ready2bskinE

Want the short answer? Yes. Now, you may be thinking, “If I don’t stay on some kind of diet, I’ll just blow up like a balloon. I need to be on a program just to keep control of myself.” But consider that any kind of dieting involves a diet mentality, which ensures failure, encourages you to ignore hunger and satiety signals, and promotes a negative relationship with food, because you have to give up “forbidden” foods and, often, eat foods you don’t really like. This inevitably results in giving in, which often means binging and feeling terrible about yourself. So, though this idea may sound radical, we firmly believe there is no good diet.By “diet,” we mean the conscious restriction of the amounts or kind of foods you’re allowed to eat for the express purpose of losing weight. A diet is something that you go on when you want to change your body, and go off once you’ve reached a certain goal. Though we certainly do endorse consuming a wide variety of healthful foods, paying attention to portion sizes, and thinking twice before eating a lot of foods that are high in calories but low in nutrition, we don’t recommend following any kind of plan that tells you what, how much, and how often you should eat, without regard for your body’s hunger and satiety signals. And we definitely don’t recommend any eating plan that you go on and then go off.

Although it may sound surprising, the negative effects of dieting also hold true even if you aren’t following a formal diet but still think like a dieter. If you count grams of fat, opt for high-protein foods while shunning carbs, rely on “safe” foods, beat yourself up for eating “bad” foods, consciously or unconsciously undereat (which can trigger overeating later), use diet soft drinks or coffee to quell your hunger, or decide what you can eat based on what you’ve already eaten today, you’re dieting.

The Physical and Psychological Effects of Dieting

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you go on a diet, all you want to do is eat? Even if you weren’t particularly concerned about food prior to dieting, all of a sudden you become obsessed with it. You find yourself preoccupied with what you’ll have for your next meal, whether you can have a snack, what others are eating, or even what you’ll allow yourself to eat tomorrow. What’s going on?

The mind and the body are inextricably linked, and never is this more apparent than when you go on a diet. Geared to survive during feast or famine, both body and mind switch into survival mode when the food supply is radically diminished. While the body turns down the metabolism and becomes a “slow burner” in an attempt to hang on to every single calorie, the mind gears itself to one overriding purpose: getting food. The result? Suddenly, you may find yourself clipping recipes, planning menus, cooking elaborate meals or dishes for others (neither of which you’ll eat yourself), or even dreaming about food at night. The message is clear: Your body wants food, and your mind does, too.

After a few days of extremely restricting your food, you’ll probably become more depressed and anxious. Although this may be due to changes in neurotransmitters like serotonin, it may also occur because you are depriving yourself of things that are very pleasurable that aren’t replaced by anything else — leaving a pleasure void. You may suddenly prefer to spend more time alone — it takes too much energy to deal with others — and your self-esteem may start to drop. Unfortunately, the more depressed, anxious, and isolated you become, the more you’ll obsess about food.

Some people can hold out longer than others, but the result is eventually the same: a binge. You eat something you “shouldn’t,” which makes you feel as if you’ve blown it. So you let go and eat. During the binge you feel relief — at last you can relax and do what you’ve wanted to do all along. But you may also feel as if you’re in a trance and can’t stop yourself. It’s almost as if your body has developed a will of its own; it’s going to feed itself whether you like it or not. As a result, you can end up eating more food in one sitting than you ever did when you weren’t dieting.

Are you crazy? Absolutely not. This is a normal, even healthy reaction to a period of semi-starvation, a reaction that made good sense during primitive times. After a period of famine, it was natural and necessary for our ancient ancestors to overeat. They needed to be able to take advantage of a feast when they had the chance, because the food supply was uncertain. To make this possible, their appetites increased after a period of famine. So the same amount of food that would have satisfied them during times of plenty left them feeling hungry after a period of semi-starvation. The same thing happens to you when you restrict food. Suddenly, you develop the urge and the capacity to binge, and you no longer feel satisfied after eating what you used to consider a normal meal. In short, restrictive dieting can trigger binges and leave you hungry even after you’ve eaten normal amounts of food. This is true for most Runaway Eaters, and even for those dieters who do not develop Runaway Eating problems.

