Manifestation of anxiety

MrAcavano

I steadily tracked my diet for about two years. I’ve suffered with anxiety for a long time and recently, through various means, I am less anxious than I have ever been. Here’s the interesting thing. As odd as it sounds, I find now that my anxiety is under control I’m less motivated to track my calories. I still exercise and eat as healthy as I can but I can’t seem to track each little piece of food. I’m starting to think the my mfp tracking was a control activity to abate my anxiety. Almost an obsessive compulsive action. Has anyone else ever thought this?

kshama2001

Hmm, very interesting topic.

This has not showed up for me with logging, but I do exert more control over other areas in my life when my anxiety is high, and relax when it abates.

Fflpnari

my anxiety and depression make me lose control of my appetite. Once I got that under control my eating got so much better. When those spikes I binge eat for a few days.

MaggieGirl135

When I’m really into tracking (I come and go with this), I feel it becomes a bit obsessive with me (feeling I’ve got to get everything totally accurate). To keep it at bay, I purposefully don’t track really low calorie items—a way of acknowledging it doesn’t have to be perfect. Spray oil and lettuce are examples. Even being a lot wrong on their weights is relatively immaterial.

callsitlikeiseeit

My husband and therapist would absolutely agree that (for me) my calorie counting feeds into, not so much my anxiety issues, but definitely my OCD issues.

But the overwhelming majority of my OCD issues revolve around food and always HAVE.

I have so. many. rules.

I think that was why calorie counting came so easy to me. It was just another food rule. No big deal....

Speakeasy76

As a person who also has periods of anxiety and a history of disordered eating, I can understand this. In the past, I was reluctant to go back to tracking as it could start to feed into my obsessive and ruminating tendencies. When I decided to start back on MFP again to lose a bit more weight, I countered this by initially viewing at as an exercise in increasing my awareness of how much mindless eating I was doing. It helped me be more mindful about all those bites here and there and the overeating that I did--often times as a coping mechanism for anxiety. I also knew I wasn't going to weigh and measure every single thing, as that could feed into my obsessiveness. I kept my deficit low and increased my overall activity level.

Now that I'm on Lexapro, I don't feel that anxiety creeping in if I get close to my calorie goal for the day. I don't think about the calories I have left in my day...well, at least not as much as I used to. If I go over in a day, I know I'll make it up over the course of the week--less obsession about details and more big-picture thinking. Finally, I just went on vacation to Disney World. While I tried to make healthier choices and even eat a little less than I normally do for breakfast, there were multiple days when I had ice cream sundaes or Dole Whip for lunch and ate a big dinner, often with dessert. I didn't let it stress me out, thinking how much weight I might have gained, but thoroughly enjoyed it and knew I'd get back on track when I returned. I also know I don't feel great eating like that regularly, and actually started craving more vegetables and fruit!

NorthCascades

For me it's the opposite. Knowing I've gone through the minor pain in the *kitten* of counting calories and accounting for every little thing I ate or drank all day made the laying awake at night thinking about how hard some of my life goals are and how weighing more than I should makes them harder and is bad for my long term health go away. I mean CICO is (unfortunately) in charge, so knowing I'm playing correctly by those rules makes me feel in control and lets one worry monster call it a night early. 🙂

westrich20940

This could be true. I find myself also seeking to be more intuitive with my eating simply because I can see how tracking any and all calories can become a bad behavior to engage in - long-term. I understand how important it is when starting out to measure/weigh things and track everything to get an idea of how much you are actually eating...but after knowing more or less what's what....I have tried to stop doing it.

I ALWAYS find my anxiety levels (and my perception of how capable I am to handle various situations - usually stressful ones) gets better when I'm more healthy - not necessarily tied to my diet but more tied to my physical activity level/how much I'm getting outside.

wunderkindking

I have anxiety issues.

I knew going in MFP and calorie counting rigidly could become an obsessive and really unhealthy behavior for me. I've worked my butt off to keep that from happening. That's involved doing things like setting my calorie limit a bit higher than it 'should' be, and NOT using a food scale.

I've been okay but um. Yeah, for me this kind of thing could be maladaptive coping, big time.

rosebarnalice

I certainly can relate with my attitude towards tracking changing over time, although it's in a somewhat different manner.

I started out hating/ loathing/ resenting having to log because I saw it as a personal fault and weakness that I couldn't just "eat like a normal person" --meaning my own screwed up concept of somebody who can eat an appropriate amount of food and then stops because they're not hungry any more. In my head, logging was my punishment for being a bad person and not being able to "control myself" around food so I had to have a stupid app to do it for me like a damned babysitter.

The longer I've done it, and the more I've dealt with my mental issues related to food, the less it feels like punishment, and in fact, now it feels like self-care. I don't "HAVE" to log my food, I "GET" to log my food. It gives me a sense of calm and peace that I'm keeping myself well and healthy. And if I choose to have a "treat" or a "treat day", that's OK, too. Because I know if I close the app for a day, it will be there for me the next day, and I will GET to log my food again.