Category: Binge Log

Well, I shouldn’t have made that last post. That was a Thursday… Sunday night was F1 night – it was officially the end of my cut, and I was all alone in the kitchen. You can guess what happened….

On the upside, I think aside from about 4 or 5 cookies, most of what I ate was decent quality food. Lots of protein (yoghurt, skim milk, whey protein, a protein ice cream) and carbs (dry breakfast cereal, fruit) – mostly ‘normal’ food and not treats.

It’s now over a week later and despite some relatively weak urges, I’ve managed to eat pretty sensibly. I started working with a new coach for my lifting, and he wants to get an idea of my weight change over time, so I’ve been hopping on the scales. and right now it seems like I’m maintaining, not gaining or losing. I’ve been using the strategy of eating when I need to eat, but trying to choose healthier options like fruit and stuff if I feel the need to snack and I think that’s been satisfying the sweet cravings without turning me into a raving carb junkie looking to mainline sugar.

So far, at least, there is some balance in my eating. It doesn’t stop me overthinking things a lot, but it’s progress.

Oh, and we’ve got new pantry doors being made, so the old doors are back up. The food is out of sight….

This popped up in my feed the other day, and as usual Abel is on the money with this advice, I think:

So I’m gonna write this post a bit differently. First, the TLDR; then, if anyone is interested, they can read my longer explanations and thoughts. It’s cathartic for me to get that stuff off my chest, but at the same time, I feel as if it’s probably not very interesting to most people – so perhaps the take home messages are the most important thing – so here goes.

• Last night, I had another binge. It had probably been two and a half, almost three weeks since the last one, which must be close to an all-time record.
• I’ve forgiven myself completely. It’s OK. It really is. Even people who’ve never suffered from any form of disordered eating overeat sometimes! I had a solid breakfast this morning and don’t feel like I’m going to spiral into a days-long episode of self loathing.
• I’ve been really enjoying the Breaking Up With Binge Eating podcast lately. It’s full of real world experiences and common sense advice, the episodes are not too long, and interestingly it appears that some of the emotional strategies borrow heavily from ACT therapy – I have been reading The Happiness Trap lately (a book on this very subject – link on the Resources page) and found it very helpful, as well as aligning very nicely with Stoicism.
• The latest episode of that podcast, which I listened to on my way to work this morning, happened to outline how a client only recognised their progress in retrospect. That was a really timely reminder for me that I’ve come a long way, and these setbacks will happen – it’s not the end of the world.

Today, despite all the things rattling round in my brain, I continue to move forward. That is my vow.

Now – here’s the long version.

The last few weeks have been generally excellent – I’ve managed to keep my stress under control, feel like I haven’t yelled at my child or my dog in weeks, and my eating has fallen into a pretty regular pattern. It was date night on Saturday night, so the wife and I went out for a restaurant meal which was awesome – and although I still made my choices with health in the back of my mind, I wasn’t super anxious about macros or calories and even enjoyed a decent dessert. To be fair, the dessert was shared with my wife, but that was genuinely out of fullness, not fear. And I still ate a damn lot without feeling any concerns whatsoever.

At home though, I’ve been tending towards low calorie desserts again, mostly out of fear that eating a more ‘normal’ high calorie dessert will trigger off a desire to binge. This feels a little like restriction, which has been concerning me, and perhaps the fear is legitimate given what happened – but I don’t think that it was entirely the dessert that did it this time around.

The thing is, I’ve got a little bit of a minor groin injury, which has been bothering me for a while – yet I still keep squatting. I’ve also had a pretty sore biceps for ages (it started months ago, when I was doing curls almost every gym session) which I self diagnosed as tendinopathy. This has never really got any better, and every time I perform movements which hit the biceps it gets a little angry – then on Thursday last week I did some heavy rows (knowing full well I shouldn’t have) and really made it hurt a lot. This started off a bit of depression and disappointment in myself because I should know better by now, and it’s definitely going to impact on my lifting til it heals. I went in and trained on Saturday as normal, and during that session managed to hurt my back on the leg press (an injury I have experienced before – very painful, but will be right as rain in a couple of weeks). So you can imagine me going out for tea on Saturday night, hobbling round with a sore groin, a very sore back, and an arm that can barely lift anything – I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

