If you are what you eat, I am ice cream.

*sigh*

It was my birthday this past weekend.  As part of that, I made myself an ice cream cake, because GOD DAMMIT it's only my birthday once per year. 

I definitely overate on it.  Like, it's all gone already.  I did eat *mostly* just that on some days.  Which I realize doesn't do me any favors either.  But the cake is gone, and while I certainly can't say I don't wish I had more, I am glad it's not taunting me from the freezer. 

I had some successes this weekend and some failures.  Ice cream cake = failure for the most part.  I mean, I didn't eat it all in one setting.  Random snacking while we had company (typically a real trigger for me) = success.  Silver lining, I suppose. 

Once again, I need to go grocery shopping.  When we get to this point, I feel like the only thing to eat is cheese and potatoes.  Apparently we rarely run out of those two items.  Like tonight, I have no idea what we are having for dinner.  Probably cheese and potatoes followed by a clementine or two.  Bonus points for at least having some fruit around :D  Planning is my downfall.  I don't have kids, so it's pretty easy to be a shitty planner.  The only real consequences are to me and my hubby.  And we are both perfectly capable of getting in the car to go to Subway if the options at our house SUCK. 

Goals for this week: 

• Meal plan.  Stat. 
• Go outside and run, for fuck's sake. 
• Eat more produce.  Like 5-7 servings a day.  For reals, yo.  Of course, that will mean I eat 10 clementines and a banana today. 
• Try to not beat myself up for the indiscretions over the weekend. 

Oh, wow.

Yesterday, during a moment of frustration at work, I recognized a thought pattern.  I caught myself thinking about how it would be nice if I had a bag of jelly beans to eat.  I was very much picturing a big bag, brightly colored, nummy nummy.  I was kind of surprised by this very specific thought.  Although, if I think about it, it's likely been what's running through my head, but I had no awareness of it.  Apparently writing down a list of "advantages" to binge eating, and talking about each of them, helped me see that I was seeking out comfort in the form of small sugary rainbow colored candies. 

I actually stopped what I was doing, and thought "Oh, Wow."  So that is probably good. 

I felt myself, all day, still desiring to eat in a way that doesn't serve me.  I did ok until I got home.  I had planned on making some sort of treat for the following day, to take to work as part of our staff meeting.  We have a "rule" where if your birthday is the one close to the meeting you may/should bring a treat in to share.  Totally a reasonable thing, and I had originally intended on making an angel food cake and serving it with whipped cream and strawberries.  But my motivation to bake an angel food cake at 7 pm was, well, not high.  I had everything on hand to make cookies, and I can whip those up fast.  So I did. 

I ate too much dough, and a few cookies.  Although, I did not do as poorly as I normally might.  I gotta be honest, my chocolate chip cookies are some of the greatest tasting things known to man, so I don't even have an issue with having SOME of the dough/cookies.  But when it became mindless, or habitual, I eventually identified it and did manage to stop.  However I paid the price for this.  My tummy hurt when I went to bed, and I woke up with that acid reflux/indigestion thing in the middle of the night!  I had to take tums to go back to sleep.  :( 

Tonight is my next session with my therapist, and I think we'll talk more about the list we made on Sunday. 

One of the other things we discussed as an "advantage" is self-care.  Originally I didn't think this was something I do.  When I think of someone who eats for self-care, I think of the overworked mom, who gets no time to herself, and who has to do every single thing, all the time.  That is not me.  No kids, married to someone who splits chores with me, when we get around to them...  doesn't really fit the mold I had in my head.  But then we talked a bit more, and it came up that in my job, I deal with people who are typically not at their best.  I always joke that no one ever comes to HR because they are happy.  They nearly always have a problem.  Their own injury/illness, that of a loved one, a loss of a loved one's job, etc...  It is my job to care, to listen, to help, to solve problems.  She speculated, and I agreed, that perhaps when I feel overwhelmed by all of this, I eat to kind of take care of ME, instead of focusing my efforts on others.  I really identified with this, because sometimes I feel super sad for people, and I wish there was something I could do to help them thru a time of crisis, or fix whatever the hell is wrong in their life.  Right now, especially, I know about a lot of employees and/or spouses going thru terrible medical issues, some of them very life threatening.  And it sucks.  I hate it for them.  And on top of that, I start to feel like everyone is sick, and it's a matter of time until I, or someone I love gets sick and dies.  And I already covered how that works out for me. 

