Breakfast: 9am
1 bowl Christopher’s World-Famous Hella-Chili!!!
32oz. Water
Mid-Morning: 12noon
1 bowl Christopher’s (Did-I-Mention-it-Was…) World-Famous Hella-Chili!!!
64oz. Water
Lunch: 3pm
1 Chocolate-Cardia-Care Visalus Shake
Mid-Afternoon: 5pm
1 bowl Christopher’s (by-Odin’s-Holy-Eye-Patch, it’s…) WORLD-FAMOUS Hella-Chili!!!!1!!one!!!eleven!!!!
Evening: 6pm
1 Butterfinger Visalus Shake
Note: The recipe for my completely diet-safe, World-Famous Hella Chili is available to all Mind Versus Mountain team members.
Walk-Count: 3
State of Being:
Evening/Night is the hardest.
That’s when it’s at its most difficult to ignore.
As a binge-eater, my routine for the last twenty years has been… No breakfast, No lunch, maybe some snacking in the afternoon,… then a HUGE dinner. It was always all about just waiting until I could retreat to be alone with a giant meal. Often,… (actually, pretty much ALWAYS, if I'm being completely honest...) my entire day would be built around that evening binge. This went on, day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year… since I was about fifteen.
The neural-wiring in my head is so firmly set in that pattern of habit that, every night around 6pm, I still feel a persistent compulsion. It feels like I’m supposed to be gathering food items. Ok,… I need to call in my order for a 8pc. chicken and jojos or a large pizza and jojos, (an old favorite) make sure I have plenty of pop, and then something to snack on for the rest of the night, after the stuffed feeling from the meal wears off. For that, maybe a couple bags of chips; Doritos and Salt-n-Vinegar Chips, and yes, folks… I’d finish both bags. I’m not talking about snack-size either. Full Family-Size bags. Of course, I’d need another bottle of pop to wash all of that down…
Now, my diet is so radically different that there are some evenings when it takes everything in me not to binge again.
Yesterday, I had my first ever day of no cravings. But, then,… that evening, I was hanging out with some friends and they were having pizza. The cravings hit me. I denied them. I didn’t cave. But, man… I wanted to.
It feels like… until I cheat, there’s something incomplete. Something I’m leaving undone. It hangs over your head like an unpaid bill. It just won’t leave you alone. And my “unpaid bill” has been hanging over me for fifty days now.
In Stephen King’s book “On Writing,” he talks about his struggles with alcoholism. He says that there is still a compulsion in him, even to this day. He says that when he sees someone with an unfinished drink in a restaurant, he feels an urge to march over to their table, jab a finger in their face and yell, “What are you doing? Finish that drink! Finish it, right now!”
I can relate.
I’m not an alcoholic but I am an addict just the same. A pizza must be finished. Leaving a few slices,… hell, even a few *crusts* uneaten is unacceptable to me on some deep-seated level. It’s an offense on my sensibilities, somehow. If I know there are a few slices left, it will bother me for hours. Sometimes, my teeth grind. Sometimes, my knee won’t stop bouncing. Sometimes I just get really depressed. …or angry,… or some other emotion that has absolutely nothing to do with the situation.
The last 24 hours have been marked by depression. But, I know where it's coming from and I'm dealing with it. I'm fighting it... trying to keep it in its place and, for the most part, I'm succeeding. It's not real. It's not me. It's the Adversary.
I’m doing better. I am. But, this hasn’t been easy so far and I don’t anticipate that it will get a whole lot easier in the short term. But, I know what 90 Days means. 90 Days is statistically how long it takes to establish a new “normal.” Not just new habits, but a new state of being, a new framework for relating to your day-to-day existence. It may take me several challenges to break through those old habits and to stop feeling their weight. But, it will be time well spent. It will have been a journey well worth taking.
Fifty days versus twenty-years… I’m still behind. But, I’m making progress. The down-days are the price you pay for the up-days.
Note: To be clear, (cause I'm getting emails about this already,) I haven't cheated. I'm still very much on the wagon. Today's just been rough.
See you tomorrow!
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*****
All your years of physical training could be put to use here. In a way, it's just another form of awareness of your body. In martial arts, you need to be aware of where your body is in space, how it relates to physics and to your opponents body. In this, it is awareness of what your body needs... when it requires nourishment and when the signals are just going haywire. It's just a thought, but it might give you a frame of reference to help you with your battles. Best!
ReplyDeleteThat's very insightful. I'm still very much in the process of learning about what the real hunger signals are and what are just cravings from weird hormonal-surges. For so many years, *cravings* were the things that prompted me to eat. Now, I get past that and then there's real, actual hunger... my body actually requesting fuel.
DeleteThe hormonal stuff doesn't help at all. It's kinda like before I got treatment and medicine for my panic attacks/anxiety disorder. Actually,... even *after* I got treatment, I had to learn to distinguish between real actual worry (meaning there was something I needed to do) and just a serotonin drop.
Tricky.
It's definitely tricky... I just hoped that could offer a perspective that might resonate with you and be somewhat familiar. Physical awareness. It's a tool in your box or a weapon in your arsenal (depending on how you look at it) that is already developed... it's just a different way of using it.
DeleteI had a battle with sugar at one point. I came of age at a time when fat was viewed as bad, but sugar was largely overlooked... so I avoided fat and replaced it with sugar. I had no idea how much it messed with my hunger signals... my mood... everything. I actually passed out at work one time (no exaggeration) because of a sugar crash.
THAT scared me and really made me start re-thinking what I was doing. Eventually, I figured it out, stopped avoiding healthy fats, and started avoiding simple carbs (sugar, white flour, etc) and things really leveled out for me. No more crashes. No more shakes. No more turning into a monster as an emotional reaction to a sugar crash. And a lot fewer cravings.
I understand that I need to multiply my experience by... a whole lot... to even begin to compare it to yours... but I think the same rules apply. If you can find a mindset that resonates with you, use it! That's my best advice. :)