Sensible people would probably take some time out of the gym, but I still trained on Sunday as well. The session went OK, but I guess in the afternoon I was feeling pretty sore and sorry for myself and depression set in. Sunday night happened to be my fortnightly evening alone, when the girls go to visit family without me – I generally enjoy these nights as they’re an opportunity to eat whatever I want in peace and quiet, but unfortunately they all too often turn into hours of obsessing about what to eat, and this was one of those times. It’s a bad recipe, scouring restaurant menus and Facebook food groups trying to decide on a food option for hours at a time, as well as feeling yukky about myself, so this is probably the first problem. Lately, I’ve been very good at letting those thoughts pass and saying ‘worry about dinner at dinner time‘ and not allowing myself to obsess and preplan too much. This time, I failed at that.

Ultimately I decided I wanted a nice takeaway steak sandwich with sweet potato fries – but that’s logistically difficult as I’d have to cook the fries at home – none of the local takeaways do them. I decided to go and buy steak and bread and make it all at home instead – and to many this would be considered a trigger, substituting a ‘healthy’ option for what you really want. However, and I’m sure this isn’t the ED voice talking, deep fried takeaway chips make me feel crap and genuinely aren’t nice/flavoursome enough to me to be worth it, so I don’t know whether I did the wrong thing or not. For better or worse, I made a steak sandwich on sourdough bread, with scotch fillet steak, an egg, full fat (shock horror!) cheese, sweet potato fries and salad. And fuck, was it good. Good enough that I decided to go all out on dessert and have strawberries, blueberries, ice cream, real (not sugar free) chocolate topping and a smattering of M&Ms. And that was bloody good as well. So good, in fact, that it made me want more. So. Much. More.

I typed out all the food I ate here, then decided it might be triggering for some. It was a decent amount, and it was all high calorie dessert type food, but I’ve certainly had much worse binges in the past. And, funny (not really) story – normally I make a cup of tea for the wife every night, and have a decaf or tea myself at the same time. When she got home, I was absolutely stuffed, but still wanted to have a hot chocolate with her tea so I had that, and also ate half a Kit Kat. Because, like, I knew I was extremely bloody full, but it was a limited edition Ruby Kit Kat which I hadn’t tried before and I just wanted it – but I really felt no urge to eat the whole thing. Even that, in itself, is progress – in the past I probably would have just eaten it all. And the Aero bar and the Cherry Ripe that were in the fridge with it.

So here I sit, a day later, reflecting on things. I’m putting this one down simply to the fact that I was sad and in pain, and I let myself obsess about food too long instead of accepting those feelings and letting them pass without acting on them. But having said that – I had a pretty decent night’s sleep and a good breakfast. I’m feeling a little heartburny, but not dreadfully so. Life will go on, these injuries will heal, and I will be a better, stronger person. Next time, I will do better.

I haven’t had a great couple of days, to be honest.

I had a birthday last week, and enjoyed some cake and slices and generally had a really good day.

But we’ve had a sick puppy on our hands, so a bit of extra stress and sleep deprivation has taken its toll – at least that’s my excuse. On Sunday night I fell into old habits and hit the dessert hard in front of the F1, and then followed that up with another giant feast on Monday.

I don’t really feel any guilt over it any more, which is good. On the contrary, I’ve been using the feasts as opportunities to conquer my fear foods. I can honestly say that I’m no longer scared of eating takeaway burgers, having had three (plus a few other takeaway meals) in the last week.

I’ve also started on the chocolate milk. On Sunday night (pre-dinner) I stared at it in the supermarket for ages; looked at the nutrition info on two or three types; put them all back and didn’t buy any. I feel as if that may have triggered my overeating later that night. But I actually had one yesterday during the binge, and another today, and have one more in the fridge for the next time I want it. Pretty soon I won’t be scared of this either. Chocolate bars are another that I’m starting to knock over. Enjoyed a double coat Cherry Ripe yesterday and ate half a Snickers before bed – honestly thought I’d be sick if I ate any more or I’d have finished it!

For funsies, here’s photos of some foods I’ve eaten today. Obviously this is not a balanced diet. But if it helps me normalise these foods in my stupid brain; it’s worth it.

