oof. I waited a good long time to eat today but it was not long enough and just after 1 pm I ate 600 cals. which is not TOO much but WAS too much for my body. I ate: one mango. 2 apples, small. 1/2 lime. few leaves baby greens. two 6-oz. packages raspberries. One medium/medium/large tomato. Hmmm. Too much, hunh? When I look at it, it really is. Probably more than 600 cals. I hurt. NO, it is NOT "food combining." It is COMPULSIVE OVEREATING. I really, truly, sincerely, and responsibly believe the Science of foodcombining arose to enable compulsive overeating. I am bloated now -- that's the truth and I can't avoid it. I didn't listen to myself or my body. I am in pain. Not very bad pain, but I am in pain. It has been a lot worse, but this is still unacceptable. i feel a sense of agony, physically. Why did I do this. I refused to pay attention to my stop-eating signal. I refused to pay attention to the signal that I got to refrain from eating in the first place, and rest. In eating, did I even get a clear stop-eating signal? I can't remember. ...Yeah, I did. I thought I could get away with ignoring it. ... A lesson: I can NOT get away with ignoring it, too often. Can I sometimes, ever get away with ignoring it? THis is the trouble. I think sometimes I can. i dunno. I am so tired. I have got to look at my thought process and values around obeying my stop-eating signal. This is a very, very vulnerable area. Here is the trouble: there really seems to be no alternative to overeating. I feel I need that... sense of security? Relief? Release? Sense of satisfaction? I feel the need to commit a certain violence against myself so I can't feel my feelings. The same drive propelled me out of bed too early this a.m. and drives me around all day, quite mercilessly. Actually, the same drivenness propelled me to the store and into getting food etc. This behavior and mindset -- unrelaxed -- are the neurological manifestation of my intestinal condition (anxiety!) (the enteric and central nervous systems being terribly closely connected... search this on web site of new york times for Science articles)... it helps for some reason to know this. I do experience relaxation post-enema; but enemas are a bit harsh for me: I get the sense that I need to really stop the problem at the source -- the overeating -- instead of taking measures to cancel out the consequences of that source problem.

I need to post about this struggle until I resolve it. I need to report my overeating until I become ready to look at the vulnerable feeling/thought process that underpins it. I will do this -- keep posting. I can't get into it right now. I need to feel safer. Funny that I post here, where I do not feel safe, but oh well. The fasting is the factor prompting my need to address my overeating. So I need a fasting forum. My fasting is having the effect of healing my overeating. The first stage of healing is to talk about it.

I am too tired to write right now and should not have gotten out of bed as early as I did today. GOOD news and bad news. Good news is: I woke up 5 am today compulsed to eat and DID NOT. I rested, as I wished to. For a couple further hours. I was amazed. It was like some good force -- unleashed by the fast -- took over my body and put me back into bed and to sleep. Further good news was last night having waited a good long time to eat I ate 650 cals and did not bloat AT ALL!!!! Wow -- this was great and amazing. I was so well and strong the whole night. God, that was good. I had to sit on my hands after I was done with the food and it was a screaming struggle inwardly but I did it. i refrained. If only I could have stayed unbloated today.

What happened today? Well -- something revolutionary ALMOST happened, first of all, and I want to affirm this. The revolutionary thing that almost happened was that as I was driving myself the the store, after my morning AA meeting (a strain, since I am not intimate with the AA people yet -- have not found the skills or language to make myself acceptable as a bona fide addict -- sense that they will reject me if they find out my drug of choice is "only" food. Horrible situation, really, though I have lived this situation in many AA groups in the past -- and though have also succeeded in confiding to some AA groups and actually been accepted as a real addict -- it was hard this morning, anyway. I hopscotched in conversation afterward, straining and hurting myself to keep them at bay as they interviewed me. i should have left early. But then I would not have had contact. Oh hell.)
... sorry for tangent!

.. the revolutionary thing that almost happened that I want to celebrate is that as I drove myself to the store (literally & figuratively) was that I had a POWERFUL urge to step OUT of the "coping impulse trance" and JUST F*CKING GO TO THE BEACH AND RELAX AND WAIT TO EAT AND REFUSE TO BE DRIVEN BY THE TERROR OF NOT GETTING MY FIX. TO TAKE THE SUPREME, TRUSTING RISK OF DRIVING OUT OF range of the grocery store and just LET IT GO, the terror, the compulsion to force myself over to the store, through the exercise of shopping, of arraying my food before me like the drug that it is; of force-eating. Just be like a normal person, and refrain from eating when eating was not OK with me. Just rebel and throw OFF the whole self-burdening self-driving drive drive drive to the store and stuff the food stuff the food stuff the food. I had the sense: I am tired of this!

I felt just before going shopping (which act more or less inevitably initiates the coping impulse trance and the compulsive eating) -- I felt just before goign shopping: "Wait. I am TIRED OF ALL THIS. I feel like driving AWAY and refusing to even think about eating, since that is what my body/my true self want. I want to relax. I want to rest. I need to rest. I am tired." I felt really released. If only I could have strengthened this within myself. Actually, I was experiencing some symptoms that I typically, sometimes, have -- it's intestinal. I had a sense of exhaustion. I had the DISTINCT and totally clear sense that I should wait a WHILE to eat and that my FIRST priority was REST. .. But I could not drive home and rest.

