Food...control...the endless loop
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I still have trouble believing some of the spots I fit in!2
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I still have trouble believing some of the spots I fit in!
This! Narrow parking spots, restaurant booths, plastic picnic chairs, middle back seat in a car, school desks, crowded elevators, carnival rides….. I’m still nervous approaching narrow spaces because “fitting” most of the time is still a surprise 😲1 -
Out of curiosity....if you have a bad day like I did yesterday, when I exceeded my maintenance calories by 800 calories (I ate 140% of my maintenance calories) would you try to make amends the next day by eating fewer calories than you usually do...or would you just put yesterday behind you and get back to your regular eating plan?
I usually follow the compensate-the-next-day-by-having-an-ultra-low-day route - and that's what I've done so far today - but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to make the day-after-a-binge harder than it needs to be. I'm interested in your thoughts and experiences....1 -
I move forward with regular eating, regular foods and meals/snacks.
Rhyme & reason... like Wimpy and his burgers to pay on Tues, i would gladly bargain to eat now, pay later, but later often never arrives because, in the moment of later, i ask for a new bargain.
Part of the struggle can be extra eating followed by under-eating, to the extremes, followed by crash and burn, restart, repeat cycle... vicious and emotional.
I think part of changing that cycle is to stabilize and normalize eating; with foods that nourish our body plus please us emotionally... i try to eat there. How can I do that if I am bingeing or restricting?
Does knowing something or having a plan fix it easily? er, not for me. It is something to practice... assess how it is going, adjust, practice more.
Note that the focus is forward looking at the new possibility (and releases the old, disappointment and guilt of failure.)
Think of a baby learning to walk
.. they start with hold head up, sit up, roll over, pull up, push up, stand, wobble, crash, try again, manage to stand, take a 1st step...
We celebrate and encourage each ATTEMPT. We do not berate them for trying, and encourage them to take another crack at it. We don't ask them to double back or punish themselves, just encourage them to get up, dust off, try again.
This is like that for me.
However, this is a part of my struggle. Asking me to restrict or limit my cals or even track/record cals can send me diving into a feast... so it is better for me to focus forward.
If i could moderate and adjust for future meals, as other people in my life, i would. Gramps swapped a dessert at dinner for salads instead... when his belt got too tight. Grams had an orange and salad at lunches a day or two before and after they had a celebration meal.
I wish. Maybe later. But I don't have to worry about all my future eating, just today, the next meal/snack...
I could go round with semantics and bargaining, and did.... so i quit trying to link past, present and future eating... and focus on each meal - enough, not too much, sometimes less if i am stable and able and want to.
Treating each meal separately is an idea I stumbled across in a book by Zadoff called Hungry. A compulsive eater who lost and kept off 125+ lbs. It is an easy, humorous read with 48? brief chapters.
Each chapter is 1 idea/lesson he learned as he lost/kept off the weight. I kept some of the ideas, did not relate to some either. I think the most 2 profound ideas i use is 1) treat each meal as a separate eating event, and 2) color/trigger foods red no go, yellow caution, green go/eat - foods can move between the groups. Respect the groups.
On the idea of progress with change, it gets better with practice. The old leaves off as we adopt the new. Excess eating becomes less frequent, less intense, shorter. Stable eating becomes easier, lasts longer, becomes possible with feelings of 'hey, i really can do this - i am worth all this'
Sorry for the booklet, lol. Stopping now.2 -
@Adventurista so much of your post resonated strongly with me.
I gave the impression that yesterday was a binge day, but actually it was nothing of the kind. It was simply a day when I went out for lunch with my husband and had a main course and a large glass of wine. That was enough to put me at 800 calories over maintenance, because the main course was about 1000 calories, and the glass of wine about 250 calories. As maintenance for me is 1800 calories, that was enough to destroy my calorie budget. I didn't 'punish' myself by not having dinner...but I did have a salad for dinner instead of the pasta dish that I'd planned.
Normally I bank some calories for the few days in advance of such a meal, and maybe run a slightly higher deficit for the following couple of days. But this was a spontaneous treat, and I hadn't banked the calories....
In other words, it was a situation that a person without a history of disordered eating would take in their stride.
Usually I run a small deficit of about 100 calories a day below TDEE....today I'll be ending the day at 250 calories below TDEE. So nothing too extreme - just the small dial back that someone like my MIL does intuitively. Nothing too extreme or punitive.
This is soooooo true!Adventurista wrote: »We celebrate and encourage each ATTEMPT. We do not berate them for trying, and encourage them to take another crack at it. We don't ask them to double back or punish themselves, just encourage them to get up, dust off, try again.
