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!

Another Year Comes to a Close

I am probably one of an infinite number of would-be bloggers who starts having gut-wrenching reality checks about their blogging (and other) habits as they start to consider year-end and new year plans.

I'd really like to take up blogging again in the new year. I think it's therapeutic, and it would be good to be able to practice writing on a fairly regular basis. Even if the kind of writing I do on here isn't exactly what I would like to be doing.

Here is what has been happening to me lately. I have, largely, gotten rid of my headache, though strangely without the aid of any food plan or drugs. It just seems to have eased up, and my head has reset itself.

Of course, the corollary to this good news is that I've been eating. Badly. And without immediate consequence (read: splitting headache). The long-term consequence, of course, is weight gain. Not a lot of it. In fact, I'm not actually sure that I weigh more now than I did back in June. As of a week ago, I was almost exactly the same weight as I was in June. But I have more fat and less muscle, I think. My pants are tighter, and I just feel heavier and more flabby. And you know that roll of flab around your midsection that you get when you wear form-fitting clothing and tummy-squishing undergarments. Um, yeah...I have that. In spades.

The good news was a couple of long hikes while I was away for Christmas proved that I am, without a doubt, still in much better shape than I was a year ago (and still down 50 pounds, which is nice).

But now that 2009 is just around the corner, it's time to get serious about this healthy lifestyle thing again. I don't feel healthy at the moment. Don't feel sexy or confident. I don't even really feel very good about myself. And a huge part of that is my weight. It's funny how you can feel good and skinny and confident with some newly-minted weight loss, but as time goes on and you get used to the skinnier version of yourself, you forget how good you felt and readjust to the "new normal." So your "fat" days now occur at a much smaller size than before, but they still occur. And let's just say pretty much every day for the last several months has felt like a fat day.

So tomorrow is New Year's Eve. I know I'm going to a party (it will be low-key, but it will still have lots of not so healthy food). And then I have the rest of the week off. I'm going to take advantage of that and really sit down and try to figure out what I want with my life and healthy and body and mind. It's a tall order, but I need to do it. I normally don't set resolutions, but this year I think I will.

So expect to hear back from me soon. I have a feeling one of my resolutions will be to write here more.

Happy New Year!

Doctors' Scales Are Evil

Happy post-Thanksgiving to one and all. I hope you had as relaxing a holiday as I did. For those of us trying to lose weight, Thanksgiving can be a bit tough, but because of my super-fun headache problems, I did not have too much trouble with overeating this year, despite my required presence at no less than three separate Thanksgiving meals! I mostly ate turkey and carrots and probably had a bit too much of a headache safe apple crumble and a sweet potato casserole I made, but I did exercise all five days of the very long weekend and am still very sore today to prove it.

So I was feeling pretty smug about my success this long holiday weekend until I got on the scale at the doctor's office for my annual. Ugh. 192. I am guessing it is calibrated differently than my scale at home (which gave a glorious reading of 189 last Tuesday). And although it is undoubtedly more accurate than my scale at home, the doctor's office scale has not been recording the changes in my weight. So I shall try not to let that evil scale weigh me down (get it? bad pun) and will wait for the "official" results from my weigh-in tomorrow on my slightly faulty but hopefully much nicer home scale. I'll be sure to report. Is it bad that I've been dreaming of being 185? That would be 4.2 pounds in one week, which is not exactly realistic. But it would put me just into the "overweight" category and out of the "obese" category, which I've been in for so long.

In headache-related news, I'm still headache-free. Which is awesome. I'll say again (mostly for myself), I really do think it's all about the food for me - when I eat according to my diet, I don't get headaches. When I go off the diet, I do. Ugh. On the downside, it's hard to eat this way. On the plus side, it's much, much healthier! (Also, just a side note that I need to add - I keep calling this an anti-headache DIET. It is a diet in the strict sense of the word - in that my particular diet describes how I am eating right now. But I am summarily opposed to being on a traditional diet of cutting calories or certain foods etc. For me, it's about eating healthfully and to satiate. It's something I've been working on for a long, long time, but I don't diet anymore. I can't. It makes me crazy.

That's all for now. I'll report back in tomorrow after my weigh-in!