The Color of Success

From Wikimedia

So the first task has been accomplished--to establish the edge pieces (boundaries) of my jigsaw puzzle (eating addiction): foods and situations that give me trouble when I try to control them. The foods are the colors that I will try to separate out and group together. Once that's accomplished, I will further categorize the pieces by pattern, or eating situations that give me trouble.

Here is the preliminary list of the foods (colors) and situations (patterns) I find to be troublesome:

Foods that give me trouble: (Colors)

Fatty and sweet-fatty foods, special occasion foods, "bargain" foods, foods obtained at coffee houses and other nostalgic eateries, foods made to please others, foods bought to please others, family dinner foods (especially excess portions)

Situations that give me trouble: (Patterns)

Holidays, coffee houses, diners, pancake houses, between meals, dinner with family, special occasions, eating out, fast food restaurants, ice cream stands and parlors, bakery thrift shops, grocery shopping when hungry, watching a movie (esp. at a theater), bake sales, traveling, stopping at gas stations on the road, when hungry, baking, cooking for family or friends, treating myself for comfort or celebration.

Using the method I use for jigsaw puzzles where I start with a bright color such as red, I’m going to start with the easiest food to recognize and segregate: ice cream. Since it’s winter, this will be one of the easiest foods to eliminate from my diet, although it will still be a challenge as I truly love ice cream (the ultimate sweet and fatty treat). So, I (mentally) gather up all the ice cream from all the situations where it seems to fit nicely, and put them aside. 

What’s more important, perhaps, than setting this food aside, however, is to pay close attention to how I am affected by removing it from my diet. What is my brain telling me about missing ice cream? While I’m doing that, too, I need to be trying to find a substitute for the neurochemicals that food stimulates.

If this kind of analysis seems familiar, it is: Shirley Simon devotes Chapter 2 in her book to helping us figure out what are our particular "subterfuges of fat"--excuses we give ourselves (that the addicted brain induces) that ultimately make it okay to eat to excess. Simon's behavioral modification approach is a scientific approach, after all, and doing the research is very important.

But there's more to it than that. The genius of the exploratory or scientific approach is that the research and study of the phenomenon of eating addiction is helping to substitute for the food's addictive effects by giving me a scanning activity to carry out in its wake.

So, I'll keep working at this and keep you updated. Stay tuned.

The Puzzle Project

Well, the joy of stickering faded after a while and I was back to not measuring what I eat. But I had the right idea, I think, in trying to reward myself for actions that will help me recover from food addiction.

But, I've come up with a new solution, related to my brain chemistry research, and that is, to activate the BAS instead of the FFF system. The FFF system--fight-flight-freeze--comes into play when the person feels threatened, impelling the person to immediate action, whether it's to flee, to fight, or to freeze in place, a la possum.

The BAS system is the Behavioral Approach System, which is activated when the person anticipates reward of some kind, impelling the person to explore his surrounding to look for that reward.

Psychologist Philip Corr explains the process in his book, Understanding Biological Psychology: “In order to survive and reproduce, animals need to do more than avoid danger; they must also approach appetitive stimuli [‘things that the animal would work to increase’ (218)]. The [brain’s] behavioral approach system (BAS) . . . is the system responsible for achieving this goal. The function of the BAS is to initiate exploratory behavior that brings the organism closer to final biological reinforcers (food, sexual partners, etc.)” (541).

Exploratory behavior is, therefore, one of the important tools an animal (or human) needs to help him survive. Running from danger is adaptive, it is true, but so is carefully approaching a possible good, such as clean water or food. And exploratory behavior chiefly involves gathering sensory data through the use of scanning. And that behavior can cause the animal to feel better, having gained knowledge of his environment that will help him find something he needs.

So far, in my efforts to change my eating behavior, I've felt genuine fear of the food's power over me, causing me to respond as if I were in survival mode. Many people characterize their struggle with addiction as a war, where the enemy is the food and its power to control them. Sometimes they try to fight it by following a drastic diet of only cabbage, or never sugar, or never processed food, or always protein, only to be ultimately defeated when the diet is over or loses its appeal. 

