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.