Hello Eldaweesda and Heather! What great looking tickers. I am looking forward to catching up with your stories.
I was not visiting here partly because I lacked the time, but also, I'm afraid, partly because I pretty much lost my mojo and then I wasn't ready to tackle my own weight loss issues. I never had a whole day of thinking that it didn't matter and I never had a minute of thinking I wouldn't be back here (where you all are), but I had a lotta lotta procrastination. After a while I felt as though I would need some breathing space before I could do anything. It was a very unhelpful feeling though and one I want to ignore if it ever comes back. Then again, right now I do want to make use of what amount of breathing space I can find to get reorganized and get my thinking straight so that I can look after myself better, both now and the next time I get busy.
One helpful thought I had this weekend, was that I was
behaving as though I was back in the bad old days when I had no idea how to break the cycle of bad eating I was in - whereas actually I'd already found some useful techniques, I just wasn't applying them. For me the binge cycle breakers have been writing, posting here, and exercising. Not necessarily in that order and possibly all three needed at once to be effective.
Sorry to be on about bingeing yet again. I'm thinking I won't drag you all through every thought I have about it this time, but it's very clear to me these days that bingeing is the issue for me.
Another helpful thing happened this weekend. Probably this was the precursor to the helpful thought above.
I went to a party. (I have had too many parties lately - not that I don't like them, just that I don't like them crammed together weekend after weekend - and it's not like they're optional). At this party was the most thoughtful of my husband's friends. I mean a guy who reflects on and talks about what matters to him. That kind of thoughtful. Anyway, as it happens, he's currently thinking about health and weight and food. So that was helpful to me because it meant we talked about that - and not just "you look great have you lost even more weight? - No I haven't, I'm gaining" - which is a bit too routine to count). Also he told me something about another woman it turns out we both know, who has dropped masses of weight. I mean she was way into morbidly obese and now she's normal. She started to visibly lose weight about the same time as me, but the day I mentioned her loss to her, it was early days and she seemed very uncomfortable about it, so I never brought the topic up again. However, she had spoken to our mutual friend about it. She told him she never deliberately set out to lose weight, but she went to something at a local university where they were dealing with underlying issues - self esteem and issues from her childhood, and the weight just started to fall off. I'm sure there'd be a lot more to it in the details.
Anyway, I was still thinking to myself that I personally was pretty far gone along the wrong track, so when I got home, I used what clues he's mentioned to do an on-line hunt, and where I'm at with that now is:
It seems there is a low cost psych clinic attached to my old uni. It's low cost because the staff haven't finished their training! But they are supervised. One of the areas they work in is eating disorders. There is at least one person working in that psych department who has specialist knowledge related to binge eating.
They did have a seminar related to the topic and one of the speakers from it has written more than one relevant book including a self help book which is not new now but is still on an updated list of self help guides suggested by another uni I respect.
I don't know if I have mentioned here that I have twice contacted a psychologist about my eating before. Once was many moons ago when I wanted to try hypnotherapy. (Which had some value but didn't work out for me at that time.) The next time was not so long ago, but I had a hard time finding a psych. I looked for two things. One was someone who was saying this was one of the areas they specialized in. Only one psych was saying that and she was located too far away to visit regularly. The other thing I looked for was affordability. There were not many who were on the list covered by my health fund! So I found one guy and went a couple of times and he seemed to me to be irrelevant, even though preparing myself to go see someone was useful.
Anyway, this clinic is close enough, on topic and dirt cheap. I'm not planning to go there just now, but I'm not discounting the possiblity either. Actually, I find it calming to think this may be a back up plan, and feeling calmer is helpful in itself. I guess I'm also wanting to do something more to give me confidence about staying healthy long term.
Also, I really must follow up on the idea that there is at least one selfhelp book out there which is quite likely relevant to me. I can't see where I can get the one that most interests me, but I guess it's time to at least get another book or three on the topic. (I have to return library books for my husband anyway.) This seems like a simple idea but truthfully hasn't occurred to me before. I suppose that's because it hadn't occurred to me that I had a binge eating disorder until recently. Maybe I don't actually have a disorder as such anyway, but clearly I have an issue, and it can't hurt to pursue information on the topic. I've looked on-line before and that's sometimes helped but sometimes gone nowhere.
Mmm. Now I've re-read that and it totally stands out to me that I'm saying "the things I know about doing to break the cycle of binge eating, all take time". So this is where the too busy too stressed thing starts getting wrapped into the negative circle in my mind. I did just say that was an unhelpful idea though. Better thought is that I need to do these things and if I'm busy I will do them a little bit.
I also remember a little cartoon that popped up in my on-line travels lately.
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What suits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?
Well, I think, I need to get to the place where I do it right and then I need to make myself some strong habits which will buttress me when I'm busy or stressed. Nothing new in this thought, but it's still pretty relevant. Which reminds me that actually, I really could do with that book. I do wonder if I'm only lacking application, or if I actually am missing some concept, something I need to make my useful behaviour more steady than it's been.