Old Habits

I've been really struggling for the past week or so.  Some of my old habits have started to creep back into my life.  Food habits.  This surgery does NOT fix everything.  If I choose the wrong foods, I can continue to overeat.  Up until recently I haven't done that.  But I've been getting stressed out at work and I've found alot of junky stuff finding it's way down my gullet.  Candy, chips, ice cream, peanut butter.  Not good.

It's scary how these old habits are surfacing again.  And the more junky stuff I eat, the more I crave it and feel munchy all the time.

I have come too far to backslide now so tomorrow I am getting back to sleeve basics by doing the "5 day pouch test."  It's a 5 day plan that takes you back to the habits that got you started on your WLS journey.  So it's two days of liquid protein, one day of soft proteins (eggs, tuna, etc), one day "firm" protein, and one day "solid" protein.  I need a little reboot to get me back on track.

The 5 days will be up on Saturday and then Sunday I am on my way to Biggest Loser Resort so that will give me 7 more days in a controlled situation to get my head back on straight.

I'm finding out firsthand that this surgery is only a tool.  It's not a magic bullet and it's certainly not foolproof.  And that's the truth. 

Survived Monday

Back to work today. More news and changes at work. Ch-ch-ch-changes. Trying to stay positive they will be good changes. Time will tell.

Work tends to be a struggle for me in the eating department. I will say my day wasn't quite as stellar as the last two (I went over my points) but it was much better than most of my recent workdays. And I don't think I went far enough over to mess me up too bad on Sunday, especially if I am more mindful tomorrow.

Need to figure out how to handle the anxiety of the changes and unknowns going on right now. It's not going to change any time soon. And I am SO ready for that kind of stuff to stop being an excuse for me to sabotage the things I want the most.....to be healthy...to have a life...to wear cute clothes...to feel good.

Plan for tomorrow: When I feel anxiety I am going to set the timer on my computer for 5 minutes and do deep breathing. I am hoping taking this time to slow down and breathe will help me get it together and avoid doing something stupid with food.

Weigh in: 3.4 lost, 178.6 to go

Well, I made a decent dent in that ridiculous gain I had last week by losing 3.4 this week. I did a little better on tracking, doing so 3 days out of 7. I could have done better but I let some stressful and emotional changes at work affect me more than I should have and I turned to food to deal.

I am close to striking distance to the 10 pound mark, which I had hoped to achieve a couple of weeks ago. If I can pull off another 3.4 pound loss this week, I will get to 10 pounds. I want this week to be the week it happens. I mentally need to achieve this milestone. Tired of floundering.

I need to prove to myself that I can trust myself. You know those people in your life that make you promises to do something, be somewhere, be on time, etc. but you don't believe them because they never follow through on their promises? Well I am that person to myself. I keep saying I am going do something...walk everyday or track my points, whatever...and then I continually let myself down by not following through. I don't believe myself anymore. I am unreliable. And it needs to change.

As my former husband the former Marine used to say "Don't talk about it, make it happen." This week I am going to make it happen. I want this 10 pound milestone. I am going to do each day what I need to do to achieve my goal. I am going to post everyday between today and next Saturday's weigh in. Hold me to it! I am going to hold myself to it!

Rebel Without a Clue

I started my official 24 week training for the Breast Cancer 3 Day walk yesterday. And may I say, I impressed myself by walking continuously for 3 miles. At my pace that equated to 1.5 hours. I didn't think I could, but I did. I am happy about that. (By the way, I am dispensing with the Exercise Logs. Instead I will be posting my training progress weekly.)



What I am not happy about is my rebelliousness when it comes to eating. I just cannot (will not?) make up my mind about how to go about an eating plan, let alone sticking to one. Logically, it seems that I should be tracking my food in some way, be it calories on fitday.com or Weight Watchers points in a notebook. I can't (won't?) seem to commit to sticking with either of those.



So then I decide I will just eat intuitively. You know, eat only when hungry, only to the point of satisfaction, and primarily healthy foods. And I do that for awhile and then pretty soon I am eating too much and the wrong things.



