It’s been almost a month since my last post and that was just a picture of a gym visit. After ending my September raw food thing early I went through kind of a bad period with food. It backfired, I was too rigid and I was too constrained and when I admitted to myself that I could not do it for a full month I broke down and started eating with reckless abandon. I would go on binges when I got home from work. I started to drink a lot of soda again and began eating really crappy things for lunch, like fries from the cafeteria or whole bags of pretzels (which contain way more than one serving by the way). I stopped getting on the scale for fear that I had just eaten myself back up in weight. A couple of weeks in a row of not getting on the scale allowed me to continue to eat carelessly because there was not going to be any consequences. Of course I wasn’t posting on the blog at all, what would you all think of me. But, I am coming back, with my tail between my legs.
Slowly, I have begun to emerge from this black whole of food and I am struggling again to make healthy decisions each day. Today is Friday, my normal day to get on the scale and check my progress but I am gonna put in hold for one more week. Next Friday I will get on the scale and we will assess the damage together. I am going to begin counting calories again and even though each food choice will be a chore I will get back into the rhythm of things.
I hope you will continue to join me on this journey. Sorry that I left you hanging for a while. My big goal right now is to weigh less than 200 pounds, no matter how long it takes.
Photo by thelearnr
Food and shame sort of go hand in hand for me; it seems like it has been a long battle to get past my shame of eating too much, or things that are bad for me. There are times that even though I am extremely ashamed and embarrassed that I am eating I cannot seem to stop myself. For instance I have about a 40 minute commute on the subway and bus systems of Boston and at points during my commute there are stops where I have the opportunity to buy snacks. In the past I have bought whole bags of chips or several snack bars and eatin them, all of them, during the subway ride home. Sitting there in the midst of strangers I feel their eyes on me, judging me, I feel embarrassed that I am eating a whole bag of chips in a short 15 minute ride home, but I am still compelled to eat. There is no doubt that eating is tied to emotions for me and since during these times I am feeling embarrassed about my eating, that emotion in and of itself causes me to want to continue to eat, it is a pretty scary cycle and it is certainly the reason that I am fat.
Yesterday, August 10th, I was supposed to begin the process of creating a healthier me and I got off to a pretty good start. I intended to keep track of my calories and perhaps even workout a bit. Of course like the rest of my life I found excuses not to do these things, I did not have a journal to keep track of my calories, I had to wait at home for something to be delivered in the afternoon so I could not workout, my bike needs a tune up so going for a ride could make it worse, etc. So yesterday I kept track of my calorie intake in my head, I took the stairs at work, and I walked briskly home to wait for our new matress to be delivered. After I was home, I got bored and nervous waiting for the darn UPS guy, and I was a little hungry so I realized we had a half a bag of tortilla chips and salsa, I love chips and salsa. So I started eating and eating and I eventually finished the whole bag, once again I was ashamed of myself, this time no one was around to judge me except Ella, our cat, who was not judging to badly, she was mainly happy I was done so that I could pet her again.
This shame affects me, mainly in a negative way but at times it can be positive. It makes me want to eat foods that make me feel good, so when dinner came around I had food on the brain so Michelle and I went out and I got a salad and an apple for dinner, and it was so good and I felt good about myself.
