During my family’s visit last week, I sort of fell out of the habit of updating daily. I felt like I was reporting many of the same things, time after time. I also thought I didn’t need the accountability of writing every day. When I first started my plan, there was powerful motivation not to cheat. I’d tell myself I had to stick with my plan, because if I didn’t, I’d have to ‘fess up on this blog.
But then, a couple of weeks ago, I felt like I’d hit some sort of “sweet spot,” where I’d practically lost all my desires to stray from my plan. My previous and ongoing success seemed like more than enough motivation to stick with things.
Over the last few days, though, that has not been so true. (I guess this is where I have to ‘fess up.)
I wrote about how I simply pigged out on Saturday night, without really caring or even feeling that bad afterward. On Sunday, I regrouped and stuck with my plan. On Monday, my husband had to leave on a trip before sunrise, and since I got up to see him off, I decided that I might as well work out instead of go back to bed (only to have to drag myself up again perhaps an hour later, with the added misery of the total grogginess that comes from dozing off after having gotten up really early). I figured I’d take a nap later in the morning.
So I worked out on my eliptical machine and felt great about it. A couple of hours later, as I walked home from taking the kids to school, I was so inspired by the beautiful spring weather that I decided to put off my nap and go for a walk instead. It seemed like a good idea – like if I made myself even more exhausted, it’d be easier to catch a couple hours of extra sleep in the late morning/early afternoon, before I needed to go fetch the kids again.
So I walked my usual (“usual” from the days when I was really into walking for exercise) 5-mile route, which winds its way all through my neighborhood and then out and around our large subdivision and down to the shopping area a couple of miles away and then back home again. It was actually a pretty good walk, although toward the very end, I thought my legs were about ready to fall off. By the time I reached my house, I felt inexpressibly grateful to be able to sit down again!
My 5-mile brisk walk really did help me to take a refreshing nap. But it also had the effect, in the later afternoon, of making me simply and totally RAVENOUS! By 4:30, I’d already eaten my dinner…which satisfied me for awhile. But then, at about 6 p.m., all I could think about was food.
In my pantry, left over from my parents’ visit, was a big bag of Lay’s potato chips. I never buy chips…and I rarely think about them unless they’re simply there. Unfortunately, there they were, staring right back at me as I peered, starving, into my pantry.
Initially, I tried to walk away. And I had some success at it. But those chips had embedded themselves in my thoughts, and a few minutes later, I obsessively and deliberately yanked open the bag and began wolfing them. I didn’t even bother to put some in a bowl – which is a good habit I learned from my Jenny Craig days, by the way, and one that I try to encourage my kids to see as the norm. I just stood there and shoveled chips into my mouth, eating them so quickly that I hardly even tasted them.
I was eating like the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, crumbs flying everywhere.
The entire time, a part of my mind was telling myself to stop. But then the other part, the starving and rebellious part, simply didn’t care. I guess Crazed Addict Fatgirl hasn’t really been vanquished after all. All I wanted at that moment was to finish the entire bag of chips. Even as I read the nutrition information on the back of the chip bag and saw, with alarm, that even a third of the bag would have been more than 1,000 calories, I still wanted to throw off all restraints and just eat chips until I couldn’t eat any more.
Sigh.
After a couple of minutes, though (and several hundred calories of damage to my diet), I was able to stop. But the whole episode was, quite simply, nuts. Crazed. Bizarre.
Because like I said, I don’t even really like chips that much. I think of them as sort of a “nothing” food, because you can eat them and feel like you’ve really not had anything at all. They’re actually bland and not particularly satisfying.
That chip episode happened on Monday. My ravenous hunger really never abated on Tuesday. Even as I tried to remind myself that that edgy, hungry feeling always accompanied dramatic weight loss, and that I should embrace it (since I knew I’d eaten plenty of calories and nutritionally balanced foods), I did practically a repeat performance with the chips on Tuesday evening.
Yesterday I got myself back in hand once again. But the whole episode with the chips illustrates something bizarre that occurs in my thinking. In the face of (what feels like) extreme hunger, I can still find myself apparently powerless to exert self-control.
I think a practical lesson here is simply to keep things like potato chips out of the house.
But when that’s not possible, I suppose I need to resign myself to the occasional cave-in.
As long as these episodes only happen on very rare occasions, they won’t completely derail my progress. As a matter of fact, I weighed in this morning and found myself at 171.2. That’s the lowest number I’ve seen yet.
But – just as an aside – I really and truly have sympathy for those out there who are truly obese, who have an extreme amount of weight to lose. This thing is, quite simply, HARD. I can see why surgical interventions like gastric bypass or the LAP band make a lot more sense for folks who otherwise would have to work at weight loss for years in order to reach their goal. If I had 100 pounds to lose, I don’t think I could stick with it. I think I’d need the additional help of being rendered physically incapable of stuffing myself with chips. If I’d known that those chips would make me throw up (as is the case for someone who has had the band or the bypass surgery), I would have easily put the bag down. But with no immediate consequences, there was nothing to stop me besides my own (at that moment) weak self-control.
Yes, I have a newfound sympathy for really fat folks. There’s actually nothing, except for my inherited metabolism, that prevents me from being exactly like them. I can feel their pain. And I can understand why for many, surgical intervention is the only path to true and lasting weight loss.
