Until I lost weight, that is. I feel like I've got this mental PROBLEM sometimes. It's all I think about. At night I plan out what I'm eating the next day, which for a calorie counter isn't unusual. But it's everything else...
At breakfast I'm thinking about lunch. At lunch I'm thinking about my snacks, and as I'm eating my snacks I'm checking on dinner. It drives my husband crazy when I ask him about the next night's meal as or right after we eat dinner the night before. But for my "planning" I have to know.
Then the food. I never ATE obsessively until I lost weight - I just ate BADLY.
If I know I'm "scheduled" for a certain food, I think about it until I eat it. I can't NOT eat something if I have it. Take my afternoon snacks for example...I'll eat lunch at home and bring usually an apple or banana and something else (like yogurt) for a snack. Then I'm here at my desk and can't get them out of my head until they're eaten. I'm not HUNGRY at all soon after lunch, but 99 times out of 100 I'll have eaten both snacks within an hour of returning to work from lunch.
It's all in my head, I know...but I don't know how to stop it. I tried this morning. I brought my cereal to work with me, to eat after my coffee. Then for an hour I thought about it in the fridge. Then it was on my desk and I MADE myself NOT eat it for another 20 minutes...I made it, but I could barely work.
Am I mentally unbalanced here? Anyone else have this problem?
I have been feeling this way lately. I can't concentrate on much else right now and that is very frustrating. All I can think of is what I get to eat next and when! I do not want to be obsessed with food, I feel that is very dangerous for me. I've always loved eating and preparing good food, but I don't feel like I thought about it all of the time like I do now. I want it to just become a natural thing for me to eat in a healthy manner.
I have this same problem too. When I'm eating unhealthfully, I don't think about it, I just eat whatever I want whenever I want and don't think about. When I'm trying to eat well, I obsess over everything that goes in my mouth. It seems twisted to me too. One of those things about planning my meals so far in advance, is that I sit down and do most of it at one time-either one or two days and then I've decided that once I'm done with it, I'm done with it and I don't think about it anymore. I just look on the calendar and see what it is I have scheduled to eat that day. It limits my obsessing to a couple days per month. That has been helpful to me.
I empathize. This is something I'm really struggling with right now.
On some level, I think it's about feeling like you can't TRUST yourself around food. Maybe there are good reasons for that. After all, I've struggled with my weight and binge eating all my life. At the same time, I know that obsessing over food in an attempt to lose weight gets me into trouble, and is dangerous for my mental health.
Perhaps those of you who haven't struggled with binging in the same way might benefit from reading "Intuitive Eating"?
We already plan dinners for three weeks at a time, but I've never gone into an entire day of meals....that might help get it off my mind some. But I don't know if that will help with my problem of eating what I'm "entitled" to when I'm not hungry....
I do the EXACT same things. When I wake up in the morning, I’m already thinking about every thing I will eat for the day (which I already thought about several times the night before) and at what times I will eat those things, too. And I totally feel you on the snacks…especially in the afternoon. I don’t know why, but time seems to go by slower in the afternoon and there’s all this empty space into which a snack would fit perfectly. I usually have two small snacks between lunch and dinner and that’s pretty much all that’s on my mind during that time. And I force myself to wait (sometimes I don’t make it). It’s not a hunger thing…it’s a mind thing.
I hope this gets better because it drives me a little crazy. Wonder if we’ll ever forget to eat our afternoon snack one day? Lol.
I've thought about just NOT taking snacks so I don't eat them mindlessly...but here at work the other ladies will LITERALLY buy 5 to 10 pounds of candy at a time. And it's the good stuff...Hershey chocolates, toffee candies, butterscotch. My favorites always, and it's spread everywhere in bowls. Not my office, but that's the only place. I can't go to the bathroom without passing two to three bowls of candy, and snackless that spells DOOM...
I have been obsessed with food since I started my journey, around 2 years ago... I can not find a way to get the meals out of my mind... One thing that make it worse is the fact that I am sooooo bored at work, because it is sooooo slow.
The very few times when I get busy, I don’t think about food, but it only happens once every six months, maybe... maybe not even that...
I do think that when we have something else to think/do, we will forget about the damn food!
I specially obsess about my weekend food. That is when I usually have treats. I love to plan the restaurants I’ll be eating, the dishes I’ll be ordering... I even go online and keep reading the menus, so I know exactly what I’ll get whenever I get there... But it doesn’t stop me from overthinking before I am at the restaurant, which means: all that time online looking at the menu was a waste of time.
Besides trying to keep your mind busy (which is impossible at my work -very slow), I don’t know what else to do...