And there is the response of fleeing from the "bad" foods by staying away from them; but the first time there's a holiday or a family gathering where people insist that they try Grandma's special potatoes or Aunt Tillie's special pie, the food addicts find themselves confronted with the enemy once again and surrender. Even Shirley Simon suggests that the face-to-face confrontation with troublesome foods is a battle. This FFF approach has its serious limitations, it seems.

But what if I approached the problem as an opportunity for exploration rather than as a battle I must win? What if I saw my eating addiction not as an enemy but as a puzzle that needs to be solved that once solved will bring a reward, a "biological reinforcer" (more energy, less pain, more flexibility)? What if I saw the problem as a jigsaw puzzle, for instance? After all, I enjoy putting jigsaw puzzles together, and doing so involves scanning, which helps my brain by inducing good neurochemicals. In other words, such an activity activates my behavioral approach system.

So how is a jigsaw puzzle like an eating addiction?

Well, to solve a jigsaw puzzle, I start with the edge pieces, then categorize pieces according to color, then pattern, then shape, putting small segments of the larger puzzle together. While doing this, I have to look very closely at those pieces, notice subtle color variations, different textures as they are represented in the two-dimensional form, see how the tiny parts make up the whole, like a pointillist painting held close to the face, or like the pixels that make up a photo seen up close. I must imagine how that little piece fits into the big picture.

Can I do that with eating addiction? Well, the edge pieces are what? Maybe the boundaries of my problem. Maybe I should start there by seeing what I am addicted to and what I'm not addicted to. Start with the edge pieces, and then work from there.

Sticker-ing To It

From Wallpapers Wide

Well, I've been continuing my sticker charts to keep track of my eating and they are still working! I've run out of "meat" representatives (carnivores, that is), and so I had to make some of my own stickers. They look like this----------------->

They should last for a little while, anyway. Then I'll make some more! This is fun!

I found, too, that even when I overeat for the day, if I record the food I ate I have an easier time getting back on track the following day. If I don't hide it or pretend it didn't happen or see it as a reason to go off track, then I can simply carry on with my eating plan the next day.

Spoonful of "Sugar"

I've come up with a new way to track eating that is, at least for now, more fun. And the more fun it is, the more likely I am to do it. I decided that doing a more visual record would be more appealing, so I came up with a way to use all my many, many stickers (mostly provided by charities) to record my eating each day.

Here's the first installment, an example of how I plan to do this:

I don't have to write down exactly what I ate, only what sort of food it represents. That takes much less time, and the result is a more appealing chart. The smiley faces are for having properly measured. The gold star at the end means a successful day.

Next Step -- Start the Eating Plan

Taken from HZGH Scales

Okay, after a week of rewarding myself for weighing and measuring, I've been fairly consistently doing that, though I haven't been sticking to the eating plan. Will the measuring behavior continue as I segue into the eating plan? I'm hoping it will.

So, the next step is to start the eating plan. How to reward myself for that? Shirley's idea was to write everything down and check off the hours as you go, and that check was supposed to be your reward. That sounds good except for the fact that the writing itself is kind of tedious and time consuming. One needs to be rewarded for that by itself, let alone the behavior it is supposed to record.

How else can I work on that? Keeping an eating journal is one way for a person who likes to write, but what alternatives are there? Need to brainstorm that.

Penny for My Deeds

Well, I've decided to try rewarding myself with points for good behavior, such as measuring and weighing my food before eating it. Those points will be represented by pennies. So today I gave myself a penny for each food I weighed or measured yesterday. Once I've accumulated a certain amount of points, I'll trade them for some as yet undetermined treat.

Right now, that behavior is being rewarded. I'll work on other behaviors later.

To Treat, Perhaps to Lose

What does it mean to reinforce desirable behavior? The below chart graphically depicts what's involved:

So, in order to reinforce the desirable behavior of, say, measuring and weighing foods before eating, one would add a pleasant stimulus, either before or after the behavior.

Just as training a dog to perform certain tricks (or training chickens not to rob banks) involves rewarding the dog (or chicken) with a treat, a person who is trying to adopt new behaviors might reward herself with a "treat" of some kind before or after she performs it.

