Aug. 29: Grrr

I am wildly attracted to the food group, "Crunchy Salties."  I've had a hell of a week, actually a hell of a year.  I've been doing well fighting off the emotional eating demons until now.

Now, I just want Crunchy Salties, and I'll; be darned if I'm not shoveling them in.  Daisy of the iron control - well, my friends, that iron has been melted and now it's just a soggy puddle of gray stuff at my feet.

I've used my usual coping mechanisms.  I've prepped my food ahead of time.  I always have something ready for a quick snack or meal.  I take a walk when I'm hungry.  Grrr.....  I'm journaling, as you can plainly see, about this issue.

Now a week of this is not going to put me back at square number one, but I have the same "Screw it" attitude right now that got me above 200 pounds in the first place. The scale is up TEN POUNDS from last week.  I'm reasonable, I know I did not eat 10 pounds worth of Doritos and Ruffles, but I'm retaining huge water from the salt and I'm certain that I've gained a few pounds.

A few weeks ago I gave away every single item of clothing I own that is too big for me right now.  I did this in self defense, because if the day comes where I can't fit into my clothes, I'll have no other option but to lose weight - I can't afford new stuff!

This week, the focus is on using every tool in my arsenal to get back on track nutritionally.  I'm far better armed for this battle than I was a year ago.  I've learned so much about dieting properly, working out, and myself, that I know I can succeed.

One thing I realized today is that the person staring out of the mirror at me, mocking me, is someone I don't know.  I don't know what looks good on me anymore.  I am having some trouble not being the fat girl.  It's disconcerting to catch a glimpse of myself in a store window and not realize it's me that I'm looking at. Thinner women are definitely treated differently out in the world.  It's like I've gone from being completely invisible to being someone that people notice.

Maybe this attack of identity crisis is some of the issue.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with the endless barrage of financial issues.  I wake up in a panic in the middle of the night when there is a vehicle idling outside my house, certain it's the repo man, here for my care.  I'm waiting for the bank to call and say, "You have 10 days to get out - we are taking back our house."  I cringe at the ringing of the phone because I know it's only going to be another person to whom I owe money.  At the grocery store, I watch the register intently so I can stop the cashier from ringing in an item that brings me over my budget for that day.  Opening the mailbox each day, I feel as though there might be a cobra in there, coiled and ready to strike.  Often there is a cobra, and it's named The Electric Company, The Cable Company or Chrysler Financial.  The worst thing of it is that I'm taking all the steps to get out of this pit and they simply aren't working.

No wonder my head hurts.

People tell me I'm strong, but really, I'm not.  I'm doing what anyone else would do if faced with the housing option of a cardboard refrigerator box.  I'm putting one foot in front of the other, trying to keep the wolves away from the door. It's just what you do - you keep trying because giving up has even worse consequences.

And really, I feel guilty when I think about all of the families in Pakistan who have lost their homes due to flooding.  When you put things in that perspective, my life is a walk in the park, comparatively.

I need to go throw out the Crunchy Salties now.

Mar. 18: Emotional Eating

It seems like the world is programming us to be emotional eaters. Think about popular culture: in nearly every chick flick, the skinny blond sadly grabs a spoon and a gallon of Ben and Jerry's out of the freezer to bemoan her love life. What they don't show is the ever-widening butt of people who indulge in this habit.

I think emotional eating is somewhat a newer issue. 75 years ago, there wasn't the ready access to prepared food that there is now - you couldn't go to the grocery store and grab a bag of chips and a gallon of ice cream like you can now. Between the addictive chemicals in processed foods and the abundance of sugar making your blood sugar go up and down like a yo yo, is it any wonder that bingeing has become a pattern behavior?

One way to help combat emotional eating is to go back to the beginning of it. Do you remember when you first began to binge to make yourself feel better? I do.

When my first child was 6 months old, my husband at the time and I moved way out in the country to this beautiful old farmhouse. We both loved it. What I didn't expect was that the fighting between us would lead to him taking off with the car for 3-4 days at a time, leaving me alone and isolated with a baby for company. We didn't have long distance service on our phone and my family all lived 1000 miles away. I did not have one single friend in the local calling area. I got more and more depressed. To make matters worse the only thing in walking distance was a little convenience store about half a mile down the road. I remember doing my husband's laundry and scrounging enough change from his pockets to equal about $5. I would put the baby in the stroller and trudge down the highway to buy BBQ potato chips and candy. My step was lighter on the way home; I couldn't wait to get home and stuff the food into my mouth as fast as I could. I gained about 30 pounds this way.

After that, a pattern was established. I dealt with stressful situations by numbing myself with food. I ate my way through my unhappy marriage and my subsequent divorce, I ate my way through a stressful job and when my beloved father became terminally ill, I really chowed down. Each stressor brought with it a certain food in which I took comfort.

Here's what I learned: through research about what I was eating, I discovered that certain food additives trigger responses in the brain. Briefly, they give your brain a boost in serotonin, the chemical that is lacking in a depressed person. Unfortunately it's only a temporary effect, triggering the urge to eat that food again.

Keeping a very detailed journal is what helped me get over emotional eating. You have to delve back to the very origin of it. Did you start doing it as a child because you saw your mother doing it? Was there a certain circumstance that occurred, triggering the beginning of this unhealthy cycle? Once you identify these triggers, you can begin to recover.

Since I began this journey I have definitely had serious stress in my life. My teen daughter moved in with her dad. My business bottomed out. Money is definitely in a shortage. However, not once have I turned to food since I made my personal discoveries. Before any and all of these things would have sent me diving headfirst into a bag of Doritos.

So today's exercise: When is the first time you recall bingeing because of unhappiness?