Day 12: Honest Confession (Warning: Might be Triggering Due to Food Mentions)

Day 12 Completed. Very, very wobbly.

I had a horrific day yesterday, food-wise. Consumed with hunger and not wanting to do this. Not wanting to give up the things I love about sugar and flour.

After lunch, I had to stop by the grocery store for corn on the cob for dinner. My local Whole Foods did not have any. No corn on the cob! In Illinois! In summer! Harumph. So I drove over the nearby farmstand and picked up some lovely fresh-picked-this-morning corn and it was delish.

But. But before I did that, I wandered the aisle of Whole Foods and for reasons that flabbergast me, bought some cookies and a big 7-layer bar. Ate the cookies before I even got home. At the bar after dinner in the car on my way to my evening performance. In the interest of full disclosure, I hid them from my husband. Always a sure sign that I'm acting from an addictive place.

So sad for myself. But sooooo determined to figure out what it is that is making me behave this way.

If it is hunger, genuine real hunger, then I need more food.

So I'm going to experiment with increasing my food a little big. My food plan for the next seven days will be:

BREAKFAST: Regular BLE weight-loss plan

LUNCH: 1.5 protein, 1.5 veggies (so, in most cases, 6 oz. meat and 9 oz. veggies)

DINNER: 1.5 protein (so, in most cases, 6 oz. meat)

If Susan Peirce Thompson is right that my public speaking work means I require more food, then an increase like this should result in continued weight loss. I will monitor and see.

Day 11 Report: Fear

I finished my day 11 really wobbly. Like, really wobbly.

And dang it, I always am wobbly right around day 11. The excitement of resuming has worn off. There isn't huge weight loss (yet) to keep me motivated. And the hunger. Oh my Lord, the hunger!

Hunger has been a massive issue for me throughout my Bright Line Eating journey. I've written about it before. And while part of me things I should increase my food, another part always responds that increasing my food is likely to stop my weight loss, which has happened in the past.

Is it the hunger, though? Or is it more the fear of hunger? Rationally, I know that hunger is not an emergency. I know another meal is coming soon.

But when the wave of hunger hits, especially if it's 2, 3, 4 hours before the next meal, I start to panic. My anxiety rises. My stomach clenches. I brace myself for hours of pain and suffering. If I'm in a grocery store, I'm likely to grab for the first thing available. Stop. That. Hunger.

I am terrified of hunger.

So I wonder if what is bothering me is not so much the hunger as it is the fear of the hunger.

The fear that I won't be able to handle it. That it will overwhelm me and carry me down. The fear that letting go of my old eating habits will mean something bad is going to happen.

It's a minor distinction probably. But still an important one.

Plan for today: Get curious about my hunger. When the feelings arise, see if I can distinguish between actual hunger and my fear of that hunger. Is it possible to separate them? And do a reality check.

Worth a try, for sure.

SeptemBLE Day 10 (Not Day 9)

Ok, true confessions. I bobbled a bit on Sunday.

And I didn't even hesitate. I knew I was feeling weak. Knew there were potato chips in the pantry. Deliberately went to the pantry, got them out and ate them. A lot of them.

There's no real question why. My husband and I adopted two pugs this weekend. Due to his prior commitments, my husband couldn't make the 4.5-hour drive with me to get them. The rescue group was lovely, but very uncommunicative so I had little idea what was going on and had to just go with the flow. The pugs are lovely little guys, but they were quite understandably stressed out and anxious. They woke up every 2-3 hours their first night.

So on Sunday I was tired, stressed out, and weak. Food helped, unfortunately.

But here's the really critical thing. I am not going to go back and start counting again on Day One.

I don't "reset" anymore every time I have a wobble. Because if I did, it would imply I'm back to Day One of doing Bright Line Eating (BLE). And I'm not.

Every single day of this journey I've learned something. For this particular break, I learned to pay close attention to my sleep patterns, which are major signals of an upcoming relapse.

What could I have done differently?

1) Insisted we work it out so that both hubby and I could travel to get the pups

2) Insisted, obnoxiously if necessary, on being informed of the plans so I wouldn't get anxiety over the not knowing

3) Trusted the history of the dogs' crate-training to know they'd be happier sleeping in their crate

4) Mentally prepared myself for the reality that moving to a new home is stressful for dogs. Logically, I knew this but I didn't really acknowledge it and brace myself for it.

