Binging, an insider’s view

It’s been too long since I reported in.  We’re a month into the new year, and it’s been close to ten weeks.

I’ve seesawed a bit upward since then. I was in the high 460s for a while; last week I hit a low of 456 but am about 460 now.

The period I skipped covered a lot of holidays.  My eating has been largely unmonitored in the past weeks – not necessarily uncontrolled, but not necessarily…not.  I’ve had some pretty serious binges.  Some involving close to a dozen gourmet donuts at a time. As well as an upsized combo meal at one or more of the more generous drive-thru chains.

It’s hard for me to describe what a binge feels like – before, during, and after. It’s like the signs of a cold or allergic reaction: the “oh crap, it’s coming” feeling, the denial, the bargaining, the defense, the acceptance, and the guilt and shame and indigestion and nausea (and at times the perverse pride) at knowing it was coming and failing to stop it.  Sometimes a binge can be short-circuited. Sometimes it can’t. When you’ve been living with a weight problem and eating problem for most of your life, the effort to resist can be exhausting. Willpower is not infinite, and often the binge is meeting a very real (if not understood) need, however poorly.

My brother is going through a similar journey. He’s taking a different road – closely medically supervised – and he’s enjoyed a lot of success, over a hundred pounds so far. He’s an accomplished and determined guy; he’s completed triathlons as an Ultra Clydesdale. But the spectre of binges are every bit as present for him.  He writes about it here.

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