Next up on the vast list of advantages (who knew there were so many?) is the idea of potentially losing my identity or sense of community around being someone who is eating to be healthy.  I focus A LOT on food.  I think about it all the time (I'm thinking about it right now because those damn cookies are out at our front desk, and it's the time of day where I get hungry and my energy bottoms out).  She mentioned that people with an eating disorder (it feels weird to think that, because I think of an eating disorder as being anorexia) spend vast amounts of time thinking about food.  Like 80% of their thoughts/time, or some ridiculous number.  "Normal" people, whomever they are, apparently think about it like 15% of the time.  We talked about how my DH, god love him, is not obsessed with food.  He can happily work away at something on the computer and forget to eat.  That has never, ever happened to me, in my whole entire life.  EVER.  The concept of eating randomly is super foreign to me.  So, the guise of talking about food, dieting, eating better, etc is something I do.  If I'm thinking about it all the time, it makes sense that I'd talk about it as well.  I've formed relationships in person and on-line thru commiserating about this sort of thing.  I have weight loss buddies.  These are comforting to me, clearly.  The thought of removing myself from these communities as a result of moving past this (I hope, I hope, I hope) can be scary. 

Then we talked about boredom.  I get bored easily.  I always have.  It's probably why I can't seem to stop going to school for SOMETHING.  I tear thru books at a crazy pace.  I read tons of stuff online.  When I get bored, I am fully aware of searching for something to snack or graze on.  It's something to do.  I think this one seems like an easy enough one to remedy, it's probably just a matter of resolving to break the habit.  When I'm bored, even when I have something else I should be doing, but maybe don't want to (laundry, anyone?) I eat.  This advantage gives me something to do to assuage the boredom and to procrastinate a task I don't want to do.  Winner winner, chicken dinner.

The next thing on the list is control/structure.  I think/hope we'll touch on this more tonight.  I also know that tonight we are going to talk about some tactics or tools I can use for social situations.  I have a social situation this weekend that will be challenging for me.  My birthday is Saturday (33, baby!) and we are having my in-laws over for dinner and cake & ice cream.  Having tons of food sitting out and around will be very difficult for me, and I want to figure out what I can do to combat the urges and the almost unconscious actions that follow (eating).  I'm hopeful.  :)

One Positive Thing Today

Today I'm going to focus on eating more fruits & veggies.  A total no-brainer.  But as I looked back on my food intake the last couple weeks, I was astounded at how lacking I was in these areas!!  No matter what other eating behaviors I have, I really need more produce in my life.  It's at least something I can do to nourish my body while I'm figuring out all the other crap. 

So today, that is my one positive thing.  I'm going to take steps to make this happen today.  I brought in some raw veggies to munch on, I'm going to fill my Subway sammich up with veggies, and I think we'll have spaghetti tonight.  Which shall include sauce (mmmmm) and some sauteed onions & peppers (in mine). 

So even if I stuff a box of cookies in my mouth (I do not currently have any cookies, nor do I have immediate plans to obtain any) I will have at least given my body some good, nutritious foods, too. 

What am I getting out of this?

I met with my therapist today.  We were originally scheduled for Thursday, but we had to move the appointment to today.  I had pretty much one of the worst weeks of eating ever.  Lots of jelly beans, Lofthouse cookies, home baked cookies, chocolate chips, etc.  Nothing good came of it.  I've gained a couple pounds, and I feel terrible about how I look and feel as a result.  So suffice it to say, I had a shit-ton of stuff to unload today.

First off, she reassured me that in this process, I should expect to have steps backwards.  Sometimes it might even feel like more steps backwards than forwards...  but it's an expected part of this process.  That did actually help.  I was already doing the negative self-talk, where I'm unhelpable, etc.

So we kind of dived into the WHY behind my eating behaviors.  I am getting something from these behaviors, or I wouldn't do them.  If they weren't serving me in some way, I would have stopped them a long time ago.  We wrote out a list, with advantages on one side (the stuff I'm getting from it) and disadvantages on the other.  We didn't touch on the disadvantages, because we both agreed those would be easy to identify.  We started on the advantage list...  I had a hard time getting started, because it's kind of hard to wrap my head around there being an advantage to these seemingly self-destructive behaviors.  So to get me started, she tossed out some things that she's learned about through her own journey to recovery, and by helping others.

