The annoyance of “by the skin of my teeth” and “close shave” successes

It’s been almost two months since my last post.  I’m guessing that lack of posting generally signifies one of two things:  either 1) great success at the moment (no impetus to post) or 2) lots of struggles at the moment (no desire to post).  I suppose there’s also an Option 3) extraordinarily busy (not enough interest to post to overcome time impediments).  Happily, I’m falling into the first category.  It’s almost scary to write this, as I know the dangers that befall a person when success is high — so too is the risk of complacency or freaking out into self-sabotage.  But indeed, I am experiencing a degree of recovery as never before, and God willing, I have every intention to keep that going.  Definitely not without challenges.  It amazes me, how long it can be since I ate certain foods, and I can still have thoughts about them.  But I deal with those thoughts with a perpetual, “Not for now.  But I can revisit my food list later, and maybe add them back then.”  How funny, the mind games we must play!

Of course, recovery encompasses — and is happening because of — so much more than just the food management, per se.  If anything, I can see how so many will say, the food management is almost more the byproduct of other actions and measures, rather than one of the tasks in itself.  I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but I will definitely concur that it’s because of all those “other things” that  I have made the strides that I have, and not because, say, I found the “perfect” food plan or am taking a particular “magic” supplement.

To say I’m grateful doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of my happiness with my recovery.  But there’s a nitpicky annoyance that has been with me all along, at least ever since I first began to pursue recovery from my eating disorder, lo so many years ago.  And that’s my perfectionist mind’s kneejerk rejection of those days in which success/abstinence is kept “by the skin of my teeth.”  Probably anyone who has worked on recovery from either compulsive overeating or some other eating issues knows what I’m talking about.  There are those days, thankfully, in which I am graced with an abstinence and fluidity of conduct that feels very solid, very natural, like a well-oiled machine.  I work my program, do what I need to do, and prepare and enjoy my meals with great ease and satisfaction.  Days like that feel like, “Yes, boy, have I made progress!”  Then there are days like yesterday, and into today.  Drove husband to the airport over the weekend for a business trip.  Woke up yesterday morning to a flat tire.  Stress-stress-stress.  I’ve never had to take my car in for repair; normally my husband gets the honors.  On top of that, it was an exceptionally busy work day.  I also had some very positive, exciting things happen to me, concerning my work and accolades from it.  In other words, a very, very intense and hectic day.  I knew such a day is just ripe for feeling triggered, and in the past it almost certainly would have culminated in a huge binge, to take the edge off my adrenaline.  But I worked the tools of my program more intensively than ever, and managed to emerge from the day unscathed — meals went as planned, my recovery and abstinence intact.  What a wonderful feeling of accomplishment that was.

But I also knew that today would be tough.  I had a much lighter schedule, would be working out of the house much of the day.  Dangerous, because this represents the “day after” a hyper-frenetic day like yesterday.  And living up to its promise, it was a tough day to stay on task.  I believe that the day will finish on a positive note — another abstinent day, and if it does, I expect tomorrow to be much easier, as I will not only be busy (as in, out of the house, away from isolating busy), but by then it will be two days removed from Monday’s unexpected twists and turns, which means probably things will calm down to their normal levels for me — “things” being my emotions, my body’s physiology, my focus, etc.  So I just need to get through dinner without picking up extra food.

So good news, assuming this all goes as planned.

But it annoys me.  It annoys me that today was as hard as it was to get through.  If I had a dime for every time I had a thought that involved the desire to eat “out of today’s box,” I’d be able to retire right now.  God willing if I make it to bed abstinent, it will not be a gracefully abstinent day; I will be abstinent “by the skin of my teeth.”  I don’t like this, even as I realize that this is simply the way life works.  Some days are effortless, some are effortful, some in between.  That’s progress, I suppose.  At one time, I would have had a meltdown for sure, dismissing a day like this as “inauthentic,” as if the fact that it involved shades of white-knuckling, means that it doesn’t “count,” that it’s not “real” recovery but just me proving that I can hold on for dear life under duress.

But I realize, even as I type this, that all that matters is that I remain abstinent.  For today, it doesn’t matter how “close” I came to eating out of order, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t a smooth sail.  All that matters is that I remain abstinent.  Sure, I can continue to work my program, work the steps, pray to my HP, work the tools, and hope that in so doing, I strengthen my recovery so that days like this aren’t as intensely challenging, or at least that the frequency is reduced, but I have to accept that there may continue to be days that surface such as this, which means in order to stay recovered, I just need the willingness to deal with the discomfort and accept that my abstinence “pearls” will not always be silky smooth or rock-solid, that they will sometimes look quite “messy” or feel rather choppy.  But I have to assume that it’s in dealing with these very days that I will make the greatest growth.  So I must embrace them the way I embrace those lovely, practically-on-autopilot abstinent days.

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The frightening caloric total, how did my body ever handle it?

Just out of curiosity, as I wrote in my journal today, I fished my memory to the best of my abilities and wrote in gory detail a list of the foods I’d typically consume when choosing to succumb to what I used to call a “Junk Food Binge.”  That was my code for anything goes, no food is off the potential list, no attempt to observe or even define certain boundaries (funny how when removing any boundaries always seems to lead to junk food and not, say, “the all-melon binge” or the “any flavor of kefir I want binge”).  I’ve always been aware of the staggering calories I must have consumed, as I still count calories to this day as part of my food plan.  In fact, counting calories is so second-nature to me, by now it’s actually more comforting TO count calories than to try to eat without having that automatic awareness be part of my selection.  Yet, it seems part of my bingeing was rooted in the need to say to heck with rules, and I kept myself mostly ignorant on how much I was actually consuming during these episodes.  “More than 3000” is about as far as I wanted to think about it.  Until today.  Yow.

I’m seriously frightened by what the sum total must have been at my worst.  My poor body, when I think of the load I caused to so many of my organs and systems, it breaks my heart and makes me sick.  At the same time, I don’t know how my body managed to handle it without the degree of weight gain you would have expected.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very active, have always been involved wth athletics and have always been vigilant about jumping back into serious clean eating following a binge.  Even so, surely these measures alone could not have negated the mass ingestion, at least that’s how it seems in hindsight.  I mean, my weight is pretty much the same as it was back in those days, and I can promise you, my net totals over a typical week or a typical month are nowhere near as high.  I exercise pretty much the same, so no change there.  How do I explain the disparity?

I can only speculate, and even then there’s really no point, just an interesting thing to ponder.  Does the body actually hit a point in which it simply can’t absorb more than “X” calories over a given period of time, so once I crossed “X” I couldn’t absorb any more?  Was I simply given the grace of a normal-weight body until I was ready to take action for my recovery?  Was I in fact still exercising more, and doing more restricting on my regular food days than I’m remembering?

