The mind is a terrible thing to waste... isn't that how the saying goes?
It may seem to be physical, this whole eating and exercising thing, but anyone who has ever struggled with becoming healthy knows that it is mental, that it is all in the mind. I think that for me, one component to dietary success will be the reprogramming of my mind. I've identified over the past few years that I enjoy overindulging myself. What's worse is that the more I tell myself no, the more likely I am to overeat.
I would like to be the kind of person who can cook healthy meals, perhaps count calories, and just stay on task. But that isn't me--at least, not right now. It's unfortunate, in some ways, that a food addiction is not like a drug addiction. At least with heroin, once you get off, all you have to do is stay away. With food, you need it to survive. Every day, you have to tempt yourself with at least some part of it if you want to stay alive. I'm not wishing a drug addiction on myself, but it's hard to stop being addicted to something when you need it no matter what.
But backtracking a bit: I would like to be able to better control myself. I would like to be able to actually listen to myself when I say, "Hey, don't eat that. You don't want that." So, I have come up with a little mind trick, a mind retraining, that will hopefully prove successful in this new lifestyle attempt.
I am not going to count calories or limit the amount of foods that I can eat. Instead, I will only let myself eat at certain times. I am sure that this might be the key in helping to eliminate my boredom eating. Let's talk a bit about boredom eating, shall we?
Whenever I am at home, I eat a lot. I eat even if I am not hungry. It's bad because when I am home during the weekends, sometimes my only motivation to get out of bed is for more food. This is pathetic. I let food encourage my slothfulness. It's almost as if the two go hand-in-hand: food feeds laziness. But... for the most part, I have never identified myself as unhappy as I am eating. My thought process is not usually "Oh, I am so sad... time for ice cream!" So, I do not think I am an emotional eater, although I have used that as an excuse before. Instead, I am a boredom eater. I happened upon an article after doing a Google Search (Key Word: Boredom Eating) and I found this excerpt to ring very true in my life:
"Boredom is a complex emotion and an important signal that your life is not being lived to its fullest, most enjoyable expression... Eating can serve to distract you from your conflict and the ensuing boredom. Eating can perhaps ease the tension for a short period of time. However, no matter how much you eat or how often, the conflict inside you remains. A helpful perspective is to realize that your boredom indicates an important desire for personal growth into new ways of thinking, acting, and living. Boredom invites you to take a breath and delve a bit deeper to explore personal passions and desires. Eating to suppress your boredom only serves to put your life on hold." [Stop Boredom Eating]
For some time now, I have known that I am eating out of boredom. Why? I was not sure, but I did know that there was something on some subconscious level that was holding me back and keeping me doing the things that I did not want to do. This article makes a lot of sense, though. I am at such a place in my life where I want to live differently. I realize I have a lot of potential and I also realize that it's me that's holding me back from having the life that I crave. And that's hard to deal with. But instead of doing something about it, I continue to be stuck in the same rut that I have been in for years. I suppose that's where food comes in.. as a "solution" to my problems. It gives me that temporary rush, that temporary satisfaction. The stimulation from food temporarily satiates my constant desire to be better and to be doing more. But, as the article said, doing that is only putting my life on hold.
This is a very good thing for me to recognize because now I can begin to combat it. And the way to do it just hit me about an hour or so ago...
Around 1pm or so, I stumbled out of bed and quickly made a bowl of Ravoli, compliments of Chef Boyardee. Two minutes of microwave cooking and I was ready to go. I told myself that I would only eat half, as two servings were 500 calories and I did not want to consume that much in one sitting. But as I watched "Lost" from ABC Online's streaming free episodes, I rapidly devoured the whole bowl. "It's okay," I told myself. "I just will make sure I do not have another meal until at least 5pm." I was not worried because with 500 calories in my system, I should not be hungry for a while.
But then 2:30pm rolls around and I am hankering for a snack. So, I tell myself, "Erika, wait until at least 4:30pm and you can have some ice cream." And that's when something clicked with me. I realized, "Hey, if I make myself wait to eat instead of indulging myself whenever I have the desire, well, I might be able to retrain my mind and get some more control over my eating." If I can at least control when I eat, it's a step in the right direction to controlling what I eat.
So, I am going to try this new time-eating thing out. If I can actually make it past the designated time I assign to eat, then more kudos to me! I am not a slave to food. And if I actually just listen to myself, pace myself, and control myself, I know I will feel better.
And look what I did while I was waiting for my ice cream? I wrote. I did something productive. Instead of just going to the kitchen, scarfing down ice cream, and then laying in bed to watch TV and fall asleep, I actually did something that I have been wanting to do more of: write.
I have a long way to go, but somehow, I feel I am on the right track.
from my original blog at 3FC.
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