Still struggling, but hanging in there

I explained in my prior post(s) that whenever I'm on track, the motivation I feel that allows me to succeed is palpable.  When I'm motivated, it's so easy to stay on track that I wonder why I couldn't do it when I was younger.  When I feel like this, the idea of eating bad foods or having a downright binging episode doesn't even enter my mind for a second no matter what happens in my life.

But when the universe starts pulling the rug out from under me and my negative emotions take over, I immediately start binging.  At this point, I start wondering how I was ever able to succeed at all.  When I lose my motivation, I struggle and the best I can do is hang on until the binging episode(s) end.  My goal at this point is to keep the damage to a minimum and not gain too much weight.  When I'm binging, I feel completely vulnerable and unstable because I don't know when I'll be able to control myself again so I can get back on track.  During this weight-loss journey, when the binging episodes finally end, I can literally feel like a switch has been turned on in my head which means motivation has been restored and I can once again continue on my journey without worry.

For the past several weeks, I've been struggling a great deal.  In addition to normal life annoyances (bad neighbors, old house, never having enough money, miserably hot weather, etc.) all of which erupt a flow of negative emotions, I've been dealing with feelings of disappointment, too.  My 55th birthday is coming up next week and I'm disappointed that my life isn't where it should be.  Although I'm grateful that I've finally lost considerable weight, part of me feels like I'm running out of time to do everything I always wanted to do because I wasted so much of my life in obesity.  I don't know what I expected my life to be when I reached my mid 50s, but I know it wasn't this.

Mostly though I've been especially stressed over my cat, Phoenix, who was diagnosed with cancer in her lower jaw over a month ago.  I've seen what cancer can do to a body and it's horrible, especially when there's no chance of saving that being's life.  At least we euthanize pets so they don't suffer unnecessarily.  I never understood why humans can't choose to be euthanized when they're terminal and suffering.  It seems cruel to keep someone alive just to suffer when there's no hope of ever improving.

Phoenix has been part of my daily life for about 14 years.  The vet hoped she might have another "good" six months, but it wasn't meant to be.  She did really well for a month and it was hard to believe she was sick at all.  Then just over a week ago she started eating less and less until finally a few days ago she stopped eating altogether.  I got the impression that she was hungry but pain in her mouth prevented her from eating no matter what type of food I gave her.  The cancer had grown quickly and on Tuesday I decided it was time to let her go.  She went peacefully and I was with her.  The only saving grace is I had several weeks to prepare myself and say goodbye to her.  In essence, I've been grieving Phoenix's passing since she was diagnosed so I was ready for the inevitable.  Now I actually feel a sense of relief because I've been in perpetual stress mode all these weeks.  I've been so stressed over whether she was in pain, that she wasn't eating, and apprehensive of how bad it was going to get for her that at the very least now I can stop worrying about her and she's at peace.

The old me always handled grief or any major negative event by climbing into bed and virtually hiding from the world, as if my bed could heal all wounds.  Somehow, it always could.  Depending on the severity of my grief/depression which was based on the event in question, it was not unusual for me to be bed ridden for a day or two, with the worst lasting a full week.  Binging would be a big part of that healing process, too.  For me, the junk food of choice is pastries and cake although when I'm in this phase, anything with a dough (bread, pasta, pizza, etc.) will do. 

As I was leaving the vet's office with an empty carrier, I immediately thought of driving to a nearby store and stocking up on pastries and it took every ounce of strength I had to stop myself from doing that very thing.  I kept repeating, "No!  You are NOT going to binge!"  Despite my brain craving these foods, it was by sheer determination that I didn't give in.  It was incredibly hard to resist, let me tell you!  As was my custom all along, once I got home, I climbed into bed where I anticipated spending the rest of the day, but a couple of hours later I decided to go to the gym instead.  I had no desire to work out whatsoever, but instinctively I knew that if I did, I'd feel better.  So I literally dragged myself to the gym with the promise that I only had to walk on the treadmill for 20 minutes.  Once there, I started slow and I almost left after a few minutes, but I kept at it.  In the end, I completed my normal 45 minutes and I was able to increase the speed to my current 3.8 m.p.h.  Afterwards I even used a few weight machines, too.  When I left the gym, I felt much better thanks to those marvelous endorphins, and knowing that I expended my negative energy in a healthy manner rather than giving in to binging was a bonus.

Research shows that exercise releases endorphins, powerful chemicals in our brains that make us feel good.  Exercise relaxes our muscles and relieves tension which, in turn, improves our spirit, too.  In fact, doctors often prescribe exercise to treat mild to moderate depression rather than prescribing medication.  Exercise helps us cope with life problems in a healthy manner rather than resorting to our particular addiction to relieve our emotional pain.  Giving in to our addiction has negative implications to our physical and psychological components.  Understanding this is one thing, another is having the actual energy to exercise.  Being sad or depressed zaps all the energy out of me.  The worse I feel, the more lethargic I become and, at its worse, it can get to the point where I can't be functional at all.  It is incredibly hard to get out of bed to do something physical when I feel bad.   

What's interesting is that this time around although I had no desire to get out of bed and, least of all, to exercise, my body told me that if I dragged myself to the gym, that in the end I'd feel much better than if I stayed in bed.  My body was right.  I'm glad I listened.

