Confessions because of a Temper Tantrum.

I could have told you that after Saturday's post I was in binge danger... because bingeing makes weight loss frustrations better- didn't you know that? 

I woke up Sunday morning with a calmer mind and ate an okay breakfast, and even baked some pork and chicken ahead of time for dinner this week... I received a late invitation for Easter Dinner (the husband was working), and accepted. The woman who cooked is a box/package/instant kind of gal and the food was terribly salty and fake. I did eat a plate of food, but declined to stuff myself because of the super high salt content. We sat around and talked for about two hours after and enjoyed fruit and a cupcake for dessert... and then trouble started...

I left their house around 7:30PM and stopped at Walgreens because I need a new tube of under-eye- dark-circle-eraser... AND SOME CHOCOLATE (honestly I went for chocolate... then the makeup). I got home and over the course of three hours ate five pieces of pizza, three diet sodas, a bit of candy, and a little bit of chocolate. I actually didn't like the chocolate very much that I bought... but I sure enjoyed the five pieces of pizza I found in the back of our spare freezer. 

I HAVE THE WORST STOMACH/INTESTINE ACHE TODAY and it is all my fault. I am in the middle of binge hangover #2,243 (or something like that). Now five pieces of pizza is not a large binge, but after a salty dinner- it is. 

I am calm today (and sick). I have to go face my classes with a terrible ache in my gut. I had a yogurt for breakfast (which is the best home remedy for a stomach ache I know), and I think I am going to have a yogurt, fruit, and Probiotic smoothie for lunch. 

Just trying to regain some control today. I have a shrink appointment late this afternoon. I am not going to beat myself up. I am going to do what I need to do... I had my temper tantrum over my weight frustration, and now it is time to move on and face the task at hand. 

No More of That...

Shit! That is what happened-- no that is what I ate last night... I got the SNACKIES and ate a bunch after I posted. Candy, chicken, cheese... juice. Now that I am writing about it I am defining it as a binge. BINGE, BINGE, BINGE! It is strange to think that when I first started working on my weight back in October a binge was a big deal still. It seems that something changed and now it is just another bump in the road I have to deal with. I don't want to label it as good or bad but I did want to note that my feelings about bingeing have changed. 

I will attempt to describe the changes... First, it is easier to slip into a binge-- since I have changed my eating habits, it seems like I can start a snack and a couple of hours late realized I have snacked AND snacked AND snacked. I can't fit as much into my stomach in a single sitting, so I tend to snack over a couple of hours which turns into a binge. Again, not going to label it as good or bad but something I need to be aware of. I guess an even bigger change would be that I don't feel as ashamed or guilty over a binge anymore (this is going to be labeled as good). It is something that I sometimes do and is part of me...and something I am working to overcome. Whatt is different is that I used to be in a rotten cycle of binge- feel guilt/shame - binge to cover guilt/shame- feel worse- binge more... You get it. I have come pretty far from that place-- not to say that I am healed and have no need for therapy, but I am saying that bingeing is beginning to change and I feel like I am making progress. 

The progress seems to be in the area of acceptance; I have fought myself over it and had such conflict and disgust and now it is something that I view with more love and forgiveness (myself AND bingeing). Through years of therapy I have come closer to accepting bingeing as a coping mechanism that helped me stay alive. That might have made you flinch, to think of bingeing as a lifesaver, but for me it played a role in keeping me alive during a the darkest hours of my life. With bingeing I was able to push the overwhelming emotions down, for just a while, and live another day. Last year I saw a therapist briefly who introduced me to the thought that bingeing might have kept me alive. When something hurts too much to live with there has to be a way to get through it...

Now, the other side of this is that I kept bingeing with me. I was in so much emotional pain as a child and adolescent that the coping turned into an addiction and eventually into the something life threatening. I think that it changed from keeping me from killing myself as a teenager to something that would kill me if I continued as an adult. There is a place where you switch from a survivor (as a child/teen) into an adult with choices and freedom. Children are victims of their circumstances but adults are able to stop the cycles and make changes. I kept the victim mentality and still struggle with it today, but I am slowly taking the power back. I want to be powerful and I want to take back the power (figuratively) that I continued to give up through my first decade independent of my parents.

I feel like I am working towards this slowly but diligently-- I feel like while my body is starting to shrink, I am slowly filling with power like an inflating balloon. Last year at this time I was in a pretty bad place- I have done so much in the last six months that I am a little bit in awe of myself! I hope all of you out there realize that you are doing the same thing. Maybe in a different way or on a different road... but you are filling yourself with power. Power over the past (to forgive and move forward), power right now (fighting the good fight for your life and making changes everyday), and power for the future (imagine all that you can be). 

