The second half of the blog year, through therapy, some great books and the blog world, in mid March the stars aligned for me. I found the faith and trust in myself and my body to feel confident enough to let go of my white-knuckle control/obsession with food. I resolved in my head the reasons I became a binger/compulsive overeater when I was a child. I took the leap from calorie counting, eating at certain times because of what the clock said, weighing/measuring food portions and getting on the scale at least once a day to just releasing all of those behaviors. I was ready to be freed from the chains that I let hold me all those years. I am now free and empowered.

Food no longer controls me or runs my life. It has no power over me. I will not let food have the control. I no longer eat because of the things that happened decades ago in my childhood. I no longer eat for emotional reasons. I enjoy the foods I want, when I want them, in moderation. I am not doing perfect Intuitive Eating, but I am intuitively eating in a way that is right for me.

When I find a passion in my life, I throw myself into it completely. This blog started off that way. I desperately needed an outlet to write about my issues with food. It was so easy to write every day, I had so much to work through, say and share. It was amazing therapy. You all were instrumental in that.

But as you know, I have been blogging less and the content has been less about my issues with food. I love the blog world, the community, and all it has given to me. I feel like I have taken so much from all of you – your kindness, support and inspiration. I can only hope that I somehow gave a fraction of that back to you.

By cutting back like I did a few months ago, I was trying to blog “half way” and that just doesn’t fit with my personality of going all out. I wanted to be part of the community, yet still have time to pursue other passions in my life. I have confirmed over these few months that there is no half way for me when it comes to blogging. I hated missing out on what everyone was saying, yet I was stressing myself out trying to find the time to write/read/comment. I just couldn’t find the balance that you all have seemed to have found.

I completely admire those of you who have came through the trenches with your eating disorders and still have fresh, creative ideas to keep on blogging. I truly marvel at how you do that. I am simply not that clever.

With that being said, I’m going to take a true break from this blog and the blog world.

With school starting up this week, I need to devote more time to my kids. I need to try to remain less stressed. I need to continue with my new found passion of triathlons, as well as having time to give myself an opportunity to write a book of my memoirs, my journey through this eating disorder. I want to somehow pay forward the things I have learned throughout these past few years about overcoming this sickness I’ve had for over 30 years called compulsive overeating. I feel good recognizing that these are my needs and that I’m trying to take care of them and myself.

I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your unending support and constant inspiration. I don’t think I’d be recovered today without all of you.

So with that, I bid you a very fond farewell. Or perhaps I should say – until another time…

PLEASE do not hesitate to contact me if you want to ‘chat’ or if for some reason you want me to guest post. I definitely want to stay in touch, as I have become ‘close’ to many of you and truly consider you my friends. If any newcomers read this, please feel free to contact me as well, I’m happy to help if I can.

I’m sure I will still lurk around here and there as I slowly pull away from this amazing blog world.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

On Tuesday, my husband showed me a really interesting article in the Wall Street Journal. It was called “Eating to Live or Living to Eat? Stomach vs. Brain: Discovering Why Some People Can Resist Dessert While Others Can’t” By Melinda Beck.

It was a really interesting article and I wanted to share some quotes with you…

“Scientists have learned much more about how appetite works in the brain and “nowadays, scientists are using sophisticated brain-imaging technology to understand how the lure of delicious food can overwhelm the body’s built-in mechanism to regulate hunger and fullness, what’s called “hedonic” versus “homeostatic” eating.

Two conferences this week on obesity are each examining aspects of how appetite works in the brain and why some people ignore their built-in fullness signals. Scientists hope that breakthroughs will lead to ways to retrain people’s thinking about food or weight-loss drugs that can target certain brain areas.

“If you are of normal weight, your homeostatic mechanisms are functioning and controlling this region of the brain,” says lead investigator Dana Small. “But in the overweight group, there is some sort of dysfunction in the homeostatic signal so that even though they weren’t hungry, they were vulnerable to these external eating cues.”

Studies have found that a diet of sweet, high-fat foods can indeed blunt the body’s built-in fullness signals. Most of them emanate from the digestive tract, which releases chemical messengers including cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide and peptide YY when the stomach and intestines are full. Those signals travel up to the brain stem and then the hypothalamus, telling the body to stop eating.

There are plenty of other metabolic mysteries, too: Why are some “foodies” who get intense pleasure from eating able to stop when they’re full and others aren’t? Is the tendency to eat way past fullness genetic or learned behavior, and how much can it be changed?”

