18 weeks pregnant and thinking thinking thinking

There's nothing much to share right now.  I spend much of my time these days thinking about the future, including how I want to tackle weight loss, weight maintenance, household cooking duties, and so on once the baby arrives.  One thing I'm trying to come to terms with is that I will have to invest much more time into meal planning, exercising, etc. than I do now if I want to achieve the results I desire.  And by results, I don't just mean a certain pants size -- I mean providing my child with a certain example, providing my family with a certain level of care.  I'm about to have unprecedented demands on my time due to the new baby, and simultaneously realizing I need to invest more time on this other front in order to progress further with it.  It's all a bit nerve-wracking, but I have to get real.

I lost the few pounds I had gained recently, and am back to 245.  It was nothing I did on purpose; those few pounds suddenly vanished over a 2 day period, though I had not changed my eating in any way.

It was just about a year ago that I joined a gym, started experimenting with a blog (first on Tumblr, then here), and decided to try to lose weight yet again. My weight at that time was 275.  In the 12 months that I've lost 30 pounds, there were weeks and months in which I gave up trying to reform my ways.  My binge eating only calmed down in January-February 2012.  My exercising has been terribly inconsistent throughout the twelve months.  And I've been pregnant for about 4 of the 12 months!  What a strange year!  Yet here I sit, in a better physical and mental place than I was a year ago.  My takeaway from this is that the whole "progress, not perfection" mentality really does get you somewhere if you give it some time.

It might take me another year to lose another 30 pounds.  After all, the next twelve months will involve the final 20 weeks of pregnancy, it will (hopefully) involve breastfeeding, it will involve a major life adjustment.  I can't accurately predict how each of those things will affect my body and mind, but I do think that shedding 30 more pounds amid all that would be a triumph.  So here's to another good 12 months!

16 weeks pregnant and pondering spirituality

I've had lots of stress lately--plumbing problems, financial stuff, relationship stuff.  I have managed to keep abstaining from sweets during this bout of stress, but it's not easy.  The stress triggers urges to give in and have something so I can feel pleasure, escape, relax (and make the urges themselves go away--the biggest and most immediate drive behind this whole cycle).  Pleasure and comfort are in very short supply these days without my favorite junk foods.

Every option seems difficult.  I outlined it in my last post.  Eating sweets moderately is difficult and requires a lot of energy and willpower.  Abstaining from them is difficult.  Binging and overeating are difficult ways to live too, for different reasons.  All of these options are difficult, but some of them lead to worse outcomes than the others, so I have to make my choice with that in mind.

Sometimes I wish there was brain surgery available that could remove or "wipe clean" the neural pathways that make sugar, binging, and food such a big freaking deal to me.  Because rewiring my brain through hundreds of daily decisions and actions is so damn hard.  Often I feel like I'm not making any progress and then I start to doubt whether lasting change is even possible.  I believe I can change my behavior, sure, but will the incessant whining in my head for MORE MORE MORE ever cease?  I wonder if I will be white-knuckling it to the grave, alternating between sheer willpower and mindfulness practices to get through my days without overeating or eating lots of sugary junk.  Both willpower and mindfulness take a ton of energy and effort, at least for me, so I question the sustainability of that.

IF the mindfulness stuff becomes more like second nature, though, MAYBE things will get a bit easier.  I found a Thursday night insight meditation group in my area and attended the meeting last week.  I really liked it.  I've been meditating on my own (inconsistently) and reading extensively on the topic of Buddhism for months now, sorting through different schools, ideas, and practices so I can piece together something that works for me.  I think I've rejected more aspects of Buddhism  than I've embraced; I'm not one for orthodoxy or pre-scientific nonsense and feel no need to  become more aligned with irrelevant Tibetan/Japanese/Sri Lankan/(fill in the blank) cultural trappings.  I'm a secular westerner that's influenced by Buddhism rather than a Buddhist influenced by secular western thought, that much is certain.  But the parts of Buddhism that make sense to me are becoming really important to my life.

No one would be more surprised than me if my lifelong food and weight woes brought me to a satisfying spiritual life around the age of 30.  It was my search for binge eating disorder help that led me to Vipassana (insight) meditation, and Vipassana led me to consider Buddhism as a whole.  I've never HAD a spiritual life before now.

