How many years of my life is the junk food worth?

I've been asking myself this a lot lately. . . every time I am tempted to allow myself a junk food binge.

I'm not talking a cookie here and there. I'm talking half a dozen or more cookies. Or whatever.

Most of the time I eat healthy. I have NEVER slacked on exercise. I just do it and don't let myself NOT do it. (At least not in the 3+ years since I started taking care of my health.)

But. . . sometimes I just want to binge. Which is a big reason why I haven't lost any weight in a very long time.

On my favorite Spanish soap opera, one of the characters is an old man--well, maybe 60--who weighs about 400 lbs. He's diabetic but won't take his insulin or control his eating. So many good things have happened to him: he married his soulmate, reconciled with the adult children he abandoned years ago, and their lives seem to be headed in the right direction. (Well, the show is coming to an end, so all of the plot lines are being resolved.)

In the episode I watched today (recorded), he is at a big family party and giving a toast to his family and friends and seems so joyful.

However, he refuses to follow the doctor's instructions and I see in tomorrow's episode that he dies. No big surprise there. He's been asking for it.

So I ask myself when I feel like bingeing: how much of my life is it worth to feel good for 15 minutes? Because that's what it comes down to in the end.

I know it's not worth it. But it's not always that easy to remember that in a stressful moment.

What a great feeling. . . to be in control!

It's been a long time coming. I could "be good" for a couple of days or so and then think I deserved a treat. And pretty soon I was indulging in treats even though I didn't deserve them. "Tomorrow" things would be different.

But I'm sitting here trying to explain how good it feels to NOT want a treat for a change. I had my breakfast over two hours ago and I'm feeling a bit hungry, but it's not enough to make me feel deprived. I think before I get on the treadmill I'll have a boiled egg or something, but I'm not at all tempted to try to find something to "cheat" with.

Why is that? I think I'm finally getting my groove back. The person who is committed to making the best possible choices and doesn't agonize over it until a binge results. The person who is not controlled by cravings—two weeks after the last treat—and not demoralized by guilt caused by poor decisions. The person who is not afraid of a little hunger now and then.

Wow. WOW! Truly something to celebrate. I don't think I've been here for many, many months. And it's not something I want to ever give up again.

This coming week will be challenge, but I know I can manage. I will be away from home and not able to cook my own food. And the past has shown me that being in this type of situation makes me more anxious and more vulnerable to emotional eating. There are times when you just can't find the right kind of food and you have to make choices. . . the lesser of two evils. I will take some food with me, but without a fridge or a coffeemaker available, I won't be able to stay 100% on plan.

And exercise will be a challenge too. I don't know if there is a fitness center near the dorm where we will be staying or if it's practical or safe to get up early in the morning to walk around. I will take my Pilates circle with me so I can do my 20-minute routine in the room. And maybe just walk around during breaks.

But I do know that I will take my card (listing the reasons why I want to lose weight) with me and read it over frequently and really make an effort to BE the person I want to be at all times.

Weight loss may not be in the cards this week. Indeed, it's not that important to me right now either, especially since the scale is broken :-(. I just want to maintain this feeling of being in control of myself. There's nothing else like it!

Flapping my wings

I was just reading in A New Earth how two ducks who get into a fight afterwards fly off in opposite directions, flap their wings vigorously (as if shaking off the surplus energy from the fight) and then float on peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.

And also about how many of us carry the past around with us every day, even though there is nothing we can do to change it. Those memories of the past become part of us and make us unable to function in the present. The story of my life!

I underlined these words: "Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?"

If I ate too much yesterday, that does not mean I have to let it make me feel discouraged about it today and make more such mistakes. I can flap my wings vigorously—and hey, maybe it will have a good effect on my flabby arms as well—and let it go.

Because it is becoming very clear to me that I have spent most of my life living in the past through guilt—especially when it comes to food—and also dreaming that maybe sometime in the future—when the weekend/vacation/retirement comes—things will be better and I will truly be happy and healthy. . . and thin, of course.

But tomorrow never comes, and even at its best, today is never good enough.

I look forward to reading more in this book, such as how to break habits that have become ingrained in my psyche. But I have found this is a book to take in small doses, every day, and give myself some time to mull it over before moving on.

Recognizing self-sabotage

It feels like I am constantly learning the same lessons over and over. I know I have written about this before, but I guess it hasn't sunk in deep enough. Or I am just really good at self-deception.