Ah!! even when I am reading, sometimes is hard to concentrate because I am thinking about what is my next meal... grrrrr
It isn't easy changing your lifestyle, so it makes sense that it would take up space in your brain for a while. It can be a fine line between healthy habits and unhealthy habits, but as long as you are bettering yourself and your health, I don't see the problem.
I am a lot like you, Batgirl Amy. I turned into a foodie I love to cook, prepare, shop and I appreciate it so much more.
Experiencing those feelings and deciding I was not willing to live that way was a big part in deciding what my lifestyle and way of eating would be. I'm still working it all out and every one is different, but I've come a long, long way and it makes me very happy. I think two things you can do are keep an open mind, and also be willing to stick things out a little. Sometimes feelings just play out and change and even go away all on their own, but only if you let them be for the time they need. Did you even determine how much you can eat without gaining? Maybe there's a reason your body is so focused on food.
At breakfast I'm thinking about lunch. At lunch I'm thinking about my snacks, and as I'm eating my snacks I'm checking on dinner. . .
If I know I'm "scheduled" for a certain food, I think about it until I eat it. I can't NOT eat something if I have it. . . Then I'm here at my desk and can't get them out of my head until they're eaten. I'm not HUNGRY at all soon after lunch, but 99 times out of 100 I'll have eaten both snacks within an hour of returning to work from lunch. . .
I brought my cereal to work with me, to eat after my coffee. Then for an hour I thought about it in the fridge. Then it was on my desk and I MADE myself NOT eat it for another 20 minutes...I made it, but I could barely work.
Am I mentally unbalanced here? Anyone else have this problem?
I have struggled with this fear that if I don't eat whatever I'm thinking about, then the thoughts will never go away, and I will be haunted by them. I have OCD, so this is part of why I obsess, but the techniques my Exposure and Response Prevention Therapist uses could probably help even if you don't have OCD.
My T would say that the thoughts are intrusive and you want them gone, so you eat the food to make them go away, but it doesn't work, because every time you eat, you are telling your brain, "Obviously this thought is intolerable because I am trying so hard to make it go away and therefore I must try even harder to make it go away."
Fixating on the food, going over it in my mind, letting it suck up my energy, and then eating it as a way to expell the thoughts is a kind of "ritual" which I use to reduce the anxiety I feel when I have the thoughts. But since it rebounds, and gets even stronger, the goal is to have the thought, let the anxiety be there and go on with your work. It will suck at first--like you said, delaying meant it was hard to focus on your work--but obsessing about the food sucks too, and if you practice letting the thoughts be there, the anxiety should subside, and you can be less bothered by them, and free up some mental space. You can even try making a recording of a script where you describe your feared outcome, and listen to it over and over until you habituate to them( for example, "I'm afraid I'll have these thoughts forever, and that if I don't eat the food, then they will drive me to distraction. What if I am always fixated on food? But the more I try to push it out of my mind, the stronger it gets, so I am going to bolster my courage, and let them be there, because I am in charge of my life, and there are things I want to do besides obsess about food.")
Did you even determine how much you can eat without gaining? Maybe there's a reason your body is so focused on food.
I've never figured out the top number of calories I can eat without gaining...here a while back I raised my number to around 1,800 a day. I never gained, but I never pushed it either. I'm eating cleaner now than I used to...not giving in to uncounted snacks as often. But I don't know if I could go higher...probably so, but I'm not brave enough to try yet.
And thanks for the tips, Nuxmaga. This has become an obsessive thing for me. I've been maintaining for going on two years now (I think), and it's just getting worse and worse rather than better over time. Maybe what you've said will help...
Mindi, you mentioned being a scheduler with food. Can I make a suggestion? I used to do the whole 5-6 small meals a day, but that just made me fixate on eating because I was eating all. the. time. Once I cut down my meal times (I eat 3 meals a day. That's it. Maybe a snack at night, but 3 squares.) I noticed I wasn't thinking about food quite so much. Of course, a lot of people do the whole mini meal thing and it works great, but that's something that has helped my maintenance evolve a little.
Jen, I've cut back my snacks some, but maybe more would work. I used to eat breakfast, a snack, lunch, two snacks then dinner. Maybe if I can get it in my head as an actual schedule, rather than willy-nilly snacking in the afternoon, it might help? Like...I go to lunch at 11 a.m., then bring only one snack and plan to eat it at 2:30 p.m. or something. And if not, then go to three meals a day again and see how that helps me.
You may be right...knowing I'm "supposed" to eat something could be forcing me to think about it more. The kicker will be staying out of the chocolate in the office...
I never obsessed over food...
I love to cook, prepare, shop and I appreciate it so much more.