I rebel against anything. Anything except overeating. I have been so frustrated with myself that the idea of weightloss surgery crept into my head yesterday. It was a fleeting thought because I don't really want to lose weight that way (insert Seinfeld-esque "Not that there is anything wrong with that" here) but I think it speaks to my level of desperation.



I feel that my behavior is very childish. I am a grown up. I should be able to set limits for myself. And yet, I can't (won't?). Historically, I have been most successful when tracking Weight Watchers points in a journal, so it seems I should go back to that. But always the rebel comes out. Even just writing this makes me want to slap my childish self and tell me to just do what I need to do and quit whining about it!



What will it take for me to get a grip on the food? I am so frustrated with myself.

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?

Day 11: Two Purposes of Food

OK, it's time to get back on track with 100 Days of Weightloss by Linda Spangle. The first 10 days of this program was all about Setting Up For Success. If you want to catch up, you can find my posts for days 1 through 10 by clicking the "100 Days of Weightloss" label on my sidebar. These next 10 days are intended to help us Put Food In It's Place.

For Day 11, the author gives us two purposes of food:

1. To fuel your body
2. To appreciate flavors

She says that anytime we find ourselves eating but not satisfying one of these two purposes, we are likely eating emotionally. The focus of the Day 11 reading is on fueling your body. She tells us to always fuel our body when it needs its, recommending fueling/eating at least 3 times per day with a couple of mini-fuels/snacks in between. (As a side note, I have heard Jillian Michaels in her weekly podcasts come out against the idea of 5 or 6 small meals a day in favor of 3 larger meals and one snack. She says that the 5-6 meals a day thing originally started with body builders who were trying to put on muscle mass and needed to consume a calorie surplus and thus needed to eat several times a day in order to get all their calories in. She feels that eating several smaller meals while tryin to maintain a calorie deficit leaves you feeling never quite satisfied. My opinion about this is to start listening to your own body to find out what works best for you. Some of us may feel more satisfied eating several times throughout the day while others do better eating fewer but larger meals. It seems to me what is most important is to fuel your body when it needs it.)

So the assignment for Day 11 is to make note of the times of day that you eat, to try to plan so that you have fuel stops every 3 to 4 hours, and to note of what effect having regular fuel stops has on your energy and focus.

I have been tracking what times I am eating for a couple of weeks now. In general, on a day I am eating on plan and only for the two purposes listed above, I tend to want to eat/refuel 5-6 times per day. A typical weekday for me looks something like this:

breakfast - 7:00
snack - 9:30
lunch - 11:30/12:00
snack - 2:30/3:00
snack - 4:30/5:00
dinner - 7:00

This exercise seems simple and obvious for those of us who are professional dieters but I recommend you do it anyway. I thought it was silly at first but what it really helped to remind me of is that it's NORMAL to get hungry and to need to give your body fuel on a REGULAR BASIS. Again, seems obvious, I know. But the years and years of dieting, disordered eating, gaining, losing, and beating myself up has left me a bit messed up about food and eating. I can't tell you how many days I have thrown in the towel because I ate breakfast and then was hungry again at 10AM. In my messed up way of thinking my thoughts would go, "I am always going to be hungry." "I can't stand this." "There is no way I can stay hungry for long enough to lose all this weight." "What is wrong with me that I am always hungry?" And then this would lead to a state of near panic and frenzied eating.

Kinda nutty, I know. That's why I say I am a disordered eater. This is how messed up you can get after years of dieting and this is what I have to work on changing if I am to finally be successful at permanent weightloss. By stopping and writing down the times that I felt hungry and ate, it helped me to realize that NOTHING is wrong with me because I keep getting hungry over and over. Our bodies need consistent fueling. It helped me realize that I don't need to STAY hungry in order to lose weight. I can fuel my body with what it needs and still lose weight. I have even become more aware of what exactly it is my body is craving for fuel. Sometimes fruit and a yogurt will do it. Other times I know I need more protein and I have lowfat cottage cheese. Other times I have actually noticing my body craving veggies, mostly big salads.

