h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks, Az, for the inspiration! I've just eaten half of those things pictured. Well, I was always visually stimulated.

Last night I had a bad night. I came home from a crap day at work in hysterics, and scarfed a pound or so of pasta with butter and salt.

Today I had a yogurt and some pretzels, then came home and had a bottle of champagne, two White Russians, and two beers for dinner. Not a very healthy approach either evening. All I can tell you is last night I felt crap, and the pasts soothed me. Tonight, I felt cheerful, and the alcohol accentuated it.

Either way, healthy habits and a decent figure seem hopeless.

hi psychocandy,

How's the head? I just realized that I didn't reply to your previous posting.

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It wasn't *me* who thought I looked scary when I was very thin, it was my boyfriend. I thought I looked great, not as though my head was way too big for my body and my arms looked like sticks.

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Well, that was the point I was trying to make. That, strictly physically speaking, gaining or losing weight is simply a question of calorie intake and calorie burning. So it *should* be the easiest thing in the world to maintain a healthy body weight, especially as overeating or eating without hunger are also not natural responses. So, it is the emotional factor that f**ks up our natural reactions to food.

This is why I think going on diets is counter-productive. If someone is using food as an emotional crutch it hardly seems sensible to suddenly whip the crutch away and replacing displaced feelings of need and sadness (for example) with ones of self-castigation.

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If I knew that I probably never would have started this thread. You see, this is what I am trying to find out. How to actually treat the real issue and not just the symptoms. I know that it probably would be possible for me to start eating much less and exercising more, using the same old techniques I used to use (mostly denying how I am feeling) and lose weight. And then? I would be thinner but with the same food relationship problems.

My theory (and one I found supported in that small book I mentioned) is that if you can understand the emotional urges that drive you to either eat without real hunger or eat too much, then this is the first step to truly understanding the problem. Because the problem isn't the food, it's how we eat. And then, once you can get back into a more natural, less neurotic, way of eating, your body will find its own natural weight. Without dieting. But the weight loss (or weight gain) should be thought of as one of the results and not the main motivation. The point being to gently ease the emotional crutch away while replacing the need for the crutch with a more positive and healtier means of support.

So, a question for you. Did you truly feel 'soothed' after eating tons of pasta? Whenever I eat too much I find I just go kind of numb. And did the alcohol actually accentuate your cheerfulness and, if so, why wasn't just the bottle of champagne enough 'accentuation'? Just curious. In a way it doesn't make sense that one would drink too much because they feel cheerful, but I have found that it isn't only negative emotions that trigger the need to self-medicate or overindulge.

Well, off to finish my now. Hope that wasn't *too* long and rambling.

az

sorry had a really busy few days.

Psychocandy: did you plan to eat pasta, crave pasta, or it was the first thing that your eye fell on?

For me, when I eat too much of one thing, it's because I have a sudden and overwhelming desire to eat that very thing. So if I am burning to eat pasta, and someone gives me 26 mars bars, I won't touch them. But if I got unlimited pasta, I'd eat until I felt sick.

And then I'd feel really bad afterwards.

But I'm managing to control all that pretty well by not having too much food in the house.

How are you feeling now?

Kelli: sorry too to hear about your work thing. That's what I had last year, and totally uncharastically because of the immense stress I just stopped eating. Not planned so it would go: Yoghurt fruit & granola for breakfast. Then I'd take a cheese salad sandwich for lunch and an apple. Then I'd eat the apple around three and either bring the sandwich home and eat it, or leave it for the next day and eat nothing. This went on for ages, and I didn't realise anything was wrong until one of the girls at work said "man, you're skinny". Now I'Ve never been more than about 10lbs overweight, and I've always had slim legs and a fairly ok bum, but my boobs are huge - and my clothes tend to hang off them and make me look fatter.

But still, it was strange to suddenly notice that all my clothes were way too big. I only believed it had happened when I put on my favourite trousers one day and rushed to work, only to have them falling down my hips all day. Luckily I was wearing a long shirt.

Anyway, all this whiffle is to say be careful. Although... the upside is now I have the weight off, I look and feel a lot better. And that's the dangerous thing: my eating habits have improved, but I've put on 2kg and now I want them off, and I can feel myself slipping into the bad eating habits.