A huge part of the ability to move on from mistakes has been from the empowerment I receive in blog land. I can look at people who have had success and see their journey- I can see the excitement of success and long-term commitment! It is funny though... A little secret... when I go on someone's blog that has lost weight... I look at their challenges and fuck- ups- really! I search out when they had a weight gain, or a hard time, and I read about how they got through it. I read until they get back to losing and feel encouraged because I know that the journey is not black and white (great weight loss all the time) but a hundred different shades of gray. I see that in the long run, that the rough patches don't stop them from still working towards their goals. 

I encourage you guys to talk about your fuck-ups too. I love a good IFUCKEDUPPOST- it makes me feel like I got rid of the negative emotions surrounding it and also I am able to laugh about it (or cry) and relate to all of you out there. I must say, I have never put myself out there and not had someone (or ten people) relate to me. I would hate for there to be an expectation in blogland that everything needs to go smooth and positive all the time. WE KNOW IT DOESN'T! I hope that we can share EVERY ASPECT of the journey, whether it is good or bad or okay or shitty or fantastic. 

All right. I feel cleansed and ready to move on from my candy/chicken/cheese (wait a minute... do you see a pattern... C's!! After my W's post last night I am seeing all kinds of these...haha!) binge and into a better day! 

Relationships. Food. Recovery.

One of my most important goals is to be able to be active again. Not in the sense of being able to just do the minimum- but to be able to do activities that I really love. For instance, I used to rock climb and I want to again. It is physically impossible for me to now. Period.

My goals concerning weight loss are not defined. Weight loss, FOR ME, is part of my recovery from abusing my body with food. Not everyone's recovery from bad food relationships includes weight loss. I have no goals to be a certain weight or look a certain way but I do have goals that include being able to do things (rock climbing and running are two of them). One aspect of changing who I am is changing my relationship with food. Using food to avoid emotions and abuse myself happen to be unhealthy behaviors I want to change and that have destroyed my life. 

During the last three weeks I have used abstinence from some foods as a tool. It is a technique that my therapist and I agreed upon and it is being supervised so it does not turn into restriction. It is really easy for me to go straight in the opposite direction and use restriction for abuse purposes and that is not a behavior I want to employ either. 

Part of my recovery will include introducing problems foods back into my diet in moderate, balanced amounts. I would like to enjoy birthday cake on my birthday but I don't want to binge on cake on a regular basis. I would like to enjoy cheese in moderation and not in a 2,500 calorie cracker and cheese binge. I think you get the point. 

I am trying to express that recovering from food issues, eating disorders... whatever- is not about copying what works for one person but about designing a recovery that works for you. My recovery happens to include some food abstinence and weight loss but with a therapist and doctor's supervision.  

The Binge. A brief history. The beginning.

The Binge. The big, ugly scar on my soul. I looked up the definition and one of the descriptions was: A period of unrestrained, immoderate self-indulgence. I have always struggled with the difference between OVEREATING and BINGEING. It feels better to say "I overate." than "I binged."... It has been the source of years of shame for me. 

My earliest memories of bingeing were around ten years old. My earliest memories of overeating were in kindergarten. I started overeating in the morning, at breakfast, with cereal- I would find the biggest bowl I could and fill it until it was overflowing. As the years when on I started adding sugar or molasses to my cereal, as my parents were of the "tofu and sprouts" type who ate the unsweetened and bran-loaded kind. It is funny to look back on the cereal/morning episodes because I still struggle with it as an adult- I used to start my day with two and sometimes three bowls of cereal.

I can point the finger pretty easily at my parents for my early relationship with food, since they were obsessed with my weight from a very young age. They were fanatical about their own weight, my dad and mom ran and did extreme exercise to keep "thin and trim" and my dad kept a running commentary on my mom's body and weight. Also, they put me in swimming at a very young age and by the time I was ten I was ranked nationally in my age group. The prospect of me being a swimming star kept their eyes focused on my body, weight and muscle mass and it got pretty extreme by the time I was ten. I was by no means overweight- in fact between the ages of ten and thirteen I was probably the perfect weight for my height as an athlete. That wasn't my choice though. Not only was I doing double workouts at the age of ten and burning thousands and thousands of calories a day, but my parents resorted to extreme food restriction; like keeping the pantry locked and the kitchen booby-trapped so they could see if I had been eating while they were not at home or not able to monitor me. They went as far as to mark the milk container so they could see if I had sneaked any milk. Milk? Really? 

I didn't really have any knowledge of bingeing or sneaking until this started. I remember finding the pantry unlocked sometimes and feeling a huge rush of excitement and power. I would grab whatever was there (it usually was pretty healthy) and stuff it in my pockets and down my pants to I could hide it away in my room. There were many times that there was so little snack or sugared foods that I would take a box of cake mix- just to get anything that was "off limits". I would eat the whole box of dry cake mix just because I had won and gotten the teeniest bit of power over my food. It was a the turning point for my food issues. They were getting progressively worse but this pushed them into overdrive. 

This is a good stopping point for now. If you are interested in more of relationships with food, specifically the binge, I will continue this story in a future post.