I've probably mentioned this before but if not, I work in a bakery. A BAKERY! My family owns a wholesale bakery where I am currently working as I await my transatlantic move this fall.
Needless to say, a bakery is far from the best place for a food addict/compulsive overeater like myself to be working. I was doing so well last week. I had gone a week and a half without having a single cookie but yesterday I cracked. Hormones were too much for me and I cracked and for some reason I let yesterday's slip up, slide right into today. I cracked again.
Granted the 2 1/2 cookies I've had over the past two days is loads less then I was consuming prior to my refocusing on my "rules"/plan/self love/abstinence/whatever the hell you want to call it. I do notice now that I am striving to eat more WLS friendly, as well as in a way to prevent the urge to binge, the cookies are almost too much for me to handle. Still, I cracked.
For a normal person this wouldn't be such a big deal but sadly, for me, someone with a food/sugar addiction, it can be if I don't acknowledge it. I do/am acknowledging it though. I know that I need to start looking inward and see just why I am reaching for cookies (besides hormones). It is likely due to the large amount of stress I am under right now, anxiously awaiting my loan to finally be processed so that I can actually start moving forward with my life.
I am not chastising myself for my slips though. That is my old pattern. Shame will get me no where. I love myself regardless of my mistakes. I will learn from them and move on.
Here's to a better afternoon, sans cookies!
Showing posts with label Emotional Eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emotional Eating. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Three Kinds of Hunger
I have a theory. This is my theory so take from it what you will.
There are three kinds of hunger:
This is actual, physical hunger. Our body telling you "Hey you! Running low on fuel down here, please send some pronto." This is the hunger where we can feel and hear our innards gurgle in request of nutrients. This is the simplest form of hunger.
Head Hunger
This hunger doesn't live in our belly. This one lives in our brain. This is where cravings come from. We are flipping channels on the t.v. and stop on the Food Network a little too long and all of a sudden we think we need some macaroni and cheese. Or maybe it's while we are walking down the mall one lovely afternoon buying ourself some new post weight loss fashions and we smell the Cinnabon wafting down the corridor. Without even knowing it, we find ourself drawn down the corridor, past all the cute clothes, to the line of drones waiting to satisfy their sweet tooth with the ooey-gooey goodness.
Sometimes we are aware when we switch into head hunger mode, sometimes not. Companies are very very good about being subtle in their mind tricks to get us to buy and eat their products. We are also far more susceptible to head hunger when we haven't yet addressed the stomach hunger that may be coming over the horizon. This is why it's so important to really listen to your stomach hunger and make sure you never let it go too far unchecked or else your head might start to take over.
Heart Hunger
This is the most complex and complicated of the three hungers because so often we don't know exactly what triggered it. This is not due to actual physical need or being triggered by outside stimulus. Rather this hunger lives in our hearts. This is the hunger that is so hard for so many of us to see or even feel because by quenching the hunger with food we subdue whatever it is we are really craving, at least for a short while.
This is what so many over eaters call boredom, but what I prefer to call restlessness. If we were truly just bored, we'd go do something, not eat something. Instead we are restless, we don't know what we want so we eat to fill the void. The problem with this? Food isn't really what we want. Since it's not what our heart truly desires, we just keep doing it and doing it and doing it to no avail. Eventually our hearts are weighted down with so much restlessness and lack of satisfaction from our eating that we feel shame and guilt. How do we cure shame and guilt? We eat. And the cycle begins again.
How do we break the cycle? (I am still working on this part of the theory!) We must learn to sit with our restlessness for a moment. Talk to it. Be nice but firm. Asking it what it really wants. Write to it, if talking doesn't work. Hell, sing to it, if that works. Somewhere deep in our hearts there is an answer to our question. There is truth. We do know what we need, we've just anesthetized it for so long with food, it may take time and patience to get to the truth.
It won't be easy. It will be uncomfortable, and scary, and frustrating at times. Feeling our true feelings can be truly overwhelming after so many years of eating them away instead. When we eat to fill our heart, we become numb. Numb to what it and we, ourselves, really need. Deaf to what it's saying and blind to what it's showing us. Once we begin to patiently ask our hearts what it needs from us, we begin to learn that it's most definitely not food.
Today is a day I need to talk gently and listen carefully to my heart as it's been trying to tell me something.
I am listening little heart and I promise not to try and shut you up with food.
There are three kinds of hunger:
- Stomach Hunger
- Head Hunger
- Heart Hunger
This is actual, physical hunger. Our body telling you "Hey you! Running low on fuel down here, please send some pronto." This is the hunger where we can feel and hear our innards gurgle in request of nutrients. This is the simplest form of hunger.