The psychological consequences of dieting were clearly illustrated in a classic study of the effects of semi-starvation done in 1950 by Ancel Keys, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota. In the study, 36 healthy, young, psychologically sound males were observed over a period of 1 year. During the first 3 months, the men ate normal amounts of food; during the next 6 months, they were given half as much food; and during the last 3 months, their food allotment was gradually increased. During the semi-starvation period, the men became preoccupied with food and constantly talked about it, read cookbooks, clipped recipes, and daydreamed about eating. When a meal was served, many took an inordinately long time to eat it, trying to make it last. Over time, the men became extremely depressed, anxious, and irritable.

Once they made it through the period of semi-starvation, the men ate nearly continuously, with some indulging in 8,000- to 10,000-calorie binges. The men reported that their hunger actually increased right after meals, and some of them continued to eat to the point of being sick without feeling satisfied. Although most of the men finally reverted to normal eating patterns within 5 months of the study’s end, some continued with their new patterns of “extreme overconsumption.”

We see these same patterns in dieters: the preoccupation with food; the anxiety, depression, and irritability; the tendency to go off the diet and eat more than one would have in the pre-diet days; and a propensity toward bingeing even after the diet has ended.

Reprinted from: Runaway Eating: The 8-Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food and Weight Obsessions by Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., and Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D. © 2005 Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., and Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D. (January 2005; $14.95US/$20.95CAN; 1-59486-038-6) Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold.

Authors:
Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., is the William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a professor of nutrition in the School of Public Health and the director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program.

Nadine Taylor is a registered dietitian and chair of the Women’s Health Council of the American Nutraceutical Association. She is the author of numerous health books and articles.

*big sigh*  I realize now, through the help of some good buddies, that a lot of my problems with food come from not being hungry, or necessarily loving the taste of food (which I do… taste, texture, LOVE!) but more from a need to be in control.  Let me tell you about this weird episode that happened last night…. and is continuing today.

OK, so I get home from work last night, and start on this shrimp dish that the hubby LOVES!  A friend brought us some fresh shrimp that he caught in the Gulf, and I have no idea the calorie or nutrient content of shrimp, I just knew that it needed to be cooked and consumed pronto.    My kids were playing computer games, so I never got a chance to look up the calorie info before dinner was done.  I sort-of figured that the dish was through the roof high in calories, so I nixed the side dishes and said We’re JUST having this.  There was more than enough for that to be ok, and I thought, I’ll just have a tiny portion.  And I did just put a small portion on my plate.  Then my husband put the rest of his huge portion that he couldn’t finish onto my plate… No wasting the shrimp. lol  Shrimp is like $12-$15 per lb here, so we don’t eat it often, and were very thankful that we received these large, delicious fresh shrimp for free.

So…. of course I ate it! Then, still not being able to get to the computer to check the calorie count, my nervousness increases.  What did I just do???  I’m freaking out, pacing, not wanting to be mean to the kids; no sense rushing them off the computer just because I’m freaking out about calories.  Start checking the labels of everything I used in the dish (besides the shrimp) and I’m like… Woah!!!  Why didn’t I do that FIRST??  I shouldn’t have eaten that AT ALL.  So I know I’m way over for the day, and that just triggers a binge.  A full out binge of animal crackers and milk.  I probably had 3-4 servings of those stupid cookies, and 2 or 3 glasses of milk.  So not only did I go WAY overboard with dinner, my “dessert” was like 700 calories or maybe more.

You have no idea how bad I wanted to go throw that stuff up.

But one of my buddies suggested that sitting with the guilt was much more useful, and I definitely agree with her.  I didn’t do it necessarily to punish myself, but to focus on my feelings and think about things.

I realized that, when I didn’t have complete control of my calorie count, I lost it.  It wasn’t what you’d think, like, “Oh well, I blew it, might as well have some cookies, too.”  Because that would seem NORMAL.  It was like, out of control stress eating, because I didn’t have the numbers I needed to have a peaceful dinner and a decent journal entry.

Realization: I must be a control freak.  That made me think about the things that make me happy, vs. the things that make me stress out.  I could list all the things for you, but basically it boils down to happy= order, organization, sticking to plans/lists/schedules, clean, etc etc.  stress= the opposite, disorder, disorganization, not having enough information, veering off the plan, untidiness, etc….