For some reason, I keep thinking I can allow myself to have a treat now and then—like a Dove ice cream—without jeopardizing my progress. I exercise a lot, and if I've had a couple of good days food-wise, I start thinking I've "earned" a treat. Of course, I conveniently forget that I do have some non-Core food every day, such as my café français and sometimes a little light butter and/or a packet or two of sugar.

But after I had a Dove ice cream on Saturday, I let it throw me off-track for the entire day. I made a Core pizza and ate the whole thing. (It wasn't all that good. . . I figured it would be worse leftover and I didn't want to throw it out.) Then I felt even more guilty and made some peanut butter toast.

I thought I'd get back on track on Sunday, but I felt even worse. I felt like a fat slob and didn't exercise at all. None of my Core foods looked appetizing, and I spent the day pretty much feeling sorry for myself because I couldn't have more "forbidden" foods.

Monday was better, but not great. Then Tuesday I had a retirement seminar to go to and lazed around in the morning and got NO exercise at all. Food-wise, I did fine, but Wednesday I made sure to get in both exercise routines and was definitely back on track with my eating. I even made a salad (after being off salads for the past 15 months or so) and really enjoyed it!

So thankfully, I am back on track and feeling much more in control of myself again, but I definitely want to remember this experience.

One "treat" threw me off for 3-4 days!

It’s one thing to eat a little off-Core away from home (sometimes there is no alternative), but to actually sabotage myself when I am home and not exposed to constant temptation. . . that’s just ridiculous.

Portion Sizes and Eating to Live

My friend was telling me that the stomach is only about the size of a fist, and that it can handle about double that amount of food. But if you eat more than that, the excess gets stored as fat. So she makes sure she eats about two fists worth of food at a meal, and usually has about 4 meals a day, ever four hours.

Since I have known for a long time that portion size is a big part of my problem, I decided to start doing something similar. For dinner tonight, it meant that I couldn't eat half of what I cooked, because it turned out to be a four fistfuls of food. Oh well, I can have the leftovers some other time. Even though it didn't look like a lot of food, I am surprisingly satisfied and not at all tempted to eat the rest.

I mean, it sounds kind of disgusting to eat so much more than your stomach can handle. I have to admit I never thought about that before when I was doing my human garbage disposal routine. In any case, the effects of overeating are unpleasant too. Even if I don't have digestive issues, eating too much always makes me sleepy.

Her theory is that if you are eating the way you should be eating, you won't be tempted to eat for emotional reasons or be plagued with moodiness. I'm a little skeptical about that—I think moods are caused by more than food issues—but I think eating right can certainly reduce the moodiness and make you less likely to eat for "self-medication."

I will say that I am proud of her for keeping to her food plan and exercising every day. She has lost six pounds in the last two weeks. I remember well how good it felt to see that number on the scale go down and to feel one's clothes getting bigger and—after about 30 pounds or so—to hear so many compliments from my colleagues.

I think one thing that makes it harder when you get to goal weight—or an extended plateau, in my case—and you don't have that reward of the number on the scale anymore, or the clothes or the compliments. Somehow you have to find your reward somewhere else, like feeling in control of your life and body, etc.

I WILL see that scale go down, though! I know I need to get down at least 30 more pounds, and if I pay more attention to my body's needs instead of looking at eating as entertainment or medication, I know I can do it.

Taking Control of My Life Again

For many years, my basement office has been a scary place.

When I first moved here, it was a place of refuge. I would come downstairs early in the morning and have my quiet time before facing the hustle and bustle of school activities.

I'm not sure exactly when that changed. I know that it became more and more difficult to face as the clutter increased. Piles and piles of papers I didn't want to throw away because "someday I might need those things." The problem is that when you have so many piles of things all over the place, you really can't find that one piece of paper or book when you need it anyway.

Every now and then I would get ambitious and start to clear out a pile of stuff, and at least it made me feel better. But soon I would have 2-3 other piles to replace it, and it seemed impossible to ever get caught up. I have always hated filing, and for years, I would just put everything in one file folder and end up with a massive filing task right before tax time. Which is no doubt why I was often doing my tax return the week before April 15!

I have saved about 13 years of conference programs and handouts, most of which I have never used, because the materials are way too advanced for the kind of exploratory course that I teach. But there was always a chance that one day I might be called upon to teach a "real" language course, and perhaps that handout would come in handy. I just couldn't get myself to throw anything out.