So that’s been my day today. I haven’t binged and have eaten unrestricted; no doubt I was in a calorie surplus but I’m feeling comfortably satisfied. Let’s hope tomorrow is another day like this one.

So after 4 days of actual binges, I spent the next few days trying to eat heartily without restriction and have not had any more episodes of ‘uncontrollable’ eating, although I did eat enough to make myself actually vomit on Monday night.

Things are getting back to normal now. Hate to think what I weigh – but that’s not important. As I said to the dietician – the number on the scale doesn’t scare me any more. I do care how I look, and how my clothes fit, but that’s about it right now.

Had dinner at the in-laws on Sunday night, on our way home from the weekend away. I skipped the ice cream for dessert, with the intention of having something sweet at home.

Yep, did that alright. Ate a ton of desserts, cereal and everything I could get my hands on, and binged every day since – three and a half days of completely uncontrolled eating. Today (Thursday) is the first day I feel like I’ve got some semblance of my normal diet back, and even then I’ve eaten more than usual just to avoid feeling restricted.

Without stepping on the scales, I feel like the entire mini cut was a waste as I’ve probably undone all that hard work. I’ve been fairly grumpy with the wife and daughter making me feel a total failure as a parent, and I pretty much hate myself at the moment.

Things were going so well…. sigh.

So I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I haven’t had much to report.

After 13 days I’ve managed to drop the weight that I’d hoped to, my body composition is looking far better, and I’ve managed to avoid binges the whole time – but it’s been a close thing the last couple of nights. I’ve done a lot of meal skipping in the last week, and some of the old tendencies are really wanting to come back, but in a perfect piece of timing we have gone away for the night to a hotel in the mountains and I’d planned to either stop dieting or at the very least take a break this weekend anyway.

As I type this from the hotel it’s snowing outside, I’m sitting in front of a warm fire with a belly full of restaurant steak and apple crumble and ice cream and feeling more full than I have in weeks. To top it off I absolutely smoked some lifting PRs in the gym this morning before we left, and I’ve managed to spend an entire afternoon and evening cooped up with my wife and a precocious four year old without biting anyone’s head off (yet).

Right now, I’m satisfied. Not sure where to go from here, I’d like to be leaner but summer is months away and there’s no point rushing. Better to keep trying to find that sweet spot of sustainable eating and keep banishing the disordered thoughts some more.

Appointment with dietician next week. She probably won’t be impressed that I’ve restricted, but the fact it’s stopped the binges is a good thing from my point of view. I guess now we see what happens once I start adding back highly palatable foods again. But no point worrying about that right now. Just gonna sit back, stay warm, try to destress and enjoy the time away. At this moment, life’s good.

So if you read my last post, you’d know that the binges hit a peak 10 days ago. I actually ended up having 3 big ones in six days (Wed/Fri/Sun).

The following week I made it through the whole working week without one, and was very pleased, until I let it all hang out on Saturday night and went berserker. That cemented my decision that I need to put the brakes on for a while, and perhaps as a last hurrah, I had a little bit of a dessert feast last night (Sunday night) as well.

So  here we are, it’s Monday the 24th of June, and my plan is to diet for 3-4 weeks at most to get myself feeling and looking a little more athletic, before I try and attempt this ‘normal person eating’ thing again.

Perhaps this is a relapse. Perhaps this is a bad idea. I don’t know. But eating lots of everything doesn’t seem to have stopped me from losing control so perhaps relearning some discipline with myself will be helpful.

It’s slightly uncharted territory as it’s really only the second time I’ve attempted to lose weight without tracking calories/macros, and it’s the first time I’ve tried without the Fitbit. I’ve also got some slight changes to my diet in mind, including trialling a low carb breakfast (mostly eggs/cheese/meat), which will be interesting, and also a bit of a challenge to a fear food. I’ve always loved eggs (and some types of cheese) but always been fearful of the fat content. So there could be some good come from it as well.

This is gonna be interesting…..

No, it’s not what you think. I’m not done with recovery from this disordered eating shite, and I’m not done with life. But I’m done with my bulk, and let me explain.