So… I have to make up for all those calories somehow, and it’s going to be by having two 1200 calorie days in a row.  (After all, if I average it out for the week, that will take me back down to an average of 1400-1500/day, so at the end of the week, it all evens out, and that’s what matters to me.)   I started out by making a list, of COURSE of what times I should eat and how many calories at each meal. THEN surprised myself by thinking… I need to organize my bedroom.  There were piles of clean clothes that needed to be put away, but there was nowhere to put them because I still need to clean out all the clothes that are too big for me now and give them away.  It’s so disorganized and cluttered. Or I should say, it WAS.    I spent my morning putting all that stuff away, organizing, getting the big clothes ready to go bye bye.    It looks great in there now, even got some candles lit.  It’s like my little peaceful sanctuary.  And for SOME REASON, I don’t feel like eating out of control anymore, ESPECIALLY when I’m in there.  Because I had a 150 calorie breakfast of plain oatmeal and egg whites, and I was counting down the MINUTES til I could eat again.  Until I got that room clean.  Now I want the rest of the house to look just as great, and I feel like (this may sound NUTS) but getting it that way and keeping it that way can be my new control issue. Like, maybe I can just switch it from food to that??  Not sure how that stuff works: I may very well end up obsessed with BOTH things.  Can a person turn themselves into being obsessive-compulsive??

One big thing that’s worrying me right now though, is that we’re planning a trip soon, and we’ll be staying with relatives for a little while.  What am I going to do, when I’m eating either food a relative has prepared OR eating out for days on end??  Will I just go crazy and eat everything in sight? Will I try too hard to be in control and wind up severely restricting my calorie intake (like, to the point of it being too far…. or I hate to say the “a” word, cuz I don’t want to go there, but that’s like a control thing, and I can see that in myself.)  I feel like right now, I have to be very careful about the choices I make because I could go either way.  I could just easily go back to not caring at all and weighing 200 lbs, or I could go too far, caring too much, obsessing even, and limit myself too much.  (I initially wanted to do two 1000 calorie days to make up for my binge, but talked myself into 1200, so see…. that’s not good. I mean, it’s good I decided to do 1,200 but it’s a bad sign that I considered 1,000.)

*another big sigh*  I just need to sort all this out and I’m having a hard time.  Think I’ll go clean some more…. Maybe alphabetize the canned goods  or something.  (???)  Just kidding. 

I have a problem with food! I know, that seems obvious, right? I’m trying to lose weight, get fit, I’m here on Buddy Slim…. Of course I probably have a problem with food. So why has it taken ME so long to realize it??

Mentally, I know what I should be doing. Eating lots of fruits and veggies throughout the day, lean protein, keep dinner to a minimum: Nutritious, but not too filling. Not good to eat til you can’t move just before bed time.

So…. why is it so hard for me to do it??  I do well all day, thinking of my goals, what I want to accomplish as far as having a lean, muscular body… If you want to LOOK athletic, you have to BE athletic. I tell myself this, I live my life like that. Well, for most of each day.  Then at dinner time, I lose it.  I eat too much, make poor choices, make excuses about stress…. Yes, I am stressed out at the end of the day.  But eating poorly doesn’t make me feel any better!

It makes me feel worse.  Much worse.   So much worse, that I’m usually very tempted to finish up my day by vomiting whatever nonsense I’ve put into my stomach.  But I KNOW that makes it even worse.  Like, ok I binge, but people who binge then purge get put into hospitals.  I’ve actually given in to that tempation twice in the past couple of weeks.  It makes me feel terrible: like a loser because not only can I not stick to my goals, I’m so weak that I can’t deal with the guilt afterwards.  But at the same time, I’m just happy that not all of those calories will turn into fat while I sleep.

I’m hesitant to even publish this blog. I know it makes me look terrible.  But at the same time, I know that I can’t be the only person who struggles with this.  I know that I have some type of problem, and I know that as of right now, I don’t know what to do about it; I don’t think I have the resources to fix it myself.  I don’t know where to begin.  I don’t even know how I let myself get to this point.  One thing I do know, is that I don’t want to go any further down this road to self-destruction.  I’m losing motivation, losing self-confidence, losing some self-respect even.  I don’t have that much to spare.

I don’t really have anyone I can talk to about this. I know the first question anyone would ask is WHY??? Why would you do that to yourself.  And the honest answer is: I DON’T KNOW.  Maybe I’m afraid.  Afraid of being fat, afraid of not reaching my goals.  Afraid that I CAN’T reach my goals.  Maybe I’m just weak.  Maybe I don’t know how to handle stress.  Maybe I’m freaking crazy.  That’s how I feel sometimes.

