Hi all,
I've read lots of posts on the boards from people who struggle with boredom eating, and I thought I'd share my own method of breaking a cycle of boredom grazing. I'm not saying it's a miracle cure, but it worked for me, so maybe it will help someone else who has the same nerdy-cum-perfectionist impulses that I have!
Basically, I stumbled upon this solution after years of boredom grazing in the evenings after I got home from work. I'd eat healthily and in moderation all day, and then in the evenings after dinner, when I wasn't the least bit hungry, I'd be like a woman possessed!
So in the end, I made a pact with myself. I gave myself permission to eat...but not right then! Instead, I introduced my body and mind to the novel concept of
delayed gratification.
If I wanted to eat something, I'd tell myself that I could eat it in an hour if I still wanted it. Then, once the hour was up, I moved the goal posts and told myself that if I still wanted it once another hour had passed, then I could have it then. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
I did that for several weeks and it broke my out-of control eating cycle. Because I'm a total nerd and a crazy perfectionist, I made myself up an Excel spreadsheet, so that I could record my progress on an hourly basis. The columns were hours (6am - 7am; 7am - 8am; 8am - 9am etc. all the way up to my bed time at 11pm) and the rows were days. And for every hour that passed and I'd either eaten nothing, or eaten something healthy and in my plan, I shaded that cell green on the chart. If I ate something borderline I shaded it in amber (orange), and if I binged or went completely off the rails I shaded that hour in red.
In the end it became a matter of honour for me to see great swathes of green on my chart, and I began to hate the times when I had to register that I'd had an amber or a red hour. It messed up the beauty of all that lovely green! Every time that I was tempted to eat something off-plan, I'd think "well hang on for the 40 minutes until the end of this hour, so that at least this hour will be green." And after shading in a green hour, I didn't want to ruin it then by shading in an amber or a red afterwards. I used to say "when you've had 10 consecutive green hours you can have a treat and still consider it a green hour..." and stupid stuff like that to keep me motivated.
Eventually my chart became nearly all green with only the occasional amber hours and no reds, so I figured it was safe to relax a little. Now I record on a daily rather than an hourly basis, and I'm pleased to report that since I switched to recording my RAG (red, amber, green) days, I've had 81 green days, and only two amber....and not a single red day!
So, this nerdy method works for me, and I thought I'd share it just in case it works for anyone else who has the same nerdy leanings and the same impulses to see a visual accounting of whether or not they're keeping on the straight and narrow.
It was also interesting and illuminating to see the patterns emerge over time, so that I could begin to understand which hours were my low-willpower ones, and which days were danger zones. It seems 4pm is a danger hour for me, and the day before TOM is a danger day. And forewarned is forearmed, as they say!
Sharing my method of beating mindless eating
