The struggle never really goes away

When we last left you, I was in a pretty good place. Or at least, I thought I was. And some really good things have happened since I last updated. I'm in a pretty awesome relationship. I won my weight class at my first power lifting competition (I was the only one in my weight class... but I was one of the heaviest lifters out of all the women). I got into graduate school. Lots of good stuff. 

But there's one place I'm still struggling: food. And it's an obvious struggle because I've gained back more weight than I anticipated. And I'm on this cycle I haven't been able to stop. I've been self-medicating with food. I will eat like its my last meal. 

This is obviously a problem for a number of reasons. The biggest and most important is that I got into a healthy lifestyle because my health was at risk. And my health improved. My lab results were good. I was physically capable of things I couldn't do before. But now I feel like I'm eating worse than before I started. I'm putting myself back at risk for all of the things I was trying to avoid. 

I also worked really hard to get into shape. And now I've undone a lot of it. And it makes me feel like I've wasted my time. 

So now I'm on this cycle. I feel bad so I eat. Then I feel bad again. And then I eat more. Then I feel bad. And because I'm eating crappy, I physically feel crappy and it's hard to find the motivation to exercise. And then I feel bad that I didn't. And then I eat. At some point it has to stop. 

So this is where I'm at. Still battling depression. Still battling binge eating. And I know it probably doesn't make sense to a lot of people. My life is actually pretty good. What do I have to be depressed about? But that's the thing with mental illness. It doesn't make sense. And that's what makes it so difficult to overcome. But I am determined to do so.