This is something I have just recently learned happens to almost everyone. You get an attack of the blahs. I battled with depression for so many years, I began to think that every day that felt a little off was a return of the black dogs, but now I'm thinking that maybe that's not so. It only took about 6 years of therapy for that big revelation!
Today, I'm a little blah. I've still got a touch of that virus or flu that's going around, yesterday morning I felt sore and achy, and hot. Hot was bad. I never get hot in the winter, particularly on a day when the outdoor temperature was plummeting. So I took some muscle relaxants and lay on the couch for a while. In the afternoon, I felt better, so Fuzz and I did some shopping, and then I fixed a kick-ass chicken curry for supper (with help from Patak's vindaloo curry paste), and actually went to the studio for a couple of hours in the evening to work on my composition issues for my latest painting. Then home for some chai and dark chocolate.
Amazing, but it's been a week now since I vowed to not eat anything after supper but my evening snack (that would be the 33g bar of Lindt 85% dark chocolate), and those crazy evening cravings have been lifted. Why did it work? I think I was really ready, and I also committed, to my sponsor and food buddy, my almost 100 days of abstinence to this goal. In other words, evening nibbling = losing my abstinence from compulsive eating. At present, I am not concerned if I nibble or lick a spoon during the day, because it doesn't seem to be a problem then. It was the night where it was threatening to take me off the deep end into a no-holds-barred binge.
A theme that came up at my Saturday OA meeting was that we forget we have a problem with food at our peril. In fact, many of us would go as far as calling our problem a disease. Many disagree with that concept, but what has happened for me is it keeps me aware of possible pitfalls. It would be nice if I could have a little nibble of this or that in the evening, for a long time I thought I could, but then again, after a couple of bites last week, I felt what was akin to a giant sucking black hole in my stomach wanting me to consume MOOORE! Each extra bite didn't satisfy, it just seemed to strengthen the craving, the scanning of what to eat next. So, I've lost my right to eat like "normal" people. Because I can't, it seems. So I have to come up with alternate strategies.
I was thinking about those strategies this morning considering the experience BF had while visiting Disney World with her family a couple of weeks ago. Saturday night she moaned that she thought her clothes were tighter than before she left for the trip. I wasn't surprised. She had some sort of inclusive meal plan that came with dessert. Hmmm.... seasoned food fighter that I am, I could have seen that one coming. Travelling is hard. The portions of food are usually larger and higher in fat than home prepared meals. I have to plan in advance as to how I'm going to handle it. These days I look for hotel rooms with refrigerators and microwaves so I can fix my own healthy breakfast, and often will brown-bag lunches if possible. In our trip to Las Vegas in December, Fuzz and I actually ended up splitting entrees and salads at more than one meal because there was just too much food.
The irony is, BF's young daughter has multiple food allergies, so she does a lot of advance planning for the girl's food. Unfortunately, she doesn't prepare the same way for her own eating challenges.
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