An Excuse to Eat

 Binge eating, diet, Eating Disorders, emotional eating, food, food guilt, food habits, Food Memories, food mistakes, limiting calories, Losing weight, relationship with food, snacking, snacks, weight loss  14 Responses »
Jun 052013
 

You should hear the kind of rationalization that goes on in my head sometimes. You may read my blog and think I have this weight loss and maintenance thing down! Most of the time I do. But I’m not perfect and I can be just as bad as the next guy who struggles with their weight. Trust me.

One example I can give comes from the time period where I was trying to lose weight. I was probably at 60-70 pounds lost so far and not far from reaching my goal weight. I don’t know what was really going on during this time period that triggered this but I went through a phase of midnight eating. I’m not proud of it. I’m glad I lived alone at the time so I didn’t have to justify to my partner why I was stuffing my face with rice krispie treats at 1 a.m. but maybe that would have been a deterrent. Anyway, I went through this phase and for some reason THOSE CALORIES DIDN’T COUNT. Don’t ask me how I rationalized that. For some reason, anything I ate between midnight and 2 a.m. didn’t count and I didn’t record it in my food journal. Totally bad. I was sabotaging myself (and this is probably one of the reasons I had such a long plateau around this weight).

Think about the last time you ate something and didn’t lot it in your food journal. Why didn’t it “count” for you?

Justified

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I use the word justified?

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Sorry, I’m not talking about Raylon Givens when I used the word “justified.”  I’m talking about all those times we ate something that self-sabotaged our progress and justified our reason for doing so. I am not immune to this! I do it all the time. When I’m cooking dinner with Michael and I nibble and snack and bite on random things while we cook. I’m much better now at including those calories because you BET they count!

“I ran an extra mile today.”

“Work sucked today.”

“I’ve eaten so good all week long!” <–So why don’t we KEEP eating good?!?!

“Swimming in the pool actually burns MORE calories than I think it does because of the temperature!”

The list can go on and on and on as to why we make allowances for the extra snacking. The question to ask ourselves is this: why am I keeping myself from being successful? That damn handful of Reeses’s Pieces don’t taste nearly as good for the 20 seconds I’ll eat them, as reaching my goal will feel!

Entitled

I think this is the biggest trap we all fall into and I think a lot of it has to do with our culture and rituals as a family. How many times have you felt entitled to eat? What I mean by this is the Christmas cookies, the pumpkin pie and extra stuffing at Thanksgiving, the chocolate on Valentine’s Day…what about Superbowl? Or the 4th of July? There are excuses year round we can use to make ourselves feel entitled to overeating.

Check out this post: Emotional Eating: Do You Feel Entitled to Eat? Emotional eating opens up a whole bigger can of worms.

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It’s a vicious cycle. I can’t tell you how many times I got sucked into this cycle when I was a binge eater. Eating half a pizza by myself followed with a carton of ice cream and then wondering why I feel sick and miserable…only to feel even more discouraged and disgusted with myself which leads to more comfort eating.

BREAK THE CYCLE! Instead of focusing on the foods I couldn’t eat or beating myself up for mistakes I made, I focused on my goal and my timeline and I changed my thinking to the positive: I CAN DO THIS. I can lose weight. I can resist the temptation of junk food. I KNOW I CAN. I said it over and over until I believed it and it got easier to resist the junk food.

I’ll Start on Monday

I have a friend that falls into this category. For as long as I’ve known her, she’s been starting a new diet on Monday. As a result of this, she often binges before the diet starts. This is a hard habit to get into because not only does it imply that we’ll be starting a super restrictive diet that we’re most likely going to fail at, we’re probably packing on extra pounds before we even start!

What worked for me to stop this mentality was to realize that I was not on a diet, I was changing my life and creating a new lifestyle. This wasn’t temporary and I wasn’t looking for a quick fix. I was changing EVERYTHING. That helped me stay “on the wagon” when I was tempted to fall off and just start over again. And you know what? Once I started losing a lot of weight, I realized that I had worked really really hard for that success and I didn’t want to mess up and fail! I wanted to keep moving forward.

Don’t wait til Monday. Start today. You’re worth it!

Change

Why not have the reason to eat be “I’m hungry”?

