The Wagon, and My Fall From It

Spent Wednesday night in Chicago, hanging out with my former dissertation director, who has become more a friend than director of anything in particular. We were excited to have a night in the Big City before my conference paper Thursday morning, and we decided to go out for tapas, a culinary treat that hasn’t really hit Milwaukee yet.

The point of tapas, for anyone who’s not familiar with the phenomenon, is that you order a bunch of small, generally Spanish dishes (the size of a pretty small appetizer, maybe) rather than one large entrée for each of you. It’s fun because you get to try many different things that way. The place we went was one of my favorites from when I lived in the Big City, and I just decided to dive in face-first. It was a wonderful meal, I have to say, and I just couldn’t feel bad about letting my ‘no carbohydrates shall pass these lips’ guard down for the evening. I was concerned, though, that I’d end up reawakening my cravings for carb-laden yummies like breads and rice and potatoes. It doesn’t seem to have happened, though, so that’s good.

What I am experiencing, however, is a fierce urge to binge, which I believe has nothing to do with my dinner the other night. This is more about the man who is winging his way toward me as I type and will soon be arriving to spend the weekend. Ugh.

My plan for the weekend is to eat as calmly as I can. It’s interesting—as I started to write that sentence, I thought, “OK, Luna, just what is the plan here?” My fingers wrote it out for me after a brief pause—to eat calmly. The emotions underlying my bingeing are anxiety and anger, and I want to be aware of them this weekend so that they do not get expressed in the way they usually do. This feels like an interesting experiment. I’ve been inducing a feeling of calmness by putting some boundaries on what I choose to eat, and it’s been working nicely. I wonder what will happen if I only require of myself that I eat without anxiety or anger? I’m not actually sure it’s possible, as I’ll be eating with my father all weekend, and the man’s a virtuoso of negative emotions.

Well, it’s worth a try, anyhow. He’s leaving Sunday night, and I’ll report the results of my experiment along with my weigh-in on Monday evening. I’m guessing that weigh-in won’t be pretty, but whatever. It’s all about the journey, yes?

Weekly Weigh-In, Week Two

Starting weight: 240
Current weight: 230.5
Change this week: -4.5
Total change: -9.5

After a tough week, things seem to have stabilized a little. I’ve been experimenting some with the suggestions of the kind readers who have left me comments (thank you, AHappyWife, Squilla and *S*!). Here are a few of the things that have helped me with the cravings:

Brushing teeth! Sounds nutty, yes? Well, to me it sort of feels like cleaning up the kitchen and then deciding that you’re not going to dirty things up again by cooking a big feast.

Eating a relatively small amount of something with really big flavor and texture. I got this idea from S’s comment about eating mandarin oranges with coconut. While that specific treat would not be my thing, particularly, it’s got loads of flavor and a nice texture thing going on, what with the plump, juicy fruit and the crunchy coconut. I’m a big fan of strongly flavored things like marinated olives, and I’m finding that a few of something like that gives my mouth something to think about for a while. My current fave is a jar of big green olives, each stuffed with a clove of garlic. It’s a flavor/texture circus, let me tell you— the yielding, smooth, slightly rubbery flesh of the olive, the crunch of the clove inside, the saltiness, the garlicky bite. Mmmmm.

Also, sometimes I’ve found that it works to just stop and experience the craving as fully as possible, to kind of sink into the experience of it and just sit with it rather than having to jump up and respond with action. I’m trying to incorporate more mindfulness into my life in many ways, and this has been an interesting experience. Somehow, fully experiencing that craving seems to lessen my need to actually do anything about it.

Another challenge this week: I’ve been struggling with the thought that I will have to live with this battle raging inside me forever if I really want to embrace a different way of eating and being. One of the things that brings me some sense of comfort when I get overwhelmed with the enormity of this struggle is to take it all one day at a time. I loved the quote that AHappyWife shared: I don't have to do anything forever, I just have to do it for today. That’s one to needlepoint on a pillow or tattoo on the back of your hand.

Oh, and I also did some behavioral things yesterday that just helped me feel generally more in control. Just basic stuff like laundry, straightening up, cleaning the bathroom, etc., but it helped me feel like I had addressed some of my external chaos, so I could allow the internal chaos to resolve a bit as well.