Yet another reason why I’m so grateful to be at the point I’m at in my recovery.  I can only pray that I always remember how horrible, awful, panicked, miserable, depressed I was during that time.  How many times did I write the words, “So SCARED!” in my food journal.  How many times did I lay in bed, so sick to my stomach after ravaging it all night with sugar, fat and carbs, that the sound of my poor stomach wimpering (at least, that’s what it sounded like to me) made me cry?

Of course, on a lighter note, it’s still depressing, seeing how quickly those calories can STILL add up.  Anyone check the label on a can of nuts or a bag of trail mix?  Ouch!  Not fair.

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The Endless “Tweaking” of the Food List

One of the more sobering revelations of recovery for me is that it’s never truly static.  There’s a part of my mind that loves the idea of, “This is THE Solution, From Here on Out.”  In that regard, on some level I find the recovery from alcohol a bit enviable; if you’re of the total abstinence camp, then that’s it, you’re done (as far as pinpointing what it is you need to avoid).  It’s not like, “Gee, for now I’ll just have 4 ounces of beer after dinner, and maybe next month I’ll switch that to a glass of Riesling every Friday night.”  But with eating, there’s just no cut-and-dried, permanent definition of what I can and cannot eat — at least for me (ditto for behaviors, but that’s a tangent for another post).  Furthermore, the criteria on which these “cans” and “cannots” are determined are different for each person.  My definition of recovery includes keeping my body within a certain weight range, which means I may have to deal with more cravings or imposed choices with my eating than someone whose goal is to be more at peace with her food, and is more surrendered to letting the weight “chips” fall where they may based on that criteria.  I think that’s part of what makes listening to others’ stories confusing at times.  Someone who appears to be more “settled” in her eating habits, who doesn’t seem to fluctuate in what her food plan entails, may in fact feel perfectly comfortable at a weight range that wouldn’t work for me, and this allows her to perhaps be more relaxed about how much she’s eating, what she’s eating, etc.  It’s been my experience that the more precise one’s weight goals, the more meticulous one’s food planning needs to be, and the more likely that there will be times that satiety will have to be partly sacrificed for the overarching goal.  It’s just the realities of weight management, especially for a person who’s natural appetite is still quite high.

Anyway, with the above in mind, one way I strive to stay on top of my recovery and eating is to remain hyper-vigilant of constantly reviewing what’s currently working and what is not.  For me, this is more or less a daily process.  At the very least, I’m logging my food, the calories, etc., and in so doing, momentarily reflecting on my overall sense of how the day went, how it felt.  But I’m also frequently pulling out my personal food list, scanning it (partly for menu planning — i.e. “Oh yeah, that’s right!  I can have grilled zucchini!  Oh maybe I’ll make some with dinner…”), reflecting on how satisfied I am with my meals and their impact on my fitness, satiety, health and body shape, and determining whether some tweaking is in order.  There are foods that work brilliantly for me for a long time, then all of a sudden start to cause problems, at which point I’ll often remove them from the list temporarily.  Then there are those foods I have avoided for a long time, but that I’m momentarily pondering.  I may put those tentatively on the list, and see if this time around I may have better success in incorporating them into my plan.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, other than to acknowledge that, while this can feel tedious at times — I think my inner “recovery police” sometimes wants to take a cynical assessment of this.  Like, “Well gee if you were REALLY recovered, would you need to be doing this?” — I’m increasingly recognizing that for me, yes, I need to do this.  For my goals and how I define recovery, this isn’t just necessary, this is PART of that recovery.  To me this is part of the concept of “going to any length” in order to get and keep recovery.  If anything, it’s kinda cool, to see this shaping up.  I feel as though I’m watching the dust from the “big bang” of my recovery settling into something that has definition, shape, and substance to it.  If I must engage in this kind of constant planning and assessment, I’m OK with this!

I AM noticing one big challenge with all of this tweaking:   that of remaining fully honest when visiting and revisiting this list.  I think it just naturally comes with the territory.  Just as reviewing and honing this list has enabled me to find a delightful food plan that has worked extraordinarily well over the last couple of months — I love my food, I’m learning that the same process of exploration has led to some dead ends and wrong turns.  I find that I have to constantly ask myself if an item I wish to add is truly a food that should be part of my plan, even if only my “treat nights only” plan, right now.  Sure, there’s one quick way to find out the answer — add the item and then sit back and watch what happens.  Funny how it doesn’t take long for trouble to surface if that item is not fit to be on the list right now!  But who wants to go through that every time?  At the same time, I have to guard against being too cautious, too restrictive, as I’ve noticed that when I limit my options too much, there’s that sense of never being fully satiated.  When that happens, it’s possible that it’s not so much the food choices themselves, it’s that I’m not in the best state of mind — that is, I’m not operating with a mindset that says, let’s explore all the wonderful tastes, recipes and combinations provided by what’s on this list.  Or it’s possible that I’m narrowing my range so much that I end up doing more damage in noshing on a bunch of semi-satiating items, when to simply allow a little more leniency would have enabled me to have “the” item and be done with it.

Bottom line is, it’s a constant dance!  I’m hopeful that as time goes on, I’ll continue to master the steps. 

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The use (or not) of the term “abstinence”

So I’m continuing an experiment, one that I’d begun a number of weeks back.  Made some changes in my lifestyle, my eating, etc.  It’s been a great journey so far, one that I will continue to recommit to, one that has brought forth some incredible results even as there have also been some challenges and bumps along the way.  Lots of emotions coming up, and the sobering realization that while certain changes do become easier over time, certain vulnerabilites will probably always be part of my makeup.  I actually feel a certain comfort in acknowledging that — it allows me to let go of this fantasy of effortless balance, and to know that a huge part of my long-term success lies in learning how to deal with those times of struggle, rather than think the goal is to eliminate those feelings.

In any event, the success of the last month or so has only further illuminated a stance I have been increasingly veering toward.  That stance is on the subject of abstinence, or at least, the word “abstinence,” with regard to overcoming compulsive overeating.  My involvement with a 12-step program of the past year, while amazing, transformative, life-changing in so many ways….has also challenged me, prompted much inner conflict in deciphering how I define and measure recovery for myself.  Not suprisingly — I say this because it seems this is a hot-button subject for many people, much of this inner conflict has to do with the use of the term “abstinence.”  So often I hear speakers talking about it, often expounding at least enough so as to share how they define their own abstinence.  Even knowing this is a program that is as individual as a snowflake, it’s tough to not hear some of this criteria, be it “I don’t eat sugar” or “I eat three meals a day, nothing in between, no exceptions” or even “I don’t binge…ever” and somehow ponder such a statement against my own eating plan.  Inevitably, questions arise.  Should I be adopting this for myself?  Is it truly possible this person can possibly have eaten exactly this way 100% of the time for the last 18 years?  If I saw what this person looks like (I often listen to speakers via podcast) or if I could follow this person in his or her day-to-day life, would I truly want the kind of abstinence they profess to have?  Am I hearing their words but interpreting them to a paradigm of living that is neither necessary nor achieveable for myself and my goals, and maybe not even accurate to their story, either?

