I Binge When I’ve Done Something Wrong

Today I did something that I seem to feel is wrong. It’s just a matter of “putting cart before horse” but it made me feel badly and so I went out to shop for holiday gifts. Shopping (or the act of shopping AKA window shopping) is one of my rituals that has to do with eating sugar. Anyone else have shopping related to your sugar intake?

Tonight I didn’t do so well in cutting the sugar out of my ritual. Maybe I need to change that ritual altogether because I ended up eating some fast food and topped it off with a Nana’s brand double chocolate cookie from Whole Foods. Yes, there’s sugar in there, but as the package says, it has “no refined sugar.” So basically I ate sugar in a different form. Here’s what it says on the label: Fruit Juice (pear, apple, grape), Rice Dextrins (a natural unmodified starch), and chocolate chips which contain whole grain malted barley and corn, and unsweetened chocolate. As far as cookie products go this is a pretty good one meaning it’s got natural sweeteners in it and with the primary sweetener being fruit juice. However, one cookie contains 26 grams of sugar. Yikes.

Still, I don’t feel badly physically or emotionally. It is clear to me that I’m stressed (money stressing anyone out?) and that’s what’s driving me to want to binge. The good thing is I’m so far away from turning to my old trigger foods that tonight’s situation made me think more than it did anything else. Some people reward themselves with sweets. But tonight I can’t tell if I was rewarding or punishing myself. I think from now on when this feeling comes up, this feeling like I’m out of control and in need of some kind of confirmation of being out of control (in the form of a binge) I’m going to instead relax and take a break and focus on getting nothing done for a short while. Maybe read.

And with that said, tonight I’m going to go to bed early and read some of the books that I have piled up. All the problems of the world will be there tomorrow and I’ll be refreshed and ready for them when I wake up.

When you binge, are you punishing or rewarding yourself? Or is it something else altogether?

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