It feels really good that I am becoming more self-aware and, hopefully, less F'ed up about food. Give this exercise a try....even if you think you don't need to. You might be suprised what you learn.


ps
Thanks again to Natalia at Embracing the Weighloss Journey who introduced me to this book.

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.

A Life Out of Balance

Hi, it's been a week or so. I have been unable to blog due to my life being completely out of whack. You see, I work full time at a pretty demanding job and I am in graduate school part time. I am taking 2 classes this summer and they are kicking my ass. They both have group projects, and as is true of most things that are done by groups, 1 or 2 people actually do it and everyone else skates along and gets the same credit for it. But that is a whole other rant I won't get into today.



Today's rant is how I have let my life get out of balance. I already spend anywhere from 40-60 hours per week working at a challenging job, then I go and decide to pursue by MBA degree at the same time. And now it's summer and the summer session is compressed and I have 2 classes, both with several group projects, and I am overwhelmed. This week I had 2 exams to prepare for, 1 project that needs to be completed and submitted by Monday, and another larger project that we are in the midst of. All while working at the same time. Many people in my class are in the same boat, or worse because they have children too. But at least half of them appear to be spoiled lazy 20-somethings who are still being taken care of by mommy and daddy and apparently are going to MBA school to avoid getting a job. Ah, I digress into a whole other rant again. Sorry.



So I was stressed out and pressed for time this week. And I ate. And ate. And ate. And I didn't exercise. At all. And this is not good. This is not what I want my life to be. I want my life to be simpler. I want to have time to take care of myself, to make exercise a daily committment, to shop for healthy food, to spend time finding and trying new healthy recipes. Yes, there was a time in my life that I enjoyed doing this. I loved to find a new recipe and give it a try. If I only had time now.



But the fact is, this is where my life is now and I have to figure out how best to work with what I have. The fact is that until August 13 and the summer session is over I will be overcommitted and I have to deal with that. Because I do not want to continue gaining weight over the next 6-7 weeks. In fact, I'd like to lose some! At this time I am not sure what the solution is. I guess I need to start with making sure I get enough rest because I have not been.

After August 13, I need to decide what I want for myself in the fall semester. I am really thinking hard about dropping back to 1 class for the fall semester. My original plan had been to stick with a pace of 2 classes/semester so that I would finish in 3 years. But I am tired. And my health needs to be a bigger priority. So I probably should give myself a little bit of a break, right? For some reason it is hard to me to commit to do that. Somehow I feel "bad" about "taking it easy." I feel like I always have to be working really hard. I need to find a way to change that. Or at least put more of the focus of my hard work onto myself and my health.

Weigh in: 5 gained, 153 to go

This is what happens when I tell myself it's OK to not weigh in and be accountable. I have been eating total junk for 2 weeks and here it is on the scale. I am not going to beat myself up but I do need to do better. The past couple of weeks I have been feeling down and tired which leads me to eat which leads me to feeling down and tired...and on and on.

Two weeks ago I ago my period and I have noticed lately that during the day or two before I start feeling really depressed and it doesn't really lift for a couple of weeks. So basically I am spending half of every month in a funk and trying to pull out it all the while eating like crazy. I am going to try to do better at tracking when these feelings start and end so next time I am at the doctor I talk to her about it. If there is something I can do to avoid this horrible cycle, I'd love to know what it is. Maybe just being more aware of it will help me.

I was listening to Jillian Michaels' weekly podcast during my walk this evening and one of the things she was talking about was sugar and its affects on our bodies. She said that sugar triggers the release of the same sorts of brain chemicals that heroin does. Heroin! So I guess what she is saying is sugar temporarily makes us feel good but can be addictive. When I have more time, I am going to research this, but I do have anecdotal evidence to support it:

On Friday when I left work I was feeling really badly for reasons I can't get into (because I don't want to be one of those bloggers who gets fired for blogging about work!) I went and got a pedicure but didn't enjoy it. I felt on the verge of tears the whole time. I got home and ate every single fudgcicle I had in my freezer. And you know what? I DID feel better. I no longer wanted to cry. I no longer felt sad and depressed. So is it chemical? Or is it just a comforting habit? Do I eat sugar and my brain releases some sort of feel-good chemical to wash my blues away? Or does the ice cream just take me back to when my Grandma would show her love by giving me a bowl of ice cream every day after school? I don't know, but either way it's one damned bitch of habit to try to break!

