Diary of a Madman

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a month since my last post here. I’ve been meaning to bang out some thoughts for a while but life kept getting in the way. Anyway, I’ve found a quiet moment, so here goes.

On the eating front, I’m quietly optimistic things have turned a corner. After my last post, I did end up having a feast a day or two later. Went another week or so without one, then went away to Queensland for an extended weekend to visit family. I was apprehensive about this, for a few reasons. But I had a good time catching up with my siblings, found a cool gym to train at and had a couple of solid lifting sessions, and things were mostly ok until some family stress brought me undone on the Sunday night and I hit the food hard; including a couple of late night walks for Cold Rock, hot chocolate, more ice cream and chips and cereal.

When I got home, I struggled with the adjustment back to family life – after 4 days of mostly adult company, puppies and kids and life stuff felt like a real shock and we had a few major blowups, and I ate like an asshole for a couple of days solid.

But since then, I’ve somehow managed to stay in control of both my moods and my eating. 10 days without an episode. Let’s hope it continues.

In semi related news, the dietician I’ve been seeing has referred me on to counsellors / psychologists as some of these issues are outside her wheelhouse. Fair enough. It does feel like these episodes have moved on a bit from frantic, insatiable episodes of extreme hunger to lately more like ‘I feel stressed/sad/lonely so let’s eat til I feel better’. It’s more of a habit than a compulsion. So now I need to work on stress management and mindfulness as much as anything. I’m trying to decide whether to see a local counsellor or a local psychologist or see someone remotely who might specialise more in my particular issues.

There’s plenty of neural rewiring to do on the food front – I’m eating almost anything I feel like, and never going hungry for too long, but still have a few fear foods. And another thing I discovered – when I was in Queensland we ate out a lot and unlike here, there were soooo many menus that had the kilojoules listed right next to the name of each dish. I found this awfully triggering…. and I NEVER chose the high calorie option. We had Vietnamese one day and I had the no noodle salad (unlike my brothers) because it was lighter. At one point I walked into a Chinese bakery and looked at all these amazing pastries but couldn’t bring myself to buy one because they were so calorie dense. It’s bizarre…. if I don’t know; or don’t look at the macros, I can trick myself into eating this stuff but once I’ve seen it, it can’t be unseen.

Anyway things are not awful right now. I hope things keep trending in the right direction.

So my last post might’ve seemed a little bit negative, and it was. At that point, I was feeling very down about things. But I’m posting again to say that since then, things have got a lot better. Somehow, I’m now on day 5 without a feast. Which is the longest I’ve gone in quite a while. What’s changed? I don’t know. Maybe that crash the other day caused me to reassess and resteel my resolve to beat this motherf***er once and for all.

I’ve definitely been doing everything I can to ensure I don’t go hungry for too long – no skipping meals, no compensating, just eating.

Last night my wife decided we’d have a packet mix risotto for dinner, which is a bit of a deviation from our normal Tuesday night meal. Six months ago this probably would have freaked me out, but now? I couldn’t care less. I covered up the macros with my thumb when I looked at the cooking instructions, and managed to completely avoid reading them. The last step was to stir in a teaspoon of margarine – and I didn’t skip it.

I’ve had dessert every night (last night it was warm chocolate brownie and ice cream; on Sunday night it was cheesecake!). Lately, eating one dessert has often triggered the desire to eat many more, but somehow in recent days the Dmitry voice has been fairly quiet.

I’ve also been doing my best to let his thoughts pass through my head without reaction too. For example, I often find myself preplanning meals way before they happen (like I’ll be about to have breakfast, and will start thinking about morning tea, or some other subsequent meal, and how the day’s gonna snap together) and I’ll simply tell myself to forget about that, and worry about it when the time comes. Of course, I bring food to work to make sure I do have those snacks available, but as I said, there are plenty of shops nearby to work too, and often people bring food to work; today I didn’t bring sweet stuff, but fortuitously a colleague bought chocolate cake. And yes, I ate a slice 🙂

I think that doing this is helping to ease the food focus, which is helping to ease the scarcity mentality, which is helping to limit the desire to eat the entire contents of our pantry. But still – it’s only been 5 days. I’ve gone this long before, and relapsed into old habits, so I don’t want to get ahead of myself. However, I am cautiously optimistic.

My Fitbit is on eBay, and will sell in the coming days.

I am getting better, slowly but surely.