Head Hunger
This hunger doesn't live in our belly. This one lives in our brain. This is where cravings come from. We are flipping channels on the t.v. and stop on the Food Network a little too long and all of a sudden we think we need some macaroni and cheese. Or maybe it's while we are walking down the mall one lovely afternoon buying ourself some new post weight loss fashions and we smell the Cinnabon wafting down the corridor. Without even knowing it, we find ourself drawn down the corridor, past all the cute clothes, to the line of drones waiting to satisfy their sweet tooth with the ooey-gooey goodness.
Sometimes we are aware when we switch into head hunger mode, sometimes not. Companies are very very good about being subtle in their mind tricks to get us to buy and eat their products. We are also far more susceptible to head hunger when we haven't yet addressed the stomach hunger that may be coming over the horizon. This is why it's so important to really listen to your stomach hunger and make sure you never let it go too far unchecked or else your head might start to take over.
Heart Hunger
This is the most complex and complicated of the three hungers because so often we don't know exactly what triggered it. This is not due to actual physical need or being triggered by outside stimulus. Rather this hunger lives in our hearts. This is the hunger that is so hard for so many of us to see or even feel because by quenching the hunger with food we subdue whatever it is we are really craving, at least for a short while.
This is what so many over eaters call boredom, but what I prefer to call restlessness. If we were truly just bored, we'd go do something, not eat something. Instead we are restless, we don't know what we want so we eat to fill the void. The problem with this? Food isn't really what we want. Since it's not what our heart truly desires, we just keep doing it and doing it and doing it to no avail. Eventually our hearts are weighted down with so much restlessness and lack of satisfaction from our eating that we feel shame and guilt. How do we cure shame and guilt? We eat. And the cycle begins again.
How do we break the cycle? (I am still working on this part of the theory!) We must learn to sit with our restlessness for a moment. Talk to it. Be nice but firm. Asking it what it really wants. Write to it, if talking doesn't work. Hell, sing to it, if that works. Somewhere deep in our hearts there is an answer to our question. There is truth. We do know what we need, we've just anesthetized it for so long with food, it may take time and patience to get to the truth.
It won't be easy. It will be uncomfortable, and scary, and frustrating at times. Feeling our true feelings can be truly overwhelming after so many years of eating them away instead. When we eat to fill our heart, we become numb. Numb to what it and we, ourselves, really need. Deaf to what it's saying and blind to what it's showing us. Once we begin to patiently ask our hearts what it needs from us, we begin to learn that it's most definitely not food.
Today is a day I need to talk gently and listen carefully to my heart as it's been trying to tell me something.
I am listening little heart and I promise not to try and shut you up with food.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
An Uphill Battle
Positivity ain't easy! You'd think it would be but for some strange reason it's not.
Right now I am struggling. Despite relishing in my ah-ha moments yesterday, I am really struggling.
At the moment, my life is far from what I want it to be and to put it bluntly, it sucks. Not being where you want to be in life is a miserable feeling. I know that I am the only one who can change it and I have been working on it (see my other blog) but it's not there yet and won't be for a while. I am unhappy and what do I do when I am unhappy? I eat. Surgery or not. I eat.
To make matters worse, I am currently working in my parents' bakery. Yes, you read that right, BAKERY. Needless to say, it's not the ideal place for someone like myself to be spend 40 hours a week. There are goodies all around. Some days I am really good and don't touch a thing. Other days, like today, I am constantly munching on a cookie here, cupcake there and before I know it, I have probably consumed 5 times what I should have for the day. Then I begin my lovely shame cycle.
I know that eating is my coping mechanism. I get that. I also know that while at some point it was beneficial to me, it no longer is. I am trying to figure out just how to love myself enough to get to the point where I can cope without turning to food. So far, it seems rather elusive. I know what I need to do but still I struggle.
So this was one of my forewarned woe-is-me blogs because today I am struggling...
Right now I am struggling. Despite relishing in my ah-ha moments yesterday, I am really struggling.
At the moment, my life is far from what I want it to be and to put it bluntly, it sucks. Not being where you want to be in life is a miserable feeling. I know that I am the only one who can change it and I have been working on it (see my other blog) but it's not there yet and won't be for a while. I am unhappy and what do I do when I am unhappy? I eat. Surgery or not. I eat.
To make matters worse, I am currently working in my parents' bakery. Yes, you read that right, BAKERY. Needless to say, it's not the ideal place for someone like myself to be spend 40 hours a week. There are goodies all around. Some days I am really good and don't touch a thing. Other days, like today, I am constantly munching on a cookie here, cupcake there and before I know it, I have probably consumed 5 times what I should have for the day. Then I begin my lovely shame cycle.
