I am technically five and a half months along my Weight Watchers journey, and five weeks into my journey with meetings. Tonight made me realize that most of the time I can rationally choose my food sometimes my emotional eating still takes over. While I know I shouldn't emotionally eat and when I want to I should find something to occupy myself, it is much harder to do in practice.
In the summer months I work long hours - regularly 55-60 hours weeks. I love my job and have amazing colleagues so it normally doesn't bother me. However, I think tonight I have come to my brink. 10 weeks of this schedule has taken its toll on me. Tonight I started to get paranoid that I am not doing good work and that I have no friends. Because I was feeling this way all I wanted to do was eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's (ideally Red Velvet Cake to be specific). I know these feelings are irrational; I know I am just tired and in need of some mental recharge; I know that I also suffer from depression and anxiety and these feelings are coming from a chemical imbalance in my brain. Even knowing all of these things, I still wanted to eat. Actually, I wanted to binge. I wanted to curl up on the couch in sweats and eat the entire pint of ice cream and cry.
That is not possible however, as I work at 8am and need to go weigh in before I head to work (unfortunately due to my event in the morning, I'll have to miss the meeting) and I know bingeing the night before a weigh in would be bad news for the rest of my awesome week that I have had. Instead I had a minor binge: 1 Fresh Steam Lean Cuisine Cheese Tortellini, 1 bag of WW wheat crisps with 1 oz of Rondel Garlic and Herb Pub Cheese and 10 break and bake chocolate brownie Toll House mini cookies. I know I could have ate better today leading up to tonight (1 Venti Iced-Coffee with Skim Milk and Sugar Free Vanilla Starbucks, 1 piece of Marble Loaf, Tasty Turkey bagel sandwich from Einstein's Bagels, 1 bag of Subway apple slices, 1 80 calorie Freshen's Smoothie). I know I could of gotten on the bike and worked out to get the same (better actually) endorphins that I got from eating the simple carbs that I was craving. I know that I made better choices than I used to make. I know that I earned 20 activity points this week so this is not the end of the world. I know the fact that I ate the Lean Cuisine before anything else - heck the fact that I didn't get fast food and instead ate the Lean Cuisine - is a good thing. Why is it that even though I recognize these things I don't feel better? Why is it that I want to continue to beat myself up?
I guess if anything I am learning that this is a very, very long process to finding a healthier me. I am learning that I need more help than I thought. I am learning that I am slowly gaining the tools to make the mental change that is needed to make a better me. Most of all I am learning about myself. For this I am grateful. Sure I wish that I could blink and lose the weight I want to lose; however this process is teaching me that the mental change I am having means that I am finally getting to the root of the problem. I am starting to chip away at the cycles and rituals that 14 years of diagnosed disordered eating has made. My hope is that writing the thoughts that I am having throughout this process may help me to better reflect, process and understand the change that I making in my life.
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