Sitting with It: Mindful Binging

This looks like a pretty awesome day, right? Burned a lot of calories, got some exercise, didn't sleep well, but I've lost some of the weight I re-gained while my neck was rehabilitating.....


But the proof is in the details, right?  You would have never guessed that inside my "Calories Consumed" lurked this monster:


I bought them as I was coming home from work.  I know I shouldn't have.  But I wanted a cookie.  I wanted the crunch and the sweetness.  Of all the cookie options at CVS, this was one of the better ones.  4 Lorna Doones has 150 calories.  2 Double Stuf Oreos (my favorite) have 140 calories. I thought I was getting more bang for my buck.  I had the box open before I even got home.  The first four cookies consumed in the time it took to check my mail, go up in the elevator, and go to my door.

But then I continued.

And continued.

And continued.

Until I had eaten the whole box (thankfully I hadn't gone to the grocery store where they have bigger boxes). 

I sat at my computer feeling ashamed and weak.
I felt like a hypocrite. I felt like I had learned nothing over the past few years.  
I had just eaten the same amount of calories in cookies as I burn while running for an hour. 

Then I had the insane thought of "oh man, I wish I were a bulimic, that way the calories wouldn't count."
I fully admit that statement is one of the most backwards and fucked-up things anyone could say. 
Bulimia is a serious eating disorder, not a way to deal with bad choices.

And so I sat at my computer, and logged the 20 cookies that I had just devoured (not even savored).
I sat there saying to myself "it's okay" softly. Repeatedly.
I wasn't giving myself permission to have a binge, I was giving myself permission to learn from it and move on.

I remembered that I had been there before and lived to blog about it.  So I looked up the entry and re-read what I had wrote.  I realized that while I've learned so much in the past two years, that some issues will never go away, and that I need to be mindful/vigilant of them always.

So I titled this blog post "Sitting with It:  Mindful Binging" because most of us who have had experience with food addiction and binges know that the first response to a binge is usually some sort of panic/anxiety/shame/regret; we disconnect from the emotions that caused the binge in the first place.  I think the lucky people see it happening and feel powerless to stop it.  The unlucky people don't even notice it is happening. 

I believe that if we can be mindful of the binge -- that is, to know it is happening and why -- the greater the chances of stopping/curtailing it.  The slower we experience the physical action of the binge the more opportunities we have to allow the emotions to make an appearance.  Make sense?

I know why I was eating the cookies. 
It's more than just loving the crunchy texture and the buttery shortbread deliciousness.
I needed to sit with the feelings -- not the cookies.

The feeling? I turn 31 in a few weeks and I've yet to experience being in love.
And I don't think my grandpa will live to see me in love.
And that makes me sad.