I’m going to publish this, make it public.  We’re only as sick as our secrets.  Yes, I know what I’m doing isn’t right, isn’t healthy.  Say what you want, but I don’t need anyone to tell me that.  What I need is for someone to tell me how to fix this before it gets too out of control.

Ok, I should have seen this coming. I woke up two days ago with a big, bright red ZIT right between my eyes. And I’m not one to brag, but my clear skin is one of the things people have always complemented me on, so having that thing right there on full display is my skin’s version of a crisis.  Should have known something was up.  But I just figured, oh well, I get like 4 zits a year, I’m not gonna make a big deal about it.

Then yesterday, I TOTALLY BLEW IT with my no-binge goal.  Didn’t mean to.  At first, it was just the cookies. I wanted a couple of cookies and milk. It was ok, it totally fit into my calories for the day.  Then my husband decided to get pizza for supper.  So I had one slice. That’s what I told myself: just one slice; it’s thin crust, no big deal.  Then that salty pizza totally kicked my cookie craving back into high gear. I was like ok, one slice of pizza, one cookie for desert.  Then eating that cookie turned into two, then I wanted one more slice of salty pizza…. and it turned into one of my classic sweet/salty binges.  I must have had 500 calories or more worth of cookies alone, and that’s not including the milk. Pizza, who freaking knows??!  So I know I totally blew it.  Didn’t even make it two weeks. 

Then I woke up this morning, completely had to DRAG my own ass out of the bed, and spent all morning bitching at my husband because he “never” helps me around the house. I even said something along the lines of “I quit. The job of family slave SUCKS and I’m not doing it anymore.”  (????)  Now, normally I LOVE taking care of my family. They’re GREAT, I LOVE them, I want to make them happy; I LOVE having a clean house and happy kids, makes me feel proud as a mom.  ( I know, that might sound really backwoods, barefoot-and-pregnant to all the career women out there, but hey, that’s me!)  So I basically just went off on a tirade that wasn’t even “me”.  For probably the better part of an hour.  Of course, my husband fueled it with his ignorant comments. All he had to do was that “listen with one ear” thing he usually does, and mmmm hmmmm me, maybe even offer an insincere apology and promise (lie) to do better.  But INSTEAD he tells me that he can’t stand that crap women pull, about how they have it so hard cleaning the house and taking care of kids, why don’t I try for one day to do his job, blah blah blah….  So of course, that pissed me off for real. No voices were raised (the kids were asleep, after all) but still, I went off on him.

All for what??  A huge zit, a sweet/salty binge, and huge fight over nothing = PMS.    And to top it off, I just realized my boobs are sore!  AUGGGGHHH!!

I know one thing, he better not try to touch them THIS Week!

 So I’ve been reading all over, how so many Buddy Slimmers are in need of motivation. I’ve come up with a Summer Survivor idea that I know will help me, and I think can help lots of other people here, too.  I’m planning for it to run from the first official day of summer, to the last day of summer: June 21- September 21. Each of us can accomplish a LOT in three months, and I think that in a competitive atmosphere, there will be even more drive to get results, so…. imagine yourself 20 lbs lighter at the end of summer, or if you don’t have that far to go, imagine yourself with 10-20% less body fat. Hey, if you’re not a professional body builder, then even if you’re close to your goal weight, you probably have some body fat that could stand to come off.  :D  I know I’m in that boat. My weight tracker SAYS I have 10 more lbs to go, but trust me, there is a LOT more work I need to do than just lose 10 lbs. to be able to call myself “in shape”.  So that’s what I want to focus on in this challenge: Getting us all closer to where we need to be.

I was thinking about having two teams: one who wants to focus on losing weight, especially for people who are still quite a ways from their goal weights; then another team, who instead of focusing solely on weight, will focus more on body fat or inches lost. If there’s anyone out there like me, who will most likely reach their goal weight during this challenge (If the work is put in!) then we’ll still have a ways to go before our bodies actually look the way we REALLY want them to. And along those lines, I was thinking that the winner from each team for a given week, will be that team’s captain for the next week. As sort-of a prize, but also to keep the motivation going. I think that having a different person keeping up the dialog each week will keep it fresh and keep any one person from feeling like they’re carrying the team’s “cheerleading.”  And then, instead of eliminating anyone, the bottom person for each week will be competing for a different title. We all know how it is to have a crappy week; it can either derail your progress, or serve as a stepping stone for kicking it up a notch. Well, for anyone who falls to the bottom and finds they’re way back to losing a significant amount, that person will be competing for the “Comeback Queen” title for the challenge. 

