Wednesday, April 4th, 2001

Okay, here's the thing. I have been really bad about sticking to a healthy diet lately, and it has brought my weight-loss to a grinding halt. John and I have been experiencing relationship 'growing pains,' but have largely come to a resolution for the meantime. However, during the week or so I was dealing with my own inner demons, I turned to food for emotional comfort. While I didn't gorge on anything incredibly high in fat or calories, I did gorge, and I fell into a dangerous downward spiral of binging-guilt-starving-binging that got pretty out of control. The good news is that I now know more about which 'comfort foods' that it is better just NOT have around the apartment:

• Sweetened cereal. Cereal with milk and sugar is a 'creamy sweetness' that I can't just have a single serving of.
• Ice-cream. Again, more 'creamy sweetness'.
• Crackers. Graham crackers, melba toast, Wheat Thins. All of these, while not calorie mines, are items that I just can't stop eating.
• Baked goods. I bake a coffee cake with low-fat Bisquick. I can't stop enjoying these with only one serving. I finish off the whole cake in a single day.

What I plan to do is just keep these things out of the apartment or keep them in very low quantities. When I bake, I should quarter the recipe (and use miniature pans), and keep all cooking I do to 2 servings max. Because even though there are a lot of healthy recipe cookbooks out there (and I have a lot of them), each makes 4 or 6 servings. And what would be the use if I ate half of the dish at one sitting? While it wouldn't be as bad a 'full-calorie' version, it still brings me no closer to taking off more weight.

John made the observation during the weekend that he hardly cooks for the both of us anymore. And he is right. I have been the one cooking in order to control what goes on my plate. I guess it was in response to the fact that I felt very out of control when John was cooking. Because he wouldn't confirm what he was making with me before he made it, or he wouldn't consult me about what portion I wanted. He's getting better, but still last weekend I couldn't help but look in the trash to see if he had used the low-fat hot cocoa mix or the regular. And when he went to the grocery store, he bought 1 percent milk instead of skim. Given the fact that weekend we had brought up trusting the other, I wasn't about to get upset about this and thus cause him to withdraw even more. Because he does care for me, and I think that he uses food as a demonstration of that. I think that he is worried that I'm not getting the right balance of nutrients, that I'm not getting enough fat and protein and so he buys 1 percent instead of skim, and makes me hot cocoa without me asking. It's really a subtle power struggle between us: will I reject his expression of caring and assert my absolute right to do what I want for myself, or will I compromise on a certain level in order to encourage more acts of caring in the future. How much is too much compromise?