Maybe that's part of the problem.

Update on my (near-) abstinence

I've been doing ok and maintaining near-abstinence when it comes to desserts.  A few days ago, I had a weird eating day and later realized I was blowing off steam. The kind of steam that builds as a result of restriction. Everything I ate that day was sweet and rich: a bagel with flavored cream cheese from Panera's, a chocolate whey protein-banana smoothie, and a small amount of rice pudding.  I ate very little for the day, but I didn't consider it an abstinent day by any means.

Yesterday, for the 4th of July, I didn't buy any sweet drinks like soda or lemonade, any chips, any desserts.  I told our guests they were free to bring anything they liked, and let them know we would be grilling meat and veggies and serving watermelon on the side.  They didn't bring anything to supplement our meal, but then we all went out for frozen custard and I did order a kid's size vanilla custard in a cup.  I liked it, but wanted more once it was over...and then felt that old anger and exasperation at always wanting MORE.

For now, I feel fine with how I'm doing.  Abstinence isn't torture day-in and day-out, the way it was when I was trying Overeater's Anonymous.  If every now and then I blow off steam or have a treat on a holiday or special day, it's fine.  It's what I would call near-abstinence, and I'm pleased with it because it means I'm not having sweets every single day anymore.

I have experienced a lot of bored and dull feelings lately, and I think it's because I've taken away a big source of fun and pleasure from my daily routine by omitting sweets.  Even though I was no longer regularly binging on sweets, they obviously remained an important part of my day and a major source of entertainment.  But that's the point--I don't want sweets to be my daily entertainment anymore.  I don't want them to be a "necessary" part of my day in any amount or in any fashion.  It'll take awhile for something else to fill the vacuum that's been created; I'm going to let that unfold naturally.

So that's where I am: near-abstinent, mostly at peace, more bored than usual.  Also up a couple of pounds since cutting sweets, but I attribute that to the fact that I'm 15 weeks pregnant and weight gain was going to start happening at some point!

14 weeks pregnant and sweating the sugar question again

So 14 weeks, feeling fine, no weight gained (if anything, a few more pounds lost), barely starting to show.  Or not showing?  It's hard to tell.  I do carry plenty of fat in my abdominal region; my lower stomach looks the same, but sometimes/in some outfits it seems there's a bit of a swell higher up.  I think I can get through the summer without maternity clothing, but will need some items come fall/winter.

While my body is trucking along just fine, my mind is up to its old antics.  Namely, I'm playing with the idea of complete abstinence from desserts for the rest of my pregnancy.  I've had some bad eating days lately and one day last week in which I just flat-out binged on ice cream sandwiches, and after that I felt so fed up and frightened that I wondered if simply walking away from that whole category of food is the smartest thing to do.  Not forever, but for now.

See, I've been over this before.  Prior to getting pregnant, I had attempts at abstinence backfire enough times that I finally settled on moderation and re-learning as the best way forward.  I still think learning to eat "problem foods" moderately is the best long-term solution.  I was making progress throughout 2012 with this approach, and before I got pregnant, I viewed my frequent slip-ups with sugar as merely part of the learning process.

I don't feel so easygoing about it anymore.  I feel like I can't afford slip-ups the way I used to, and as I'm still fairly new to the moderate eating game, they happen way too often.  Some of the things I think about:

1.  I weigh 245 pounds about 14 weeks into pregnancy. I'm at high risk for gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia.  Can I "afford" binges or episodes of overeating?  Even if I don't binge, can I "afford" to eat nutritionally poor, sugar-laden foods on a regular basis?  Keep in mind, I do not eat a low-carb diet to start with.  My body is processing considerable sugar throughout the day due to my consumption of grains, fruits, dairy, etc. 

(As an aside, I am certainly not low on calories and I don't believe my urges to binge/overeat are the result of my body desperately trying to get more energy to support a growing baby, or anything like that!)

2.  Eating sweets moderately requires a LOT of mental effort from me.  Even on my best days, it requires energy and willpower to stop at a certain point and to ignore the cravings for more than inevitably follow. (Hormonal swings haven't made this any easier, I can assure you.)  I don't have as much energy and time to fight these battles as I used to, and think it'd be easier on me, in many respects, to simply cut sweets out of my life for now.

