Skipped Week 7 , but here's 8.1, 8.2, 8.3

Way too much going on with my study launch at work...deadline is Wednesday so the stress is peaking. Late nights, spending time w/J, being exhausted, all lead to me forgetting the entire 7th visit entries - which was actually 9 days. However, I only had 2 binges during that entire time and no Burger King visits at all, none since then either! Because the difference is J, I realize that boredom and loneliness really have been playing a part (in addition to work stress) in my binges. But during that visit I discussed wanting to make sure I can do this without having someone in my life - I don't want to depend on having someone in my life to have a sense of control over what I eat, you know?

So the activity she gave me last week was to make a list of activities that must include all three things: fun, active, realistic. Active, meaning not passive (like watching TV). Ex: Listening to music in background while doing something is passive, but searching through iTunes for amazing music and getting lost for hours (which I can do!) is active. And the idea is to do these when I am in a good place, to build it into a habit so that during my weakest hour of eating, I can select one of these things as my "go to" instead of choosing to binge.

Well I did create the list of things, but in my meeting this week (on Tuesday), I told her that I've had another realization: in addition to work stress, boredom and loneliness, another key factor is the times of day I eat! I have no interest in doing any of those things in the hour I usually binge, because I'm starving! I never realized how irregular and spread out the times I eat are. She said that your stomach totally empties after about 4 hours of eating a meal. Ideally I should be eating every 3 hours. When I'm at work, I never eat breakfast, I eat lunch anywhere between 12-2:30pm, and I work until 7:30pm on average, so I don't eat dinner until 9pm and sometimes later. Why hadn't I thought of this before?! So I'm in starvation mode by the time I leave work.

She said that hunger is mental - so if my mind is distracted with work, the hunger pangs don't really grab my attention, but as soon as I leave work, and have no more stress, I am STARVED, and that's when I binge!

So this week I have a schedule that I'm going to try and follow with eating. She still doesn't want me to focus on the type of food. I told her my fear was that I will just overeat bad foods at every one of those eating times. She said - no food is "bad" so try to get that out of your mind, but even if you eat Snickers bars at every single meal, it will still probably be less than what you're eating when you binge, but more importantly, you're learning new eating patterns so that you never get to the point of wanting to binge, because you've already eaten 5 times just while at work! OK so it made sense. Plus I know it will keep my blood sugar at an even keel. So here's the schedule, and she said it HAS to be realistic (don't think about food - if it's fast food b/c you don't want to cook breakfast at home, that's fine):

8am: 2 Wake Up Wraps from DD
11am: Snack from kitchen/store at work
12-2:30pm: Sandwich
3pm: Snack from kitchen/store at work
6pm: Snack from kitchen/store at work
9pm: Dinner

8.1 Tuesday (day of appt)
Breakfast: none
Lunch: Cafeteria style restaurant w/coworker: Turkey and dressing, side salad
Dinner: 8pm Waffle House with J: Eggs, Bacon, Hash Browns, 1/2 blueberry waffle, Cinn. Rais. toast (ate waffle and toast later at home at 10:30pm)

8.2 Wednesday (first day of eating schedule)
8am: 2 Wake Up Wraps from DD and iced latte
11am: Too busy - forgot to eat
12-2:30pm: Lunch and Learn meeting: 1/2 Sandwich, M&M Cookie from Panera
3pm: Forgot
5pm: SunChips, left work at 8:30pm
9pm: Bacon, Egg,Cheese on Sesame Bagel

8.3 Thursday (today - working from home)
8am: Too busy w/work - no breakfast
11am: 1-week old coffee roll from Dunkin Donuts that I never ate
12:30pm: Bacon, Egg, Cheese on Croissant (except they forgot the egg!!) and iced latte
3pm: Too busy, no snack
6pm: right now it's 6:21pm and I'm starving and was too busy to focus on having a snack.
7pm: Since I'm already home, I don't have to worry about leaving work late. I plan on ordering dinner from a restaurant, but not sure what just yet.