This week was a difficult one. There were no particularly challenging moments, nothing out of the ordinary, but nevertheless, I felt myself sliding back into my old eating habits, and that concerns me.
That old unconsciousness is creeping back. One way it manifests itself is through not writing down what I eat. If I don't write it down, I forget I ate it. Then later in the day, I don't remember that I've already eaten more than I should that day so I go ahead and eat something else I shouldn't. Writing it down makes it conscious, and that's crucial.
For instance, I might pass by a coworker's candy dish and grab a piece of candy, go back to my cubicle, then pop it in my mouth while I'm working. It's gone quickly, along with my memory of eating it. Eating only at a designated spot (not my computer, by the way) and then writing down what I ate are two techniques designed to keep that kind of unconscious eating from happening. Writing down what I'm going to eat is also a way to prevent rogue eating episodes. I haven't been doing that one, but I'm just starting to see the value of it.
Another sign of unconsciousness is not measuring ("eyeballing"), or allowing measurement creep. If I pretend I measured it or that I measured it correctly, I can pretend I ate the right amount when I really didn't. It's a kind of magical thinking.
And then there's the problem of eating quickly and unthinkingly, putting away what's on my plate until it's gone and I'm uncomfortably full and I don't know how I got that way. (See above: measurement magic.) If I'm paying attention, I will stop eating when I'm full, even if I measured correctly. Reading can be a distractor, as can conversing sometimes.
Lest I forget, there's the compulsive "cleaning up" behavior--eating the bits left over in the pan or the serving dish that somehow don't count because they're left over. Magical thinking again.
All of this unconscious behavior allows the compulsive eater in me to take control of my thinking mind and--if not stopped--will put me right back where I was a year ago.
So, what to do? Go back to the basics, I suppose. I want to eat like a thin person, but that's not what I'm doing. I'm eating like a fat person, someone who is inordinately fond of . . . I was going to say food, but that's not it, really. It seems the food is less important than something else, something more compelling. Perhaps it's the desire for self indulgence, giving oneself a treat, rewarding oneself or comforting oneself with food. Whatever the reason, the behavior is compulsive, and it's fat-person behavior. A thin person would not eat the way I eat.
Will I ever be able to eat in a thin-person way? Well, I might be able to eat that way, but I will probably never think that way. As I've said before, it seems I'm always going to have to be vigilant in order to stay thin.
So this week, I'm going to try to be more vigilant and remember that my eating self is always looking for a way back in, a way to take the wheel again and drive us back to fat city. But I'm not going to let her!
See you next week, a little ways down the road to being thin.
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