Here is what I found most fascinating, as this is what applies to where I’m at right now…

“Some of the most intriguing imaging studies have peered into the brains of people who have lost significant weight and kept it off through diet and exercise alone.

Angelo Del Parigi, a neuroimaging scientist, located 11 “post-obese” subjects who had dieted down to the lean range. In his studies for the National Institutes of Health’s diabetes research center in Phoenix, Dr. Del Parigi found that food still elicited strong responses in the middle insula and the hippocampus, brain areas involving addiction, reward, learning and memory.

This suggests that the temptation to see food as pleasure doesn’t go away. “Post-obese people are extremely prone to regain weight,” says Dr. Del Parigi. “The only way they have to counteract these strong predispositions is by having a very controlled lifestyle, with restrained food intake and exercise.”

He and his colleagues at the NIH have observed that in PET scans, too. In another study, 17 people who had successfully lost weight had more activity in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in impulse-control in response to food than people who were still obese.

In short, successful weight losers seemed to have having second thoughts about eating on impulse, says Dr. Del Parigi. “These people see a piece of pie that is very inviting, but they think, ‘No, I have to diet. Otherwise, I will become obese again. I will suppress that pleasure,’ ” he says.”

A sidebar to the article, was a poll called “The Power of Food Scale”. Now that I have recovered from my compulsive overeating / bingeing, I found that my answers to the questions right now, compared to how I answered them a year ago, were very different. This was a good thing.

However, I guess that is why, even though I’m basically recovered, according to this research, food/eating will always be somewhat of a struggle for me, for the rest of my life.

I kind of expected that to be the case, but now I’ve seen it in black and white.

For some reason I cannot put the link here, so if you want to read the article, please cut and paste this into your browser -

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704288204575363072381955744.html?KEYWORDS=eating+to+live

On another note, did anyone see the Oprah follow-up show with author Geneen Roth? Pretty powerful stuff.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

Unless it pours, I’m set to do a sort of trial race on Wednesday, 7/7. It is a duathlon that involves the same distance open water swim as my tri , followed by a 5k run. It would be really helpful for me to do at least one open water swim before my triathlon, so I won’t be shocked from doing all my training in a pool, where I can see clearly, to going to seeing lord only knows what kind of aquatic life and other junk in the open water. Though I will only be 6 weeks into my 12 week training, it will be a scary test to see how my training is coming along. Overall it should be great experience for me.

So while all that is great, there is a bit of negativeness in all this… I’m still battling with my eating, i.e. eating enough to fuel my body for my training, but not taking advantage and crossing over the line back to compulsive overeating. I’m trying to listen to my satiety cues, but with some carte blanche to eat more, I know darn well I am ignoring my cues and it has to STOP.

I have not binged, but I have definitely been exhibiting some ED’d behaviors

The past couple of weeks have been stressful. I’ve written a little about it in my last few posts, so don’t want to bore you again with my issues. Suffice to say that on top of those, I have been exposed six days/night out of eight, to buffets of desserts. Tough for even a “normal” eater to deal with! Once a week or every two weeks eating a little too much is “normal” and I’m totally good with it.

But for the past few solid weeks, the fact remains that while before I was just standing next to the line in the sand, that if I stepped over would lead me to the “dark side”, I feel like I’m now standing on top of the line.

I got on the scale to touch base to see how I was doing and I have in fact gained weight. I’m totally fine with that, but I don’t want to keep gaining. I’m sure some of it is muscle from the training, but I can’t kid myself, I know that some of it is from my carte blanche eating.

I need the rope of common sense, the lifeline reminder of how hard I’ve worked to recover from my eating disorder, the help and support to keep me from being drawn back into the world of compulsive overeating and bingeing, to pull me off of “the line” and back into making the right choices.

Today is my last BBQ. I’m going in with the mindset of not giving myself carte blanche anymore. I’ve sampled and enjoyed enough junk five times already in seven days. I know they are unusual circumstances, but I need to go back to making better choices for myself.

Sorry for the rambling thoughts, thanks, as always, for listening!

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

Typically, going to my sister-in-laws house for any event fills me with anxiety. For some reason, I was still holding onto the calmness and I had no anxiety. It felt great. While there, I totally engaged in conversation and was not obsessed with the food. A miracle!

I do have to mention, that it wasn’t the usual smorgasboard of desserts and sitting at a table with food in front of me, but it was in fact an outing and there was of course food that I could have gotten into had a really wanted it.

