So here’s some new research that I think any long term dieter could have written – but in plainer language.

Purpose: Weight loss is critical in the fight against obesity yet only about 20% of individuals maintain weight loss long term. This review examines the psychological factors influencing weight loss maintenance….

Conclusion: Evidence indicated avoiding dichotomous thinking, eating to regulate mood, and disinhibited eating were associated with weight loss maintenance. Increased dietary restraint, perceived benefits outweighing costs, lower/stable levels of depression, and more positive body image were also associated with weight loss maintenance. …

And it all means?

If you want to maintain a weight loss (and I would add, lose it in the first place), get rid of the following behaviours:

• dichotomous thinking = All or Nothing, On or Off Programme, On or Off the Wagon

• eating to regulate mood = Ice-cream* or Cheese* Therapy (insert applicable food.)

• disinhibited eating  = “I eat because it’s there.”

And add the following behaviours:

• increased dietary restraint = too big for a one-liner. This is the whole lifelong commitment to a new and better way of eating.

• perceived benefits outweighing cost = “I’d rather wear that dress than eat that doughnut.” (I know there’s a better deeper reason but it didn’t just pop into my mind the way the dress image did.)

• lower/stable levels of depression = (in my case) keep talking it off and keep moving.

• having better body image = being motivated to make big changes out of love rather than loathing for my body.

If these really are the secrets to success  – and they ring true to me – then I’m going to work with them for a while.  I know an awful lot about dieting. I know what to eat. I know how much to move. But I’m not getting the results I want – because I’m not being consistent with the things above.

So from this point till I’m bored (can’t promise a timeline), I will notice and work through these things on a daily basis.

The curve balls. I know; it’s life. But I didn’t duck very well and one of them hit me square in the face. I woke up this morning feeling bruised and sad and wishing that things could be different.

Vague, yes? Sorry about that. Some things don’t get blogged about. But I CAN say that I ended up eating out of anger and frustration and sadness.

I also had a weird blow-out with the old WW buddies. Oh well. That’s nothing compared to the other stuff. I decided a long time ago to remove myself from angry people, so I did.

It’s interesting to see how really sad & angry and virtually sad & angry are completely different. One requires sorting and solving; the other requires moving on and keeping going.

Here’s the tricky and relevant bit: neither of them gets any better or any more solved by stuffing the feelings down with food.

And RIGHT THERE – that’s the place that separates the “Just do it!” people from those of us who need to work this thing through with more than just self discipline and an over abundance of positive maxims for amazing living. (There should be multiple exclamation points in there but I don’t have the stomach for that this morning.)

So – a new day. One foot in front of the other. Mindful eating. Forgiveness (of self and others). That’s all I can offer from this not very chipper perspective.

Yesterday I got thinking about the difference between these two statements.

I’m not hungry.

and

I feel satisfied.

I figure you’ll never see an ad (advert, commercial – we’re nothing if not bilingual around here) for a diet where someone says “And I always feel satisfied!” (big smile on a skinny body.)

The fact is that many of us overeat to feel “full” – not just to take the edge off hunger.  I can eat an orange and not feel hungry but it doesn’t satisfy if I’m trying to feed something other than my appetite.

Yes, I know, it’s Weight Loss 101.  But I’m not sure how to conquer it completely.

Yesterday, because I had given myself permission to be utterly selfish (anti-social, really) about food, I spaced my eating throughout the day to suit no one but myself.  I only felt hunger when I needed to – as a signal to eat.  I ate enough to satisfy that hunger.

Was I satisfied?  Only because the thought of losing weight replaced the need to “feel full” in my stressful life. I figure it will be a good five days before “diet satisfaction” starts to wane and I need to replace it with something else.

So, thinking ahead, how am I going to stay satisfied without feeling overly full?

Something to think about today.

Donna’s post about bingeing really got me thinking about what it is throws my eating into disarray.

I don’t usually get food crazy because of just one thing. Instead, my worst behaviour needs both an emotional reason and an opportunity.

In no particular order:

• hormones
• fear of the unknown – the big picture – like not having a pension or proper jobs but a mortgage that runs till we’re 70.
• fear of the unknown – the little picture – like work that needs doing but I’m not sure how it will go.
• anger
• boredom
• grief
• feeling constrained by the weight loss process
• confused feelings about losing weight (more fear of the future, perhaps?)
• over-eating in a social situation- ie buying into the “off the wagon” mindset

Alone, each one of those things is usually manageable.  I can go for a walk, talk to someone, go to bed, get myself distracted.  But in certain circumstances, any of those things can be the catalyst for the “perfect storm”. And the circumstances are?