On fasting. Taking these slightly longer fasts has compelled me to stop the overeating tendencies that I have. I have been sort of forcibly made to confront the overeating after this most recent fast. It seems a little harsh but it is still a good way to go, I thiink. I really don't think it is harsh at all. Fasting is the most gentle thing I can do for myself. After the fast my body awareness is raised and, yes, I FEEL more pain. But am I really IN more pain? No. I am actually hurting myself LESS, because my awareness forces me to hurt myself less... I think people get scared of fasting: "oooh, ooh, it's dangerous!" because it lets them actually FEEL THEIR PAIN. ... WHat's dangerous, surely, is continuing to anesthetize yourself.
I am having success a lot of the time in this post-fast period refraining from overeating, today's hurtful episode notwithstanding. BUT IT IS A HORRIBLE STRUGGLE. God, it never gets easier -- or it does very slowly. i do think it will get easier. I have only to get used to a different way of living and eating. .... More and more it is apparent that fasting compels me to become GENTLE. There is a GENTLE way of life that I have got to learn if I want to live long and be well. After I fast I am AWARE of how I need to change to be gentle. I am aware of what gentleness feels like. it takes tremendous courage to stop the violence (mostly, violence of overeating... all my self-violence has its original cause/source in my overeating.)

I talked with my brother father and sister today. They're on the east coast. My dad (who staged a screaming fit about my declining thanksgiving dinner last year -- it is my drug of choice; I was fasting in the first place; it is not appropriate emotionally for me to eat in front of others who will not respect my refraining from eating as I see fit... my dad is one of these others so I do not eat in front of him. my dad clings to this mode of totally disrespecting me -- he has this bizarre rigid policy of being unwilling to respect my saying no to food. people like this don't belong in my life. this is the primary form of respect I need from people: that if for WHATEVER reason eating is not Ok with me, then I need to be respected and not force-fed. I actually need to demonstrate this primary form of respect to MYSELF. My sobriety, which will when I achieve it repair my broken self-trust, must and can only consist in my refraining from eating if eating FOR ANY REASON is simply not OK with me) .. my dad totally violated me; my sister was actually not bad but and my brother was a surprise. He called right back when I called his cell and he said to call him at any time. He works as an investment banker in NY and has actually kept his job. For a while brother kind of hated me, or pushed me away. He just kept me away for many years cause he couldn't handle my depressed over-neediness. I have hope that I could really one day tell him who I really am and be respected by him in my assessment of myself as a compulsive overeater and in my assessment that my healing will come only from fasting and from refraining-from-eating-if-eating-is-simply-not-ok-with-me. I believe he has the ability to respect me! Today without telling him anything much I was able to be positive to him so it was OK, talking. There is a horrible barrier between me and other people. I need to post about this some time.

About today. I feel like, okay I have screwed up and now I might as well eat again and bloat even more and take an enema. I am angry and vulnerable and humiliated that I have failed by overeating just now. After overeating and bloating I have been feeling just compulsed to eat again. i don't know how to end my day. i don't want to do anything. I am scared to initiate a big change in behavior. I am so tired and I have to self-examine in order to create a kind of food/eating policy and stop bloating if that is the appropriate thing to do (what are my values?).. and I am so tired that I can't set myself to this task. I can't look at the overeating-compulsed thought process and value system. It is too much. I just want to go and stuff myself and pass out. I need to write this. This is a sad way to be. What ought I to be doing? Productive work?? It seems my work right now is healing/fasting. OK, I know what my work is. Kind of, my work is posting here so that I can be brought toward sitting down with myself and working out a feasible plan of behavior. But I do need some real connection in this project/work.

It's hard to STOP eating once you have started, for me, even when you are bloated. I do not know how I can possibly go the rest of the day and night without eating -- stuffing myself again. I just do not see how I can possibly emotionally endure the rest of the day without food, my drug. Eating is NOT okay with me right now, so I need to refrain. I need to say this very strongly. There is a tendency for people to react to me by screaming that "you have to eat." nothing could be further from the truth. If eating is not okay with you, you should not eat, cause of the damage you do to your dignity and cause of how violating self-forced-feeding is. People that scream in with dire warnings of starvation are actually committing an extreme form of disrespect. They are doing something HORRIBLY damaging -- feeding a sense of fear and feeding the sufferer's self-mistrust. They are infantilizing and violating the sufferer. This is not well understood in society today, which is a terribly (self-intoxicatedly) fearful, not to mention food-addicted, society, a totally violating society. I want with my fiction (prose and film) to transform society's understanding of this situation of a person who has a need to refrain from eating. Work! God, i am tired. I wish I could feel well.

... I feel -- funny enough -- it would only take a couple of days of really obeying my stop-eating signal and adhering to wait-time rules and diet cleanup, for me to feel almost totally better. I felt so good last night! When will I do this??? I am helpless tonight. I am headed to eat, to hurt myself. I do not know of any alternative. I am too tired to work it out. I will perhaps not eat until 2:30 am -- 12 hours after the 600 calories. But it hurts my sleep to eat at that hour. Help. But I can only help myself. How. By posting and by staging a real sit-down with myself. By looking at the thought overeating-compulsing process that I keep avoiding looking at. Thanks for reading my fasting-prompted healing process. Lauray