But the amazing part is that I didn’t want it and I didn’t have it. I truly enjoyed the conversations I had with people. I amazed myself.

So to keep things chronological, I told you all about my trip, so you know how that went. Well, two days after we returned, we went to a combination Passover/birthday dinner for my son and nephew at the same sister-in-law’s house.

Once again, my mindset going in was not one of anxiety, which, again, was such a great feeling. This gathering entailed sitting at a table with all the dinner food and then later, dessert food, in front of me. I was not counting calories, but ate sensibly. Did I pick a little bit at the chicken and then at some of the dessert? Yes, I did. But it was not in the “forbidden” way, it was the “I’m just eating like a normal person would” way, if that makes any sense.

I again engaged in conversations instead of obsessing over the food. With this new mindset I’m embracing, I didn’t make any of the food forbidden. I just ate it like it was no big deal. The food was not controlling me. I consciously chose to have it.  There was no planning, obsessing, plotting and over-thinking. There were no regrets and I know I did not overeat. It was quite empowering and I felt kinda “normal.”

Since I won’t be getting on the scale until the 16th, I won’t know how all this is going. Yes, my clothes seem to be fitting fine so far, but it hasn’t been two weeks yet and I do need to admit, I will feel better once I check in on the scale and hopefully see that little or nothing has changed.

I’ve told myself that if not weighing/measuring food and not writing down my calories has me gaining too much weight, then I will go back to my old ways. For now though, I remain positive that I have made a really great leap, I’m trusting my instincts, I’ve banished all or most of my old demons that caused the compulsive overeating over three decades ago, and basically, I’m giving it my best shot.

I want to enjoy food, but not be a slave to it. I am slowly changing the way I used to describe myself – I used to say that “I lived to eat”, but now I’m starting to feel more like “I eat to live.”

Which do you feel like you are doing – “living to eat” or “eating to live”?

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

I’ve been reading a great book called “Eating in the Light of the Moon” by Anita Johnston that Christie at Honor My Health wrote a bit about on her blog. She went to a great presentation by the author and was kind enough to share her experiences on her blog.

I think this book, along with others I’ve been reading and sharing with you, have been affecting me. In a positive way. The book explains how and why woman become eating disordered, starting at a young age, through stories and metaphor. It explains the feminine and masculine, the yin and the yang, and how it relates to compulsive overeating. I really see myself in so much of what this book says and explains.

The scary part is that, a lot of what the author writes, is exactly what my therapist has told me.

The more I read about eating disorders and how to climb out of it, the better I feel. I think really looking at my past is giving me an awareness I never had before. I think I’m coming to grips with it. The pieces of the puzzle that form to make me, feel like they are coming together. We all have our days when we feel like things are working well for us, and days when things aren’t going so well. I guess I’m in one of those good grooves at the moment. So with that being said….

I had the craziest thought pop into my head yesterday afternoon. Are you ready?

I thought – maybe I’m ready to stop weighing and measuring food. OMG, did I really just write that??!!?!

And perhaps, I’m ready to stop counting calories. ULP!!!

Maybe, just maybe, I’m ready to stop counting calories and just listen to my body and eat intuitively. Double ULP!!!

Are these crazy thoughts coming into my head because I’m ovulating? Or am I growing and progressing?

Am I really ready to take this leap of faith and roll the dice?

Only time will tell.

One big monkey wrench to throw in… not to give TMI, but I just found out my estrogen levels are, although in the normal range, on the very low end. So my doctor recommended, and I just started taking late last week, estrogen pills. I’ve heard they may cause weight gain. I’ve been on bc pills for years in the past and I was lucky enough that it never affected my weight. But I’ve come to find out that the amount in just an estrogen pill is much higher than the amount in the bc pills I was taking.

I could definitely deal with a couple of pounds, but not 8-10. I’ve worked way too hard to get down to this weight and lord knows what it could do to me mentally to put on that kind of weight as I am in recovery.

I’m also only getting on the scale once a month (I’m in month 3 now). So I would totally have to go by my clothes to know the deal with my weight.

Then again, I could be one of those people who is not affected by the additional estrogen at all. Glass half full, anyone?

So now what do I do?

Please, any and all advice is appreciated!!!!

On a totally different subject, a shout out to Hollly and her Oikos greek yogurt giveaway!

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

I recently sent an email to the author “Intuitive Eating”, Evelyn Tribole, with a question I needed some clarification about. She was kind enough to respond to me and allowed me to post it on my blog.

