Notes from a recovering binge eater

Somehow I think that I'll be filling up this blog with a lot of entries this month. I guess if writing my way through this process is what I have to do in order to finally sort out this area of my life then so be it. After all, writing has always been a therapeutic outlet for me ever since I was little.

I've got about an hour or so left here at work and I'm already starting to think about food. It's during moments like these when I feel like I'm the only person in the entire world who goes through this. Food is constantly on my mind and that is embarrassing to admit. Ever since I started gaining weight as a child I've always turned to food for comfort. I remember how my sister and I would run up my grandmother's tab at the local convenience store buying pop tarts and cookies after school and then sneak it all upstairs to our room and eat until we couldn't move. That pattern of "bad" days continued off and on throughout high school, reaching a peak in college with our new-found freedom and independence. Since we roomed together, we no longer had to hide our binging from anyone. I remember our "f-up days" lasting for entire weekends at a time, from morning till night eating whatever we wanted and always in mass quantities. Our junior year we lived right around the corner from Rite-Aid and Dave & Andy's, a situation which caused us both to put on at least an additional 30 pounds before that school year was over. Things calmed down in grad school, but the binge eating never completely ceased-- the episodes were just fewer and farther between.

The strange thing about binge eating for me is that the actual eating isn't what produces the most satisfaction. It is, rather, the anticipation, the planning, the thoughts of where to go and what to order that are most pleasurable. Actually eating the food is anti-climactic, because all of the happiness and excitement that thinking about food produces just doesn't make up for the end result. In fact, it all spirals out of control at that point. What started off as an exciting, "happy" trip to indulge turns into feelings of depression and self-loathing in the end.
It's a hurricane of emotions that leaves you physically and mentally spent.

In light of all this I wonder then, why do I allow these thoughts and urges to continually creep back into my mind?