Post Turkey Day Test

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day, and as tradition dictates, one overeats. It's a feast day and so I feasted. I didn't go as far overboard as I have in years past, but did have pie and ice cream and more fat than I usually have considering the green bean casserole with its French Fried Onions. The corn bread also added some fat as did the gravy and the eggnog.

But now the challenge becomes can I take a short detour and get back on the road quickly? This is the big problem and the reason that "the holidays" become October through February. We food addicts make a big excuse that carries us right through the holiday period--like a four-month pass that allows us to eat whatever we want. I'm going to try to thwart that impulse this year. If I do, the payoff will be in control and also in future short-term indulgences.

I know--I've tried this before to no avail. But I can't give up. What will my reward be? I have to think about that some. It should be something substantial. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try to confine my overeating to supper time, but only because there is pie, casserole and eggnog left to eat.

Week One Is Done - Bring On the Next!

I did alright over the weekend--lost 3 lbs this week, but that's common at the beginning. I keep telling myself that the payoff is not in the food but in the control.

What shall I reward myself with this week? I'll have to think on it. Mostly I want to give myself time to do things I don't seem to have time to do normally. Indulgences I refrain from. We'll see.

Still Moving Forward, Avoiding the Ditch

I did pretty well today, although I did get hungry a bit during the afternoon.

I finished the new mystery I was reading as my reward. Now I have to come up with another one. I'll have to think on it.

I'm trying to avoid thinking that I'm depriving myself if I don't eat all the food available to me.  I have to keep telling myself that I don't need that payoff.  That it's not all it's cracked up to be.

The Hunger Dilemma

I was terribly hungry yesterday, but I persevered, mostly through eating an additional fruit. But I didn't go off my program so I felt proud and relieved when the day was over.

I've decided to reward myself with reading my mystery every day that I manage to get through without veering off.  So far it's working. I'm getting a payoff from refraining instead of from indulging.

Today I wasn't so hungry as yesterday. I wonder what causes the hunger? I didn't do anything different yesterday from what I did today or the day before yesterday. Maybe it's just a kind of withdrawal.  We'll see what happens one day at a time.

Attention to Detail

I had a good day yesterday--didn't encounter too many obstacles. I kept busy, maybe that's why.

I do find myself feeling burdened by the need to weigh and measure everything and spend so much time preparing food. I start to tell myself it's a big pain. And that's when I start to slack off on doing it.

I also want to slack off on recording, and sometimes I just forget. But it really does help. The constant attention to detail helps and is worth it. But it can be tiring sometimes.

Today I'm at work and feeling the usual hunger between meals. I try to stretch the time, though, so I can eat less or less often. So far, so good.

Windfall Treats: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Well, I'm happy to report I managed to get through one whole day (yesterday) without eating food I shouldn't. And the reason I was able to do so was that I avoided five occasions where I could have eaten but did not.

The first was at breakfast time when my husband suggested I have leftover ham with my egg. First, I imagined how good that ham would taste with the egg I was eating. Then, I tried to figure out how I could eat the ham without going off my eating plan. I didn't want to start right out blowing it, after all. After seeing that it was only 9 AM and that if I were to eat the ham it would have to come out of my lunch time protein allotment, and that in three hours I was going to be hungry again and would probably not be satisfied with a smaller amount of food, I decided I couldn't afford to indulge. So I just had my single egg with toast and juice and enjoyed it.

The second was a true windfall. While at the library I saw that cake was being offered to celebrate a library achievement (there are many for our wonderful library). It was ordinary looking cake, but I was kind of hungry having just walked about a mile to get to the library. I was sorely tempted. But then I remembered that I was not going to eat cake or other sweets that day, and said "No, thank you" to the young woman who was offering it.

I had brought an apple with me to eat if I got hungry on my walk, so after leaving the library I ate my apple and was satisfied with it until I got home.

The third was a typical dilemma for me--being hungry in the middle of the afternoon. Once I got home from the library it was 3 PM, still too early for dinner, so I had to eat something to tide me over until dinner. Having no bread or meat allotment, I chose to have celery with leftover milk from breakfast (in tea).  That worked for a while, but then dinner wasn't until 5 PM, so in another hour I had to have something else. I decided I should have the rest of my milk in some raspberries with a teaspoon of sugar (and added sweetener).  That kept me from being hungry until dinner. But I really wanted something more substantial. I get panicky when I'm hungry, but in truth I will be hungry every two hours no matter what I eat so eating just enough is preferable to eating something highly caloric.

