August 20, 2011: Grief and Trash Talk

Yesterday's food:

God time? Yes
Meditation? Yes (x 2)

Exercise? No (weekend)

Points: 35 of 36

[P]  Chicken breast, grilled

[P] Beans (in rice and beans)

[V] Salad bar (in corn tortilla)

[V] Salad bar (in corn tortilla)

[V or F] Tomatoes

[F] Apple

[F] Banana

[St] Corn tortilla

[St] Corn tortilla
[St] Kashi

[D] Skim milk (1/2 c)

[D] Skim milk (1/2 c)
[D] Light mayo (1 T)
[D] Light mayo (1 T)

[Sn] Mini pretzels (1 bag)

[Sn] SF Klondike ice cream sandwich

[Nightfood bar] Yes

[W] Two cups

I'm struggling with my weight loss. Not so much with my food though. I've been on plan since my last (wee) gain of 1.2 pounds, which happened during a bout of insomnia a couple of weeks ago, along with subsequent eating and Internet shopping, and I've been at +/1 zero pounds for 2 weeks now. I'm quite discouraged, but I'm not going to give up because Weight Watchers is really helping me with my compulsive eating, and I don't want to go back there even if I don't lose any more weight than the 6 or so pounds I've lost in the past 3 months.

Most things usually come easily to me; I'm a quick learn. So when faced with struggle, I almost always start talking trash to myself, like "I might as well give up" and "I'm never going to lose this weight" or "I might as well just eat myself to death." Problem is, I quite like this program of eating :-) It's slowly seeping into my sense of "normal," but I don't understand why I'm not seeing weight loss when I think I'm doing everything right. One of the secretaries at my last meeting told me to keep a precise record of what I eat during the week (which I do anyway) and show it to my teacher at the next meeting. Maybe he can pinpoint where I'm getting off track.

One of the legacies of being an adult child of an alcoholic is that I tend to have global, all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking, especially when I'm stressed. I've been waking up feeling out of sorts for a few days now, which is not like me, but it's taken me a day or so to figure it out. That old "stinking thinking" took it's toll on me in how I self-talked after the Weight Watcher weigh-in on Saturday. Later that day, I vented to a good friend about some of what's been going on in my life. Then it dawned on me: I'm grieving the loss of therapy, and my therapist, from my life.  Therapeutic contact has been the single longest relationship in my life.

It seems silly to be grieving something I chose to leave, but here I am, in grief. Hence the feeling out of sorts. Now that I don't have therapy to fall back on, I'm going to have to reach out and share my process with friends more often and work harder to keep my feet on the ground and my head where my feet are. That means saying "no" to the temptation to isolate and making sure I support myself by getting to church, getting back to my to Al-Anon meeting (i.e., my current home group), getting back to consistent God time, and getting back to meditating twice a day.

Although my grief this time around is taking a different form than it usually does, as in feeling crabby, "reactional," and ungrounded rather than just crying a lot, I still have to treat myself "as if" with gentleness, concern, protection, and compassion rather than unawareness and judgment. Looks like all that therapeutic work I did sank in pretty well :-)