The last couple weeks have been challenging for me. Halloween is my favorite holiday and I embraced it thoroughly. I threw a party the weekend before, and though the dinner I cooked was healthy, I also made monster cupcakes and chocolate demon mice for dessert. I made cocktails. It was no big deal -- I had some of everything, but didn't feel out of control. And then there were left-over cupcakes and chocolate mice in my house for a week. I ate a cupcake every night. Still not a big deal, but I wouldn't have eaten a cupcake every night if they hadn't been there. I also neglected to go grocery shopping that week because I'd shopped for the party and had left-over real food, too. But that didn't last and I ended up buying dinner every night instead of cooking. Again, not a disaster, but several less healthy choices than I would normally have made. Halloween day came and there was candy at work. I ate a lot of candy at work. And eating candy somehow brought back old feelings of needing to eat as much as I could while no one was watching, so I ate plenty of real food, too. Then I went to someone else's dinner party and ate more candy. On Saturday, I had to work and ate more candy.
When I went to my Weight Watchers meeting on Monday, I had gained two pounds.
None of that, in and of itself, really bothers me. I feel like it's important to be able to embrace Halloween, to eat crap if it makes me happy, and to not feel guilty about it even if it doesn't make me happy. I've been losing weight steadily for seven months, so gaining two pounds one week doesn't really matter.
What scares me is that while I'm feeling that way, I don't trust that I'll get this back. This has been easy, losing weight. I'm enjoying myself, and I have no interest in getting to a place where I start worrying and feeling guilty and telling myself not to eat things I want to eat. That mindset fucks me up. I truly believe that the most valuable thing I'm doing right now is not worrying.
But it only works if I keep wanting to eat spinach and chickpea curry and go running at 6:00 every morning. If I start wanting to sit in front of the TV and eat cupcakes, it's all over. Right now I feel like I have it back. I made that curry over the weekend, as well as a vegetarian chili, cucumber salad, and roasted root vegetables. The idea was to distract myself with an abundance of yummy healthy food, and it worked. This week has been better. But it feels tenuous. I fear that I'll feel out of control again and not bounce back so quickly. I couldn't even write about it while I was wanting to eat candy constantly -- it felt like the struggle would be real if I named it, so I name it now in the past tense because that's safer.
I'm entering a place I haven't been before -- a longer period of successful weight loss, a smaller clothing size, and it feel scary and like it will be easy to lose.
2 comments:
So where are you now? Are you back in the right emotional space?
Thank you for asking, Kat. I'm still doing well -- was already in a better place when I posted (as I said, I was afraid to write about it when I wasn't) and have managed to stay here. I still like working out. I still like cucumber salad. And I can still eat too much greasy Chinese food when I feel like it and go back to eating well afterward. I'm beginning to trust that this will stick.
Post a Comment