• being alone
• having simple carbs in the house, even just as ingredients.
• having company but being angry at said company (not naming names but he knows who he is. )

These situations aren’t like the times that I just sit around with friends and eat too much in a social context.  What I’m talking about is the next level – the step beyond eating too much in a happy, normal, celebratory way.

For some people that will mean eating 2 loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a cake and donuts all in one sitting.  For others it will mean eating a couple of chocolate bars or 2 bowls of cereal.  For me, it’s about making sure that I feel full all day long.  It’s not the quantity of food but the mindset that defines bingeing.

The post-binge shame is such a terrible place to have to pick yourself up from.  It always feels like “sqare one”, as though you’ve made no progress at all, as though you have to figure out the process all over again.

The worst time for me was after my dad died and I was alone with my grief for a whole month.  I would wake up feeling ok but the “must be full” mindset hit by early afternoon and I would self-medicate until bedtime, get up and do it all again.  And every day, after the upsetting experience of visiting my brain-injured mom, I would head to the grocery store, creating the perfect opportunity to think that a bag of Cheetos or a loaf of olive bread looked like a viable supper option.

People who do this are not obese losers who don’t take care of themselves.  We’re people who’ve learned over time that food offers (very) temporary relief from something that we don’t want to deal with in the light.

In the light.  That’s where eating should be done – like the rest of our living.  And we should speak our worries and fears and define our sadness and bring it all into the light.  Healing doesn’t happen in the murky darkness where bingeing takes place. (That’s a note to self.)

Peace, not perfection.

I binged yesterday. At first I was going to say that I don’t know why I binged but I think that might not be true. I think that I’m stressed about a number of changes and uncertainties in my life right now and I don’t do well with change and uncertainty. While the idea of building and moving into a new house is exciting it is also really scary for me to go back into a mortgage, even if it will be quite a small one. I worry about being laid off even though there is no reason to think I will be. I am totally terrified of owing more than I can pay, of being homeless, penniless. What is strange is that I have never been any of these things. We had little money growing up but we were never needy. But this has always been a pretty deep rooted fear of mine. So yesterday I binged to drive away the fear. Unfortunately it doesn’t work, not even while the binge is taking place.

People who binge talk about feeling good while they are eating, they talk about eating to numb the fear/pain whatever. I don’t get that release. Yesterday, I realized that I just felt sad – before, during and after. So obviously the binge didn’t help anything, it only added sadness to the stress. Oh, and a sense of shame. Let’s not forget the shame. Because let’s face it, I’m ashamed that as self aware as I am, I still can’t turn that into change. Maybe the changes that cause me stress also resist allowing me to change myself. Maybe the comfort that I feel in my old bad habits are stronger than any incentive that I can find to replace them with something that will get me to my weight loss goals.

I wonder if I can allow myself to take a chance that I will probably never be homeless, starving, deep in debt and needy? Knowing that binging only makes me sad, can I give it up? Honestly, I don’t know.

I recently read an article in O magazine about a book by Geneen Roth called Women, Food and God. The book talks about finding the reasons why we eat, not a particularly new concept. After all, practically every book about weight loss talks about finding the reason why we eat. Every time I read an article like this, I spend a few minutes thinking about myself and what my reasons are. This time, I spent more than a few minutes. What bothers me is that I cannot really figure it out. Do I eat because I’m bored? Well yes, of course I do, but not all the time and not to excess. Am I unhappy in my marriage? No, I can’t imagine my life without Rick. OK, so I am very unhappy with work these days, but this is a recent issue and it doesn’t explain all the years before. I also know that this is probably a temporary condition and eventually I’ll get back to enjoying it. Even so, I’ve never been someone who lived for my job and I don’t feel that my job defines who I am.

As I changed bedding this morning, I spent my time thinking about what it would take to ‘find my bliss’. You know what I mean, what would my best life look like? What would it take to resolve whatever underlying problems I have so I can make peace with food? The trouble is, I just couldn’t come up with something. Oh sure, I could fantasize about winning the lottery and having lots of money to travel and shop etc. But that’s not really the answer, is it? I pictured myself doing different things: working at different jobs, living by myself, taking up different hobbies, etc. None of them produced any kind of epiphany, none of them hit me as ‘hey, that’s what I’m missing in my life’.

