Getting Real

I hugely disappointed myself last night. First of all, I weighed myself. My scale had been hidden away (not on purpose) for ages now, and I finally got around to cleaning under our tub yesterday and it was pulled out. Like a body possessed I found myself standing on it and looking aghast at the number that appeared. I knew I had gained a lot of weight, but I was really surprised. I was at least ten pounds more than I thought I was. It made me super depressed, which led me down a somewhat destructive eating path, really just piling on top of a weekend that already had a theme of overindulgence. I was mad at myself for letting my weight get away from myself so badly again (I haven't weighed this much in three years), but I was also upset because I even weighed myself. I like how I look, and now I'm letting some stupid number ruin that for me. Of course, this does reinforce the fact that health wise I need to really stick to the changes I decided to make at the beginning of the month and truly work harder at eating mindfully.

But it also reinforces that this issue I have with food is truly an addiction, truly something in my head, something that goes beyond not have "willpower." I'm not trying to detract from my own faults in this weight gain, I mean, I did purchase, cook, and eat the food that has caused my weight gain, but I can't tell you how many times I've eaten an outrageous amount of food, rationalizing it the whole time, then, when it's gone, looking back, almost as if I had woken from a dream, unable to believe I had actually done that.

I've spent the last 24 hours feeling so full of self-loathing, and then feeling angry that I'm so full of it. It's like these two parts of me are battling each other, and I don't know who to let win, or if I even have a choice in that. While I'm often thankful I'm not significantly affected by my eating disorder (I mean, I would say I have a "mild" case), and I've not been hospitalized, I haven't had a significant binge in a long time (I'm just chronically overeating, sometimes to the point where I feel chronically ill) and I haven't started eating straight bags of sugar or something (as can happening with binge eating disorders), this all still super, duper sucks. I'm in this weird place where I just don't want to think about food any more, but I can't think about anything else.

I sometimes wonder how much more I could get done and how much better I'd feel if I just stopped eating.

But I know I can't do that, like physically can't. I like eating too much. It elicits too much pleasure for me to not do it.

Ugh. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this.

Where I'm At

I have been thinking about this blog quite a bit in the last few days. I haven't written in nearly a year and a half, and I feel like that's too bad. Maybe if I had stayed with this I would have worked out my issues. But, then again, maybe not.

My issues with food still persist. I gained back all of the weight I had lost when I was last writing here. It's half pleasurable, half disheartening to see that black and white picture of myself in a purple dress that no longer fits as it should, but still hangs in my closet. I looked great, felt great, but got greedy, first for more weight to come off, and then for the comfort of eating, which I was denying myself.

The new year is coming, and with I always promise myself something, and I always break it. Always. I've even promised myself to not make a promise, and I've broken that promise, too. It's almost as if I can't trust myself any more, because of the constant betrayals. It's very difficult to be in this place where you want to do things differently, but you simply can't find a way to do it, no matter how many ways you try. It's like seeing a big ol' bag of money sitting in front of you, but it's just out of your reach and you can't move from where you're sitting.

This is exactly where I was at a year and a half ago, and it's where I find myself again, only it's worse now because I've lost any sort of traction I've gained (meaning I've gained back all the weight I lost). And I've stopped seeing Dona, which hasn't helped, but can't be helped, due to time constraints (I'm working full time plus taking two grad courses). And every time I try to make an effort, try to curb my eating, or eat mindfully, or even try to make the time to workout, it barely makes it more than a few days.

I can't say I'm determined to do better, to get back on the wagon, but I do want to start taking care of myself in this area again, and do it in earnest. However, I don't want to diet. I don't want to do stupid exercise videos. I don't want to use colorful tupperware containers to portion out all my food. I just want to live my freaking life and not worry about food so much. I just want to eat enough to live, enjoy the food I do have, and take the time to walk or go for a run or use kettle balls (these are the exercises I've found I do enjoy).

This is all I want, I just wish I knew how to get it.

Small Victories

We went out to dinner Friday night to celebrate an award our daughter received at school (I'm raising a beautiful and brilliant little girl, by the way).

E., my daughter, has a favorite restaurant and that restaurant, is Applebees. I was kind of pleased to go, because, you know, they have all those lower calorie and Weight Watchers choices. So I perused the selection and was mildly enticed. But damn, I really wanted some freaking french fries.

