Trigger Guards Needed

Well, it's been a while since I've posted, but I've been continuing to work the program, though not always successfully.  I've been finding it hard to eat things that slim people occasionally eat--like cake, ice cream, pie, doughnuts, cookies, chips--without triggering cravings for those foods and a feeling of longing after just one.

The other day I had ice cream and cake for my birthday, but after I had eaten a rather large serving, I was feeling frightened by the desire to eat some more as soon as possible.  I wanted to resist the powerful urge to finish them off, to get rid of them (by eating them, of course), as if they were radioactive. So I decided to put them into the freezer and have them at another holiday occasion, Memorial Day. 

I tried to think what a slim person would do with leftover cake and ice cream.  She wouldn't feel compelled to eat the cake and ice cream as quickly as possible.  She wouldn't be consumed with thoughts of the treats waiting in the refrigerator until a socially acceptable time to eat dessert arrived.  She'd probably ignore them until a festive occasion prompted eating such foods--a special occasion.  She wouldn't be thinking, "Oh, there's cake left, let's eat it."  She wouldn't feel as though good cake was going to waste just because it wasn't being consumed.

I never feel that way about alcoholic beverages. I never think good beer is going to waste just because it's sitting in the refrigerator for days or weeks.  I don't think about the leftover whisky I might happen to have in my cupboard, even if it sits there a year.

That's how slim people feel about treats--they don't.  They enjoy eating them when they have them, but they stop when they're satiated. And they don't feel compelled to continue to eat past satiation, just because the treats are sitting on the plate or in the refrigerator or the cupboard.

I'd like to be at that place someday, where I'm enjoying food without compulsion, but it's not going to happen any time soon.  Meanwhile, I have to take steps to prevent the overeating that will inevitably follow the eating of any of my "trigger" foods.

It's all part of the process of learning to be thin.  See you next time.

Let's Hear It for Science!

I've neglected my blog for a while, mostly due to ennui and being on the road, but I'm back!

I'm at the point now where I'm struggling to stay on track.  I've not lost weight in the last two weeks; in fact I've gained .6 lbs after losing .8 since I last posted.  So that means I've lost about .2 lbs in three weeks.

But it's not about the losing and never really has been.  The problem now seems to be that I'm stuck on a few stubborn behaviors that don't want to change.  One of them is not paying attention while I eat: I'm still eating too fast and not really tasting and enjoying the food.  Another is not writing down what I've eaten.  I'm still very lax in that regard.  A third is eating foods that are not on my diet plan without accounting for them in some way.

This third is the most difficult to deal with.  Perhaps I shouldn't have skipped that step where I deal with extra-diet foods by calling them "controlled trades" (127) and monitoring them.  With the controlled trade technique, I am supposed to know ahead of time what foods I want to eat, then plan what foods on the diet plan will be the controlled trades.  Otherwise, it's just an uncontrolled cheat and counts as a minus in the "right?" column.

So far, I've been saying that I'm experimenting with "normal" eating behavior by eating these foods and calling them okay and not deviations.  That's not good.  It's a form of unconsciousness and needs to stop.

For example, the other day, someone brought in doughnuts to share and I had one.  A doughnut is a highly caloric food--fats and carbohydrates galore.  Probably the one I ate was at least 300 calories.  It was extra, plain and simple.  I justified it by telling myself that once in a while I could have a doughnut like a normal person.

But I need to stop calling these deviations "experiments," I think, because I feel the urge to conduct more and more such "scientific" explorations, which really are just attempts by my fat self to get back into the driver's seat.

So, what to do instead?  Well, if I want to do real experiments, I should use proper procedures.  Shirley Simon's "controlled trade" method is that kind of procedure.  When I want to have something not on my diet plan, I should plan ahead.  And I'm only supposed to have so many of those trades.  Since I've been on the diet for 63 weeks, I should be allowed 60 trades. That's too many, obviously, since it's about 9 per day.  Shirley says I should still be eating the main diet most of the time.  So let's say I eat about 20 different trade-able foods per day; at least ten of them have to be normal diet items.  I'm not doing that most days, and don't really want to.

But let's take the case of that doughnut.  If I'd planned ahead, I could have the donut, but only it it were a small, plain one.  The one I had was not very small and it had chocolate frosting on it.  But if I had the plain one, it would have been considered a Saturday special (a once-a-week extra that doesn't have to be traded), not a regular trade.  And then, I needed to use the "thin gourmet" technique to really savor the treat once I'm eating it.  After all, from what I've observed, that's how thin people eat.

So using the controlled trade technique is how I should be handling this "normal" eating behavior experimentation.  I'm going to try harder this week to do that instead of just eating whatever I want and calling it an experiment.

Let's hear it for science!  See you next time.