On a related note, a timely post from Tabitha this morning:

Getting your weird little OCD traits to work for you in recovery

Lots of this stuff rang true for me. I started writing a bit about it, but time is short right now, and I decided I couldn’t do it justice at the moment, and I want a coffee. A milky, frothy one, from the bakery. Because that’s how I roll now.

I’m feeling pretty discouraged at the moment.

This week started badly. Binged in front of the F1 on Sunday night. Actually gave up on watching the race, because I was struggling to stay awake and ridiculously full. Had a fairly big all-day binge on Wednesday as well. Today (Friday) I ate all the food I’d packed for work by 10:30am, plus some extra cake and biscuits, then made sure I ate plenty at lunch and afternoon tea as well.

Being depressed about how I’ve been eating is leading to a vicious cycle of eating more to try and not feel depressed and I’m beginning to wonder how much of my eating these days is actually ‘extreme hunger’ and how much is just me feeling totally depressed and empty inside, and wondering if it’s all worth it, and if I didn’t have a wife and daughter relying on me, would this be a good time to ‘take the open door‘?

I want to talk about positive things. Learning guitar. I bought one. It arrived Tuesday and I’ve had a couple of brief attempts at working through some beginner lessons. I want to talk about the correlation between eating disorders and an over-fixation on health and body image, my loss of identity (apart from fitness) since having a child, and how learning guitar is an attempt to reinvent myself, and find other means of evaluating my self worth.  But of course if I fail at learning it, this might backfire.

It does seem as if it is taking less food to actually feel satisfied and stop a binge. Maybe that’s progress, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s just because I’ve been making an effort to eat so much more earlier in the day, that I physically can’t fit much more in.

I hate to think what I weigh at the moment – it’s been two weeks since I last stepped on the scales. I think I look fat, and I think the tightness of most of my clothes is exacerbating that feeling. Maybe I need to go back to wearing more baggy clothes so I don’t have to deal with the constant reminder of how much weight I’ve gained.

And now it’s after 10pm, sitting here bloated after a big dinner, half a tub of gelato, countless biscuits, cakes, chocolates, chocolate brownie and hot chocolate drinks, I know it’s gonna be another hot, sweaty night of shit sleep and aggro with the wife and daughter and dog and I’m wondering when all this is going to end, who will I be when it does, and will I be happy with the person I’ve become?

I posted this on my Insta this morning, but as I’m trying to keep this blog kinda anonymous, I won’t link and will repost with a bit more detail here…

It may not be obvious but the difference in size and weight between these two bags is enormous.

I got the bag on the left in June 2017 in my Avatar Nutrition days. It’s an Innovator 500 by Six Pack Fitness. Let’s be prepared, I said. I loaded each compartment with different varieties of snacks, my own tea and coffee, protein powders and shakers, cutlery, as well as my standard lunch and the other foods I planned to eat for the day. I was gonna hit my macros come hell or high water!

I’ve been carrying this bag to work every day for two years. For the last few months or so I’ve not eaten anything out of it except my standard lunch. And it’s so big and unwieldy… I have to stop and wait for people in the hallway so I don’t bump into them with it, and given that I also carry a backpack with my laptop and other equipment in it, it’s a pain in the bum.

The stupid thing is, my lunch is only in it from the kitchen to the car, then the car to the fridge. I’m office bound most days, with access to a fridge, microwave, and a fair few shops within walking distance. So it’s completely unnecessary, but yaknow… habits.

Today I downsized and put my lunch into this smaller bag instead – it’s maybe a quarter of the size and weight. It might seem like a pretty minor thing, but this is another (small) step in the process to fixing my relationship with food. The smaller bag is so freeing – and ya know what? Food is just food. Meals don’t have to be perfect. If I’m hungry – I’ll go buy something. And in fact, I plan to – because shop bought sandwiches taste so much better than what I make at home, and actually, I might feel like a burger.

Don’t let food become a chain around your neck. Don’t let a fixation with your body size and shape ruin your life. I did, and I regret it so much. So many arguments at mealtimes, yelling at my wife and daughter because I was hangry, avoiding social and family events because the food didn’t suit me, or (worse) attending and starving myself because I refused to eat sausages because OMG SO MUCH FAT… or compulsively walking day in and day out to try and burn off the calories and make sure I stay lean.

It was a pale imitation of a life and it’s one that I refuse to live any more. Food is good. All of it. It’s there to be enjoyed. My body is the least interesting thing about me. It really is – and the benefits of eating enough food to fuel my body are evident in my energy levels, my gym performance, and my overall happiness.