What might that treat be? Well, it's probably not a good idea to use ice cream as a reward. What else, then? I'll have to think on that.

Starting Over with Chapter 1 - Conditioning

"Learning is the key to change," says Shirley. But she's not saying to stop there. Just knowing what to do will not change behavior. Knowledge has to be followed by doing.

Talking about conditioning, she says, "In order to develop firm connections, the learner must be repeatedly reinforced for making the desired responses to the appropriate stimuli." She then goes on to say, "To promote desirable behaviors, the learner must engage in them."

So how does one go about reinforcing desirable behaviors? Certainly undesirable behaviors have been repeatedly reinforced.

Eating out of the carton, for one: an undesirable behavior to be sure, but how does it get reinforced?

For me, it provides a physical stimulus of immediate gratification, but also a mental stimulus from getting away with something, a kind of rule-breaking, a liaison dangereuse, you might say.

Below is a depiction of classical conditioning:

Taken from Flatworld Knowledge

So, with conditioning, pairing a behavior with a neutral stimulus will produce the behavior even without the original, unconditioned stimulus.

We can see this with the behavior of eating while watching TV.  We might eat potato chips when we are hungry, stimulated by hunger and the smell of the potato chips. This is a natural, unconditioned response. Now, if we never eat while watching TV (neutral stimulus), watching TV does not cause the desire to eat potato chips. But if we watch TV and eat potato chips at the same time often enough, just the stimulus of watching TV will be enough to produce the response of eating potato chips, even when we are not hungry.

Hungry------->Eat potato chips
Watch TV (not hungry)-------->No desire to eat potato chips
Watch TV + Eat potato chips (8 times)-------->
Watch TV (not hungry)-------->Desire to eat potato chips

What conditioning have I been conducting over the years? Well, that's a good question, one I'm going to try to answer in the coming weeks.

The Third Day!

Camel Head by Kevin Law

Well, I managed to stick pretty close to my eating plan, measuring and weighing almost always, for the past two days. Today is the third day, the dieter's hump day, the most difficult to manage in the beginning. I'm striving to get through today unscathed. We'll see what happens!

For Good Measure

So far, so good. At lunch I had 2 scrambled eggs, 1 slice toast and a cup of cauliflower. I was tempted to slather all with margarine, but refrained and tried to really taste the food for a change. I even put a dash of Szechuan seasoning in the eggs (bold for me), and measured a tsp of grated cheese. It was actually quite good. I also tried to eat slowly for a change, which also helped.

For mid-afternoon mini-meal (i.e. snack) I had an English muffin with a 1/2 T of peanut butter (natural) and 1/2 cup of grapefruit juice in diet ginger ale. It was good!

But now it's 4 p.m. and I'm hungry again. Alas! That's the hard part. Hungry every 2 hours no matter how much I eat. And being hungry, I find it much more difficult to take time to weigh and measure. Ah, well. I'll try to persevere.

Down, but not out!

Today I am going for it once again (rather a long hiatus this time). I must admit to being a stress eater, and the past two years have been quite stressful (deaths and injuries to family members top the list), so I resorted to my comforting old friend, food. (Not really my friend, you'd say?)

I did a lot of damage, but I'm not beaten yet!

So, this morning I measured breakfast intake. Now lunch becomes the challenge. Here we go! Report later . . . 

What Condition My Condition Is In

I've been trying to focus on the conditioned responses that reinforce destructive eating behaviors. Today I tried again to eat without reading, but didn't get very far. I'll keep working on it, though. It is amazing what food tastes like when you pay attention! For instance, I didn't realize how gritty raisins are!

Measuring is also a challenge. Today I measured at breakfast and lunch, and even snacks. But supper was a challenge again as I only managed to measure the meat and not the rest of the meal.

Taken from https://momland.wordpress.com/tag/clean-plate-club/

One of the techniques that has been hard for me in the past is stopping eating when I'm full. Can't seem to manage that yet. It's the old "clean plate" reward that is getting in the way, I think. I've countered it in the past with a promise to myself that I can always eat it later, then put it into the refrigerator. I need to go back to that tactic, I think.

