Going around in circles

Hi, everyone. I'm reaching out for advice, counsel, reassurance ..kick in the pants, whatever. ;) I apologize in advance for it being so long -- it's taken me months to get clear enough to actually write it all out, and I'm a little afraid y'all will say that I *am* the one person this program can't help ...

I’ve been working on this program for about a year and a half, and have posted a few times about how much difference just eating breakfast makes: as soon as I settled into breakfast, I started eating other meals as well (rather than random snacking or putting eating off for hours too long), I felt more grounded emotionally, it was such a relief not to be tormenting myself with food. All true. The problem is, I can't sustain it.

After a couple of weeks, or even a few days, the relief wears off … not feeling terrible starts to feel normal, and then I start feeling bored and restless, and maybe a little anxious without something to struggle against … or I have some kind of challenge, and I start to feel like I need some kind of treat to get through it. (I'm not trying to restrict sugar.)

I can feel that I'm hunting for an excuse to “use” food – and once I do that *once* -- no matter how small it is, but with the intention for it to be a drug rather than foodt, I can’t stop. I’m into a downward spiral where my eating gets more and more random, and the quality of what I'm eating gets worse and worse, and eventually breakfast goes too ... until I’m exhausted, sick, and miserable.

Then I bottom out and go back to breakfast – and of course, there is the relief again, all the better feelings … but the whole cycle repeats, over and over again.

It feels like it's more about intention than about what I'm actually eating -- like there are two parts of me – one that wants to get better, and one that doesn’t, and they’re about equal in strength and take turns being in charge. But that’s not a very helpful frame – that feels like I could be here the rest of my life. I wonder whether there’s a biochemical explanation for this swinging back and forth? I feel like it might help me frame it differently – maybe I wouldn’t feel so powerless to shift it.

I wonder too about non-food stuff – I tend to push myself really hard – I work about 60 hours a week, and I also have a house, a husband, four cats, and a mother-in-law – so the list for every day is longer than I can get through, and I just go from work to housework to pet care to MIL errands until I fall into bed, and start it again the next day. It seems pretty clear that I need to change this too to fully recover, but once again I can’t see how, and it just feels like too much to tackle.

If I just keep focusing on breakfast and now Layer 1 journaling, will these things get better on their own? Should I also try to make one simple change in my lifestyle stuff, like making sure I get 7 hours of sleep?

Sorry, sorry so long ... thanks to anyone who hung in there long enough to read it. I know I'm writing from inside the problem, but I do feel stuck in there ...

Thank you. Pam