Shame

I hate these posts where I get all obnoxiously honest. It's a bit painful. And here goes...

So there's a lot of shameful things that happen when you chronically overeat. One of those things is that you hide food intake. I sometimes do this thing where I sneak food and then feel really ashamed and full of regret.

Like today. John left for worship team practice and I pretty immediately went for these two small-ish leftover baked potatoes in the fridge. I wasn't hungry. We had had farina for brunch not two hours before. Without a thought I took both out instead of just one. I found myself trying to hide the bowl with the potatoes, margarine and light sour cream from my landlord/housemate walking by. I knew it was wrong and I shouldn't, but I was too far into the process. The concept of not eating it at that point just wasn't an option.

So now I need to figure out how to go from this place of shame and embarrassment and self-disgust that just makes me want to give up and crawl in a corner to one in which I feel empowered and motivated to continue in the right direction.

I know it's gonna be a lot of hard work to get where I want to be. And for that reason, I haven't given myself a time table. It took a lifetime of learning bad habits to get to this place. It might take a few years to get to an awesome place. It involves changing bad habits into good ones. Consciously switching the associations I have created in my brain. Resisting a lot of temptation and feeling good about it. This physical thing with my body has to happen on a cognitive level and sometimes that just feels overwhelmingly difficult.

In The End to Overeating, it talks about changing your brain's association with things to change your behavior, e.g., taking a whiff of stale cigarette butts every time you want a cigarette so that eventually you just associate smoking with nastiness. The books says that you can train yourself to do the same sort of thing with food. If I'm able to resist temptation (made easier by making a plan of action before I encounter said temptation), on a consistent basis, I won't be tempted anymore. I'll be so rewarded by the results of resisting the temptation that walking away will be a more desirable thing to do than eat the brownie (or pizza, or cheesecake, or potato).

Here's hoping that I can get to that place. I'm feeling pretty negative at the moment and I want to get to a more positive place. One where this journey is exciting and not something I dread.