[The Little Bowl] The Truth As I See It

[Guest guest]

Lets. see, I missed writing yesterday, so this entry will cover two days. Well, actually, I am going to write about the first 22 days of July. I believe in bigger pictures than just one day, even when one day can change the whole picture. lol. I have come a long way in working through my triggers. I can see that I now respond more readily to my needs. I take a hot bath or shower when I feel sore, I sleep when I feel tired, I get out of the house when I feel cooped up. I knew July was going to be a challenge and I fought the fears of bingeing when alone with promises of an even stricter regime. That kind of thinking usually backfires, as I can see with my uber strict days vs. the days where the calories built up too high to lose weight. I was roller-coasting my way through July. Many mixed feelings, being off the truck, being alone, about to see my daughter, grandkids and help a new baby come into the world. I was dealing with body image changes as I tried on my wedding dress and smaller clothes. Lots and lots of emotions this month (and it ain’t over yet!). I think I have done well to keep fairly on track and nurture myself along the way. I had gotten my “up and down†calories down again, for 4 days in a row. I was starting to feel that lovely feeling when in ketosis. So much brighter, alert, happy. Click to enlarge I weighed in on my regular day at 243, the next day (yesterday) I weighed in at 241. Yippy! I knew I was less, and this weight was taken in the afternoon on top of it…could it be I was back at 239? I felt thin inside all day yesterday. I wore a cotton summer dress that I felt like I was light as a feather in. I went to an antique mall and walked around and really enjoyed myself. I brought my lunch, but forgot to eat it. What happened next baffles me. I had just seen that lower weight. I was feeling good. Then it just flowed into a different direction. I was on my way to a thrift shop that was next to a fabric shop because I needed some navy blue trim for a baby dress I am making for my granddaughter. That was the plan, but as I drove down the street, I decided to stop at a import store that has really cheap items from Asia. I bought several items I had seen before and was walking back to the car when I saw that there was a grocery store in the shopping lot, so I decided to go and get some club soda for a “treatâ€. A grocery store has always had a mystical charm to me. I prefer that my husband do the grocery shopping so that I don’t have to deal with it. MOST of the time, I am fine and don’t have any troubles buying what’s on my list and avoiding the temptations, heck, for the past year I have been a saint when grocery shopping. Steel will and all. But yesterday, my mind went right into binge mode. I wanted something more. I went through the whole store. section by section planning, plotting my binge. I found the club soda, and some powdered whole milk I wanted to try for my coffee, but after those two items, I was on the hunt for treats. I was tired, I was wanting a “pick me upâ€. I stopped first at the bakery. They had white cupcakes. I put that into my cart. Then what? You know, it’s been so long I had to think about what my old binge foods were! Seriously! As I thought about it, I almost made myself laugh, because when I went to look at different things, nothing really appealed to me. Normally I would get chips and dip. Naw. Then I looked at frozen foods. Naw. Ice cream? Nope. I saw some Ciabatta bread with garlic butter and cheese, so I bought a box of those, since I had ground beef already cooked at home. I would toast those in the oven and add beef to them. The only other thing that I could think of was popcorn. I hadn’t had kettle corn in over a year. The last time I ate cupcakes was in May of 2009. Again, I strolled the aisles for anything else that would knock my socks off…but nothing appealed to me. Some binge this was going to be. I was awfully half hearted about it. Did I think of stopping it? Yes. In fact many times when I was looking at the food and decided against the item, it was because I knew it would make me feel sick or that I would end up with too many over the top meals because I knew I could not eat much at a time. How long did I want to make this happen? Hopefully just one day. I never considered that aspect before. It use to be a binge was a purposeful thing having nothing to do with how it made me feel or how much food it would end up being. Other than that initial gleeful delight of the first bite, I knew that it would soon taste awful, as it always does during a binge. I had been thinking of those damn cupcakes since June when I knew I was going to be home alone in July. I had fantasized about them before nearly every home time and didn’t eat them. I had made it 21 days in July without eating them. Now they sat in my grocery cart. I had this weird determination to keep them in the cart, even as they started to look unappetizing. While driving home I told myself that I didn’t have to eat this stuff. I could throw it all away. I mean three items were a fraction of what I would have bought for a binge, I wouldn’t have lost much moneywise. I almost felt silly for bothering with the whole thing as it was. Even the old rationalizations my head comes up with to binge were falling rather flat on my ears. Instead, I decided (and yes, this was really a decision) to go ahead and eat what I bought and record it and look at it, instead of sweeping it under the carpet and hoping it goes away on it’s own. I ate the food in two sittings because my stomach is too small these days to hold much. The rolls were cut in half, 6 halves in the box. I ate 3 half rolls of the bread with ground beef for lunch and 3 cupcakes. Ouch, I was stuffed. The rolls were ok, one would have been more than enough. The cupcakes were just as I remembered them, way too sweet. I wanted a pronounced vanilla flavour, but the sweetness overpowered the vanilla. The frosting wasn’t as heavy as the Walmart junk cupcakes, this store had smaller cakes and less frosting, but way too much any way you look at it. I felt utterly neutral about this experience. No hurrah’s, no anger, no feelings other than thinking, is THAT all there is? I ate the same thing for dinner (my binge has already failed the eat it all in one sitting category) and later, when watching a movie I popped a bag of the kettle corn. Of the three things I bought, I think I enjoyed that one the most. Still, it wasn’t so great that I felt I couldn’t give it up. Of course I woke up groggy and feeling tired and saturated with carbs, especially sugar. I made my cup of coffee and sat down in my rocker and thought about it. Was it worth it? Yes, it the sense that I needed to get it out of my system. It was a year in the making. But because I had made it a year (Sept 1 is the official year date) being strict and dedicated, the potential for a binge was always in the background. It is one thing to grit your teeth and just do it and fear a binge will start the regaining of weight and another to realize that bingeing no longer has any power. AT ALL. I mean, I could not bring myself to binge yesterday, even after giving myself complete permission. It fizzled as far as the usual epic amounts of food I could consume. It was popping a balloon. All hot air. I could care less and it hasn’t even got the power to make me feel like I failed my diet. Of course I hated seeing the data. 6 ciabatta rolls at 160 calories each, that’s 960 calories 12 oz of white cake with frosting (there wasn’t any info on the cupcake box, so used the next best item in my software program) 1211 calories 1 bag of popcorn, 390 calories. That’s 2561 calories. I shudder to think of what I use to eat when I deluded myself into thinking I ate normally. All totaled, with my breakfast and the ground beef I would have eaten, my total for the day was: Click to enlarge A whopping 3542 calories with 389 carbs. Ouch, what numbers. I entered my meals for today and got it back to a better number range. In my honest and truthful opinion, this binge fell flat on it’s ass. It will take me three days to get back into ketosis. While getting back to ketosis is a tiresome thing to keep having to do, the binge itself was really more of a turning point for me than I expected. The difference is that I just don’t want what a binge gives anymore. I cannot stand feeling groggy and tired, I cannot stand feeling full, I cannot stand sugar and starch, I like feeling like I did yesterday in that summer dress. I liked how I felt when getting in and out of the car, with ease and energy. I like waking up feeling fresh and with a smile. Going off my diet in the past was a relief, now staying on my diet is the real relief. Funny how it turned out this way. I did not expect that. I am not one to say the word NEVER, but I think perhaps that was my last binge. I think it is out of my system for good. I really want what I am doing and where I am going with my diet and my body changes. --

Posted By elisaannh to The Little Bowl at 7/22/2010 08:27:00 AM