I know that eating is my coping mechanism. I get that. I also know that while at some point it was beneficial to me, it no longer is. I am trying to figure out just how to love myself enough to get to the point where I can cope without turning to food. So far, it seems rather elusive. I know what I need to do but still I struggle.
So this was one of my forewarned woe-is-me blogs because today I am struggling...
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Food and Thoughts - A Cage for Emotions
One of the biggest challenges in this whole WLS journey has been emotional eating. Let's be honest, for most obese people, a lot of our issues with food stem from something deeper then just the good taste of banana cream pie.
I am no different. I KNOW that all of my "issues" with food stem from my emotions. I KNOW that I eat when I am feeling stressed, lonely, tired, bored, sad, or even happy. I KNOW all of this but I am starting to realize that while I KNOW all this, I have not let myself FEEL it for years.
In order to protect myself from myself I turn to food. But, I don't just turn to food, I also disengage. I live in my head. I am an intellectual type person. I think and think and over-think everything. In a way this is a HUGE defense mechanism. Thinking is my way of disengaging. I can rationalize my emotions and therefor not have to actually feel them and, in turn, deal with them.
I THINK I am dealing with them by thinking about them but really I am just rationalizing, which is definitely not the same as dealing with them. In order to face ones emotional shortcomings (though I am not sure I like that word as it has a negative connotation - will have to work on finding a more fitting word), one must actually face them. I am just now starting to work on that. It's a slow and arduous process as I am trying to retrain long standing habits that I once believed were helping.
I know now that through both food and thinking, I believed I was helping myself, preserving myself from feeling too much. The thing is, there is no such thing as feeling too much. There is no emotion too big that I can't handle. (Again, this is my brain talking. My heart still doesn't fully believe or grasp this concept.)
So, how am I combating this? I can't really put it in to words as the process is all still new to me. I am trying to listen to my heart more. When I feel an urge to eat or zone out into thinking too much, I try and stop for a moment to be present in whatever it is that is causing me to want to retreat. Most of the time this is very hard as my instinct is to flee into my head or the ice cream bowl. I've had a couple mini-breakthrough moments but it is still very much a battle for me.
This is where I am right now in the process. I am working through and trying to better identify what I am truly FEELING and let myself actually FEEL it, even the bad stuff. If I need to break down in order to breakthrough, so be it. I know once I better learn to let myself FEEL just what is actually there rather then trying to eat or think it away, I will be able to better move on and let go. Because really, until I can do all that, I am just rehashing and falling victim to my own caged emotions.
I am no different. I KNOW that all of my "issues" with food stem from my emotions. I KNOW that I eat when I am feeling stressed, lonely, tired, bored, sad, or even happy. I KNOW all of this but I am starting to realize that while I KNOW all this, I have not let myself FEEL it for years.
In order to protect myself from myself I turn to food. But, I don't just turn to food, I also disengage. I live in my head. I am an intellectual type person. I think and think and over-think everything. In a way this is a HUGE defense mechanism. Thinking is my way of disengaging. I can rationalize my emotions and therefor not have to actually feel them and, in turn, deal with them.
I THINK I am dealing with them by thinking about them but really I am just rationalizing, which is definitely not the same as dealing with them. In order to face ones emotional shortcomings (though I am not sure I like that word as it has a negative connotation - will have to work on finding a more fitting word), one must actually face them. I am just now starting to work on that. It's a slow and arduous process as I am trying to retrain long standing habits that I once believed were helping.
I know now that through both food and thinking, I believed I was helping myself, preserving myself from feeling too much. The thing is, there is no such thing as feeling too much. There is no emotion too big that I can't handle. (Again, this is my brain talking. My heart still doesn't fully believe or grasp this concept.)
So, how am I combating this? I can't really put it in to words as the process is all still new to me. I am trying to listen to my heart more. When I feel an urge to eat or zone out into thinking too much, I try and stop for a moment to be present in whatever it is that is causing me to want to retreat. Most of the time this is very hard as my instinct is to flee into my head or the ice cream bowl. I've had a couple mini-breakthrough moments but it is still very much a battle for me.
This is where I am right now in the process. I am working through and trying to better identify what I am truly FEELING and let myself actually FEEL it, even the bad stuff. If I need to break down in order to breakthrough, so be it. I know once I better learn to let myself FEEL just what is actually there rather then trying to eat or think it away, I will be able to better move on and let go. Because really, until I can do all that, I am just rehashing and falling victim to my own caged emotions.
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