H.A.L.T. Who goes there to the kitchen?

In Overeaters Anonymous there's an acronym called H.A.L.T., which loosely signifies, "Don't let yourself get too Hungry, too Angry, too Lonely, or too Tired." In other words, halt before you H.A.L.T. There's a great AA blog I have started reading lately also called Mr. Sponsorpants who mentions H.A.L.T. in relation to AA as well, so it likely originates from that organization, but still, I learned it first from one of my OA sisters.

Anyway today I had to halt. Or rather, eat. And of course I felt guilty and confused. But here's the deal, I had a long, busy day, I did not plan enough calories for the day (and especially for the first part of the day) and so come dinnertime I wanted to eat everything.

I didn't eat everything. I did add about 200 calories to my dinner, and then after an hour of crazy food urges and neurotic fear that I was going to overeat, plus some use of the phone tool that did not work in squelching the food urges, I ate a boiled egg. Finally, the hunger was tamed.

I just feel guilty for some reason when I change my food plan too often. And since I had already sent my sponsor my next day's food plan, which already included some changes I had made for the day, I felt like a loser for having to email her again to say "Ok here are some other changes."

But changes aren't bad. They're normal. And often beneficial, hell, becoming abstinent was a BIG CHANGE. I am just understandably fearful of losing said abstinence.

Logically I know there's no reason to feel like I'm a failure because my food plan changes in little ways (substitutions, additions, subtractions). Even my final calorie count for the day was very reasonable: 1565. But the irrational, fearful, self-doubting side of me went into a tizzy. I do not know how to trust my instincts in regards to food because they have been so overwhelmingly wrong in the past. So of course, this fear and confusion is completely understandable.

In this instance, I was not sure whether my hunger was emotional or physical. My brain knew it wanted more food. My stomach didn't *feel* like it was hungry, so I assumed my brain was working on behalf of my emotions at the moment. I dunno.

There's also another saying in O.A. to "Do Whatever it Takes" to avoid a binge. Well I did that. You certainly cannot claim that I overate for the day. I never, at any point, ate past the point of fullness. My total calories are completely reasonable.

But I sure did have a binge of neurotic self-blame and worry!