It’s been a few days now. I’ve been doing great. I want to write more, but we’ve been busy all weekend following my 4-year-old daughter having a Day of Hurling, and now my 6-year-old son is sick, and my husband will be in Seattle all day tomorrow. Hard to find the time to update!

Mostly I’ve been listening to myself. I watch what happens in my head whenever food comes up, which is frequently. Often it feels like some kind of hurricane, winds picking up, things flying around, and if you asked me right then the most basic questions, “Are you hungry? What would you like to eat?”, I’d give you this utterly blank look. I think Greg is starting to get used to it. It’s like I have to spend several minutes tuning in. I’m the stomach whisperer.

During these hurricanes, I cling to my stakes in the ground. I rope myself in. One of these is the idea that I absolutely will not put anything on the “can’t eat” list. This isn’t the same thing as telling myself, “You can eat all of that thing you want!” It isn’t an encouragement to start eating. Instead, it’s telling myself, everything is available. My choice isn’t to be made by looking at a mental list of Allowed Food, or Non-Triggering Food, or Low-Cal Food. It’s to be made by listening to myself and then honoring the answer.

Myself is confused a lot of the time, but it’s getting less so.

I had a real moment of clarity (“moment of clarity”? aiyeee, I’m going all bumper sticker on ya’ll) a few days ago when I realized that for this compulsive eating to be healed, I’d actually have to give up needing to be smaller. This has become another stake in the ground, yet I argue with it all the time. I’m pretty sure that if I don’t get small enough to wear this purple dress (purple!) I want from Patagonia, my life will be in ruins. <—- That particular area of my brain doesn’t even try to be rational anymore.

The thing is, you can’t simultaneously tell yourself that you love yourself and then tell yourself that you aren’t capable of being trusted around food and you need some diet book author or program to tell you what to eat your you’ll just EAT IT ALL. I want to have faith in myself, and I think I’m worth that.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: There is, at this very moment, a box of peanut butter bars in this house. Greg went out tonight for some other groceries, and asked if I wanted anything, and I knew I wanted something………yes, I wanted a peanut butter bar. And the look on his poor man’s face, it’s like I asked him to bring me back a baseball bat with which to beat myself. I reassured him that I was feeling very good and this HAD TO HAPPEN SOMETIME, that I couldn’t keep running from peanut butter bars my whole life.

He brought the box home. I had one. I thought I was eating it a little too fast, but then I was reading a book in my Kindle (I won’t tell you which book, you’ll laugh at me), and I frequently eat too fast when I’m reading. Especially about vampires! Woops. Did I say that out loud? An hour or so later I wanted another one. I had the following internal dialogue:

“But….but…..but……”

“Hey, YOU SAID. Everything is available, right?”

“But, this is IT, this is your kryptonite. What if you eat the entire box? What if you eat the entire box, make yourself sick, and then you’re even more anxious than usual all day tomorrow?”

“It’s a risk, isn’t it? Kind of scary, isn’t it? How do I do this experiment and not give in to all these fears? How do I trust myself? I just DO. I just trust. Let’s go.”

“But do you even really want WANT a peanut butter bar? I mean, really, one is enough, right?”

“Apparently NOT, if I want a second one. Just hold it in your hand if you want. Just don’t fear the damned food so much.”

“But what if you want three? And then four? And then seven? And then you go back to the store and buy more, and then your stomach explodes and you die of peanut butter-related injuries, and then your kids find you on the floor and they have to tell their friends what happened, and for the next twenty years they go into post-traumatic fits WHENEVER THEY SEE THE LITTLE DEBBIE LOGO? ”

And then one half of myself rolled its eyes at the other half. If that’s possible.

I got another one. I ate it more slowly. It was very, very good. And at the end I felt a twinge of heartburn. I noticed I felt comfortably full. I looked at the empty wrapper and imagined another one, and it just didn’t give me any thrill at all, or seem necessary or useful.

So, right now, there is a box of peanut butter bars sitting in my cupboard, being neither eaten nor craved. I’m pretty sure this is some kind of minor miracle. I definitely want to check in tomorrow and let you you guys know if I ate the whole box or not. Because if there are still peanut butter bars here on Tuesday, from the SAME BOX, well then I’m calling Oprah. She totally owes me one.