That’s not to say I want to get fat again, or that I don’t care what I eat. And it’s true that I’m bigger than I want to be right now. But this is all part of the process of attaining balance in my life, and some sort of peace with food.

I refuse to diet again until I am confident I can do it without turning into a monster. Til then, I’ll just have to live with how I look. It’s really far less important than how I act and how I feel.

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.

I feel like most of my posts lately have been fairly negative reports about what I have been calling binges (but are really extreme hunger). Today I received a nice email from J who has been reading my posts here, and while it was kinda nice to know that other people are reading and finding it helpful (thanks, J!) it reminded me that this is also supposed to be some sort of record of how I’m going, not just a neverending catalogue of my eating habits.

So, it’s time for a review of my symptoms and where I’m at with addressing them.

• As noted, I don’t track or weigh my food at all any more. I don’t obsess about perfect macros, I still try to get 30g of protein in every meal particularly after a training session, but really – close enough is good enough. A decent helping of meat and maybe some yoghurt or eggs if I’m in doubt, and everything is happy.
• I don’t look at nutrition labels very much these days. Every now and again I do, mostly just for interest’s sake, but it’s not usually a compulsion. Although I did look at the label on an AMAZING cookie I ate the other day… AFTER I’d eaten it. And since then I have been scared to buy that cookie again, even though it was so darn good – so clearly I still have some work to do here. But that being said, I can eat out at a restaurant without fear or favour these days. I even had a burger and chips the other night, and enjoyed them with no guilt.
• I am getting better at not restricting food all day, most definitely. I have been working with a dietician who has really drummed into me that I need to eat every 2-3 hours whether I’m hungry or not, and sticking to this has really helped me become far less food focussed. Also, and this should be common sense, but I’ve realised that if I’m not starving at dinner time, I’m in a far better mood to be spending time with my family, and I’m far less likely to want to eat a half a dozen servings of dessert afterwards. Which is great, because it leaves me time to spend on other, productive habits. So, my suppers these days tend to be very small, if anything at all – and I think that cutting back on that evening splurge, as well as moving to lifting in the morning again, has really helped me sleep better too so it’s a win all round.
• Refusal to eat non-healthy food? Nup, nada. I still try to eat ‘clean’ 80% of the time (because there’s nothing wrong with caring about your health) but I can’t remember a single day when I haven’t had some kind of chocolate, cake or biscuit in the past couple of months. And that’s kinda taken care of the fear of excess carbs/fat as well…..
• Multiple trips to the supermarket every week? Rarely happens. I make do with what’s in the fridge or in the cupboard, and quite often if I can’t be bothered making lunch I’ll go to the bakery (or the takeaway) and buy a bloody sandwich. Imagine that!
• Seasoning foods? I don’t do it anywhere near as much now – half the time I don’t bother, if a food isn’t tasty enough to eat without seasoning then perhaps I shouldn’t be eating it? But yaknow… chips need salt, salad needs mayo, and I even had sweet chilli sauce on my noodles last night. 3 months ago that would have been unthinkable because OH, the CAARRBS! The SUGAR! I do still use 99% fat free dressings, and having been watching a lot of Megsy Recovery lately, it’s reminded me that this is something I need to address. Same as my fat free yoghurt obsession.
• Microwaving tea and coffees? Nup. Nada. Can’t remember the last time I did it. Although I do occasionally now make a frothy coffee, with lots of milk, and I do warm that up first. Because it’s the closest thing to a latte that I can make at home.
• Bullguarding food? No, not really. I do still get a bit moody at mealtimes if I’m super hungry – but mostly I combat this by trying to never let my hunger get below about a 3 on the hunger scale.
• Craving carbs? Well yeah… as I’ve posted many times, my extreme hunger almost always involves some carb heavy food. But the erythritol out of the packet thing… nope. When I committed to gaining weight, I completely dropped artificial sweeteners from my drinks and went back to beautiful, lovely, sweet tasting raw sugar. I might have used erythritol or stevia two or three times in the past few months, the thought barely crosses my mind.
• Compulsions to move? Well no, not really. I still like to have a bit of a walk after lunch, but I don’t do it if I don’t feel like it, or the weather’s bad, or if I have lots of work to do. Since taking the Fitbit off I’ve felt the most free I’ve felt in a long time. I still get into the gym and lift weights – lots – but that’s something I enjoy even when I don’t feel like it.
• I’ve cut back on supplements a lot. Nowadays I’m down to 3 that I take regularly (creatine, vitamin D, and digestive enzymes) as well as a few actual medications. Most of the others are still in my stash but just get ignored.
• My bladder has been much improved since I gained weight and stopped drinking so much black coffee.
• I’m still a bit obsessed with gut health – partly because of the huge quantities of food I’ve been slamming at times, I feel like making sure my digestive system can handle it is probably not an awful issue to have right now.
• Extreme hunger – if you read this blog at all you know it’s still an issue. But I’m coming to terms with it.

