The Anatomy of My Binge
Disclaimer: This is a long and detailed post that I did for me just to get things out of my head.
Ok, so I’m an analytical person and since joining the forum have spent some time trying to figure out exactly why I binge. I am not a lot closer to that answer but in the process I have developed a whole flow chart of behaviors (told you I was analytical) that lead me to a binge. They’ve been swimming in my head a while and I need to get them out, so here goes.
1. A normal day. I’ll think about foods that I like or have a “craving” for but can easily resist, move on, think other thoughts. Basically have a normal day.
2. The Obsession Begins. I start thinking about food a lot more and at odd times. It seems to invade my thoughts when I’m thinking about something totally unrelated. Also the food thoughts are a lot more focused on either one food or a specific flavor.
At this point one of 3 things happens.
A. Deny. I pull out my reserves of will power and say no to myself.
B. Binge. I head to the store, start baking, whatever, with the full intention of eating it all.
C. Moderation. This is a new one for me. When I get to step 2 I go ahead and give in a little bit, making sure I record whatever food it was and it fits into my plan for the day.
3. The Hover Phase. This usually happens if I deny myself. I will hover around all the places that store food in my house. I’ll open the refrigerator and look, then the pantry and look. I’ll go do something else and before I know it I’m back in the kitchen hovering again.
a. Deny
b. Binge
c. Moderation
What I’ve learned so far is that if I obsess-deny-hover-deny I will eventually binge. It make take a day, it may be 3 or 4, but it will happen. I never seem to get back to 1 if I follow that path. Even if I hold out a couple of days I’m miserable during those days because of the internal struggle going on.
If I give into a full binge after the obsession phase it can go either way. I can go back to 1. and be fine a week or more, or just a day or two later I’m back at the obsession phase. What’s weird is if I have a binge after the Hover phase I seem to bounce back to normal and stay there longer then if I gave in after just the Obsession phase.
The moderation is where I’m experimenting at the moment. What I’ve learned so far is that it seems like if I attack the Obsession phase right away with something small, I’m usually ok. The few times I’ve tried to eat in moderation after Hovering, it didn’t really seem to help, kept hovering.
Even after writing all of that out, all it really has told me is how to minimize the damage. And maybe this has been my mistake up to this point. I have been focusing on the behavior from the obsession point on. What I really need to look into is how do I go from 1. to 2. Why start obsessing on a food? Is it emotional, stress, what I ate for dinner the night before??? I think the plan moving forward is anytime I recognize that I’m starting to obsess, take a few minutes to write down what has been going on the past 24 hours.
Wow – that was a lot of stuff rambling around in my head. I’m glad to get it out. Thanks for listening.
|