3.  In a few weeks, the baby will be swallowing amniotic fluid throughout the day that is flavored by the foods I am eating.  Research suggests that certain dietary preferences start to form in utero, largely through this mechanism.  (Breastmilk is similarly flavored and believed to influence later food preferences and eating behavior, too.)  If family history is any indication, my baby probably has food/addiction/weight challenges awaiting him or her already.  Do I want to do anything that might make matters worse?

Even if abstinence is the best route, I don't know if I can maintain it.  I've never been able to before, but then again, I've never had to factor a baby into the picture, either.  I'd like to try and see.  If I sense that it's about to backfire in a big way,  I will have to go back to the daily grind of battling for moderation.   Even if moderation (with all my inevitable slip-ups) isn't ideal, I CANNOT go through the abstain-binge-abstain-binge cycle while pregnant.  One round of the abstinence experiment is all I will do; if it fails, I will not be attempting it again during pregnancy or breastfeeding.

There isn't much research or literature out there on binge eating disorder and pregnancy.  All my books briefly cover anorexia and bulimia in pregnancy, not even mentioning binge eating disorder.  Yet I know I cannot be alone in this, and I wonder how other women handle it.

Inattention is key to binge eating

You hear all the time that eating mindfully helps you eat less.  It's true.  If you attend to the experience of your food and your eating process as fully as possible, you can be satisfied with less.  Start doing it and you'll see the contrast from all those times you wolfed something down while multitasking or otherwise distracted and then thought "That was it?  That wasn't enough."  And then reached for more food then and there, or perhaps an hour later. 

If you want to eat less, pay more attention.  If you want to eat more, pay less attention.  In my experience (and I'd be interested to hear other views on this), I don't think one can binge mindfully.  A binge indicates an unusually large amount of food eaten in an unusually brief period of time, and there's an mental state involved that isn't calm or focused.  If your mind is calm and you are eating slowly and attentively, I doubt you are binge eating.  It's possible you are still overeating,  but I think binging is unlikely.

Ice cream was a classic binge staple for me; I'm still prone to overeating it.  Can you believe that it wasn't until I slowed down and tried to eat ice cream mindfully that I realized my mouth became numb after a scoop or two and that I couldn't really taste the ice cream after that point?  And that it's not pleasurable to eat ice cream you can't taste?  All those years of binging on ice cream a few times a week depended on my inattentiveness; it's how way I was able to remain convinced that I "loved" eating two pints of ice cream in 20-30 minutes. 

If you tend to binge while watching TV or movies, browsing, fiddling with the radio in your car, playing games on your phone, letting your mind wander far and wide, whatever...try doing it without your favorite distraction added.  You might find that the act of eating itself becomes boring pretty quickly, and that the food doesn't taste as great as you remembered.

I'm convinced that junk food manufacturers depend on people not paying much attention to what they are eating.  Eating m&ms in the movie theater is fun.  Sitting down at a table and eating one m&m at a time, attentively, is freaking dull.  I think fast food tastes good, but it loses much of its magic when you pay close attention to it--say, if you sit down and eat it quietly instead of while driving or talking with another person.  And there are so many junk foods I thought were delicious until I slowed down and discovered they were too salty, too stale, too cloying, or too bland for me.  Some of them need to be paired with OTHER junk foods in order to be really enjoyable (for me, chips and popcorn taste much better with a soda alongside).  This doesn't mean I'll never eat such foods again, but having experienced them in a new light, I'm unlikely to reach for them and even less likely to overeat them.  Without some distracting activity paired with those foods, they just aren't that fun.

I don't think that mindful eating is a straightforward, easy solution to binge eating.  Not at all.  But I think it really can help lessen the grip of problematic foods.  It can allow you to see that there IS hope: if your perception of a food can change via mindfulness (despite believing for years and years that your connection to that food was ironclad), then your behavior around that food can change as well.  And no matter how entrenched your binge eating disorder is, there is a part of your brain that remains capable of providing insights and applying solutions to overcome it.  We've got to put more stock in those parts of our brains!  Mindful eating is one way of doing exactly that.