Height: 5'9
SW: 196
CW: ~155
GW: Less jiggle and more confidence In a, hopefully not endless, journey to overcome my compulsive/impulsive eating this blog is to record my thoughts and feelings about food and my inspirations.
I know I'm not as bad as I used to be, but I still don't feel like I have complete control of how much I eat.
Sometimes I just go crazy and eat way too much. It isn't because I'm restricting (since I hardly am, at all, between all the cheating I do) or because my body needs it. I am literally /never/ actually physically hungry when I binge.
The strangest thing, though, is that if I talk it out with someone (especially someone outside my family since everyone here only ever offers to buy me more food or encourages me to eat everything I can, or simply says "If you had self-control you wouldn't be complaining") I tend to cool down and I don't feel out of control and can only then notice that the world won't end if I don't eat.
Whenever I want to eat, I think about eating some more.
And then I quickly justify eating whatever I want, whenever I want, even if I'm already full.
I eat impulsively and then I will keep eating until I can't anymore, compulsively.
My main goal, before I can expect to make any advances in losing weight, is to really outgrow these horrible habits.
My thoughts on compulsive/impulsive eating:
I think I use food as a means of escape.
Whenever my family's dysfunctional-ness acts up and they call me into their drama I notice that before the drama is over my mind randomly travels to: What can I eat after this?
I realize that this is because I get so stressed that I default onto eating to soothe me.
Once I noticed that I realized that although I'd thought that I was always n control of my emotions when it comes to how messed up my family gets I actually wasn't.
I've been trying to become more aware of my stress-levels and I've realized that every time I get a little fatigued from the drama I always turn to food without a second thought of consequence. It always seems justified and I just eat as much as I can as quickly as I can until all I feel is full and guilty.
It's almost like I substitute my family-stress (or my school-/work-/social-stress[!]) with diet-stress.
Because if I feel guilty about how badly I've eaten then I don't/can't spare time feeling stressed about work tomorrow or the test tomorrow or what-have-you.
Another escape is an escape from boredom!
Every time I have nothing to do on the internet, or if I'm only watching a movie, or if I'm actually busy doing something that just isn't interesting - I always want to eat!
It's so strange.
It's, like, whenever I'm feeling too much negative I need food and whenever I'm feeling too little, I want food!
When /don't/ I want food?
When I'm happy-busy, when I'm happy, when I've already eaten so much the guilt is too much to even look at food.
Any other time I want to eat. And whenever I /want/ to eat, I usually justify and justify until I /am/ eating.
Because I'm an emotional-eater, I guess.
I've been actively reminding myself, though, that food is not the solution to stress, and it isn't the solution to boredom.
I need to figure out how to really recognize these things and stop them.
Even right now, when I'm so full (after eating so much junk!!!), I'm still thinking so much about food that I kinda want food!
are you the girl in your sidebar?? either way, you should post the picture sometime if you're not busy :)
I wish! The woman in my sidebar image is Miranda Kerr. I'd absolutely love to look like her! I guess I should post some kind of picture. I don't usually take pictures of myself (crippling social anxiety coupled with years of self-image issues makes a camera something of an enemy to me), and although this is a secret blog I feel like I should properly introduce myself.Who knows, maybe I'll post a semi-anonymous picture someday soon. :)
I actually don't workout. At least not at this point.
Right now, I'm focusing my energy on work and eating right. After eating right has become more of a habit I'll start working out again. I don't want to push my body too hard right off the bat since every time I used to do that I'd have a nearly uncontrollable urge to binge and restore my calorie deficit.
My work (I work at a movie theatre) requires constant standing and walking and leaning and reaching and carrying. I spend 15-30 hours there every week. And I also do 30-90 minutes of housework every day. So all that must amount to something, right?
But once I start working out again, I'll start walking a mile on the treadmill a day plus a half hour of cardio on Your Shape Kinect.
Plus dancing.
I don't dance, traditionally. I'm not training or anything. I just put on my favorite music and dance around like an idiot for a half hour.
Do your parents know you're trying to lose weight? Do they care?
Yes, but I don't think they care.
They care enough to criticize me, but not enough to encourage or try to stop me, which is fine, I guess.
My Dad is as oblivious to female weight-issues as any male can possibly be. He's 60, grew up surrounded by the idea that women were always trying to gain weight in order to be attractive, and he's frankly turning a bit senile as of late. No matter how many times I explain to him that I don't, nor haven't, drunk soda in over a year he gets all surprised as if it was the first time he'd heard. He offers me soda all the time still. If I ever voice, casually, that I feel fat he just says, "But you're not fat," in a bewildered tone and I leave it at that.
My Mother is the one who usually criticizes my eating habits or my exercise habits but she's confessed her diets methods when she was around my age and I can't see how she could bring herself to discourage me as she does with such an uneducated opinion. She used to jog every day and fast every other day, eating only sparingly on the days she did eat.
She never got thinner than a size 12; the size she'd been obsessed with. (That's why she always used to tell me I'd never be any smaller than a 12. That it was 'physically impossible'.... Thanks, Mom.)
I'm actually being healthy about this and am making some real progress and she still doesn't approve.
It's been about 5 days since my last update, but I've only eaten well the past 3 days, so I'll only make up for three entries.
Do you binge? If so, explain why you think you do.
Yes, I have binged on occasion.I think there are a few reasons why I binge:
1. Boredom.
I think I simply get bored enough to think eating is necessary. I think I'm 'hungry', but I'm really just craving the action of eating because I'm craving stimulation.
2. I talk myself into thinking it'll be beneficial.
I am particularly good at manipulating myself into believe I 'deserve' to eat whatever I want for 'just one day' or that eating processed food is something I need because I need a dose of fat in order to wake up my metabolism or something. It's all really shoddy logic. I just justify eating wrongly because I happen to really want to.
3. I'd been eating poorly before.
Either I'd been eating too little and my body is making me crave fattening things because of the stress I'd been putting it through or I'd been eating wrongly just before and my body craves fat and sugar simply because I'd given it too much just recently.
There are a lot of reasons, but I don't want to focus on that.
I want to start focusing on why I don't binge:
I don't binge because I know I shouldn't.
I know I know better and there's absolutely no way to fool myself otherwise.
I know I'll only be ashamed of myself afterward.
I'll have to start all over again.
I know the wrong food will only make me feel terrible, physically and emotionally, and the taste of those foods are not worth any of that discomfort.
I am in complete control over what I buy and what I eat so it's no one's fault but my own if I end up betraying myself.
If I had only taken more care to eat well these past few years I would have never gotten this big, and if I'd had more willpower over these last few months I'd be thinner than I am now!
That last thought alone frustrates me and motivates me enough to push myself to say no more and more often.
Why do you really want to lose this weight? Are you doing it for you?
This is a difficult question.
A part of me wants to say this is just for myself, but I know that in the corner of my mind I wouldn't be putting up with this stress and waiting if no one else mattered.
I want to lose this weight so that I can look a certain way in clothes and admire myself and marginally so that I may be admired. I'm not actually all that interested in the extra attention I get from guys, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it as a bonus. This weight loss is mostly because of me. But I'm not sure I'd even think about wanting to look the way I want to look if I wasn't introduced to it by society.
I don't really mind, though. I don't see myself as a 'slave' to the media. I just know what I want and I'm getting there.
All the health and weight loss benefits aside, nothing relaxes me more than settling down with a few cups of not-so-hot-to-burn-your-tongue-but-hot-enough-to-enjoy tea.