ETA:

1.I am not posting my "Good Things" today. Oh, I have some good things written down for today. I have just decided to post them once a week instead of daily.

2. Why the heck is my weigh-in pic portrait? On my PC it's landscape?

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.

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.

Dieting and Mondays

"I'll start on Monday." Isn't that what alot of dieters say? I can't tell you how many times in a Weight Watchers meeting I have heard the familiar lament, "I always blow it on weekends, I need the structure of the workweek to stay on track."

Well, I must be one giant weirdo because for me the exact opposite is true. Monday morning rolls around and suddenly the wheels are off. I sit down at my desk at work and within the hour, maybe sooner, I am jonesing for junk food. Friday afternoon comes and with it, a sense of relief and control. Ahhhhh.......NOW I can get back on track.

Weird, right? Maybe not. I am an accountant and my job tends to get busy and stressful. The first months of every year are particularly difficult. So, yeah, historically I have a tendency to try to deal with my stress by scarfing junk food all day. I do not recommend this method of stress reduction, however, because 1) it doesn't reduce stress, 2) it makes you fat and miserable, leading to 3) one more thing to stress about...your weight! Regardless of its ineffectiveness, eating still seems to be my main coping mechanism when I get stressed out. So when Monday comes and most dieters are on their best behavior, I am struggling HARD!

I have come to two important realizations about this situation:
1) There is nothing I can do about the stress in my job except quit and that is not an option so I HAVE to find a new, more effective, less health destroying way to cope with it (duh), and
2) We are finally out of the worst of the beginning of the year stress and things are pretty lowkey right now, but I am still struggling with food at work! Something bigger is afoot here.

I will leave Realization #1 to a later post and address Realization #2 since it more reflects the current state of things. I am no longer stressed out and yet I still want to scarf food at work. What is up with that? Here are some thoughts I have had about it. I don't think any one of these are the sole cause of my difficulty, rather all of them are contributing to it.

• Once I heard Dr. Phil say that sometimes we start eating for one reason but keep eating for some other reason. Maybe this is happening with me. Maybe I am having some kind of Pavlovian reaction. There are so many times that I have reached for food to cope during the busy times that now my brain thinks as soon as I sit at my desk it's time to start cramming my face with stuff.
• I am not particularly fond of the work I am doing. I feel unchallenged, not in terms of the quantity of work, but in the quality. I know I could be doing higher level work but the opportunity is not there.
• I feel unappreciated at work.
• I feel taken advantage of at work.
• I feel inferior.
• I feel "less than" at work because no one else is morbidly obese. I am a professional person but I do not look like it. I feel like since I have gained this weight, my superiors treat me differently and I resent it.
• I feel resentful of my job because I had to move away from my friends for it and now I am lonely.
• I feel resentful of my boss because he is a button-pusher. He likes to to stir things up and then stand back and watch the reaction for his own amusement. He does to everyone but to me it seems like I get alot of it. I have worked hard to not react to his bullshit in the hopes he will get bored and find someone else to annoy.
• I feel negatively about myself for thinking these things because my job is secure and I am well-compensated. Most people would love to have pay and benefits that I have and here I am complaining about it. It makes me feel like I am an ungrateful, greedy brat.

Now that I have gotten those thoughts down in writing it seems kind of obvious that I have many negative emotions associated with work. Jeez. And I just thought I was stressed out. Apparently not. And I wonder how much of my feeling that I am ungrateful and GREEDY leads to my behaving greedily with food? I dunno....that's might be a little too psycho-babble-y for me. But I definitely can buy into the fact that I am not just trying to cope with the stress of lots of work, I am also trying to bury lots of negative thoughts and emotions regarding my job. No wonder it is so hard for me.

On a positive note, I did much better today than I do most of the times on Monday. It was not a perfect day, but nothing terrible. So I am happy with that. Tomorrow is another day to learn more and to try again.