Anatomy of a Binge

I have been on a stay-cation this week and until yesterday was really enjoying some much-needed downtime and relaxation. I was focusing on getting lots of sleep, exercising, eating right, and reading books for pleasure rather than for a class. I was feeling pretty damned happy and at peace with the world. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I started coming to the realization that I had lots to do and started feeling like I had wasted the five or six days I had just spent relaxing and now I was dreadfully behind on everything. I had a meeting coming up for the marketing project we have to do for one class, I had started the organization project in my home office, my income taxes aren’t done, I am behind in my reading for my finance class, I am going to go back to work and be greeted with another super busy month as we close the first quarter and do the SEC filing, plus I have 3 exams, a group project, and a 30 page paper to complete during April.

It all started overwhelming me and I could feel the stressed out feelings building inside me. It was as though my week of serenity had never happened. And as the stress built every small thing seemed to go wrong. I was dropping things, spilling the contents of my purse all over my car, just little things, but they set me off. I actually pulled my car over and screamed at the top of my lungs trying to purge the stressful feelings out but that did not help. I tried breathing deeply. I tried talking myself down from the edge.

None of that worked and eventually I caved in and sought comfort the only way I apparently know how to get it – with food. It started with ice cream. I tried to be good by buying Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches. But if you eat the whole package, they aren’t all that skinny. I ordered a pizza, but I got it with thin crust and veggies instead of fatty meats. I was still trying to mitigate the damage I was doing to myself.

Today I completely threw in the towel and gave up any pretense of trying to eat healthy. It was like I was searching out the very worst things I could find. At the checkout they had snack-sized bags of chips. So I got some. First I grabbed the Baked Lays, again trying to mitigate the damage, but I put them back and got the full fat ones instead. I bought corn dogs and French fries which I pan-fried in oil. I bought a package of premade brownies and vanilla ice cream. And I have eaten all of it.

I know why I was eating. I was stressing out and I wanted that feeling to go away. Nothing else I do seems to soothe those feelings….not screaming in the car to let it out, not crying, not taking deep breaths, not positive self-talk…only eating soothes my feelings. So eventually I gave in and binged. On one had those uncomfortable feelings are gone. But on the other I feel sick. And disappointed. And discouraged. And hopeless. I feel like I will NEVER be able to string together enough healthy eating days to make a dent in this massive blob of a body.
I am also confused. Why am I unable to cope with stressful feelings? I don’t think it was always this way. I would never have made it this far in life if my coping skills had always been this sucky. I don’t know what has happened to me. How I am I ever going to get where I want to go?

Weigh in: 1.1 lost, 169.2 to go

Not sure how, but I lost just over a pound since my last weigh in 2 weeks ago. During these past 14 days I have not been following my plan of eating. I don't even know how many hours I have worked these past two weeks. I know I came home late every night and worked full days last Saturday and Sunday to boot. This kind of schedule always wrecks me. I have not been able to figure out how to moderate my behavior when I am under stress and very tired. My behavior during this time has fluctuated from only eating when I am hungry and watching my portions but not necessarily making the healthy choice (drive-thru workers near my office became reacquainted with me this week) to all-out bingeing where I would make a special stop at the store on the way home to pick up my usual binge foods. There were at least 2 nights that I became so physically ill that I vomited. My exercise was sporadic at best. How all this adds up to a pound lost, I cannot imagine. I guess I just have to add this to the evidence that the scale doesn't make any sense and that we should try to not put so much stock in it.

So that was the past two weeks. Coming up for this week is some more long hours although hopefully not quite so much. Since Sundays are my weigh-in day I always look at them as a bit of a fresh start and so I will be spending some time today planning what I am going to be eating this week and getting to the grocery store. My main goals for the upcoming week are:

1. To spend time each evening packing a lunch and snacks to get me through the next day.
2. To be in bed by 10:30 at the latest so I can get to Curves for my workout on M,W,F.