After throwing this post together in a bit of a hurry, I feel like there’s far more positive things going on than negative, even if I still feel out of control around food at times. Things to focus on are finding better ways to deal with stress than eating (last week was… very bad in this respect) and making sure I don’t restrict. At all. Just eat when hungry and move on with life. And there are fear foods I need to work on. Chocolate milk is a classic that I haven’t mastered yet. But I will get there.

Lots of positive things going on in my life outside of the food world. Work is going fairly well, and I feel more productive than I have in a long time. We have a beautiful new puppy at home, and I just signed a contract to build a new gym in our backyard – soon I will have a lot more space for my man cave. It’s my birthday later this week, and we have some fun stuff planned including a nice night out and meal with the family.

Life is good.

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.

I wrote this post today for a Facebook group I’m part of. Thought it was worth posting here as well:

There’s been a few posts on perception in here lately, and I thought I’d add my 2 cents worth.

As I may’ve mentioned, I’m bulking right now – I have let my eating get very out of control at times, and ballooned in weight really quickly. 

When I look at myself in the mirror, all I see is that I’ve lost all semblance of upper ab definition and my belly is round. When I weigh myself all I see is that I’m xx kilos heavier than I was a few months ago. When I get dressed, I freak out about the fact that my pants are tight and I’m on the last hole on my belt. 

Yet it’s really easy to forget about the other stuff.

OK, I’ve had some binges. I had another one yesterday, funnily enough. But I’ve also been enjoying many different types of foods that I’d previously cut out of my diet and so meals are more enjoyable. I went out for dinner for the wife’s birthday on Saturday night and it was almost a pleasurable experience, 6 months ago it would have been a really stressful experience of choosing what to eat and trying to fit it into a calorie target somehow.

Being well fed has also markedly improved my mood and motivation. I still get grumpy, but I’m generally happier than I was, and I’m actually getting more done at work instead of just drifting along. And people are noticing that I am easier to get along with, which is nice. This means I can be a better work colleague, husband and father – this is really freaking important!

On the training front, I am stronger in the gym than I have ever been – have been adding weight to the bar every single week and hitting easy PRs almost every session.

OK, my waist has grown. But my arms are filling out my t-shirts. My upper back wants to rip my work shirts open when I bend over to tie my shoes. My thighs are filing out my work pants and might be growing faster than my waist is. 

This week I have had 4 separate people comment on how good I’m looking. Obviously these are only people that see me with clothes on. But clearly, the changes in my body composition are noticeable and I have stacked on some muscle as well as the fat.

Not only that – while I do still have some niggles from training, I’m not sore all the time. I’m also sleeping better. 

So, am I happy with how I look naked? No. 

Am I able to rationalise it and be OK with it, considering all the other good things that have come along with gaining weight? Yes.

Sorry, this is a bit of a brain dump, but in keeping with this group’s theme… remember that the number on the scale and your physical appearance are just one aspect of the beautiful creature that is YOU. It’s OK that those things are important to you. In fact, I think they should be important to everyone, because if we don’t take care of ourselves and our bodies, we can’t take care of others.

But we can’t let them take over our every thought and feeling about our identity. There are more important things. 

I said to my dietician yesterday, I got into this fitness caper to get healthy, live longer, and be a better husband and father. Instead I let it become an obsession and the worse it got, the less time I spent living in the present with my family and giving them the attention they deserve. I regret that mistake deeply, but feel very grateful that I’m not divorced and I’ve taken steps to restore the balance in my life; I’m not quite there yet but have taken great strides.

If you’ve read this far, I hope it helps you in your journey. Examine your why, and consider whether your current path is really taking you toward that goal or if you’re just habitually doing the things you’ve always done. Is there something you can change? Why not make that change today? What’s holding you back? Probably just fear. It’s easy to say, but that’s just an emotion and usually, it’s an irrational one. The more you challenge that fear the easier it gets and the easier it gets the more motivating it is to continue.

I love the people in this group. I’m sorry so many of you are struggling. I know it’s damn difficult at times. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and you are all fantastic human beings that deserve happiness and peace. Go out and get it. Life’s too damn short to waste.

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…)

Good news and bad news.