It’s now Saturday night and I’ve had two more crazy binges this week – one on Wednesday night (in a fit of depression and loneliness, after hurting myself a bit in the gym) and one at work yesterday afternoon, for no real reason that I can think of except I just wanted to eat some nice food. And boy, did I ever. Dinner was supposed to be a pastie but ended up being soup, because I was so stuffed.

I’m not beating myself up about this, in fact I’m slightly proud of the fact that even though I had the urge to lift last night (cos yaknow… burning calories as compensation, plus I could send at least some of them toward building muscle, right?) I didn’t. I sat on my arse on the couch and spent a little time with my (long suffering) wife. Faffed about on Facebook and YouTube. Shed a few tears over an acquaintance from many years ago who recently passed away. Drank hot chocolate. Slept.

I weighed myself this morning (yes, I’m doing that again, but it’s not compulsive, just when I feel like it) and it was pretty much what I expected. But again, no big deal. I skipped breakfast (honestly…. truly… I wasn’t hungry), I did my chores, and I got a great training session in before having a big lunch, a nice afternoon, and the pastie for dinner (which was super good, thanks for asking).

But to the main point of my post – I am big enough now that I’m feeling sluggish and lazy, I had to order a new belt yesterday, and I said when I hit this weight that I’d be done with gaining. Also – I think I’ve let these feasts become a habit, and while I totally think they were necessary for me to get eating my fear foods again, I also think I’ve let my disorder become an excuse and allowed myself to slip into bad habits of snacking and not eating mindfully.

So this week is a new start – time to break the snacking habit, attempt to maintain this weight for a week or so, and then do a quick mini cut to drop some of the fat. Four weeks at most. If I lose a third of the weight I’ve gained in the past couple of months it’d be a miracle, especially as I intend to do it without tracking and without going too hungry. But I think I can get to a place where I’m happy with my physique and able to maintain it without feeling deprived all the time, unlike the last few years.

It’s a new phase of this journey and I’m looking forward to it a lot. Dieting on higher calories with no Fitbit and no off limit foods. Many would say I shouldn’t be dieting at all, but I’m a rule breaker who’s come a long way. If it causes some of the old issues to resurface, I know what I’ve gotta do, but I’m sure I can do this. Wish me luck!

So I was feeling pretty down last night (after a particularly stressful day at work), and after kidlet went to bed I kicked off again, that’s twice in 3 days. My food journal is a dumpster fire of ice cream, puddings and Frosties. Oh, that honey flavoured corn flake goodness.

I had a training session planned and I even considered skipping that so I could lie on the couch and wallow in self pity. I didn’t, which was good. I felt a little less fat and bloated afterwards. Til I had my post training hot chocolate, biscuit and yoghurt. Then I felt like a beached whale again.

Today hasn’t been a good day either. The Frozen soundtrack was playing on my drive to work, and I decided to have a singalong, but instead of cheering me up it had me bawling my eyes out.

What’s more concerning, maybe, is that I had nawt but a coffee and a can of Monster for breakfast, a can of Pepsi Max for lunch, and didn’t let my first solid meal pass my lips until 4pm. And that was just a bowl of greek yoghurt with some fruit and muesli.

Sure, it could legitimately be said that I wasn’t hungry at breakfast time and not eating was a good example of listening to my body. But by morning tea time I was thinking about food a fair bit and by lunchtime I was definitely a little hungry – but I still decided to restrict and compensate.

Psychologically, I’m feeling pretty fucking delicate right now. It doesn’t help that my weight has almost hit the ceiling I set for this bulk (a week or two earlier than I want) and I’m almost unable to get my belt done up on the last hole, and I’m trying to avoid buying another one. But I really don’t want to be falling back into these old habits of fasting and restricting right now.

I like desserts.

Last night, after a rather bad mood bear night with the child, I ate many of them. I wasn’t hungry, just depressed and loathing myself and my lack of patience with her.

I want this to stop,  and I want to be a good parent, not a grumpy, shitty one.

Right now I’m not setting a great example.

Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea yesterday at work.

I was anxious about this, and somewhat relieved when Miss Four was sick and I had an excuse to stay home from work in the morning and avoid it – but in the afternoon I had some work scheduled so I had to go in after lunch.