My relationship with food has now changed. I know that I'm not going to fall over and die if I skip lunch and don't eat a big meal that evening. So now I feel in control, but it's almost control-freakery gone wrong.

Ah, I have no idea what I'm saying here.

I hope everyone is fine?
How about a group ?

Hi there, Az and Sho. My head's all right today (i.e., no hangover!), but my stomach's not terribly pleased with me.

The drinks really only did make me more hyper, but that's usually the case. I'm kind of weird (kind of?) in that certain drinks, especially stuff with a lower alcohol content like I had last night, tend to perk me up, and caffeinated beverages usually knock me out.

Thursday night after I wolfed down that pasta, I did feel better. I had a really upsetting day and was emotionally distraught, and what was going through my head foodwise was "I know what will make me feel better- I'll eat the rest of the pasta I couldn't finish last night". Of course, I ate it much too fast to really enjoy it, and I was also talking on the phone while I did so I wasn't paying attention anyway. I suspect that my feeling better afterward had less to do with carbohydrate-induced mellowness than with having someone I love give me the emotional support I needed.

It doesn't help when you've been too busy to eat all day, and come home ravenously hungry, does it? I tend to get what one of my friends calls "hungry eyes", and eat either too much, or too quickly. Eating too quickly is another bad habit I'm trying to break, because I find that when I skip meals and then scarf one down, I eat far more than necessary, and usually wind up overly stuffed.

I'm not feeling terribly guilty about either night's overindulgence, but I do want to learn to rely less on certain crutches if I can.

Sho, I also try to stay in control by not having a lot of food in the house, and not bringing certain foods home at all. I also feel that when I am in control of my eating, it's more control-freakery than actually being "in control", and when I give into temptation, I feel such a failure that I allow myself to lose control completely. It's an all-or-nothing kind of thing with me. Then again, most things are with me... maybe that's what I need to work at first?

Well I've rambled more than long enough... thank you all for your insight. I wish I could offer some myself and be of more help, instead of hogging it all for myself! I hope everyone is fine, too, and that you are all enjoying your weekend.

The control freakery aspect is the one thing that frightens me about my attitude.

I have to have food in the house for the children,but I don't have to feed them apart from at the weekends, so to compensate for me being a working mum (and having the guilt that goes with that) I cook them nice meals. Which I feel bad about if I join in.

Stupid, isn't it?

But the controlling part of eating is part of an annorexic's armoury, isn't it? and that's what worries me. Not the part about being able to stop myself after two pieces of chocolate (becuase, I can if I really want to) it's the bit about controlling my eating so much that I enjoy being hungry because of it.

And here's a tip from a serial dieter (they haven't ever worked): if you eat, make sure that you are doing nothing else at all.

I have sabotaged many a diet and many a nice sandwich by calling my mum while eating. It means that I don't notice that I've eaten, and even if I was hungry, I don't actually notice that I have. meaning that I'm stuck with two choices. Disappointment, or eating more.

re: control freakery.

As part of my continuing endeavour to stop thinking of food as the problem I always keep lots and lots of food in the house, and especially the foods I like most.

For me this stops me thinking of these food items as 'the enemy' or as if it's the food that controls my actions. Also, if there is lots and lots of what I like, I know I can have just a bit when I feel like it and not feel compelled to finish off the whole lot in order to 'get rid of it'. If there is soooooooooo much of it that I couldn't possibly eat it all then the compulsion to overdo it becomes less.

Sho - I agree that it is much nicer to only eat when one is eating. Well okay, if one is eating with someone else, some nice conversation goes well with both of you pausing to enjoy the food. But talking on the phone or doing something else that takes your attention away from the pleasure of your food does leave one with a sense of being full but not fullfilled.

az

Full but not fullfilled? Freudian slip? Meant to say full but not satisfied.

az

Nice catch!

"Filled but not fulfilled"... that's too funny, Azahar. But I think there just might be something to that.

>But the controlling part of eating is part of an annorexic's armoury, isn't it? and that's what worries me. Not the part about being able to stop myself after two pieces of chocolate (becuase, I can if I really want to) it's the bit about controlling my eating so much that I enjoy being hungry because of it.<

I worry about that, too. Not especially enjoying eating wouldn't be so bad, because then at least you're only eating for nutritional purposes. But enjoying hunger is something else.

