I visited some friends for a weekend and when I got hungry, things got weird.

So here’s what went down. My husband and I went to stay with some of his friends for a weekend. They are such lovely people and we had a great time…but. A few things. They apparently have smaller appetites than me so we didn’t eat very much or often, and they don’t keep many snacks handy in the kitchen so I could grab something and not make a big deal about it. And they live in a place where you need a car to get around anywhere to get food.

It all added up to me feeling super out of control. When and where and how could I get my next calories?! It was all I could think about. And when we had a meal, I ate so fast I barely even tasted anything.

We hadn’t been there 24 hours before I was completely obsessing about food. I was hungry, but it was way beyond that. I knew logically that I wouldn’t starve to death. But I was experiencing all the signs of food insanity, in a way that isn’t normal for me since doing my own six-month Phase 1 many moons ago.

As I wrote about recently, in my dieting days I was forever searching for control over food, so I fell for all of the diet industry’s crazy solutions. Plan out all your meals, eat at specified times, don’t eat too early, don’t eat too late, moderate, calculate, evaluate. But it only made me spiral further out of control. Before long I was in a full-out binge-purge cycle to cancel out all my “mistakes.”

These days I live by a food mantra that helps me feel real, authentic control over the way I live my life: “I can eat whatever I want whenever I want it.” I haven’t binged since. But this weekend, when a couple of practical variables prevented me from living by that mantra, I was shocked by the way my brain and body panicked.

It helped me recognize just how much of a food-control freak I am. Not in a bad way or a good way. Just a neutral “know thyself” way. For whatever reason, I am predisposed to food insanity. Maybe restriction and rules are mentally triggering for me, or maybe my hunger hormones are hyper-sensitive. Who knows. Whatever the reason, it just makes me grateful that I no longer feel this way every single day of my life.