Day 31 of 183. 152 days to go.

Its saturday.
This weekend i am bothered by the feelings of angst at being alone all weekend. Today I've been wondering how i usually get through weekends.

Thinking back, now, in order to answer that question, I spent weekends writing my dissertation, and then later, after that was finished, they were spent swotting up for the oral exam interview. That has been going on for at least 18 months. Since April, when i passed the final exam, i think i've spent weekends catching up on doing things like painting, reading for lesiure, relaxing, gardening, etc.

I don't do much socialising. I need to change that. If my life continues in this way, being alone all weekend, then i am in for a very bland life. I shall be miserable. Calm, yes, but ultimately generally miserable.

Now that money is a little more in supply, i do have enough for a basic social life.

I'll need to join something.
Thats what to do, isn't it?
Some kind of club of people with a shared interest, or a social networking organisation of sorts. I saw one advertised in the Sunday Telegraph "The Dinner Club". Singles social events. I could give that a go. It does sound like a nice civilised way to meet both female friends and potential male dates.

Food again!

It will actually be lovely to enjoy nice food, and eat it with interesting people, instead of eating mindlessly alone, in front of the TV.

Hmm, that sounds nice. Apart from being too overweight to feel comfortable meeting potential dates at the moment, thee is also the small matter to consider of the fact that I'm actually not eating any food. And i will not be eating, 'normally' until just before Christmas. Joining at that time of year is probably rather grim. I shall wait until the end of january at least.

My handyman chap has been sanding the floor of the lounge for two weekends now. The floor does look fabulous. Its a victorian house and the floorboards are almost perfect. There are just a couple in one side of the room that have been cut to gain access to the space below the floor. The majority of it is in its original streamlined state.

My graduation ceremony was the usual affair. It was a long hot day. I am so glad that i went, though. It was worth feeling tired yesterday and exhausted today.

My friend and i were talking about eating, framed as an addiction, on the drive home in the car. I mentioned to her that i feel safe and relaxed and a huge sense of relief because i am abstaining from food. However, i know i can't go on this way forever. I don't know what i am going to do when i start eating again. The problem hasn't gone away.

I know this because when we were at the motorway services, i wanted the food on display. Not the hot and cold meals, nor the sandwhiches, but the cookies and cakes!

I despair.

My mouth watered, and my tummy rumbled. And i had a pain in my stomach as i walked to the pay station with my black tea.

My friend said that she watched a documentary and recalled somebody in the medical field saying that he had done tests on the brain and that the findings were that lard and other solid fats like that do create changes in the brain and their conclusion was that those fats, when consumed, act as a relaxant or a sedative or a pain killer.

Thats amazing, isn't it?
If anybody knows of such a report on those kinds of studies, please be kind enough to send me the link, or add a comment below.
I'd like to read about it myself.

It makes sense to me. I know that the reason i started binge eating uncontrollably and with damaging frequency, 6 years ago, was because i needed something that would act as a medication to quell the extreme anxiety that i felt. Food did the job. When eating it did soothe me. Not just by distraction or by the idea of having something nice to eat, but i am sure that it did actually change my physiology.

Why i continued to do the binge eating behaviours during the last 2 years, when things weren't as bad and my anxiety wasn't at the same extreme strenght, isn't easy to say.

Possibly I had now got used to using food as a medication and so continued to use that method because it was cheap, easy and it worked.

I think that there is more to it than that, though.
I think that by the last couple of years i had put on so much weight over the first 4 years, that my body was unrecognisable. I didn't look like me, didn't feel like me, and couldn't dress like me.

I was embarrassed. I couldn't make a social life, so i stayed with food for company and eating evenings as an activity.
What a waste of a life!
Then periodically i would stop doing it and be determined that i'd change things. I'd diet and exercise and get myself back to the old me and everything would be alright.
I tried every approach that i knew. I didn't make it.
It was the same pattern.
I'd get results in the first three weeks, feel pleased and optimistic and motivated. After then the weight loss slowed to about a half a pound a week or a pound off and then the next week half a pound on again.
At that point i lost sight of everything.
It is then i'd get low and hold the low mood for a while. Fairly soon after, days usually, I'd think, "Whats the point" or some such other thought (it wasn't actually articulated, it was more a feeling) and then i'd feel an urge to go and get food. I think that i was angry at that point. And when i felt angry, i felt the urge to binge.
I didn't manage to get the feeling to go away very often, so a binge then did take place.
I'd shop for the food quickly and with no pleasure whatsoever. It was a task that i had to get done.
Then i'd get in the car and start on eating something there and then. I'd continue to eat as i was driving. And finish eating at home.
Sometimes it was all gone, sometime i couldn't eat it all.
When i woke the next day i sometimes might have carried on. Whether i had any food left over or whether i went out to buy more, if the urge was there, i fed it.

On friday i had a conversation with another friend. We were chatting on the telephone about everything and nothing. She said something quite odd, in a mocking and accusing way, about an email that i'd sent her a few days ago.

When i went out later that afternoon, i found myself feeling really angry about what had happened in the conversation about the email.

I wanted to eat.

I knew that i wasn't going to eat. Yet i did notice that i had the urge to eat. If i had acted on that urge and indeed gone and had a food binge, I think that buying the food would have been a way of acting out the anger. Eating the food would have been the soother / relaxant.

I have just realised that since that moment i have felt very tired. I thought that it was because of my trip to the graduation ceremony, but now i think that something else is going on, psychologically.

I've been extremely tired, apathetic, and lethargic - and i think that it is out of proportion to the event (of the graduation day).

I need to confront my friend.
I think thats the solution.
I have to think about how i will do that.

When i do it, i shall come to life again, i'm sure.
Isn't that odd?