point is that the “reward” is all in my head. We reward ourselves with food that our bodies don’t need or want. Why? Because that is what we are conditioned to do. As a culture we celebrate with desserts. Why don’t we celebrate with spinach? I know, that sounds ridiculous. Well, I did end up eating a spinach salad for lunch and enjoyed it. I enjoyed feeling like I was doing something nice for my body. I felt as if it was a celebration of my birthday. Doing something nice for me. Like I said before, I get to have cake later 🙂