HAPPY THYROID DAY!!!!

Yesterday (Sunday late afternoon) while I was at the AA anniversary party, my awesome endocrinologist called and left me a message telling me my biopsy is entirely benign!! I just need to see her once a year to stay tuned to my thyroid's apparent propensity for sprouting nodules. This thyroid drama has been going on since March, and while not the biggest deal in the world, it's been an offstage worry in my mind since. I'm thrilled, relieved and so grateful that she called on Sunday afternoon (docs can get results and stuff on their home computers now) so I don't have to be on pins and needles every time my cell phone rings today. I'm going to write her a note and tell her how great I think that was. So for now, my thyroid gland will continue to reside in my neck, rather than in a kickbucket on an operating room floor. Thanks for all your support and prayers about this. I literally did a dance of joy, and made my husband join me in said jig.

On the food front...several people commented that they would find it hard to bake the cake I did yesterday and not be tempted to eat it from batter licking to last crumb on plate. I did have one small piece at the party, and that was it. There were so many people that it got gobbled up pretty fast so there wasn't time for me to appropriate a sizeable hunk for myself, which I've certainly done many times before. It was utterly scrumptious and I had numerous requests for the recipe. It was so good that I'd never EVER make it for home. EVER. I'd be safer drinking an anthrax cocktail or eating arsenic pudding. I definitely ate more food at the party than I should have, as well as the housewarming I went to the night before where I dabbled in fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. Very risky behavior, but I made it through both occasions on the right side of bingeing...as in I didn't get triggered to come home and start rummaging the cupboards for bizarre combinations of sweets (since I keep nothing like that on hand now)to continue eating until I was "done". I couldn't even guess at how many times I've done that...too numerous to count.

I'm glad that the food events are over for now. How crazy is it to call those parties food events, I just realized!? One was a woman celebrating moving into a new home after her last one burned to the ground. The other was celebrating an AA meeting that has been going 7 days a week for 9 years. There was food served at both these gatherings - but the food wasn't the main event or the reason for either.

In my mind, food is how I've always framed life - from parties to meeting a friend at Starbucks for coffee. From holidays to cold weather days to hot weather days to spring days to baby showers and weddings, a kid getting an award, book club. I know that food is infused into the fabric of all aspects of day to day life. It's essential for survival, pleasurable, comforting, nourishing. But for me, food has always been the umbrella under which life happens. It's been the ground under me and the soft place I fall. Truth be told, since I gave up alcohol, it's been my major life strategy, and it was before I ever started drinking. Baby's first addiction.

I want that to change. I'll always love food and eating. But I want my relationship with food to change; I want to make peace with it. Last week on my first binge free day after the bad episode on Tuesday, I didn't want to eat dinner because I wasn't craving anything and wasn't even that hungry. I was afraid that as soon as I ate anything, even salad, the binge switch would get flipped. It came to me that in addition to loving food, needing it, using it to self medicate and cope, I'm also afraid of it at times. So I'm praying now for right relationship with food. By the way, I did eat a sane dinner that night and did not get triggered to binge, and I haven't since. That doesn't equal perfection, but it does give me hope that a right and sane relationship with food is possible for me.

Off to work now. My knee is still bothering me a bit, so I have to continue to abbreviate my working out; but I know the more important thing on which I need to stay focused is keeping my food clean and staying aware of potential food traps. Pay attention to my thoughts and feelings and notice when "the urge" hits. It'll hit for sure - sooner or later - and I want to be ready,