On Falling Off

For the first time, I feel like I've really just let go of my diet, and pigged out. There's been a lot of stuff going on that's been bothering me, and it sort of boiled over.

I injured my back a few weeks ago, to the point of being unable to breathe easily or move; then just as that was starting to get better I got a bad cold that completely laid me up. Then just as the cold was starting to get better I was supposed to go on a trip for work, but managed to re-injure my back lifting my suitcase. So I canceled the trip at the very last minute. And that's still stressing me out.

So, while I was sick, it was especially difficult to get decent food, because I didn't feel like I could even go outside; and my whole diet is restaurant-based. I have some dry grain and frozen veggies at home, but I never cook them.

So when I got hungry at the height of being sick, I got a bag of frozen veggies and half a loaf of frozen raisin bread someone had left in the freezer, and ate them. Then some friends brought me canned chicken soup, and I had some of that. They also (at my request) brought me more loaves of raisin bread, and a tin of nuts.

So at that point, I was essentially completely off the diet. True, I wasn't eating pizza or chips or drinking coke, but the food I was eating bore very little resemblance to anything that might have a balanced nutritional content.

Today I'm still recovering from the back re-injury and the cold, but I still went into work to take care of some stuff. And I ate various bad stuff, including pure snack food. I had a fig bar that we keep in the mini-kitchens, and a piece of cheese.

So, I think that partly this was the result of me just being sick, and weakened, and not really caring to think too hard about what I ate, and not really having much resolve about diet stuff.

Also, partly, I think it was related to my whole effort to relax the diet somewhat. My weight had plateaued, and I was just (in theory) attempting to let my body adjust to the new smaller size. But in fact, there was probably various nutritional deficiencies hidden away in what I was eating, that I should've expected those to start giving me cravings. Maybe somewhere in my consciousness I did expect that.

And also, I was putting all my eggs in the anti-snack, pro-portion-control basket. Which, when I think about it now, I wonder, why was I so interested in relaxing the diet in the first place? What benefit did that bring, aside from giving me more options when I ate? Too many options were part of the problem.

Another thing I did was, I slacked off on the day-at-a-time principle. Originally I was keeping a spreadsheet where I would give myself a grade for each day. A '1' meant I had eaten perfectly; a 0 meant I had eaten the worst possible foods. Oftentimes I'd give myself a .8 or thereabouts, for a regular day.

As I had started trying to relax my diet, the mechanisms for calculating what score to give myself started becoming more slippery; and eventually I just started giving myself a '1' for each day; figuring that I was eating as perfectly as I wanted to. And after a few weeks of that, I stopped grading myself at all, and just let the spreadsheet lie fallow.

So now I've got several tins of nuts in my house, part of a loaf of raisin bread, and that may be it. Traditionally, for me, falling off the wagon like this tends to just continue, and I gain back all the weight I had previously lost.

I'm not sure what will happen now, because all my previous experience seems to point towards total failure.

One thing I'd like to avoid, is an effort to talk myself into eating any particular way, as I sit here thinking. I don't want to be like, "tomorrow I'm gonna...!"

But what I have done is, I've started a fresh spreadsheet tracking each day, and I've given myself a .3 for today. The spreadsheet seems like the thing to focus on right now. I originally started it as a way to mimic Alcoholics Anonymous's "day at a time" approach; and that seems to be where I've found myself now. I don't need to think about the days ahead; instead I want to just be aware of the single day I'm in right now, the single choice confronting me at this moment.

For example, do I want to eat more of that bread and nuts that are sitting on my bed? The answer is a pretty clear "no". I won't throw away the nuts, because they're actually OK in my diet, in small quantities. The rest of the bread is garbage though.

Damn - there's another can of tomato soup sitting in my bed... I don't want to throw it out because it's a perfectly good can of food. But I happen to remember there are some other cans sitting on a shelf somewhere... I can keep it with them.

And the rest of the nuts can sit on a bookcase.

That's the way I've handled the choices confronting me this evening. And that's all I need to trouble myself about right now.

On No Longer Feeling Thin

An interesting thing happened recently - I realized I don't feel thin anymore. While I was actively dropping a lot of weight, I started to feel very thin; when I got down to 179 I felt positively svelte, in spite of still being officially 'overweight' according to the BMI.

I've been hovering around 179/180 for a few weeks now, and I'm starting to feel like my body is fat. For instance, I'll think to myself, "the last time I weight 180 I was upset at myself for having gained so much weight."

