A couple weeks ago, I received and finally started working with The Binge Eating and Compulsive Overeating Workbook: An Integrated Approach to Overcoming Disordered Eating by Carolyn, Coker Ross. While I wasn’t sure what to expect thanks to not being able to find books about BED up until now, I have to say that I’m already impressed with this book…
…and resisting it.
It’s funny, knowing myself well enough to know when my resistance isn’t some gut feeling telling me not to do something but rather a resistance to getting better. There is a restless, trapped feeling that I get when I’m working toward a more stable relationship with food that usually ends in disaster. However, this time, something in me seems to know resisting is silly because I need to get better. I need to and the time is now.
I’ve made it through the first section of the book, which concentrates on getting stability through eating patterns and learning more about foods so we don’t judge them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. While I would still argue that Coke Zero is deadly and thus ‘bad’, it’s not real food anyway. And arguing for the sake of being pedantic is just another way of me resisting.
In the case of this workbook, stability comes with meal time scheduling, setting achievable goals, creating a menu and keeping a food diary.
Ah, the dreaded food diary.
The Bloke has been very good at not giving me the whopping ‘I told you so’ that he could give me. He’s been after me for years to keep a food diary. I tried it a few times (hating it all along the way) before finally declaring that keeping a food diary ‘just isn’t for me’.
Well, tough titties, as they say here, because keeping a food diary is part of the regime now whether I like it or not.
It is strange – and somehow fitting – that something I have resisted so hard for so long is now something that I have committed to doing for at least a month (more on ‘why a month?’ later). While it’s not quite like the food diaries I’ve had in the past, it’s still the same thing at heart. And yet, now it has a calming effect for me. My food diary, the amount of paperwork, thinking, writing, etc that I am doing solely for my own benefit right now feels cautiously good.
Part of me still wants to grab a packet of Tim Tams and run for the hills, but it is a small part. More of me – the newly discovered narcissism, perhaps – wants to stay and explore this. It’s like the true spirit of me is sitting in the back of my head, saying, “You’re doing all this for me? All this love, devotion, attention and hard work? For me?”
It’s a new world, there’s no doubt about it. I’m taking care of myself with kid gloves in a way I never have before. I’m devoting time, effort and study to understanding my problem and fixing. It’s aggravating, scary, confronting and a lot more, but it’s also saving my life.
So here’s to one day down and plenty more to come.