The fourth eating occasion occurred when I was cooking dinner--choosing something that works with my diet is difficult if I'm hungry when I'm preparing it. I managed to make something tasty that was within the bounds of my plan, but I had to really concentrate on doing that and taking the extra time to weigh and measure everything to avoid "eyeballing" quantities that turn out to be too much, too late to do anything about it. When I'm in a hurry on the weekdays, it will be more of a challenge, I think.

The fifth occasion was when I prepared my nighttime snack. I had yogurt and pineapple, but when it came time to add granola, I wanted to add more than one tablespoon but did not. It turned out that one was plenty and I felt virtuous and also satisfied.

So, it looks like each day is fraught with peril.  Just getting through the day, I feel like Frogger trying to get home having to avoid obstacles like speeding cars or alligators. (For those of you too young to remember, Frogger was an early video game.)


Frogs trying to get home, some (red) not making it

The rewards are great if I can successfully navigate the treacherous passage to eating control.  But since the ultimate payoff is way down the road, I'm going to start rewarding myself for each of the perils I avoid each day.  Yesterday I earned 5 credits.  That's enough for an hour of mystery reading! We'll see what today brings.

Until then . . .

Back to the Future

I'm getting worried about my weight gain because I'm running out of clothes that fit me. But buying more clothes in bigger sizes is completely unacceptable because that would be admitting defeat and I'm not going to do that! I've come too far to give up now.

So, what to do? Well, I decided to go back to the beginning of this blog and read all the brilliant things I said nearly three years ago when I started down this path.  Perhaps my own words will inspire me.

So, I'm heading back to 2011, starting with the February 6th post, "Payoffs and Consequences," which deals with Chapter 1 of Shirley Simon's book, Learn to Be Thin. One of the ideas I discuss in this post is that compulsive eating has a payoff and that it's the payoff that I am going for when I overeat. One could say that the payoff is the taste, the zing to the brain that triggers endorphins or something like that. But it's more complicated than that, I think. Yes, there is the physical payoff that results from giving your brain what you have trained it to want. But there are other payoffs as well.

One that works for me is pleasing someone I care about. All of the people who know I love chocolate and sweets and care about me want to please me by giving me sweets. And then I want to please them by accepting their gifts. To refuse to eat something that someone has lovingly prepared for you is equivalent to rejection. It's quite a dilemma, of course, because it's my own fault for making them think they will please me best by offering me sweets. Those cheap little gifts have enormous power to produce good feelings.

But once I have the sweets I have a hard time not eating them. That's the other part of the dilemma. Now my compulsion is triggered by the sight of the sweets. Having accepted the gift, I've satisfied the terms of the social contract. I don't really have to eat the sweets now. But I eat them anyway, but not because I want to please the giver. Oh, no. Despite my using that as an excuse, the real reason I eat the sweets is that I feel compelled to do so.

Witness my thin co-worker who sometimes receives gifts of sweets from people in our office. She graciously accepts the cookie or candy or banana bread or whatever. Then she lets it sit on her desk for the rest of the day, or she offers it on her counter for others to take, or she makes it disappear some other way. But the point is she doesn't eat it. Does the giver see her not eating it and feel bad? Maybe. And maybe she feels bad that she can't eat the cookie. But does her co-worker's disappointment cause her to eat what people give her when she doesn't want to? Nope.

She is missing the second part of the payoff--satisfying the craving. She doesn't struggle with the compulsion to eat what windfall sweets come her way because she doesn't get a thrill from eating. People who have eating addictions are different from people who don't--pure and simple.

So, how to make use of this knowledge? Remember that a donated cookie is like a time-bomb for you. The person giving it to you doesn't know that, or maybe he/she knows it but thinks you're okay with it. So your choices are to let the person know it's a problem for you, or get rid of it as soon as possible. Oh, that's the hard part, isn't it?  Maybe you don't want it publically known that you have a problem with sweets. People will think you weird or maybe uptight, anti-pleasure or something. Or, maybe you're afraid they'll do what you ask and stop giving you sweets. And then if they see you eating sweets later, they'll think you are snubbing them. Or they might be tempted to scold you or tease you for eating something you shouldn't.