First, I identified that stuff tastes good.  That was an obvious, easy one.  I never binge on carrots.  Or baked chicken.  Or rice.  You get the drift.  So we talked about this, and something I noticed earlier this week when I was shotgunning jelly beans:  I am drawn to things like jelly beans, M&Ms, skittles, etc.  I love looking down at a handful of colorful happiness.  I'm very drawn to color, and I shared with her that one of my greatest comforts, and favorite things to do, is to sit in my sewing room, surrounded by the fabrics I have picked out, and moving them around, pairing them up, enjoying the sight of colors.  It's relaxing, and it just flat out FEELS GOOD to me.  I noticed this when I looked down at a particularly colorful handful of jelly beans.  So a visually appealing, colorful bunch of sweet tiny objects apparently makes me happy for some reason.

Moving on from there, I told her that since the last time we'd met, I had started to think about the idea of not binge eating.  And because I tend to binge eat, or emotionally eat food that I really like, I definitely felt anxiety around the idea of not doing that.  I can't really explain it, because I desire, A LOT, to have a more normal relationship with food.  But the thought that I'd no longer do this, at some point, definitely made me feel anxious.  Which completely supports the fact that I'm getting something from these behaviors.  It's not like if I give up binge eating M&Ms that I will never eat them again.  It shouldn't have to be an all or nothing endeavor.

So then we really got into the heart of the matter.  She said many women eat to kind of just check out.  At first that didn't feel right to me (for myself) but as I talked a bit more, I heard myself saying words like "distraction" and "avoiding" so it became obvious that while I don't just zone out while I'm eating, I'm very much doing it to check out from certain feelings.  As we were talking about this, I could feel myself nearing tears.  She asked what it was about, and all this stuff came pouring out of my mouth, kind of to my surprise.  Anxiety around losing people I love, and how I worry, incessantly, and it is a hard thing to escape from.  I talked a bit about my past, which had a significant loss in it, and how this past year I very nearly lost my little brother.  I'm FUCKING TERRIFIED of losing the people I love.  There are many people whom I worry about, but the three that recur for me the most are my husband, my brother and my mom.  That doesn't mean I don't fear losing other people, but those three definitely crowd my thoughts.  It didn't help when my little brother nearly died.  The worry and anxiety is all consuming for me at times.  I can be doing something else entirely, and be overcome with it.  The worry is peppered with gratitude for the fact that I get to keep him in my life, but the worry never really goes.  I have told my hubby on more than one occasion, that I hope I die before him, because I can't even entertain the thought of how I'd cope with that.  And losing my mom would pretty much rip my heart out.  I don't know how to live in a world that doesn't have these three people in it.  So as I bawled my face off, this all came spilling out.  Apparently this bothers me from time to time.  When she asked me if I thought that eating gave me a way to stop the always present hum of worry, it really rang true.



She mentioned that in college, some of her worst binge eating happened when she was procrastinating school work.  Let's suffice it to say that I identified with this.  While I'm not taking a class this eight-week term, I finished one a few weeks ago, and I am fully aware that I eat to put off doing homework.  School is easy for me, and I always know I can put it off until the last minute and still get it done, and still get an A.  So even tho I know I should get things done before the deadline, I never, ever do.  If the deadline is Sunday at midnight, you'll often find me completing my work at 11:45 pm.  It's just how I roll.  We also talked about how I procrastinate difficult conversations, or tasks I don't want to do at work, etc.  It's really an all-purpose procrastination tool.

She asked me "If you woke up tomorrow, and this eating issue was gone, what would you have to do/face/talk about, that you are avoiding or procrastinating now?"  And while I don't yet fully have the answer to that, I hope to figure it out.

It's time for me to go to bed, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.  We talked about more than just these reasons, and I'll write more about these tomorrow.  I'm processing a lot of this stuff right now.  And my "homework" between now and Wednesday when I see her again is to finish my list, and think more about this stuff...  I'm not sure I could NOT think about it even if I wanted to.

Outdoor running rocks.

Ah...  spring seems to be here, at least temporarily.  And I'm loving it.  I have run outside the last three days in a row!  Love Love Love Love.  In addition to this, I've given myself permission to run only a few miles. Lately, I've wanted to run 4-5 miles at a time, and when I didn't really feel like running that far or have time for that, I just opted to not run.  I felt like if I couldn't go for 4-5 miles, then it wasn't even worth going at all.  Which is total and utter bullshit, but it was what I was doing.  So, I've decided to just make it ok to only run 30 minutes, or whatever. 2-3 miles HAS to be better than a big fat 0.  This has vastly improved my likelihood of running.  And sometimes, like yesterday, I told myself it was ok to go out for 3 miles, and I ended up doing nearly 4 because it felt good.  Plus, my neighbor has been up for running...  and having a buddy always helps.  Much more fun to me.

