Excess Kills Success?

???lbs - Don't even ask.

I’ve always been a person of extremes.  I don’t go at something half-assed; it has to be all or nothing.  I have two speeds - stop and go.  Mind you, this doesn’t dominate every aspect of my life) don’t ask me to pick a restaurant, we could be here for days) but it certainly seems to take hold of me when it comes to how I live a healthy lifestyle.

Why have one beer when you can
hang over the keg?

I’ve been blessed (or cursed) with some crazy energy.  It’s the kind of energy that is loud, animated, and to many people, probably pretty annoying.  It’s this energy that has pushed me from a 5k to a full marathon. It’s what makes me load up the weights in BodyPump class so I am lifting heavier than anyone else.  “Go big or stay home” has always been my personal motto, but I’m learning that there are some major downsides to this and my weight loss success is suffering as a result.

One problem with being super-charged is that it completely wipes out my ability to moderate what I eat and drink.  When I’m in that moment where I’m flying high, there’s no stopping what I put in my mouth and how much of it.  Some might suggest that this behaviour is binge eating/drinking, but I don’t agree. It’s never to soothe or cover up feelings. I just get so caught up in my own energy that I’m like a boulder gathering speed as it rolls down a mountain (or the Tasmanian Devil at an all-you-can-eat buffet).

If they were this big, I'd only eat one. Maybe.

Eventually the boulder has to come to a rest, and that’s the other problem. When I’m high on excited energy I don’t slowly float back down to earth. I crash down hard and I end up feeling lethargic and sad.  It’s the antithesis of runners high. I’ll come back from the hardest, most insane workout feeling on top of the world but as soon as the sweat has dried to a salty crust on my face I’m a sullen mess (not to mention very sore).  Realising that this probably isn’t normal, I’ve been checked out for the possibility of being bipolar, and that’s not the case. I just have a personality that’s prone to big swings. 

This cycle of up-down-high-low-on-off is really messing with my weight loss and I’ve had enough.  It’s like my metabolism has decided to say "Holy crap, lady. An extra large pizza and a half marathon on the same day? Screw you until you’ve got your shit together”.  I really need to learn moderation. Everything in moderation, right? But how the heck do you change something so engrained in your personality?  Can you learn to step outside of yourself and resist that urge to go all or nothing?  What are the tools to change that?