Relapse.  It crept up on me in small increments, disguised as small exceptions.  A skipped snack here, an extra ounce of protein here.  I never ate anything that was no on my list of approved abstinent foods.  Nothing major happened.  And then I figured, nothing major happened, so why not stray off the plan a little more.  An extra 2 oz here.  Skip the fruit, keep the protein.  Double the protein.  Then eating dinner twice. And finally, on the last day of my 3 week slide, it was dinner 3 times in one night.  That was last Friday.  That day as a I drove home, the fast food places on the highway started to look appealing after a year and half of not noticing them.  Food was on my mind all the time.  Fortunately, I did not dip back into sugar and flour, but there was still damage done.

The first two weeks only amounted small trips off of my food plan.  The last week was much worse, not only in the amounts of food I consumed, but in the shift of my mind state.  The almighty obsession to eat grabbed hold.  Food was on my mind every moment of the day.  If I knew something was in the refrigerator, I had to eat it.  The obsession to eat defies all reason and knowledge.  I have full intellectual knowledge that it is detrimental to me.  The obsessive thought  must be acted on less for physical fulfillment than to just make the thought stop.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  I cannot be left to make judgments about appropriate food portions on my own.

I woke up on Saturday morning, fortunately with the will to do battle.  I made a decision immediately to stop, and to return completely to the constraints of my food plan.  I knew it would bring me back to sanity again.  It was tough, but I hung in.  I reached out to my closest friends in and out of recovery.  I admitted to what had happened, and let them know that I was committed to getting back on track.  It was a relief to talk about it.  The desire to follow my food plan steadily increased.  It is still amazing to me that following the plan provides such a mental safe haven for me.  It frees me from the vicious cycle of the obsession.  Today is my 7th day back on track.