Pop Pscyhology and Abstinence

I think our disease is very much psychological. As the Brown Book puts it, it is a "disease of mind" as well as a disease of body and spirit.But everyone knows that. Pop psychology and calorie counting are the two big "tools" of the conventional diet. Today I began thinking about how I have set myself up to associate positive things with food. I plan my breaks from study and work around meals and, consequently, today, when I found myself struggling with my study and I began to fantasize and obsess over the small tub of yoghurt I was going to allow myself to eat in my next break. This then led me to think how all this study deserved more than just one little tub of yoghurt and, that it wouldn't hurt to have a couple , maybe something a bit "naughty" as well...you guys get the picture.

Now, in my education course, I've been learning about "behaviourist psychology". Basically this is the idea of learning through association and reinforcement. So, the more times we experience X and something positive together, the more we will associate X with positive things and thus react positively to X, and vice versa. It's sound theory and it's used by teachers the world over. So I decided then and there that I would exercise in my break and eat my yoghurt at the computer after I finished my break. That worked fairly well today, so I think there is some merit in using psychology to help ourselves. I am particularly interested in Sociocultural psychology, which talks about how we use the mental and emotional tools provided to us by the people around us.

But I also realised that one of the other common diet recommendations is not to eat whilst doing something else. So in a way it's a vicious cycle. That's why the simple fixes are doomed to failure, because they will soon stop working, and then we will be in a worse situation than before and have to try some marvelous new idea.

When I think about it, is the problem that I associate food with the positive experience of having a break, or is the problem that I have an unhealthy attitude to life that makes breaks such a powerful incentive for me?. The rest of the world plan's their lives breaks around meals without any trouble, so it certainly isn't that. It must be the deeper problem: that I cannot live in the present, that I cannot enjoy my work, that I cannot enjoy life. Admittedly the inability to live in the present probably has something to do with my ADHD and thus my inability to focus on the task at hand, but I think it goes deeper than that. Psychology is important but it's not the only answer.

Ok so I was writing this stuff coz I was "hungry" (read obsessing about eating) so if it doesnt' make sense who cares.

Scales don't make a good Higher Power

A few weeks ago my sponsor told me that she only weighs herself once a month or when she visits the doctor. Up until that point I didn't realise how important the scales had been in my dieting, but the idea of weighing myself only once a month sounded to me like jumping off a cliff and hoping there was a trampoline at the bottom. I don't weigh myself when I'm bingeing, but if I'm dieting then I weigh every day. I associate the scales with good dieting. I agreed to only weigh myself once a week, since that's what all the diet magazines recommend, but so far I haven't even managed to make it seven days.

When I did go a couple of days without weighing in I found out just how much of a trigger it is. As soon as I jump on the scales my thoughts are either a) I haven't lost enough with all this hard work, might as well binge b)I've lost heaps! now I can binge!!!. My pattern was always to binge after weigh day.

This week I weighed in on Saturday to only lose 300g. I was so disappointed! I wrote to my sponsor and she once again urged me to do the once a month thing. So I've decided to give it a go. I weighed in yesterday and I was down to 86.5kg (190.5lb) That's a weight loss of 1.5kg! Just goes to show how stupid the scales can be! So, as you may notice, I've changed the stats on my blog....

...And this is where they'll stay (if God gives me grace) until the 27th of June. I'm going to try not to weigh myself for a whole month.

The thing is I've been treating the scales like a Higher Power. It is their will and approval I am seeking when I diet, and I rely on their affirmation to validate me, and their support to motivate me. But the scales are just a replacement for my obsession with food. They are also just another way of measuring myself. I have a lot of "measuring" Higher Powers in my life. My marks, my friends, my scales. How about some enabling ones?


Warning: Bible quote
"It is God who works in you to will and to work his good purpose" Philippians 2:13

Alright God...i'm giving you a go.

Does anyone know what day it is?

Yes that's right! it's weigh day! and i payed the price for yesterday. only 300g loss (a bit over half a pound). I neeeeeeeeed to lose weight faster than this. I am SICK of being fat. All I want is to be skinny like the pretty little girls in Dance Club. I also want to be free from food obsession. Neither of those things happened for me today. I desperately wanted to eat all day. (I didn't overeat but that's not the point...I've been reading in the Brown Book all about food obsession. How what really comes after us is the day in and day out obsession with food....I know that and I want to be free of it.)

