One Day at a Time

I have a feeling I’m like a lot of people out there. Every new year… and birthday… and vacation booking… I swear up and down that this will be the time I eat healthy and make a true lifestyle change. I feel like I’ve tried it all. I’ve counted calories, points, and carbs. I’ve turned to yoga, marathon training, dance classes. It always seems to go great for a while. So great, as a matter of fact, that I start proselytizing the method of the moment to whoever will listen. I’ve been known to say things like ‘now THIS actually works! Everyone should do this. If it works for me it can work for anybody.’

Yet time and time again, I fall off of the proverbial wagon. This happens because one of two things inevitably occur:

1. I reach my goal! I’m so damned proud, I celebrate with something that I’ve been depriving myself of. Usually a double western bacon cheeseburger and a quart of peanut butter cookie dough ice cream.
2. I start gung ho with an incredibly restrictive cold turkey plan. Without fail it’s such a huge transition that by day three I realize there is no way I can possibly succeed. I prove that success is impossible by classically sabotaging the new healthy me with a double western bacon cheeseburger and a quart of peanut butter cookie dough ice cream.
   

I’ll casually mention this success-fail routine to my friends, and they say things like ‘Everybody does that, it doesn’t sound like a problem to me’.

And that’s why I came to this blog- it feels like a problem.

When I fall off the wagon, it’s in family size servings. I have been known to eat an entire pot of spaghetti, or three bowls of cereal and a half of a watermelon. I’ve eaten a tray of brownies, washed it down with a 2 liter of soda. When I’ve been home alone, I’ve eaten until it hurt. I’ve had food hangovers. Weekends are the hardest where I don’t have the distraction of work and being around my colleagues to keep me self-controlled.

I had such an episode this last weekend.

I want to give it another try, and hopefully this time will stick. I’m going to try and take it slow. I’m not going to follow a fad. I’m not going to torture myself as if I’m the only one that has ever felt this way or had this type of struggle.

Sometimes it’s hard to get any sort of support for what I feel is disordered eating. Because I’m not starving myself or forcing myself to vomit, it doesn’t seem to be classified as a ‘cry for help’. Also, because I’m not obese, I think my community underestimates the destructive consequences of my actions.

I’ve set my goal this week: Eliminating Liquid Calories. I drink soda if it’s around me even though I don’t like it very much, and I’m a self-described starbucks-aholic. If I can stick to iced tea with Splenda or straight water for a week, I think it will be a good step in the right direction.