What a Month Can Do

As you may know, I went on a crazy binger the last two weeks of school, which finally came to an end as of June 16th. I have a history of obesity, yo-yoing 60+ pounds of weight, and having a sweet tooth/stomach capacity that no normal person can compete with. On the 17th I got back on track, eating healthy, cutting calories, and exercising probably more than I should have. At that point I was extremely bloated all over (even my face!), my skin had broken out, I felt disgusting, and most of my wardrobe didn’t fit anymore. The weigh in wasn’t pretty and too embarrassing to post here. I took pictures to remind myself where I don’t want to put myself again. I’m a little anxious to put all this out there for anyone to read, but sometimes just admitting it can help with fixing the problem.

You might wonder how two weeks can do that much damage. While I was busy eating everything in sight, I never stopped to think about why I was doing it. In hindsight I was far more stressed than I thought at the time. It’s weird how that works. I was finalizing my masters degree projects and my ginormous Procert projects, stressing about what I would be teaching next year because it was a big unknown while everyone else knew what they were doing, and finalizing the end of the year stuff with the kiddos. At the time if you’d asked me I would have said I wasn’t stressed and that everything was fine, but it wasn’t fine at all. I was secretly pulling my hair out to the point where even I didn’t realize how bad it was. Mix that with being a food addict and you get a perfect storm.

Make that “week”

Just a few examples of what I ate during those 2 weeks:

                  

Not pretty and a clear sign that food can be an addiction

One Month Results:

Today is the one-month check in since all of that and I’m happy to report that I’ve gotten most of the weight off. I am four pounds away from where I’m supposed to be, my ultimate goal weight that I’ve been working on maintaining for over a year now. With two or three more vacations in the next month, I will need to stay vigilant to get the final four pounds off.

The results from today also included an update on body measurements. My hips and waist size had grown at least a few inches in June but now both are only about .5″ up so my clothes all fit now. My pants will happily go over my hips AND button with some space! Pretty much all the body measurements are half an inch or one inch up from where they are supposed to be, but that’s a vast improvement from where they were in June.

The Problem/Concerns:

Two weeks of very bad damage was almost reversed in one month. Maybe two will be what it really takes. Two months for two weeks? So not worth it. That’s practically my whole summer. What a stark difference from last summer! Last summer I was still working on weight maintenance and was actually losing weight unintentionally.

I know this is a problem. I am working toward not having something like this happen ever again. It’s ok to go all-out every once and a while, like on a fun weekend of part of a vacation or something, but that is the difference between indulging and binging. I can’t tell you why I couldn’t just stop myself. All I know is that I was like a shark in a frenzy.

Goals:

My goals for the next month include continuing eating healthy and exercising, as well as being reasonable on vacations – Enjoying myself while not going overboard with eating on either of the extremes. There were no binges last month. I don’t want any this month so that is probably my bigger goal. I think that should be a goal for future months, too. Indulgences are great and sometimes necessary to keep from feeling deprived. Binges are like a chemical dependency in the brain that causes you to temporarily lose your mind, therefore eating tons of junk without truly enjoying it.