Day 2-

Still motivated. Still snotty and cruddy. BUT, I didn’t eat after 8:30 last night. AND, I got eight hours of sleep! So I guess I’m off to a good start.

I was thinking earlier today about my late night eating. Why do I do that? Why do I find so much comfort in that? So I started thinking about how that all began.

When I was a kid, I had two things: 1) A tendency towards anxiety, which I never outgrew, and 2) a secret, late-night snack club with my dad.

Okay, the anxiety. It’s a problem that I always knew I had but I never realized what it was until my late twenties. When I was five, I remember taking these little green triangular pills. My mom served them to me in ice cream. I never knew what they were for. Growing up, I always felt a little more highly strung than my friends and I always worried more than they did. I just chalked it up as a character flaw. Until….I had a major come-apart around 28. I was so stressed I couldn’t catch my breath, I couldn’t sleep, I cried all the time. As it turns out, I have an anxiety disorder. Who knew!

Well, apparently my mom did. I braced myself to give her the life-altering news and she said, “Oh yeah, we knew that all along. Remember those little green pills we used to give you? It was anxiety medication. We never brought it up after that because we didn’t think it would last.” 

Seriously????

So, a major part of my life-long anxiety is trouble with bedtime. I will lie in bed and roil in my thoughts until I’m so panicked that I have to get up. And usually, I eat. I get a big glass of milk and a huge stack of saltines. I fill up my stomach and that calms me down so I can sleep.

And that brings me to my next culprit, the late-night snack club. When I was about six, I was super skinny and my parents were worried about me. So my dad cooked up a master plan. After my younger sister went to sleep, I would sneak downstairs and my dad would make me snacks while we played video games. It made me feel so special, like I was the cool kid that my dad wanted to hang out with. I didn’t find out until later that it was an elaborate plan to fatten me up. But it was too late. The comfort and excitement of late night eating were already in place.

So, what’s the purpose of this long psychological explanation?

I need to find a way to reduce my night time anxiety without using food as my comfort. I need to stop relying on food at night to fill my heart in addition to my stomach.

My quest this week is to figure out what works. Do I take my anxiety meds after dinner? Meditate? Read? I guess I’ll have to wait until the uncontrollable urge strikes. Hopefully knowing what I know now, I can manage to fight it. I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

31.4 carbs so far....