So I am not really bulimic, and I don’t think I ever will be. But I don’t mind talking about my love of copious amounts of food.

Maybe love isn’t the right word. I do love food. I love good food, and I love food that is rich and salty and filled with fat. When I find the right dish of pasta or the perfect pizza, I have no problems eating a lot of it. But I think where my problem lies lately is that I binge without any regard to what I am eating. I don’t love binging just to binge, just because I have set a day aside to binge, and just because, for that one day, I allow myself to do it.

I don’t mind going to the local Mexican restaurant that has the best nachos I’ve ever tasted. And I don’t mind ordering an extra large pizza from that place around the corner that makes the best pies in town, and working on finishing it all day. When the Super Bowl came around, I had no trouble making my $40 Super Bowl Sandwich and taking 10 hours to eat the entire thing.

But it’s when I just binge to binge that makes me think I have a problem. Let’s take last Sunday as an example. It wasn’t supposed to be an off day, and I was doing just fine until a friend called me to have dinner with her. I tried to pick a place where I could get a salad or something healthy. She wanted very much to go to a soul food place up the road. I relented, and ended up eating okay, but not great.

Now, in my mind, that ruined the day’s eating (yes, a very flawed mindset, and one that must be fixed soon; also one that will be talked about in further posts). So around 10 p.m. I wanted to binge.

What were my options at 10 p.m. on a Sunday? Fast food. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Lots of it, without ever really trying to convince myself I didn’t want it. Afterwards, I didn’t feel very good (surprise!). I went to the bathroom to do a No. 1, and immediately dropped down to my knees and threw up. It was partly because I didn’t feel good at all, and partly to atone for what I saw as a royal catastrophe of fast food binging.