When last heard from, four and a half months ago, our heroine was vainly trying to squish 6 weeks worth of girly necessities into her overly-small trolley bag and feeling slight trepidation about the possibility of maintaining her weightloss in the land of apfelstrudel, kaiserfleish and (possibly) bridezilla ...
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Fast forward six-point-five weeks from lift-off and I was back in NZ and ready to assess the damage. I had been nervous about being without any empirical method of monitoring my weight while travelling. I even considered packing my scales before a rare common-sense moment made me realise that this bordered on lunacy, given the compactness of my trolley bag. It turns out that all that fretting was just wasted energy - the morning of departure I was 57.6kg, and at the post-travel scale showdown I was an even 58kg. I may have allowed myself a 'heroine returns victorious "woohooooooo"'.
Since then, my weight has remained solidly in the range of 57.5 to 58.5. Yesterday it was 57.8; today, after last nights carby dinner, it's 58.2. In 2010 my weight did not exceed 60kg, although it got perilously close after I got recklessly over-confident with the easter eggs. I have not yet managed to break the 57kg barrier, however, it's not as if I've been trying very hard. My approach while travelling, and generally, trends toward a loose mix of relaxed eating followed by slightly more controlled eating. In other words, I exhibit the signs of being a common, garden-variety normal eater. One thing which has definitively separated the past year from other times when I have flunked weightloss maintenance 101, is an almost complete absence of high volume or recurring binge eating episodes. Not that I haven't overeaten, or binged. I have, many times, and every time I panicked a little, fearing it was the beginning-of-the-end of my eating sanity. But, every time I managed to set myself back on my wobbly feet and start immediately making steps in the right direction.
The weeks surrounding my sisters wedding were particularly challenging, with some days being a cycle of mini-binge, pull myself together, mini-binge, forgive myself, journal it down, deep breaths, mental agitation, edge-of-tears, mini-binge.... Until that point, it had been smooth sailing, mostly because The Programmer and I were travelling as a duo and I could set the schedule, e.g. sharing the most perfect apfelstrudel at my usual afternoon snack time after a day of perfect, butt-moving sightseeing exercise. Once in Liechtenstein, there was a full-house of excitable relatives, all of whom I love dearly but whom can drive me bonkers in that particular way that only family can manage. The schedule was out of my control, there was more sitting around, far more alcohol consumption, constant presence of delicious carby stuff, it was sometimes very stressful, I was anticipating shortly leaving my niece and sister behind again, and generally it was just a whole lot harder to keep things on track. I quite often found myself using the 'give it three days' thought control process. That is, if I had, for example, had too many wines and woken up with a disturbing memory of having ferociously attacked the bread basket, I would avoid indulging a state of defeat by determining to refocus and see how I felt in three days. Even if I only managed two good days, this was usually enough to de-bloat and feel in control again. The only seriously out of control eating day was the actual wedding, but I don't really count that as a binge because, for a start, the food was truly indulgence worthy. Secondly, I had been practically force fed more than a little extremely expensive champers, was drunk to the point of being cross-eyed and, well.. I wasn't standing at the dessert table eating with my hands or anything. ;)
Once home, just as I was settling back into my normal routine, the city where I live was thrown into chaos by a 7.1 earthquake, which was widely reported as 'massive' and which tipped me into immediate food insecurity and a state of feeling ridiculously vulnerable. Indeed, being without power (no coffee machine!) or running water, and knowing the the supermarket is closed while they mop up the wine aisle, was very worrying. However, to my surprise, I managed to more or less keep things on track, even with limited food options. In fact, it was good to feel in control in that one area, when everything else was, quite literally, very shaky.
Even in the middle of all that, I had time to reflect that the relationship between me and comfort eating is definitely changing. There were times when I've subjectively recognised myself in 'that state' where in the past I would have binged. The 'I need something' phase of pre-binge. A couple of times I even started what could have been a binge but stopped when I began to feel physically full. I recall one incident when I was sleep-deprived, stressed by a large aftershock, running drastically late on my university work and had just argued with a family member. I had just consoled myself with a large buttery sandwich and was getting started on the nut butter jar when I began to feel.. a bit silly. Almost as if I was watching myself and finding it all a bit ridiculous. I was full and didn't want to keep eating. I wasn't getting anything out of it, it clearly wasn't going to stop aftershocks or cause assignments to write themselves, and I just... stopped. Therefore, it was overeating, even comfort eating, but definitely not a binge episode. It didn't have a huge impact on my weight, I felt mildly annoyed but not devastated by my behaviour, and it didn't open the door to further binge eating.
Digging into the 'how' of getting to this stage, and of being able to manage situations like travel, family drama, stress and intense emotions will be the subject of future posts - this one is already quite epic! The main things, I think, are fronting up to problems/negative emotions and learning to look after myself when I'm dealing with something stressy. I've also gleaned some insights from my recent academic research into Binge Eating Disorder which I intend to edit into something vaguely readable and post it on The Lab. In the meantime, I wish you all a fantastic christmas. My terribly complicated plan is simply to keep my head screwed on and focus my mind on the possibility of maintaining this hard earned weightloss right through the *danger zone* of red wine, brandy snaps and free chocolate. And, if I can do it (with my acknowledged fondness of all things foodie and celebratory), then so can you! Good luck, fellow heroines! Let's raise a glass to being fabulouser than ever in 2011!
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