Comfort, craving or reward?

Whoosh, it's been a funny few days. I've been yo-yo-ing up and down - both on the scales and in terms of my calorie intake. Yesterday I only managed a paltry 900 calories, the day before was about 2,500 and today looks like being on course for about 1800!! Why so high? Well I'm going through a very tough time at work. I work at a University and the students have just arrived back in their thousands. It's nice for the place to have a bit of a buzz again but the amount of work I have to get through is horrendous. I've been working twelve and fourteen hour days for the past week or so - arriving home exhausted, resting a while and then going to bed. Then the next day it starts all over again!

The thing is, each day I start out really well - just as today. By 4pm this afternoon I'd had about 5-600 calories - which is good. But then when it gets to about 5 or 6pm and everyone else has gone home for the evening, I'm here on my own and know I'm going to be till at least 7 or 8pm, my resolve just goes. I got hungry about an hour ago and just had to 'pop out to the shop'....a euphemism, perhaps, for stuff my face with chocolate. It's not just that I need to satisfy my hunger - which every normal person would have to - it's also that I need to get that something else, that unknown 'x' factor out of my food. Maybe it's comfort? Maybe it's some sort of reward for working so hard? Maybe it's just a craving for sugar borne of letting myself get too tired? I don't know - but wherever the urge comes from it is is incredibly powerful. Nothing I do enables me to resist.

When I get home in an hour or so from now I'll have another small bite to eat, collapse in the chair for a while and then heave myself up the stairs to get some well-earned sleep. Today, I haven't even found any time to get some exercise - so I haven't exactly burned off many of the calories either. And before you say "ah, but what about burning off the calories during all those long working hours?" - yes, but the trouble is, I spend most of my day sitting on my butt!

I can simply console myself for now with the knowldege that this period of time is always very bad. Perhaps I shouldn't expect to be 'good' at this time of year - just good enough to maintain, rather than gain any weight. Then in a week or two when things calm down (they will, won't they?!), then maybe I'll be able to get firmly back on the wagon - rolling inexorably downhill towards the finale some time in January I hope (or is it February now?!).

Thanks for staying the course with me!