Day ???

I had a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich this morning. It was what I wanted. I was about a 7 on the hungry scale (10 being the hungriest possible) and needed food because of a migraine/hangover. It did hum to me about a 7, probably because it's my forbidden binge food. I feel somewhat good, a bit scared, a bit happy about eating it.

Day 26

I had a slip yesterday. It followed several days of bad attitude and feeling really disconnected from OA after going to Pittsburgh, despite going to two meetings this week. It just didn't gel, and I didn't want to do any of the things I was supposed to do to maintain my program. It was a bad attitude times 10. All this culminated in my doing an actual binge yesterday. Still not the "feel sick, can't button your pants" variety binge, but a deliberate "I'm going to the grocery store and I'm going to buy my binge foods" binge. Which I did. And I ate most of them. And it calmed my nerves a bit. And then I woke up this morning with an even worse attitude. The kind of attitude I have when I'm in the food. an I don't care, screw it, life sucks, I'm just going to roll over and go back to sleep attitude. But I couldn't sleep. So I went to a meeting. And then I called my sponsor, which I didn't do yesterday.

My sponsor told me to read a passage in the Big Book called "Acceptance Was the Answer." She told me to see what I got out of it, think about the things in my life that were unacceptable or that I was not accepting, and to write on them. Which I am doing. But very much with an "I hate this, this sucks, I want to stop" attitude. Ugh.

My first thoughts were, "why is she making me read this? It doesn't apply to me." It was all about he couldn't admit he was an alcoholic. I thought, "is she saying I'm not admitting this?" I think I have admitted I'm a compulsive eater. But about 3/4 of the way through the story I started realizing that this man's story does apply. And I started underlining. The first part I underlined said that at first during abstinence he had a reason (legit, he thought) for why he should take a pill each time he was tempted. I do that. I think that my pain or emotions are bad enough that I need the food.

Then he said he got to a point where he coudl say he was an alcoholic and it was "all right" with him. I haven't done the "its all right part." I always wondered in meetings when people said they were grateful compulsive eaters, not gratful recovering compulsive eaters. I got how you could be grateful to recover, but grateful just to be a compulsive eater? That didn't register. Though you do hear peple say they woudn't have learned the life skills they have without being in OA, so I guess I can see it. Then the story says that he began living in the solution to his problem, rather than living in th problem itself. I think I've been living in the problem. I can't get out of the negativity. I need to live in the solution.

Day 23

Yesterday I went to my first meeting in 6 days, and I'm glad I went. We had a relatively small meeting, which meant that pretty much everyone was guilted into speaking. I spoke and was glad i did, even though I didn't say anything too exciting. But it was interesting. After 23 days of abstinence, I'm starting to feel like its my job to comfort and offer support to those who are struggling or new. One old-timer sounded like she was struggling, and I found myself, after the meeting, going up to her and asking how she was doing and trying to find words of support instead of talking about myself. That's something I've been very self-conscious about. I've felt since July that all I do is TAKE, talking about myself, and not offer advice. But I think it's taken that long to really buckle down, so I've been struggling myself since then. Its way too early to say that I feel like I've got it figured out and that I can offer any advice to folks. But at least I can share positive stuff right now instead of negative or uncertain stuff, and that's a step in the right direction.

I'm between steps right now. I've finished reading about and writing on step one. I need to re-read what I've written on step one to make sure its really internalized, but I also need to meet with and discuss what I've written with my sponsor before moving onto step 2. I'll be curious to hear what she has to say. So instead of moving on, I'm reading some other OA literature, including the Big Book and Overeaters Anonymous. I read three stories in Overeaters Anonymous. And they all spoke to me generally in some way - they always do overall, in the way that I understand the pain and frustration adn hopelessness you feel when you can't stop binging. But none of them really grabbed me.

Though in the last story I read, there was a line right at the beginning where the author said "So great had been my isolation before coming to OA that no once had I ever told anyone about my bingeing, not even the psychiatrist who treated me for severe depression." I can relate to that. I've told people I'm a compulsive overeater, but its only recently that I've been able to admit out loud that I'm a binge eater. Somehow it seems worse - grosser, less appealing, more mentally wrong. I even asked one day why people in OA don't identify themselves as binge eaters and instead just call themselves compulsive overeaters. I was told that binge eating falls into the category of compulsive eating. But for me, I almost need it to be more specific, to admit exactly what I've been doing out loud to the group. The one group that won't judge. Maybe at my next meeting I'll identify myself that way. But one other big step I've taken recently was admitting to my therapist exactly what I consume during a binge. I kept a food log, showing rigorous honesty, even during a binge. It was sort of embarrassing, but I also think I'm numb now and willing to go to "whatever lengths," even if it means admitting my worst to a (relative) stranger.

Day 17

I binged last night. Not an all-out can't button your pants or breath binge, but it was unhealthy food, it was deliberate, and it was because I wanted it, not because I was hungry. I'd been craving chocolate and peanut butter for a while (a week) and had in my head that I wanted Coldstone Creamery's chocolate Reese's mashup. I've been resisting using the tools, but then I got it in my head that I could use a substitute. A substitute being fat-free, sugar-free fudge pudding with fat-free Cool Whip mixed with peanut butter. Better for me, probably, (in terms of calories and fat and sugar), but not in terms of health. Health-wise, it was very bad for me. I got all the stuff at the grocery store after lunch and also got a bottle of wine. I consumed all of it. I didn't feel too bad physically, but mentally I wasn't too happy.

I'm not restarting my abstinence date, because it's a slip, not the end of the world. When I got up this morning, I really wanted healthy food and didn't like that I'd had that junk. And I've continued to eat healthy all day and I'm about to go to the gym. Have I learned anything from this? I'd love to say yes, though I'm not sure that's true. I think what might be different this time is me acknowledging that I really do have this disease and that having that one (or 500) compulsive bite really is a problem, as it's much harder in general after that. I've also acknowledged that I have to keep doing what I'm supposed to do according to this program. The program knows better t han I do. So I went to a meeting today, and I'm doing my reading and writing and food logging.

Step 1 says "As long as we refuse to acknowledge that we have this debilitating and ultimately fatal disease, we are not motivated to get the daily treatment for it that brings about our recovery." I think that is what is different this time, that made me do wht I was supposed to do today. I KNOW I have the disease of compulsive overeating, and so I knew that today, like every other day, needed me to engage in my daily treatment, despite the setback last night. And that, I hope, is my lesson.

Day 16

"We ate to sate the fears, the angers, the disappointments. We ate to escape the pressures of our problems or the boredom of everyday life. We procrastinated,we hid, and we ate."

