28/126

Today was the opposite of yesterday. It started out badly but ended well! A rare feat, but one that I'd certainly like to be able to repeat. I woke up in a very bad mood, not helped at all by feeling nauseaus and kind of ill and did I mention that I was in a very negative mood? I was not fun to be around. However, as it was a 'no appointments' day, the only person I got to be around was myself, which is definitely a good thing (?)

My head was full of negative thoughts about my ability to actually live the healthy life that I want to live. Mostly, I was dwelling on the fact that I can eat well most of the time, I have no trouble exercising, but then I still have these moments of overeating where I undo all my hard work (not quite true, but we are not talking about a realistic frame of mind here).

The overeating that I've been doing lately, I can't really call 'bingeing'. I've been there and it's really a different thing. If last night had been a binge, I would have been hustling my mother out the door so that I could make a run to the 24 hour service station for icecream and chocolate. Bingeing doesn't end until you can't breathe anymore. This is just overeating. But still, it's destructive because it feels like something that I can't predict or control. It's very frustrating, but I'm beginning to see that it's not a fat issue, or a food issue, it's kind of to the side of that and I need to deal with it in a way that doesn't just involve telling myself 'don't do that'. Today I made a good start at digging up the motivations that drive it.

Before that moment though, there was the morning. Being that I wasn't hungry, I didn't eat until about 1pm and it was just an egg salad with essene bread.

About 3pm I headed to the library. I'd packed an apple and some walnuts and ate them in the car when I got hungry. On the way out of the library, head still full of defeatist thoughts, I auto-piloted across to the dairy and bought, of all things, a steak and cheese pie, which contains nearly everything that's not on my plan. My immediate (illogical) thought had been something like 'well, today marks the end of my first month and next month I'm not going to screw up even once, so this is my last chance to really blow it. I'd might as well really go for it'. I left there with an evil plan to get home and eat .. stuff.

By the time I got home though, I was just feeling angry and, for some reason, this made me ask myself a very intelligent question, which was 'what, exactly, do I get out of it?'. Rather than going at myself with 'I've got to stop this, I've got to stick to the plan, lose weight, this has to be the last time', I wised up. Because, clearly, if it's such a hard habit to kick, I MUST be getting something out of it, right? Otherwise I wouldn't do it. So, I grabbed my journal and just started writing along the lines of what I feel when I overeat. Yeah.. there was a lot, much more than I had first thought, and I would like to keep this post relatively short, so I'll just summarise. Mostly I saw that I use food much like a drug. I use it to alter my mental state, whenever my feelings get uncomfortable, and it does it very effectively. I can't mentally talk myself out of overeating, I'm going to have to deal with it at the icky feelings level. Yay.

After that, the urge to stuff my face was completely gone and I had my mental focus and happies back. Food was just food again and I was able to eat a healthy dinner. It was a grilled steak with a red wine reduction and lots of veges including a parsnip mash (it's hiding under the steak). For dessert I had an apple. There was a glass of wine.

I don't want to needlessly dig into my psyche or pick fights with myself, but intend to just take it gently on a case by case basis and see if I can figure myself out somewhat. I'm sure it will be endlessly fascinating reading for the two people that visit this blog. Actually I have no idea how many readers the Lab has. I'm not going to put a site meter on it because, actually, I don't want to know. It makes it feel more like I'm writing it just for me.