I understand the potential need for such a term.  I do. Especially given that 12-step programs, for the most part, spring forth from the original wellspring of Alcoholics Anonymous.  With AA being modeled on the concept of total abstinence from alcohol, and that there is no “moderate drinking” in AA, it’s understandable that other 12-step programs would seek a way to determine the parallel of that model for themselves.  And I realize that in order to recover from destructive behavior, one way or another, a person needs some kind of definable boundaries to know whether or not he or she is meeting that objective.

The problem I have had all along….and I’m sad to say, still haven’t been able to reconcile….is that I just don’t see how I can possibly boil it down to such simple, cut-and-dried terms on the subject of food and eating.  For starters, life is not so simple.  If I say I won’t eat sugar, all that does is shift my mind to obsessing about what that means.  Does that mean absolutely nothing with sugar in it?  Does that mean nothing with high-fructose corn syrup?  Or is it only certain “sugar items” such as cake?  Or what about the “No bingeing” as my abstinence?  I find that problematic, because to me, any excessively large meal is technically (in my eyes) a binge.  I define a binge as anytime I eat extra food, or amounts that I could not sustain and still maintain my weight.  So to say I won’t binge basically (again, for me) means I will never overeat, and I just don’t think that’s realistic.

But perhaps most important of all is that I think the notion of abstinence takes my mind away from the real goal, the true end result, and that’s a balanced life, a reasonably balanced mind, and a body that’s within my optimal weight range.  I could follow a self-imposed abstinence to the letter and still completely come up short in any or all three of those items.  More over, while I am more than ready, willing and able to go through extra lengths to ensure I’m able to adhere to my food plan and exercise schedule, including those times we’re traveling or socializing, in recent years it’s become apparent that even if 99% of the time I am able to stick to the plan, there are those 1% instances in which it’s just not possible to put my foot down in accordance with this self-imposed boundary.  For example, we were recently invited at the last second to a dear friend’s house for dinner, and said friend is an empassioned cook.  Yes, yes, I’m a veteran of, “Oh, can I bring a salad for all to enjoy?”  But you know what, sometimes no matter how much you try to be gracious, to make such a suggestion would be rude.  It would.  Or maybe it wouldn’t be rude, but my insistence on eating my vinegared lettuce while everyone else is dining on a meal the host painstakingly prepared over two days’ time…..does change the dynamic.  People won’t relate as much to me, fair or not.  To say nothing for the fact that, frankly, I don’t want to call attention to myself and my eating in that way.  Because inevitably, people look at the person shunning the decadent stuff and immediately glance at the person’s weight, as if to assess the efficacy of such a rigid eating structure.  I don’t need that kind of pressure or scrutiny!  But the bottom line is, at least for certain very close-knit friends, I’m just not interested in alienating myself just so that I can pat myself on the back for finding an “abstinent” solution.

Understand, I am NOT challenging anyone else’s use of abstinence as a tool.  If using the term and defining it very specifically for yourself works, please do so.  I’m simply coming to accept that this is one aspect of my program in which I personally will have to depart in philosophy and approach, at least for now.

For me, I don’t want a “perfect report card.”  To me, the “perfect report card” is nothing but a booby prize if my weight didn’t stay where I’m comfortable with it and all I did was take the part of my brain that could have been used for something far more constructive to humanity, and obsess over orienting my eating to keep that absolute perfection going.  And I can’t reconcile the notion of committing to “abstinence,” if at some future point, that definition can be revisited and changed.  What’s the point?  I’d personally feel disingenuous to say I’ve had X years of abstinence, if to break it down you then discover that there’s been no constant in that abstinence.  To me, it renders the term meaningless.

Instead, I’m finding better success in staying connected to my big picture goal, and letting that be my guiding beacon as to how my eating is duly oriented.  I’m preferring to develop the maturity that allows the possibility of having to make an exception every once in a while, without it derailing me.  I find that it all comes down to remaining wholly honest with myself.  Is what I’m currently doing compatable with keeping my recovery moving forward?  Have I gained weight?  Am I becoming sloppy in my eating?  These are the hard questions I need to stay on top of.

Now, does this mean I don’t have a food plan, and a very clearly defined one at that?  Absolutely not!  I weigh, I measure, I count calories, I have a list of foods that are the building blocks of my menus, and that list gets updated more or less on a weekly basis.  Some weeks certain items get removed, others get put on it.  And there are foods I do avoid.  Lots, in fact.  I try to stick with the vast majority of my current foods being my “safe” foods.  I’m staying on top of my weight, my energy levels, my cravings, etc., and I’m finding this infinitely more constructive than obsessing over whether I could pinpoint an official abstinence criteria based on my following this format.

Is it possible that this is, indeed, a form of abstinence, and my steering clear of the actual word is just an exercise in symantics?  Could be.  Just last night, I had a few treats that are outside of my normal food plan (as in, they’re not normally part of my regular “clean eating” days, but they’re on the periphery of my current list).  When I shopped at the store for them, I was tempted to buy something else — a food that I had recently put on my “not eating this for now” list.  But part of the way I work my recovery is that I try not to make any impulsive decisions, and in order to allow a certain food to be eaten, I have to have predetermined whether or not it’s part of my current repertoire.  So….I stuck to my current criteria and held onto my current bottom line.  One could argue that this IS a form of abstinence.  The distinction I would make is that these micro-adjustments, for as deliberate and carefully pondered as they are, occur quite frequently, too frequently for me to feel comfortable umbrella-ing them all under one, unbroken “abstinence.”  It just makes more sense to aim for the best case scenario each day, but in the final analysis, keep the ultimate focus on having good weeks, good months, and staying gruelingly honest with myself at all times.  THAT, for me, is the definition of sustainable recovery for myself.

Just something I needed to write out and acknowledge.  It’s official, the “a” word is not likely to be a part of my recovery vocabulary, and so far that’s working out just fine.

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The serenity of binge-free living

As you probably have deduced, I’m not using or updating this blog very regularly these days (how’s that for a fancy way to say I’ve been completely MIA?).  Truth be told, I find that my ability to benefit from such an outlet fluctuates; sometimes I do better by actually distancing myself from any focus — blogs, books, message boards, etc. — on anything that has to do with eating disorders or weight or food issues.  By shifting my focus away from those things AND surrounding myself with a lifestyle and people who represent anything BUT those things, it’s almost as though I “forget” to have such issues.  Sometimes I think there’s a danger in all this self-help via interacting (or lurking, anyway) with others, because doing so can “normalize” what is otherwise very unacceptable behavior, IMO.  For example, certain behaviors or perceptions may not even OCCUR to me, yet in an environment in which people with weight or eating issues are discussing their problems/recovery, I may encounter individuals who engage in these things.  And while at first I may read with a sense of detached curiosity, you read it often enough and suddenly it doesn’t seem so odd, and suddenly you find your own mind is actually absorbing some of these things, and it starts to pollute your own thinking.  By cutting loose and instead only conversing with people who have never had eating issues, I remind myself what “normal/healthy” looks like.  I realize my own version of “normal/healthy” may not ever be quite there — my history brings with it some realities that I ought not be naive enough to ignore.  But who knows?  Time does great things, and through repetition, it’s amazing how much a person can change, to where there’s not even a hint of a resemblence to their former self or way of thinking.

