Sufficient for the Day

Four non-binge days running, so that’s encouraging. I’ve been being very exact, which takes a great deal of the pressure off. Any leeway fills up with mental disputation and uncertainty, cunning arguments from the first lieutenant and vague policy rants from the captain. It’s not worth it. Easier to follow my own rules to the letter. There’s a time for changing rules -- it’s Wednesday morning, after the weekly averages have been reckoned. At no other time are the rules even to be questioned. That’s not what we’re doing.

I’m not gung ho on psychological approaches to weight control: I think it’s fundamentally a hormonal problem, not a psychological problem, and that psychological solutions mostly miss the point. Conceptualizations don’t trump hormones -- they just make excuses for them. My job is primarily to prevent temptation from arising, or to make succumbing to it difficult. But when I do  fail at that, and get into a conceptual tussle with myself, I get some use out of a simple phrase that I mutter to myself: “that’s not who I am any more.” I used to be someone who engaged with temptation, took it seriously, struggled with it: now I just don’t have time for it. I don’t have to be that person. I can just step out of that skin and walk away. It’s a mental shrug, shaking it all off. I used to be that person, but I got tired of it, and now I’m another person.

The other thing I find helpful is reminding myself that the binge is lying to me. On the far side, it says, will be peace and contentment. But what’s on the far side is actually ever more wanting, ever more restless looking for more food, more piquancy, more indulgence. There is no end to it. There’s no contentment on the other side. There’s a moment or two of pleasure and relief, and then it’s back to relentless temptation. If I want some freedom from craving -- and do -- the only way to get it is to interrupt the craving/indulgence cycle. Wait. Let the craving burn itself out. It usually does it quicker than I expect.

This week I bump my work hours per week from twenty up to thirty, to deal with the increased volume of the giving season. It’s a little embarrassing to realize how large an impact that makes on my disposable time -- it’s only ten hours, after all! But it’s actually very large, and I have to cut back on my ambitions in other areas to accommodate it. I’m going to cut back my workout schedule a bit. (from 1 every 3 days to 2 every 7 days, to be exact. Not a huge change. It’s much easier to that way to make the exercise days not land on work days.)

I’ve also abandoned my program of progressively increasing my walking-time, at least for now. I had weekly totals I was trying to reach, which seemed like a reasonable approach, but involved just a bit more tracking and remembering -- the sort of first lieutenant versus captain disputes that wreck my eating program. I really can’t afford to maintain any additional regimen with a memory that crosses the sleep country. Yesterday has to utterly vanish. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day. The moment my head hits the pillow, all debts are cleared. I had to do that with eating too: what I ate yesterday, whether I binged or fasted or whatever, has no implications for today at all. I get what I get: I don’t try to repair the past or steal a march on the future.

There are a few things that have to be planned and remembered across the sleep boundary: in particular, shopping and food prep. But every one drains my energy and capacity for self-regulation: so I have to be thrifty with them. I can’t wantonly take on new ones.