Hello again,

I thought I'd post a note on my current and past eating habits, and what kind of ideals I have for eating healthfully.

Let me start with my recent past eating habits... I had gotten into an awful habit... of not eating enough!  Can you believe someone can gain weight by not eating enough???  Well, many of you who have ridden the diet rollercoaster a few times know that eating smaller meals more frequently is an effective way to boost your metabolism and thus burn fat. 

For me, it had NOTHING to do with me trying to lose weight, because I wasn't trying to!  What it was, was a habit of not eating breakfast, getting busy with my day, living on a diet of coffee and cigarettes during the day, and then by late afternoon/evening, I would be somewhat hungry (never ravenous) and then I'd start eating...

With a history of binge eating, I discovered (through sessions with an eating disorder counsellor) that the best way to overcome an obession with food was to eat without guilt.  The way the counsellor told me to learn to eat without guilt was to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, without allowing myself to feel guilt for it.  This is a big part of the reason why I have put on so much weight and why, in my initial blog entry, I say I NEEDED to do that.  People who binge eat have a fear of scarcety.  They have always felt deprived of food, particularly the food they love, and so they eat as much as they possibly can (sometimes, as I did, in secret) whenever they get the opportunity.  Have you ever gone out for a steak dinner (or other favorite meal), ordered the biggest steak they had, with all the fixings and side dishes, and then gorged yourself on a gooey dessert, then felt AWFUL afterwards for binging?  Somewhere deep inside, you think to yourself, "I'm going to treat myself to this indulgence just this once, then I'm never going to eat this stuff again."  So you eat until you feel sick to your stomach, and wish you hadn't eaten so much.  Then the next time you go out for a steak dinner, you do the same thing... the reason why is because you feel deprived of this luxury (not because of circumstances but because of supposed will power), so you want as much of it as you can get when you can get it.

What if you were to stock your freezer with 10 oz New York Strip steaks, bought all your favorite toppings and side dishes, and made it every night for a month.  For the first few nights, your mouth would be WATERING waiting for that beautiful steak dinner, and you would take the time to make it just the way your favorite steakhouse does, and you savor every bite as if it were your last... after the first week, when it comes time to make dinner, you start thinking, "geez, I wish I had something else other than steak tonight..." but you diligently make the steak dinner, and decide you don't feel like going to the effort to make all the sides and toppings, so it gets more and more simplified.  Then, a friend calls you up and invites you out to an all expense paid dinner at your favorite steakhouse, and you go, but (even though it's free and you could have as much as you want), you don't really feel like eating steak, and you definitely don't enjoy it as much as you used to.

The reason this happens is because you have not deprived yourself of this like you used to, and therefore you don't crave it so much.\

An amazing thing happened to me... I took this advice from my counsellor, and just bought the things I loved to eat, and ate them without guilt.  Having a husband who doesn't judge me or berate me for eating what I want or the portions I want helped tremendously!  Over time, I got sick and tired of cookies, cake, french fries, chips, pop, ice cream, all the junk food treats I used to hide so I could eat... Now, we have that stuff in the house all the time, and I have no craving for it, I simply eat it if I really feel like having it, and honestly, it doesn't happen that often.

So, my main focus for eating now, is just re-incorporating healthy food choices into my diet.  I don't really overeat (although my portions at dinnertime definitely need some adjustments, and I've been working on that), but I don't get enough of the nutrients the healthy food choices offer me, so I have to eat more conciously, and I've started planning my meals for the week.

Again, my meal plans aren't based on "diet" foods, just normal everyday meals, but it's up to me to ensure I eat at regular intervals, and start out with small portions, let the food get to my stomach, and then decide if I'm truly hungry for more, or if I'm just being compulsive. 

I struggle so much with eating during the day, that I bought myself an "Everything Bagel, toasted with butter" from Tim Horton's the other day, and they cut it into four pieces, as usual.  I tried to eat it, because I wanted to start eating more in the first half of the day, but I just found I wasn't hungry in the slightest, and it was really uncomfortable for me to eat past the first quarter of the bagel.  I had to actually make a DEAL with myself that I would eat one quarter now, another quarter after I picked my son up from kindergarten, another quarter after my husband came home to see me at lunchtime, and the final quarter after he left to return to work.

It is THAT hard for me to eat during the day.  Instead of pressuring myself, and making myself feel bad, I recognize it's a huge issue for me, and I am trying.  It's the old saying, as long as you try, you cannot fail.  So I'm trying to make improvements... it's not going to be overnight, and I am accountable to myself, in that I try not to eat after 8pm so that I can be hungry in the morning! 

It's a work in progress...

Cheers
Melody