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 . . .

Holidays Approach!

I'm still trying to find a way to record my food intake in a way that's convenient for me so I'll do it. I've started a spreadsheet, so maybe that will work.  We'll see.

The holidays are coming up, and I'm hoping to be able to hold the line, but I wonder if I will succeed . . .

More of the Same

Not much has changed, especially my weight. But that's not a bad thing; at least I'm not going up.  I have to keep working at exercise and curbing my eating.  It's simple, right? But not easy!

Physiology

Okay, it's becoming obvious that Shirley left some things out of her diet book, mostly having to do with addiction.  I think Shirley didn't want to discuss addiction because that implies a lack of control, and she is all about control.  Maybe she even went to a meeting or two of Overeaters Anonymous and found it wasn't for her.  It's a shame, really, that OA is all we have for help with eating addictions because 12-step plans can seem a bit too pushy for some people. (I'm one of them.)

But as I've said before in this blog, organizations and programs that don't acknowledge addiction as the root cause of compulsive overeating are not going to be successful ultimately--at least not for the sufferer.  (The programs are always going to be successful, whether they work or not, because what they are offering, really, is hope.)

Shirley's program at least hints at compulsion and the necessity to change the way we think about food.  She was right in her theories about "subterfuges of fat," but I think she overestimated an addict's ability to go back to eating highly fat- and sugar- concentrated foods in a controlled manner. She used the term "levels of coping" to describe the fat person's ability to eat certain foods responsibly, and did acknowledge that some foods would never move beyond Coping Level VII, the "out of sight, out of mind" level where you can't even be around the stimulus food without scarfing it down.  But she seemed to see that response as a rare occurrence and believed that most people would be able to move beyond Level VII for foods that they especially like. I'm not so sure she was right about that.

OA asks members to come up with a list of what they call "trigger" foods that (as alcohol does for alcoholics) trigger a conditioned response of indulging until you fall over and pass out from fat and sugar poisoning. But I think it's more than that one episode of overindulgence that is the danger. As with alcoholism or any other compulsion, once you give in, it's hard to stop.  Like the wolf lurking outside a little cabin in the woods, the compulsion is there to pounce on you when you open the door to indulgence just a little crack.

I had a reminder of that the other day when I ate some chocolate for the first time in a while.  I felt a little burning sensation (from the acid, no doubt) in my mouth, but also, immediately, somewhere else in my body, somewhere in my heart area--maybe it was in my blood that I felt it?  I can't pinpoint its exact location but it was amazing how that first taste focused all my attention on what I was eating.  Once the candy was consumed, I did not stop thinking about it and continued to go back to the source, eating more pieces until the desire stopped, long after I should have stopped eating and would have stopped had I not been addicted.

This is the problem with an eating addict's trying to consume reasonable amounts of food.  For us, some foods prompt the cascade of sensations that give rise to the barely controllable urge to eat more and more until it's all gone or satiation is reached.  Unfortunately, satiation isn't reached quickly--not at all.  Shirley Simon talks about habit, about behavior and stimulus-response, but she doesn't talk about the physiology of the phenomenon. There is a physical sensation that certain foods set off, and it must be acknowledged and dealt with in order to succeed at controlling compulsive eating.

Some eating addicts would say that they don't have a binge problem.  Okay, but they might have a nibbling problem (a little of this and a little of that adds up), or a hearty appetite problem (having the hamburger, the hot dog, the cole slaw, the potato chips, the baked beans, the pasta salad, the guacamole, the dip, the fruit, the veggies and then the brownies, the pie, the ice cream and the jello for dessert).  You're habituated, you turn off your mind, you give yourself excuses, but you also physically crave that fat and sugar.

How to fix it, though?  Ah, there's the rub, isn't it?  I'm going to have to think more about that and get back to you.

Cravings . . .

I had a bad day yesterday--eating everything I'm not supposed to.  It's the cravings.  They present themselves as hunger, but they're not hunger and I don't have a good response when they sweep over me. I might just have to gut it out. More later.