Ha ha, I’m making it sound like I’m desiring such a dramatic change!  No.  But do I think I benefit greatly from getting out of any “ED recovery” environment or mindset?  Yes, absolutely.  Where I’ll ultimately go….again, who knows?

Anyway, but I’d had a recent turn of events that threw me into a bit of turmoil.  Happily, that turmoil is being resolved, but out of the crisis an interesting lesson was illuminated for me.

I have often lamented (tongue-in-cheek), particularly when I’ve prepared for my various athletic events, about how well nutritious eating “works.”  Meaning, by golly, when I’m forced to eat absolutely cleanly for a long, unbroken stretch of time, usually because I’m training much more intensively and have ambitious goals for a given athletic event, I not only see the influence of properly chosen foods and supplements on my body and athletic performance, I also experience a remarkable, almost unbelievable, release from all my cravings.  Whereas I normally can navigate the ebbs and surges of my appetite and cravings without too much problem — they’re there, but with good nutrition and other tools in place, I can ignore and/or work with them effectively, during these extra-clean eating times, it goes even beyond that; I literally lose the cravings.  Eating my planned meals is effortless, I lose my hunger and yet have boundless energy.  It’s not the most “fun” I’ve had with my eating — the foods are typically not the kind that hit people’s Top 10 list of favorite cheat items, but it feels a small sacrifice when compared with the reprieve it gives me from the daily challenge of appetite management.  Why, you wonder, do I ever stray from such synchronicity?  Like everything, little by little, I let “things” chip away at the oh-so-well-oiled-machine, and while my weight pretty much remains the same, I gradually find myself back to the usual m.o., which includes clean eating, just enough “non clean” eating to satisfy my perceived cravings and to stimulate some new cravings of their own, with willpower kicking in to keep things from moving in the direction of those cravings.  I know, deep down, that if I bring myself back to that more simple eating arrangement, I will probably go back to a craving-free existence, but there’s a reluctance that’s hard to penetrate if I don’t have some overarching motivator, such as an athletic event to prepare for.  Perhaps one of these days things will “stick” more than they have thus far.

With that in mind, recently I had experienced a “mysterious” weight gain.  Now hear me out, I’m normally a person who rolls her eyes at the notion of “mysterious” weight gain.  There’s no mystery; you took in more calories than you burned.  Simple as that.  And this, I believe, is still true.  But considering I’m as vigilant as I’ve always been about weighing my food, measuring my food, tracking my daily calories, recording my food intake and my exercise…… the sudden (as in, over a couple of months’ time) weight gain and notable change of body composition truly had me baffled.  By weight gain, I mean relatively small; about 5-6 pounds over my norm.  But on my frame….it looked AWFUL!  But worst of all, I just couldn’t find a good reason.  If anything, my eating and exercise were even tighter than they were in the preceding 6-8 months.  It was baffling and frightening.  It took a long time for me to get to the level of management of my eating (and the ED) that I currently have, and the thought that I might have to make additional tweaks was overwhelming me.  It didn’t help that I was emerging from one of the hardest and harshest winters our area has ever had.  Clearly Seasonal Affective Disorder was a factor in my dispondence.  And while the extra weight may not seem like a big deal, it was just enough to not only force me out of most of my clothes, but to feel….compromised.  I know at what weight range I look irrefutably at my personal best, and this wasn’t it.  I looked bloated, puffy, definitely imbalanced.  I had been at this weight many years before, but back then it was somehow healthier, more fit, even if it still wasn’t my goal weight.  This?  It didn’t even look like me.

I’ll spare the details of how we finally figured out what the problem was — or at least, what we believe the problem was.  Suffice it to say, we did resolve the problem, and I have taken most of the weight off.  I’m now up by a pound or two and can expect the rest to fall into place soon enough.

But the “why” isn’t really the point here.  My point is what I experienced while trying to deal with the mysterious problem.  Because I had no idea what was going on, only that I was gaining weight mysteriously, one of the changes I had to make was to further shore up my eating.  I needed to make certain that I was truly being accurate in my intake and consistent in staying within my allocated caloric boundaries.  I also figured that darn it, if I was gaining weight now, while eating so cleanly, there was no telling what awful consequence would befall me if I dared stray from my eating plan.  So no cheats.  For a long time.

And that is why I make this post.  Because admittedly, as I have referenced before, I had become accustomed, over the years, to a management strategy whereby I would eat cleanly and exercise regularly, enough so that my metabolism could handle a (usually) once-a-week cheat.  Good enough, except that these cheats were often quite grand in scale — cookies, pizza, cheese, chocolate, eaten to the point of discomfort.  It’s been hard to curtail this one remnant of my ED (which at times didn’t look particularly ED’d, more just the kind of nibble fest people often experience on a Saturday night), as it would often take a good 2-3 days for me to feel recovered from the consequences of my splurge.  And while I didn’t always turn to such decadence on a weekly basis, I would still allow at least 2 days each week in which I’d eat way, way more than my body needed of even “healthy” food, such as trail mix or apples or sugar-free pudding.  And while my weight somehow remained consistent despite these occasional flights of fancy, the cycle of dealing with the added quantity of food on my gastrointestinal tract….the distress it would cause….was awful.  Part of my challenge over these last several months has been to work on lessening the severity.  I say “lessen the severity” because I don’t necessarily think I can nor should abolish these occasional deviations from my food plan.  But of course, there’s a huge difference between having an extra helping of a treat food or cooking a particular recipe in its “full fat” version but otherwise leave the day’s eating the same….vs. what I was doing, which definitely went beyond where it should be.  But….old habits die hard.  Choose your poison, and all of that.

So imagine the unexpected “gift” this recent dilemma gave to me.  For while I was decidedly unhappy with my situation — that is, I was annoyed with what was happening to my body and consumed about trying to figure out what the heck was going on,  I found myself, on a particularly difficult day, taking note of one shining light:  the serenity of being away from bingeing.  Because of my body’s apparant rebellion, I had vigilantly kept myself away from eating outside of my meal plan, and for a long stretch of time.  In this case, it had been weeks since I’d last strayed, and prior to that stumble, a few additional weeks still.  Altogether, I had had almost a couple of months without bingeing (my term for those Saturday and/or weeknight cheats), and I have to tell you….. it was wonderful.  While I was still struggling to find outfits that fit me, I could at least feel the serenity that comes when the body hasn’t been inundated with excess food.  My mind was cleaerer, my energy levels more even, my digestive tract at relative peace.

