It’s been a mixed week. My self-started 90-day challenge is still on, and I’m relieved to get through almost the first week without major incident — something I haven’t been able to say for a while now. But it hasn’t been without a couple of stumbles, and I have to nip these in the bud before my mind infers that somehow I “got away” with these deviations. Ironically, that’s always been a force to contend with in myself; slip-ups, if they don’t feel too consequential, have the dangerous ability to suggest that they can reappear again soon after with no harmful impact. At a time when I reached my heaviest weight (a number of years ago), that’s how it happened. It didn’t happen by bingeing; it happened through steady, seemingly “harmless” overeating, with just enough clean eating days in between to make me feel falsely safe and secure. I weighed myself only sporatically and wow, was I in for a shock when I finally stepped on the scale. It’s actually one reason I “accepted” bingeing as a method of weight management for myself. When I binge, particularly at the end of the day when the digestive ill effects will even further impact me the next day, I can’t for one second fool myself into thinking that what I did wasn’t “so bad.” You KNOW it’s bad. Your whole body knows, the consequences are stark and horrific and throw you back into action like nothing else can. But overeat a little? Especially if you do so early in the day — i.e. take in a few extra calories between breakfast and lunch but eat a normal dinner, you could emerge the next day feeling no perceivable changes in your digestion, energy, etc., even though you did what you did the previous day. This, I believe is what lures people into a false sense of security and inaction. My challenge, therefore, lies heavily in striking a happy medium between the two extremes: to not binge, and for many reasons, but to also not let the occasional slip-up become anything more than occasional. I have to react to these indiscretions with the same voracity that I do a binge, or I’m setting myself up for that same steady creep that resulted in ## extra pounds lo so many years ago. I will NOT go there. I was miserable on a level that is indescribable; I would actually rather be riddled with an eating disorder of the first order for the rest of my life than let my body return to that place. At that weight, I’m useless. I don’t function well, I’m distracted every second of the day by how bloated and imbalanced I look and feel. I’m not healthy and I’m aware of it when I’m there. But I also know how physically awful it is to binge, what it does to my body. I don’t want to remain so reliant on that behavior as my “parent” — the impetus to snap myself back on track. I want to snap and stay on track through other, more mature, internal motivations. That’s what these 90 days are all about.
Anyway, on to my post title. Both of my slip-ups this week involved parmesan cheese. This is definitely a good example of a craving that long since ran its course, only you cling to the food item not for the actual satisfaction it brings you, but out of habit. You don’t enjoy it nearly as much as you think you will or remember doing so, but you turn to it anyway at a moment of concentration lapse.
So I’m officially moving it from my food plan list to off of it. It’s no good for me, salty and loaded with saturated fat. I’m definitely much better off without it and now I’m making it official. Done.
