Two Days Off

I deducted two days from my count of "abstaining" days because I didn't do very well over the weekend. My big downfall, as predicted, was Saturday night. There was just too much against me. I worked my tail off on the busiest day of the entire festival, I was "starving" because I didn't have any kind of afternoon snack. I was surrounded by two major binge foods -- pizza and burnt sugar cake, and I was seemingly surrounded by people who were overeating all weekend.

None of it's an excuse. I made a conscious decision to eat too much. I know I was gobbling down that pizza way too fast because I was so hungry and it tasted soooo good.

On Sunday I was surrounded by food -- major leftovers. I decided to compromise: I kept what I knew I would eat that day, and I took the rest and left it at the festival office so it wouldn't be around to tempt me today.

And so today I'm back to the plan, although I didn't go to the gym because I didn't feel well (including a hoarse voice which I'm kinda' concerned about). I think part of it was being tired from working my tail off at the festival, but I think I was also having a real food hangover after all that heavy food.

After thinking about it, I decided not to go back to zero but just deduct two days from my count. As Dr. Fairburn's book says, I lapsed, I didn't relapse, and I shouldn't consider a weekend of overeating a few things as a complete failure. I was able to catch myself in an overeating/binge moment, realize why I was doing it and try to learn something from it. In between those couple moments of weakness I still wrote down what I ate, tried to make some healthier choices and tried to keep my meals and snacks at specific times and not free-range grazing the whole weekend.

Instead of feeling the drudgery of going back on a diet, I actually felt a sense of relief of getting back to my (new) routine, which is definitely a new thing for me. Almost as an added incentive, Opr9h had her B0b Green3 challenge people on her show today (a re-run) and showed all the before and after stories of people who made a real commitment to change their lives.

If anything, this is a learning experience that I can have a "guilty" weekend and then go back to healthy eating. In the past I would have just completely gone off the wagon and never got back on, and I would have just continued overeating and chowing down on all of the leftovers until they were gone. "Normal" people have days or weekends where they eat too much, then go on with the rest of their lives, and that's what I'd like to achieve.

While none of my gang commented on my appearance, my mom's friend KS stopped by at our party Saturday night and made a fuss over me, which thoroughly tickled me. It's so nice to have a cheerleader to make me feel good and encourage me to keep it up, because I rarely have anyone tell me I'm looking good, etc.

I'm also totally unused to have anyone fuss over me, but B certainly does, and I always feel so special when he dotes on me and makes so many PDAs. No one except for Mabel ever touches me, so to have someone, even a gay man, be so willing to make physical contact makes me feel, at least a little bit, that I'm not the most physically repulsive creature in the world.

Now I guess I'm eager to lose more, enough that people have to notice. Something tells me this could really be it, the time that I'm finally successful, because my goals are realistic and I'm allowing myself to be imperfect, which hopefully will keep me on track and less likely to quit altogether.

I just have to be kind to myself after I do fall, and keep reminding myself of all the good things -- how much better I feel, how much this will improve the quality of my life -- and all that!