Good Days, Bad Days

Most people who maintain blogs about their weight loss tend to write a lot when things are going great and to disappear for a period of time when things are going poorly. That’s because many of them are chronicling success and embarrassed to reveal perceived failure. I find that I’m rather the opposite. The more I succeed, the less I need to write.

This blog is a more a chronicle of my pain, frustration, struggles, and anger than my achievements, and frankly that’s the way I want it to be. If I start blogging about success, then I worry that the process of weight loss will start to define my life to the extent that it feels like a “hobby” or an end unto itself rather than a means to an end. When I reach a healthy weight, I expect to have little more to say.

These days, I find that I have “good days” and “bad days”, like I always did, but the severity of the “bad” is far less than it once was. A “bad day” is usually around 2000 calories and a “good day” is usually around 1300-1400. I find that I still “binge” for comfort, but there’s a cap on the amount of it, and I’m fully aware of what I’m doing rather than doing it mindlessly.

There’s still a mental process that needs to be dealt with in terms of using food to cope and comfort, but I am keeping in mind that it is a “process”. That is, it’s a gradual shift of behavior from extremely destructive gobbling of 3000-4000 calories in a day to consuming 500 calories in a short time such that I sabotage some of my success rather than absolutely fail. Progress is being made, and failing to succeed 100% is not true failure. I must be patient with myself. I’ve only been working at this for 7 months and the mental patterns have been in place for nearly a life time.