me want food

i am struggling. the past two days have been particularly difficult for me with food. i find myself abiding by the weight watchers guidelines until i get home from work, then i eat non-stop – right up until bedtime - wracked with guilt for doing so.

Why?

‘because i’m hungry' is my immediate response. this is no real answer, though. this is the lazy reply of a little kid. rarely do i bother delving a little deeper, asking myself “hungry for what?” instead, i feel that gnawing presence of my belly, mistake it for physical hunger, and without thinking, without really feeling what’s going on inside me, i head to the kitchen and start scouring the cupboards. there is a sickness in my scavenging but there is also comfort. i know this routine is not good for me, yet i don’t allow myself to pause and figure out what it is i’m REALLY starving for.

a few days ago, i started pondering addiction, my addiction: food. i quietly focused while trying to duplicate the feeling that i get when i’m in the midst of a binge, stuffing anything, everything as fast as I can down my gullet. you know what i came up with? what i felt? numbness.

binge eating brings numbness.

it's not really a 'void' or 'nothing' or blankness'; 'nothing' suggests the absence of anything. numbness, however, suggests the presence of something, yet an inability to engage it. when i succumb to the 'need to feed' i am, in essence, a friggin' zombie. instead of clamouring for more "par-ee-medics", i find myself trying to sate my hunger with a pear, an apple and peanut butter, a reese's candy bar, a frozen pizza, a handful of triscuits, a few olives, a handful of craisins, creme brulee that's been in the freezer long enough to develop a crystallized winter city on it's surface... eating and eating until the needle on my internal fuel tank rises well past "full".

this is what i can do for myself at this moment: 1. be aware of my comfort in numbness and 2. honestly record the points of everything i eat. and this is enough for now. it's ok
that i ate thirteen points more than my daily weight watchers allotment. i am aware and accountable. getting to the next level will come...

as daunting as the journey to a sound relationship with food may seem, there is light at the end of the tunnel… actually, it's closer than the end of the tunnel. this very moment i’m blessed with the presence of light and the calm it brings. this afternoon at work, a gal from another department ambled by, peeping her head into my office, whispering about pie leftover from afternoon office festivities in her department, "hurry up and get it! it needs to be gone before the end of the day" - the way she said it - the low, husky tone of her voice, the breathless, hurried excitement of a gilded secret, the glimmer of diabetic shock in her eye - it was as though she was intimating sacred directions - from one fat girl to another - about how to find the treasure. before heading off to extend her invite to another gal, she mentioned something about eating too much pie herself, worrying about having it go straight to her capricious ass and feeling guilty about how much of it she ate. girlfriend, i know the guilt of which you speak all too well.

perhaps it was the tone of her words. perhaps it was the fact that she chose to disclose the bounty of pie to only a few folks in my area, including me. or perhaps it was the way she denied herself absolute delight over an afternoon piece of pie by decrying her largess and therefore her right to wholly enjoy a simple piece of pie. (or perhaps it was the three 1-point weight watchers chocolate cakes i had already devoured over the course of this afternoon...) maybe it was all of these together that gave me pause. i was left a little stunned at her own admonishment of self, and, well, it felt very familiar. i'm grateful to this office pie cryer. strangely, her words left me feeling at peace with the pie, peace that was strong enough and steadfast enough for me to hold on to it through the evening. normally one to jump at the invitation of free sweets, this time I didn’t feel the need to quietly sneak attack the snack table in the pie department. it feels good to not need food just because it's there. it feels good to be offered something yummy and to be able to turn it down. it feels like peace. it FEELS.

and so it is this serenity that comes from saying "no" that i choose to hold on to as i go home tonight. i don't need to reverse carpet bomb the fridge. i am strong enough to confront whatever it is that i've been eating down these past couple of days. i invite it to the surface and offer it a place in my heart, and room in my belly.