This morning I took the Fitbit off and went back to a watch. The thing had been buzzing at me yesterday multiple times (since I’d been travelling and unable to move much) and I managed to ignore it. So this morning I figured it was time:

This is the longest I’ve gone without wearing one for a couple of years, it normally only comes off to charge or shower. I’m not sure if I’ll ever put it back on again – there might be some value in using it to track sleep – though in practice, what exactly will I do with the data anyway? If I ever do another longer term diet it might be useful to track steps, if I can avoid it becoming compulsive – but I don’t expect to do that for a while, hopefully.

The bad news is, I lost control at the conference buffet at lunchtime today and ate well past the point of fullness. I suppose there’s some consolation in the fact that it was mostly quality food, sandwiches and wraps and quiches and fruit and stuff, with only a smattering of extra small desserts. The anxiety of being in a strange place with strange people, I guess… but I wish I’d extricated myself from the situation. I’ve gained so much weight already, and feel like homeostasis at this size would be good. But that won’t happen if I don’t learn to maintain some control over my appetite and I’ll be cutting again sooner than I want to.

I was really looking forward to a decent takeaway/restaurant meal tonight, but now I’ll have to see how I feel. At least I had a small win last night and enjoyed a burger for tea, and avoided the temptation to get a light supermarket meal. That’s a win of sorts, I guess….

As noted in my list of symptoms one of my issues is compulsive movement. Mostly, it’s the fact that I wear a Fitbit and enjoy challenging myself to hit 250 steps every hour and 10k steps every day. However, if I can’t hit these targets it often causes anxiety. Even trying to sit still for 90 minutes to watch a movie can be difficult.

However in addition to this, I really like to lift weights. I’ve been doing this since midway through my big dieting phase a few years ago (the thing that started all this!) and it could probably be argued that I’m a bit compulsive about this too. I enjoy training hard, I pretty much never miss a session, and I have been known to use it as punishment (after overeating) or as a reason to eat more (as in hey, if I train, I deserve more food). The last two are problematic, because I don’t deserve punishment for giving into hunger and I certainly don’t need a reason or justification for eating until I am satisfied, that’s just a basic human need whether I’ve lifted weights or not!

I’ve digested so much ED material over the past year or so and much of it seems to suggest that during recovery we should just eat and rest – exercise of any sort is a bad idea. I’ve never quite been able to accept this, to be honest and it’s been a bit of a source of guilt. I know that my walking is definitely a problem, but the lifting, I think in most cases, is generally OK except in the cases I mentioned above – and in fact I think more often than not it is really beneficial for my mental health. I need the time out in my gym, away from the hustle and bustle of day to day life – getting under the bar and lifting some heavy ass weights seems to clear my mind better than almost anything else I’ve tried.

Thankfully, it seems like not all experts think exercise should be completely cut out, and I was pleased to have my own biases confirmed when I read this article by Emily Troscianko  earlier in the week. And this week, I’ve also confirmed to myself that the lifting is really a minor issue (if it is one at all). Due to some work commitments this week I’d planned a lighter week in my lifting, and often times in the past when I’ve tried to deload I’ve found myself just going hard anyway. But this weekend just gone I had two days out of the gym without guilt, have done a couple of light sessions since then, and will be heading interstate for a conference tomorrow (and a couple more gym-free days) with zero guilt as well. I feel like I’ve got some perspective on things.

On the walking front, well there’s progress there as well. I haven’t hit 10k steps quite a few days this week, and I’ve been quite chillaxed about it. It only really took a few days at work in meetings and stuff (which meant I was unavoidably low on activity) to realise that the sky wasn’t going to fall in if I didn’t do it. I just haven’t quite got around to removing the Fitbit yet, but come to think of it, since this conference means hours of sitting inactive in a function room, now is probably a good time to challenge myself so tonight I’ve pulled my old watch out of the drawer and I fully intend to wear it tomorrow instead of the Fitbit.

I still genuinely believe that a ten minute walk after every meal is useful for digestion and overall health (both mental and physical) – I don’t think that’s my ED voice talking, as in my head the post meal walks have nothing to do with weight management (it’s my overall activity levels that do that). I’d also like to make sure I don’t become deskbound all day at work, again just for general health. But it should be quite easy to do those things without relying on external cues to do it – if that means less anxiety (and being better in touch with my body) then that sounds like a win-win to me.

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.

This might be a long post.