Oh my god. This is the passage that really hits me in reading Step 1. It describes me exactly. I ate over everything. Every emotion, even some good ones. That summer in D.C. I ate to block out my loneliness and depression over feeling fat and feeling like I didn't fit in. That first year out of college I ate my way through my terror that I had no idea what to do with my life and the fact that my life post-college felt like this huge, empty void. What did people DO on weekends without friends around and studying to do? Life seemed like a vast emptiness with no end in sight. And my job was miserable, I hated it so. And so I ate. It wasn't conscious at all. It was just how I subconsciously knew how to make myself feel better.

Later on I ate to ease my depression and boredom and loneliness. Which of course only exacerbated all of those things. I had no friends, and spending Friday and Saturday nights binging and watching TV gave me an activity, and allowed me to blot out the fact that I had no real social life. I didn't have to think about it when I was high on food and drunk on alcohol. After a while I realized that it was wrong. I knew that I was not behaving in a way that was healthy, normal. In fact, I used to make trips up and down the stairs of my apartment building to the vending machine thinking all the time "here I go, feeding my eating disorder." Literally. Somehow I thought that taking the stairs instead of the elevator would be better for me. It meant I was getting some exercise in (I lived on the 7th floor) and maybe in some way that would make up for all the crap I was shoving in my body. It didn't of course. And it certainly made me worse mentally.

I did, at one point during these years, go to OA. But my thinking was that Step 1 was a bad idea. "If we tell ourselves we are powerless over food, then we program ourselves to go right on eating compulsively!" It's too negative, I thought. I think I lasted a month.

Later on, once I had become much more aware of what I was doing to myself, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, it became even harder. I knew what I was doing was wrong and I made lots of efforts to stop. But in those periods when I did manage to stop, "life without food seemed unbearable." Both because it meant I had to deal with situations/problems/emotions without numbing myself out and because it meant that one big activity in my life - the one thing that kept me company when I was alone - was the one thing I wasn't allowed to use. And I couldn't do it. It seemed impossible. And so I gave in. Every time I gave in, for one reason or another. I remember one time relatively recently when I didn't have plans on a Saturday night. I knew I shouldn't be eating - I'd been going to OA meetings but not really working the program - but I didn't know what else to do with myself. Lying on the couch without food to numb my loneliness out seemed like an unpleasant prospect. So what else could I do?

I have to deliberately, every minute of every day, make a conscious decision to choose to live my life differently. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Day 15

The second part of step 1 says that we admitted that our lives had become unmanageable. For me this is the key to admitting powerlessness. I've been trying to control my food for 15 years, but my life still has become totally unmanageable, despite my best efforts to control it (and the food). That, to me, is the essence of powerlessness. I've been trying for so long and failing for so long. I still have a large part of me that thinks that if I just try a little harder or get slightly better circumstances, or somehow get more willpower or get slightly less depressed, I'll finally be able to lick this thing. But that never happens. Ever.

I always attributed the fact that the happy thngs that happened in my life didn't make me happy because I was depressed. And I was depressed in large part because of my weight. But that's an oversimplification, in reality. Yes, I was depressed by my weight, and my weight made it so I was less comfortable doing the things I love (like hiking etc) and didn't get that normal "high" you get from happy activities. My self-consciousness also kept me isolated and away from many of the normal life activities that would make me happy, keeping me in a depressed, isolated state. And eating.

Were our homes pleasant places to be, or had we been living in an atmosphere or depression and anger? My home definitely wasn't a pleasant place to be. It was often overrun with dirty dishes, piles of dirty clothes, crumbs, dust etc. I never cleaned it unless I had to, was always to embarrassed to ahve anyone over. You're supposed to make your home a sanctuary. Mine was like a dark, denlike hell.

Had our chronic overeating affected our marriages and our friendships? Yes! I essentially disappeared on my college (and high school) friends out of wanting to isolate and eat and out of embarrassment for being fat and not succeeding the way they were. I remember the times when I would go visit my best friend, I would think to myself "ok, time to go pretend I'm a normal, happy functioning person in the real world for a little while, even though in my actual life I'm nothing like that." It was like putting on a facade for a little while and acting cheerful and normal, when I felt like a total fraud, unhappy, embarrassed, fat, like I didn't belong in the real world anymore. It was absolutely exhausting one time on one of these visits my life was so out of control - I had let my finances get out of control, my eating was a disaster etc. I got to the airport and something had gone wrong financially. I'm not sure what. Maybe a check had bounced. Whatever it was, I was in total despair, knowing that it was only my irresponsibility that had done this. I turned around and went back home and told my friend I "accidentally" missed my plane. I hadn't. I just couldn't face the truth that night. I'm sure I went home and binged. I don't know. I do know I went the next morning and felt a bit better.

As for other friends, I spent the first 5-7 years in my new town without making any friends. Maybe one or two. But I was totally consumed by my disease and felt I had no way to make friends. And marriage? Well, I'm not married. And the main reason for that is that I have been too consumed by my disease to even try or have a successful relationship. All my friends are having babies and married, and I'm trying to get over an eating disorder. It's incredibly demoralizing, but I have to accept that this is the path my life has taken, and change only what I can from here on out. I can't change the past.

Day 14

I was just sitting here trying to figure out why I've had such awful cravings the last few days. I made a hookup call (my first!) and talking helped a bit. Thinking usually doesn't help much, because let's be honest. We've all tried to think our way out of this, intellectualize something that can't be intellectualized. Because it is our brain doing the thinking, but it is our brain that is messing with us.

Some of the craving right now, for me, might also be my body. My body wants to binge. It really does. But mostly it's my brain that wants to binge, I think.

But I've been thinking while reading some of the Big Book about various things, and one thing that occurred to me, on a vague, fuzzy level, is that I don't think I've accepted that I can't take that first compulsive bite. I think there is part of me that thinks I should be able to have my binge foods and be ok with it and not eat compulsively after. I think part of me is "waiting" for the time when I feel like it's ok to have that bite (or maybe even that binge). I don't know if I believe that just one bite will be my downfall. I think, yes, after a bite (which I imagine would turn into a binge), I believe that I will crave more. I believe that. But I also think that I can get through the craving on willpower. But when have I ever shown the strength to do that? Ever? Even if it's not that day (though it frequently is) or the next day, eventually after I do give in that first little bit, it leads to a still bigger and bigger binge until I'm all-out binging again. So these people, who have more experience than I do and more recovery than I do, might actually be right. It really is about that first bite. And I know when I'm taking a compulsive bite. Or at least, I know when I have a frenzied feeling, a hole I'm needing to fill, and I take a bite almost because I don't have the will not to. But there are other compulsive first bites, I think. That bite of cake that you think is ok and you aren't feeling frenzied, but then it leads to a binge. What if that's my problem today? I had a bite of french toast. And it was amazing. And I really wanted more. Could that be making the cravings worse right now?

