Minor Victories

I'm in my beginning "detox" phase.  This is where I don't eat any of my serious trigger foods (anything sweet, chocolate, or large amounts of white flour) but I don't worry about reducing portions yet.  I have done this for two days.  I have also avoided snacking right before bed.  For two days.

May sound like not much, but for me it's huge.  I call this period my detox.  As I settle in, I will begin to be able to reduce portions and establish more "normal" eating patterns. Or at least that's the plan.  I've had several detox periods that were interrupted for whatever reason, and it always takes months to get back to where I can start detox again.

Using food as a drug is pretty ingrained for me.  Even when I managed to eat well for almost a year and got to a good weight, it was still on my mind all the time. 

I eat if I'm sad, mad, happy, bored or if I feel deprived.  Like if I didn't get a Buick.  (I saw a 2009 LaCrosse yesterday almost exactly like the one I was going to get, and it was like a knife in my heart.  I actually felt a pang.  And to make it worse, the lady driving it looked mean.).  I eat to celebrate, to soothe myself, to relax.  To reward.  You name the emotion/event/day of the freakin' week, and I could find a reason to eat to cope or acknowledge the event.

Now that I realize that my pattern is ingrained and I will probably always have to cope with it, it makes it a little easier.  It's not like a switch will flip and I'll stop having an unhelathy relationship with food.

Have you ever noticed that you never see an overweight very old person?

I was looking at my bookshelves to see all the diet and eating books I own.  It is truly stunning.  I will not credit the authors here (though I should), I'm just listing titles:

What to Eat
Half-Assed, a weight loss memoir
Passing for Thin
The Pink Ribbon Diet
Shrink Yourself
The Slow Down Diet
Designated Fat Girl
The Fat Girl's Guide to Life
Compulsive Overeater
Food, the Good Girl's Drug
Secrets of a Former Fat Girl
The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Plan
Life is Hard, Food is Easy
The Soution for Permanent Weight Loss
Daily Meditations for Overeaters
The South Beach Diet
The Woman Doctor's Diet for Women
The End of Overeating
The China Study

This isn't all of them, but you get the idea.
Ouch.