Bingeing

I think I have talked before about my mentality and the thoughts that go on in my head around eating. Whenever I am off whatever eating plan I have been on, my mind encourages me to eat up because I might just be restricted the following day, so I need to eat as much of whatever I can now, while the restrictions aren’t there.

My friend is always talking to herself, telling herself that she doesn’t need those potato chips or cake or whatever it is that is tempting her, whereas I am the opposite, telling myself to eat them up now, today, because tomorrow I mightn’t be able to have them.

What kind of logic is that? And how much damage does that one binge do? I keep saying to myself, that I must do some work around this mindset, yet I still don’t think I have ever sat down and done this.

As I have written previously, I have been on keto since the end of March. After getting sick, I decided to eat whatever I felt like, such was the nausea. All was good initially as I had no craving for my sweet foods. That was until yesterday.

My bad eating started with a heap of crackers and dip before yesterday’s performance at Willow’s school. I was hungry and the tastes of hummus and basil pesto were just what the taste buds yearned for. We all came back to Genevieve’s after the production, for lunch. She had prepared a beautiful roast chicken and vegetables followed by a cake dessert and ice cream. I was already full from the earlier munchings, but tucked in anyway. I left her house feeling extremely full.

I needed to get my car registration so stopped in at the post shop on the way home. The shop doubles as a grocery store. This is where my demise began. I found the biscuit department and pulled out a packet of squiggles. I didn’t have a shred of hunger on me but my mind was playing its tricks. These are your favourite biscuits. You won’t be able to have them tomorrow because you’ll be back on keto. You know how much you love them. Go on buy them, you only have to have one. That is all, just to remember what they taste like. And so I did, along with a chocolate bar sitting at the counter on special for a dollar.

Remember, I was already full and then I had that just one biscuit. Then the second and the third. That was after eating the chocolate bar, that Stephen refused to eat more than a square of. And so, the bingeing continued, until every one of those biscuits was gone. I dragged myself to bed, full of the nausea I had been suffering from while I was sick, accompanied by a nasty dose of heartburn.

Today, I feel terrible. I am hardly able to stand up and I am regretting yesterday’s, all too familiar, eating rampage. The coughing and the razor blades have returned to my chest. I don’t feel well at all.

The biggest thing of all of this is that while I was sick, I lost a couple of kilos. And yet eating like this will ensure their return. Each time I have dieted in my life and lost weight, it is not long before that all returns and some. I know I am not alone in this phenomenon. Surely the solution is out there. Meanwhile, all there is left to do today is to wallow in my self-pity and affirm never to do that again…as I have already done hundreds of times in my life.