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| Sunset in the Inside Passage |
It was June 2013 and I was on an Alaskan Cruise, about half way through the trip. I decided it would be "OK" to have about a tablespoon of mint jelly with some delicious lamb at the formal dinner.
It wasn't okay. And I knew it. And I ate it anyway. Insert slippery slope thinking voice "You've been walking about 15-20,000 steps each day on the ship and shore... certainly a little bit of mint jelly won't hurt....
It did hurt. I felt like H*LL and spend the rest of the evening alone, laying on my bed, thinking about the Titanic and the people trapped below. Dramatic much? LOL. :)
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| Everybody MUSTER! |
I went up to the gym and weighed in the next morning. I was not alone. I was in a gym with 10 other people and waited in line to weigh in with 3 other people. MY people!!
In other words- I mustered up the plan and prioritized 100% on getting right back to recovery.
So the lapse was one meal, one time, one year ago.
It's been a year since the lapse. Have I had binge urges and thoughts, yes! Have I gotten very close to another lapse- YES! But I stopped, paused and asked myself.. why am I eating? Am I hungry? Am I angry, am I lonely, am I tired? Am I bored? HALT-B as the Before I eat app reminds me.
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| I'm still standing! Post paddle on an Alaskan river |
Today, I celebrate! I'm still standing. Still food sober, still sticking to my food template. Still doing the work and prioritizing what I need to do to keep from being sucked into the wheat and sugar H*LL that I used to live every day, every hour.
Life is good. Here's to another year. Sometimes it takes an off road trip to make me appreciate all the on road automatic life I've build.
I wouldn't trade my grain/sugar/legume/dairy/nut abstinence for anything!
Onward!
What is working:
1. Abstaining from my trigger foods: grain/sugar/legume/dairy/nut
2. Taking any step necessary from falling back into binge eating.
3. Repeat, daily, each meal, hourly.
What did not work:
1. Moderating grain/sugar/legume/dairy/nut-... just like smoking a shorter cigarette... didn't work
2. Not taking action when moderate eating was not working (and I knew it)
3. Repeating moderation of junk foods and staying on the eat, repent repeat cycle.
Food sobriety ROCKS!!
Well, you are quite hard on yourself. I don't take mint jelly at one meal as breaking food sobriety. If that has been your only sugar/etc. in a full year, DAYUM!!!! You go girl!
ReplyDeleteHi Gwen. I could feel it in my mind that it was indeed a lapse. I didn't beat myself up for long, but I remember planning how the next day was going to go, what I wanted my weight maintenance plan to look like and feel like long term. I decided I did not want to keep the sugar addiction alive. I can have the 85% chocolate ( maybe 3-5 grams of sugar or less- two small squares) once a day. In the presence of the the high fat, I can eat that and not get triggered.
DeleteI still count my total food sobriety as May 3, 2011. I think lapses will happen from time to time. If I can keep them at lapses and not relapses, I'll have better health. Onward! :)
Congrats Karen. I admire your honesty and integrity...it inspires me :) I also enjoy your pix too!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Katie... at a recent food addiction talk at PaleoFX14, (I attended the live stream) one of the participants talked about being really honest about our recovery. I knew I was falling back into the old cycles. So glad for honesty and clarity. Thanks for stopping by the blog.
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