These things are important boundary-setters. And boundaries are soooo important to my food journey.

So yesterday, September 10 was my TENTH day of the current resume. I'm not resetting to zero because I'm not at zero. Every day is a step in the right direction.

And as a follow-up, yesterday was a squeaky-clean awesomely bright BLE day.

Day Seven: Tune Out the Food Chatter

I spent four and a half hours in the car yesterday, driving to a big city to pick up the new dogs my husband and I are adopting. My husband has a meeting he cannot miss, so I made the drive myself.

I love long drives because they provide lots of time to delve into a good book. For me, I decided to re-listen to a book called Brain Over Binge by Kathryn Hansen (you can find a link to the book below). It’s one I’ve read before, not because I suffered from Binge Eating Disorder, but because I thought intuitive eating was the way to go for me.

At the time, it didn’t resonate much. Her journey, which she describes in poignant, honest detail, involves bouts with binging. But I wasn’t a binger. I didn’t tend to eat huge quantities of food at a time.

My problem wasn’t how to stop bingeing, it was how to stop compulsively overeating. So I didn’t know how to implement her ideas. What do I stop? I wasn’t getting accurate information from my body about what and how much to eat. I wasn’t sure what to do with her approach. book went onto the bookshelf.

This time, though, wow. What a difference. Now that I’ve got two years of trying to do Bright Line Eating, and I know what I need to stop doing (stop eating sugar and flour and stop eating between meals), this book suddenly clicked.

She advocates the idea that in an addiction, the ancient, reptile brain (the part that controls basic bodily functions like eating) comes to see the addictive behavior as a necessary life function. When an urge hits, it’s because the body believes it has to do that thing right now or it will die.

The prefrontal cortex, however, is the part of the brain that represents your truer self. It’s the brain that knows that binging (or smoking or drinking alcohol or whatever) is not right for you. It’s the part of you that wants to recover from your addictive brain.

The reptile brain has a critical role to play in your life because it produces life-sustaining urges. If it’s sending out an urge to breathe, that’s great. But when it thinks binging (or smoking or drinking) is vital and sends out that urge to binge (or drink or smoke or whatever), that’s false information. It’s just neurological junk. Your reptile brain doesn’t know the difference. It just thinks it needs that hit as vitally as it needs a breath of oxygen.

In Brain Over Binge she learned to separate herself from the false urges. When an urge to binge arose, she just told herself it was brain junk that should be ignored.

That is what hit me so powerfully. Maybe every urge I get to eat off my BLE plan is just false information my brain is sending me. Maybe the key to staying on plan is to start ignoring those urges.

Not everything in this book fits me. She decided not to eliminate certain food groups, but I find the idea of abstaining from sugar and flour compelling. And she did not feel emotional pressures tended to trigger her binges, but in my case they really do.

Still, I’m going to try this approach, setting aside what doens’t work for me.

Every time I get an urge to have a snack between meals, to eat a little bit extra than what I planned for, to eat some crackers or bread or other flour-based food, I’m going to tell myself:

“This isn’t my real brain. This is just brain junk my animal brain is sending me. I don’t need to pay attention to it. I can just observe it and let it go.”

This is fundamentally different from what I’ve been doing for two years. My usual approach when an urge hits is to hang on for dear life. I try to white knuckle through it. I try to distract myself from the food thoughts, wait 10 minutes for the urge to subside.

Those never work. The food thoughts don’t go away. And no wonder! My reptile brain thinks it needs its food hit to survive.

But viewing urges as false junk my brain is sending me, well that means I don’t need to fight it. I just need to notice it as junk info. And let it go.

This approach now seems both transformative and exciting. So I’m going to try it for the next few days.

If you’re interested in the book, you can see more information about it here: http://a.co/d/euz34Tv

Day Six: Remove the Temptation

I’m
 remembering how fragile the early days of a resume on my food plan is.

The voice in my head (the one that thinks I need to eat sugar and flour the way I need oxygen) is really really LOUD. It’s such a struggle to remind myself that that voice is not the real me. That’s just my addictive brain, thinking it’s doing what’s best for me.

