The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

All out of order:

The Ugly
January has been an ugly month. I've had more binge eating days than I'd like to count. Okay, depending on how you count it, there have been about 11. Here's the sad evidence. I can see what's happening, and it's not good. Last year one or two days of overeating would be followed by a day or two of barely eating, as I was listening to my body and things evened out naturally. This month that has only happened once, near the end of December on the chart. As you can see from the averaged numbers, FitDay thinks I'm eating exactly enough food to account for my activity, but I know from experience that I actually need to keep that "Calories Eaten" value lower than the "Calories Burned" value. Even setting my activity level on FitDay to "bed-bound" doesn't fully account for my low metabolic rate. :(

At any rate, the ugly is that I've let this go on for so long, just watching it happen. Watching myself eat when I'm not hungry. Eat out of stress and sadness and discomfort, eat for the sugar's affect on my brain chemicals and eat because I feel sorry for myself. Eat when the food doesn't even make me feel good anymore, when I'm so in tune with my body's signals that I know it's just making me uncomfortable, but so used to the idea that food provides pleasure that I eat anyway. Eat eat eat. This is making it sound like I'm some kind of binge eating depressed maniac. I swear I'm not. I've been "binge" eating only compared to how I'd like to eat, how I've eaten in the past for longish stretches and how I'd like to eat again.

The other part of the ugly is that being in New York for xmas and being sick last week really threw a monkey wrench into my exercise regimen. Add to that a real need to work long hours at work right now, and lots of coffee drinking.

The Good
FitDay, being in touch with my body, having the triathlon as a goal, and setting up 150 lbs as my trigger weight have all helped to get my mind back in the game. I will spend the next month in full healthy mode, no excuses. My ability to compete in the triathlon, not slipping back into unconscious bad habits (so far the bad behaviors are all very conscious), and staying healthy and comfortable (not exercising = creaky knee, too much sugar = bad digestive track and bad skin, too much caffeine = bad sleeping habits, etc); all these are more are at stake. I've done this before, I can do it again. All that delicious food will still be around when I'm done. I can have tiny portions of things I truly want to taste. I can drink, just plan for it. I can make time to work out. I can, and I will.

The goal this month isn't to get to a certain weight, it's to enact a certain set of behaviors.

The Bad
Today is a working Saturday here at work. They feed us here, and are piling on the comfort food to make us feel better. I get in much earlier than most people, so had already had my half-of-a belgium waffle (with banana slices and a touch of maple syrup) and two, count them two small muffins before anyone else in my group got in. I "justified" the second muffin as... well, it doesn't matter. It was justification, pure and simple. I hadn't yet fully decided to buckle down on my behaviors yet.

So what does my boss bring in to help us through this Saturday? Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I had some. I did. But I only had a quarter of a chocolate glazed and half of a original glazed (would have had a quarter of that one too, but the yeast doughnuts are hard to tear apart without mangling. I know, I should have just thrown out half of what I took. No, wait, I shouldn't have taken them at all.)

Add to that my Dine About Town dinner at Rubicon tonight. I'm going to keep that dinner in the front of my mind during lunch today, resisting the onion rings and cookies on the menu. I want to enjoy my Wild Anise Chocolate Mousse relatively guilt free. I've already chosen what items off the Rubicon fixed price menu I'll be ordering and entered those into FitDay (my best guesses, anyway). The muffins and doughnuts "ruined" today's calorie intake and nutritional breakdown, but I'll do some damage control at lunch with a big salad, veggies, and grilled chicken. Then I'll fully enjoy my delicious indulgent dinner, because I'm completely convinced that those sorts of events have to be part of any long-term plan. Big salad for lunch (it's not like I hate salad, after all), indulgent dinner, moderate eating tomorrow. As it should be. The ugly would have been onion rings and cookies at lunch AND an indulgent dinner, after all. :)