This whole struggle I have with balance as it relates to my work is one that has been going on for years. And one that needs some examination. I should feel grateful in these tough economic times that I have a job that is fairly secure and that pays me very well. And yet, I have deep feelings of resentment about the ways that my job negatively impacts my life in other ways....my health and weight, my social life (or lack thereof), my general happiness. Financially my job is a great one. But I don't think I am happy in it. I'd like to find a way to be happy in it because it is so good financially. Others seem to be making it work. Why can't I?

Reasons? Or excuses?

I strongly considered not posting this, but the truth will set you free. Or so they say. Here goes. I have gained a lot of weight in the past 2 weeks putting me at a new all-time high weight of 241. When I started this blog in April I was at my then all-time high of 315. So I have gained 26 pounds since April. This is turning into a weight-gain blog. Not exactly what I had in mind.

It’s embarrassing to put this out there for the world to read. I keep saying I want to change and yet I don’t. Why? I can think of a million reasons why I keep doing what I am doing. I am tired. I am stressed out. I am working too much. I am anxious. I don’t have time to plan. I am lonely. I am depressed. I am angry. I feel deprived. I am frustrated. I am unsure.

My reasons? Or my excuses? Or did they start out as reasons and become excuses over time? I think that is it. I think these were reasons until I realized they were reasons at which point they became excuses. Confused? What I mean is as I become more self-aware of the reasons behind my behavior, doesn’t that change my responsibility? Once I know that I find myself nervously nibbling on junk at work because I am trying to soothe my anxiety, doesn’t that knowledge now require me to do something to change my behavior? And if that answer is yet, then the reason now just became an excuse.

Now there is nothing in this world that annoys me more than people who make excuses. But somehow I think it’s OK for me to make excuses about my eating habits and that has to stop. I am not beating myself up here. I think 2008 was the year I came to a greater level of self-awareness surrounding my food issues. Yay me. Now it’s time to kick it up a notch and actually DO something with this awareness. Somehow I have been thinking that simply being more self-aware would magically transform my behavior. I expected making the changes to be easy now that I knew why I was behaving the way I was with food. And now that I see my behavior didn’t magically transform on its own, I am even more frustrated, angry, depressed, unsure, embarrassed. Just more reasons (excuses) to continue my behavior.

What I have been doing is avoiding taking REAL and CONSISTENT action to change my habits. No more excuses. Change is uncomfortable but it’s time to cowgirl up and start making some real change in my life.

Mr. Bento: My Portion Control Savior?

I have really struggled the entire month of August with my eating. Maybe I shouldn't use the word "struggled" here as I feel this implies that I was actually making an effort to eat well but found it difficult. Truth be told, I wasn't even trying. I pretty much soothed every emotional bump and bruise this month with food and lots of it. And I soon found myself overeating even without an emotional impetus. Eating crap quickly became my daily habit, especially when I was hitting the fast food joints everday for lunch and sometimes for dinner too.

Today that changed because yesterday my Mr. Bento lunch jar arrived.

A friend of mine told me about Mr. Bento and I decided to order one to see if it would help kickstart me into packing healthy lunches again. What do you know? It worked! I was really excited last evening to try and put together a healthy lunch to pack in Mr. Bento. Even though one of the reasons I bought it was to help with portion control, at first I thought it seemed small and that any lunch packed in it would never satisfy me. I was wrong as I ended up with a lunch so filling I had to save some over to eat as a mid-afternoon snack. It was nice to enjoy a fresh and healthy lunch today. I ended up feeling nourished and sastified rather than sick, greasy, and bloated.

Just to give you an idea of what my Mr. Bento was able to accomodate, my lunch today included:

• turkey rollups made with a whole wheat tortilla, roasted turkey, Laughing Cow cheese, greens, and a tiny splash of Newman's Own oil & vinegar dressing
• carrots and cucumbers with a dab of hummus for dipping
• yogurt with fresh blackberries
• a handful of walnuts and almonds

I am learning that Mr. Bento is very big in some circles as I was able to find a flickr group dedicated to presenting their Mr. Bento lunches. It's been fun checking out the pictures to get ideas and inspiration for my own lunches.

PS

Don't forget I am going private at 9PM tonight. If you haven't emailed me yet have access to my private blog please do so soon. I would prefer my blog to be public and I hope to go public again in the future. For right now, I feel best taking it private.