It's really interesting that I had this thought occur to me while reading the Big Book right now - that is, the thought that I don't really believe that I need to abstain forever. The thought that I am, at some point, on some level, anticipating that first bite and first binge, I'm just not letting myself do it yet. Then I turn to my designated section of the Twelve and Twelve and read the first highlighted passage that I'm supposed to write about today. And it says: "If we don't ever overeat, we don't trigger the reaction that makes us crave more." I guess that's my HP speaking to me. He wanted me to read that passage. It then goes on to say that "this has proven impossible for us to do on willpower alone. This is becaue our malady is not just physical in nature; it is emotional and spiritual as well" Which is true for me. So I need to address this need to binge this time. Not just hold out until my brain (or my disease) tells me I've behaved long enough and I can have a binge food. I need to address this need to binge now. Look at why, how, call people, write about it, think about it, read about it, pray about it. It's the end of the road. And I have to address the spiritual and emotional reasons why I want to binge and why I still think I can overeat at some point and come back. I think I will overeat at some point, but I cant spend my time waiting for it happen.

Day 11

Compulsive eating "doesn't stem from habits learned in childhood, nor from adjustment problems, not merely from a love of food, though all three of these things maybe be factors in its development. It may be that may of us were born with a physical or emotional predisposition to eat compulsively. Whatever the case, today we are not like normal people when it comes to eating."

This is an interesting passage to me. I have, at one point or another, attributed my food problems to each of the factors listed above. I did think they were probably culpable in combination, but I was inclined to blame childhood habits and adjustment problems. And I think I DO have a physical or emotional predisposition to eat compulsively. For whatever reason, my baseline approach to food is to eat too much and the wrong thing. Did I start out that way? Probably. I remember sneaking food as a very young child, so it seems it started when I was very young and it has simply progressed from there.

But I think that is not what OA deals with. "Whatever the case, today we are not like normal people when it comes to eating." It doesn't matter WHY or HOW you got this way. What matters is that you need to stop acting this way.

But "We can't quit." I've tried many times. Each time I think it's different or I think it's just because I'm going through a rough period in my life that I can't quit or I think that this is something I can control or will be able to control soon. But each time I get some measure of success, I fall. I end up back in the food, totally demoralized and depressed. And fat. It has become painfully clear that I CANNOT DO THIS ON MY OWN. I literally cannot stop eating on my own. I need the help of the group, of a higher power, of both.

I had a thought last night about OA and God. I was thinking about how some people use meetings and the collective group in OA as their higher power, and honestly, I think it's kind of all the same. The OA program helps you become the ideal version of yourself. It helps you acknowledge and rid yourself of character defects, it helps you approach life on a more even, kind, serene level. It helps you approach food the way you should approach it. And the idealized you is obviously the one that God wants, the one he intended for you to be. So the OA program is essentially putting God's wishes and plan into action. I like that. I don't know what it means in terms of my higher power, but it's a nice thought.

Day 10

Well, when counting the days like this it sure highlights how frequently (or infrequently) I post on here! Though if I'm going to try to write every day, hopefully I'll be on here more frequently. That's the goal anyway.

So today's topic is admitting I am powerless over food and that my life has become unmanageable.

The first thing that stands out for me is the idea that I had trouble admitting that I was powerless over food. I didn't like the idea that it wasn't in my control (am I a control freak?) or that it was hopeless. To me that felt so negative. Before even thinking about that I spent so long either not being aware that this was a problem or a problem that was affecting me or not being willing to let go of my control over it.

I was living under the delusion that "someday soon I would again muster the strength of character needed to check my eating excesses, and this time I'd keep them under control. But the days of controlled eating grew fewer and farther apart, until at last we came to OA, looking for a new solution."

Like many people in OA, I tried diet programs. Many of the. I did Weight Watchers 4-5 times, each time lasting a shorter and shorter time and losing less and less weight and being increasingly disgusted with it and myself. I tried Jenny Craig and a shake diet center. None of it worked, and as I got older and gained more weight, the diets worked less and less well. I couldn't even seem to put together 24 hours of controlled eating by the end. They just made me hungrier. I think that is what having a progressive disease is. It got worse and worse. My last attempt (the shake diet center) even came after I'd been to OA at one point. But I didn't believe I had a problem, really, I guess. I wasn't willing to admit that just willpower and counseling alone would be enough. I needed to admit that I am, really, and truly, incapable of fixing this on my own. I need someone much stronger, more powerful than I to help me with this disease. Because it is a disease. And I need to admit that so I can "cease blaming" myself. I heard in a meeting the other day that something is broken in us. Normal eater's status quo or baseline approach to food is to eat normal, healthful portions. My baseline approach to food is broken. My body and mind want me to eat junk and large quantities of it. That means something in me is broken, which means, by definition, that I have a disease. And if you have a disease, you seek out a cure.

The hard component for me at this point is admitting that this is a disease that is not just physical, but emotional and SPIRITUAL. I get the physical part. Science ha shown that the more junk food you eat, the more your body craves it because it becomes addicted to it. The emotional part I also get. I am an emotional eater. When I don't know how to deal with my emotions (and I almost never do - and boy have I had a lot of them lately), I eat over them. I just want to numb out and not feel anymore. Not think about what I don't like in my life. And there's a lot of that too. The really tricky part for me is that this is spiritual. And that's the part that I actually think might be the key, even though it's the hardest to wrap my head around. If this disease were just physical and emotional, then abstaining from eating junk and trigger foods and going to counseling to address your emotional problems would be enough. But it's not. It is not. I need something else. A belief that there is something greater than will solve this problem for me, with my help. I've often thought I didn't need religion or god. But I've also found myself thinking a lot over the last few years that I was "morally bankrupt." What I could have said was "spiritually bankrupt," I think. I have had no reserve of faith on which to draw. Where should that faith come from? Faith in what? I don't know. But I need to find out.

Day 3, Question 1

1.

For me my early history of compulsive eating began with stealing food as a child. I remember in the old house, when my parents left us alone for a while, I would sneak into the freezer in the playroom and sneak pieces of candy - usually fruit-flavored hard candy or Bits 'o Honey. I just remembered that. I also remember trading parts of my lunch for other kids' lunch and getting their "good" stuff, like fruit roll-ups and Nutella. I never understood why those kids would want my boring carrot sticks or whatever instead of their sugar-laden desserts. All that said, I ate relatively normal at home and don't remember having too much trouble with food apart from the occasional stealing as a child.

The stealing continued throughout my teenage years, with it getting progressively more desperate. My parents left me alone more and more (increased responsibility), and I would start to look forward with eager anticipation to the times when they would be out of the house because it meant I could sneak food and watch forbidden tv. That started a pattern for me that still exists today.