So many fears associated with one innocent-seeming act! What's the solution? Probably best to tell them--I can't eat that--I'm trying to quit--Looks lovely, but I'm not eating sweets right now.  It's hard, though, because that means you have to admit to the weakness, the addiction. Either way it's a bummer.

There's no payoff in this situation, unfortunately, since you don't get to eat the treat, so you have to build in your own payoff. Reward yourself for having dodged the bullet successfully.  That you didn't eat the treat you don't (really) want to eat should be rewarded, maybe with some non-food treat for yourself. I'll have to come up with some for myself. Maybe I can start out with a chit for each eating trap that was avoided, collect them and reward myself when they accumulate to a certain number.  I'll have to work on that. To do that, I've created a list on this blog: Non-Food Rewards. I'll be adding to it as time goes on, but for now there's only one item on it.

Meanwhile, I'm going to do the things the eating plan recommends--measuring, recording, eating slowly, paying attention to enjoying the experience.

Where the Battle Is Joined

Well, this is a very hard thing to do, as any fat person will testify.  That one-week stint I was hoping for in the last post didn't happen. I have been able to do a day at a time, but no more than that.  I guess the reason there are so many fat farms and reducing programs (an old fashioned expression there!) and diet books and diet food manufacturers and even diet TV shows is because this problem is darn near intractable!  Do I have the magic formula? Apparently not.  But I haven't given up hope yet.

Compulsive eating is an addiction. That much is clear.  Beyond that, what's the best way to get over it? There is no completely effective method--so far, anyway.  The brain is definitely involved, but sometimes it seems as if other body systems, such as the endocrine system, are also involved.  I try to learn about the science of the problem, but I don't get very far because a lot of it is over my head. But I haven't given up there either.

I do know that I have to go on trying, and that I must make an effort every single day.

It's funny how powerful the urge to overeat is sometimes. For me, the most compelling "argument" my mind comes up with is the one that likens compulsive eating to enjoyment: "Come on! Live a little! Life is short! What's the harm in a little bit of ice cream?" If it were only a little bit, there wouldn't be a harm. But unfortunately, it's not a little bit. A little bit leads to more and more and more and pretty soon a little bit of ice cream becomes a daily pint of Ben & Jerry's.  Or instead of leading to more ice cream, the notion of "enjoyment" becomes a piece of pie, or a donut, or a handful of cookies, or a bowl of popcorn--all on the same day. And that day stretches to another and another and another until a month of "sundaes" has gone by.

I'm not sure I'm doing much good complaining (whining?) about how hard it is, or confessing to multiple failures to maintain control. It does help to continue to focus on the problem, though, because then I don't lose track of the goal: to solve it.

Of course, the world of advertising and marketing does not make it any easier. In fact, they all want to encourage this behavior of compulsive eating because it is profitable. Look around you--we compulsive eaters wear our addictions on our sleeves, as it were.  "We like to eat," we say, "We're going to eat."  And the marketers say, "Let us help you! What can we do to make it easier and more satisfying?"

There are lots of ways to make compulsive eating more satisfying (and therefore more profitable). One of the most effective, of course, is to up the taste concentration, so that each bite is more satisfying than it was previously with the same product. One of the ways manufacturers do that is to increase the concentration of sweetness with high fructose corn syrup.  What a marvelous product! It's not only cheap, but easy to add to all manner of foods, from bread to yogurt to meats.  And of course, all sweets can stand to have their sweetness increased. So easy! So satisfying! So profitable!

But food makers also increase the concentration of fat in foods to make them more satisfying. It's funny to me that at the same time they are boldly declaring that some foods are fat free, marketers are also showing glistening pictures of hamburgers piled with cheese, bacon, and avocado, or french fries drowning in hot cheese sauce.  "Hey!" they say, "We'll give you whatever you want! Diet soda? You got it! Cheese fries? That too!" They are not trying to help. They just want to make money.  Can't blame them, you say? Okay, but don't expect them to care if you're slowly killing yourself by packing away too many units of energy that you'll probably never take out and use.

