I Believe In Fairy Tales

Why is it that after what I consider a hugely successful IE day, the next day I fall flat on my face? Could it be that even though on the surface I feel great that I've eaten intuitively, on a deep subconscious level I'm still feeling deprived? This deprivation then inevitably leading me to overeating or binge eating the next day, week or month.

The incident I'm talking about was Friday afternoon. I had one of those great days off where I leisurely cleaned the house, taking breaks here and there in between the dusting, sweeping, dusting, etc. Breakfast was OK, lunch too, then I hit mid afternoon and found myself free-falling with a box of Girl Scout cookies that I unearthed from the freezer. The whole box! It's a miracle I didn't eat the cardboard and the plastic bag, too!

However, I will say that this moment of overeating did not lead me into a full-blown binge. At supper I ate two pieces of pizza and was quite content with that. While I bought a three different snacks for the drive-in movies (a double feature with the new Fantastic Four movie and Ocean's Thirteen), I only opened one and ate a small portion of it. I knew I didn't want any more and I put everything away and was fine the rest of the night.

Still, those cookies haunted me. Today I've felt a sense of guilt all day, and in a stupid, stupid move I hopped on the scale in the middle of the day and was bowled over by the reading. I suppose I did it out of some perverse punishment for the cookies -- "See what a bad girl you've been!" -- and I definitely felt like a naughty child who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

To add insult to injury, I let myself get totally bummed out when my in-laws showed up with their daughter and her two girls. SIL and the nieces live far away and only visit a few times a year. Well, this SIL has lost 4o pounds with WW, and MIL was really gushing over this accomplishment and getting her to tell us all about it. Hubby then chimed in with his 20 pound weight loss with the Meridia, and as they sat there comparing notes on their successes I felt like a great big fat failure.

I know, you're probably sitting there frowning at the screen and thinking, "Andrea, how can you let this get you so upset? You know better!" I'm even thinking it, yet I still find myself caught up in the self-bashing and the diet mentality, and unfortunately I'm still not over it.

The thing is, the rational side of me knows that I didn't let Friday fall into ruin, and today I've done very well, too. I found myself satisfied with a very tiny lunch, and I wound up bringing half of my supper home with me. Despite my bad feelings I worked hard at not depriving myself, and I made sure that I felt slightly full every time I ate. While part of me wonders if I didn't eat as much today because deep down I'm trying to diet, I wonder too if I just didn't need as much food today because I had those extra calories yesterday.

I suppose there's good news in the fact that despite the disappointment on the scale, all the dieting talk and feeling bad about overeating, not once did I seriously consider giving up IE and going back to dieting. I will confess I thought about getting more serious about my physical activity -- I've been totally lax about any kind of strength training or toning, and I've been saying "I should" for some time now -- but I still have this faith that IE will work if I give it enough time and effort. Even though lately this goal of becoming a "normal" eater feels more like an impossible goal, like wishing for a fairy tale ending, I suppose I still subscribe to the saying on my daughter's hat. (If you can't read it, it says, "I believe in fairy tales!")