So, I got a sandwich, with fries. But I also, for the first time ever, despite having read/heard this suggestion a billion, trillion times, got a take out box and put half my sandwich (and eventually have my fries) inside before I had even finished dinner. I also paused mid-meal to see if I was still hungry (I was).

This may not seem like a huge deal, but the fact that I was able to leave a restaurant without feeling like I was going to explode or be sick is pretty amazing. Small victories, right?

A Little Backstory

Let's jump in with something big, shall we?

I have been going to see a nutritionist, Dona, since 2012. I was at my heaviest then, a weight too embarrassing to share publicly. Between January 2012 and May 2012, I lost roughly forty pounds. It wasn't everything I felt I needed to lose, by a long shot, but it was a great start. That May, I got pregnant with my second child and trying to lose weight went out the window. I did try to continue to eat well, but pregnancy sure was a good excuse to overindulge (I thought).

After my son, M., was born, I obviously wanted to lose the baby weight and get back on track with healthier eating. Off and on I would go, through spurts of really trying to watch what I ate, going to see Dona regularly, and just generally being "good" about what I ate. And then I would go through bouts of total food annihilation. No foods (except for maybe veggies) were safe. I would eat and eat and eat. Maybe there would be a "good" day in between, but generally my eating habits sucked. Finally, enough days would go by where I felt like total crap when I went to bed, stomach too full to get comfortable, and the scale tipping just way too far in the wrong direction. Then I would feel very guilty - not too guilty, mind you, because I am excellent at rationalizing the things I do to avoid that very feeling - but still, that nasty turn of the stomach feeling would sneak in. 

Once that unsettling feeling of guilt finally got to me, I would lay awake at night and promise myself and the ethos that the next day would be better. I would call Dona and make an appointment (because, you see, I had already missed two). I would go for that run that I said I would do for the last two weeks. I would make sure I ate better. I. Would. Be. Good.

And then I would be "good". And then I would be "bad" again. And my weight? Well, luckily for me, it stayed roughly the same, until very recently, where in the last two months I gained about five pounds, then lost it and another ten with it (more on that later).

I ask you to notice two things about what I just wrote. First, note my focus on why I wanted to do better with my eating. Weight-loss. Now, I could write a whole post (and maybe I will) on the media and pop culture and women who are bigger than allowed by their standards, but for now I will say that I am like almost any other warm blooded American women in that I see these "standards" in which I am expected to live up and they scare me into thinking I better start laying off the cupcakes and doing that thirty-day ab challenge a bunch of my Facebook friends are doing. And, that's not to say that eating fewer cupcakes or doing crunches is a bad thing, because it's certainly not, but when it's not coming from an emotionally healthy place the results that come will likely soon be erased.

That brings me to the second thing I want you to see - my cycle. My cycle of "binge, repent, repeat" (Dr. Michelle May) is something I've done for as long as I can remember, though I never realized what a problem it was until I was older, just as I was starting to see Dona. I looked at it very distinctly as being "good" versus being "bad". The quotes around these words, by the way, aren't there for some weird, pretentious reason. They're there to highlight that the terms good and bad are very subjective here. I'm not out to actively harm myself when I eat poorly, though I surely am. And, to be honest, when I eat well, the reasons aren't always good ones (like improved health, better performance when I run, or longevity so I can enjoy my family for as long as possible). 

These two things are just parts of the multifaceted puzzle that makes up binge-eating disorder, a disorder with which I've been tentatively identified.

A definition from the Binge Eating Disorder Association: 
Binge eating disorder is characterized by recurring episodes of binge eating, feeling out of control while binging, and feeling guilt and shame afterward.

I can imagine some reading this and thinking, "Geez, why can't the fatty just stop eating? It's her own fault." And there isn't a whole lot I can say to counter that, because, on some level, I agree. But, the truth is, I can't "just stop" binging. It's my source of comfort when everything else around me feels out of control or fills me with anxiety. It's my cigarette, my beer, my opiate. Food is my drug*. There are chemical and emotional strings attached to every bite I take, and while I do not withdraw ownership over many of the food choices I make, both good and bad, each choice is tinged with this unhealthy relationship, which I have not chosen to have.

I'll end this by saying I'm not under any allusions that this is the same as a heroin addiction or will devastate my body and family in the same fashion as something like bulimia or anorexia, but it is a battle, my battle, and one that is long overdue.   



*And in fact, one of the risk factors of having binge-eating disorder is previous addictions.