New tactics.

I'm bumping up "relax" on the list of my things to concentrate on. Or rather, "learn to relax". I spent a long time priding myself on my inability to sit still, to always need to be doing something, or possibly three things at once, but now that I look back at the past ten years, it occurs to me that I've really just given myself a short attention span and a desperate need to fill the quiet time with something, anything-- usually food. If I can learn to have quiet time, I think I'll be better off. Hell, I think I'll be able to concentrate better, which in turn means that I'll get more done. But that's secondary. First and foremost is the task of being able to turn my damn brain down from its constant boiling point.

Quiet time and an early bedtime are tops on the list right now. Everything else suffers when I ignore those two things, and I'm tired of everything suffering. I want to be able to let go.

I keep tricking myself when I'm running. "Oh, I'll just do LISS today," I assure my befuddled brain, and mysteriously end up doing HIIT. Mid-way through that I assure myself that we'll just go directly to the cool-down phase, no need for LISS... and then I hit the button controlling the incline and truck along at the steepest angle for 10 minutes. I literally, literally was arguing with myself after that point today, saying that there was no way I wanted to run the 7 mph intervals, I just wanted to cool down nicely at 3.5 mph, thank you. "I don't want to do this," I muttered, and something in my brain said "Oh, okay," just as my fingers reached up and slapped the speed control up to 7 mph and I had to run like hell. It's very strange.

I'm giving mental voices to my various "Take care of yourself!" sensations. My dry-aching head and scratchy throat inspired a melodramatic inner monologue that went something like, "Oh, God, give me water. Please. I'm dying here. Water water water water water. So cool and refreshing. So moist and delicious. Water water water. PLEEEEEEASE!" There was a nice prisoner-down-a-well echoey sound to the voice, like something out of Silence of the Lambs.

I gave similar voice to my stomach when it was time for my mid-morning snack, only going the other way: "No, no, please don't feed me. I can't. It's too much. Noooooo..." Mental images of evil force-feeding and screams of horror went with that one. I ate the snack like I was being forced to eat all my lima beans (the way my mom cooks them-- very badly-- and with me at age six): slowly, with a big production over how mean it was that I had to do this.

Yeah, it's sick. Look, I'm at the end of my rope here. I keep end up feeling like my body has been hijacked by some evil demon that wants to do horrible things to me (and, more often than not, does) when it comes to food, and I'm tired of only hearing the voice of the demon, I want to hear the voice of the prisoner, hear about all the horrible things that binging does. If this is what it takes, then so help me, this is what I'll do. I learned algebra by anthropomorphising the equations and turning them into little stories; it worked then, I see no reason it won't work now.

Work continues. The book is actually getting worked on, too. I run like a crazy thing and bumped up the weights on a few exercise (ow, by the way) yesterday. This is not "nothing". I have to remind myself of that. I'm okay.