Binge, Interrupted

Friday night I did something I haven't in a long time. I planned a binge.

I thought about it and longed for it, and then I shopped for it.

The setting was right. I'd be all by myself, since Mark was taking Sophie to the Martina McBride concert. And my binges, of course, have to happen in secret.

My mood was right. Totally in the dumps, because I was stuck at home on a night I should have been out with my girlfriends having fun and feeling human again instead of a Mommytron. Poor poor pitiful me. I needed to get rid of that feeling, and numbing myself with food always does the trick.

The price was right. Who cares if Haagen Dazs is $4 a pint? One each of vanilla and chocolate should hit the spot. And oh yeah, let's throw in a box of Pop Tarts (my favorite, brown sugar cinnamon) for good measure. That's a measly $10 for a night of sugared-out bliss.

I didn't wait to be alone before I started in on the Pop Tarts. I opened a pack to feed to Luke with his antibiotic (a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, after all) while everyone was still here. I had one and my Mom ate the other; Luke didn't want anything to eat at all.

Then it was just me and the boy. He watched Dora the Explorer while sitting on my lap, and I picked up my recent book purchase about keeping weight off forever. I've got a fiction book going too, but wasn't in the mood for reading about the oppression of being a woman in Afghanistan, so I figured why not read about how someone else has stayed thin. Maybe it will sink in by osmosis.

Turns out, even though so far I'm not impressed with its disorganized structure and standard platitudes (like "don't eat unless you feel hungry" - I mean, really... who doesn't already know this? And I'm only in chapter one), the book made a difference for me tonight.

On page seven, a simple exercise of "The Old Me" and "The New Me." The questions under each:
The Old Me
I used to see myself as:
Most of all I wanted to be:
More than anything, I wanted to be able to:
Every day I hoped:
If I had one wish it would have been:
My favorite dream for my future was:

The New Me
Now I see myself as:
Most of all I want to be:
More than anything I want to be able to:
Today I hope:
Now I wish:
My favorite dream for my future is:

Since I had Luke on my lap, I didn't write out my answers. But I completed the sentences in my head and by the time I was done and had muddled through a few more pages of the book, the desire to binge had gone away. The desire to eat chocolate ice cream is still here, even as I write this late Friday night, but the desire of "More than anything I want to be able to keep this damn weight off for the rest of my life" is currently outweighing anything else.

I wrote the other day about there not being many books available for weight loss maintainers. Maybe that's because maintenance is a bitch. A bitch that isn't easily tamed and apparently is as ugly and frightening as the one Sigourney Weaver battles in Alien.

Only this one doesn't have a big Hollywood ending. This is going to be an endless battle. There is no finish line. There is never going to be a day when I can say "Okay, that's it, I'm all done and I don't have to do this anymore" (well, okay, the day I die I can say that, but you know, that's a long way off, God willing).

This idea of "it's never going to end" isn't new news, I realize that. It's just a small little epiphany in a likely endless road of epiphanies that will add up to be my life.

And The New Me says, "Most of all I want to be a weight loss success, for now and for good."