More discovery

After reading a post on the Beyond Chocolate forum, I think I might have discovered why it hurts so much to throw away food on my plate when I am full.

I think that is my old self, disappointed or frightened that I have rejected food as a way to cope. Throwing food away, for me, is a reflection that when I am hurting, I now have to feel the hurt instead of stuffing it down, and there is still a part of me that doesn't want to feel that hurt, and by eating the food that I don't need I stay in the place where I don't have to hurt.

I also realised that I don't love junk food like I thought I did. Even biscuits and crisps and chocolate, I only choose the real quality ones now. I get much more satisfaction from a handful of Tyrells crisps or a square of Green & Blacks chocolate than I ever did from cramming down the cheaper alternatives.I never understood that when I was dieting - I never got how one square of good chocolate could satisfy someone more than a whole bar of the cheap stuff. Now I realise that is because I wasn't satisfying my tastebuds or my hunger, I was trying to satisfy a big hole of unfulfillment and it worked for a while when I was eating to distract myself, so I thought it worked it the long term.

For me now, junk food is a way of punishing my body because generally it makes my body feel awful. Unsettled and overfull. Sometimes I might need a whole bar of good quality chocolate, sometimes I might need two or three, but I eat the good stuff and it's a way of rewarding my body for putting up with the abuse I gave it over the last five years. It's a rare occasion that I can comfortably put away a whole bar now though. And comfortably is the key word. If I zone out I can still binge, but being tuned in (which is almost automatic now) means that I can only fulfill my tummy hunger with food and that trying to fulfill some other hunger with food doesn't and won't ever work, not even in the short term.