A bad zero

Well so much for my victory last night:( This morning I had 10 of those evil weetbix I wrote about before, and then the day hasn't gotten much better. I went to the uni bar tonight and bought a serve of pasta and a banana bread on top of the salad I already had to tide me over. It's not tooo bad i suppose, but it's still definitely beyond normal eating. Anyway I feel bad at the moment and I can't get into the meetings because the server at uni doesn't support those kind of things. I think this is a fairly negative blog because I always write here when I feel bad. But I guess people need to see that.
Weetbix, Pizza and Subway
Ok so not only did I have 10 weetbix, but I also had my normal porridge as well. Whoa that's insane. I really know what they mean about insane obsessive compulsive eating. It was so much like the compulsion to do other irrational things, just that constant nagging to binge. I just couldn't shake it. I got rid of it with the Pizza last night but it came back. The GOOD news (yes there is some) is that I have now thrown all my weetbix in the bin. My sponsor told me to get rid of them but I wasn't sure how that would go down with the people I live with. But it's done now. Ahhhh will I ever have abstinence? Why can't I do a simple thing like going without binging for more than 4 days?
Ok so here are the nutrition facts on Pizza, Weetbix and subway:
1. One slice of average Pizza Hut average-crust pizza:
*830kj or 200cal
*3 grams fat
*25grams carbohydrate

2. 1 subway 6 inch club sandwich:
* 1210kj or 290 cal
*5.4g fat
*41g carbohydrate

3. 2 weetbix (not including milk)
*492kj/120cal
*0.5g fat
*22g carbohydrate

4. 1 cup of skim milk
*360 kj or 86 cal
*0.4g fat
*11.9g carbohydrate

So...
1 subway 6 inch= 1.5 slices of Pizza (way to go me)
10 weetbix with milk= 6.5 slices of Pizza in terms of calories, and less than 2 in terms of fat

Weetbix seem like the stupidest food to binge on in history. But somebody said that with trigger foods you need to look at the ingredients rather than the foods themselves. When I think of it that way I can see that a bowl of weetbix contains lots and lots of my two favourite things: carbohydrate and dairy foods. But I don't know what that means in terms of eliminating triggers. Quite clearly I can't eliminate all carbohydrates and dairy foods. That would be unhealthy.

Other stuff
More good news is that I haven't had chocolate, another big trigger food for a while and I haven't had ice cream for a week or two.

I am also gradually learning to be powerless. The fact is that, as a younger compulsive eater, I like to think I can do it myself and it's easy to convince myself it's true. Sure I've tried diets etc on my own and they haven't worked. In fact nothing has worked for years. But I just don't have those extra 20 years of experience that other compulsive eaters have to draw on when they start to get cocky.

Pizza count: ZERO!

Yes that's right. I had NOOOOOOOO pizza tonight!!!! I went to subway before the party and i bought a 6-inch sub club and i ate it when everyone else was eating Pizza. The problem was that the unfinished Pizzas sat in their boxes on the counter for most of the night so it wasn't a case of refusing once. It was a case of refusing every few minutes for 3 hours. But praying did give me a real sense of peace. i was really anxious about it before. I just had no self confidence...and that leads to bingeing. But when I was able to trust God it really did help. I felt like I didn't have to give in because it was possible to get through this. And I did. whooo hooo

What a day!

Right now 'm nervous and hungry because I am going to a dance club party and they will have FREE PIZZA. I feel a real compulsion to overeat. I am taking the following steps:
1. I am posting on my blog about it
2. I am going ot buy something to eat before i get there...perhaps something from subway
3. I am not going to ahve even one slice of Pizza. I'm not sure that Pizza is a major trigger food for me, but I know that this situaiton is a major trigger for me
4. I've gone online to chat with someone
5. I am going to pray. This will be a big step forward for me, because it will mean I am finally turnign to a HP, which is something I haven't been willing to do so far. Well I am going to hope so.

I have always justified my overeating in financial terms. For example, I always used to buy a whole family-sized block of chocolate instead of a single bar because it was just so much better value for money to pay $3 for 500g than to pay $2 for a hundred grams. But if food is being offered for free, as it usually is at parties, where it is acceptable to eat larger amouts for pleasure, I feel a serious compulsion to binge which I can rarely resist. This is exacerbated by the fact taht I am feeling arrogant at the moment because I lost 12 kg, and sad as well because I embarssed myself publicly today. I think it is a cross between feeling like I have a right to binge and a responsibility to...because hey, free food doesn't come along eveyr day. For some reason it never occurs to me that by feeding my disease I was eventually going to cost myself even more money. And it doesn't occur to me that it's my responsibiltiy not to deplete the communal pool. It's

By the way, . Today I went to Dance Club and performed in front of heaps of people at the uni bar! Yesterday I had rehearsal and I danced for 4 1/2 hours (including very long warm up/down sessions) I haven't performed dancing in public since I was a little girl going through my ballet phase (that ended about the age of 8 or 9)

Gotta keep it real!

Ok I'm not even sure what that means. It's something Americans say on television when they are trying to be cool. I'll have to find out. I'm writing this as I've just spent half an hour choosing pictures for this blog instead of doing an overdue assignment. Is that wierd or what? Now I'm upset and freaked out. They say you should use the OA program to replace your need for food, but I'm not sure if this is exaclty what they meant. It's true I do usually eat to avoid scary and distressing realities, or just to procrastinate, and this is a healthier way to do that. The problem is that none of those activities were healthy to start with. I guess that's why they say getting to the root of the disease is sometimes more important than physical recovery. This sort of behaviour costs me just as dearly as overeating does in many ways. Ok new rule: have to stay on task for at least one hour at a time. NO EXCEPTIONS!