Toward Intrinsic Rewards

Okay, analysis is the name of this game.  I have to figure out how I'm being rewarded for eating behaviors--good and bad.

So, that means knowing what rewards I get now for undesirable behaviors, and finding new rewards for desirable behaviors.

For instance, this morning I ate my oatmeal with raisins as I usually do, but instead of reading while eating (and consequently ignoring the eating experience), I decided to focus on the food.  I still ate pretty fast but did enjoy the taste more.  That can be a reward, one that I wouldn't get if I ignored the taste and just shoveled in the food.

But what is the current reward?  The reading, I suppose, is the reward.  I get to read when I eat, but not usually at other times.  The reading is what I like; the food just makes it legitimate.  I have to eat something in order to read, but I can't focus on both simultaneously, so I focus on the reading.  If I don't have something to read when I eat, I feel empty somehow, like something is lacking.  I miss the reading.

Some people say eating is intrinsically boring, that one needs something to focus on to make the chore of eating go by.  That's an odd claim from people who say they love eating. I think they don't love the eating as much as the before and after--mostly the before--anticipating the eating, preparing the food.  The eating (tasting) is only pleasurable for the first 5 minutes or so, until the palate gets jaded.  It happened to me this morning.  After the first few bites, my oatmeal wasn't as stimulating as before. I had to really concentrate to stay focused on the taste, and still it wasn't as good. Isn't that interesting? The palate gets jaded fast. Yet the overeater keeps eating. I wonder why? Bite follows bite, I guess.  Like the alcoholics' saying: the man takes the drink, the drink takes the drink, then the drink takes the man. Habit takes over and the pleasure comes from continuing the habit, maybe.  

Habit is comforting. It allows you turn off your brain, to feel calmer. Maybe it hearkens back to the days when our eating was done in a hostile environment. We were vulnerable when eating, so we had to get it done as quickly as possible before a predator came to attack us or to take the food away. Whatever habits caused that efficiency were useful, maybe even crucial.  In a safe environment, there's no longer the need for efficiency. We can enjoy the eating for its own sake. A different reward--one we're not used to allowing ourselves. 

I wonder if there could be an intrinsic reward for measuring and weighing?  Shirley says it works to slow down the process, but I'm looking for more than that.  I'll have to think about it, see what I can come up with.

Dr. Simon and Me - The Journey Continues

Taken from Banyan Treatment Center website

Preface.  My Story.

Starting over again, I haven't lost faith in Shirley's approach to changing eating behavior, that is, to focus on the behavior and not the food. There may be all sorts of reasons why certain people are prone to self-destructive eating habits, and there certainly are many theories out there that purport to explain and remedy those habits, freeing the food-addicted person from the life-long pattern of indulgence followed by remorse. But this theory makes the most sense to me, so I return to it, trying once again to make it work.

From her research, Dr. Simon learned that "overweight people were indeed different from thin people in the way they behave toward food. They found that we respond differently to hunger and to taste sensations and that we react differently to a large number of things in our environment; that much of the time we eat in response to emotional states, to the time of day, to what we see, to where we are, while thin people eat mainly in response to feelings of hunger" (page 3). This seems like a rational conclusion, but while it's gratifying to be confirmed in our suspicions that we're different, it doesn't do us any good to stop there. As Shirley puts it, "We must also know what we can do to change our behavior" (4). So that's what Dr. Simon provides us with in her book: a way to change.

So once again, I'm starting over with Chapter 1, which is where the food addict analyzes her behavior. She has to know where she is in order to determine where she must go and how she will assess her progress. In Chapter 1, Shirley explains behavior modification as the changing of learned responses that have become automatic through repeated reinforcement. As Shirley puts it, "we learn to do those things that have good consequences and learn not to do those things that have bad consequences" (14). Simple, no? We learn to overeat in the same way a dog learns to perform a trick and for the same reason: we get rewarded for it. Understanding that makes it possible to see the project of changing eating behavior as figuring out how to stop the reinforcement of self-destructive behavior. Simple, yes. But easy? Definitely no.

In this blog I'm continuing the project I started five years ago. I'll be recording my progress, once again, with hope that I can find a way to make it last a little longer this time. Join me!