It was a genuine breakthrough eureka moment for me when I realised that people did this - I've worked hard to develop this habit and mindset...most of the time I manage it, and the slips are getting rarer and running their course much more quickly. I guess that's progress.Adventurista wrote: »Gramps swapped a dessert at dinner for salads instead... when his belt got too tight. Grams had an orange and salad at lunches a day or two before and after they had a celebration meal.
I've been trying to do both these things - sounds like a book I might enjoy!Adventurista wrote: »1) treat each meal as a separate eating event, and 2) color/trigger foods red no go, yellow caution, green go/eat - foods can move between the groups. Respect the groups.
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THank you for the booklet, Adventurista. Each meal as a separate eating event. So simple. So profound.
Again - how much I love this group.
Bella - I think I would enjoy that book also! Maybe it will be a travelling read 2 -
So, different from 'can't resist excess eating' is the 'intentional choice to eat extra'... I do that for truly special or infrequent occasions. Strategies such as
--a holiday feast, i try now to have 1 plateful of a regular meal plus a serving/rounded spoonful of a few fav dishes, maybe 2nds on 1 or 2, then sample desserts equivalent to 1 or 2 desserts. Stop. This is in lieu of unrestricted rating, aka 6 plates and nibbles
And 1 or 2 meals depending on length of feast days. I do not track nor adjust before or after.
-- special dinner/meal out, infrequent... a nice regular meal structure, i might take a bag leftovers home, indulge in drink or dessert. So rare, i don't track or adjust.
-- regular meals out, i do track and try to choose regular foods. May bump up to 'maintain' level of calories for the day, or even an extra 500 above maintenance = 1/7th of a lb. I do track these but not adjust, because bargaining/adjusting is part of the issues I am improving
Upshot, depends on underlying reasons - a difference approach between 'can't resist' and regular eating wherever the location
Mostly tho, oh how i wish none of this were a problem, ever ♡2 -
Hi! Sorry for not posting regularly, but blah feeling is going & feel more lke self!
The food is staying down still & staying in…. for most part!
Bloods not showing anything much, bit anaemic, but no parasite or infection …..so far so good, does look like a Rituximab side effect & hopefully is passing… Thankfully …🤞🤞🤞
Just to add to the above comments re snacking, going over calories, resisting the overeating / binge eating & then trying to restrict following, the feelings of guilt &, for me, a dollop of self loathing.
Gosh.. I do so resonate with the different approaches you all make… & Jeepers … it is so hard isn’t it?
I’d love to be able to do what this period of illness has had to make me do.
Currently my bowel issues mean I am eating smaller, lighter meals & quality is getting better - having success returning fibre to my repetoire; some fruit & vegggies …..feel confident if loo nearby …. though I have let the cr*p food back in ….🙄🥴
When I’ve overate, I find restricting after a day of excess never works here & can spiral into days of starting well, but ending up calories way over what deficit I planned! Ugh! I wish I could moderate, like the examples given, plan well, eat less before a meal out etc…but that has gone!
I knowI need to get back on CICO & as the weight is coming back on, needs to be sooner rather than later ….. 🥴
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I strongly believe that one of the ways that one can 'cure' a lifetime's history of disordered eating is through learning to become a food snob. That's the method I'm unashamedly embracing. Centred on concepts (such as slow food, zero miles food, seasonal eating, home grown and home cooked) which would have seemed self-evident and totally normal to my grandparents but which now seem faddish and 'precious'.
Until 15 years ago, I hadn't a food-snobbish cell in my body. I'd eat any rubbish I could lay my hands on - in fact the more rubbishy the food, the better the experience. Fast food was a delight and a pleasure. Fairground hotdogs, chuck wagon spine-and-sphincter 'burgers', kebab meat and chips, BK or McDs, KFC zinger burgers, wagon wheels and jammy dodgers, jelly babies and skittles, Mr Whippy ice cream, Frazzles and scampi fries...E-numbers, additives, emulsifiers, artificial colours and flavours, trans fats, modified starches, strange sounding 'ingredients' I couldn't even pronounce...all grist to the mill.
Then in 2009 I went to our local independent cinema to watch a double feature of the films 'Food Inc' and 'Supersize Me' and they hit me like a sledgehammer (particularly Food Inc). The films were really topical because around that time in the Uk (in fact in the huge chicken-processing factory 10 miles from my home) there was a scandal about bleached rotten chicken carcasses finding their way into the food chain, and a nasty e-coli outbreak at a national burger chain....all these factors combined to open my eyes to the danger of eating meat products with unclear provenance, and the insane power and reach of the big food conglomerates. I left that cinema determined to improve my nutrition and take back control of what I put into my body. It was a watershed day for me.
