All Quiet on the Eastern Blog

Thank goodness it's March. February is a hard month to maintain a happy face, and that makes me feel like eating bread and pasta and potatoes and cookies, so...a warm welcome to the (almost) Ides.

I have been having a crap two weeks, y'all. Dentist, stomach upsets, my very first flare up of carpal tunnel, doggy destruction, more cat puke than you can shake a damp sponge at, and dry face skin, to boot. Trying times like these lead me down unfortunate paths with my food choices, because food makes me feel good. I try real hard most of the year to remind myself that I can feel even better by exercising and eating right and trying to keep it real with myself and being engaged and involved in the world around me. But February...eff me if I can stick to it.

It's awesome, too, that I have had some no-good nausea for a handful of days now. I won't eat because I'm not hungry with nausea, and then I'll go for too long and get ravenous and eat too much of something I can eat quick, instead of preparing something healthy that takes 20 minutes. It's a cycle I need to break.

I'm totally off the no-sugar wagon. Just like a dam, a tiny chink led to a crack, which led to a gaping hole that let that sugar on in. I'm keeping myself in check, somewhat. I've been eating only dark chocolate, the higher that cacao content the better, and I have been making one candy bar last two or three days. I'm trying to feel okay about that. Sometimes, there are dark chocolate raisins involved (Bets, I totally get it now). I have always been an all or nothing girl. What I need to learn now is moderation. I'm tryin'.

Because I am not feeling great in my stomach, and have been getting sick more than I regularly do, I have been getting this little red flag in the back of my head. I am not, I repeat, AM NOT a bulimic, but I think I've mentioned before that I get nervous that I could slide into that pattern of behavior, b/c throwing up has become a somewhat regular enough part of my life that it doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm very cool and collected about the whole ordeal...and that concerns me. So here's what I'm noticing about myself that has the red flags up: I'm not paying as much attention to portion size b/c my unconscious says, I mean, whatevs, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit, and then there will be room for three more bites, anyway. I know how effed that sounds, lords knows I do, and I'm pretty sure that a therapist is on my list of things to get on for the next week or two, but I guess I'm hoping that by calling that shit out now before it becomes a habitual pattern of behavior, I can head it off at the pass.

Before I had lap-band, I remember reading accounts of people that had had one of the surgeries, and then got eating disorders. I remember thinking that there were so many testimonials, and that I couldn't even understand how they could let that happen. Starving or vomiting--how gross, right? But now I see how even a subtle shift in normal routine can sink in until it becomes normal, too, when it's not normal, not normal, at all, and deserves some analysis and attention. I.e. I can't eat two servings of anything and expect it not to come up; therefore, I can't eat two servings. It seems real simple, not like something I would forget, but sometimes I do, because, man, food tastes good.