Tough Love

I don't really want to write on the blog today, which I know is a bad sign, so I'm forcing myself to do it. This may sound weird, but it's my own version of tough love: if I don't write, i.e., work out what's going on in my head right now, if I stuff it down and don't express it somewhere, it will get buried in a mountain of food. I will wake up a month from now 20 pounds heavier and full of remorse.

I really fell hard into the food the last two days. I'm getting really, really tired of this, but at the same time I don't seem to be able to turn it off. This is a cop-out, and I know it. I know all the ways to prevent this from happening: relaxation techniques, exercising, exploring the feelings behind it, working through the cravings, toughing out the temporary discomfort of not following through and letting them pass. But I'm just being lazy and taking the easy way out -- eating.

I also know I'm delving into self-flagellating when I use words like cop-out and lazy. It doesn't help to criticize and call myself names. But it's hard not to be disappointed in myself when I know I can do something yet I make the choice not to. And there was choice there. At any time over the weekend I could have told myself "STOP. Now." Yet I didn't.

What scares me the most is when the drive to eat kicks in and I do lose some sense of control. My body and brain disconnect somehow; no matter how much I consume I don't seem to feel any sense of satisfaction or fullness.

I know on Saturday I was feeling anxiety. And I did try to hold off the Eat Mode a couple times throughout the day. In the morning I remember chanting to myself in my head, "I can eat whatever I want, so I don't need to eat it ALL." This was my attempt to alleviate some of the deprivation anxiety that I knew was brewing. In the afternoon I tried to get myself involved in house cleaning, hoping it would be a distraction, a physical release to release some of that tension. For a while it worked, but as soon as I was done, the eating thoughts came flooding back in.

On Sunday I wanted to turn it around. I got Mabel and myself to church, then she and her dad went off to a Fishing Derby for the rest of the day. Then in the afternoon my Mom and I went to visit a friend of ours who is housebound after surgery on his leg and foot. I knew these were good things, positive things, and I hoped it would make me feel better and lessen the grip the eating had on me. Instead I just ate before and after these events. Then we had dinner out with the in-laws (because I'm pretty sure if we didn't have a meal with them on a Sunday the Earth would crack in two), and by that point my body had finally broken through the wall my brain built up and announced, "Hello, we're stuffed full down here! Enough!" And I wound up bringing half of my supper home with me.

So here I am, full of remorse and down on myself. But as I write all this down, as I go back and look back at my activities, I realize that I wasn't lazy. Both days I tried enacting ways to pull the reins in on my eating. They weren't all that successful, in fact, not very successful at all. But at least I did try. I did try to observe my feelings both before and during the eating. I tried to find ways and activities to try to get me away from the eating.

I have a quote tacked on to my bulletin board at work that says "There is no shame in failure -- only in quitting." So at least I can say I'm not a quitter. Got to keep looking for the good things.