I'd be lying if I said I haven't eaten rubbish food from that day forth, but probably less than 10% of the foods/beverages I consume nowadays would be considered ultra-processed foods. That's why my food spend is so high. The UK average spend on food as a percentage of income is 7%....I spend more than double that. It helps that I can afford it and that I don't have to feed a houseful of hungry children on a limited income. I recognise that I'm privileged and lucky. I have choices that many people don't have.
Of course one can still eat too many calories through eating whole, natural, unprocessed foods and homemade dishes - foods like butter, olive oil, nuts, cheese, homemade bread, cakes and puddings etc. can still pack a big calorie punch. But being a food snob certainly makes it much, much easier to resist those ultra-processed poor-nutrition foods that exert such a hold over many people (and ruled my waking hours for over 30 years). Will-power and good resolutions are redundant when that type of food no longer sings a siren song....
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Good books! Will go back to read🤯😂 currently sleeping through stuffed noses and fevers for the nurses here not sure that I've ever noticed before (it could be a new artefact of my new reality?) but boy did heart rate shoot up with fever I think on Friday I was officially tahicardic all day almost never falling below 100
Anyway. 99 hours of sleep later feeling a bit better
Since I have vast experience at Bella predicament the answer is 100% don't lie to yourself to push it.
I would take the easy win of naturally not wanting to eat as much for the next meal or push it back to later or make it a smaller one. But I have a second hamster timer going. And if it's getting to be 2pm or so the next day (time variable per sleep and lifestyle and time of previous excess) and I still think it don't feel like eating because I'm still so full... I eat something anyway. And most of the time I've discovered that indeed I should have
Only time a super meal lasts past overnight for me would be a dinner time (tea time) all you can eat stuffing with more than one plater full and that's not our Bella.
a slightly lower day as would be natural following excess is one thing.
But deliberately courting compensatory undereating, to me, sure seems like a quick path to a restrict binge cycle and to be avoided.
If you're already in deficit do nothing other than continue. If you're at maintenance I would say the same. But after a few incidents you may want to introduce a slight deficit.
I usually always have a deficit goal which I exceed by a lot when maintaining.... a whack of a lot when gaining and a tiny bit or not at all when losing 🤷♂️ (hamsters are weird 🐹)3 -
Hi all - Happy Monday … is freezing & overcast here today … would like some sun in these old bones! It is June!
Good points well made @PAV8888 and this is my takeaway ….. “deliberately courting compensatory undereating, to me, sure seems like a quick path to a restrict binge cycle and to be avoided.”
Yep … this has been me & takes a while to get out of such a cycle!
I find my bouts of illness do upend things….Each & every time …. To pun it terribly, I am so sick of it!
Hope you are doing okay @PAV8888 ? …. Tachycardic periods not good… & nurses - we defo not good! ( well….most are good, but not me on the scene, as a safeguarding one 😜)
Yesterday here was a best day food wise - nice to eat good stuff, with no nausea or excessive trips to loo….. & slept really well last night continuous, good 7 hours … best medicine!
Totting up the calories, yesterday was still a day under calories & I agree, definitely is not a time to push it … but think I’m doing best I can.
My maintainence calories would be around 1610. Sailrabbit / Miffin formula…..as I am sedentary at mo - yesterday, got in just under 1400 or thereabouts. Best in weeks!
I do so agree with you @Bella_Figura about quality, well source foods & I’d rather spend my money on that too ….& although, not snobby about food, do have a similar ethos to you - Food cooked from known source & fairly priced… also lucky to be able to spend more ££ on food, & well aware that is hard for so many at this time …
To that end, I’m fortunate to live near to a fabulous farm shop that is within walking distance where I live now, but it does have a serious downfall - a gorgeous friendly cafe with homebaked / home cooked food & goodies! ….
Maybe not get too well eh? Thankfully still tapering down the steroids here & hoping wellness: hoping does not over increase the appetite! 🤪🤣
@Adventurista - Zadoff - Hungry - have you got a link for this please?
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PAV much better! PAV glad peops feeling better. Steroids ugh. how can they NOT impact
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I'm not snobby in the sense that I like posh restaurants and haute cuisine - that stuff holds no interest for me at all. But snobby in that I try to only eat fresh, seasonal, local, natural foods as much as I can. As Yooly said, if I wouldn't feed it to my dog, why would I eat it myself?