In high school I went to an all-girls school so I didn't worry as much about what I looked like. The food was also amazing, so I ate a lot. Well, I don't have that much memory of what exactly I ate - when it was make your own sandwiches or soup in breadbowls I would probably have two. What I do remember is the cookies and pastries. Every day I'd get 5-6 and take them back with me and eat them throughout the afternoon. I also got pastries from breakfast, even though I wasn't supposed to because I was a day student and not a boarder. By Junior year I was stealing breakfast pastries most days. My weigh stayed relatively normal (maybe 20 pounds extra?) throughout high school because I was very into sports (tennis, skiing, hiking). I did gain a little weight and remember going on various diets. Slim Fast shakes, an all-banana diet, only eating white rice with soy sauce for lunches. It was weird. My parents weren't crazy about the extra 20 pounds (or the extra 30 my sister had) and encouraged us to lose weight. I remember them letting our little brother have dessert and telling us that we had to have air-popped popcorn or applesauce instead.

The summer after highschool I went on a month-long backpacking trip and lost all the extra weight (maybe 20 pounds?) and looked great in time for the start of college. When college started, I participated in a week-long backpacking orientation trip in which I was too nervous to talk really. I also didn't eat much (I'd gotten used to not eating much while backpacking) and refused to eat McDonald's on the way home (oh how times have changed!). My leader later pulled me aside and told me there was help for my "eating disorder." I was shocked and appalled. I didn't have an eating disorder! I just didn't like McDonald's!

I actually still don't think I had an eating disorder at that point, though my food was definitely not normal. In fact, on that month-long trip previously that summer, I developed a bizarre and socially unacceptable fear that we would run out of food before our next re-ration. I would panick when boys ate too much and try to keep them from eating too much. I myself hadn't eaten much and didn't see why they needed to. It made me totally ostracized. At the end of the trip, we did a bonding game where one person had to pick another person and make pantomime up. My person imitated me by pretending to snatch food from another group member. Everyone thought it was funny, and I fake laughed, but inside I was completely humiliated. It was awful.

When I started college I resolved to act differently around people if I wanted to have any friends. Interestingly, I didn't connect my poor behavior on the month-long trip with food, just with an inability to socialize properly. Its only now that I have the perspective that I can say that the bigger problem there was food. Still, my social plan worked, and I developed a pretty nice group of friends in college. Food became a problem relatively early on on campus. I remember there being donuts in the lobby of our dorm and sneaking by like 10 times to get one, each time feeling more and more conspicuous. By the beginning of the second semester of freshman year, my clothes were starting to get tighter. Then, most of the way through the semester, I remember having my first binge. I had broken up with a pseudo-boyfriend (my first) and was devastated. I couldn't sleep and for some reason (I can't remember the thinking now), I decided to stay up all night in the hallway (while my roommate slept) and eat. I do remember thinking that I could eat an entire bag of cookies and no one would stop me. So that's what I did. I went out and bought a bag of Pepperidge Farm fudge cookies. I still remember the exact kind. And I sat up and ate them. I guess to try to soothe my heart. I didn't make it all night - probably only til 1 or 2 a.m. But that was my first binge.

I actually don't remember binging again for quite a while. Most of my eating for the next year or so consisted of me feeling sorry for myself and buying sandwich plus chips plus cadbury eggs to make myself feel better. Still not a good reason to eat (and probably still too much food), but not an actual binge with the binge mentality.

Then came the summer after my Junior year. I was interning in Washington, D.C. and living in a dorm at Georgetown with 5 other girls I didn't know. I didn't really know too many other kids in the city, though I met a few, and I was lonely a lot of the time. To ease the loneliness (and give myself an "activity," I guess, I started going to the store in the Georgetown student center and buying crap. Loads of pasta and junk food. And just eating it. The first time it occurred to me that I could buy an entire cake for myself was like a revelation. I bought a pound cake and slowly proceeded to eat the whole thing secretly in my bedroom, knowing that it was wrong but also loving it. I would stop after work on the way home at a bakery and buy 3 1/2-price pastries an scarf them down while waiting for the bus. It was not a fun summer.

By the time I returned to campus for my Senior year, my binging was ingrained, if not habitual. That year, I did not binge that often, but I do remember buying massive muffins and cakes and taking them back to my library carrel while writing my thesis to ease the boredom, I suppose. I also was dating someone that year who called me fat. And he was right. I'd pretty much binged my way up to being well-overweight at that point. Wearing size 14, I'm guessing. I look massive compared with my roommates in photos.

The binging didn't really begin in earnest and in a way that I could not stop until after college. That first year I was living with my best friend in Chicago. She had her own life and I wasn't much fun to be around, as I was depressed, unhappy about my job, totally clueless about my future, and at loose ends about everything in my life. I remember lying awake one Saturday morning thinking, "what the hell do people do on weekends after college? My life is totally empty!" So I proceeded to fill it--or me--with junk food. There was a convenience store in the basement of our building where I would go and buy junk food. Raspberry croissants, massive Kit-Kat bars, ice cream, cookies, cake. You name it. This was when the workday pattern set in of, around 3 pm every day, me thinking that I wanted junk food. And promising myself every day that today would be different. It almost never was.

By the time I got to DC a year later, my binge-eating was full-blown. My first few months here were spent in total isolation, sick (I later had surgery), lonely, depressed, scared. The best remedy (I though) was food. I binged almost every night for the next 3-4 years and made almost no friends in that time. It was the most miserable time of my life. I remember buying a dozen krispy kreme jelly-filled donuts, ice cream, a Chipotle burrito, and chips and eating most of it. Then finishing the rest the next morning. All I did was watch TV and isolate myself. A couple times I joined Weight Watchers, not realizing that I had an actual eating disorder at the time that wouldn't be solved by counting points. The first time was the most successful, and I lost maybe 20 pounds before I lost the ability to control my eating and binging. The second time I don't think I lost more than 10 pounds. I also tried Jenny Craig, which lasted maybe 3 weeks and cost me hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

I also went on what could be called the "romance" diet. I met the man who would become my first successful relationship about 5 years after arriving in DC. I was pretty happy at first and lost some weight. I have no idea how much I got down to, but I did lose some. I also didn't binge as much, because I was simply happier. I did binge when he wasn't around, though, and that secret eating and bingeing became a massive source of unhappiness for me over the next 3 years of our relationship. About a year into the relationship, my parents told me they thought I was depressed and should go on antidepressants. I listened to them and started seeing a therapist and got the drugs. And gained 40 pounds over the next six months. My top weight was 243 pounds. I don't know how much of that gain was because I was depressed or because the medicine simply made me crave carbs, but the weight gain was staggering. I'd never experienced anything like that before. I was beyond miserable and knew I needed to do something about it.

I went off the drugs about 8 months after starting them but still couldn't lose the weight. My parents decided it was time to send me to a weight-loss clinic, and they paid for it. It was a very, very low point in my life. I was 28, bordering on morbidly obese, poor because I'd spent so much money on food, and my parents felt like they had to step in and get me professional help to stop being such a slob. That was how I felt. I was also still depressed, mostly because of my weight.