I’m realizing that in these early days, the most important thing I can do is to remove temptation. And by “remove temptation,” I don’t mean just get things with sugar and flour out of the house. Although that’s important. My poor husband has no goodies for himself because I’ve been relentless in getting rid of them.

What I mean by “remove temptation” is to be ruthless. When it’s early and you’re fragile, you need to smooth the way before yourself. That means, yes, get rid of sugar and flour in the house. It also means:

— Don’t go out to restaurants for meals. Not forever, but for sure for now. Eating in restaurants takes extra work and has extra risks. There will be plenty of time to eat in restaurants when your plan is more solid.

— If at all possible, don’t go to events where food is the main focus. Your book club’s Like Water for Chocolate tasting event? That would be a no. But also your family’s trip to the baseball game, if baseball games used to be all about the food for you. Or whatever. Of course, some events you can’t skip, so for those make a really strong plan, commit to it, and leave early if you need to.

— Don’t make treats for your daughter’s soccer team meet or your nephew’s birthday. Ask someone else to pick up the dessert.

— Don’t read novels that are heavily food-focused

— Don’t decide to update your family cookbook, the one with your grandmother’s recipes for holiday treats. (Guilty).

For some unbeknownst reason, I decided that this week would be the perfect week to start typing recipes up for a revision to my family’s book of favorite recipes. It hasn’t been updated in 18 years, and two of my nieces just moved into places of their own, so the time is right. Doing it now (early September) means it’ll be done in time to be printed for Christmas.

But man, do recipes stir up emotions! I spent two hours yesterday typing up recipes for Granny’s Kolacky and my mother’s famous Thanksgiving turkey and my aunt’s wonderful lemon bars.

Not only did it steep me in happy memories of these wonderful women, who I miss so much. It also filled me with memories of these wonderful foods, prepared with such love and served at happy occasions. It reminded me of how I started using food to express love.

So no, not a good decision. But a good reminder that when you’re early in the game, you need to be vigilant about removing any and all temptation. No more cookbook updating for me until I’ve got a bit more momentum on this journey.

Day five: underwhelm, underwhelm, underwhelm

Day five of my current resume completed. All four of my bright lines are shiny and bright.

And you know why? Because I had a day with no stress. Zero. Everything went easy-peasy. No bad traffic. No work stress. No phone calls or emails that got me riled up.

The house is clean. I wasn’t waiting anxiously for news about anything. It was just ... easy.

And I’m always surprised what a huge impact that has on my eating behavior. In these first early days of getting back on track, this is exactly what I need. To keep the stress levels low. Keep things easy. Don’t take on unnecessary issues. Do the minimum.

Ok, I know, that isn’t always possible. You can’t just stop you life. But you can cut back on anything inessential.

Belle Robertson of tiredofthinkingaboutdrinking.com puts it this way: “Strive for underwhelm.” She recommends that people aiming for alcohol sobriety do the minimum necessary. Don’t just enough at work so you don’t get fired. Eliminate invitations out. Order take-out for dinner. Go to bed at 7:30 if you need to. Strive for underwhelm.

The same applies to food recovery too. Treat yourself as if you are recovering from a really awful bout of the flu. Don’t say yes to invitations out unless you really, really have to. Eat at home as much as you can; restaurants can be too overwhelmingly tempting.

Pamper yourself with whatever you’ve got that’s healthy: hot baths, going to be really early, that special herbal tea you love.

Avoid overwhelm in whatever way you can. These early days of squeaky-clean lines are precious and deserve some pampering

My day 4: There will always be good days

Success! Got through Day Four of my current resume with bright lines intact.

But it feels like a cheat. I mean, nothing stressful happened. The opposite in fact — we got great news that we were indeed chosen to adopt two little black pugs into our family, which has been sadly dogless since our beloved Katie passed away in March.

Given that day 3 was stressful and I had huge cravings, I was paying close attention to what happened on this day.

And, not surprisingly, the answer was: nothing. No huge cravings, no hunger, no chattering brain reminding me it wanted to eat.

I spent most of the night sitting there in awe that I wasn’t overwhelmed with food thoughts.

If I’d ever thought that my brain controlled a lot of my food obsessions, that right there told me a lot.

I ate my dinner of homemade spaghetti sauce on top of zucchini noodles and got a good night’s sleep.

If only every day were this easy!