Q. I’m trying to be an Intuitive Eater. But I’m not sure what to do when I get hungry at night. Around 9pm or so, about an hour before I go to bed, I feel hungry. Should I listen to my body and eat? Or is it smarter not to eat something so late at night?

A. Many people have the perception that eating past a certain time in the evening will cause weight gain. But that’s not true. Our bodies don’t punch time-clocks. For example, there is not a fat-making shift that begins at 7:00 p.m. Also, many cultures eat later in the evening, such as in Spain.

Mindless eating in the evening, while watching television or surfing the internet, however, could lead to overeating and weight gain. But the issue in this case is the mindless eating, not the time of night.

Becoming an Intuitive Eater is about being attuned to your body—hearing and responding to its biological cues of hunger and fullness. Generally, if you are biologically hungry, it’s a good idea to eat. There are a couple of ways you could explore you evening hunger.

Biological–Are you eating enough food throughout the day? If you eat on the lighter side—it’s possible to feel hungry later in the evening. I’d consider eating a light, but satisfying, snack (since it can feel uncomfortable trying to sleep on a full stomach).

Habit?—Is it possible you are in the habit of eating before bedtime? (I don’t get that impression from your email, but it’s a question worth exploring.) If eating a snack is part of your wind-down routine before going to bed, it seems that the night eating is more about desire and automatic habit, not biological hunger. If that’s the case, I’d suggest opting for a different relaxing routine—such as reading or taking a bath.

If you are not sure, you could also explore eating a light snack and take note of its effect on your sleeping or energy level in the morning. Or, if you opt to not eat, do you find yourself having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep (hunger can do that). Ultimately, every eating experience is an opportunity to learn something about your body.

Thanks so much, Evelyn!

To get more info about Intuitive Eating, please check out Evelyn’s website EvelynTribole.com or nutrition info 411

What do you do at night when you are hungry? Do you you tune into your body, eat regardless, or look at eating at night as forbidden?

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

My therapist totally rocks and we talk about tons of things that are very meaningful and I know it makes up the pieces of the puzzle that make me who I am. I know that all these new awarenesses I gain via him are making me grow as a person and I am so grateful for that. I know that these new awarenesses are helping to allow me to expand my life and LIVE, which will help reduce the compulsive eating part of my life.

However, when I go to my monthly appointment tomorrow, I feel like I need to do some hardcore therapy about this eating disorder because I HATEDHATEDHATED that frenzy that took over my body in the room / near the dessert buffet. I have lived through the eating frenzy more times than I can count, even while I’ve managed to stay binge-free (thank you, “forces of good,” that kept me from crossing the line!)

I’m at my ‘happy’ weight and I’ve been maintaining it for about 17 months. I feel good in my skin. I don’t hate myself or my body. However, I want this struggle to stop being so damn hard when I’m faced with buffets.

When I’m home, I’m pretty much fine most of the time. When I eat at a restaurant, I’m mostly fine. So, OK, I admit it, I’m looking for the quick fix. These frickin buffets are so troublesome before and during the event, and I want SO badly for that frenzied, out-of-control feeling to stop, like, yesterday please!

I know that that is what separates me from being a “normal” eater. A normal eater doesn’t have a tangible, physical yearning at the mere site of a dessert table. A normal eater certainly overindulges sometimes, but this palpable yearning is a special feeling that, well, I believe comes from my ED (I can’t speak for all compulsive eaters), I have that I REALLY want to kick to the curb.

While I have gone over 2 years without bingeing and have managed to put on the brakes somehow when the frenzy for food clicked on in my head, I want to get rid of it entirely. Is that too much to ask?

I admittedly follow the intuitive eating to a point. I’ve let go of the reigns a bit and allow myself more treats than I have in the past and I have no regrets when I do. So that is a big step. However, intuitive eating (and it’s way too much to get into here) says you should totally go for it and eat everything you want and once you allow yourself to have them, they will no longer be a big deal because they won’t be forbidden.

Well, to be honest, I’m afraid of gaining weight from doing that. I’m afraid that if I let myself go like that, I will go back to my old ways of bingeing/compulsive overeating and that hunger cues will fly out the window. I’m also afraid to give up calorie counting, another intuitive eating recommendation. I don’t want to have to go by myself a whole new wardrobe as I experiment. I want to have my cake and eat it too dammit!

