the trials of tracking

I never thought I would say this, but I feel like tracking sometimes actually makes me eat more than I would in certain situations. I have this weird aversion to leaving calories uneaten... like I am somehow depriving myself if I don't consume them, even if I'm truly not hungry. I need to find a way to reframe this in my mind so that I don't eat when I am not hungry regardless of my calorie balance. I also find myself eating more fat than I would if I weren't tracking, because I look for the calories and sometimes forget to look at that number. This is probably why WW is better, but MFP is free...

In talking with my mentor, I've come to the conclusion that my ultimate goal should not be a number but rather emancipation from numbers. Eventually, I would like to be able to know naturally what I should/should not eat, and listen to the Lord's leadings for those "permissible but not necessarily beneficial" foods. I don't want to count calories forever! But right now I *need* to take note of the excesses (carb/sugar/sodium/fat) and deficits (protein/vegetable) so I can begin to adopt better eating habits. I also need to learn to be accountable for the things I eat by exercising to compensate for overages. There are no freebies. Yet I need to remember that I can't do this on my own and that to walk (sometimes literally) in shame and regret is not helpful. With the consequences also comes grace if I am willing to accept it.

Please pray that God's still small voice would begin to speak louder than the cravings or inklings that I "deserve" certain treats, especially in cases where I technically have enough calories to eat them!

snow pass

When I rolled out of bed at almost noon, I was surprised to see a soft blanket of snow on the ground. I had heard the forecast but somehow it still took my breath away to see so much white. Even when the power went out, it was still bright in the house from all the reflected light.

I wish I could say that I proceeded to have a lovely healthy day in which I kept on track and even burned some calories shoveling snow... but that would be LIES. What I actually did was interpret the power outage & uncharged iPod as a Hall Pass to eat whatever I wanted. If you can't enter it on MFP, it doesn't count... right?

Wrong. The power is back now and my insides are gurgling from the binge. I thought about just not entering my intake... but I logged it anyway, just to see how bad it was-- a 2500+ calorie overage! WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Actually, I guess I know the answer. I was thinking "I can have this because I want it" and "I will fix this tomorrow" and "But it's so delicious, I can have more". But all these things are false. For example, what if I walked up to someone's husband and kissed them because I wanted to. SIN. What if I stole from a store because I didn't have the money to pay today, with the intention of paying them back when I did. SIN. What if I liked the feeling I got from a prescription pain-killer, so I started taking it even when I wasn't in pain. SIN.

Food-related transgressions are not often called by what they are: SIN. I've been thinking about this in context of Christian community. How many plump parishioners, stout singers, and portly preachers fill the chairs of churches? Do you say anything to them (me) about indulgence? No. Maybe you think you shouldn't because their (my) sin is more visible than yours. It's not fair that you know what they (I) struggle with when they (I) don't know your vices. So you should pretend that you don't know, to level the playing field.

What?! Whose idea was that?! While it's true that a person with a plank in his/her eye shouldn't try to help someone else get a sliver out of theirs... putting on sunglasses and pretending everything is F-I-N-E is not any better!

And you know what? If someone knows what I struggle with and loves me & Jesus, then they should hold me accountable. If I know what they struggle with, you better believe I will exhort them, because I LOVE them (and I like telling people what to do).

Being this way, having this relationship with food is not healthy or right. It is sin and it needs to go.

reset button

When my food tracker rolls over to the next day and my calorie credit resets, it's tempting to think that the choices from the previous day are washed away, including the 1000 calorie cracker/cheese/jam binge. But that is really just playing the "out of sight, out of mind" game. The truth will show up on weigh-in day.

I wish I could say that binges are a thing of the past, that they won't happen ever again. But in reality, I had one yesterday, and I will probably struggle with that temptation for the rest of life. However, I think that honest recording can help me to bounce back.

I don't have any trouble recording exercise in my food diary, and then consuming every extra calorie I earn. I just wish MFP would keep a rolling balance: if I go over my calorie limit any day, I carry that debt until I exercise it away. If every earned calorie was applied to outstanding calorie balances from previous days, I might stop taking three steps forward and two steps back.