Despite struggling for several weeks and still feeling emotionally vulnerable right now, I've been staying on track pretty well the past week.  As a result, I managed to lose the 3-5 lbs. I kept gaining/losing over and over during the last several weeks.  Right now it's not motivation that keeps me going because I haven't felt that switch in my head kick in yet and I'm still struggling.  Any success I'm having right now is through sheer determination and will power in not giving in to my binging cravings.  It hasn't been easy.  At all!   My brain is screaming for me to binge, but I'm resisting.  I'm at a turning point today because my weight is back where it was six weeks ago and if I can keep winning the war over my cravings, I'll be able to continue my journey once again and, hopefully, I can capture that motivation feeling again soon.  No matter how much I've been struggling with my emotional demons, giving up has not entered my mind.  Giving up is not an option any more.

What is incredible to me is how quickly my brain starts demanding junk food whenever I feel emotionally unstable.  It's an immediate response.  I never gave binging much thought before, it was just my body requesting food for whatever reason.  I suspected it wasn't hunger, I just didn't understand what caused the need to binge.  I just kept trying to satisfy that bottomless need and I watched my weight balloon through years of this behavior.  

Lately I've been doing a little research about binging and I learned a few interesting facts that I'll share below:

In 2013, the psychiatric community officially recognized "binging eating disorder" by listing it as a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition ("DSM-V").  The DSM is the psychiatric bible.  The 4th edition was published almost 20 years before, in 1994, and a text revision was published in 2000.  Before the 5th edition, binging was not recognized on its own to be a disorder, instead it was diagnosable using only the catch-all category of "eating disorder not otherwise specified."  It's quite disconcerting to see it in black and white that when we binge a mental disorder is at play, but then again aren't all addictions some form of mental disorder?  Eating to fuel our bodies is normal, binging is not.  Binging has nothing to do with hunger.

Binging eating disorder ("BED") is a common eating disorder, and in the U.S. it affects 3.5% of women, 2.0% of men, and 1.6% of adolescents.  I was surprised by the low percentages because I would have guessed they'd be much higher, particularly for women since we tend to be emotional beings.  Leave it to me to be part of a small percentile of the population when it comes to having an eating disorder!  According to what I've read, although most obese people don't have BED (a surprise to me), the majority of people with BED are obese.  The latter makes perfect sense to me.  Research shows that people with BED have higher levels of anxiety and both current and lifetime major depression.  BED can be treated with cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, or medication.

With cognitive behavioral therapy, you work with a psychotherapist or therapist to help you become aware of negative thinking so you can view challenging situations logically and respond to them in a more positive way.  It seems I've been unknowingly conducting my own cognitive behavioral therapy because that's exactly what I've been trying to do: change how I deal with negative feelings brought on by circumstances out of my control.

I'm not sure what interpersonal psychotherapy entails, but it's defined as a type of therapy that's based on the principle that there is a relationship between the way people communicate and interact with others and their mental health.  This type of therapy teaches the patient to regain control of mood and functioning for improved social adjustment.

I also learned that my cravings for binging are hardwired into my brain.  It's an instinct ingrained into my brain.  This explains why I feel out of control when I'm binging and I can't prevent it from happening.   

We have a reward system programmed into our brains that rewards us when we do certain things to survive, for example, eating.  When we do something that the brain considers good behavior for survival, the reward is the release of several chemicals such as dopamine that make us feel good.  When dopamine is released, we feel pleasure.   

Although eating healthy foods to nourish our bodies releases these feel-good chemicals, too, unfortunately, junk food provides a greater degree of pleasure than healthy foods ever could.  Junk food has the same effect to our reward system as illicit drugs, such as cocaine, do.  This explains why when I'm experiencing binge-cravings, it's always for junk food.  When I want to binge, I'm not thinking, "Hey, I'll have a couple of apples."  Instead, I'm thinking how many pastries and cakes I want.  With time, our bodies build a tolerance and we need more junk food to make us feel good.  In other words, whereas two pastries were enough before, now I may need four pastries to reach the same level of pleasure as before.  Cravings are emotionally based and their only purpose is to satisfy the brain with dopamine and other feel-good chemicals.  Cravings can completely consume our thoughts, which explains why I become obsessed when I have certain foods in the house.  The more frequently we give in to our cravings by rewarding ourselves with junk food, the stronger the cravings become and considering we eventually require more junk food to reach the same level of rewards as before, it's a disheartening combination.  It's a vicious cycle that worsens with time.

From what I read, if you suffer from BED, it can be triggered at any time and not just by negative emotions.  Walking by a pizza restaurant or seeing an ad on TV for junk food can also trigger it.  That explains why sometimes I have no thoughts whatsoever about eating yet after I see an ad for junk food or smell a specific food, I start craving it.

There are also different degrees of severity.  I seem to live in the mild to moderate categories, but could easily end up in the extreme category if I let myself: 

Mild: 1-3 binge-eating episodes per week.
Moderate: 4-7 binge-eating episodes per week.
Severe: 8-13 binge-eating episodes per week.
Extreme: 14 or more binge-eating episodes per week.

Now that I understand why I get these binge-cravings, maybe I can learn to abstain better.  If the more we give in to our cravings makes future binging worse, perhaps if I can successfully fight these cravings now, the need to binge will lessen in the future.  Wouldn't it be great if there was a dopamine pill that had the same effect as junk food but had no side effects whatsoever?  In the meantime, until they come up with such a pill, all I can do is continue to struggle with the hopes of conquering this emotional demon once and for all.

If you're not prone to suffering BED, you have no idea how these cravings take over your entire existence.  You're lucky.  For those of us who do experience it, we need to keep fighting the cravings or at the very least minimize their control over us.  Although it's incredibly hard to resist during a BED episode, the payoff (physical, medical, emotional, spiritual) is priceless.