I've sort of come to the conclusion that I might be a bit of a blagger. Not a blagger blogger, just a blagger.
In my mind I can pretty much justify anything when it comes to "bad" foods. I'll happily steal another's excuse if it helps me too.
Golden oldies such as "eating well after eating badly, simply cancels it out" / "I've had a really hard day, it's better to take it out on cake than alcohol or drugs" etc are just really really bad ways of telling your angel self that as your devil self you've come a cropper in the old eaterie section of life.
But I've been psychoanalysing myself lately (not saying I'm qualified or that I'm in a position to take bookings at the moment, but to be honest, when you see the price of a psychologist, you realise you DO know more about yourself than you're willing to let a pyschologist take their time dragging out of you at the cost of your mortgage, car and soul) and the results have been well predictable but interesting. Interesting because what I needed to do was find a solution to these situations.
I could be deemed an emotional eater at times. If I feel lonely, or stressed or pre-menstrual or just under the weather I fall into the category of "oh she EATS". But if I am happy and relaxed or even bored, then I become "sorry, food? No i've forgotten, remind me of it again please?"
Some people really cannot stomach food on a stressed time of life but I find myself reaching to the cupboard eating whatever is in reach. I'm in the zone and I can't seem to stop and I'll just eat until I snap out of it, which can be at any or no given time. What's interesting is that a lot of the self help books and online tools available with weight loss and diet plans often tell you to "find a way to deal with your emotions without using food" but the question is HOW do you get to the point? If you are so in the zone, how can you suddenly stop yourself and go "woah woah woah WHAT are you doing? Leave that kilo of cheese be please, Louise..." To be able to have the strength to stop yourself from fridging out, then you surely would have the strength to not head towards the fridge in the first place?
When it comes to boredom, I find then that I wont eat. I like to get out and live life (of course I succumb to slobbery at times, you need to) and if I am bored, then I know something is wrong within and I need to sort THAT out. I am very comfortable sitting on my bed without sounds, in order to work through what I'm feeling, writing it down and throwing it away or playing out calmer scenes in my head, allowing myself to daydream and think and not to let that overwhelm me. I don't feel I need to blot out silence all the time.
So it needs to be more of an extreme situation that causes me to go nuts. Sometimes I can be having a bit of a binge and simultaneaously thinking "well what the devil is going on here...you seem to be eating, so there must be a cause, I'm sensing it's not good but I can't tell right now what it is". So it's going to have been triggered by SOMETHING but it might not instantly come to me what happened in my day to have made me reacted that way.
I do wonder if getting this grip on food control is to do with the unlimited access we have to food now. We are all independent when we are earning our own money. We are no longer under the watchful parental eye. I remember the sheer joy at moving out from my mum's house at age 17 and stocking my kitchen with everything I could possibly want just because I could. My younger sister visited and her very first impression of the house was "wow you've got so much cool food". We are not in an era where food needs to be rationed, where food is all natural and unprocessed and where there are restrictions on what you can find and buy.
Now we can just literally trawl the out of control size supermarket aisles racking up a small fortune as we go, picking up this and that and offer after offer of things we do not actually need. It takes courage to step out of the supermarket and go to a local grocer or market when you get used to having anything you like at any size and a relatively cheap price.
I firmly believe in stocking your cupboards full of healthy and nutritious foods; I think this minimises temptation because by filling up on foods that you already have you are less likely to start scratching around for biscuits and sweet things. However, therein lies another problem. If you don't have the time to go shopping very often or you find that while the vegetables have sat nicely in your fridge and now have gone off because you didnt make time to eat them, then you have wasted that food, now there is nothing to eat and your old friend Pizza Hut becomes a saviour at the end of the phone.
I try to meal plan as mentioned before- this actually goes against the grain for me. I like to improvise, be spontaneous and eat what I fancy on the day. So planning meals, only buying the food I would need for those meals does restrict me so much. But it saves me money and it ensures that I'm getting a good balanced meal each time and using up everything I've bought. That made me realise that what I want and what I need are different and now I'm having to tell myself "No you can't have this". I never thought I could because you always want what you always want and you don't like the word no. So you are your best friend, never denying you what you want.
Bloody hell, I sound like a grown up who's inner child is fighting the clutches of the "I've had it with you" mother...
I think Halle Berry's photo on the front of the fridge helps me sometimes - I think she can do it, she can look great, I can do it!. Although sometimes I just go "oh F off Halle, you unrealistic healthy witch, you're messing up my life strutting in your bikini, you think you're god's gift, well love you're not, no I am god's gift, me and my ice cream and my chocolate brownie and clogged arteries"
So I need to trick myself with constant new ideas. I wish I was the kind to think normally and like a thin person, but it would appear that is not me. So I embrace this side of myself indoors but I intend to spend some time tricking myself into eating and exercising with motivation. No-one will know the plethora of excuses I'm throwing at myself or the tantrums behind closed doors.
So now I am going to plan a week's worth of meals AND exercises at a time, based on what commitments I have that week. The one rule fits all weeks does not have a place on my sofa. Then at the end of that week I will take my pre-set reward or punishment accordingly and high five myself. I tried it last week and the reward was a haircut. This is something I'd wanted to get done so it was the perfect motivation for it. It was hard work but I enjoyed thinking about the reward and fearing for the punishment (no hair straightners for 2 weeks).
I'm not saying I can keep to all of this but I am evolving the routine to keep the only piece of variety in it that I can. Controlled variety that's what I'll call it.
