Reach for the stars

Hello again, blog of mine. My, you've been neglected lately. I cannot believe I haven't posted since May 25th - eek! Anyway, it's about time I checked in again.

And what's there to report? Well, sadly, there hasn't been a great deal of good news. Still have been throwing down the junk food like there's no tomorrow a lot of the time. Most of my clothes don't fit me and I'm a bit afraid to get on the scales. *blush* However, there is value in peeling back the layers and seeing what is really happening underneath the surface to make me want to do this, to write off all my hard work over the last few years and put myself back in a seemingly ever-deeper hole of misery from which, one day, I fear I will lose the ability to emergy. So thank God I have Dr B the psychologist, and I saw her again on Tuesday. It was a really useful chat this time. Basically, it's now time to stop talking about the past and focus on what I can do to make my present more enjoyable so I don't think bingeing on crap food is the only thing I can do to make me feel OK.

Number one problem - I hate my job and want to do something different, but don't know quite what. Dr B gave me some useful websites to look up re this, plus I'm going to go to a Gold Coast TAFE careers night thingy which is specifically for workforce newbs or those who are wanting to do something completely different. Right now, the options that really appeal are, of all things, vet nursing (or something else involving working with animals) or music therapy. One is a lot easier to achieve than the other and involves less study, but maybe there's something else I might like to do which hasn't even occurred to me yet. Looking forward to doing something different, anyway. I already feel a bit excited even having made that little a step towards my new future. :)

Number two problem - though I don't bear T any ill will and I don't want to expunge him from my life forever, he STILL has stuff in my and J's flat after 12 months and it really has to go. Now I've given him a deadline by which, if he hasn't organised himself to collect it, it's going into storage that he will be paying for. And the reason I'm able to pay for it is because his uni pay is STILL going into my bank account, as it has been all this semester, meaning I have to see him every fortnight to give it to him. Not any more. Either he gives me a bank account to transfer it into or he doesn't get it at all. There are reasons why he wants to keep our "system", but they are reasons which no longer concern or worry me. They are his problem to sort out and none of my affair. It's hard for me to take stands like this, and yet as soon as I decided I would do it, I started to feel just a little bit of that inner warrior I know is still there start to emerge just a little bit. I felt a tiny bit of my inner strength starting to stir.

Which brings me to my eating/food. *SIGH* There isn't much I haven't tried in the last six months re this, but the result clearly shows none of it has been working - I'm about 10kg heavier than I was most of last year, have burst out of most of my clothes and I do not feel good for it. But because, at the moment, I'm still not quite mentally strong enough to get really tough and stern on myself (because up until now, that's the only way I have been able to keep myself remotely on track), I've compromised. Right now, I have only one goal - not bingeing. Tonight I was out shopping and I bought a card of star stickers, you know, like the ones you put on kids' homework or star charts. The system is pretty simple - every day I get through without going out and buying junk food specifically to binge on in my house, out of sight of everyone, I put a star on my calendar. That way, when the urge is really strong and my brain is telling me all that crap about what terrible things might befall me if I don't give in to the urge, I can look at the calendar, see all those starred days and realise that if I got through those without bingeing, I can get through any day without bingeing. Nothing will happen to me except that I will break this extremely unhelpful habit I've developed lately. I'm not even trying to calorie count or anything serious - I'm just not bingeing. And seeing as some of my binges lately would have been easily 1,000 cals or more at a time, I figure it's got to be a good improvement to start with.

Anyway, that is all I have to say for now, but I'm feeling a little bit optimistic at the moment, something I haven't felt for a little while. I am going to try hard to make it stick!

Till next time... xx