I think I lasted a week at the weight-loss clinic. They wanted me to drink these shakes and take all these supplements. It all felt wrong. Just so wrong. But I wanted to lose weight and appreciated my parents (right or wrong) offering to help me. So I quit after a week, apologized profusely to my parents for the money they lost and then proceeded to do nothing (though not gain weight) for the next 6 months. That was when my friend asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I was happy but also horrified. By that time, I was a size 22, and I knew this friend would want us to wear some kind of couture/designer bridesmaid dress - in this case, Vera Wang. I just knew Vera Wang didn't make size 22 bridesmaid dresses. And there was no way I was walking down the aisle with the rest of her impossibly small and chic friends at that size. The bride hadn't seen me in a couple years and, I thought at the time, certainly wouldn't have asked me to be in her wedding if she knew just how big I was. I knew I had to lose weight. I decided to go on a low-carb (South Beach) diet and commit to exercising a minimum of 3 times per week. I had a lot of support from my then-boyfriend, and it was actually a pretty good time. I lost 50 pounds in 6 months, getting down to 190. Then I stalled. I think my body partly likes being at this weight and partly the fact that I finally told my parents about my efforts messed with me mentally. Also, I was never able to go more than two weeks on the diet without bingeing my brains out. The binge would only last one meal, but it did enough damage.

Since then (about two years), I've remained within about 8 pounds of that weight, but that includes relatively frequent binges. Which is why I've come to OA. But it's clear that OA is not a simple solution. As the literature says, many of us hoped there was an easier, softer way. But there doesn't seem to be for me. I've even tried OA in the past (maybe 3 years ago) without actually doing the steps or using the tools. And that's actually what I've been doing for the last few months since the end of July. But I haven't been successful at staying abstinent more than a week or two at a time since starting, and I think it's time to accept the inevitable. That I have to work it. It works if you work it, that's what they say. Even though I hate that expression. It's so Twelve-Steppy. Ugh. But if a Twelve-Step program is what will help get me out of this mess that is my current life, then who am I to knock it? I have a lot of pride and I hate being a cliche. But maybe that's not what I am. Maybe I'm one of the people who can overcome something really, really hard to overcome and can admit that I need to do whatever it takes to do that. I hope so. I want to be that person.

Nothing...Left

I feel like I have nothing left. Nothing left to give, to myself or anyone else. I'm at the end of my rope. I have no choice. I have to do something about it.

It starts with the food. You can't do anything until you put down the food.

White Knuckles

I want to eat right now. All the wisdom says that when you want to eat, if you've already had a meal recently, you need to figure out why. I've never been good at pausing long enough to let my brain be quiet and figure it out. But here goes: It's hard to tell, but I think I might be a tad hungry. I had a fairly filling lunch, and I wasn't hungry when I started eating. Was it enough? Is my stomach just digesting? Will the _slight_ feeling of hunger go away or will I become ravenously hungry? And so what if I do? What does that mean? I think I am afraid of hunger, the way so many experts say we compulsive eaters are. But really, what's so bad about being hungry? I remember being hungry before meals a lot as a child, and that was a good thing. It's more fun to eat when you're hungry than when you're not. So I get hungry an hour (or two?) before I'm supposed to eat dinner. What does that mean? That I'm not cut out for this whole eating healthy thing, that I can't get it right, that I always either undereat or overeat. I never eat "just enough." I'm a failure. I think that's part of what goes through my head. But also the fear that I won't have access to the foods I need (or want?) when I do get really hungry. But so what? There's tons of food around, both in my house, at the grocery store three blocks away, at the zillion restaurants within two blocks of my house. I WILL NOT STARVE.

So what else is making me think I want to eat? Maybe part of it is actually reading OA literature and seeing how these people overate. I'm also anxious. Anxious that this won't work, anxious because I'm off sugar, again, for a couple days now. Anxious because I feel like I don't measure up and I'll be alone forever. But the thing is, I won't. What I'm doing now will help me get the confidence to surround myself with people when I need them and be alone when I don't. It will give me the confidence to get out there and meet people, something I've been really bad at. So I think that's what's bothering me. I'm not sure if this will help the white knuckle situation. I doubt it will. I'm going to try going for a walk to ease some of this.

One Day! (sort of)

I was actually able to get a day of healthy eating under my belt yesterday! It felt good, and I was glad I did it. Now I need to do it again today. So far so good. I've had oatmeal with strawberries and turkey bacon for breakfast so far. And lunch is going to be stuffed mushrooms.

It seems like every day is something a bit different but equally distressing. Yesterday I had a ton of things on my mind. Many of them food-related. Today my distress is about something else (though, as always, related). I have an ex-boyfriend, who I talked about before in this blog, who I broke up with in January. For a number of reasons, but primarily because I simply didn't want to marry him. He did want to marry me. For various reasons - many of them having to do with loneliness and the fear that I will never have a normal relationship because I'm too fat for anyone to like me - we have had a messy breakup. I.e., hooking up and spending probably too much time acting like boyfriend-girlfriend. He has slowly been trying to get back into my life on a more regular basis, which sometimes is good and other times (most of the time) seems like a really bad idea. I don't want it. I don't want a relationship with him. And I'm worried I'm leading him on. In fact, I'm pretty sure I am and I feel guilty about it. He has gotten back into the habit of wanting to talk every single night on the phone, which I HATED when we were together. And he wants to see me multiple times per week, even though I'm fine with maybe once a week. And I'm supposed to see him tonight and the once-per-week thing is seeming like too much. He said I didnt sound excited about it on the phone last night. My inclination was to make an excuse, but the truth is, I didn't want to be talking to him on the phone last night and I don't particularly want to see him tonight. But I said I would, and I also don't have any other plans as of right now, so I guess I'm going to.

I don't know. I'm very, very tentatively starting to think I might be able to conceive of putting myself out there in the near future and finding other people to date. The whole body composition scan thing helped a lot. Knowing I don't have 70 pounds to lose is helping me feel more confident, and I think I'll feel more ok with getting out there if I only lose 20-25. We'll see. But the (very small but growing) excitement about potentially meeting someone else is making this hanging out with the ex thing even less appealing.

Poor guy. It's not his fault.

Just needed to get this off my chest.

A Lack of Progress

After posting about my revelation today, I read through my blog. I started from the beginning and read all of the posts, trying to see how I've progressed.

My conclusion? I really haven't. I feel like I've bounced from one weight-loss or anti-headache effort to another, without ever being successful or sticking with them long-term. If I were reading my blog, I would think "wow, this person seems a bit delusional." She doesn't learn. She tries things over and over again and never manages to stick with anything. She just ends up eating every time.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's just that I've read other people's blogs and felt some sort of superiority over these people because they didn't seem to realize that they were, in fact, not making any progress. they just kept going right back to the food. Except feeling superior is ridiculous. Because that is EXACTLY what my blog is like. Hm.

