Eating Stealthy

Day 14
Mood: 5/10, and I’m being generous here.

This stinks.

I want to say that WW stinks, and my food addiction stinks and the unmentionable weirdness in my life stinks. But those are all by-products. What really stinks is my discipline. My discipline and my focus, both of which have gone hurling out the window and down to the curb, crushed by the extra weight I have carried since Christmas.

After last Saturday’s weigh-in at 152.75, I was inexplicably up to 155.50 on Monday, even though Sat & Sun were virtuously clean, food-wise. I was down to 154 by Tuesday, but then when Wednesday hit and I was still above the 153 fat mark, I lost my cool, and I never recovered. This morning, I’m back at 156, and there’s not a PMS day in sight for over a week.

I don’t think I can officially call it Holiday Weight, especially since I don’t celebrate Christmas in any real way (read: with food). Howard and I ate through December pretty much the way we always do; lots of vegetables, lean protein, low-fat popcorn at night. In any case, even if I had over-canape’d myself at the buffet, that was four months ago. I’ve been hiding behind my excuses, the weather, and long sweaters for 16 weeks. I have even sunk into that Nastyland-rationalization. Maybe I’m not meant to be 147 pounds. Maybe I’m stuck here in the low (MID!) 150s for good.

Well, sure I’m stuck here: stuck until my eating continues out of control for another month and I find myself dancing with the high 150s. How much longer until I can’t wear my jeans or I’m forced to buy new clothes because my wardrobe is Too Snug For Work?

I wish that my weakness lay in some common WW territory: I have to cook for a skinny husband who won’t eat ‘diet food’. Or that I traveled for work, and I can’t get good food on the road. Or I’ve been run over by a truck and my wheelchair doesn’t fit into the StairMaster. No, my malady is mine alone. My disease lurks in the trenches of my subconscious, down in the dino-brain between the awe of money and the fear of death.

I eat bad things when I’m alone.

I do this, even when I’m not hungry, even when I’m already sporting seam marks from my clothes, and even when I don’t like what I’m eating. I’m like a drunk in a hotel room with an complimentary mini-bar. If there’s free food, I’ll eat it.

Somewhere, ‘back there’, I was hungry all the time. Or maybe not hungry, but not able to eat when I wanted to. Or maybe ate whenever I needed it, but never allowed to indulge. I’m guessing here, because I honestly don’t know. We had nothing growing up. Everything was measured, and we didn’t eat leftovers because there never were any. Bologna sandwiches were a common dinner, and soup was served year round. But I can’t reasonably blame No Snacks In The House on my dysfunction. Anyway, I didn’t even know that was unusual until someone in my Sunday School class told a story about a ‘poor needy’ family who had sandwiches for dinner, and I realized that she could have been talking about me.

I do remember times growing up that I was really uncomfortably underfed, but most of that was after I moved away from home. Once I had $6 to last me 3 weeks until I got my first paycheck of the summer. I bought Ramen noodles at ten-for-a-dollar, broke each package in half and ate one ‘piece’ for breakfast and one for dinner. I skipped lunch (couldn’t afford it) and trolled the break rooms in the afternoons for post-meeting leftovers. I walked home through some not-so-cool neighborhoods, because I didn’t have the bus fare to get home the ‘luxury’ way.

Another time I had some car problem and it wrecked my budget for the winter. I bought a family-sized bag of instant oatmeal and gigantic box of brown sugar and ate that 2 or 3 times a day for over a month. When my roommate gave me a jar of peanut butter, claiming that she didn’t like ‘the creamy kind’, I nearly wept with joy. I stole a sleeve of saltines from a different roommate and hid the loot in my room, spreading transparent layers of peanut butter over a single cracker every night, to stretch it out. When I ran out of crackers, I pilfered a spoon and fed my habit straight from the jar.

But that’s just Growing Up stuff; learning about money management the hard way. I don’t think I can pin my issues on peanut butter and fake noodles--though I didn’t eat either for many years after that. I think it’s just the mis-wire in my brain, that I don’t ‘know’ where my next meal is coming from, or that it will ever come, and so I’d better down whatever I can slink off with.

It’s the same reason why I haven’t purchased anything of substance for years—if ever. I don’t know when I’m going to lose my job, or get all my money taken away by some mean-spirited former live-in lover, or forget to turn in a tax document and have my bank accounts siphoned off by the IRS (this latter has never happened). When X and I had to buy a second car to get me to work, I paid cash for a used mini-van and then was mean to him for weeks afterwards. We had effectively tripled our income, but I couldn’t rest until every cent was replaced and resting in the savings account.

So okay, if this is who I am, then what do I do? Do I accept this about myself and say good-bye to the 140s forever? But then I can’t explain how I was able to maintain that beautiful position for months. Do I dig into the nethers of my mind, figure out why I’m such a psycho about dollars and donuts, and then work to weed it out of me? I don’t think there’s a shrink out there who could un-truffle that one. I don’t even know what it is; how would she?

Maybe I just put myself into places where I’m never alone, or if I am, there’s no food anywhere. If I have to work late, I schlep to the library. If I’m home first, I walk laps around the house until someone comes home. I make the house ingredients-only, so if I want to pad the octopus, I have to make something. That ought to fix it: I’m as lazy as I am stealth when it comes to food. If it ain’t made, don’t eat it. That’s me. If I even have to sprinkle fat-free cheese into a wrap, I’ll blow it off. Too much trouble.

Too much pain. Today I met a friend for lunch. I hadn’t seen him in years, and the last time we were together, I was at my fully fatted 250+. Yet I nearly cancelled because I’m carrying 9 extra pounds, I’m in my size 7 juniors , and I look bigger.

He would never have known-from his perspective, I’m down 90 pounds and 11 sizes. But I came close to collapse, worrying about what he’d say when he saw my octopus hanging over my jeans. Never mind that he has a new baby and that he called me ‘slim’ when he saw me. I knew I was different, even if he didn’t. I knew it, I did this to myself, and that has made all the difference.

This crap-tacular attitude won’t help, I know. I’ll fix it. I just have to work it out. And work out. And give up my alone time, because clearly that is a trigger. Guess it’s time to find the ‘safety’ and snap it back on.

A the W(TF?)