CROSS

adjective

  1. annoyed.”he seemed to be very cross about something”

It happened quickly, so quick I didn’t even know it was happening, but there was the evidence by the side of me – an empty packet of biscuits. It wasn’t a small pack either, it was the ‘extended edition’ pack of Chocolate Hobnobs. I had started at one end, and carried on eating until I got to the other end. It got worse though. When I had been in the shops to get the biscuits – yes it was a stop off just to buy biscuits, I bought two packets. One for ‘the house’ and one as a treat for Liam after a hard weekend of racing and training. After consuming the Hobnobs I wasn’t satisfied, I had to seek out the other packet we bought. Fortunately, Liam had already attacked it and there were just a couple left. They didn’t stand a chance, the ‘biscuit fog’ had descended and I was on the rampage. An hour later, the house was empty except for myself when I happened to find a packet of Kimberly biscuits, I noticed it was open and that was the red rag to this rampaging bull. Eight Kimberleys later and I have almost reached satiety, but not before I had consumed very close to 2600 calories. Then the guilt came …

My mass biscuit consumption was the finale to a slow escalation of biscuit abuse. Since coming off my FAST800 journey I have been trying to up my calories, but maybe I haven’t been too clever about it. I am eating well, I now have a great diet and I am eating good foods, but portion sizes are still quite small as I just don’t want to eat large meals anymore as they make my IBS flare up and I feel ill. So a consequence of this is my calorie intake is still quite low – usually 1500 per day if I am lucky. Therefore I have managed to square it away in my own head to eat a handful of biscuits or have an ice cream a day. Probably not too serious a consequence, but to be honest, I don’t think I can trust myself, and maybe the Hobnob consumption detailed above is testament to that. I do need to increase intake though as I am training 3-5 days a week and my running mileage is starting to go up, and my body has needs. I think I am at a point where I have to just cut out biscuits completely to remove the chances of excess. I always thought pizza was my Kryptonite, but perhaps those little baked circles of delight are my downfall.

What surprises me most though is the ease in which I reverted to my previous behaviour. Even with the large weight, body fat and waist size loss it didn’t trigger alarm bells in my head that what I was doing was probably not a good idea and was potentially setting a pattern to return to poor health. I quite literally was willing to throw it away for the ‘hit’ I got from the biscuits and it is something I don’t really understand why. I suppose the good thing is that I recognised it, and I did something about it, because I have done something about it and I have (hopefully) had a Holy Shit ! moment on biscuits. Will I sit down in a few weeks and have 2 biscuits with a cup of coffee ? Possibly I will, but if I do then I have to control it. Should I just cut them out completely and never eat a biscuit again ? Probably would be for the best, but there is a flip side in that this will probably make me really miserable. The balance between enjoying two biscuits and getting the chemical high from eating 20 biscuits is where my inner turmoil lies. There may still be some work to do here in dealing with that turmoil. Will keep you posted.

Postcript: It is now four days after my biscuit binge and although I saw a fairly big jump in my weight I am back down to 94.3kg and holding a steady 19.6% body fat. Blood sugar seems to be behaving itself. Guilt levels still high. Still cross with myself.