Well, happily, the few changes that I felt were needed, that I felt may provide the relief my body needed from what appeared to be going on….did finally start to take effect.  I began to see “my” body re-emerge, which was a huge relief, indeed.  I had a few athletic events come and go as well during that time, and found the problem to be almost 100% resolved.

So you know what happened next.  Of course!  Problem solved, success at my athletic events, which means it must be time to celebrate!  Mind you, I’m not out of the woods yet, especially since the whole point is to bring myself back to where I normally MAINTAIN myself, not just some bottom-end extreme from which I can then promptly rebound.  But sure enough, at the first opportunity (read:  where I had a day of down time afterward, allowing me to become cave-dweller and digest quietly out of the radar of most humanity), I merrily high-tailed it to the store, picking out all the sugar-fat-kitchen-sink delights I had so steadfastilly kept myself away from for so long.  It was almost head-spinning — literally — to experience these foods again, like switching on a bunch of neuro-receptors that had become dormant (not unlike what I imagine it’s like to smoke a cigarette after having quit for a while).  A couple of hours and a distended belly later, I couldn’t believe I had once again let myself fall into that bizarre, pre-binge amnesia, where I seem to forget how truly horrible the aftermath is — much more horrible than any pleasure obtained from the taste of the food.

So okay, a trip, stumble and fall.  It happens.  Move on.  Only…. I’ve had a couple more since.  So now I’m back to shoring up my eating and be more guarded on what behaviors and foods I allow over the next week or so.  Having had some blissful reprieve from my last binge, I can once again taste that serenity that I recently experienced, and I’m anxious to return to that place more solidly.  It’s fresh in my mind, and I’m grateful to have been, albeit through strange circumstances, forced to rout out some remnant destructive behaviors so as to let me catch a glimpse of it!  I don’t want to forget it anytime soon.  Talk about realizing how ready I am to be rid of those remnants, once and for all! 

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Interpreting the “Higher Power” reference in OA

Generally, OA is not my personal cup of tea.  I appreciate that it’s helpful to others and for that I acknowledge its value; it simply isn’t for me.  However, I strongly agree with some of the beliefs and approaches by the organization, even if I don’t necessarily apply them in the exact same way as they do.  I agree, for example, that helping others who are struggling is one way to help yourself (though obviously that ought not be the only motivation for doing so).

I have a book, one of my favorites, on overcoming overeating (no, it’s not the book by that title nor the author), written by a member of OA and based on the program therein.  It’s not an “official” OA book, but from what I understand of the organization, it ought to be, for it’s about the most logical, clear-cut, well-organized manual on the subject I have ever read.  And so much of what the author spells out about the program are points I have found, on my own, to be extremely helpful.

But the one element I have often struggled with is the notion of a Higher Power.  Don’t get me wrong; I believe in God or some comparable entity, believe there is “more” than what meets the eye on this earth.  But somehow, the notion of handing myself over to a Higher Power — one of the credos of OA — has never sat well with me.  To me it suggests that I lack the ability to overcome this — or, now that I’ve done most of the “overcoming,” to manage this.  I might be misinterpreting it, but that’s how I read it.  I like the idea of taking full ownership and responsibility for such a problem, and in upholding the idea that I alone — maybe through the tools God has provided me? — can make my own wise decisions and go about implementing change.

But I had a light bulb moment the other day that gave me a sense of resolution to this, perhaps because I *want* to believe in that part of OA.  I was on one of the cardio machines at the gym, reflecting on a conversation my husband and I had had that morning.  I was asking his advice on tweaking my current food plan.  I go through this every single winter; I swear the lack of daylight and the cavedweller effect of all this snow and cold literally scrambles my brain out of its normal self, because this plays out every year without fail.  In short, I begin to “experiment” with my eating, introducing foods that are 99% likely to cause trouble, and to make short-term decisions that, frankly, are immature, selfish, impulsive and/or self-indulgent.  It nearly always leads to a period of trip/stumble/get up/get back on track/trip/stumble/get up/get back on track/trip.  There finally comes a point when I cry “uncle” and recognize that there’s no place like home, “home” being my regular food plan, my regular approach.  It’s almost as though I momentarily get amnesia, “forgetting” how predictably these foods have caused problems in the past, hoping upon hope that maybe “this time will be different.”  And of course, we all know what happens next!

So of course, it’s like Dorothy on the Wizard of Oz.  You take this magical mystery tour, only to realize, reluctantly at times, that you’re still best off doing what’s always worked.  Which is the point I had reached recently after just such an experimentation.  My patient husband duly administered his (appropriate) “duh” response upon my verbalizing this revelation.

So now I’m on the cardio machine, reflecting on how if I only shut off all outside noise — all books, all message boards, all TV ads, all Oprah’s, all magazine articles, all overheard conversations, all blogs…… and simply turn to that internal source, I always steer myself right.  What frustrates me, I suppose, is because what works for me tends to run against what is commonly touted.  That’s tough, as it means I have to essentially plug my ears with my fingers and yell “la la la la la” as it can be soooooo easy to let myself second-guess that internal wisdom.  But you can’t argue with success, and whenever I’ve ignored the popular “sensible” wisdom of the masses (not the rules of nutrition, just in how I choose to adminster them for myself), BOOM, I click into a pleasant, almost “easy” rhythm of eating and lifestyle.  When I futz with it…. I struggle.

Ah-HAH!!!!!!!!!!!   In other words….. that “inner wisdom” of mine IS that “Higher Power.”  It’s that overarching authority that must ultimately be the dominant voice in choosing your tools, your path.  Because everything “beneath” it — looking to others for validation/guidance, going by the popular choice, going by the whims of cravings (danger, Will Robinson), going by the whims of what others insist is the “right” way — is ground clutter.  You have to have someone or something that is unfailingly the final word to ensure you DON’T get pulled in every which direction.  Does this “Higher Power” wisdom of mine come from God?  Or something similar?  Is it within me only?  Is it a compilation of everything I’ve learned and everything I’ve experienced?  Probably….yes.  To all of the above.  Or maybe not.  Who knows, who cares.  The point is, I GET IT now.  And suddenly it makes all the sense in the world to me.  And truth be told, it’s the one sure source that I have always found works (when I listen to and implement it).

Another piece to the puzzle!

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Craving management: Like Maslow’s hierarchy

Well, I’m back from my break, at least briefly.  I’m not sure I’ll post again very frequently (if at all), if for no other reason than the fact that I don’t have much in the way of thought-provoking revelations or discoveries of the moment.  My ED seems to be in a state of semi-remission (I say “semi” mainly to avoid letting my guard down and becoming complacent) at the moment, so I’m just coasting along and enjoying what appears to be a new phase of my life.  Interesting, exciting, and a bit scary all at the same time!

However, I do want to post a conclusion I’m increasingly drawing on the subject of cravings, dealing with hunger, appetite, eating management, etc.  I’ll explain how and why I’ve come to this conclusion.