A Revelation

Do you ever have the problem that you feel like you need to write and you feel like putting things down on paper (or screen, as the case may be) will help you sort out your thoughts, but you have so many thoughts and so many topics that need sorting out that you don't know where to start? Or you don't know which one to choose because if you tried to cover all of them you would be writing for the rest of your life? But it's hard to separate out the topics because they're all, really, tied together?

I'm having that problem right now.

but I'll try to tackle one of them right now because it's the topmost in my mind and can help give perspective on future posts, assuming I get around to them.

I've been thinking about going to a nutritionist for, well, years now. But most of that thinking went along these lines: "What the heck can a nutritionist tell me that I don't already know? I know I'm overweight, I know what I need to do to lose weight, there are a million sensible food plans out there that I could follow, but the trouble if figuring out HOW to get myself to follow them and a nutritionist really can't help with that." But the drumbeat of "go to a nutritionist" has been getting louder the last couple of months as I've been attending OA meetings, where getting a food plan from a nutritionist is expected at the very least, and more likely required.

So I finally made an appointment with one and went in with an--admittedly--bad attitude, particularly given some bad things I had heard about my chosen nutritionist the last couple of days. She didn't quite live up to all the hype about how bad she was; she seemed to concentrate a bit too much on addressing my migraines in ways other than food, when I really wanted her to give me a food plan that would allow me to lose weight, and she didn't actually end up giving me a food plan in the first visit but instead told me I would have to come back for that. I was peeved, to say the least, and decided not to go back.

Three days later I am hopelessly mired in my eating, still confused by food plans, unable to see straight ahead in terms of where I was supposed to go and how I was supposed to eat. I called her back and made a follow-up appointment. At this point, I figured, I had already invested a fair amount of money, so I might as well go back and get the food plan from her. Little did I know that what I would learn in the upcoming visit would be so interesting.

When I got there, she performed a body composition test, something I had never had done before. Now, I had always suspected that I was unusually muscular for a woman. But my father, who is a doctor, had told me that that shouldn't matter in terms of weight loss and than you should still shoot for the lower end of the government's recommended weight range for your height. For me, that would mean 125 pounds. I didn't quite listen to my father and decided on a goal of 135 pounds, which would put me squarely in the middle of the range. It's a number that I have been focusing on as my "ideal" weight for my entire adult life, and given my struggles with food, it would not be an exaggeration to say that learning that this number was off--by a lot--shifted my world view.

The body composition scan told me that I have 140 pounds of muscle and bone and 60 pounds of fat a ratio of 70% muscle to 30% fat. Which means that if I had zero (0%) body fat, I would still weight 5 pounds more than my former "ideal" body weight. I'd also probably be dead. Assuming that I wanted to reach the recommended body fat percentage for a 31-year-old woman of 21%, I would need to weigh 178 pounds. Yes, 42 pounds more than I thought I was supposed to weight.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I currently weight 200 pounds, and I thought I had close to 70 pounds left to lose. Turns out? I only have 22. And at my skinniest, when I know I looked and felt good, I was probably still close to 180 pounds.

So given this revelation, what does that mean for me, my attitude, and my weight loss? That first day, it really did feel like my world view had shifted, like this attitude that I had had of myself as being a huge fat slob was all wrong. It was a great feeling (though also slightly sickening to think of all the time I've wasted thinking that way). Also, the burden of having to lose weight shifted a bit. I was no longer facing this massive, seemingly impossible uphill slog. Instead, it was a much smaller hill I had to scale, and it made it seem less daunting.

What does that mean for my food addiction? Honestly, I don't know. The more weight I had to lose, the more I seemed to get depressed about how hard it was going to be and how long it was going to be before I felt comfortable enough to put myself out there, date etc. Which only made me eat more. Knowing I had less of a battle ahead of me did give me hope for my future. But it's not like this revelation all of a sudden made me stop stuffing food in my face. I binged the next two days after I learned that. Why? I don't know. Habit? Sugar addiction? Still needing to process everything? Who knows.

I will say that today, so far, I have been, precariously, doing well. I am following (more or less rigorously) the food plan prescribed by the nutritionist, and I am enjoying the food. Let me repeat that. I am enjoying the food. I had some very good tasting oatmeal with turkey bacon this morning, and lunch was a big cobb salad. I am also having one of my favorite stuffed portabello mushrooms recipes tonight for dinner. IT feels like maybe, just maybe, I can do it today. I'm still feeling slightly peckish after my cobb salad, so I'm going to have an apple now.

I can do this today. I can. tomorrow will have to deal with itself.

Ugh

I'm so confused right now. Upset, frustrated, scared, angry, apprehensive, nervous. I'm supposed to (or at least vaguely) do something with some people today and I'm resentful that I feel obligated to. I said they should call me and "I'd see." I didn't commit necessarily, but I think that was assumed. I'm resentful that I feel like I committed and now I'm mad at myself for backing out and guilty about it. But I don't owe this person anything. He thinks I do. I don't, but I think I might be allowing him to think I do. I'm backing out because I'm so upset, in such a black, panicked, depressed mood. My eating disorder is in rough shape, and I'm reading about eating disorders. I've gained weight and my clothes don't fit. And my thighs rub together and chafe. And I don't have the right shoes because I injured my foot and no jogging shoes fit without giving me blisters. The pair I have might be too late to return, because I've been in such a fog of food, so I might have spent $125 for no good reason and ended up with a pair of shoes that don't work. I can't believe I've gotten so fat. And yet all I want to do is go out and get food now. And I've put off doing the thing this afternoon but said I might do dinner with them. Which just makes me look like a fat pig, but I can wrap my head around doing dinner better than I can walking really far in flip-flops with my legs chafing.

Ugh Ugh Ugh.

OA Confusion

I've been doing OA. Or at least going to OA/HOW meetings. It has been interesting and has given me a lot to think about and made me take a closer look at how I function right now, not how I want to function or should function. It's interesting. I will try to write more about it in the future, but right now I want to get off my chest an incident that happened this morning. A person whom I had met through OA a number of years ago but did not know well needed a ride to a HOW meeting this morning. I was tired but made very sure that I got to the metro station to pick her up on time. And she wasn't there. And she didn't show up (I thought) for the next half hour, despite me circling the block several times, parking, wandering around looking for her, getting coffee etc. I eventually gave up, feeling a bit annoyed but mostly compassionate for her, concluding that she must have been having a really hard morning. I didn't get a call from her. I went ahead and went to the meeting, which went fine. I then heard from her about 3 hours later when she left a voicemail asking where I had been. I called her back and we chatted about what had happened. I still have absolutely no idea how we missed each other. None. We were, apparently, both at the same area at the same time, but totally didn't see each other. She also waited for a half hour. Anyway, I feel like I did something wrong. Like I should have waited longer or looked harder for her. I know I should have brought her phone number with me (and she didn't have mine either, so that was a mutual problem), but I don't know why I feel guilty. I guess because I had promised that I would drive her to this meeting and I ultimately failed to do that, despite trying to. I'm hoping writing this down will make me feel a bit better. I know, logically, I did nothing wrong and really did try. But I still feel bad. Because I know she needed/wanted this meeting. Anyway, we set a more definite meeting place for next week and are going to try again. I hope it works better!

