Last night while I was running, I was thinking about my relationship with food and how I should probably go home and journal about it, because maybe if I have some running account of my thoughts, one day I’ll go back and reread and something will strike me as different, and I can feel I’m making progress. (So that was a run-on sentence, apologies.) Well, it didn’t happen. Such a bad journaler, I am.

I successfully calmed down one huge impulse to go buy junk at lunch today, and here I am at 3:30 facing the same cravings. I am |_| <– this close to putting on my coat and walking next door. They have a fantastic banana pudding, it makes me feel like I am a little kid. Or, if I don’t want that, they also have bulk candy bins and just about any regular check-out aisle junk food you could desire. It’s got to stop!

1 – I have problems with sugar. I am mildly hypoglycemic, which means when I have sugar I basically fall asleep. My blood sugar spikes, because my insulin response is delayed, and when my pancreas realizes it ought to be doing something, it over-reacts and produces too much insulin. That results in a dramatic drop in blood sugar… and so I am left groggy, irritable, and at times, incoherent.

2- I am just feeding the addiction. I’ll never get over it unless I stop, now. I can’t just have one little thing today and expect to wean myself off. That one little thing now may mean more little things this evening… Or it may mean a big thing tomorrow. No matter what, it won’t make it easier to start over tomorrow. I know it is possible to get over the feelings of necessity as I’ve been there before. I have the most success with weight loss when I don’t feel dependent upon sugar. It’s when I fuel the fire while telling myself I am on-plan that I end up falling off so quickly. (This is part of the reason for not just doing straight counting points – I can rationalize too much junk that way. I once spent a month saving 5 points each day so I could have a bag of M&Ms.)

3 – The sugar doesn’t do anything good for me. It only sets me back. I deserve to move forward. I deserve to make progress in this area of my life. I know I can do it. I just have to stick with it. I see so many people on 3FC complaining of the back-and-forth of sticking to plan, then falling off plan. And I just want to say to them, hey! it’s entirely within your control! the next choice you make, make it a good one! But then I realize I’d be a hypocrite, as apparently I can’t even follow my own advice.

The past couple weeks have been pretty bleak. I have even considered stopping my WW membership… I haven’t been to a meeting in two weeks. I don’t want to own up to the gain I am facing. Where is that going to lead me? How will that help, when I get so much positive energy out of going to the meetings? What kind of choice would that be, good or bad? I have been to McDonald’s more times in the last two weeks than I had been in the past two years (seriously). There came a point where I was alone, in my car, went through the drive-thru at one place and really considered going through a second before going home. I don’t know why. Why, why, why do I want to do that to myself? What is behind those feelings? I wasn’t stressed, or anxious, or tired, or angry, or anything. Life was fine, on an even keel. Yet I went home with enough calories to last me 3 days in a paper bag and ate.

This is such a cycle for me. It’s such a terrible monster. Today is the day I say enough. I can move on with my life. This doesn’t have to be the center of my universe. I choose to move forward, and put this behind me. It’ll be hard, and I’ll hate every second of it, but I am going to do it.

It’s always darkest before the dawn.