When your body speaks up.

Last week, I was trying to be gentle with myself and eat what sounded good. My goal with this was also to try and normalize foods for me, particularly ones I typically make taboo.

Off I went to Target. I bought several kinds of candy and some Little Debbie snack cakes. I discovered some fairly interesting things as a result:

1. I don't really like Twizzlers or any variation. I actually gave away a whole bag of chocolate Twizzlers and threw away half a bag of Red Vines.
2. Hershey's chocolate kind of sucks.
3. Little Debbie snacks really are yummy. And easy to binge on.

On Friday, I ate about 6 snack cakes in the afternoon at work. Afterwards, I felt absolutely horrible. My blood sugar skyrocketed and my heart started pounding. I ate little the rest of the day and felt terrible.
Then, over the weekend, I felt an odd pain in the pit of my stomach. I have a mild hiatal hernia and the pain was in that general area. I got scared because I didn't want to be making it worse. I was having pain at every meal. Saturday night and Sunday, I tried to be very careful about what I ate (following the guidelines for hernia management). By Sunday evening, I felt much better and was pain free.
On Monday, I was pain free through lunch. Then, I discovered the last Little Debbie snack in my desk and, impulsively, ate it.
And had pain again.
It went away after a bit but then in the afternoon, I ate some chocolate I had leftover as well. Stupid on multiple fronts since I don't even like it! I think I was having a bit of "last supper" mentality and also wanted to see if it really was excessive sugar triggering the pains.
It was.

Part of me is scared that I've treated and fed my body so poorly that it has had to exhibit symptoms to get my attention away from my emotional eating. However, part of me is grateful my body is able to do this and let me know what it needs, if I just listen.