Glad you're feeling better Pav - and you too Creamy!2 -
I would feed it to my dog.... but her tummy would reject it!🤣4
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Glad people are on the mend!
@Creamtea42 ~ blue cover is the version I read awhile back. I liked to read/ponder and idea every few days for if it was something I could use, or not or maybe later - kind of like trying on clothes... Keep the lookers, send back the rest back - very occasionally tucked away something for maybe later
Regarding this book Hungry by Zadoff, - I got it for the read an idea every few days - maybe 48 of them - after the intro/life story - he has a lot of humor throughout interspersed with this tuff stuff - but the tuff stuff is hard to read - kind of like watching the people give their history on my 600lb life - if you've ever watched that... or on the biggest loser - most of that I skim because I don't like the muck - other than to nod b/c I can relate to how people get in such a pickle... for me, it was a yoyo diet that ended up an extra 5 lbs a year but over 40 years that's like 200 extra lbs - and trying to change any of that welp, that's when I realized it was more than just going on a diet - and fixing/changing that was about.... hmmm, if I need to stop whatever, well what the heck should I do - and that began the adventure exploring things that work for me.
In "Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin" I found a few real keepers - it was worth the read...
https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Lessons-Learned-Journey-Thin/dp/0738211052
I also liked Albers, found a few things in that too
because i have a huge # of squirrels running around in my life - i developed an aversion to anything "diet" and was not able to track, use a scale, follow anything that sounded 'diet' so it really kind of helped to just ponder, try, practice an idea... some did not work initially but later I could use - and I found another book that was helpful - about just choosing the best thing able (on a continuum of this to better to even better... anything is a choice - and I am free to choose whatever I want... So what do I want and why? (to nourish my body) That has also helped - I can't white knuckle - but I can explore - even if we're talking about the same thing, it's the perspective - this is hellacious pain OR... this is a grand adventure.
That book was The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Gain Health by Ornish (and again, only snagged a bit out of it.)
There have been a few other profound books on the subject of food dependance - but will stop at this for now... or we could be here a week yakking this stuff, lol Upshot though is that by exploring, trying and practicing - it gets better - maybe not in the few days or weeks but looking back, can see real progress. Just wish there was a way to bottle it - but we are all different, in different challenges - I'm just glad we can talk about it
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Hey! You telling me that there's bookz and zuch aroundz other than mfp forumz, forum posts, and google?!?!?!?!!?!?! I am having a hamster (apparently can also be called a squirrel) moment here!!!!
I am sensing that Ms Adventurista may be closer to my (and I believe a few years back Novus' perspective) of viewing this as an adventure where we WILL be trying many different things over time.
Which isn't a bad way of viewing things because both ourselves and our environment and our own situations change over time... so unchangeable constraints don't quite work as well.
And also... my hamsters are always happier exploring things they CAN do as opposed to dealing with things they CAN'T do!2 -
Arrived today…. Nearly finished “Hungry” …. So relateable 🥴
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Ikr @Creamtea42 - fast read, but takes me a few days to consider concepts if ok/or try for me. I found some really helpful especially the red/green light foods and taking 1 meal/snack at a time. That one actualltly led me to de-link and quit kitchen sinking everything/release the guilt.
On the 50 ways Albers, a good part of it, 25%, is along the line of meditation and intuitive eating..
Not my cup of tea, i still have trouble moderating, so use cico to figure out quantity.2 -
@Creamtea42 ... in case you're interested in another...
Speaking of intuitive eating, have you ever noticed it is a popular recommendation?
I was reading a book that mentioned that cico/food plan better for people she described as 'volume food addicts' (first time i ever heard described as a breakout idea, and just in 1 little page), and i went ahhh, ok... that makes sense. Book was helpful in sorting info on extra eating issues, and helped me sort ot some things... thought it was worth the read...
The book https://www.amazon.com/Weight-Loss-Surgery-Treat-Addiction/dp/154846046X
@nicsflyingcircus - just an fyi... interesting, book goes on to say surgery can be helpful along with addressing eating approach. She was very upbeat, and she is a pre-surgery evaluator, so this was her experience upshot.
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@Adventurista I might have to check that out. Interestingly, as a nurse, I saw immediate post-op bariatric surgery patients and you could already tell who did the mental pre-work to be ready for their post surgical lives and who hadn't.
That's why I didn't rush into mine, took my time even as I completed the steps required of my insurance, and really thought about the consequences and changes I would have to make. I feel like I was realistic and overall will continue to be successful, but it is true that so many aren't.
We had a lady, who as we rolled her out of the hospital, post gastric sleeve, who exclaimed "Can't wait to get me some fried chicken!"2