Eating tomorrow

Tomorrow, August 26, I will eat oatmeal, fruit, eggs for breakfast.

Progress?

I've done a lot of thinking since my last post--about why I overate that night, whether it was something that should really bother me, how to move forward, etc. I think the reasons were what I stated, and the thing that made me feel better about it really was the fact that I hadn't deliberately gone out and bought binge food and eaten it all. It was not a deliberate thing. So I really didn't want to beat my self up over it. And I didn't. I felt ok. But I did want to analyze the reasons why to see if I could prevent it in the future. 

Right now I really, really want to go out and buy binge food and eat. It's been four days since the night I overate and I've been doing fine. Food was fine. but there's a lot of stress right now related to family stuff etc. All I want is sugar. I'm determined not to have it, though my mind is messing with me right now. I had planned on having chicken and mushroom risotto for dinner, but I decided I didnt want it and that I was going to have to eat something I actually wanted if I was going to not be pissed off about not eating my binge foods. So I'm thawing a steak. And I'm going to have roasted broccoli and baked french fries with it. That's a real meal that I can feel fine about. I hate this obsession with food, though. I wish I could just accept that Im not going to eat sugar and flour tonight, make the decision to have my (new and improved) dinner, and then move on. But I can't. Maybe it's because I'm hungry. I didn't have much breakfast or lunch, so that could be it. I need to start eating on a better schedule and more complete meals. That would help. Then I wouldn't be so hungry at 4 pm. 

I think I need to watch some more videos about BED. That is a good deterrant.

For now, it's time to go get my laundry out.

Peace Out

Trying to Understand

I have so many thoughts in my head right now. I overate tonight. and not just vegetables or oatmeal or something  healthy. But cookies and m&ms. Lots of them. I did not go out and binge, so I suppose that's good. But I overate. Why? Stress over the job. Food. Headaches. Alcohol. Socializing. There are lots of reasons. I need to think about them tomorrow. But here, now, I just want to come on here to say that I DID NOT BINGE and I need to treat tomorrow like any other day and work on being healthy. Tomorrow I will eat: strawberry/oatmeal/egg bake for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch, and pork with broccoli for dinner.

What I will eat today

Breakfast: Egg, blueberry, oatmeal bake and coffee

Lunch: 1 can tuna with two rice cakes, vegetable (salad?) and smoothie.

Dinner: Steak with gorgonzola sauce, broccoli, applesauce

Depression

I'm depressed today. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I don't have enough to do. Or because I'm anxious and tired. I couldn't sleep last night, maybe because I'm worried about getting a job. Maybe I'm dealing with the consequences of eating healthfully. They say getting out of the food exposes lots of raw emotions and feelings that have been buried under the food for so long. I think you just have to get through it. Try to examine what the feelings are, why you're feeling that way, and what you can do about it. Why am I feeling this way? I think I'm scared I'll be alone forever. I'm stressed about my personality issues. I'm worried about relationships, and I'm stressed about work. But I'm doing what I can right now. I'm waiting to hear back from a potential employer, hopefully by the end of the week. I think I've got a good chance. I need to send out two resumes today. That is my goal. And I need to make a phone call to my current freelance boss about plans going forward. As for relationships, I am working on what I can do, which should make me feel better. I'm working to be healthy and look better, which will make me feel more confident in the long-term to find real love. And in the meantime, there are things I an do to make myself less lonely. Those come with problems too, but I think, on the balance, it is better to do it than not to. As for personality stuff, I'm going to apologize to the people I think they affected last night, when I go exercise with them. I hope that will help. And exercise. That will help me feel better. So I am working on these things. But none of the solutions will help me feel completely better immediately. So the key is not to eat through them, because that will make me feel worse. Even though all I want to do is curl up on the couch and cry. Although not quite as much as I did before I started writing this.

I Will

I swear. Here in public in writing. That I will eat according to my food plan tomorrow, August 8, 2009.

Bfast: Blueberry oatmeal bake

Lunch: Tuna salad, rice cakes, salad, smoothie

Dinner: Daal Makhani with rice, apple.

I'm Down

Why is it that I come back here when I hit a particularly low point in my life?  And why is it that the low point almost inevitably includes out-of-control eating pursuant to other life crises? I suppose I should update since my last update. My dad is fine. His cancer is gone, and after a difficult recovery, he is well on his way to healing fully. That is the most important thing, and I am so grateful that he is all right. I would like to not take that for granted. 

The other thing I was dealing with the last time I wrote was the breakup. It has been hard. We are still broken up, I still do not want to marry him, but we are spending more time together. He has been my best friend for four years, and that doesn't just go away. Losing your best friend and your boyfriend in one fell swoop (the same day you find out your dad has cancer) is too much. So we're talking. And hanging out and...hm. I'll leave it at that.

I can't deny that I'm lonely. In fact, it's been a sad, awful day of being cooped up in my apartment (for no good reason - I could have called friends, could have gone outside and enjoyed the weather, could have not eaten crap food, could have not watched a horrible depressing movie. But I did).  So I talked to the ex. And I wanted him to come over. Because I'm sad and lonely and need the comfort. He did not (I had too much pride to ask him outright). But perhaps I feel a bit better after talking to him.

But why do I do this to myself? Why do I isolate myself like this? I know it's my disease, and I now that life could be good. But I don't seem to have the strength to get to good. Exactly one month ago, I found out that my executive director (from here on out A.H.) had sold the bulk of my company to a firm in Philadelphia and was laying everyone off except a few of his favorites, who he was keeping to start his own think tank with the proceeds of the sale. I was going to be jobless. Me, an Ivy League graduate, the youngest magazine editor at the company, was going to be jobless. Since then it has become clear that the new company wants to retain me as editor, and we have spent the last couple of weeks negotiating the terms of the contract. It will be finalized this week and my last day at my current company is Friday. Starting next Friday, I will be a self-employed freelance editor working out of my home. And I'm terrified. I'm terrified of being even more isolated than I am, I'm terrified that I will just be unable to motivate myself to work, that I'll just become this (more) depressed, unhappy, slothful, time-wasting mess. Realistically, I know what I need to do to make sure that doesn't happen. But can I make myself do it? Can I set a schedule and stick to it? Can I make sure I get out and work in coffee shops and go to the gym every day to interact with other humans? Can I make a bigger effort than normal to socialize so I see people enough? Can I get up the gumption to volunteer? Can I get the work done? Can I get up the energy to apply for full-time jobs?