Road Trip Confessions

I am back home again after my trip to see my grandma. She is doing well for now but I will have more to post about that later. This post serves as my pictorial confession of all the junk food I ate during my 24 hour round trip drive. There is something about driving alone long distances that makes me want to eat every kind of junk I can get my hands on. Confessing and moving on….

Disciplining My Inner Child

The past couple of weeks I have been stuck in a really bad cycle of bingeing. I’ve just been eating whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever quantities I want. I go to the grocery store with the intentions of stocking up on fruits, veggies, yogurt, lean meats, oatmeal, and all the other makings of a healthy diet but once I get there I find myself trolling the various aisles just looking for something that will taste good. I will go up and down the bakery aisle to see if there is some fabulous pastry, bread, or cooke that must be tried. I wander through the freezer section, admiring the various flavors of Ben and Jerry’s debating: do I get the tried and true Chocolate Fudge Brownie or go for something new? Or maybe I should choose fudgecicles or Eskimo pies or ice cream sandwiches. And often I don’t choose. I just get them all.

When I take the time to think about and write about this behavior, I realize that I am acting like a spoiled, overindulged child. If there is such a thing as an inner child, mine is definitely in need of some discipline, some tough love, if you will. My inner child wants everything and wants it right now. Even though I know my health is suffering, my happiness is suffering, my physical comfort is suffering, I cave in to the whining tantrums of this bratty, greedy child. (“But everyone else gets to have ice cream!”) Why do I do this? I guess that much like a real child throwing a tantrum in public it is just a whole lot easier to give that child what she wants in that moment to stop the tantrum. This solves a short-term problem but just continues to exacerbate the long-term problem.

So what is the solution? I don’t have any children so I am unpracticed at the art of disciplining a child. Dr. Spock I am not. But I do know how to Google! So I found an article by Merry Wallace on the Discovery Health website that gives some ideas on what to do and what not to do when disciplining a child. I thought a lot of her suggestions could be used to tame my own bratty inner child.

Here are a few of the ideas from the article and how I can use them to create some discipline for myself.

1) State your limits clearly and firmly – Today you are shopping for healthy foods, not extra treats.
2) Discuss limits in advance – I equate this to having a shopping list prepared before heading to the store.
3) Use rewards to encourage a particular behavior – If you complete your shopping trip with no extra goodies in your basket, you can buy some sugar free gum at the checkout counter.
4) Acknowledge wishes – I know you wish you could buy some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream but it is not on the list for today. Maybe another time you can get some.
5) Externalizing a rule (You will decrease the battle of wills if you objectify the reason for the rule) – You cannot buy ice cream or other treats today because if you eat them you will feel physically sick, you will prolong the achievement of your weight loss goals, and you will be disappointed in yourself.
6) Maintain realistic expectations – Changing behavior is hard and if I slip up I will not berate myself. I will forgive myself and try to do better the next time.

I am really going to try to keep these things in mind the next time I go shop. After all, what is more annoying than a kid in a grocery store throwing a fit?......especially when she is 38.

The Good News and The Bad News

The good news is that I have started back up with an exercise routine. I am starting back up slowly with the support of a friend. She and I have made a pact to exercise X number of minutes per week and for ever minute we are short, we have to pay the other $1. You gotta hit us where it hurts...in the pocketbook! The incentive has been helping as I have exercised in some form 3 days so far this week. Up from 0 days in the preceding weeks.

The bad news....my eating has sucked the past 2 days. It is stress eating. Work is getting busy again plus I am going to graduate school part time in the evenings and have lots of projects related to that over the summer. So I am feeling overwhelmed and I eat. Which is really prett pointless as chowing down on fast food does not get my work done or my school projects completed. In fact, it hinders my ability to do so as I am tired and mentally lethargic after overeating.

So I celebrate the good and I acknowledge the bad and resolve to make a change. Tomorrow no fast food, no ice cream. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

One day at a time...no guilt....move on.

Do over

I am the queen of the "do over". I know it's a manifestation of my all-or-nothing thinking that contributes to the difficulty I have getting healthy. But here I am calling another "do over". I have continued to binge on junk since my "frickety frick" post. I am ready to be done.