It's kind of like those hoarders. I know I've made this analogy before, but bear with me a minute. Picture the guy who can't throw away newspapers or magazines. He's got so many there is hardly an aisle left to walk through in his house. He'll never read them, but more and more get added because he can't stop. No one comes to visit him, and he's in danger of dying from a fire because there is so much combustible material his dwelling will go up like a torch. Plus he's got all his exits blocked. Or, he might die from a pile of magazines falling on him. And no one will hear him cry out for help because all the paper insulation is muffling his voice.

Is that so different from the person who is hoarding fat cells? She'll never use them, at least not as they were originally intended to be used--to survive in the wilderness over a period of scarce food supplies. They're just sitting on her body, her physical "house," making it difficult to move around and putting her in danger of dying from being crushed by the weight of those useless containers of energy. Yet she keeps adding more of them because she can't stop. Or she gets rid of some of them in an effort to "diet," but then before long, more are added until her "house" is full again and she's back to living in that tiny space between the stacks.

Oh, it's easy to see what the problem is. But when the urge is upon you, it's hard to think of why it's not a good thing to give in. And that's where the battle is joined, after all.  In those synapses, those tiny spaces in your brain where the compulsion was born and lives on, never quite extinguished, always coming back, day after day, year after year to try to regain control of your life.

*Sigh* And so it continues . . .

Try and Try Again

Well, I got about five days into recording my eating when things fell apart again.  But that's longer than I have been able to do for a while. I'm going to try for a full week this time. We'll see what happens!

Once More Into the Breach, Again . . .

I'm starting again to do this the right way with the proper diet a la Shirley.  I know I can do it; I just need to stop thinking I can't.

Today I was pretty hungry and am hungry still, but I'm not going to let that get in my way. I can handle hunger.  I just need to ignore it for a while until it's time to eat again.

I succeeded today.  One day at a time . . .

Get Back to Where I Once Belonged

I've got to get back to controlling my eating.  Today I did pretty well.  I was tempted to eat donuts and coffee cake that was for a celebration at work. But I didn't. And I didn't try to eat just a little bit, either.  Then, I saw someone had put kisses in my candy basket.  I tried not eating those but did not succeed.  They were small, but I had about a half dozen, I believe.  Not so successful with those.  I did refrain from eating anything else not planned for, and ate my chicken salad supper without any kind of crackers, even though I wanted to eat some.

So awareness is all, and I'm trying to stay aware and make different choices than the ones I've been making for the past weeks.

We'll see how it goes.

Cascading to Fatsville

I've been having lots of trouble staying away from my "trigger" foods, as they are called by Overeaters Anonymous.  They trigger a binge, so that's why they should be avoided.  I keep trying to play with fire, though, and not avoid them, thinking I can control them in small quantities.  But alas, I can't, and find out the hard way.

Instead of the word trigger, though, I prefer a word like cascade.  Eating such foods tends to send me cascading down into a binge.  The effect reminds me of the cascade of cards at the end of an electronic solitaire game.  That's how it feels when I eat a piece of chocolate, or some other intense food. I feel like I'm losing control, as if I've dropped a deck of cards and they're cascading to the ground.

So what to do? Avoid those foods, of course. Again--simple, but not easy.

Yesterday when I wanted to eat something sweet, I thought about going to the chocolate candy trough in the skywalk, but then I thought, "That will cause me to want more and more chocolate, so I'd better not." Then I ate a butterscotch and was mostly satisfied.  I made a choice to do something that did not cause me to overeat.  I need to keep doing that.

I like the term "cascade foods"; I think I'll use that.  There are quite a number of those kinds of foods for me.  I have to keep watch over my consumption of them so I don't lose control.

Once More Into the Breach

Yikes! The weight's coming back and I'm watching it happen as if it were happening to someone else.  This weekend's quest: stay on the diet for the whole three days.  Can I do it?  I'll let you know.

Trying to Quit

Well, I'm testifying to the difficulty of this project.  There's a reason I get stalled at this point in the quest: it's not possible to have a normal relationship with (some) food, at least not as far as I can tell at the moment.

As soon as I try to eat chocolate or sweets or fatty foods, the old cravings come back and then they stay.  And it seems I have to go through withdrawal all over again to get rid of them.

So, what to do?  Well, at the moment it seems the only solution is to stop eating those foods that give me trouble.  This, of course, is the Overeaters Anonymous philosophy--foods to which you are addicted must be purged from your diet and avoided.

