The Wolf at the door

I'm back from five days in Richmond - the town that caused me to gain 30 pounds over two years - and for that reason I am not stepping on a scale until July 1st. Food wise I actually think I did fine. Sure, I had the drunken rice at Mom Siam (twice!) and Ukrop's chicken salad, and Baker's Crust Mesquite Chicken Grinder with pasta salad, as well as belgian waffles and sausages and chicken and dumplings, and cheese-stuffed chicken breasts and twice baked potatoes.

Uh...okay, so it wasn't good. But you have to understand that my standards are a little different.

What made it 'okay' for me, was that on all of those occasions, I ate just enough to feel satisfied, but never so much that I awoke my Wolf of COE, and I can't tell you what a surprising and motivating feeling that is. Normally, a few days of rich food would send me into a spiral of self-loathing and an enormous binge (oh boy, what a binge) but instead I came right home and stocked the fridge again with chicken and vegetables. And what matters more is that I did it not using a spring of 'willpower' or even self-discipline. I did it because that's just the way I live now.

You know, even saying that is hard for me, because I have spent 29 years not being the person who could manage to avoid my own compulsive overeating. I have reached for a doughnut mere seconds after vowing not to do it. I have been at my own mercy for so long that proclaiming that I'm different now sets off the heretical part of me who expects a vengeful God to start throwing lightningbolts (or lasagna, for that matter). Lately I find myself tiptoeing around my own psyche - waiting for her to disappoint me again. And yet for better or worse, I still feel in control.

What brought this to light for me was lunch yesterday. A. and I got back from Richmond late Sunday night and all I had in the fridge was a wilted cucumber and some eggs. I skipped breakfast on Monday morning and then was forced to run to Kroger at lunch. I walked right in to the deli and ordered two pieces of rotisserie chicken and green beans. It came with a roll, which I promptly threw away.

No big deal, right? Well, yes and no. As I ate lunch, I realized that normally (meaning really any given day before April of this year) I would have used my bare fridge and my 'vacation eating' as an excuse to pig out. "Well, since I have nothing to eat I'll just get what I want today and 'be good' again tomorrow." The memory was so vivid to me that I even knew what I would have purchased: a container of chicken tenders, as well as mini pitas and hummus, along with (probably) a candy bar of some kind and maybe a giant can of Spaghetti-O's* or Mac&Cheese for dinner. Then I would have eaten the chicken on the way home from the store, and gone inside to the snack bar and toasted piece after piece of the pita bread, and dunked it in the hummus or slathered it with butter. I would have gone through the whole bag of bread in one day, believe it or not.

And you know, as far as binges are concerned, that wouldn't even have been a bad one. In the worst days of my COE, I found myself trying to "save" my hunger so that I could cram in as much food as I could when it came time to eat. Over the course of a long weekend, I have gone to the store every day for just *one day's* worth of groceries (never mind that it looked like it could feed a family of four for a day).

So believe it or not, this weekend was a triumph for me, and it brought to light just how much I've changed. Of course, I'm still crossing my fingers about this, and half waiting for the pendulum to swing back over into dangerous territory, but I'm determined for the time being to enjoy my new found freedom from ... well ... myself.


*The binging part of me eats like an 8-year-old, yes. Embarrassing but true!