As part of my "do over" I have decided to cancel my Weight Watchers membership. Don't get me wrong, I think WW is the best and most realistic program out there. IMHO, it is the only plan where no food is off-limits and the focus is more on portion control, i.e, you can have A brownie, just not the entire PAN of brownies. Also, I really like the whole Points concept as I find it easier than tracking calories, fat grams, etc.

Despite what I like about the program, I decided to cancel anyway. I find I have too much shame at going to weigh in's after I have had a binge week. And then when I don't weigh in, that just sets me up for another week of no accountability. So I have decided to buy a scale (didn't own one before) and do my own weekly weigh-ins where I can feel comfortable facing the truth without fear of judgment. I will continue to follow a revised WW plan. The revision will be that I am going to increase the number of daily points I allow myself. At my current weight, I was getting 37 points per day plus my 35 weekly points allowance. I am going to give myself 45 points daily and go back to the old plan of "banking" points rather than the WPA thing. Basically, the 45 points covers my basal metabolic rate calories.

Anyway, I am ready for my "do over" now. As for the support I will miss by not going to WW meetings, well, I can get that from the online communities I am involved in.

Here I go now. Doing over.

Well.....FRICK!!!

frick frick frick frickety FRICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I blew it today. Really blew it. I binged. Bad. Do you ever feel like you are walking a tight rope and just when you think you have your balance and are going to be able to make it across something throws you off and down you go? That was me today.

Yesterday I made it through my work day fairly well. Not stellar in terms of dieting, but pretty damned good in terms of controlling the bingeing. But then today....wheels off. Sometimes this happens to me. I can white-knuckle my way through one day only to eventually give in to the demon the next.

OK, let's figure out what happened. The binge started after lunch but I think it was set in motion mid-morning. I have been having trouble with bingeing when I get to work in the morning so I decided to bring a mid-morning snack with me (if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, right?) and to make a concerted to effort to eat it when I truly felt hungry. That happened around 10ish and just when I had started to eat my snack, someone came into my office to work together on something. I put my snack aside, feeling hungrier and hungrier as the minutes ticked by with my co-worker. So when I finally ate it at 11:15 or so I was ravenous. That was the first thing that went wrong, letting myself get too hungry.

So the co-worker finally left my office and I finished my snack. Shortlythere after I ran home for lunch. I had a healthy meal prepared and ready to go. I ate it all the while thinking, "This isn't going to be enough." I have that feeling often - that whatever I am eating is not going to be enough. I finished my lunch and drank an extra glass of water. I left the house with the desire to stop and buy a box of Little Debbie's and eat them all on my way back to work. For some reason I was craving the creamy sensation of the filling.

But, I was able to talk myself down telling myself that if I still felt like my belly needed to be fuller when I got to work, I would make myself some of the instant oatmeal I keep at my desk. About halfway to work I realized I wasn't feeling hungry anymore. Yay. I got to work and made 2 packets of the instant oatmeal even though I wasn't hungry. Then I followed it up with a Milky Way, a package of Reese's Pieces, and a package of M&M's. Coming home this evening, I decided I deserved an evening of entertainment. For me, this was a Spicky Chicken Sandwich combo from Wendy's, 3 Pizza Hut breadsticks, about 3/4's of a Pepperoni Personal Pan Pizza, a giant bowl of Frosted Flakes, and pint of Dove chocolate ice cream.

So that is my confession. Now what caused me to do this? Yes, I let myself get a little too hungry and that definitely seems to trigger my feelings of no amount is going to be enough once I do start to eat. But something else was going on today. Something else had me feeling something that I can't quite remember now. Which I guess is really the point of the bingeing, to push those feelings down. Well, it worked today. I can remember something had me feeling....well, uncomfortable...for lack of a better description considering I don't remember exactly what it was I was feeling.

OK, so my plan for tomorrow:

1. Take the time to eat my snack when I am feeling hungry regardless of who might be in my office at that time, and more importantly (I think)
2. Take a small notebook to work to jot down my feelings so that I will remember them.

I am going to figure this crap out, dangit. I am sick of doing this to myself.