People catch me up sometimes, when I say I've been "good", meaning I've counted every calorie and stayed within my self-imposed daily allowance. (I won't tell you what that is, it's unhealthy and I know it already) I count the calories in chewing gum, vitamins, and even toothpaste, and deduct it from my permissible daily intake. Why does martyring one's self to hunger feel so good?

I haven't counted a calorie since I was 15.

az

Aaaaaaaaargh, this thread for me really is NOT about losing weight. It's about how to eat without having the concept of being thin or fat come into it at all. It's about learning how to eat when one is hungry and stop eating when one is full. It's about getting back to a place before it all got f**ked up. You know?

And of course it's fine that other people talk about their emotional food relationships in terms of feeling fat or whatever.

But for myself, I am really trying to get out of this 'diet' vicious circle and the concept of food controlling my life and how I feel about myself as a person apart from FOOD. I am actually almost there - I started the thread to try and get some more input, more info, more understanding about *why* people eat emotionally. In an effort to understand why and how I eat myself.

Being thin means sh*t. Being happy with who you are and how you look and being able to enjoy food and drink in a natural and healthy way means EVERYTHING.

az

sorry for contributing to the derailment of your thread.

The problem being, of course, that for many there is a conection between their emotional relationship with food and their own body image.

But this morning I was thinking of you. We had porridge for breakfast. And it made me feel all warm and cosy and about 7 again, because for some strange reason it tasted just how my Grandma used to make it. For one reason: I ran out of fresh milk during the cooking and added cream.

It was lovely, for about 5 minutes I was in a very lovely place.

Sho,

Heavens! There aren't any 'rules' for this thread at all. And I know tht emotional eating habits often focus on being FAT and going on horrible diets and such.

You haven't derailed the thread at all , nor has anyone else. It's just that if people get toooooooooooo into talking about fatness and sh*t like that I would like to pull it back to what I hope this thread will help people with. Which is how to understand how our emotions effect how we eat, how to not only recognize but make friends with those emotions, how to - for once! - stop thinking about if you can fit into that extra thin skirt or how other people think of you. It is something that truly drives me mental when I hear people (men and women) go on about. Because the FOOD is NOT the ISSUE.

All comments are welcome, but please allow me my own frustration.



az

Sorry if I contibuted to your frustration. It's not about being fat for me, because I'm not, really. It's all about figuring out the emotional aspect. Why some foods make me feel good (including ones I don't especially like) when I eat them. Why eating well or enjoying food makes me feel "bad" or guilty, and going hungry makes me feel "good", as in "in control" or "behaving myself". Why my obsessive tendencies have taken over every aspect of life, including my eating habits.

I guess I'm probably trying to recognize the emotions involved not to make friends with them, but in order to stop having them. In other words, to control them, too. I'm not being of much help here at all, and I apologize for going on about it.

psychocandy,

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And what if you thought you are probably going to have these very same feelings all your life until the day you die? Because this will probably be the case. I don't think it is possible to stop having these feelings, but it is possible to accept and understand the feelings so that they stop being something we feel a need to avoid and ignore.

Yes, you could continue trying to control them. And I think we all know how well that has worked up till now. For all of us.

The thing is, we are talking about a part of ourselves. Something we are trying to either deny or control, something that is a part of us yet we keep saying this is a BAD thing. You see, we cannot run away from who we are. The emotions are there. They will probably always be there. They are a part of who we are. Whether we like it or not. We cannot run away from ourselves. So why not turn around and get to know that part of us instead of running away, or trying to control it, or telling it that it is BAD. It isn't bad. It's just confused. We *can* actually teach that confused part of us to feel accepted and less confused. We can incorporate it into who we are now. But not just by taking the food away.

Sorry, bit of a rant and ramble.

az

Thank you, Az. That's exactly why I'm here, to learn strategies for teaching that confused part of me to feel accepted instead of bad. Trying to ignore the bad feelings only exacerbates them, and the guilt and frustration. I really *do* want to learn to live with them instead of trying to control them. In the end, they only wind up controlling me.

I don't mean to come across like I'm whining or ranting. I do tend to ramble and not make much sense. Emotions have that effect on me sometimes!