Decided I would happily eat some of the leftovers, but wanted to get a chunk of work done first. Which I did. And then proceeded to eat one or two of everything (cakes, slices, biscuits, lamingtons), grabbed some more chocolate on the way home, ate dinner and then four bowls of ice cream plus more biscuits, chocolate, granola and nuts for dessert.

Gosh darnit. When will this ever stop?

I changed my training schedule and lifted yesterday evening instead of this morning. I know that’s probably a bit of compensation (which is not ideal). But I also was careful to train normally and not use it as an excuse to punish myself, which was good.

Really not very hungry this morning…..

So, as mentioned I hit the conference buffet hard yesterday at lunch.

I didn’t go to the conference dinner (this was pre planned). But now part of me wishes I did, I was so full from lunch that I deliberated for ages about what to have for dinner and I decided to grab a seafood salad from a nearby sushi place. At the time, I thought that was the right call. However I decided to have some ice cream and a hot chocolate afterwards. Sure, no problem. But that kicked off another few hours of eating cereal, chocolate, chocolate milk, and more ice cream. Faaaaark. Fell asleep on the couch in a carb coma.

Hit breakfast hard this morning too. Normal brekky, plus extra cereal and extra croissants and more coffee. Overfull.

More croissants, some banana bread and lamington and coffees at conference morning tea. Absolutely stuffed. Feel like I won’t need to eat again for days.

When will this end? Surely I don’t fear these foods any more. I hate myself so much right now.

(more…)

Another one last night. Ice cream, biscuits, cereal.

This time, I really don’t have a trigger or an excuse. There was some child-related stress (I was single parenting all afternoon/evening) but it really didn’t feel like a big deal at the time. There was some anxiety about working the election today, but not much. I’d eaten really well during the day and in fact really didn’t feel super hungry at mealtimes because I’d been so good about getting my snacks in.

And yet still, after E went to bed and the housework was done, I hit the sweets like there was no tomorrow. Just wanted the chocolate ice cream (it was so delicious) and everything else….. for no particular reason. Maybe a little bit of loneliness, what with my partner being out for the evening. I dunno.

I’m paying for it today. I’ll be working all day and now having to cope with major heartburn and indigestion as well. And I feel pretty hopeless to be honest. I don’t know when or if they’re going to stop, and I’m beginning to think that having an ED is just giving me an excuse to be a pig and deal with my emotions by eating, which is not what I want to do. Gotta use my damn brain.

So I had another episode last night. I’ve been logging these in a Word document, but now this blog is up, it’s probably a more appropriate place to put them.

My last episode was on Friday the 3rd of May, so it’d been 10 days or so. The trigger for that one was, as usual, a combination of restriction and stress. I had a day off work, had a busy morning running errands with E in tow, and really wanted to go to a cafe or bakery for a nice coffee and a pastry. Unfortunately with her being such a fussy eater, we couldn’t find a shop that had kiss biscuits, and she kicked off in the street so I took her home and missed out on my treat. It was after lunch that day that I went berzerker on cereals and chocolate.

Yesterday was similar. I actually had a pretty good day at work, but was obsessing all day (again) about going to the bakery and getting a coffee and some sort of sweet treat. But I refused to let myself have it, telling myself that I should save my money – which is true – I really can’t afford to be spending ten bucks a day on coffee and pastries! So got through the (short) day without it, had some cereal for afternoon tea, all good. But then I had a couple of blowups with E around dinner time, for various reasons, really wanted a nice dessert, and a second bowl of ice cream turned into half the tub, as well as copious quantities of biscuits, chocolate, coco pops, and a couple of hot chocolates, the final one with a generous spoonful of Nutella in it.

It’s worth noting that this one felt a bit different than most of my others – I didn’t feel anywhere near as manic, or out of control. I really just felt lonely, depressed and wanted sweet food. Taking photos of it for Ate gave me the opportunity to reflect at each plate refill, and I could have stopped, but I didn’t want to.

Needless to say I had another hot, heartburny night’s sleep – and not enough of it, particularly since I’d planned to be up at 5am for an early training session. At least I was well carbed up for it! As I write this, I’m midway through lifting and I feel OK. But needless to say, I’ll be going and getting that latte and croissant today, if I feel like it.