Facing the Binge

No sooner had I clicked publish on my tracker post for last night--it happened.

The dreaded BINGE.

( BTW: I absolutely hate that word. Binge. Eeew. Hate it. Looked to see if there were any suitable synonyms...fling, jag, orgy, or spree are our choices. Fling, jag or spree seem too carefree. Orgy? Um, nope. Gonna just stick with binge for now.)

So. Last night. Yeah. I was getting some bread to make the kids a sandwich (after which I would prepare my salad) and out fell a 3/4 consumed bag of Doritos. They were left over from a casserole I had made the previous day for someone else. I knew--I KNEW--that I should have thrown them away. But for whatever reason I did not. (mistake #1) Unfortunately I had not eaten much all day (mistake #2) and what I had eaten wasn't great (mistake #3) When I saw that bag it was over. I tried to convince myself as hand entered bag-- just one.

Yeah. Right.

I polished off the bag of Doritos. In the very, very back of my mind I was thinking you already decided not to do this. Stop. But those thoughts were mere whispers compared to the hunger in me that had been provoked. It's like the chips woke a sleeping bear...or whatever that euphemism is. I microwaved a plate of popcorn chicken that I had been watching the kids eat all week. Apparently I am a little more fond of the popcorn chicken than I knew.

Gone. In minutes.

At this point I realized I had crossed the line. Yes. This is the first time I realized it. I wanted to stop, and sometimes I can stop during the middle of a binge, but this time I didn't. I do recall thinking about my tracker, the meal that I had planned out just minutes before and sent into blogging land for all the world to see. I should not have done that before I actually ate those things and it was a done deal. (Mistake #4) The inner debate: Will I blog about this here binge? Or will I keep it to myself? Cause you know, the tracker you intended to have for today is already out there...

The debate ensued as I ate a peanut butter sandwich, some saltine crackers and a package of reduced fat Cheeze Its. I was throwing all of my trash away and as I looked down into the trash can to see the debris from my crazy tornado of eating, that's when I thought about God. What was He thinking about all of this? I stood there quietly.

Are you finished?

Not in a sarcastic way, like I would ask if it were me. Not in a harsh tone. But just simply Are you finished, Keelie?

And I was. And He was there, waiting on me.

I sorted through a lot of this before I went to sleep. I certainly want to learn from something like this, if there is anything to be learned. And I think there is. First of all there were several things I could have done differently that most likely would have prevented the binge. As I noted previously:

Don't keep chips in the house.
There are just certain items that I know I can not be trusted with in my house. (chips, baked goods, ice cream, honey, croutons) I think what happened in this case is that on the day I made said casserole, I was strong enough to resist the temptation to eat the chips. I thought someone else could enjoy them so I kept the package. But eventually, there will be (and was) a circumstance where I'm not strong. I can not let myself be fooled--I know how this plays out.

Don't ever let myself get overly-hungry. Under any circumstance.
I had 2 meetings immediately after church, one in which pizza was being served for lunch. Honestly I did not want to be the person who brought a special lunch to eat because I'm on a "diet." I just didn't want to have to go through all of that with them. My solution was to eat a Luna bar right before I went to the meeting and just feed my kids the pizza hoping no one would notice that I wasn't eating. It worked for a while until the aroma of the pizza, and the fact that my 3 year old kept shoving it in my face was just too much. I ate a piece. Same thing with the cookie.

Don't eat pizza and cookies.
Eating pizza and cookies in moderation is fine. For some people, some times. But this is exactly what I was writing about in the Choosing to Choose post. I CAN'T eat that stuff right now. I just can't. Because as hard as I try not to think this way, it still creates the mentality that I messed up that day. Which oddly, leads to other mess ups. Which is all really *messed up* if you ask me, but that's just the way it is. I should have taken my own lunch. Plain and simple. I'm a big girl. If someone wants to know why I'm not eating pizza, I can tell them.

Don't share a tracker until I am getting into bed.
I never thought about this, but in the moment I started the binge, I know I was subconsciously depending on the tracker I had already posted...as a safety net or sorts. If I had known I was going to have to face the tracker one more time before bed, I'm betting that I wouldn't have eaten what I ate. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is the first time I posted the tracker before I ate dinner and it turned out pretty bad. So I'm not going to do that any more.

The most important thing I need to remember, and I think this knowledge has served me well in this particular binge incident, is that no matter how much preparation, planning, or precaution goes into it, I am still a flawed human being. The occasional binge is likely to happen in this process. Hopefully the duration of the binge gets shorter and shorter and the duration of the time in between binges gets longer and longer.

Lots of mistakes, but one thing I did right: I got up this morning, faced what happened last night and now I'm moving on. That's all any of us can do.

I found that there are three stages in every great work of God: First, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done. If you persevere in faith, one day you will find it is done! --Hudson Taylor