Eating my stress away

The last few months have been very stressful what with losing my job and then the diagnoses of possibly, maybe, might be something malignant but we don't know yet.

Everybody has different ways of dealing with stress. I tend to over eat and the binge of choice for me is JAM, almost any flavour will do thank you very much.

Hi my name is Don and I am a JAM addict.

I do not mean to make light of those with drug and alcohol addictions but for me JAM is my drug of choice. I kid you not. And by JAM I mean sugared fruit, boiled and sealed in jars. Spreadable on toast or just eaten right out of the jar with a spoon, with or without peanut butter.

I finally admitted to this addiction about 6 years ago, and stopped buying Jam because of it. I would go through a jar in like a day, maybe 2, certainly not longer then that and I don't mean a small jar. It was, honestly, just better not to have it around.

This was tough when I lived with my brothers, as they both loved PB&J sandwiches as well so they wanted to have Jam in the house all the time, however, things have been easier since moving in with the SU. He's not really into Jams so it hasn't been difficult not keeping it in the house.

When I first got the diagnoses, we had Marmalade in the fridge (for overnight guests). Marmalade is kinda of safe as I don't really like the orange flavour of it, however, even that wasn't a deterrent. I started eating that. And worse, hiding the fact that I was eating it by burying the jar back in the fridge so the SU wouldn't notice it and then replacing it when it got low.

Then I lost my job. Well to hell with marmalade. I bought raspberry (my personal fav) and 4 fruit jam, and strawberry jam. I've gone through loafs of bread and many jars of jam in the 2 months since then. As the diagnoses continued to move along and narrow to a possible cancer related illness the stress level just went up as did the jam consumption.

After the last results, when the malignancy was mentioned, I binged again eating PB&J for days. Some days that's all I ate. Anybody watch the Big Brother shows on CBS? When they used to put the losing food challenge members on PBJ for a week? hell I'd have thrown the comp, that is not a punishment for me.

Again, after the malignancy was indicated I kinda lost all motivation, I ate and stopped working out, stopped job searching and ate.

Now the good news is the final diagnoses is in and that it's not a malignant parotid neoplasm but only a polyp that will likely go away on it's own. The specialist was very nice and reassuring, just indicated that I continue to watch the area and if I get noticeable swelling to come see him again but he doubts that I will.

The damage is done though. I have half a jar of raspberry jam left. I've gained 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks.

Today I must rededicate myself to avoiding my addiction. People with serious drug and alcohol addictions are probably reading this and scoffing, thinking I'm making fun of them but I can honestly say this is as much a crutch for me as their addiciton is for them.

I got back on the WII Fit this morning and I'm going to continue to work out every day, I need to get the Jam out of the house and not buy more. The SU knows about my addiction (which is why I hid the marmalade I mentioned earlier) but I've been hiding other jams from him too. He doesn't know about the jar that is currently half empty. He would mention it, especially the rate that it's decreasing but he hasn't, so he hasn't spotted it.

So my first step is to come clean to him tonight when he gets home from work. And then dump the jam that's left, just get it out of the house. Second to get active again, via the WII Fit and just by taking advantage of this warm March sunny weather and getting out and walking, hiking something. The area of Toronto we live in, is close to the Scarborough Bluffs park system, there are trails both at the top of the bluff and along the base right at the water line. I could walk down to the bluffs park in 10 minutes. We've been there twice in 3 years.

Today there is a job fair at Home Depot. I think I'll walk over there and see what they have available. It is not my career of choice but if they have something part time and I'm able to get it, it will be something to get me active, to get out of the house and to help motivate me to do other things.

A clean bill of health, a warm sunny day (well warm sunny weekend really) to look forward to. It's time to get out of my funk and break my cycle of stress and mild depression.