Saturday, April 24, 2010

Good & Bad

Well, my stuff came today, thankfully.  I was mostly looking forward to the supplements I ordered.  It's been a while since I've been on a good daily vitamin and I ordered a really good prenatal vitamin.  Additionally, I bought linoleic acid and a blend that balances water/electrolytes.  I think they should work out pretty well.

Since I didn't have my supplies from the beginning of the day, I did have all regular food today, though I was careful and kept the calories down.  I weighed myself this morning and was horrified.  It was 265, which it has not been for well over a year.  When I first got my lapband I was 280, so it's not that high, but way too close for comfort.  I have nice restriction on my band but, again, the band doesn't really help addiction.

I want to talk about addiction a little bit.  It seems to be a pretty broad topic and there are certainly lots of kinds of addictions.  Food addiction is like other addictions in that the pathology exists which affects daily living.  For instance, when I wake I think about food.  I think about certain types of food that make me feel the best and how I can fit them into my day.  I think about how I can hide them from my husband, children, friends and other family and sometimes strangers.  My gateway drug is sugar.  Once I have sugar I am prone to eat more of it or move on to more equally destructive substances, like high fat foods or high carb foods.  Food addiction is unlike other addictions in that you can't stop eating.  There is a 12 step program called Overeaters Anonymous (OA) which explains that abstinence is different from person to person.  Abstinence usually includes eliminating only your trigger/gateway food.  If I followed that program I would eliminate all sugar from my diet, or certainly  minimize it down to as low as possible (because let's face it, sugar, particularly corn syrup is found in EVERYTHING).  I may do that in the future.  Right now I'm more concerned with getting to a healthy weight.  Not perfect weight, as if there is such a thing.  But a healthy weight.  Anyway, food addiction is complex and there are no easy answers.  I'll say right now that I am not fond of OA.  The reason for that is that I don't like that there's no feedback.  I want to share my story with someone, but I want it to be with others who aren't afraid to confront me.  I need that.  I'm way too learned in the field of psychology to simply be all right with verbalizing my experience for the sake of doing so.

Have I mentioned that I'm a substance abuse counselor in training?  Nice timing, eh?  My personal philosophy of substance abuse counseling is a combination of individual and group counseling.  Right now, I'm in neither.  I do have an amazing therapist but I've been on a break from her for a while.  Likely the amount of time it took me to balloon to 265.  Anyway, I will return to her for this journey.  However, I wish there was a good group in which I could participate.  There's nothing like a good group for being confronted or having the mirror held up. 

I think I am going to end here for tonight.  Tomorrow will be official day one of the meal replacement diet.  I'm actually looking forward to it.  :)  Please remind me of that a couple of days, weeks or months in. 

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