Day 13: Moments to Remember -- Not the Good Ones

In Catherine Gray's brilliant new book The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, she notes that in her first days of sobriety, she felt like Dory in that animated film, Finding Nemo. Remember that little blue fish? She's always forgetting who she is and what's she's doing? 

Gray describes how in her first 30 days, she felt like Dory. She was constantly forgetting WHY she was doing the sober thing. WHY she had given up drinking. She had to keep replaying in her mind the worst moments from her drinking life.

I often feel that way too, in my journey to stop overeating.

This week, I had a really bad 1-2-3 punch of emotional experiences. Three completely different events happened, each of which sent me emotionally into a tailspin. At each of those moments, I simply forgot why I had given up overeating. And I ate.

So, in the spirit of Catherine Gray, here are most of my worst moments. These are the moments I need to replay in my mind to get me to remember why I am doing this healthy eating thing:

—      Once, when I was in the grip of my sugar addiction and starting to binge because of food restriction, someone gave me some cookies to take home after an event. I told myself I’d give them to my husband, wrapped them up in napkins and put them in the backseat of my car. Driving home, I got obsessed about them. Could NOT stop thinking about them. Finally found myself reaching behind to the backseat to get them … while driving down a busy highway. Yes, I could easily have gotten myself into a terrible crash, just for the sake of reaching cookies in the backseat.

—      I hit my heaviest weight while finishing my Ph.D. Dissertation. I was so fat and miserable that I didn’t permit many photographs on my graduation day, the one day in my life where I got to wear actual Ph.D. robes with the velvet stripes on the sleeves. As a result, I have virtually no photographs from the time when I hit one of the major achievements of my life.

—      Someone sent me photographs of myself when I was performing Jackie Kennedy at a venue in Maryland. It was a great achievement because the organization had flown me in specifically for this event. But it was clear in the photos that the costume did not fit me. The pink skirt was stretched tightly across my bulging hips. Knowing how visibly obvious it was to the audience that the suit did not fit (and that I was waaayyy bigger than the real Jackie) was mortifying. I still think of that photo and cringe.

—      After I’d been doing Bright Line Eating for a while, I found myself binging whenever I broke my lines. This was upsetting because I’d never been a binger before. And because my family thought I was so great for giving up sugar. I began resorting to addict-style tricks like

o   Hiding the plastic wrappers and bakery boxes in my car and throwing them away at gas stations so my husband wouldn’t see them

o   Driving out at night to buy junk food because there was none in the house, the way an alcoholic might drive out at night to get booze.

o   Keeping treats in my car so that I wouldn't overeat them (and my husband wouldn't see them), then sneaking out early in the morning or late at night to retrieve them

o   Coming home at night and sitting in my car in the driveway, stuffing cookies in my face so that I could get as much sugar in me before going inside.

—      Seeing my father become increasingly vegetable-like, unable to stand or walk by himself, in part because he refused to give up his existing eating habits when he developed Parkinson’s disease. He now has brain dementia, brought on in large part by eating sugary and processed foods and refusing to exercise. Knowing that I have a family history of Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases, I have got to get my food addiction under control.

Whew. These are embarrassing moments to revisit. But I think they are just as important as the vision in my head of the "happy, thin and free" me. In fact, in the moment, when the chips are down and the food is staring me in the fact, it might be more important to remember why I don't overeat anymore than to remember why I do eat healthfully.

I say no to all these moments.