So, this led me to wonder… what if I never figure out what my underlying issues are? If I don’t, am I doomed to never lose and keep off the weight? Or am in in denial? Is there something that I’m just not facing? How do I know?

I guess my only choice in the matter is to keep going through the motions and hope that eventually something comes to me.

Donna wrote this the other day and I’ve been saving it for a post:

We have such a strange relationship with food. We know that we can eat quite large amounts of ‘good food’ (veggies, fruits etc) and we can also eat small amounts of ‘bad food’ (chocolate, fast food, wine). Instead of being content with that, we throw a temper tantrum because we want to do the reverse, i.e. eat small amounts of the good food while consuming large amounts of the bad food, and then we’re surprised when we gain weight. Please note that when I say ‘we’ I really mean ‘I’. When am I going to make peace with reality and stop testing to see if the laws of nature have changed just because I want them to?

Can I ask that one again in two parts?

• When am I going to make peace with reality?
• When am I going to stop testing to see if the laws of nature have changed?

Making peace with reality:

Over the past couple of years I’ve made peace with a couple of food/body realities:

• My shape is my shape and nothing is going to change that.  And it’s not a bad one.  As the husband says, “No matter how much you weigh, you HAVE a shape and that’s good.”

• Clothes are not going to automatically look good despite a smaller body.  I no longer dream of wearing things that aren’t naturally going to suit my body shape. And that’s ok.

• The “when I’m thin” fantasies of old are just that.  I’ve got a thinner 48 year old body – not the thinner 21 year old body that I somehow used to see when I thought about the future me.  I’m making peace with my belly because, though smaller, it’s here to stay.

• My personality is such that I don’t always take the straightest, shortest route on any journey and that includes the one to food/body sanity.  I’m ok with lots of detours and a longer than necessary journey – though I am getting a bit fed up now that I’m down to the last few pounds and I seem to be rolling backwards.

• I simply can’t sustain enthusiasm for any length of time but that doesn’t mean I have to be fat and out of shape. I’m tend to live a feast or famine life – with spurts of energy for things like cooking and exercise.  I just need to make sure that boring daily life involves getting off the sofa and filling my body with healthy food – even if it’s all done a bit lazily sometimes.  There will always come a time when I want to run again.

Well – more peace in this life than I thought!

And what about wanting to change the laws of nature?  Donna really pin-pointed an issue for me.  It’s not an everyday thing but it certainly affects me when I’m feeling stressed about the unknown.  No matter how many other things I seem to have got to grips with, when I want to relieve stress, I think about feeling full.  And I don’t stop to think about all the possible foods that could have that effect.  I instantly think of carbs and fat – rice and butter, bread and peanut butter,  cheese and crackers, oats/ sugar/butter in any combination.

I don’t think of a large salad with a tin of tuna and some balsamic dressing.  That would be filling and good and healthy but my dysfunctional brain can’t imagine it having the same comforting effect as oatmeal cookies or flapjack.

And when I’m feeling that no other food will do, I am completely oblivious to the laws of nature that state that, if I want to lose weight, I need to compensate for those calories somehow.  Maybe even thinking about that would somehow take away the soothing effect of the food.  It would break into that (very) temporary state of peace and ruin the whole point of the exercise.

To be honest, my inner stress eater scoffs at those people who suggest that a bath or a walk is as effective as food for stress relief even though I know it to be absolutely true.  A bubble bath with a magazine is a major de-stresser.  A run on a spring day has a huge mood improving effect.  But I still want cheese and crackers. And I still want to lose weight.

And so I keep thinking and writing and making daily/hourly/minutely decisions about how this process is going to go.

All advice welcome- though most of it will probably be ignored because I seem to need to learn the hard way.

This whole battle can be boiled down to

• what?
• when?
• how much?

My normal “weight loss” day should look like this:

7 am – noon: 2 mugs of coffee, porridge, mug of tea, banana

noon – 6 pm: soup and crackers or cottage cheese and fruit, a couple of clementines, mug or tea

6 pm – bedtime : dinner with lots of veg, some carb and protein, a glass of wine, mineral water, decaf tea

My recent, “I can’t be bothered” day looks more like this:

7am – noon: 2 mugs of coffee, porridge, mug of tea, cracker with peanut butter, banana

noon – 6pm : soup and crackers or cottage cheese and fruit, a couple of clementines, piece of cheese, mug or tea, crackers, crackers, a couple more crackers.

