Two "off" nights and what I'm doing for OA step 1 (169.0)

Wednesday night we had a dinner for clients at a local Italian restaurant.  I had a good food day during the day, and expected I would eat dinner there and would just skip dessert.  I had half a glass of white wine when I got there.  Dinner was green beans & red peppers, chicken breast, and augratin potatoes.  I had one small piece of bread at 7:00 because I was starving, ate dinner around 7:30, had a lot of green beans, about half a chicken breast, and a small spoon of the potatoes.  I didn't have dessert.

Around 10 that night, I was sitting in the family room watching TV, and the binge thoughts started. 

I know what you're thinking... WHY would you be in the family room where you know you binge?  Well, I didn't want to be around Mark. It wasn't HIM, it was the fact that he's a human being.  I'm about 1/2 extrovert, 1/2 introvert.  When I am as extroverted as I was at dinner, I have to recharge by having an equal amount of solitude.  So I stayed away from him for some quiet time. Looking back, it would have been better to just go to bed and tell him I needed quiet.  But at the time, I literally could not even stand the presence of another body in the room with me.

So anyway, I was determined to head off the binge, even though I was thinking of the cookies in the cupboard.  I didn't binge on cookies, but I still ate.  I had 2 laughing cow cheese wedges on about 10 soy crisps.  Then I had a bowl of Kashi cereal with milk.  It wasn't earth shattering.  But it wasn't healthy or abstinent, either.

That night set me up for a messed up Thursday.  I was still "fried" the next morning (needed more alone time), but also bloated and not hungry for breakfast.  I got to stay home until 11 am (since I'd worked 12 hours on Wednesday b/c of the dinner, Mark said it was OK to be tired & stay home for a bit Thursday morning), so I did get my introvert recharge completed.  But I skipped breakfast.

Around 11:30 am I had yogurt & raspberries and a Luna bar before I left for work, which is a pathetic lunch, I know. I think I was playing a penitence game with myself.  "I ate last night.... I don't need to eat now. I deserve to be hungry for a while since I didn't feel hungry this morning."  I then had an early dinner at work (frozen meal and an apple) at 3:30 pm.  I worked until 5ish, had a church meeting at 6, then choir at 7, then home by 8:30. 

I was feeling fine, relaxed, not stressed. But I was stomach-hungry.  Instead of eating something healthy around 9 pm after the kids went to bed, I said "NO! you don't eat after 8:30.  That will cause you to binge."  Of course, at 10 pm I was starving (I WAS in bed, not in the family room--I was hungry, not binge-thinking).  And I went back to the soy crisps and the laughing cow. Only one wedge, only 8 crisps.  But still. As soon as I hit the kitchen, I started thinking of cookies. Thank goodness I didn't eat them.

Second night in a row of that kind of stuff could be the beginning of a pattern.  Time to stop that now.  So I'm writing about it.

Monday night my sponsor told me to write down all my trigger foods. I thought that would be easy and a short list.  Ha.  I have a full page in a school composition notebook filled from top to bottom.  She also asked me to write about my food history (as I wrote it, I thought of more & more trigger foods).  I went all the way back to Kindergarten or 1st grade, when a babysitter taught me that butter on top of poptarts makes them even tastier.  I wrote for over an hour, I think, and only got through middle school.  I have about 25 more years to cover.  I am trying to remember significant food obsessions and activity, and also negative body image and eating-for-comfort/stress relief/boredom experiences. 

One example is when I was at my grandma's house when I was in early grade school.  I was a very picky eater.  I often only ate white bread PB sandwiches, and I would also make white bread toast with margarine covered in cinnamon/sugar.  Grandma kept a shaker of cinnamon/sugar mixed up so we could all do this.  I also would eat (and sneak) spoonfuls of Nestle Quick straight out of the container.  I would eat cake mix the same way--dry, with a spoon and a glass of milk on the side. All when I was under the age of 10.  Food compulsion, anyone?

I'm better today.  Ate a good breakfast and lunch, had an acupuncture treatment (ahhh, bliss), and will be home tonight to have a healthy dinner.  I will work on my food history this weekend to keep me focused on WHY I'm doing the OA program. And hopefully that will help me stick to it.