Failure

Weigh in: 175.5

I last posted on September 29th. It's October 10th, 12 days later. At that time I weighed 172.2. In 12 days I regained the weight *and more*. I had to travel for business, and I was incredibly busy and stressed because my manager was there with me. I was also in a different time zone, so I didn't sleep much and I was jetlagged. Stress, lack of sleep and unhealthy foods everywhere - these are like the nuclear bomb of all triggers. I did well for about 2 days of the trip, then it all went to hell. I didn't make a food plan ahead of time because I thought that since I was doing great, I'd just continue to do great. Obviously.

The other mistake I made was in not attending OA phone meetings. You see, once I really got the hang of "abstinence", as it is called in the program (which means for me, not binge-eating and eating in a way that nourishes me), I thought I could do it myself.

Then, once I lost control, I thought "I am a failure. I've done this forever. It's so overwhelming. I'll never be able to stop doing this." So I just didn't stop. For days.

Oh, what a miserable feeling. Self-loathing is the worst. It led to me eating an entire mini-pizza last night in addition to a candy bar AND a half quart of ice cream. Obviously I was full -- I was over-full, of course, but I had to reach that bloated, numb feeling in order to satisfy... to satisfy something. I dno't know what. The disease, I guess. I knew exactly what I was doing, but it was like I was having an out of body experience. I just moved my brain to a different plain and ignored the truth of what I was doing completely.

I thought about this blog, and how it would stay up on the internets forever with only a handful of hopeful posts before the author just dropped out of sight. I thought about how someone might come across it - someone who is one of our tribe of over eaters and binge-eaters - and know exactly what happened to me.

For some reason - utter desperation, probably - I'm back in the ring today. I cried for a long time this morning. I called into an OA meeting and even had the guts to share my failure. I went for a long walk. I still feel close to crying. I slipped on my promise to my body and self. I hurt myself, I treated my own body like nothing. I fed it crap and awfulness for days. I put that crap inside of me, just as I was learning to treat myself with love, gentleness and respect. I'm sorry, body. I'm sorry.

Becoming un-secretive about this subject is very new to me. I'm starting to tell my husband little bits of this. He's a very pragmatic person, so I'm unsure how he will react to the concept of overeating and binge eating as a type of disease. But it must be. I feel that it must be, because I can do - and have done - many difficult, awesome and impressive things in my life because I worked very, very hard to achieve them.

But this... this is by far one of the hardest. I don't think I can do it alone. I don't even know if I can do it. I'll just do what they say in the meetings and keep coming.