According to the extended weather forecast on Weather.com, except for a slight chance of rain of Sunday, my entire hike next week should be clear and dry and seasonably warm.  If that holds up, it will be great and make it just that much easier.

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As for the book I recommended yesterday, which I still recommend for anyone struggling with emotional eating issues, it has been pointed out to me that losing weight is a simple matter of eating fewer calories than one burns.

That’s pretty much true and I know it.  Off the top of my head, I can tell you the calorie count of nearly everything in my kitchen.  I can tell you the average number of calories most common exercises burns, too.  My issues don’t stem from a lack of knowledge of nutrition, exercise, and physiology.  And that’s true of most adult fat people, from what I understand.  We know more about food than most ‘normal’ weight people.  That’s because we tend to be fat and food obsessed, whereas naturally thin people don’t bother to learn that stuff because they don’t ‘need to know.’

Emotional eating is a whole different issue.  Emotional eating (aka food addiction) is when eating has become a unconscious compulsion to eat comfort foods without regards to physiological need.  It’s driven by psychological issues – much like other addictions – and it’s complicated by the fact that over time the body grows accustomed to…
    1) consuming large amounts of food and continually expects large quantities to fill it’s stretched stomach and counteract the insulin it pre-emptively releases, so that it’s actually painful to eat less, and
    2) reaching for comfort food as a response to negative emotions while the emotion is still at an unconscious impulse, before it has risen to the conscious level (you did know that something like 90% of your brain activity was unconscious, didn’t you?), therefore not only preventing you from feeling the emotion but preventing you from even being aware that the emotion was triggered, which makes it all the more difficult to control, catch, or counter.

Kinda like a mosquito bite – you don’t even know you’re bitten until after it’s over.

Anyway, any event, relationship, or circumstance that has the ability to trigger negative feelings has the potential of being an issue around which a person can develop addiction or food issues.  The book helps the reader narrow down exactly which issues are her trigger, which aspects of her life she needs to change, and what ‘normal’ behavior is as a marker for comparison.

Despite having read many books on the topic before, I’ve learned a lot about myself reading this book and I expect to be able to take another giant step forward in my relationship to myself and to food because of it.

* * * * *

And now for something completely different… OMG!  I’m glad they’ve finally cleared the Ramsey family in the case of poor JonBenet, who was murdered in 1996.  But OMG that poor family.  And Patsy died without ever any peace of mind about what happened to her daughter.  It’s all so sad.

It’s going to be rainy all day today here in Northern Virginia.  I’ll probably have to play taxi driver this afternoon, but other than that I’ll be home, reading, writing, and contemplating.  I usually don’t like the rain, but today I don’t mind it.  It fits my pensive mood.

If you deal with food and weight issues, I highly recommend this book.  I just got it yesterday and started reading it this morning – already I’m 1/3 of the way through and it’s made a huge difference in my understanding.

I will hit the trail in only 6 more days.  I have all my equipment and food together, but I’ll do a sanity check at the end of the week: I’ll have my husband read off my supply checklist while I repack my backpack to make sure I don’t accidentally overlook anything.  Plus I have to pack a bag he’ll bring me at the end of the trip with clean clothes and bubble bath.  (We’ll spend a night in a hotel room with a jacuzzi before driving home.)

This week, I will get a haircut so I have less of a mop on my head to be hot and sweaty.  I think that’s the only last minute sort of thing there is left to do.

I’ll be doing 50 miles in 7 days.  This averages a fraction over 7 miles a day.  I’m not concerned with being able to cover that distance, and I know it’s relatively short compared to what some people hike daily when on these sorts of trips. 

I’m not concerned about getting physically attacked by bears or other scoundrels.  The only thing I’m really concerned about is bears (or other scoundrels) stealing my food at night.  It’s required that a hiker hangs her food in a tree each night, about 100 yards from where she sleeps.  There’s a set method for doing this that I won’t bore you with.

But I don’t like the idea of being separated from my stuff by 100 yards where anything could happen to it.  I’m concerned about being able to find it again in the morning.  I’m concerned about it going missing.

It’s not a ‘how will I survive’ issue – after all, although it would be unhappying, I know I can go a few days without food.  It’s more of a security blanket thing.  I’ll be 100 yards away from (some of) my belongings.  In a strange place.  And what if I can’t find again the tree where I hung my food bag?  How will I know whether it was stolen (by a bear or other scoundrel) or whether I just can’t find it?

My plan currently is to use my GPS to mark the spot where I hang the food so I can find it again in the morning.  Still, until I actually have success at re-locating my provisions, I’ll have that niggling doubt that I may lose them.  And have to endure the unhappy circumstances.

But other than that small worry, I’m looking forward to being a wandering hermit for a week.

I’ve decided that instead of 100 miles in 2 weeks, I’m going to hike 50 miles in 1 week.  I’ll be tramping the first half of the original 2 week plan.  I can always go back and do the second half of the original plan at a later time, if I survive and enjoy the first experience.

I’ve got my route programmed into my gps, so there will be no guessing about distance or where I’d planned to sleep each night.