Some time ago if you’d asked me about the HAES movement, I would have parroted the thoughts of a podcaster I had been listening to at the time. He said something along the lines of the movement condoning (if not glorifying) obesity and that we shouldn’t have obese people on magazine covers because that celebrates and justifies unhealthy lifestyle choices. At the time I agreed fairly strongly. But having now done a lot more research into HAES I think I understand it a little better and feel like at least some of that condemnation might have been misplaced.

For a start, it’s Health at every size – not Healthy. I don’t think too many people associated with the movement would deny the fact that obesity is correlated with all sorts of negative health outcomes, and that in a perfect world nobody would be obese. I think the movement is intended to try and stamp out fat-shaming, and to encourage people to try and develop healthy lifestyle habits, regardless of where they’re starting from. I can’t fault either of these aims.

I guess where I do have an issue with it is telling people that all bodies are different and therefore you should be comfortable at whatever your natural weight is. Sure, all bodies are different – I’m cool with that idea. But if you’re a 5 foot tall woman weighing 100 kilograms is that really your natural weight? Or did you have to work a sedentary job, spend your evenings on the couch, and ignore a whole truckload of hunger and satiety cues over many years to get there? Not judging – I’ve been there (well, except for the woman part) but I’d bet that for most people, these lifestyle factors and overeating can be addressed with a little effort and the ‘natural’ weight you can sustainably maintain is somewhere well south of ‘dying young of a heart attack’ unhealthy. So I think we have to be careful in condoning people’s choices and telling them ‘it’s OK’ to be overweight especially when they are clearly unhappy about it.

On a related note – since I started really trying to fix my issues with food, I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of resources about intuitive eating and most of them are all very down on ‘diet culture’ – suggesting that it’s toxic and that dieting ‘doesn’t work’. Again, I have some sympathy with the viewpoint that slimness (women) or lean muscularity (men) is promoted as the ideal for everyone but we are all different and what is healthy (mentally and physically), sustainable and desirable is likewise going to vary. We would all do better to just focus on being the best version of ourselves that we can be rather than trying to compare ourselves with models and celebrities who have goodness knows what genetic, lifestyle and pharmaceutical advantages helping them to present those perfect bodies to the world on a pedestal. But again, that doesn’t mean there aren’t good aspects of it and that we shouldn’t give people the tools to change their lifestyles and their bodies if that’s what they desire to do.

The fact is – diets DO work – assuming the aim of the diet is to lose weight. Statistics show that the vast majority of dieters do manage to lose significant weight, the problem is that most of them don’t maintain it in the long term. And I would argue that that’s probably because most people choose the wrong approach and treat the diet as a temporary thing, instead of making permanent, sustainable changes. In many cases this is because they were promised the world by some charlatan fitpro or celebrity and after successfully losing that weight they went back to the same old habits that got them overweight in the first place. And so the circle continues….

It’s such a shame that the industry is so full of these people, and they do make diet ‘culture’ a pretty toxic place to spend time. But that said, I have a hard time understanding why so many people get sucked into the rubbish these people are spruiking. The old adage ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’ rings really true to me here, even when I was young and naive I don’t think I ever would have believed that eating that ‘one magic food’ or going on a 2 week juice cleanse would somehow magically make me lose weight and keep it off forever – I was always taught that nothing worth doing in life is ever easy. But yet every day people still get hoodwinked by all sort of scams and I think it comes down to the fact that so many of us are sad and lonely and just want to believe in something, even if it does seem a bit too easy. Unfortunately losing weight really isn’t – and it can be so overwhelming, especially if you have a lot to lose. But it’s like any major project, you just have to get started, and eat that elephant one bite at a time.

Which brings me to my final point, about intuitive eating. I’ve read the book, and I’m attempting to incorporate the principles into my lifestyle, because I believe that being a formerly obese person I need to utilise some sort of strategy to control my food intake and maintain a healthy weight for the rest of my life. In my heart I know that if I don’t, then I will continue to overconsume all the calorie dense foods that I love and will end up back where I started, fat and unhappy. However – I don’t necessarily agree with Intuitive Eating in the sense that it’s supposed to be entirely weight neutral and your body weight will settle where it does – I think true intuitive eating will result in a body that maintains a composition without excess fat. Sure, what constitutes ‘excess’ will be different for everyone, but as I said above I think in the vast majority of cases obesity occurs because we ignore the body’s signals and eat the wrong foods for the wrong reasons. I see no reason why most of us shouldn’t be able to maintain a body composition we’re happy with while eating intuitively, although this might also require some emotional deep diving to understand the reasons we eat foods outside of just hunger / needing fuel. And that takes work.