Many alcoholics believe they don't have to stop drinking alcohol completely.  They think they can drink occasionally, normally, like other people who don't have a drinking problem.  Some do succeed with that, but I wonder how many.

When I was trying to quit smoking years ago, I found that I couldn't just have an occasional cigarette.  Having one meant having another and another until the habit was back.  And I didn't have much of a habit to begin with!

So, I guess I need to process this information, see what I can come up with for a solution to the problem.

Sorry, Shirley, but I think there's little hope for getting to coping level 1 with most foods.

Still Struggling, Still Hopeful

I'm struggling still, but hopeful still as well. Today I want to see if I can get through the day without eating stuff not on my diet. We'll see what happens.

Into the Fray Every Day

Well, I'm still struggling and that's how it's going to be, it seems: a struggle every day.  It looks like I'm not going to enjoy the easy maintenance displayed (apparently) by Shirley Simon, but that's okay.  I'm not completely sure that's how Shirley ended up anyway.  After all, she dropped out of the public eye years ago, so I'm guessing she went back to being fat too.

Nonetheless, that is not going to happen to me.  I just need to accept that it will be a daily struggle to fend off the addictive powers of food.  Some days I do better than others, but it helps to know that it's not going to be easy--ever!  It's still worth doing, no matter what.  I'm not giving up.

I've been doing pretty well with exercising daily, thanks to the MP3 player I have and the ability to download audio mystery novels from the library!  I've made a rule that I can only listen to the book when I'm exercising--usually walking.  That works very well to get me motivated since I want to know what happens next in the story.  And mysteries are perfect for that since they are suspenseful; moreover, the library has a great many audiobooks that are mysteries, so I will never run out of books to listen to.

The exercise is helping to keep me from eating too much, also. So, things are coming along. I'm still trying to win this contest, but I remain confident, so every day I jump into the fray, struggling against addiction.

Fear Itself

Okay, so I didn't succeed that day--or any other day since then up until . . . today!  Today I stayed on my diet plan, even through supper!

I thought about how I've been so hungry lately during the day and that hunger makes me vulnerable to temptation (of which there is plenty at my work place).  I thought about how it feels to be hungry or experience intense cravings and I decided that it's really a kind of fear--fear of going without food, I suppose, which must have something to do with brain chemistry, because it's highly unlikely that I'll starve any time soon.

Feelings of hunger produce feelings of fear; feelings of craving also seem to produce fear, which produce a frenzied hunt for food that will satisfy the craving.

The problem is, the satisfaction doesn't last very long.  Two hours later (and sometimes sooner) I feel hungry all over again, but then I'm also calories heavier.

So today, when I felt hungry or tempted by calorie-laden snacks, I told myself there was nothing to fear but fear itself, that I could handle being hungry, that I didn't really need to eat those M&Ms or donuts.  Then I held out until it was time for my healthy snack that I brought and I ate that, as slowly as possible.

Those strategies seemed to work well today.  Also helpful was eating cottage cheese instead of milk, especially with celery reserved from lunch.  It was crunchy and had protein for longer lasting sustenance, something I need in the afternoon between lunch at 11:30 and supper at 7:30.

And for supper I consulted my old Weight Watchers cookbooks for inspiration, which really seemed to help me come up with a good supper that was also on my diet plan.

So I had a successful day today and proved that I can do it! On to the next!

Finnegan Begin Again

Well, now I know why I've failed at this diet so many times. It's hard! But I'm determined not to let happen again. I'm at least not eating all that fattening stuff I was eating, and it seems I've only gained about 5 pounds--not too bad, considering.

So, today I'm going to try to eat only what I should and to measure everything once again.

We'll see what happens.

Where Am I? Where Am I? Oh, Finally the Holidays Are Over!

Well, the answer to my question, posed in the November, is "not too well."

The holidays are over--finally--and I'm hoping to salvage some of my resolve to return to my healthy eating habits, but I have to say it will not be easy.

I've been writing about my thoughts on the brain's role in overeating in my blog Brain Chemistry Chronicles.  The holidays are stressful, and the social controls are loosened; together that makes a potent force against staying on track.

Now all the bad habits are back and have to be resisted once again. Ugh!

But this time, I'm going to be saying to myself: it's just brain chemistry! It's not real! There's no reason to respond to that stimulus!

We'll see if it works!

Next time . . .