I am pleased that despite the cranky, difficult week I had, I managed to stick to my eating plan. I’ve been able to stay under 25 grams of carbohydrate, eating mainly steamed or fresh veggies and chicken breasts, with a few meals of eggs or beef thrown in, and a couple of nice big chef salads. I’ve snacked on nuts or cheese (or my yummy olives) as needed, mostly in the mid-afternoon to guard against being so crazy hungry by the time I get home from work that I’m ready to grab a squirrel out of the yard and eat him whole (I guess there would be worse things to grab on impulse; a squirrel, while gross, would not be a violation of my current eating plan. I bet they taste nasty, though.).

Anyway, I’ve gotten through this week, the sun is shining today here in the cold upper Midwest, and I’m hoping for a better week ahead.

This is Hard

It's been a challenging week. Lots of eating out, lots of craving things that will not be healthy for me, lots of feeling cranky. I keep thinking "What if it's always this hard? What if I have to fight this fight every day in order to get and stay thinner and healthier?" It's an overwhelming feeling, and it makes me understand why in Alcoholics Anonymous they encourage people to think in terms of "just for today." So that's what I've been trying to do: Just for today I'll eat what I packed for lunch, and nothing else. Just for today I'll say no to the homemade apple cake in the break room, I'll drink plenty of water, I'll choose to eat for health rather than comfort.

But grrrrrrr. It feels hard this week.

I think I've got hormones working against me as well. I caught myself today thinking morosely that my supervisors don't really like me, my coworkers just tolerate me, my friends are growing weary of me, etc. This is usually a sign that I'm PMS'ing, as I'm not usually so prone to such thoughts. It used to be that my period came and went like clockwork, so I had some warning and could sort of predict when I'd be in a crappy, self-pitying mood. Since entering my 40's, though, things have gotten really irregular on the monthy cycle front, and it's anybody's guess as to when the hormonal tide will turn. The zits, the crankiness, the cravings...well, I'd say the tide it is a-turning just about now.

That's all for now, I guess. This feels hard, but I'm still doing it. I've managed to stay on-plan all week thus far, and the toughest of it is over. I've managed to negotiate the situations that challenged me, and now I just have to manage ME.

Dinner as Relapse

Sigh. Sugar is like crack to me.

I wrote here about the challenge of social situations, and one of them was my weekly Monday night dinner at the halfway house for addicts in recovery. Tonight it was just impossible to eat like I’d want to. First off, these guys are just not salad dudes. We always end up with some meaty entrée and a big starchy side dish. Often I can just take some meat and a bit of the starchy whatever, take a little taste of it and then push it around on my plate.

Tonight, though, two problems. The first was that the main dish was sloppy joes. For anyone outside of the US who is not familiar with the sloppy joe phenomenon, they are sandwiches with ground beef cooked in a tomato-y sauce that usually has a fair amount of sugar in it. You eat them on hamburger buns, and they’re pretty darn tasty. So, no way to avoid the sugar there, though I did eat mine open-faced, on a slice of whole-wheat bread rather than a white-bread bun.

The second problem was the GIANT BOWL OF POTATO SALAD that accompanied the main course. And the gentleman who made the potato salad and was quite proud of his first attempt at doing so was sitting right next to me. So I put a smallish glop of it on my plate, and he said “Oh, here, it’s really good, you’re going to want more!” He reached over and PLOP—fixed me up with a big hefty pile of it.

Well, I took my time and nibbled a bit of it and ate my semi-virtuous open-faced sandwich. I could just feel my palate tingling with sugar-love and potato-lust. Oh, white minions of Satan! Vile, carby temptresses! I will not succumb to your siren song!

The potato thing I’ve kind of gotten over in the couple of hours since dinner’s been over, but I’m sitting here craving something sugary like you wouldn’t believe. After I left the dinner/meeeting I went shopping to distract myself, and now I’m sitting here writing and sipping tea in an effort to tell my body to just chill out. Yes, crack may make us feel good in the short term, but we really don’t like all of the collateral effects—the weight gain, the shame, the loss of control. Not to mention the crappy sugar-hangover the next day. Who needs that? I got me some tea, some will-power and some words to write, and I shall ride out the craving until it turns into something else. Sleepiness, probably.

Just out of curiosity, what do you all do when the cravings hit? I could use some new weapons in my arsenal.