I want to have different challenges each week, one focusing on the diet aspect of getting in shape, and another focusing on the exercise aspect.  Both are very important; most people will be unable to reach their ultimate goals focusing solely on either one or the other. So we’ll be working on all of it, together. 

I ‘m going to try to have a forum thread up and running by tomorrow. I hope to see a lot of you there. 

Anyway, Thursday was Day 6 without a binge. Today will make a whole week!!  :D  I’m excited about that, but it’s hardly a milestone. Two months will be big… I don’t think I’ve ever in my life gone two months without a binge. Maybe not an all day binge, but even when I was skinny, I had mini-binges…. like 4 or 5 bowls of cereal in a row, or 3 huge bowls of ice cream in a row; you know, enough to make me sick in more ways than one. So, one week down, 7 more to go! 

I already blew my personal exercise goal. I wanted to workout for 21 straight days, but yesterday was SUPER hectic. Ran errands all day, with the plan of working out when I got home from work. Unfortunately, when we got home from errands, my baby was BURNING UP. Checked her temp, and it was 102.7. For those that don’t know, they recommend taking a baby to the hospital at 103. So then she starts shivering, and her hands and lips turn purplish, and all she says is “I’m cold… I’m cold!!” over and over. Of course I freaked out, called her dr, called in to work because I couldn’t leave my baby, not even with my mother, with her feeling like that. By the time I actually got to speak with a nurse (the office took a message and had her get back to me!) she was back to her normal color, and the fever had gone down to 101.7. So of course, I didn’t take the time to workout yesterday. Instead, I held her and monitored her all day and throughout the night.  Happy to say today, that the fever just broke this morning, and I’m certain she’ll be fine. You know how moms are… we just freak out over the slightest little illness. LMAO

But anyway, I’m back on track today. Now that I know for sure she’ll be fine, I’m planning a nice long run after work. Well, as long as my lungs will let me.

I guess maybe I’ve been in denial about it, because up until now I’ve always had other names for it. Like, I’m just REALLY hungry (excuse) or, I must be a natural fat-ass (beating myself up).

Did you know that some sources site Binge Eating Disorder (not to be confused with Bulimia nervosa, because there is no purge) as the most common eating disorder. Yet, it’s also the most under-studied, due to the tendency for it to be written off as mere over-eating.

I know that for me, there’s so much more to it than just over-eating. It can be triggered by stress, but that’s not always what brings it on. It almost seems like an obsessive-compulsive thing, like something I can’t control once it starts. I think it really stems from me feeling generally out of control of my life, if that makes any sense. On days when I really feel CHAOTIC, like there’s not enough time to do everything that needs to be done, or I’m worried about something (I have borderline anxiety disorder, but refuse to rely on Xanax for it), or just generally very stressed for whatever reason- I totally lose control of my eating. I put ALL my focus into controlling other parts of my behavior. For example, very rarely do I snap at my toddlers on these days, very rarely do I complain to my husband, and I NEVER “go off” on my co-workers or other innocent bystanders. Instead, I just compulsively eat everything I can get my hands on. Which of course doesn’t help. Sure,  it diverts my attention- searching for food, preparing it, and devouring it takes time and attention away from the stress, but at the end of the day, I wind up feeling even MORE out of control and WORSE about myself.

Anyway, the REAL reasons a lot of the time I’ll lose for several weeks and then suddenly GAIN one week, is due to my binges.    Ugh- it’s so hard to admit that.

And the worst part of the whole situation is that I have no idea how to handle the problem more effectively. Obviously, the easy solution is to STOP EATING SO MUCH. However, for me, the whole thing comes on more like an anxiety attack or something. I don’t fully realize I’ve started a binge until I’m well into it (it’s not like it’s a conscious decision after all) and by then, I don’t feel like I’m in control of my responses anymore anyway. Maybe I could talk to my doctor and fill my Rx for anxiety meds, but to me, that’s more “brushing over” the problem than actually solving it. I don’t want to have to rely on meds to be normal.

Is anyone else going through anything similar? Have you learned better ways to deal with your stress? Please feel free to share any ideas. I really help, and I’m seriously considering the possibility that I may need professional help for this.