The Bucket Is Full

I want to re-post something I wrote on the Optifast forums. It's a slightly more eloquent account of how I've been feeling lately.

My apologies if you've already read it, but I want this blog to be a complete journal. I want to be able to look back on this time and see how I low I felt and how I could make it through. Here it is:

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I never thought I'd be saying this, but I'm really struggling at the moment. This is so hard for me right now. Most days I'm eating my 1000 calories by lunch time, and then I have to stop myself eating for the rest of the day because I've already hit my limit. And this is on days I don't exercise.

It's not eating out of hunger. I'm just... sad. Everything feels so hard. And when I think about NOT eating my feelings, I get mad. I get mad at that voice in my head trying to tell me it's a bad idea. I think "Why can't I eat my feelings? Why can't I? I want to. Even if it won't help, I really WANT TO. And I feel so helpless right now, why would you deprive me of this?"

I didn't lose this week - I stayed the same. Even though I totally deserved to gain. I think I'm doing it all wrong. I love running. I just want to run. But, my coworker makes me feel bad for not doing 5 gym classes a week with her. She says "If we skip today, we HAVE to do two tomorrow." When it comes to exercise, I do NOT like tough love. I wanted to do 1 or 2 classes a week max. And right now, I want to do none. I want to sleep.

12 more kilos to go. At least. I don't know how I'm going to do it. I feel it happening - that transition to when people just put all the weight back on. I feel like this is how it happens. These are the days when 1000 cals turns to 1200 and 1500 and 1800 and then I look at myself in the mirror one day and say "Ok, just be fat then". And then I just give up.

Now I get it. Now I understand that it's hard. It wasn't this hard for me before, but I feel like a leaky tap was just drip drip dripping into a bucket. And slowly the bucket filled up. And now that the bucket is full, every single drip makes it overflow. Just one little drip is too much to bear.

I'm so sorry for this post. It's not very inspiring. I'm sorry that I couldn't stay strong.
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After writing this post, things got a bit worse before they got any better. I forced myself off to the gym.... where I promptly scraped my car against a pole in the car park. In front of my gym buddy. I was so overcome with embarassment and stress that I just drove away. It was like what I wrote in the post above - one little drip keeps making the bucket overflow.

I drove away for a minute or two, then I pulled over and checked the damage. It was a scrape - pretty big, but I have already scraped it worse in other places.

I got back into the car and just cried. My gym buddy was ringing me, probably to see where I went, but I couldn't answer. I just cried because I couldn't take it.

Then I tried to think what I could do. I was so desperate. I tried ringing my old psychologist, but he was busy. Somehow, I decided I just needed to go back to the gym and do the class. I needed to brave my gym buddy, face the embarassment and work out the frustration.

Monday night we had cancelled the gym because I was tired and grumpy and sad. And that didn't work for me. It just meant that I went home and battled cravings and the urge to stress-eat all night. And I didn't feel any better for it. So, I figured I may as well go to the gym.

When I got there, my gym buddy was really great about it. I was so embarassed, but I managed to joke about it a bit. That helped. She suggested I "take it out on the bike". And I did. That was a really good suggestion.

I drove home and collapsed into boyfriend's arms. Then we went to the shops and bought me some veggies. We chopped them all up so that I could have a huge stash in the fridge. This is my plan. If I can't fight the urge to push things into my face, then those things are going to be veggies. I'm sure I could push veggies into my face all day and still lose weight.

I have a mildly optimistic feeling that yesterday was the lowest point of this trough. I am going to scramble up out of this ditch.

Thank you all for reading and supporting me. I feel the love. Thank you for hearing me and understanding me and making me remember how strong I am.