Sunday, March 4, 2012

It's been a while, huh?

Welp, I kind of abandoned blogging for a long while.  I don't have any specific reason, but I am going to try to return to it, since it seemed to help me get my head clear.

What's been happening in my world?  First and foremost, I changed jobs.  Thank god.  Seriously, my old job was making me a stress bunny, cranky, and unhealthy.  I was not making time for workouts, I was stress eating every single day, and I was just straight up unhappy.  Another opportunity presented itself, and I flung myself at it like without hesitation.

However, in that process, there were all sorts of emotions around leaving the people I have worked with for ten years.  So I mostly soothed myself with food and wine.  Well done, eh?  :D

Now that I've settled in to my new job a bit, I'm finding myself again.  I have some great perks at this job that are workout related, and my new boss is incredible.  Getting fit and active (again) is much easier here.  I'm working out with a personal trainer twice a week and doing yoga once a week at work.  Winner!

So let's talk about what spurred me to come back to blogging.  I've been self-reflecting a lot the last week or so.  Then this weekend I binged.  I could kind of feel the low level anxiety creeping up on me all week, and I wasn't able to put my finger on the problem.  I'm still not entirely sure.  What I do know is that a conversation with my hubby about my old job (he still works there) pushed me over that edge, and things got out of hand yesterday and again today.  :(  I, of course, don't feel good about it now.  I know that food is not the answer, and sometimes I even think it in the moment, but that doesn't seem to stop me all the time.  I was doing well with it earlier in the week, kind of stepping back from myself to observe the thought patterns and behaviors.  As I look back on the last 3-4 days right now, with my 20/20 hindsight goggles, I can totally see the wave...  let's use this sciency thing I found on the interwebs:

Ok.  I'm putting on my professor outfit right now, so be prepared for this educational piece.

So, as I look back, I can see that I had been doing well, riding along, fairly calm, at sea level.  Some minor waves, but nothing I couldn't ride.  For whatever reason, one of those got deeper.  As I was watching myself, I was descending down into the trough of the wave.  I hung out there for a bit and then started the journey up to the crest.  I could feel that build up as it was happening, and was able to stay afloat for a while...  but the discussion about my old job was apparently what pushed me to the crest of the wave, where I just couldn't take it anymore.  I then chose to use food to get the wave to break.  *sigh*

Knowing that this is a cycle, something that will happen again, I'm really focusing on being more self aware so that I can ride minor waves, keeping the wave height from getting so high that I turn to the good ol' habit of binge eating to break the crest of the wave.  I need to focus on making my wave frequency lower. I was really handling it well (relatively) for a while, and a bigger wave kind of snuck up on me.

My therapist gave me some book titles to consider reading, and I've started one of them.  I'll talk more about them in a later post, but so far I can highly relate to what I'm reading.  I want SO BADLY to get the recovery phase of this eating disorder.  I'm also trying to own this.  I do have an eating disorder.  It's not anorexia, or bulimia, but it's Binge Eating Disorder (BED).  I'm talking a lot about my struggles with some online friends in a forum I frequent, and I'm trying to keep this at the forefront of my consciousness, because it helps me be more present and be able to ride that wave better.

I'd ideally like to use this blog as a bit of a journal, not so much chronicling what I've done or eaten, but what I'm observing and learning.

1 comment:

  1. Congrats on the new job!

    I hope it's ok to comment about your struggles with food. From here, it looks like you are getting it. I think you have a really good handle on addressing your triggers and accepting why a binge occurs for you. This is the key to eventually changing the behavior. I don't know if you have read any Geneen Roth books, but I love some of the exercises she offers in one of her first books about breaking away from compulsive eating. You're not alone in this, and you are many steps ahead of most people by being aware. I think the next step is to have a plan of what alternative actions you can take when you are faced with those high waves, but you will get there! xo

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