Since MFP doesn't have this feature, I'm going to try doing it my own way. Every bit of exercise I do will be entered on Sunday until that debt is paid off. Here's hoping it works!

sweets & magic numbers

So I made a bet with a friend that I could give up sweets if she could give up chips for one month. This occurred after I ate two cupcakes AND two pieces of pizza in a span of maybe 30 minutes... I agreed to the bet without much thought, because I don't think of myself as a major sweets-eater.

Boy, was I wrong! I am realizing that I crave sweets... After every meal, after eating something salty, I start to think about sweet things. It's not necessarily chocolate or cupcakes, but anything that hits that taste sense! It could even be PB&J (PB is a whole other category of craving... let's just say it is *banned* from this house). Luckily, we have a lot of fruit and yogurt, which are exempt from my sweets restriction. Nonetheless, I did stare at a jar of jam for a good five minutes tonight, debating where it would fall on the food pyramid. I said "If it has High Fructose Corn Syrup (HCFS) in in, it counts as sugar and I will not have any." I looked at the label, and sure enough: the second ingredient was HCFS. Come on, Smuckers! Throw me a bone! I will admit, though, I took a little taste anyway... I think maybe it fermented during the hurricane power outage.

It's interesting that this bet is coming after I publicly declared I would lose 10% of my body weight by December 15. A few friends committed to attempt the same. So far, we've all said "LET'S DO IT!" but I'm not sure how many of us have actually started to do anything. I did a bit more exercise this week than I have been doing (certainly not the three miles every morning I USED to do), and also I have tried to start playing Just Dance 2 every day on the Wii (great arm workout!). But my eating... still just as disordered.

Maybe that's what led me to watch an episode of My (Extra)ordinary Family on ABC, featuring people who have food issues: anorexics as well as overeaters. It was interesting how interrelated these two conditions were when you really look at them. Control and fear play major parts. However, the thing that struck me most was the treatment for these folks: a 12 Step program similar to AA. So I wondered what those twelve steps might be. Overeaters Anonymous uses this list:
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1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

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Umm, wow! Talk about serious, deep stuff. So deep that I am stepping back to think: how much do I want this? Magic numbers are so much easier-- ten percent of my weight, a size twelve (which will take MUCH more than a 10% loss, incidentally), a BMI that ranks me as JUST overweight and not any other horrifying term (morbidly what??). BUT who am I kidding? There is nothing magic about numbers. Reaching any of those goals won't make me happy or satisfied. BUT falling into His arms, as described by the 12 magic-free steps above, just might finally stop the craving.

wagons and ladders

I am continually canonballing off the wagon these days. Each time I hit the chocolatey dirt, sink into the muffinous moss, or swim in the sugary sea, I lay there a little longer. I lounge in the post-binge haze until something alerts me- an unexpected reflection of the double chin, a slightly tighter pair of pants, an alarming number on the scale. I huff and puff and pull myself up, and begin crawling, staggering towards the wagon. But each time it seems a little farther away, and the journey more laborious.

A friend mentioned a book called Made to Crave, and I started to read it... three weeks ago. Until the part where she mentioned finding your "want-to". I probably read a few pages beyond that but I remember thinking "Hmm... I don't have a want to, really. Other than I don't want to literally suffocate to death in my own body." Then I stopped reading.

But now I am wondering if maybe that should be my want-to in and of itself. Maybe I should put pictures of my obese relatives on my fridge/cabinets/wallet to remind me that everything I put in my mouth is a step towards a healthier (happier?) future... or away from it.

My aunt is so heavy now that she can't sleep comfortably and is always fatigued. My uncle is slowly dying from congestive heart failure and insulin-dependent diabetes. My father used to be headed that way too, until bariatric surgery. But there is no easy way out- now he struggles with malnutrition, anemia, kidney stones, and a very restricted diet. And his relationship with food is still very disordered...

