HUNGRY

I have stuck resolutely to my eating plan, measuring and weighing everything that I have eaten.

It is still a battle between me and my fork, every meal, every day.

I sometimes *think* I want back the ease of “mindless eating,” but that term is really a lie. For me, “mindless eating” was just delayed guilt. I would think about, obsess about, analyze in excruciating detail what I had eaten, and I would torture myself and hate myself for it. It was only “mindless” when I was actually eating it, only during the actual process of obtaining it and physically consuming it.

Then, the thought process would kick in.

I think I kept eating a lot of the time to just delay further the waves of inevitable shame, guilt and hate, stretching binges to hours and days.

When I decided that I was tired of feeling bad (emotionally and physically), and that *something* had to change or I was just about to the point of giving up, I made myself log what I was *actually* eating for almost a week. (The week before starting this eating plan.)  Even though I think I subconsciously kept myself from eating even more extremely, because I did not want to have to admit it and write it down, my eating was bad, truly horrible. A lot of food, a lot of time, a lot of money. A lot of hidden eating, rushed eating, disguised eating. Shame, shame, and more shame. Followed by waves of self-hatred.

I cried as I logged it.

After a couple of days, I cried while I was eating it, too.

I have always cried once I was done eating.

When I looked back at the shame-filled (and tear-streaked) pages, it struck me hard how malnourished I truly was. I was taking in huge amounts of calories, but with zero thought to nutrition, to what I was actually eating. No thought to what it was doing to my body, to how it would make my body feel and function.

My eating was also not feeding my soul, my spirit. I was starving my true self. Eliminating any chance of liking (much less loving) myself. Taking away the ability for self-acceptance, self-pride. So much pain. An overfull, painfully full stomach. Black, bottomless emptiness inside.

All those thousands of calories I was consuming, and I was still so … HUNGRY.