I am not my friend

I am the worst friend to myself.  I am constantly critiquing and judging myself, and I rarely give myself encouragement besides the forced-feeding every time I realize I'm being negative, and I try to retroactively say something positive instead.

And it's been even worse lately.  I simply haven't been caring about much of anything, and as someone who is normally passionate and excited by life, this has led to some dismal weight-loss and self-confidence efforts.

I've been trying to change my internal dialogue for years now, and it goes slowly.  I often say "I love you" to myself, which makes me feel silly.  Yet, I feel just fine with the onslaught of "I hate you"s that is in constant repetition in my head, in reference to every small thing I've ever miss-done, even years later.

Last night, like many nights before, I completely binged.  Despite the fact that I had "wasted" my calories by 5 p.m. (oh delicious cookies!), it was a frustrating day and hunger remained.  So I ate.  I didn't eat anything too calorie extravagant - gnocci, 100 calorie ice cream, a Cliff bar - but more calories than I would have at a normal meal, and many more calories than I had budgeted for in the day.

Ironically, this morning I woke up sick (head cold), the scale was up 1.2 pounds, and I was late; and this morning I felt better than I have all week.  I felt my energy back and I felt the sun shine on me.  (Literally - it's finally sunny after days of rain.)  And I know that I will win this journey, even if the scale is not kind to me, even if I am not always kind to myself, and even if I mess up.  I will continue to try, and that's all that matters.