This may belong in maintenance, but I thought everyones input would be good.
I feel like I'm always thinking about food - I'm either planning my meals or grocery lists, waiting for my next meal, analyzing my last, thinking about upcoming events and figuring out how to fit them in, trying to figure out how to make my meal plan cleaner, looking for new recipies, worrying about how well my DH and especially my DS are eating, etc. ect., I could go on and on.
While this isn't exactly a bad thing, planning and awareness are key to my maintenance plan, and keeping things new and fresh is important as well; I feel like it's a little distracting. I'd like to just have my plan for the day and then not think about it anymore. I'm wondering if as I get further into maintenance (and I guess I should confess I'm technically still trying to lose a little more, but I'm doing it a little differently by just eating my maintenance cals of my goal weight to avoid the maintenance transition) will this subside a little. I mean shouldn't this lifestyle just be second hat by now? I've been at it for close to a year. For you long timers do you still think about food as much as before?
I rarely think about food. I plan my menus for the upcoming week on Friday and make my grocery list. Shop on Saturday. Eat the meals and snacks I have planned on. I write my menus in my Food Journal in pencil, then if I deviate, I erase and write in red the replacement. I make a note on how satisfying the meal or snack was and how hungry I was when I ate it. That's it. I plan to try a new recipe twice a week.
The key is really planning ahead and then doing it.
Does it subside? For me, after 6 years, no. However, do keep mindful that maintenance brings a whole new group of food issues, and it's somewhat of a dangerous zone for eating disorders. I'm not sure if you are just new & enamored with maintenance or if things are getting "too serious", iykwim?
I'm the same way. The moment I take my last bite of a meal, I'm in oh-my-god-I-can't-wait-for-the-next-meal mode. It's not a hunger thing, I just always have food on the brain.
Two things that help me but are fairly inconvenient solutions. The first, staying busy. And I know you're a mom and probably have a very full schedule. But having a plan for the day (not a food plan, just a to-do list) helps me fill in those time gaps between meals. I'm almost relieved when I have errands to run, tests to study for, etc because I know it will fill in a chunk of time that I will be distracted from thinking about food. My other solution, and obviously this isn't really a solution one can apply to a normal life, but having a very rigid routine.
I have literally eaten the EXACT same foods at the EXACT same times for weeks on end. Small lunch at noon, big dinner at 6pm, big snack at 7:30pm. And the lunch, dinner, and snack were the same foods every single day. Call me crazy, but the lack of variation didn't bother me a bit. The diet was very balanced, I loved each meal, I knew the calorie count for each day without planning, grocery shopping was easy, etc. What and when I ate was so habitual that it required no thought. It was just an automatic process that became as involuntary as brushing my teeth in the morning. I just...did it. And as I said, I loved each meal. Buuuuut....how many people can really live like that? It was easy for me as a college kid living by myself (before my guy came home), but it's not really convenient for 99.9% of people, haha.
That said, I don't think Food on the Brain Syndrome ever goes away. As long as we stay on the "attentive and conscious" side of it rather than "obsessive and disordered."
Food problems (overeating, bingeing, etc) are so tricky to deal with. Our eating habits are fundamentally broken, and we have to learn how to use plans to allow is to "fake it until we make it" (if we ever truly make it) and kind of mimic healthy normal eating behaviors. We have to eat to survive, so we're always going to be teetering between on plan and not on plan. What if you told an alcoholic that he HAD to have one glass of wine everyday, but no more? Or a smoker that he had to smoke one pack a week, but no more? I'm sure their brains would always be on their next drink or their next smoke.
I'm not on maintenance either but I'd like to comment because I've made it to maintenance before and obviously gained it back. There were many different reasons why I gained it back, but I do think that part of it was that I got really sick of it. I didn't want to think about it anymore. I didn't want to count, measure, plan, etc. The bratty kid in me took over, refusing to continue. Again, there were a bunch of other reasons, but I think that the bratty kid in me plays a bigger role than I sometimes care to admit.
Right now, I'm also constantly thinking about food, planning, counting, debating (should I have this or not? type of a thing), measuring, weighing (myself and food!) , obsessing. I really do find that it's an obsession. Maybe one day I can find a way to do this in a more balanced way, but for now, I'm going to accept the fact that I may always have to be this way because the alternative is really horrible: out of control bingeing, hiding my food consumption from others, gaining weight with no end in sight, guilt, dreading the future, hopelessness, avoiding people I haven't seen in a long time, wishing I could disappear from sight because my problems are visible for all to see, etc....
So, yeah, I'd rather have these feeling than the others.
I am probably the opposite....I don't plan enough and at times that is when I am letting myself slip or think well I don't feel like cooking so this is okay to eat.
That said, I don't think Food on the Brain Syndrome ever goes away. As long as we stay on the "attentive and conscious" side of it rather than "obsessive and disordered."
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I think this is a really great thing to say
One thing us "former fat girls" often forget is that our own issues with eating do not always manifest in being overweight - that yes, we are also much more susceptible to the other extreme, being unhealthily thin and becoming anorexic, etc. In fact, some maintainers aren't happy with maintenance, and can go far beyond that (without being able to see what is really happening).
Bottom line is that yes, we will never be part of that group that can stay slim without a thought or care (thus we must be attentive and conscious), but we also need to be aware that we could become obsessive and disordered. It's not always jealousy or envy of our new slim figures - sometimes, it really is the truth.
According to a psychological study I once read (real study in a real journal, not merely some crazy opinion found on google), they found that, in order to not gain back weight that was lost, it was imperative to keep a high level of attention on weight and food tracking. The study brought out that the moment something else in life 'takes over', is usually the moment our weight comes back on. For example, a close friend or family member dies, or you start a new, challenging job - those events naturally consume your attention. When your attention is diverted from weight loss, the weight comes back (it did in every case they followed). According to this somewhat bleak study, there is really no auto-pilot that ever kicks in. A level of obsession is a must to maintain the weight loss.
That being said, I think there are many comparisons of people of all walks of life dealing with the fact that they must put their full attention toward planning and cooking what they will eat: Jews/Kosher, Vegans/no animal products, Diabetics/insulin levels, Those with gluten/dairy/soy allergies... I would even argue that some of the 'hardcore' vegans I have met worry more than the dieter about their next meal, and I've witnessed them do without food and go hungry if their only option has animal product within it. And one time I worked for an Orthodox Jewish family - their meals required TONS of planning... even using the kitchen was tricky - not washing certain things over certain sinks, not using certain plates for meat if it wasn't a certain day.
So, I'm going to have to say - I think you will always be completely distracted. Its sort of your new life project. I have the same problem - other people are changing the world and I am meticulously writing down calories.
I teach at a University here. My students always take a break at the half-way point. Despite the fact that we were, for example, just engaged in an invigorating discussion on the dire economic situation in Greece, once that break starts my mind immediately shifts - it goes back to my food planning, grocery list, etc. Because it is consuming my life, I am currently brainstorming on how I could make the topic part of my work.
I can sometimes forget about food. For about 2 hours or so after a meal, I am not thinking about food. Then about an hour or so before my next meal, I'm usually watching the clock until meal time. :-)
ALWAYS thinking about food...
i'm in the same boat