So I’ve been taking baby steps. As I said, I’ve loosened the reigns on having some extra treats and feeling no regrets. On Friday I will get on the scale for the second time in two months. As a once-, or sometimes twice-a-day weigher for decades, that is huge for me.

I just feel like I need some more tools in my tool belt on how to better deal with the buffets/parties/events. I’m pretty much ok when I’m just at home on my own or just having dinner out with friends where everyone is given a single serving of something. I need more hardcore tools to deal with time when I’m faced with multiple foods laid out in front of me.

I hope my therapist is ready for me.

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

My Dearest Daughter,

Mommy wants to share something with your about herself that I think you are old enough and mature enough to understand. This is something that is private and personal. It is just between you, daddy and me. We will talk to your little brother when he is a little older when he will be old enough to understand. This is not something that you should talk to your friends about or other members or our family, it’s just between the three of us because we know that we can trust you to keep it private. If you want to talk to the school guidance counselor about it, you can, but no other adults or kids, ok? Do you have any questions about that?

Do you know what an eating disorder is? …. Eating disorders are an illness, something that people have inside them, something that they can’t control without a lot of help and hard work. You will probably hear about them in school, you will probably have friends who have them. There is anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating.

Mommy has an idea disorder. Mommy is a compulsive eater. This is mommy’s issues, not yours. It started in my childhood. That means for 30 years or so, Mommy has had an addiction to food. For a long, long time, mommy would eat tons of food, even when I wasn’t hungry. That is called bingeing. I did not listen to my body about when I was hungry and when I was full. I would sneak food, hide food and make myself sick from eating too much.

Long before I met daddy and before you were born, mommy’s weight got very high many times. I would lose weight and gain weight. I was unhealthy and didn’t feel very good about myself. It is a terrible feeling to stuff yourself with food until you sick, yet I somehow couldn’t stop. That’s what compulsive means, it means you don’t think at all, you just do it. In my case, I would eat a lot of food without thinking about what I was doing. Again, this is mommy’s problem, not yours. Do you understand what compulsive overeating means? Do you have any questions about it?

I’m trying very hard to recover from my eating disorder. Thank goodness, mommy has not binged for over two years now. I have lost weight by not binging and by going to the gym. I got my weight down to a place that my body feels good, strong and comfortable. With daddy’s support and yours too, I can continue to work through this and keep getting better. I know that you see me weighing and measuring my food portions. I weigh and measure my food because I don’t want to lose or gain weight; I know just how much my body needs to keep at my weight. Does any of this surprise you? What do you think when you see me weighing and measuring?

Mommy and daddy are scared that the things you see me doing, as I’m trying to recover my eating disorder, are affecting you and how you may feel about yourself. Is that true? Can you share with us your feelings about that?

You are smart, funny, creative and a great daughter. We want you to have self confidence in yourself and proud of who you are. Mommy and Daddy are certainly very proud of the person that you are. Those are things that are on the inside of you. On the outside, you are a beautiful girl. You should feel great and comfortable with your body. Mommy and daddy have told you this before, but you can be anything you want in your life, whatever you set your mind out to do.

I know you see mommy sitting at the computer a lot and have probably heard me talking about blogging or my blog. I started a blog a few months ago about my eating disorder, because it is very helpful for me to write down, or journal, about my feelings about this eating disorder. I have found that there are a lot of women out there who have similar problems with food, so it’s great to ‘talk’ and share with people who understand. These people help me and I help them as well, which is a great feeling.

Do you have any questions or is there more that I can explain to you?

How about you? Have you told your child(ren) that you have an eating disorder? How did you do it? How did it go?

One Day at a Time... Nurture myself... Awareness... Letting Go... Listen to my Body

I have been a compulsive (over)eater for 30+ years, although it never occurred to me I had an eating disorder, I thought I just had a sweet tooth all that time.

At 5’3”, my weight has been as high as 172 and as low as 105. Like many women, during my high school and adult years, I have moved between those numbers like a yo-yo due to my obsession with food. One thing that I think has always helped me is that I’ve always been athletic. I’ve always worked out on my own or at a gym. Fortunately, I’ve been at the low end of that weight range for a little over a year, which simply means you wouldn’t know by looking at me how fanatical I am with food and how badly I struggle with food issues every day of my life.