Due to my ED quieting down, I’ve been interacting more with people with no apparent history of eating issues, from all sorts of walks of life.  Mainly though, those people whom I admire or with whom I have shared interests.  I’m doing this both just for personal enrichment, but also to further learn — understand where an ED “ends” and “normalcy” begins.  Sometimes this is a gray area that’s hard to pinpoint.

So that’s my “how.”  Now the “why”:

I suppose one reason I’m taking a break is, I don’t want to forever have to be so active in my analysis and debate regarding my emotions, my behavior, etc.  I’m realizing that there’s no such thing as “total” recovery, meaning, you’ll never fully extinguish cravings, you’ll never achieve a state of absolute contentment.  So to keep pursuing such a goal is frought with frustration, as no matter how well you’re doing, it’s never going to be “good enough” if that’s the lofty goal you’re holding yourself up to.  I think part of why I’ve become fidgety over the last couple of years is because I want to figure out where “normal” is.  At what point am I more or less “normal”?  Obviously, the answer can only be answered by me, but figuring that out is no easy task.  I suppose the answer has to come from a combination of observing “normal” in others who appear to be more or less where you want to be….and what you personally are willing to accept as your personal “normal.”

So why be so analytical?  Why the need to decide such a thing?  Simple.  I want to get to the point that I can let GO of the recovery process already.  If I honestly feel I’ve taken my recovery about as far as I can, I can relax and settle in where I’m at and free up my mind for other things.  I don’t have to wonder if there’s more around the corner if I only put in another six months of active effort.  I do think there’s a point in which any additional improvements will be negligible at best.  More over, they may very well happen anyway, even without “formal” effort, just by living my life based on the values and principles I’ve established over the course of my recovery.  In other words, at some point I have to let go of micro-managing my recovery, and instead just let those ongoing, if smaller, changes continue to occur in their natural timing.

Okay, so here’s what I’m concluding.  In the whole scheme of eating — cravings, hunger, appetite, deprivation, etc., and life — emotions, personality inclinations, etc., there are “layers” of these elements that aren’t unlike Maslow’s hierarchy.  There’s the first layer, which I’ll call the “biological creature” layer.  Just the basic facts of being a living thing:  metabolism, eating, energy production and consumption, etc.  The next layer up will be the “genetics” layer.  Next is the “human experience” layer.  Up from that might be “issues and specific personality challenges” layer.  Above that might be the “eating disorders” layer.

What’s my point here?  That no matter how much you heal, grow, mature, resolve issues, change bad habits, develop healthy outlets, learn new coping skills, strategize your meals and nutrition, exercise wisely, attend to your health, learn to live with your emotions, etc…… you will STILL have a certain amount of cravings, appetite, hunger, emotional challenges, etc.  There is no fully getting rid of these things, because they’re driven largely by certain realities of biology, genetics, and simply the “normal” human experience.  You can do your best to attend to those things you can change, and clearly help yourself deal with those elements you can’t change, but at the end of the day, you’re still going to have to grit your teeth through times of uncomfortable hunger, cravings that just won’t die, irrational emotions and crankiness when you have no reason to be anything but ecstatic and grateful.

And here’s the thing:  the above things are OKAY!!!  There was a time when I’d experience some major breakthrough, or put to practice a great strategy of “alternate actitivites” (i.e. when a craving hits, do something to occupy yourself that doesn’t involve food), or develop hobbies or form great friendships that helped keep my mind happy and busy, boosted my self-esteem and  elevated my overall life contendedness, or had an “ah-hah!” about the origins of my behavior……and I guess deep down I kept hoping that somehow these things would help “magically” cut my cravings, or reduce my desire to make inappropriate eating choices.  I was WAITING for it all to at least become a little bit EASIER.

But here’s the truth, at least per my experience.  All of those things are great, but they don’t take away the cravings.  They don’t remove the urge to eat outside of my planned meal strategy for that day.  They don’t make keeping my weight where I like it any easier.  BUT….what they do is help me solidify my resolve, keep my confidence and sense of self-trust high, keep me motivated to confront these difficult challenges and STILL make the right choice, even if every cell of my being is momentarily screaming for a bag of cookies.

In other words, sometimes you’re going to have to white-knuckle it.  If you want both the emotional healing AND a body that’s fit and trim, you still have to deal with those challenges that are simply a normal reality of biology, genetics, and the human experience.  Just as our lungs always have a reserve of air in them, so too do we have a “reserve” of challenges that won’t go away completely, not for as long as we’re alive.

Ironically, it’s actually very freeing to arrive at this conclusion.  I don’t have to wonder if the existence of these things somehow points to the ED, or suggests I need to do “more work” in order to try to extinguish them.  I simply need to accept these realities, make my peace with them, and then flex that mental muscle every time I confront one of these challenges.  It may never get easier, but like everything, with repetition and time, I can get used to it.

I can live with that!  

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Update, and may take a break

It’s been a strange month.  With only one stumble, I’ve managed to stick with my initial goal — that of not allowing a separate, “special” trip to the grocery store should I make the decision to binge.  In other words, if I feel the need to eat beyond what I’d planned, it must be foods that I already have at home; no special “treats” or normally “forbidden” items.  The idea is, I wanted to see what would happen if I removed any sense of allure to the binges, at least in terms of WHAT they would entail.  There’s not nearly as much enjoyment from them when they’re simply comprised of foods I’m already including on my food plan!

But I also did make that 90-day challenge for myself, one in which I wanted to see how long I could be abstinent (abstinent, in this case, referring primarily to not bingeing).  Not wanting to evaluate the wisdom of issuing such an ambitious challenge until I gave it an earnest shot, my behavior these last  few weeks has been quite interesting, to say the least.  I would call it a mixed bag, in terms of success.

There have some very distinct differences in my current eating patterns than my norm.  True to the goal, I have not “binged” in the same sense I normally do.  Normally, if I decide to binge, along with the glee I feel in allowing myself access to certain “treat” foods, I typically throw any sense of calorie-counting or even hunger checkpoints out the window.  Basically, I eat until either the foods I’m interested in are gone or until I’ve “had my fill,” which almost 100% of the time means by the time I stop eating, I am extremely uncomfortable.  HORRIBLY uncomfortable.  That, actually, has been among the leading incentives for my wanting to change these days.  I feel mournful, sorrowful, and quite scared, at the awful abuse I inflict on my body by this behavior.

