Tag: binge eating

Fat Fridays: Moving Forward Inch by Inch

This past week I’ve been fighting a lot of my food addiction demons. Mindsets and thought processes that make me binge eat or just completely not care about diet, health, etc. It’s been a bit frustrating. I’ve done the heavy work of recognizing my unhealthy thought patterns, but how do you get rid of them? Sometimes, logic is not enough to break free from a sugar addiction. Or emotional eating. 

I’ll admit that my diet went out the window while I’ve been trying to figure this out. Then yesterday, I went to the store to get a pair of jeans. I live in the South. It’s still pretty hot around here, but I know that cool weather is on it’s way, and since my weight loss, I don’t have any pants my size. So, I went to the store and pulled about four pairs of pants to try on, all in the size I thought I was, and low and behold  none of them fit. They were all too big. What?? So I went back and got the next size down and that worked fine. I don’t know if men have this in their sizing but women have these W sizes which are cut a bit baggier in the butt and thighs. So, I am a solid 16W, down from a 22W. I was able to fit one pair of regular 16, but another style was too small. 

I decided then and there that I was going to just focus on losing the next ten pounds and maybe with that weight loss I’ll be a solid regular 16, not just 16W. I’m finding that looking at how far I have to go to get to my Dream Weight is overwhelming. So, I’m just going to focus on the next ten pounds. 

I think, in all of this, I keep having to remind myself that I am human. Not perfect. And perfection isn’t required of me. I’m on a journey towards health and sometimes the journey is going to be backtracking and side trails and mess ups and just standing in one place for a minute. But each day I get to decide to try again and see if I can move forward another couple inches. So, here’s to the next ten pounds!

See you all next week. 

Fat Fridays: Restriction=Binge Eating

I”m writing this on a Thursday night. It has not been a great day as far as health is concerned. Yesterday I was jogging and I didn’t take the time to put the right shoes on, and I ended up pulling something on the side of my knee. Not real bad, but noticeable enough that I knew I had to rest it today. So, I told my trainer about it and she cancelled my jog for today and said no walks or runs for a couple days. I think I’m going to do some strength training tomorrow. But, I was really looking forward to my jog, and being inactive hasn’t been great for my mood. 

Then, earlier this week, I was talking about some problems I was having and my trainer suggested that I take bread/wheat out of my diet for a little while and see if it solves the problems. Ok. I can do that. Except, on the same day that I decided to do that, our neighbor, who works in a food pantry, ambushed me. While I was out, she dropped off two cakes, cinnamon rolls, carrot cake sandwich cookies, and muffins. She needed a home for them and thought of us. I walked in the door and was bombarded by baked goods (my number one weakness) and I caved and ate two cookies before I even gave myself time to think. I did manage to stop after that, but felt crummy for caving in the first place. I sent a lot of the food with my husband to his work to share, but we still had two cakes in the house. The kids asked if they could cut one of the cakes this afternoon, and me, just wanting these things gone, said yes. And then suddenly there was chocolate cake everywhere and I caved again. And then I made the family chicken alfredo while I had a chicken salad, but still caved again and ate some alfredo. 

And I’m sitting here thinking, what on earth is wrong with me???? 

And I realized what it was. It all started with deciding to cut bread/wheat out of my diet for a while. I do really, really, really, bad when I feel like I’m being deprived of something. If someone tells me I can’t have something, I immediately crave it. I get this mentality of, better eat a bunch now, cause I’m not going to be able to get any later… 

I have done a lot better these past months telling myself I can have whatever I want in moderation. And as I’ve started counting my calories, I’ve gravitated towards nutrient dense food just so I can get more bang for my buck. I mostly eat Ezekiel bread now, and no more than two slices at a time so I can keep my carb load low. I made that choice naturally without having to set strict guidelines about which kind of bread I can eat. If I feel like I have freedom to choose whatever I want, I am much more likely to make good choices. But if I feel like I am being restricted, it sets off a bunch of weird cravings and bingeing. 

So, moving forward, I think I’m going to have some good bread alternatives laying around the house (I found some gluten free ancient grains waffles, and I found some low calorie popcorn), but I’m going to give myself permission to eat whatever I want. And hopefully, without the weird emotional response to restriction going on, I will feel free to make better choices. We’ll see. I’ll let you know how it goes.