I Can't Stop Binge Eating

No, I don't do a binge day but that's a good idea. I'll try it out, thank you!

The View from a Plateau

I have a confession. I like chocolate….a lot….especially with peanut butter. In fact, I should probably own stock in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I also like cake, and cookies, and pasta, and bread, and pretty much any kind of junk food you can think of. But peanut butter cups….they are like crack, and I would eat them one right after the other, nonstop, if I could. And, anyone who knows me could probably guess (and rightly so) that I have done that in the past. I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out you don’t get as big as I once was by eating carrot sticks and celery. I am definitely what you would call a junk food junkie.

You could also call me an emotional eater. I feel stressed or down in the dumps about something, and I eat. Then, I feel terrible about what I ate, how much I ate, or both. That just makes me feel worse, and I eat even more. It’s a vicious cycle that I am sure countless others can relate to as well.

Up until October of last year, that was how I coped with things. Since then, I have been working hard to change my views about food. I’ve cleaned up my diet, eating more fruits and vegetables, less processed foods, and more protein. I’ve also added exercise into my lifestyle. Over the course of making all these changes, I’ve lost over 75 pounds, and feel significantly healthier. I have energy that I hadn’t had in years. Recently,Todd and I took a vacation, and we did quite a bit of hiking. It was refreshing to realize that it was him trying to keep up with me, and not the other way around. I can’t remember a time when that was the case - possibly when we first started dating, but definitely not anytime in the last several years.

I used to never quite get it when people would say that long-term weight loss isn’t about a diet, but a lifestyle change. Anyone can follow a recipe or eating plan for a short period of time, and be successful with it, but bouncing from diet to diet every 30-60 days does nothing to help you learn how to make sustainable, long-term changes. In fact, most people who do this end up gaining back what they lost on the latest fad diet, and often times, actually gain back more than they lost. They then decide it is time to move on to the next diet, and the entire cycle repeats itself again. This isn’t new information, though. We all know it happens, but at the same time,we all want the quick fix. The desire for instant gratification that is so rampant in our society today is great for fueling that fire. The hard part is learning to stop thinking of weight loss as dieting, and to start thinking of it as a life long commitment to being a healthier you.

I was doing really well with making that shift in thinking. I was making better food choices, and as a result, I was looking and feeling better. I had more energy. I didn’t feel bloated or sluggish anymore. I actually wanted to get up off the couch and go move around for a change. I had found new recipes that I liked, and had even gotten better at eating that junk food that I love in moderation.

And then it happened. It’s that dreaded thing that anyone who has ever set out to lose weight spends way too much time and energy wondering about, worrying about, and trying to figure out how to avoid. I hit a plateau. In fact, I’m still there. It’s probably been somewhere between 6-8 weeks since I have seen any real weight loss. The scale seems to be stuck, bouncing up and down in the same 5-pound range. Ok, so maybe it isn’t a “true” plateau, because I have been continuing to loose inches. My clothes are still fitting differently, although I haven’t been dropping sizes as quickly either. That being said, I was able to buy a t-shirt a size smaller than what I have been buying lately. Todd keeps telling me that he still sees a difference from week to week, and that I am more toned and muscular than I was the week before. Yes, it’s all progress, and it counts. However, the scale is stuck. And, IT’S. DRIVING. ME. CRAZY!!

So much so, that I have taken a step or two backwards. I’ve gradually gotten to where I am snacking more again, and making not so great food choices. I know the consequences of making those choices, and I know that some of those food choices are triggers that set me up for weight gain. I also started omitting those foods from my food diary. Not only did I know they were bad choices, I didn’t want to see the red numbers in my food diary when I went over my allotted calories for the day. I rationalized what I was doing by telling myself that since I was working out every day, it didn’t really matter that I was eating more calories than I was allotted for the day. That train of thought quickly led to me feeling as if I needed to do more when I worked out, so that I would still get a benefit from doing so. The problem with that was two-fold. First, since I didn’t know how much I was really eating, I had no idea if I was actually burning more calories than I was eating in a given day. Secondly, I was approaching a point where I wasn’t giving my body enough time to recover after working out each day. Between the food I was choosing, and the exercising, I was feeling tired all the time again. I just felt run down, and needed to do something about it.

It took me a while to get there, but I finally realized the problem wasn’t what I was doing, although it may certainly look as if that is the issue. The problem was how I was thinking about things. Somewhere along the way, I had started looking at those foods I had been eating in moderation as something that I shouldn’t have at all. I convinced myself that if I had them, I wouldn’t be able to just eat alittle bit, but that I was going to be out of control. I just knew, instead of eating two cookies, I was going to eat the entire package. Food was becoming the enemy, and that isn’t a good way to look at it, whether you are trying to lose weight or not. Once I realized this, I knew I needed to do something about it. I had to find a way to change my way of thinking.

I wish I could say all it took was realizing that, and suddenly I was back on track again. Not so much. All those toxic thoughts were teetering on the edge of becoming self-fulfilling. After lots of praying and self-evaluation, I came up with a plan. I gave myself a set date for that plan to begin, and then I took a few days to get my head straight. I just had to get past the point I was stuck at in my head, so I decided to not worry about counting calories and accurately logging food for a few days. I knew that meant a gain on the scale. I also knew it would give me a chance to clear my head. I ate birthday cake, and ice cream, and candy bars, and bread. I knew I was going to gain some weight back, but I just had to get out of my head. As a result, I did gain a little bit of weight back, but I was also able to prove to myself that I could control portions of those foods, despite what I had been thinking lately. I also got a big old reminder in how junk in= junk out. I’ve been feeling extra tired, sluggish, and bloated the last few days. Yes, all that junk food tasted good at the time, but the miserable feelings afterwards have not been worth it. I know that after getting back on track, I will feel better in a few days, and I can’t wait. No, the junkfood didn’t kill me, but it didn’t do anything positive for me either. Just one more lesson to remind me that food really isn’t the enemy.

People like to compare losing weight to running a race. We’ve heard all the clichés about putting one foot in front of the other, how slow and steady wins the race, and every journey begins with the first step. Maybe that works for some people, but I have decided losing weight is more like crossing a mountain range. There are lots of ups and downs, and the journey may even turn out to be longer than you anticipated – all those ups and downs can make it difficult to accurately judge distance. The views along the way though, can be breath taking. Most of the time, you reach the top of the mountain, and you head right back down. Other times, you reach the top of the mountain, and find a large, flat meadow as far as you can see – a plateau. And maybe that is when those race analogies come into play, because you definitely need to just hunker down and continue to put one foot in front of the other. It can be slow going, but there is still progress being made. It’s just when you decide to take a break, sit down, and eat a box of Twinkies while walking across that meadow that it becomes a problem. After all, no matter how beautiful the views may be from that plateau, you will never get to see the views from the next mountain if you don’t cross it.