Bit miserable

Yesterday I binged. I have a stressful job (I'm a children's social worker) and I ended up so busy I didn't eat for about 7 hours, so I was really hungry after work. I ended up in the McDonald's drive thru and had 3 chicken selects (3 pcs fried chicken basically) and some mozzarella dippers... THEN for some reason a cheese and onion slice from the garage across the road. Wtf?

Once my partner left (for his very healthy exercise) I ordered garlic pizza bread and macaroni cheese and chocolate cookie dough from pizza hut. And ate it all. I did track (but then deleted) and the binge as a total came to about 2500 kcal! I didn't even really want it all and I felt horrible during and after eating it... but I ate it.... I felt so pathetic putting the boxes in the bottom of the wheelie bin so my boyfriend wouldn't see, and I hate myself today.

i ate an entire bag of honey mustard pretzel pieces today (~1700 for the whole thing) and i don't even have the excuse of having a stressful job. i did it because honey mustard pretzel pieces are delicious and i haven't binged in about six months. no regrets. i diligently logged it in, got my array of sad red numbers, saw that it didn't even nudge me the slightest bit off course, chalked it up to a delectable but mostly terrible idea (wow i physically felt like crap by the end of it, MY JAWS HURT) and now it's back to business as usual. it happened, and in the future i will also probably cram more stuff in my mouth, because i literally can't think of a single person who doesn't do this on occasion. i watched a bodybuilder friend eat an entire 54oz bag of skittles in a day. (that is 2400 CALORIES WORTH OF RAINBOW GOODNESS.) my sister, who is aggressively thin and normally very on top of what goes into her body, has been known to slam down an entire large pizza on herself in one sitting. it happens! it's food, and food kicks *kitten*. on we go.

you have a couple sticking points, so walk with me here:

you're equating food with shame and embarrassment and self-loathing. you're making judgments about yourself based on what you put into your body. food itself isn't inherently bad or good. food has no innate moral rudders. it's just food. it's there. you eat it. the judgments, then, come from external and internal influences. the external: a world that hates fat, and hates anything that might lead to fat. if a thin person eats mcdonald's and pizza hut in one day, nobody bats an eye. it's normal. it's food. but if you aren't thin, then WHOA, WATCH OUT; suddenly you get slammed from all directions about all the millions of terrible character traits you must possess simply because you aren't what the overculture says you should be.

internal judgments are an aggregation of external judgments. look at the toddler: the toddler doesn't feel like the food they stuff into their mouth-holes with their stubby little hands is a moral statement about their character. dogs and cats don't flip their lids if they go over their daily caloric allotment. it's food! but you, as an adult, feel ashamed--you deleted it out of your log out of logging it, you say you felt "pathetic" hiding the boxes because you're scared of someone you love and admire making negative judgments about you based on what you eat.

your relationship with food is your own business. sometimes you have a stressful day and you're hungry and you eat a lot of food. what does that say about you as a person? (spoiler: if you answered anything but "nothing", you're incorrect! the food you eat on a stressful day says nothing about you as a person, because it's just food.) let food be a truly neutral entity in your life, and let yourself be open and honest about your food. claim it. yeah, you ate 2500 calories of stuff. get it up on your log, see those red numbers, and set it in stone. record it. say, "yeah, i did that and it sucked, but that won't happen every day." don't hide your food boxes because you're ashamed and you're afraid of people you love judging you. leave them in the open. if they say anything negative, SUPLEX THEM THROUGH A CAR WINDSHIELD. it's none of their business what you put into your body at any point, ever, period, end of story, and you don't have to put up with that crap. if they take you aside and say "honey, we gotta talk about that pizza hut box," tell them to get out before you turn into an iron juggernaut of rage. this is your body and your journey. nobody else gets to make commentary.

you know what your goals are, and you know how to get there. that's all you need. dips in the road are just that. if you turn it into something bigger, if you make it about character judgments, shame, and self-loathing--if you're only good when you're doing it right and you're bad if you aren't, if being thin is the only way you can be good and anything that isn't conducive to thinness is bad and you are bad for indulging it--then you aren't developing a healthy relationship with your body and the food you put in it. you need to be able to love yourself even when you have mcdonald's grumbling somewhere in your intestinal cavity. you have to be able to say to yourself, "yo gurl, even mozzarella sticks swimming in your corrosive body acids can't stop me from being fond of you." the more you let external expectations and judgments rule you, the more of a whirlwind you're going to create for yourself when it comes to food.

and i think we both know you don't deserve to be hated for eating some really delicious stuff. if you saw someone in a restaurant eating something hella bad for them, would you walk over to them and say "YOU'RE FAT AND LOATHESOME AND DON'T DESERVE TO BE LOVED"? probably not! they'd probably ask you to leave and maybe call the cops on you. society doesn't tolerate that kind of aggressive behavior between two separate parties. so why would you tolerate that kind of behavior from yourself -to- yourself? it's just food!