6pm – bedtime: dinner with lots of veg, lots of carb and protein, 3 glasses of wine, mineral water, tea, crackers with butter & jam

The difference between losing weight and not is a few crackers,  a bit of cheese, a dollop of peanut butter, a couple teaspoons of butter and some extra wine.

What’s with me and crackers?

The bigger question is what’s with me and needing to feel full when I’m feeling stressed?

Today I’m going to experiment with noting both my emotional feelings and my hunger levels throughout the day.  I’m going to see what happens when I’m both stressed and hungry. I wonder if I really do just cease to exist? Or explode? Or fade away to nothing?

If I’m not back here tomorrow, you’ll know.

]]> http://www.talkingitoff.com/2010/03/16/stress-and-hunger/feed/ 0 http://www.talkingitoff.com/2010/03/12/hurdles/ http://www.talkingitoff.com/2010/03/12/hurdles/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:47:46 +0000 Millie http://www.talkingitoff.com/?p=1118 [...]]]>

There’s good news and bad news.

Bad news first: turns out that anger is a very big hurdle when it comes to emotional eating.

The good news is that I don’t experience that kind of anger very often.

The rest of the bad news is that I encountered and ate my way through an episode this week.

I seem to have got better at dealing with boredom and I’ve got a bit better with grief – mostly because the grief has subsided over time.  But real anger still needs to be stuffed down and I stuffed it good!

So here I am feeling a little bit bruised – like I’ve survived something that I don’t want to go through again.  The sun is shining and all the things that were good about my life on Monday are still good on Friday.  So it’s time to look ahead and absolutely not to look back.

The cause of my anger has been resolved but it exposed some stuff that hasn’t been and that I need to work on.

In the mean time, after having eaten my body weight in baking, my hairdresser saw me for the first time in four months and blurted, “You’re tiny!”  So, whether I’m large or small, the hurdles of life need hurdling.  And eating excessively doesn’t make me un-tiny and it doesn’t help me get over the hurdles.

Yes, of course I knew that already in my head, but I seem to need to learn and relearn these things in practice as well as in theory.

Thank you God for sun and warmth and birds and spring and love even when life isn’t exactly how we think it should be. (Amen)

I am learning that illness makes me not really care about losing weight.  Which is a drag because I had hopes of accomplishing something this week in that line – like maybe a pound off.  But my coughing (barking) and sore throat make me want to eat whatever’s easiest to prepare and swallow.

Last night I didn’t feel like cooking so we had a very rare Chinese takeaway. (see the result of the sodium on my daily weigh-in.)

And today I suggested we go out for lunch – where I struggled to find something that would suit taste buds, eating plan, stomach woes and sore throat.  I ended up getting a Beetroot Tart Tatin with a rocket, tomato and feta salad.  The tatin was almost like a dessert – except for warm beets instead of warm apples.  I ended up leaving most of the delicious crust because it was obviously mostly butter but the salad was lovely with a little balsamic vinegar. And a small glass of wine.  And coffee.  And some of the husband’s chips because this place makes the BEST chips in the United Kingdom.

We sat at a middle table – perfect for watching everyone coming and going. We read the paper and chatted and eavesdropped whenever possible.  Nice way to pass part of a Sunday afternoon.

I guess I’m going to have to reign things in a little for the rest of the week.  I’ve got dinner out tomorrow night in London and a hotel breakfast the next day.  After than I can eat lightly for the rest of the week.

The above is a FORCED conversation because I really just want to chuck it in for the week and eat whatever I want. I’m tired and stressed and sick and nervous about an important meeting on Tuesday.  The last thing I want to think about is how much I’m going to weigh next Saturday.

But I also don’t want to weigh more than I do right now – not because it would be the worst thing that could happen, but because I don’t want to go to the effort of re-losing weight that’s already gone.  Whatever my stresses of the moment, extra large helpings of carbs are not going to provide a long-term solution.

Sigh.  It’s only realistic that I’m going to have these attitude dips once in a while but they’re tiresome and make me feel so unbelievably bored with myself.

I’ll be offline for a couple of days but intend to come back here and tell you that I’ve made some good decisions.  And that I had a good meeting.  And that there was no traffic on the motorways.  And that I found parking at the hotel.  And that my cold is better.