Running, exercise and diet ban

I haven't written here about diet or weight loss in quite a while. A little bit of background: last Monday I kind of hit a wall and didn't feel able to keep up with my regular routine of diet and exercise. I made the decision to "give up" those things for the next 4-5 weeks.

Here's what I wrote on RM about it:

So, as I wrote in the Training forum as well as in my Journal, I am taking a break from exercise for a while. Even thought I was fairly candid in my original post about my reasons, it's really so complicated.

It was unreal - I was actually walking to the gym in the blowing snow when I stopped in my tracks, turned 180 degrees and walked back to the car. It was a painful decision at first, but then very liberating to do it. The good thing is that it's on my own terms (not a forced break due to injury).

I've always believed that we "make" our own situations in life. We are where we are (largely) due to the choices we make, or how we choose to respond to the events that life presents us with. But I was just starting to feel in so many areas of my life that it didn't matter what I did, I was either beating my head against a brick wall, or I was on this endless treadmill that was getting me nowhere. So I made the decision to "do a different thing" (as George Costanza would say), hoping to get different results.

I'm tired: physically, mentally, and emotionally. I just need a break before I break!

I'm still not 100% sure I've made the right decision or how I am going to handle it. With C and A in town this weekend we had planned to run and I was looking forward to it (in a way), but also dreading it in other ways. In the end, we never ran because we stayed up too late on Friday and drank too much on Saturday. Oops.

It's weird: I did have a dream over the weekend in which I was running.

Some observations after eight days of not running, exercising, or dieting:

1) I still don't miss it (yet).
2) I still have lots of the same little aches and pains I had when I was still running.
3) I feel fat and sluggish.
4) I am tired, though I think that also has to do with staying up late watching Olympics the past 17 days, as well as a weekend of too much alcohol and too little sleep.
5) Mentally and emotionally, I love not being a slave to the schedule.
6) Now that the Olympics are over, I have to find something else to do with my time so that I don't waste the time I used to spend exercising on stupid and meaningless things.

#3 is the most concerning for me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. I don't want to "diet" (which, to me, means counting calories, limiting portions, and forbidding myself to eat certain foods) but I don't want my eating to go to hell, either. And with the lack of exercise, every extra thing I put in my mouth will go directly to my gut.

I've had mixed reactions from friends (running and non-running) and family (non-running) about this. And though people are well-meaning, I don't know that I really want to hear all their opinions on what they think I should or shouldn't do. At least not right now, since I'll be taking their "opinions" and "suggestions" as criticisms of my decision, whether or not they are meant that way. That's why I'm posting this here instead of over on RM.