Though I played sports all through school and dabbled in various types of exercise over the years, I became a runner back in ’96. I ran as my sole form of exercise for 11 years, including running a marathon. You’d think I would have been as thin as a rail from all the miles I ran, but my eating disorder (in hindsight) kept the weight on. I’m sure I was healthier from all the running, but mentally and spiritually I still was not happy. Due to a torn meniscus in my knee diagnosis a little over two years ago, I had to cut my running down to part time. I joined a gym and included strength training and various other forms of cardio to my workout regime. Wow, what a difference that has made to my 41-year old, having-two-kids body! Who knew?!

It wasn’t until I recognized and embraced that I had an eating disorder two years ago, admitted it to my husband, started going to OA meetings and saw a therapist, that I could finally reign in my eating and reap the benefits of my working out at the gym 4 days a week. Being honest was liberating then and it still is now.

I have now been binge-free just over two years. I feel good about myself and like what I see when I look in the mirror. But more important than how I look, is how I feel. I didn’t like how I felt when I was binging. I would feel horrible; mentally, physically and spiritually. I was very down on myself and of course self-medicated with more food. Every day I would vow it would be the last binge and that I would start eating sensibly the next day, but sadly, it took me a long time to get to the place in my head where I needed to be to really make that happen.

Of course my greatest fear is going back to the binging cycle. I never had a normal relationship with food, but heaven help me, I will continue to learn how to fight this eating disorder and remain in recovery. My goal is to keep learning and improving myself so that I can perhaps have a semi-normal relationship with food as time goes on.

I hope this dynamic duo sticks around for a while. I am the only one who can make that happen and I am committed to it. One day at a time.

One day at a time. Nurture myself. Awareness. Letting Go.

So I went out to dinner with my husband and kids last night and had an abstinent dinner.  We decided to go to Dairy Queen for dessert for my son and me.  I got my usual fat-free fudge bar – 50 calories, hits the spot, works well with my calorie count for the day.  My 7-yr-old son told us while still at the restaurant, that he had his eye on the brownie fudge sundae in a chocolate dipped waffle cone.  Music to my chocolate-loving, compulsive overeating ears. Because he ate a really good dinner and it wasn’t that close to his bedtime (didn’t want to over sugar him up on a school night) we decided to let him get it for the first time.  Already, at that moment, I felt a physical yearning to have some of his sundae.  My compulsive brain was already fixated on my son’s dessert before we even stepped foot in the Dairy Queen.

We placed our order and the girl at the counter turned her back to us and put it together.  When she was done, she turned around and holy cow, there was this huge chocolate treat on the counter in front of us. Brownies, hot fudge and ice cream dripping over the sides of a chocolate dipped waffle bowl.  Heaven on earth!   I knew that after eating a whole dinner he would never be able to finish the sundae, no matter what size it was. I had to do everything within my power not to embarrass myself by drooling in public.  The physical urge I already had prior to even seeing it, grew stronger upon seeing this delight and I practically had heart palpitations knowing there was no way he was going to be able to eat all of it and therefore the leftovers would be mine. 

 It’s insane, I hadn’t even eaten any and already there was no turning back, my mind was made up. 

We took it home for him to eat.  I got him all set up at the kitchen table and then tried my best not to lurk over him watching him.  To my credit, I didn’t do my normal routine of asking every two minutes if he was done yet.  I tried so hard to occupy myself with other things waiting for my son to say the magical words that he couldn’t eat anymore so that I could swoop in and eat it because I was obsessed with having it.  How I wish I was normal and could have just been like - oh, you’re done, I’ll just toss it in the trash. 

I never ate a waffle dipped in chocolate, let alone had one of these sundaes in one.  Well, I dug in, and as is often the case, with this huge build-up I had in my head, of course the treat was not as good as I expected it to be (I don’t think the brownies nor the waffle bowl were fresh).  But did that stop me from spooning it into myself over and over again?  No, of course not!  I still inhaled it like it was the last meal I was ever going to eat because I was simply obsessed with having it.  Thank goodness, in total, I only ate about 1/3 of it, which equaled about 325 calories.  So I went over in my calorie count by about 300 calories, but my indulging didn’t progress any further.  So to me, I ate compulsively, a slip if you will, but to me i have kept my abstinence because it didn’t lead  to my eating everything in the house that wasn’t nailed down and I am right back on my normal track of eating today.

Just goes to show that even with just about 22 months of abstinence, I still fight this sickness every day.  The only good part about any of this is that I actually offered to share this dessert (a rarity on my part!) with my 9-yr old daughter and she agreed.  I’m always hyper concerned that all she sees is me eating small portions and in a bizarre twist, was happy that she saw me going to town on this dessert.