Then I became friends with Ellen Shrager, who offered to become my "de-clutter" mentor. (She teaches first-year Spanish to seventh graders, so she, too, finds herself unable to use a lot of conference materials.) She told me to look at the materials as relics of unfulfilled dreams. We all have dreams of what we would like to do someday, and it's not possible to realize all of them. As we get older, we have to let go of some of them in order to concentrate on the things it IS still possible to do. . . and do so without allowing the feelings of regret to take over and control our lives.

Letting go of some things is extremely painful, but it's amazing how powerful it makes you feel afterwards. I have been gradually taking piles or corners or boxes of things in the basement office and making decisions about what to do with the stuff. Much of it goes in the trash, which is why I've been filling up a lot of trash cans lately. Some of the stuff—mostly books—I am selling on ebay. And some things I don't think will sell or don't want to bother selling I drop off at the Goodwill store.

I even sent some Spanish books to another Spanish teacher for the cost of shipping. THAT was painful, because I had spent hundreds of dollars on them in Spain and had planned to read all of them for my MA in Spanish literature, but I never finished them all and realize I will never do so now. It took me several days to get up the courage to do it. But it's amazing how wonderfully free it feels to have them gone at last. . . as though that part of my life is now concluded and I can look forward to the future.

For years, I avoided this job because it seemed so overwhelming and I dreaded having to make decisions about what to keep and throw away. Even after school ended earlier this month, I procrastinated. But I decided I really wanted to make this room once again a place of refuge where I can work quietly and peacefully and not be intimidated by the burden of the clutter.

So I started working for 15 minutes at a time, taking one task. Sometimes the task took longer than 15 minutes, but I kept going until it was finished. It started with going through one file drawer, which was relatively simple. The next file drawer involved shredding old tax records, which took considerably longer. At first my efforts didn't seem to be much compared to the enormity of the task, but gradually, I started feeling optimistic. Each difficult decision, each trip to the trash can, each completed task. . . finally began to make a difference in the general ambiance of the room.

There is still a long way to go. More difficult decisions. More trips to the trash can. And a whole lot of cleaning. . . the dust balls and cat debris (the cat passed away in April) are horrendous. But the fact that I can SEE the dirt is actually a positive thing. . . it was completely covered with junk a few weeks ago!

I have every confidence that someday soon—definitely before school starts in August—my basement office will be a place of refuge again. A place where I can work in peace without the constant awareness of chaos and filth.

And more importantly, I will feel in control of my life again.

What is my body telling me?

I've been telling myself for two years now that it's okay that I'm not losing weight anymore because of this reason and that, and that eventually I will get back to the process of losing the final 40 pounds or so. The scale doesn't run my life, and at least I am more or less maintaining the 90-pound weight loss.

But as I've been mulling over the past three years of my Core journey, it occurred to me that the primary reason the weight loss stopped was because I haven't been paying attention to my body's signals. Not the way I need to, at least.

It was easy to lose weight when I weighed 280 pounds. All I had to do was quit eating junk food and start exercising, and the weight came off pretty consistently. I could overeat Core foods on a regular basis and still lose weight.

That stopped when I got down to about 220 pounds. I thought it was the gall bladder surgery. Then I realized it was portion control (yes, I had figured this out two years ago), and started working on that. And I lost some more weight, and then stopped again. And then just quit worrying about it, since there were so many other distractions in my life.

I used to be able to say no to the junk food in the staff lounge too, without a lot of agony. These days I can't say no to anything and I'm bingeing on a regular basis and I wonder what has changed. Yes, I'm addicted to sugar and white flour again, and detoxing is a difficult process. But it recently occurred to me that the reason I had more self-control back then was because I always had the reward of the weekly weigh-in to look forward to. Now that my weight is stuck, I have nothing to look forward to and having the treats at least makes me feel better temporarily.

Where am I going with this? Well, I don't have any answers yet. I do think my friend Ellen has a valid point (she is doing a plan called Radiant Recovery). She says that if our bodies are properly balanced nutritionally, we don't have the cravings and the emotional eating issues. The challenge is to find out what foods to eat—and when—to keep our bodies in balance.

I'm not going to abandon Core—I am on Core for the rest of my life—but maybe it would be better to have protein (maybe a boiled egg) with my oatmeal/fruit breakfast and to combine the carbs with a small amount of protein throughout the day. It's definitely worth trying.

Because yesterday I made a great lunch with a chicken and plum recipe with veggies, and I was still hungry afterwards, so I made popcorn. I think it would have been better to have a potato with it.

The main thing is to be more cognizant of what is going on with my body and be determined to sense the body's signals that it is satisfied. . . and have the willpower to put the food down as soon as I sense them.