Simple, isn’t it? It’s a hard thing to retrain our minds to listen to what our bodies are telling us. What helped me was eating more whole, natural foods. Also, running and biking helped me look at food as FUEL. Once I changed my mindset to wanting to eat the RIGHT fuel for my body to succeed in athletics, it became super easy to recognize the right signals.

It’s not going to become easy overnight, and it will certainly be something you have to work at. But isn’t it worth it? I thought it was!

QUESTION: Do you make excuses for your eating?

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Food Enablers

 Binge eating, Eating Disorders, Eating out, fast food, food, food enablers, food habits, Food Memories, food mistakes, Friends, limiting calories, Losing weight, Obesity, temptations, weight loss  12 Responses »
Mar 282013
 

I’ve been a fan of the Howard Stern Show for like 15 years. What people may be surprised about is that Howard is a health food fanatic and also a runner. He cares about his body and keeping fit. Robin is famous for her wacky fad diets (the maple syrup/lemon juice concoction and then the green drink fads). Well, there are two people on the show that do not care about their health–in fact, they LOVE fast food. Love is a weak word, I’d say more obsessed with it.

John Hein and Jason Kaplan are the most vocal about their love for fast food. In fact, they host a show on Sirius entirely about Fast Food AND they eat their favorites on air while they debate what is better. While it’s comical, it’s also a bit disturbing.

Recently Howard teased these guys because they sit in the back office while he’s on the air and have lengthy, involved debates about what fast food is better and where they should all go to lunch that day. These conversations can go on all morning long in preparation for the lunch hour. Then these guys go out to fast food together. Jason discussed at length about everything he puts mayo on.

Howard commented that Jason is “bigger than ever” and I believe that John is diabetic. Yet these things don’t deter them from eating fast food every single day (sometimes multiple times a day). What struck me as the most obvious is that John and Jason were totally feeding off each other’s food addictions. They discussed where they’d be eating and they would go together.

Food enablers are the friends or family that we share bad habits with. We ALL have friends who are the enablers.  These are the people that share our bad habits and feel content to indulge in the bad habits with us because it’s comfortable. We don’t judge each other, it’s safe and easy.

I’ve had food enablers in my life. I had one friend in my mid-twenties that I went clubbing with. While she didn’t really have a weight problem, she loved fast food. After dancing and clubbing Friday and Saturday nights we’d stumble to the nearest Wendy’s or Taco Bell at 2 am (or a Portland favorite: The Hotcake House) and eat a bunch of junk food.

Two of my closest friends have also been “enablers” but we’ve managed the work through that during my weight loss journey and our friendship remained intake despite my change in habits.

BACHELORETTE

When Rachel and I were in high school I remember asking her “Are you hungry?” and her response was “Always.” Or I’d say, “Can you eat?” and she’d say “Definitely.” And we’d happily head over to Beth’s Cafe or Denny’s and squat for hours eating and talking. I still smile from the happy memories of those days. Were these bad habits? Sure. But Rachel was also one of my biggest supporters when I decided to lose 100 pounds and she knew that encouraging me to eat healthy and change my habits was how I’d be successful. She was a true friend that wanted me to be healthy. Our friendship survived my transformation as a result.

My other closest friend, Robyn, wasn’t really a food enabler but she struggled with her weight just like I did. We were both at our heaviest at the same time. While we didn’t encourage each other to eat badly, we both struggled at the same time. It was like having a partner in crime to complain to about weight issues. What I love most about how our relationship changed was that we both lost the weight and kept it off. Not only that, our relationship became about fitness. Whenever we hang out these days it’s usually a gym session together, or a fitness class. I love it and so does Robyn! We both get our workouts in and we can catch up and spend time together. It’s fun to have someone who encourages you to do “a few more squats” or add some weight to the machine. Healthy competition works.

Food Enablers aren’t necessarily evil people. They aren’t always setting us up to fail. Sometimes it’s just the dynamic of the relationship. We all have those friends that fit a certain niche. The friends that we usually go to movies with, the friends we workout with, the friends that like cooking and will happily bring freshly baked cookies to your house, the friends who like to party.

The hard part with Food Enablers is changing the dynamic of the relationship without losing the relationship. Not all of the friendships will remain intact but I think it’s important for health to be the priority.

QUESTION: Do you or have you had food enablers in your life?

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