It's the HOPE that's helping

Last week at my work was utterly crazy and as busy as it's been in my 7 1/2 years here - thus minimal posting.  By the end of the week as I was driving to my early morning meeting before work, I gazed into the sky and got a clue as to why things were so bonkers with my clients (they'll always be patients to this nurse!)...there was a full moon in our neck of the woods!  I swear that darn astral orb really does exert forces and influences that we aren't aware of.

But I digress...I'm mainly checking in on how I've been doing since restarting, or continuing , my neverending journey to health, fitness and wholeness.  Recall when last we met (last Tuesday), I'd strayed off my very low carb combo of South Beach Phase 1/Atkins Induction, and managed to actually gain 1.6 pounds for the Monday weigh in.  Since that post, I've been mostly on plan, with a few deviations over the weekend, like splitting an order of world class onion rings with hubby at dinner Saturday night, and another bowl of ice crean that somehow found it's way into my belly.  But truly, honestly, I was much more on plan daily, and had zero incidences of bingeing.

The zero bingeing is a biggie for me, because as I've shared with a blog friend who has been so kind and gracious to offer additional support via email (like a therapist!), I haven't abstained from bingeing because I've got this thing licked.  Every afternoon and especially after dinner, my obsessive and addictive brain starts sending me messages to eat one of my favorite "whatevers"...and each afternoon and evening I find myself back in the boxing ring with the obsessive food thoughts.  It's really exhausting mentally and emotionally, and I see (when I'm not instantly acting on the desire to eat) that often I cave because it shuts up the obsessive thoughts.  But caving to the one thought by eating the one "whatever" ALWAYS, repeat ALWAYS (that means every single time) leads me to the next whatever.  Repeat ad nauseum. 

I've said it before - I don't have to refrain from eating a sleeve of cookies; I only have to refrain from the first bite of the first one, and the binge doesn't get started.   How many times do I have to prove this?...well, I'm not going to self flagellate as that doesn't serve me well at all.  But what has helped this week as the thoughts have hammered at my consciousness - mocking me, wooing me, luring me, tempting me?  It's been the sense of hope that I found back a few weeks ago when I emerged from a long period of out of control eating and confessed it all here.  At that point I was 215.8 and had been feeling hopeless about ever getting back the desire to stay in this arena.  Seriously.  Within several days of clean, on-plan eating, the biggest thing I felt was the return of hope and the loss of the daily remorse and misery of putting on something that was getting more snug by the week.

Hope.  I didn't realize how much I didn't have it until it resurfaced.  And it felt glorious and still does.  I'm grateful that God is giving me a glimpse of that contrast between hopelessness and hopefulness, because when the thought of going stark raving binge crazy comes up, I know I don't want to go back to the absence of hope.  Yet I didn't even reconize its absence before during those rough months.

So - while I haven't been perfect, I've been doing so much better and not getting hung up on sharing onion rings and deciding I have to come home and "finish the job" by eating all that isn't nailed down.  Because once I do that one time, the hope begins to dwindle as predictably as sand flowing down through an hour glass.

My weigh in this morning was 207 - down 3 pounds from last Monday.  I'll take it.  I was delighted, surprised and disbelieving when I saw the number...as I told my blog therapist friend, I actually got off and back on the scale 3 times before believing it.  I was praying I hadn't gained, and yet knew I'd doing pretty well and exercising a lot. 

That's where I find myself this morning, and it's a hell of a lot better than where I was a month ago.  Thanks, universe!