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!
Recovering Part-time Bulimic 