But in the place of the “normal” binges has been a sort of hybrid creature, and I’m not liking it.  In some ways, it’s “good” in that, I have yet to eat completely out of control or to get to that “horrible discomfort” point.  What has happened is, in between days of clean eating, I have days in which I, after dinner, decide to eat extra food.  The big differences are, I’m choosing foods that offer no more enticement than my food plan:  soup, apples, microwave popcorn, etc.  AND I’m still counting my calories meticulously, so that at least I know what the damage is.  And while I still end up eating more than I want, I do stop well before I would normally do so.  Clearly, these strays are not serving quite the same “release the pressure valve” purpose offered by most of my binges.  But I still consider them binges.  They still render me way beyond an amount of calories I need, though nothing like the devastating calorie blitzes I’ve been guilty of inhaling in the past.  And predictably, it doesn’t take nearly as long to recover from these deviations; I find much less “aftermath” to suffer and start to feel like myself again sooner than I do under normal “post binge” circumstances.

But the mind is tricky, and with these changes — I actually worried that this would happen — I’m straying from my food plan more frequently than normal.  This is disturbing  me greatly.  I worry that if I keep at this, I may be looking at the formation of a habit that will be tough to break.  A habit that could turn disastrous if my momentary “relative” self-control with these eating splurges should ever spiral back in the direction of my regular binges.

So my instinct is to say, this was good, it served its purpose, it helped me swing my eating habits back (overall) to a more healthy schedule, it gave me good insights — insights I would not have had if I had kept my same-old, same-old m.o., but now I need to let it go.  Do I think I could keep going for the full 90 days?  Actually…..yes.  But I’m not sure this is what I want.  If I stop it now, I have a much better chance at breaking this pattern before it has a chance to really become habit.

But how’s this for a monkey wrench?  So far, it seems my weight has stabilized!  Not to where I usually like it — I’m still about 2-3 pounds above my normal weight (I’d gained about 4-5 from the holidays this year, more turmoil than usual, part of the reason for my doing this month experiment).  But, if I’m to believe my weigh-in of a couple of days ago….and a few days before that…..yeah, it appears possible that things aren’t deteriorating on the weight end.  MAYBE.  Two or three weigh-ins are hardly enough to see a trend.

So….. I have some thinking to do.  I’m not afraid to abandon either the 90 day challenge OR the January challenge (actually…..I won’t abandon the latter as there are only a few days left of the month, and I do think this is a good break from certain food habits I’d developed) if it turns out to be not what I feel is what I want.

I also may take a break from this blog (hey, it IS called the *part-time* bulimic, isn’t it? my attempt at humor).  I have so much going on with my work and I worry that concern about blogging is actually taking my eyes off my eating “steering wheel” at the moment.  Then again, maybe I’ll discover I benefit more by keeping the blog going than in taking a break.  I just wanted to let readers know what’s up if I suddenly drop off the face of the earth.

We’ll see!

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Lightbulb moment! I use my dinner to “decompress”!

This month has produced so many interesting realizations.  Initially I simply made it my goal that if I were to binge, I would limit myself to only the foods already in the house.  In other words, no special trips to the store, no purchases of normally “forbidden” options.  Doing this, I speculated, would remove some of the allure, knowing that all I’d be eating are those foods that are already part of my meal plan.  And indeed, it’s amazing how this helped diffuse the urges.  They’re still there, but for sure this helped calm down my eating.

Then I issued a challenge to myself, to pursue 90 days of “abstinence,” abstinence being, a break from bingeing altogether.  I felt I’d reached the point in which I was ready to tackle this, though I also knew that putting it out there would be risky.  90 days is a long time, and more over, the definition of “abstinence” can be massaged tremendously.  Nothing drives me crazier than when a person sets out to accomplish a goal, falls short of it, and rather than own up to it and maybe speculate on what went wrong or maybe whtether the goal was too ambitious or mismatched, they simply skirt the issue, give some general, “Well, at least I didn’t GAIN additional weight” or whatever.  Hey, the idea is to set goals and make an honest effort — and be honest with yourself, not to let things peeter out and avoid confronting the fizzle.  This is something I WON’T do on this blog.  What you read is what is happening.  You won’t see me back down or side step what has actually happened.  What’s the point?  Self-deception and denial are the fuel that keeps us in our current situations.  If you want to change you have to face both the triumphs and the discomforts of tripping.

Anyway, I have a whole lot to say with regard to those two challenges I’d issued myself.  Lots of progress, some stumbles, some imperfections.  But this has been a very different month from December, or really any period of time over the last several years.  It’s scary at times, because I’m not totally sure I like where this is taking me, but it’s also encouraging at times, as it certainly can suggest the opposite:  that I’ve stepped up to a new platform in my growth from my eating disorder.

In any event, the change of eating and restrictions in terms of binge behavior has led to a number of insights and realizations.  Last night (really, this morning) was one of them. 

I have to admit, a large factor in my eating choices has to do with calorie density.  What I mean is, I tend to try to choose foods that I enjoy, but that also provide the biggest “bang” (volume, for example) for the calorie “buck”.  Fruit, vegetables, popcorn, nonfat yogurt, sorbet, fish, fat-free cottage cheese, sugar-free jam, rice cakes, oatmeal.  You get the idea.  Don’t get me wrong, I also include olive oil (love to cook), dried fruit, sunflower seeds, rice (neither very low nor very high in calories), peanut butter, etc.  But by and large, I gravitate towards foods that both fill me up and take a long time to eat, while providing the minimum calories for that amount.  Among the foods I don’t tend to eat:  bread, butter, dry cereal, most meats (just don’t care for), potatoes, pasta, desserts, sugar, chips, crackers, cheese….you get the idea.  I also tend to shy away from certain fruits that, while tasty, are easy to overeat and are rather high in calories.  Grapes, for example, as much as I love them.  Bananas are about a 50/50; I’ll go through phases where I’m eating them constantly, then not at all.

Anyway, I know these aren’t exactly well-kept diet secrets.  I’m sure many people do this as it makes perfect sense.  Why not choose Food A over Food B if Food A is just as enjoyable as Food B, only with Food A you can eat more for the same calories?  Common sense.

But I discovered something REALLY interesting last night!

I had a good day yesterday overall.  Work went very well.  However, given my nature, I tend to get “wound up” by the end of the evening.  I work a job that demands long hours, usually quite late.  And as much as I adore my job, what ends up happening is I get so excited and jubilant as I work, by the end of my day I’m literally ready to run a 5K.  I can’t even listen to music en route home, settling instead for talk radio that I don’t even care for, just because I need to hear someone talking; I’m too wound up to concentrate/”relax” enough to listen to music, even though I normally LOVE listening to music.  This I’ve known about myself for many years.

And I’ve also known that part of the force that drives my binges is this very trait; I get wound up and it predisposes me to make impulsive, bad choices with my eating.  I can have my normal plan in place for the whole day, only to have some weird metamorphosis occur within those final two hours of the evening, leading to my making (almost always foolish) last-minute changes that almost always leads to disaster.

