Well, I've about driven myself nuts, and I want to make sure its not just me that does it. I realized last night that I must have atleast a 100 conversations with myself during the day, regarding food. Is this normal??? It goes something like this.. "Hmm.. that looks good.. maybe I should have some.. No Liz, you don't need it.. you just ate.. your going to eat in an hour.. you need to wait".. Now, I know i'm not starving myself, because when I have these conversations, I'm not even hungry.. I know its just a matter of boredom.. Alot of my problem was eating when I was bored, lonely, upset.. you name it.. I ate because of it...
This is my 4th week of changing how i'm eating, and I think i'm doing fairly well.. I'm not going to weigh myself till I go to the doctor on April 1st, but I know I feel better.. Don't have that mid-afternoon tiredness anymore.. Just feel better all the way around..
How do I get around this... I try to keep busy, but even when i'm at work, I think about food constantly.. When i'm I going to eat next.. what did I bring for lunch.. What time should I have my afternoon snack.. This is at 9 am! Why am I planning my afternoon snack when its only 9 am???
Also, sometimes when I eat.. when i'm done eating, and I know i'm done, cause all the food on my plate is gone, i've drank my water.. I didn't eat fast, I enjoyed the food.. But I don't have that totally full, overstuffed feeling.. You know the one.. where you kept eating till you felt sick. That was a normal feeling for me before.. Now I've not had it for atleast three weeks.. For some reason it makes my brain feel like i'm not eating enough, even know I know I am... Hmm.. and you wonder why i'm overweight.. Anyways.. Ack! Has anyone else experienced this?
This is completely normal, and it is something that lots of people go through. We all have been food addicts in some way or another and it is hard to break those ingrained psychological patterns.
Whenever I would try to lose weight before, I would get that disappointed feeling after eating a normal meal -- that feeling like it just wasnt enough. These destructive thought patterns around food would get so bad that I would give in and binge. Then the guilt would be so bad that I would give up on any continued effort. I still get those thought patterns now, put I force myself to recognize a "normal" full feeling and I try my hardest to recognize what I am really feeling and not what my brain is trying to tell me.
Do you know that occasionally I would meet up with a friend of mine for brunch and I would stop on the way to the restaurant to get a bagel or something just so I could feel a little bit fuller after eating the regular meal. When I think back on that, it was quite abnormal! Sometimes, I would go to a fast food restaurant and order two sodas just to give the impression that the take out food I was buying was for 2 people and not just for me. Also, I would sometimes go out for lunch and eat at one place and walk to another place for a second meal. Thoughts of food ruled my life. I hated eating in front of anyone and would sneak food like drug addict sneaking shooting up.
I think it was Deepok Chopra (sp?) who said that to lose weight you should view hunger and satiation on a 10 point scale. You should only eat when your hunger level is at a 7 (not famished, but fairly hungry) and you should stop eating when your fullness level is also at a 7 (not stuffed, but slightly full). Before, I would eat at all times and I wouldn't stop until I felt uncomfortable full.
We have lived our lives many many years with these thoughts and it will take alot of time and effort to overcome them. It isn't easy, but we can do it!
I too tended to obsess about food. I would start the moment my eyes opened till pretty much when my head hit the pillow at the end of the day. As soon as one meal was over, I was thinking about what I should eat next. I think a huge part of this was escapism and boredom. I didn't like my life, and if I could use food as a distraction, I didn't have to think about the other issues. Also, I had no other real outside interests that took my mind OFF food. I've found that in my life the few times where I had something going on which totally captivated my interest (either in a positive or negative fashion) I stopped obsessing about food. Towards that end, in this attempt at changing my life pattern, I have started replacing my food obsessing with other interests. Sometimes it's forced, sometimes it's genuine.
One of the things I'm using is food tracking. Oddly enough, spending a lot of time tracking my calories and looking up nutritional information on foods (did you know that 4 ounces of tilapia has 93 grams of omega 3 ?? cool!) and planning what I can eat for each meal has really helped. Another thing is that I don't just exercise. I research the exercise. Interval training, weight lifting, pilates, I think I might try belly dancing... anything new and different and fun or challenging that I can use to think about rather than food. And it's working for me. I've been OP now for 6 weeks and slowly I'm losing that obsessive food thought pattern. As a matter of fact, I now have to be very careful to eat enough, because I forget. It isn't easy to stop thinking about food all the time, but you can do it. You just have to figure out what works for you.
Isn't weird how that overstuff feeling becomes "normal?" Doesn't it make you want to scream!?!
Now, there is boredom hunger and there is "no really, I'm hungry" hunger. I thought I knew the difference, but I'm discovering that I wasn't giving myself enough credit.
My advice to you is to experiment with your diet. When you eat A, how long does A satisfy you for? When you eat B, does it inspire bad eating behavior?
I discovered that if I eat 25 grams of protein in a meal or a snack, I won't even THINK about eating. Now, this is incredibly contrary to my earlier belief that I was "just bored." So, obviously, I need more protein in my diet. So, almost everything I eat has a protein component.
I've also discovered major trigger foods. Crackers only propagate MORE crackers (as in I will eat the entire bag of oyster crackers). Or worse, hidden trigger foods. Ones that make you crave something very badly until you can't handle it anymore.
So, experiment and take notes. Figure out what your body is trying to tell you.
Hunger Problems! Help!
