Mindgames

The military likes to screw with you.  Know this.  So, this week has been more than slightly hectic and nothing but pure stress.  Despite this, I've managed not to binge eat or even over eat and I am truly proud of myself.  What is going on, however, is that on Tuesday night we received a phone call stating we will be getting orders to move.

What we don't know is to where or when yet.  Every day we're given just a little bit more information.  At this point, all I know is that by Friday we should have complete details.  I am surprised that I haven't cleared out my fridge of all the food and put it into my stomach.  This says something about how far I've come!

Some things I've noticed myself doing in place of eating is cleaning, focusing on spending time with my son and husband, working on my computer and talking to my mother and my friends.  These are all positive things and they all came to me without thinking about them or thinking about turning to food first before doing them.  I hope that I continue with these habits.

I saw my physician yesterday about my leg.  I was given a 7 day extension on Septra, a strong antibiotic and will be following up again in one week.  I also did some blood work, to make sure that I wasn't becoming diabetic, since this cellulitis has been a problem.  The frustrating part of all this is that I still can not exercise (by walking).  I have found it hard to raise my heart level through other types of movement that doesn't involve the use of my legs, but I am still trying.

I thought that it would be all right to walk my son to the bus the other day because my leg was feeling pretty good.  The walk really isn't that far, just right up the street no more than a three minute walk with a 6 year old who doesn't want to walk more than a snails pace in the morning.  I have to tell you, it felt good to be out and walking again.  When I got home, however, my entire foot and ankle that the cellulitis is on, had become swollen.  So when the doctor tells you to stay off your leg, stay off your leg.

Tomorrow is therapy, looking forward to it.  Hope it's not my last session.  I really don't want to leave this base yet.  Love it here.

Let's Share!

Recently, I've wanted to get together and talk to other people about weight loss and the struggles that come with it because I just need to talk about it with someone other than my therapist.  After doing a search online, I found that there was a local chapter for Overeaters Anonymous in my town and I was pretty excited about it at first.

I checked out the location on Google maps and tried to psych myself up into going.  They meet once a week on Tuesdays at 6pm and I figured that I could handle this.  Not only would this be great for support, but it might help me meet new people since I really struggle with creating and maintaining new friendships.

The only problem is, I really hate people.  That makes no sense, right?  I know, it's confusing to me, too.  Try being in a position where you can't stand to be around people 95% of your waking day (not including husband and child) and then actually crave to be around others.  How do you get around that?  I have no idea.

I think I might just be having a little anxiety about being out in public while being obese, though.  I've talked about it in the past, not wanting people to stare at me because of my size.  I can't just assume because I'm going to an Overeaters Anonymous meeting that everyone there is going to be obese, too.  Some people can overeat and not gain weight, but still need help.  Not all binge eaters are obese.  This is the dilemma for me, having to worry about being around skinny people who overeat.  It makes me even more embarrassed about my size.

Anyway, what I think I need to do here is just force myself to go to one of these meetings eventually.  It's going to take a bit more psyching up, however.  Another week or two, perhaps?  I wish I had someone to go with.  Also, I wish I wasn't so big that I was worried about breaking a chair if I showed up or worried that I might not fit in the chair.  It's times like this that I tend to fall back on the excuse, "Well, I'll just wait until I lose a few more pounds then do it."  I need to break that habit.

Did You Get Enough to Eat?

Recently I've been having this conversation with a friend about how my husband always asks me about my dinner and it drives me crazy and makes me extremely uncomfortable.  It's always made me uncomfortable because even before I knew of binge eating, I had the weight problem so I did not like talking about the food or eating the food. 

The questions were innocent enough:

"How's the food?"

"Did you get enough to eat?"

"Would you like some more?"

However, they drove me crazy.  Just stop asking and let me eat my meal in peace because you are irritating the crap out of me and making me even more self conscious than I already am.  It got to the point that I even asked him to stop asking.  He would forget, I would politely remind him not to ask me again.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Now, I could just be remembering incorrectly but I recall when growing up in New York, it didn't seem to matter who we had dinner with - Mom, Nana and Grandpa, Dad, Uncle and Aunt, you get the idea - that you sat down, mentioned how good everything smelled and ate while having some sort of conversation.  At the end of the meal, everyone then made it a point to mention the meal was great or how they really enjoyed a specific dish.  No one was bothering anyone two seconds after taking a bite and asking how the food was.

Back to my conversation with my friend, who can both commiserate that she dislikes when this happens to her then admits that she does the same thing to her family which drew from me a hearty laugh.  She goes on to point out that it may be a Southern thing.  Both she and my husband are from southern states while I grew up so close to the Canadian border I could toss a rock at it would almost reach. 

Cultural differences?  Would that be a correct term in this instance?  I believe it applies.  It gave me something to think about, and to laugh about because my friend explained when it is she doing the asking, it just comes out.  The question is just part of the ritual of mealtime without really giving it much thought despite how it makes her feel when she's asked.  Though even without her telling me that, I've figured out that he just does this and it isn't malicious nor is it when she asks, or when her family asks.

I did end up asking him if this was a common question in his house, since I could only vaguely recall experiencing it once or twice while I had visited my mother-in-law in the past.  He said it was.

Well, the issue is my own and something I need to work on. There is no reason for me to let food stress me out or the innocent questions that are posed to me about it.  I will go ahead and remind myself the next time my husband asks me how my food is that it's ok to answer him that my food is ok instead of getting upset over it and let it go so I don't get upset or possibly angry about it later.  This will just take a little bit of work.

P.S. Are you sure you got enough to eat?  Because I have plenty more...