December 22, 2012
50 pounds to go
Where are the cheese crunchies and veggie chips?
To be fair, I stole this phrase from The Hunger Games. Not to compare my over-privileged middle class life to that of Katniss Everdeen, (or that I've been hiding in trees from radioactive bees) but I have had the feeling of being able to eat a house and still feel hungry. Those times when it doesn't matter what I eat, or the volume of eating - full never comes and I'm hunting around my house for something to make me feel better.
Before I started managing what I eat earlier this year, I could go on some spectacular food binges. Put it in front of me and I could put it away. Huge noodle dishes. Fast food. Big fuck-off sandwiches. And beer. I still love beer even though it gives me a gluten headache the next day. I stay away from it now ninety nine percent of the time, but once in awhile I say "it's not going to hurt me THIS time." Nope. Headache. Pay the price bitch for this beer. Anyway, I loved to eat. And it wasn't just the love of eating - in times of extreme stress it felt like my digestive system was on overdrive. Even though I was packing in these huge portions of food I never felt comfortably (or uncomfortably) full. It was all I wanted and I could never seem to get there. I'd eat lunch and say "why am I still hungry? What can I eat to fix this?" So I'd go eat more and still be a bottomless pit.
I thought I kicked this problem in the ass a few months ago when I discovered that gluten and simple carbohydrates were spiking my blood sugar -- like a ninja in my stomach preventing the "I'm full" triggers from activating. I threw that stuff out of my diet, upped my protein and started eating baked potatoes instead of fries, and found out that fat free refried beans mixed in anything is satisfying. If all else fails eat a bowl of cooked broccoli smothered in light laughing cow cheese wedges (120 calories) then chug a glass of water. I had found the cure to 'not full.' Alas, this last week it stopped working. I still was scuttling along eating my normal choices and suddenly I wasn't full when I was done with lunch. I came home and my normal dinner combos weren't doing the trick. I paced around my living room after watching the Gossip Girl finale (I'm still reeling. Lonelyboy? What a fucking girl.) baffled why I still felt like raiding the fridge even though I had just eaten an 800 calorie meal filled with all the right choices.
There are three things that I can do in this situation:
1) Give up and order a pizza.
2) Chug a glass of water / get a cup of coffee / a cup of tea
3) Go do something else.
Once and awhile I still give in and eat an extra helping of cheese crunchies (just a few hundred extra calories, not the whole hog) which I did a lot of this week. Sometimes I recognize the 'hungry' go chug a big glass of water or non calorie beverage just to keep my mouth occupied. (Yes Mike, that's what she said.) However, I almost always forget, and rarely deliberately go do something else to distract myself because all else has failed.
Last night on day 4 of bottomless pit week I realized that I have been under an abnormal amount of stress. This should trigger the 'duh' reaction as I've been dealing with a company take-over for the past 3 months, but I was doing fine. What made this week so fucking different? Now that I'm a ladder-climbing manager in a privately owned company the threat of "I own you" has been ominously hanging over my head. Truth be told, I'm exhausted (again, duh, I've had 4 aura-blinding-firework-show migraine headaches in the last month. It's not really funny when I'm sitting at my desk and am temporarily blinded by a light show) and I know it. I need a break. I have a vacation planned but now that it's on the books I have 3 huge projects that have been dumped on my desk. "Work on it over the holidays." Break means going away. Break means detaching for a few days so I can catch my breath and do these projects well. Break means not taking phone calls. Break means not checking my email. I will not be owned.
Deep breathes. Pick your battles. Put down the chocolate. Now is not the time to shout "the emperor has no clothes! You are out of your fucking mind!" Or draw a huge dancing penis on my boss's door because at least that would make me laugh during this insanity. After I had a teeth-grinding drive home yesterday and scared the shit out of Mike with my grump-face I just vegged out for a few hours and ruminated on my "I'm never full" and work situation. This isn't the end of the world. And I'm very good at my job. Next week will be quiet, and in all likeliness I can get these projects done (for the most part) before I leave on my vacation. Plus, I know that no one else is going to do it on time so I'm going to look like a hero. And as far as being made to work on my vacation? I'll be going to Antarctica -- I hear the reception is terrible. In all seriousness, I'm still relatively new at this company since I was 'acquired' and now is not the time to make a huge fuss.
So bottom line is: my stress trigger is still what is causing this. It's just hidden down deeper and takes longer to detonate now that I've gotten a better hold on my food-emotion-connection issues. Once I came up with a game plan last night (even though it's still mildly overwhelming) I felt better. Also, "I'm full" miraculously returned this morning after I ate breakfast. (Yummy breakfast burrito guts of potatoes, scrambled eggs, sour cream, salsa and fat free refried beans. 465 calories. Still bursting.)
Maybe it's a good thing that I experienced 'hollow' this week because I know I have to re-asses how to manage my stress. It's not necessarily a good thing that I have to cope with this huge pile of it, but it's what I've chosen and the bottom line is I do like my job. I like the level of responsibility I have and even in moments of "I want to draw a penis on your door" I still like the people I work for. They're mostly in the same boat that I am, respect me and have a good sense of humor. The fact that my boss was quoting "Office Space" the other day while dumping a project on my desk made me crack up. They don't care if a random "oh fuck" slips from my mouth (which happens) and the first time I said "are you nuts?" on a project timeline I got the reaction "I like her, she tells the truth" instead of "Do it! You're my minion. You minion-y minion grunt. Get to work!"
When I don't manage my stress and my expectations at work a layer of mild discontent forms underneath my surface. I feel depressed without knowing why. I feel out of control. I feel like eating a monster burrito. A life lived in mild discontent is a wasted life. To go way down deep into the pit of philosophy; is re-assessing my stress and coming at my life from a different angle an illusion I create for myself to cope? Or do I really feel happy now? Only I can determine that. It takes a lot of guts, and honest assessing to come up with a real answer with only my own experience to draw from. Many moons ago when I worked at the bookstore, I fucking hated my job. I kept ladder climbing but it wasn't helping. I would be so miserable I would cry for no reason sometimes. That deep rooted feeling of "I don't want to go" or "I hate my job" or "I am never going to get out of this" or "I'm stuck" haunted me when I woke up in the morning. I look back at it now and I was wasting my life in a pool of mild discontent. Saving up my money and quitting that job was the best present I ever gave myself. And I can say I don't feel discontent in my job now.
Life was never meant to be a flat, hill-less boring ride into the boneyard. I know instinctively that there are going to be periods of great stress and periods of great joy. When it's really bad (like it was this last week) I have to step back and say "this is just a shitty week." And now it's not.
The secret to life.
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