I broke my abstinance.  In a horrible way.  Twice.  I threw up on purpose.  Yesterday and today. Funny thing is, I don't feel bad or aweful or remorseful like I should.  I feel better.  Ugh.  Shit will hit the fan tomorrow I know.  or it will be fine.  I am so busy today I can't think so I will think over night and write tomorrow.

Back in The Saddle

In OA, we are encouraged to take a good look at our compulsive eating, and the self-destructive things we have done to avoid obesity- the dieting, starving, over-exercising, purging..."
a.)What solutions have I tried, and what were the results?

I have tried dieting, restricting one or more food groups, exercising, fasting, taking laxitives, taking ephedrine, throwing up, hurting myself for punishment, not eating in front of people, Jenny Craig, therapy, reading books, drinking coffee.  The results were varied in the short term, but I still ended up where I am today, feeling fat, out of control, not feeling like I understand food, my body, how the body works, nutrition.  But i can spout out facts like an M.D. 
b.)am I still looking for a solution outside OA?

In perfect honesty yes.  I still exercise specifically to keep from being fat.  I still eat as moderately and sparingly as I can most of the time so I can be as small as possible.  I would like to say no, but I know that I am still trying to eat for weight loss and work out for the same purpose. 
c.)How have I used food, exercising, dieting...to escape life's problems?

Food/Dieting - I use coffee, jelly beans, diet coke, or in general eating at night to relax and to have something to look forward to after work.  I look forward to the release of veronica mars and mindless munching after work more than hanging out.  It's me time.  I let myself eat nearly a whole bag of jelly beans two nights ago.  I was exhausted, in pain and stressed out and I just munched and munched my way through.  Of course it wasn't much of an escape because I have felt aweful about it since.  It's in the past and I can't change it and I haven't done anything like it since.  Today is a new day and each good choice is a step in the right direction.  But I'm still disappointed over it. 

I use hunger or skipping meals or restricting to help from feeling lost or overwhelmed in social situations.  Eating in front of people makes me feel vulnerable and refusing or eating so little makes me feel powerful, and in control....even beautiful and exotic.  When I am uneasy or insecure in front of a boy I refuse to eat "I'm not hungry" or something like that or I nibble as Scarlett O'Hara did "with disdain as if you weren't possibly interested in that buttermilk biscuit".  I have always associated that with femininity and that's what I do to try to gain femininity.  

Exercise - if I exercise, I can feel like I deserve to eat and to rest and relax.  I don't deserve to sit down and read or watch a movie with boyfriend if I haven't exercised.  Exercise makes me feel disciplined, even better than other people.  I am above being sloth, I am above relaxing, so I don't have to feel insecure in front of them. 
d.)are there any particular foods or eating behaviors that always give me trouble? triggers?

Jelly Beans, pretzels, tic tacs, chocolate, candy really of any kind, frozen yogurt, dips like pita and hummus, though I love it I want to eat all of it.  
e.)here is a complete inventory or my dieting/overexercising/self destructive history...

oh god, this is going to take a long time.  i started when I was nine and I don't know if I have the strength to go through and relive it all right now.  I'll come back

Exerpts from "Appetites"

Before I started this program, like a long time... a year maybe? I picked up this book called "Appetites" by Caroline Knapp.  I loved it.  It's not a recovery book, its a memoir by a woman who was anorexic.  I love her writing style and I liked her honest estimation of things.  

"The Lure of starving - the baffling, seductive hook- was that it soothed, a balm of safety and containment that seemed to remove me from the ordinary, fraught world of human hunger and place me high above it, in a private kingdom of calm.

 This didn't happen immediately, this sense of transcendent solace, and there certainly wasn't anything blissful or even long-lived about the state; starving is a painful, relentless experience, and also a throbbingly dull one, an entire life boiled down to a singular sensation (physical hunger) and a singular obsession (food).  But when I think back on those years, which lasted through my mid-twenties, and when I try to get underneath the myriad meanings and purposes of such a bizarre fixation, that's what I remember most pointedly - the calm, the relief from an anxiety that felt both oceanic and nameless."

An anxiety that felt both oceanic and nameless.  I have described this feeling as "the darkness"   huge, endless, "nameless".  

I was explaining my new lease on life to Maia today.  The weight will go slightly up and down my whole life and there are so many other things to worry about.  I like my experiences.  I have been really sick that last few days... ugh, and embarrassing UTI.  And I pee every few minutes and I have this constant hunger.  So tonight when I got home I had a can of soup and then I ate nearly a whole package of dark chocolate.  2.5 servings and I had 2.  Wow, doesn't sound that much now that I put it out there but yeah, I'm a little embarassed of the 2 servings of dark chocolate. but I do have to say that my hunger was gone and I was able to go to the bathroom.  I have been backed up for two days.  and now I feel like I should be ashamed and I'm going to get fat, but in all honesty, I'm too tired to care.   My life is more than the dark chocolate.  I'm active (when I'm not peeing fire) and I eat a reasonably healthy diet.  nuff said.  But that anxiety, that darkness... it ebbs and flows, a constant thread throught my whole life. It's in ebb stage right now.  I'm happy, works good, enjoying spending time with my new boy.  It'll flow again but I know that it's a cycle like everything else....

just writing with no particular goal.