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Book of 2016

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 I keep coming across a group of questions as I do my research.  I have found them in books, on-line, just about everywhere I look.  So i was wondering if it wasn't time I started trying to answer some of them. 
In one form or another the questions always come down to a list like the following and your asked "Do you identify with any of these statements?"
 
--I am preoccupied with food, eating, and weight.
    - For most of my life I think the above statement has been pretty spot on.  I have been preoccupied with my weight for as far back as I can remember.  I was thin.  Really thin, pant couldn't stay on my ass.  I went on my first diet when I was 10, 11, or 12.  I think ever since then I have been preoccupied with food.  What I can eat, what I can't eat, when I could or couldn't eat.  So on and so forth. I wake up thinking about food. I spend a lot of time thinking about what food is next.  


--I am aware that my eating patterns are not normal.
   -I don't think I have anything remotely close to a normal eating pattern.  From the size of my meals, to the time I eat them.  I don't think there is anything normal about walking into a bagel shop and ordering two bacon, egg, and cheese bagels, and just in case that isn't enough order a cinnamon sugar one as well.  I prefer to eat alone where no one can watch.  I eat so fast that some times I choke myself shoveling it in. I don't think when I eat, I just stuff myself until I am done. 
 
--I eat when I am not physically hungry.
   -I told someone today that I don't know what it means to be physically hungry, b/c I never give myself a chance to be hungry. See 1 and  2 above as they help answer this question as well.  Also,  I eat when I know I am going to be home by myself.  I eat when I am stressed. I eat when I am happy.  I eat when I am sad.  I really don't know what being hungry is.  
 
--I eat very little in pubic and binge in private.
   -Can be true.  What I mean is for me and what I can eat is very little in public compared to what I can eat when I am home.  Take me to In and Out Burger.  I will have a double double and fry, sometimes I will get two fries if I am feeling like pushing it.  I go to In and Out on my own depending on how stressed out I am or how alone I am feeling. I either get 2 double double, and 2 fries, or 2 double doubles and 3 fries, or I have done 3 and 3 and when I am really feeling like I need that little extra bit I get 3 fries, 3 doubles, and a milk shake (large).  I wait till my friends leave my house then I go to 7-11 and I get 1 pint ben and jerry's, 3 containers of dibs and come home and house them and sometimes I wish I that I had more, ok, most of the time I wish I did..  I will go to a friends for dinner and eat the amount they are having.  Stopping and getting b&j's on the way home and taking down a bag of lays bbbq chips which are my favorite (last sunday for lunch I ate an entire family sized bag).

--I tend to eat more when I am stressed, anxious, or depressed.
   -Yes.  Every time I think I am going to get fired at work (and it is more often than you would think, i every quarter end and audit I am convinced there will be a mistake and I will be sent packing) I eat and I eat.  Example 3/3/16 breakfast - 1 blueberry muffins from pete's, 1 banana chocolate chip bread.  Lunch - 4 or 5 slices of pizza.  Dinner - two double doubles, 3 large fries, and a milk shake.  I stress eat.  my first four years at my current job I gained 120 pounds and that was all stress eating.  I have actually gotten better the last few years, or I had until Dad got the cancer.  Then I got depressed again.  I do eat a lot more and want to eat a lot more if I am worried about something.  Some people write, some people exercise, some people have the sex, I hit a drive thru or a 7-11 and I have a little pig out.  Then I stop worrying about whatever I was worrying about and I beat myself up over what I have eaten.  
 
--Food has become my friend, my lover, or my drug of choice.
   -Well I don't think of food as a lover.  I can't get there, that is even to fucked up for me.  However, a friend, yes, I can see that.  It has always been there for me when I was at my lowest and needed something.  It always agrees with me.  It never tells me I shouldn't be doing something.  It doesn't judge.  So a friend yes. A drug of choice.  Ya, I think the last three weeks I have been strung out.  That is how I feel.  I go into work exhausted.  People think it is the work and some of it is, but it is also the abuse of food and all the negative shit that comes along with it.  The pain in my gut.  The self loathing.  The exhaustion from getting up ever few hours to check the fridge. 
 
--I feel ashamed of myself due to the quantity of food I consume.
   -Ashamed?  Ya, i feel ashamed.  I am a self loather and I have always have been and when I am on the stuff it is even worse.  Years of being and being told how fat I was makes me feel so fucking small, when I am in reality so fucking big.  I hate myself a lot, but never more than when I have downed two pits of b&j's or when if I have been in the drive thru and came how with a #4 large sized, two double cheeseburgers, and two large fries.  So ashamed, hell yes.  So ashamed that if people could see me thru my eyes they would run. 
 
--I feel powerless over my eating behavior.
   -I am at that point.  I can't stop and I have tried.  Everyday of the my life as far back as I can remember has been last time.  Its been the last drive thru.  Its been the last 7-11 stop.  Its been the last pizza ordered.  Its been the last you name.  tomorrow is always going to be the first day of the rest of my life.  The only thing is tomorrow never comes.  There is always more stress, more self loathing, more happiness, more sadness, you name it and there is more.  I never asked to be the sensitive one, but I am.  I try really hard to act like i am not, but I am.  I am wounded so easily and I am so fragile.  Even as far as I have come I fall to easily.  I think this is all b/c the lack of control I feel in my own life b/c I know every day I have to eat.  I have too.  In order to live you have to eat, so every day, I will be tempted and anything can set me. 

So that is how I would answer those questions.  That is what I would say to them.  I have identified with them on Podcasts, reading books, and doing research.  

I want to also note, I have been "sober" for four days now.  No binges.  I have stuck to my 2800 calories a day.  I walked twice today, having puppy make a huge difference.  I have done it by committing to 3 meals a day, 1 day at a time.  Breakfast and lunch are planned tomorrow already and dinner is looking like a it is too.  Friday's are tough though, but you know even if I can be fragile and sensitive, I can also be obdurate and tough and i will take tomorrow as it comes.