Day 1

Dear Diary,

Are these journals public? If so, TRIGGER WARNING!! I'm going to vent my past few days here, so if you're reading and are easily triggered, please go away.

Oh, but please be my friend, too ;)

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I signed up for this account today, after calling the Binge Eating hotline last week and getting an email with a link to this page. The sign up and the call were big things for me. I don't usually take action; I just web search and forget. So maybe this one has a little more staying power.

You probably wouldn't guess by looking at me that I have a problem with food as I'm tall and fairly normal weight but I've binged at least since elementary school. I'd come home from school, eat two or three big bowls of cereal, sometimes with several spoonfuls of sugar on each, then have dinner as normal. More recently, I've had two modes: Rigid Perfection and Out of Control. In the past, I think I've gotten Rigid Perfection to last about two consecutive months. Out of Control can also last for months. Examples of recent Out of Control moments: my daughter's birthday party last week saw my wife and I agree to eat dinner after the evening party. During the party, I still ate two slices of pizza, several chicken fingers, and three plates of cake, each with two pieces (it was a joint party and both birthday girls wanted their own cake, so each plate came with a piece of each), for a total of six pieces of cake. At home, we decided to toss the remaining amount of our cake. My wife took the kids upstairs and I proceeded to scrape off as much frosting as I could from the platter (because it's easier to notice missing cake than missing leftover frosting), shoving it into my mouth before I even swallowed. When there was no more frosting left, I just ate more cake. Probably three or four more pieces. I don't think we had dinner that night after all.

Then just yesterday: I wasn't hungry for breakfast, but the in-laws wanted to go out so I ate a *huge* breakfast burrito with home fries. Immediately from there we went to the movies where I had a bag of M&Ms plus half a POUND of airheads, plus popcorn that I nabbed from my son sitting next to me. From there we went home and I had a slice of pizza and most of a bag of corn chips. My friend, who hadn't eaten nearly that much, suggested we grab a bite, so we went to Qdoba. At this point I was already almost uncomfortably full, but just for giggles I got a burrito bowl with extra chicken and finished it, AND bought a chocolate chip cookie from behind the counter that I finished before even reaching the register. Later that night and hating myself, I polished off the remaining half of an industrial strength sleeve of Starburst leftover from the night before. Cherry on top, I had to run to the store to grab food for the kids' lunches and while there I also bought a cup of cookie dough and ate it in the car before coming home.

Jesus... it's no wonder I'm 15 pounds heavier than I was 2 months ago. Things don't burn off quite as fast now that I'm nearing 40.

Today's been okay. I wasn't hungry for the peanut butter & apple I had for breakfast, but of course I ate it anyway and at least stopped there. Lunch was salad, albeit with honey chevre and a small handful of dried (cough, cough, sugar-soaked, cough) cranberries. I had probably a few too many handfuls of peanuts immediately after, too, so maybe today wasn't such a rousing success after all, but at least that was the extent of it. No cookie dough or pints of ice cream. Hell, I even went to two stores today and left both without dessert, so I guess that's something. 

And with that, it's time to jump into Dad duty. Bye Diary. Let's touch base again tomorrow.