In my mind I can pretty much justify anything when it comes to "bad" foods. I'll happily steal another's excuse if it helps me too.
Golden oldies such as "eating well after eating badly, simply cancels it out" / "I've had a really hard day, it's better to take it out on cake than alcohol or drugs" etc are just really really bad ways of telling your angel self that as your devil self you've come a cropper in the old eaterie section of life.
But I've been psychoanalysing myself lately (not saying I'm qualified or that I'm in a position to take bookings at the moment, but to be honest, when you see the price of a psychologist, you realise you DO know more about yourself than you're willing to let a pyschologist take their time dragging out of you at the cost of your mortgage, car and soul) and the results have been well predictable but interesting. Interesting because what I needed to do was find a solution to these situations.
I could be deemed an emotional eater at times. If I feel lonely, or stressed or pre-menstrual or just under the weather I fall into the category of "oh she EATS". But if I am happy and relaxed or even bored, then I become "sorry, food? No i've forgotten, remind me of it again please?"
Some people really cannot stomach food on a stressed time of life but I find myself reaching to the cupboard eating whatever is in reach. I'm in the zone and I can't seem to stop and I'll just eat until I snap out of it, which can be at any or no given time. What's interesting is that a lot of the self help books and online tools available with weight loss and diet plans often tell you to "find a way to deal with your emotions without using food" but the question is HOW do you get to the point? If you are so in the zone, how can you suddenly stop yourself and go "woah woah woah WHAT are you doing? Leave that kilo of cheese be please, Louise..." To be able to have the strength to stop yourself from fridging out, then you surely would have the strength to not head towards the fridge in the first place?
When it comes to boredom, I find then that I wont eat. I like to get out and live life (of course I succumb to slobbery at times, you need to) and if I am bored, then I know something is wrong within and I need to sort THAT out. I am very comfortable sitting on my bed without sounds, in order to work through what I'm feeling, writing it down and throwing it away or playing out calmer scenes in my head, allowing myself to daydream and think and not to let that overwhelm me. I don't feel I need to blot out silence all the time.
So it needs to be more of an extreme situation that causes me to go nuts. Sometimes I can be having a bit of a binge and simultaneaously thinking "well what the devil is going on here...you seem to be eating, so there must be a cause, I'm sensing it's not good but I can't tell right now what it is". So it's going to have been triggered by SOMETHING but it might not instantly come to me what happened in my day to have made me reacted that way.
I do wonder if getting this grip on food control is to do with the unlimited access we have to food now. We are all independent when we are earning our own money. We are no longer under the watchful parental eye. I remember the sheer joy at moving out from my mum's house at age 17 and stocking my kitchen with everything I could possibly want just because I could. My younger sister visited and her very first impression of the house was "wow you've got so much cool food". We are not in an era where food needs to be rationed, where food is all natural and unprocessed and where there are restrictions on what you can find and buy.
Now we can just literally trawl the out of control size supermarket aisles racking up a small fortune as we go, picking up this and that and offer after offer of things we do not actually need. It takes courage to step out of the supermarket and go to a local grocer or market when you get used to having anything you like at any size and a relatively cheap price.
I firmly believe in stocking your cupboards full of healthy and nutritious foods; I think this minimises temptation because by filling up on foods that you already have you are less likely to start scratching around for biscuits and sweet things. However, therein lies another problem. If you don't have the time to go shopping very often or you find that while the vegetables have sat nicely in your fridge and now have gone off because you didnt make time to eat them, then you have wasted that food, now there is nothing to eat and your old friend Pizza Hut becomes a saviour at the end of the phone.
I try to meal plan as mentioned before- this actually goes against the grain for me. I like to improvise, be spontaneous and eat what I fancy on the day. So planning meals, only buying the food I would need for those meals does restrict me so much. But it saves me money and it ensures that I'm getting a good balanced meal each time and using up everything I've bought. That made me realise that what I want and what I need are different and now I'm having to tell myself "No you can't have this". I never thought I could because you always want what you always want and you don't like the word no. So you are your best friend, never denying you what you want.
Bloody hell, I sound like a grown up who's inner child is fighting the clutches of the "I've had it with you" mother...
I think Halle Berry's photo on the front of the fridge helps me sometimes - I think she can do it, she can look great, I can do it!. Although sometimes I just go "oh F off Halle, you unrealistic healthy witch, you're messing up my life strutting in your bikini, you think you're god's gift, well love you're not, no I am god's gift, me and my ice cream and my chocolate brownie and clogged arteries"
So I need to trick myself with constant new ideas. I wish I was the kind to think normally and like a thin person, but it would appear that is not me. So I embrace this side of myself indoors but I intend to spend some time tricking myself into eating and exercising with motivation. No-one will know the plethora of excuses I'm throwing at myself or the tantrums behind closed doors.
So now I am going to plan a week's worth of meals AND exercises at a time, based on what commitments I have that week. The one rule fits all weeks does not have a place on my sofa. Then at the end of that week I will take my pre-set reward or punishment accordingly and high five myself. I tried it last week and the reward was a haircut. This is something I'd wanted to get done so it was the perfect motivation for it. It was hard work but I enjoyed thinking about the reward and fearing for the punishment (no hair straightners for 2 weeks).
I'm not saying I can keep to all of this but I am evolving the routine to keep the only piece of variety in it that I can. Controlled variety that's what I'll call it.
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