Deciding to document my fitness stuff a little closer, I don’t know why I find it so embarrassing to do so but I do so be nice.
I’m really trying to fix bad habits and identify the foods/behaviors that fuel said bad habits and journaling is the most useful tool for me. I may switch to a written journal if I physically cannot handle my own cringe but this feels easier to me than writing.
TW restriction mention, binging mention, overall discussion of my own bad habits I’m trying so hard to fix but these topics could be triggering ⚠️
Anyway, my main goal I want achieve is neutralizing sugary foods and decreasing my intake of them. I think this comes from my upbringing and disordered past, sugar has always been a novelty. Diabetes runs ramped in my family, literally every single family member besides my sisters and I either are or have been diabetic or pre diabetic. So as a result sugar was moralized in my household, something to avoid for as long as possible and feel ashamed of when consumed in excess. Exasperated by my eating disorder, I now live in a cycle of allowing myself to consume sugar to combat restriction, binging due to the novelty of it and justification that it’s combating my restrictive mindset, and then restricting it for days to follow after over consumption. Rinse and repeat. I really want to get off this roller coaster ride.
So what triggers the binge and what triggers the restriction? After I over consume sugar, I feel really poor. I find it harder to sleep at night and harder to wake up in the mornings. I feel puffy and bloated in my face, fingers, and tummy. I feel THIRSTY. I feel foggy. I kind of doubt this is from the sugar and more from the carbs/fats associated with processed sugary foods but my digestion comes to a grinding halt. I get a tummy ache among other GI upset symptoms. All of this is obviously undesirable so I cut back on the sugar for the days/week to follow.
I try not to cut sugar out completely because I know it sets me up for a binge. My idea of not cutting sugar out completely is having a piece of chocolate a day and allowing myself a sweet in moderation when they’re in the break room at work (half a donut, cookie, etc). In my head, I feel like that sounds perfectly reasonable but maybe my brain still sees this as restriction by only allowing myself a small piece of chocolate or half the cookie/donut, etc rather than the whole serving? Like even though logically it’s not restriction, because we often have sweets in the break room so I’m consuming them a couple times a week, it still keeps me in a restrictive mindset by only allowing myself half? Maybe I should have a whole serving but just not every time someone brings us treats? Because, in that case, I would be eating something like a donut 3-4 times a week? Or is that actually healthy and I’m being more restrictive than I realize? I’m honestly not sure.
I’m struggling to identify what triggers the binge because I try so hard to have balance and not restrict certain food groups, and in my opinion I do have balance and I’m not restrictive. I also believe I just have a natural affinity for sugar seeing that my entire family clearly does too. I think I struggle with what a normal, healthy sugar consumption even looks like. In my head, it looks like eating primarily home cooked, whole, unprocessed foods each day with one or two days a week where fun foods are consumed. But 1) there I go moralizing foods again with the term “fun” and 2) I feel a healthy sugar consumption probably can’t be that controlled. It’s probably the control that makes it unhealthy for me. I guess healthy sugar consumption looks different for every individual based off of what’s going on in their life at that time. I really don’t know, this is what I’m working on and trying to learn.