I also recently hauled out my old jeans from the closet - the ones I kept around in case I lost all that weight - and they fit again, but they're a little tight. So they make me aware of all this extra body fat spilling over the waist, and filling up the pant-legs. When I was just wearing my big pants, they were like a tent, and I had to use a belt to hold them up; and I'd think, "these huge pants look so ridiculous on me because I'm way to thin for them now." Now that I wear the thinner pants, it's just the reverse.

So I think I've come to an understanding of what's going on. When I was losing weight, I felt thin because I was losing weight. Now that I've plateaued, my apparently "real" self-image as a fat person has caught up with me.

This is really interesting, because I've been curious lately about whether I identify as a fat person or a thin person. Most of my adult life has been a steady process of weight-gain, slow and inexorable. I guess the result has been that my normal mental state is to conceive of myself as fat. I wonder if this could translate into anorexia, where I might continue trying to lose weight, but always consider myself fat, no matter how much I lost.

Most of my friends tell me I'm not fat anymore, and express surprise when I tell them I'm still technically overweight. And my plan has been to just allow myself to plateau at my current weight, eating normal portions and not snacking, until my body adjusts, and the new eating patterns don't feel like such a new thing anymore.

But it's just interesting that now, once again, I feel fat. Part of me wants to go back to wearing the big pants. Part of me wants to go back to pure salads until the BMI thinks I'm normal. And part of me wants to just stick it out with what I'm doing, and not make any precipitous changes based on these odd new feelings. That's the part of me I trust.

Overeating Hurts!

I overate last night. It was weird. I ordered two entrées, two appetizers, and a cup of soup, then also got apples and cashew nuts on the way home. All the food was very healthy, but it was plentiful.

I didn't notice any sensation of being too full until after the last apple. I drank a glass of water to make the last mouthful go down my esophagus, and as soon as I swallowed the water I realized that I was really, really, really, really full. It hurt!

The sensation gradually subsided, but I remember thinking, "wow, I'm never doing that again!"

In the old days, that quantity of food would have been just normal. And back then I often ate enough to feel uncomfortably full, but the feeling in those days was much different. For one thing, that earlier sensation was less like a serious alert and more like a time-to-lay-still-for-awhile feeling. I remember long ago, discussing it with one of my friends who also would eat too much, and he was like, "yeah! I love that feeling!"

This time I was surprised by my own reaction. It wasn't just that I had to endure this period of discomfort. It was also that I had a strong negative sense of recoiling from the prospect of doing something like that again.

I don't know if I'll actually never overeat again. It could be that the various forces at work in my brain will tilt one way and another, depending on many factors. But the thing that's interesting is that my reaction this time seemed natural to me.

It's similar to the way hunger feels natural to me lately too. Instead of perceiving hunger as this ravening, unquenchable force racking my entire body until I launch into an eating frenzy, the sensation of hunger is much more like just a gentle reminder these days.

I had a chicken panini a few days ago; essentially as part of relaxing some of my dietary restrictions, in favor of focusing on portion control and snack avoidance. The panini was mainly processed flour, with a good bit of grease and salt, and some chicken and vegetables.

After I ate it, I had that old feeling of being hungry and unsatisfied right away, just like in the old days. It sort of confirmed my idea that I should always try to have vegetables, or at least whole grains, be the main ingredient of any meal.

It's fun to discover these quote-unquote "normal" responses to things, like hunger and feeling full. And it's interesting to feel like I'm getting confirmation that I'm avoiding the correct things too.

One interesting thing is that I talked to my friend K__ recently. She's always been very fat, and I've never heard her express any dissatisfaction with her body or her appearance. She just seemed totally fine with herself, and had a great self-image.

So I was surprised this time when we talked, that she's embarking on a very extreme diet, similar to what I was doing at first - eating virtually nothing but vegetables. I'm actually visiting her soon, and I'm planning to join her on whatever dietary measures she'll pursue. I know enough not to make comments to her in our conversations. That can be so annoying! Even encouraging comments. It really is virtually identical to when I quit smoking. Some of my friends don't like that analogy, but it's really dead-on. Controlling one's eating is like kicking a nicotine habit. The only different anyone's been able to point out is that controlling eating is even harder, because you can't quit entirely.

But that's why the sugar/salt/grease avoidance seems to be key. Those seem to be the things that produce the strongest addictive reaction. When I eat just vegetables and whole grains, with maybe some fish, and I make sure all the nutritional requirements are met, my reactions don't seem to resemble addiction anymore.