I hope this is my want-to. I need it to be my want-to because I can't think of anything else!

don't even go there

So lately I've been struggling with the idea of "everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial". I have mentioned a strategy in which I substitute the phrase "I can eat X if I do Y exercise" for the phrase "I can have this treat because..." However, I'm beginning to wonder if that strategy doesn't work well for people dealing with food addiction.

 Some foods are a road well traveled for me, that always ends in a serious overindulgence. Most cereals, baked goods, and salty snack foods fall into this category. Eating one little bit starts a chain reaction in which I find myself unable to eat only a single portion UNLESS it is individually packaged (who knew cellophane was a psychological forcefield?). But buying individually packaged snacks is super expensive and portioning into snack-size ziplocs is NOT the same. Somehow that zipper doesn't deter me one bit... maybe because it's resealable?

I used to think it was normal to have certain foods that I just can't control myself around, and anyone who puts those foods in my path is sabotaging me... But that takes the power out of MY hands, when in reality it is my HANDS that are doing the sabotaging by reaching for that cookie, chip, etc.

So now I'm leaning more toward just avoiding these "trigger" foods. It's not like they're a vital part of the food pyramid (though I hear now it's shaped like a plate...). Having one sweet/salty treat at a party may one day become an option, but for now it's an invitation to sin, so I'm going to say to myself "don't even go there!"

in remembrance of Him

I attended a friend's church awhile back, and I remember keenly the pastor's apology to visitors, saying "This is not how we normally do things, but today's entire service will be communion." He then led us in a meditation on this sacrament. We had glasses of juice and bagels, and he encouraged us to really think about communion as a daily discipline. He asked "What if every time we ate and drank, we did so in remembrance of Him?"

That service stuck with me and I've often thought back on it. What if I thought of Him before every morsel? What if I pictured Him in the room with me, sitting at the table or standing over the sink, as the case may be... How would that change my behavior?

So often I think that no one sees me when I binge. Some people see the aftermath-- the dead soldiers of cookie boxes and pretzel bags, but few people have ever seen me in the act. Yet, there is One who always sees me, His name is El Roi. I want to know what He feels when He sees me engaging in this behavior.

Maybe that would change the way I feel...

begin at the beginning

I've been inspired by a friend to start writing down my struggle. I don't know if it will help anyone, but I think it will help me to get clarity.

Let me start by saying that I have an addictive personality and a serious lack of self-discipline. I could go into theories about what could have caused these traits in me, but the blame-game and resulting victim mentality are actually kind of counterproductive. So instead, I will just talk about where I am, rather than try to figure out how I got here.

Some of my vices are obvious, some not so obvious. I love food. I especially like salty and sweet carbohydrates. I tend to binge on things like cereal, crackers, pretzels, cookies. When I lived with roommates, I just didn't buy that stuff. Occasionally I would lust after other people's carbs, but generally I kept my hands to myself. Once I added exercise into the mix, I started losing weight, and it felt good.

BUT now I am back living at home in the land of free-flowing carbohydrates... and I can't get enough. I've tried begging my parents not to buy that stuff but they keep saying "You just need to have self-control." So far, that's not working. I still exercise, so the overall effect on my weight is not very noticeable, but it is creeping back slowly. It's only a matter of time. Eating back every calorie I burn (and more!) is not only pointless, it's dangerous. If I stay at this size, the physical activity that stands between me and Jabba-hood will eventually get too hard for my joints. Exercise alone is not enough.

So what do I do? How do I stare down that box of wheat thins and say "You Don't Own Me!" when I really feel like they do? When I open the cupboard and see those colorful containers, I have a bodily reaction similar to that of an alcoholic surveying assorted bottles of booze. Food is a drug to me.

The addiction in and of itself is a problem, but the greater issue is that it stands between me and what God wants for me. I know He has big plans for me, plans which require me to be healthy. Yet I feel powerless against food!

So, that's where I am. Sigh.