Knowing this about myself, I’d made some recent (as in, within the last 4 months or so) attempts to mitigate this effect.  Since I can’t seem to change the way I go about my work, my thought was, maybe there’s some intervening activity I can perform between driving home from work and arriving home for dinner.  Because once I’m home, it’s like this ticker clock goes off, and I can’t make my dinner fast enough.  So for a little while there, I was stopping off at the gym, not to exercise so much as to do other things:  sauna, sit in the Jacuzzi, stretch, sip some tea at the cafe, get a manicure, etc.  Just *something* to help diffuse my hyperactivity.  And lo and behold, it definitely helped.  I not only did better with my eating, I also loved these indulgences, began to look forward to them.

Admittedly, as the holidays approached I began to stop doing this.  Why?  Not sure, actually.  Without a doubt, it’s a bit exhausting.  My days are long and this additional activity demands its own extra effort.  At this time of the year especially (cold, snow, ice), it becomes more of a hassle.

Okay, so last night I had a good evening at work, but a few (normal) stresses as well.   I was doing okay with my eating this week — some issues, some of them scary, but overall well.  I had no reason to believe last night would be anything but a success in terms of my sticking to the meal plan.

So I got home, cooked my dinner, which was delicious.  Healthy, warm, nourishing.  I emerged very happy and content.

But then…. I kept going.  Oddly enough, I literally almost exactly repeated my day’s food.  In other words, nothing exotic, no treats, I had almost exactly the same foods I’d eaten on my meal plan yesterday.  Definitely well in excess of what my body needs (great….back to “damage conrol” mode), but not a single “woo hoo I’m eating this!” forbidden pleasure-type foods.  Vegetables.  Soup.  An Asian apple-pear.  Sugar-free dietetic mousse from a mix.  No out-of-control portions, though by the time I stopped it was definitely enough to cause a great deal of stomach distress.  I went to bad extremely angry at myself.  What the HELL?

It wasn’t until this morning that I realize what I do.

I use my dinner to decompress.

And last night….. I had more stress to “vent” than normal.  And guess what.  My dinner didn’t “last” long enough for the full decompression to take place.  Because it was weird, the impulse to eat more came out of nowhere.  It was as though I felt a certain let-down upon finishing my dinner, like, “But I’m not READY to be done with this yet!”  I didn’t feel hungry per se, just wanted to keep eating.  But I didn’t want to undo the progress I’d made this month or gain weight (well…at least not gain so much weight that I couldn’t get back on track quickly), so I fastidiously avoided any foods that would constitute my “treat” foods.  By keeping my foods within my “normal” options I avoided initiating that “what the hell, I’ve already eaten this, may as well go for the things I’ve been craving!” switch.  But still, I ate.  And well in excess of what I needed.  But I had no problem stopping long before I might normally have stopped with my “regular” binges.  So something was definitely different here.

And that’s when I realized this this morning.  I had more on my mind last night.  More “stuff” to release.  The safety valve was my dinner, only the safety valve was not opened for long enough to fully release the pressure that had built.  I had to re-open the valve and keep it open until all pressure had released.  I could then stop and relax, albeit now with a whole new stress in its place.

So here I sit, with a bloated stomach and this realization.  Which means I have to do something about this.

Clearly, I have to figure out how to release that steam, that built-up energy (which by the way is often positive, which makes it even worse as I feel like I’m truly abusing food for NO good reason!) in some other way.  Yes, I’ve become good at sitting with my emotions and not letting them sway me the way they used to.  And yes, I’m valuing my body and my sense of worth more than ever, which is one reason I made these challenges for myself this month.  But I don’t think any amount of recovery from the ED will negate the fact that I’m inclined to work myself up when I’m at work (or anything — I get excited and happy and sad and intensely passionate in so much of what I do).  I need some additional strategy to take that edge off of the pressure, so that dinner becomes the tail end of that unwinding process.

What to do?  Not sure yet.  I could resume my hit-the-gym-after-work routine, but I also need something I can do at home.  Last night, for example, would have been out of the question for that strategy as the temperatures dropped below zero, with windchills even worse.  I need to keep it practical and accessible enough that I’ll readily be able to follow through with it.

Got some brainstorming to do!

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Going out on a limb here: My 90-day challenge

Every now and then, I’ve had to shake up my routine and/or my approach to continuing to move forward with better eating and related behaviors.  Over the years, a number of measures have helped tremendously, but the only thing they really share in common is that they came from something deep within, a momentary light bulb idea that, had I tried to impose it on myself at any other time, probably wouldn’t have worked.  That’s one of the tough things about managing/overcoming a bad habit:  There’s no formula or step-by-step set of procedures, no linear “plan” of first you do this, then you do this.  As often as I have been helped by my diligent logs and journals over the years, I know how often I have fallen into that trap of trying to look up what I was doing during a particular era in which I was experiencing good success, hoping to glean some insight as to what I could be doing now to get back to “that point.”

And while there definitely are measures that consistently work well for me no matter what year it is or what I’m currently experiencing….there are plenty of actions that become outdated; they run their course and may never be of use to me again.  Or they fade, I stray away, but they resurface later, at another time.  The lack of clear-cut answers and definitive “methods” can be daunting to an analytical mind like mine!

With that in mind, I’m feeling the light of inspiration for one of those probably-short-term-but-effective strategies for myself.  I hesitate to blog it because it’s quite the tall order.  Nothing annoys me more than when someone vows to do something….then a day later that “something” falls off the radar, or they abandon it.  What was the point of making such a declaration if you’re going to be so wishy-washy?  So for me to reach the point where I’m recording this, means I’ve given it a lot of thought and have a sense of readiness about myself.

I have basically always exercised.  At one time in my life, I exercised probably 4-5 days/week on average.  I’d exercise a few days, take a day off, another few days, take a day off.  Sometimes two days off.  At some point, I realized I felt better, functioned better, improved my health and happiness, if I aimed to exercise every day.  It took a while for that to fully happen — about a year of 6 days a week — but these days, with very little exception, I exercise every day.  Some days are lighter, some heavier, but the goal is every day, even when I’m slightly under the weather, even when I’m tired or cranky or just don’t want to.  My current streak is over six months long.

I’m looking at this as a model for my next eating phase.  I’m making it my goal to be abstinent for the next 90 days.  I’m borrowing that term from OA (I’m not personally a fan of that program but I certainly acknowledge it has helped many — and like everything, it has those points I agree with and disagree with), because it describes my goal most accurately.  In this case, my aim is to to 90 days without bingeing.

I feel ready for this because I honestly feel I’m down to the “bad habit” stage of my eating disorder.  As my dear husband often observes, I’m 97.9% there, save for this pesky remnant behavior I just haven’t yet kicked.  But I think it’s been weakened to the point that I have a real shot at this.  I do it with my exercise, why not with my eating as well?

Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.  How will I feel?  Happy?  Relieved?  The Same?  Cranky?  Irritable?  Excited?  I promise I will blog what happens.  The whole truth.

If by chance YOU feel ready to take on a similar challenge, well certainly, you’re welcome to join me!  I know I’m not the only one at this stage of my eating behavior.  Or if you’re not interested or ready, sit back and see what happens.  Either way, it’s bound to be an interesting three months!

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