And most importantly, can I get my food under control? I have no reason to think I can. I've failed a million and one times before now. But the evidence is growing that beating this disease is a matter of life and death for me. As in, I have no life when I'm in the food. I do things like sleep on the couch every night and eat til I feel sick and exist on sugar and carbohydrates and get migraines daily and avoid contact with friends. I watch TV all day. I do what I did today. And I'm miserable. I snap at people, I have inexplicable rage totally out-of-proportion to life events. I haven't been handling this job stress well. And I know it's because I'm so consumed by my addiction. Everything is worse when I'm in the food. Layoffs and underemployment and massive life changes are stressful. But they don't have to be as stressful as I've made them. I realized this a couple of weeks ago--that I was making things so much worse because of my food. So I got up the energy (nerve? Chutzpah? willingness?) to try eating no sugar, no flour, and no wheat. I did it for 8 days, and I felt better in the last few days of that period than I had in a while. I was able to look at the positive aspects of these changes and see how it might be good. I was calmer, happier (though still not happy). I was more human. 

Then I have into the food. And all the goodness went away. Now, though things are actually looking brighter than they were last week, I am having trouble seeing any good in anything. It's like I'm stuck in this chemical haze of negativity and I can't see my way out. I just have to trust that not eating sugar, flour, or wheat will once again help me regain my equanimity. I just have to pray to god that I can do it again and that I can continue eating that way. Because my way doesn't work.

I have to try. I can only hope that my new schedule will help me break old habits and form new, good ones. I have to try.

Today, I am grateful for:

my friends

Harry Potter

Mom and Dad

My apartment

summer

the opportunity to try working from home

flowers

balloons

Compulsive Eating

Why? I had a perfectly nice lunch - brown rice pasta primavera and a banana. IT was excellent. But as I was microwaving it, I spied a box of marshmallow-caramel-chocolate-pecan thingies someone had left in the office kitchen. I was starving. Apparently my waffle with 1 T peanut butter and half a banana wasn't enough. So even before I got the pasta out of the fridge, I grabbed one of these thingies, tore open the wrapper, and ate it. It was good. Then I stuck the pasta in the microwave and while it was heating grabbed another chocolate thingy. This one was not as good, not because it was different, but because it was too much gooeyness after the last one. Of course I was immediately struck with horrible guilt and the feeling that I've ruined yet another day.

And this is even after commanding myself to "just chill" on my way down to get my lunch, to be present in the moment and be aware of what I was doing/eating/enjoying.

Didn't help.

The only slightly good news is now I'm too full, so the idea of binging after this slip-up isn't appealing. I just need to chill.

Why do I do this, though???

Oh right, I'm uber stressed (see post above). Argh. I would be able to handle all this life crap so much better if I felt better about my food and my body.

I'm So Not Coping

I just said ( I'm so not coping) this to my friend, and I realized how true it is. Well, I'm coping the only way I know how, which is to eat. Yesterday I literally ate the entire box of cereal I bought in the morning. So messed up. The things that amount of fiber will do to your digestive system are not pretty.

So I'm totally not coping. Have you ever reached one of those points in life where you have so many stressors that you don't know what to do? Well, what I do is turn to food. Which is just making everything worse. Like I know I'm getting fatter on top of everything else, so literally everything feels out of control.

Long Time No Blog

So I guess I've had my longest period yet without a blog post. Most times, that means bad things - whether it is lack of weight loss or other traumatic events. In my case, it's all three. Since my last post, I have broken up with my BF of 3.5 years, learned my dad had cancer, moved apartments, tried Overeaters Anonymous, and gained enough weight to go all the way back up to 204. Not great. In fact it sucks. It has been a sucky, suck 2009 so far.

Things are working themselves out, slowly, though. The now ex-BF and I are speaking again. It hurts. So much, but I want to be friends. I just didn't want to marry him. Dad had surgery and is on the mend. We find out in a couple days if the biopsy results show the cancer has spread, but it's looking very, very promising that it hasn't. I moved into a wonderful new apartment (unfortunately, right next to the ex but also right next to a couple good friend, so I have company). I love my new space. OA has given me a lot of think about, and although I'm not sure how much I'm going to involve myself in it going forward, it will be valuable regardless.

So I'm trying to figure my crap out right now. There's been a lot of distraction the last couple months, but I'm hoping that I can concentrate on me a bit more now. I don't know. We'll see. The plan is to come here and post feelings around mealtimes. We'll see how that goes.

Heather from Dietgirl - I had no idea anyone had commented on my posts, but am thrilled that you did! Will try very hard to keep updating this site more, mostly for me.

Thanks.

Recording Feelings

This morning I am anxious - actually, almost panicked. Because of how fat I feel. How messed up I know I am about food. etc. I've been doing OA, and I'm still so on the fence about it. On the one hand, I really see myself in those people, and on the other, I don't. I'm not as crazy as a lot of them. At least, I don't think I am. And I don't want to be that crazy. I'm hoping I can do some introspection, figuring myself out without getting into all the OA craziness. I want to work on the steps and write and read, but the meetings - ugh. Hm. We'll see. I succeeded in getting over another bout of headaches using a very strict anti-headache diet, but of course I couldn't stick with it and it caused me to binge. I need a more reasonable, balanced approach to eating. Eat things I like but in moderation and balanced with good things. So this morning I really wanted cereal. I had some (probably a serving and a half?) and feel nervous about eating it but really good after. Like it was just what I wanted. But no guilt after.

We'll see how lunch goes.

Back on the Wagon?

I know I was supposed to start the whole healthy eating thing again on January 1st. After all, it's the start of a new year, right? But with a 4-day weekend, that didn't really happen, so now here I am back on Dayy One trying to be healthy. I figured my weigh-in day was as good a day as any to kick-start things again. As of this morning, I weighed 195.4 pounds. Not exactly an earth-shattering number. In fact, I've been somewhere in the 190-195 pound range for a full six months now, so it's time to do something about that.

But a lack of exercise during that time period means that I am bigger than I was before. 195 pounds of mostly fat is just plain bigger than 195 pounds of fat and muscle. So my pants are a bit tighter, some tops ride up a little too far...I just feel gnarley.

So as of today, it's back on the wagon, in the saddle, on the horse, etc etc. The eating has gone well today, though exercise was shaky. I woke up at 8:30 after going to bed at midnight because I stayed up to watch Lifetime's new series Dietribe (not bad!) and then couldn't settle down for another hour. And I'm meeting a friend for coffee tonight, so I won't be able to exercise after work. But tomorrow is a new day!