What I'm not loving is my eating patterns.  I bought a bag of easter candy (jelly beans) and ate most of them at work.  It was like I couldn't stop, and the idea of throwing them away to get rid of them make me anxious and pissy.  What is wrong with me?  Why did I even buy them?  I know good and well what is going to happen.

The good news is that I have plenty of fodder for my therapy appointment on Thursday.

Mojo gets up and dusts itself off

So...  I met with my neighbor to run today, and we ran for 40-45 min, and it was glorious.  Abso-frickin-lutely glorious.  Sunny and in the 60's.  We liked it so much we are doing it again tomorrow!  Maybe, just maybe, my mojo is dusting itself off.  Let's hope!  It felt good to run, good to get out in the sunshine, and good to be just doing it.

We got new bedroom furniture today.  I big-fat-puffy-heart it.  I'm going to take some pictures tomorrow when the sun is shining and if they look ok, I'll share one!  I really feel like an honest to god grown-up now.  Our bedroom looked like a college dorm before this!  So this is fabulous.  My living room is still full of random crap from our room, tho.  Hee-hee!

Tomorrow I'm baking cookies to send to my sister-in-law.  She's had a rough few months, and there are only two things I know how to do that will guarantee a smile from someone. Bake, and sew.  I'm going to do both.  I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies, except I'm going to use Easter M&Ms.  There is nothing healthy about these cookies, folks.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  But fuckin-A, they are good.  I'm sure I'll have some dough, followed by some cookies.  But hopefully my intent of mailing them will keep me (us, really!) out of them too much.

Speaking of bags...  I know this blog isn't really about them, but I made myself a fun bag this last week, and I finally took pics of it tonight.  It came out super-fab.

I had a binge-y day on Saturday.  I bought Starburst Jelly Beans, because I'm apparently deluding myself that I'll have a handful and save the rest for later.  That only works if later = 20 seconds later.  Which I guess it technically does...  But yeah.  That bag was gone before the end of the day.  And while DH ate some, I pretty much demolished them on my own.  Then that night, I overate peanuts.  That one was due to real hunger (at least at the beginning of it).  Then I overate at dinner.  So not a real winning day.  I will chat with my therapist about it on Thursday when I meet with her again.

I'm working on not beating myself up.  I mean, it doesn't accomplish anything.  So yeah.  I'm going to try to stop doing that.  Maybe if I can work on the inner monologue stuff, I can see behavior change?  That's the theory, right?

It's like my running mojo got ran over by a bus

It's just not there.  I can't get excited about it.  I know we all go thru periods like this, but it's kind of sucking the life out of me.  In my mind, I know that if I just make myself get out there I'll feel like 8 million bucks when I'm done.  And the weather has been positively glorious this week.  I have no (good) excuse aside from flat out laziness.  GAH.  I'm sick of feeling like this. 

Could someone please come kick my ass? 

I've been setting my alarm to get up and run at 5:00 am, but I, without fail, reset the alarm for 6:00 am every morning.  I go to bed too late, so I'm not in any mood to get my ass out of bed that early.  Hell, I'm not ready to get up at 6:00!  I need to figure out how to make getting to sleep earlier a habit, and a priority.  Part of the problem is that my DH is a night owl, and when he comes to bed he wants to watch TV for a bit.  And he watches the most annoying loud shit at bed time.  Like Family Guy.  Not a quiet show.  I don't want to be that giant bitch wife who is like "I know I've been ok with this for 10+ years, but I'm no longer allowing TV in our room."  Um, no.  It's not fair to ask him to totally change because I have decided to totally change.  We need to find a happy medium.  Maybe we go to bed and watch TV, but we do it earlier?  I'm not sure.  Maybe I can convince him to enjoy quiet, boring shows?  That seems pretty damn unlikely.  :D 

I found a core workout for runners that I want to try...  I know my core is weak.  Not only does it look like a jiggly bouncy house floor, it doesn't even have a good base underneath it!  It's all stuff I can do right now, even without being able to put pressure on my wrist.  I shall start this bad boy tonight. 

Oh, we've been loving the Griddler!  I may make breakfast paninis tonight!  How fun and tasty is that?