Eating

[Hannah]

I saw the issue of "emotional eating" come up in the Clutter? discussion and I thought it's important enough to be a discussion of its own with things like clutter and whatever else being subcategories to approaching it. First I'd like to say that the term "emotional eating", while it has its uses, is a problem because it's my personal belief that it's a rare person who does not feel any emotions while eating and who eats only to satisfy hunger or nutritional needs.

[Hannah]

Now to get the ball rolling, though overeating is not my main problem, nor is eating unhealthfully most of the time, I do have this problem with what feels like my bloodsugar when I'm out and with boredom and stress when I'm out or in. Plus my appetite has grown, not diminished, with age. So yesterday, I had to go to the DMV, and I remembered from last time when I had to have a snack for emotional and bloodsugar reasons that they have a snack bar in the lobby and these chocolate covered almonds I craved. Arduous task and I was going to do whatever it took to make it easier on myself. However, this time they did not have the chocolate covered almonds, and nothing else really called to me -- except for the hot dogs. When I got home, I found out that hot dogs have 8 Weight Watchers points and I had pretty much blown my points for the day. That was enough to motivate me not to get any more hot dogs. The same thing happened when I had to go to the post office last week, only that time it was the small cheeseburger at Burger King. Now, I also have that boredom and stress eating difficulty when I'm home, but I found ways around it. If I'm home all day I make a point of giving in to hunger as early as it strikes. I find this calms it later on. But I have to be hungry, or feel weak, or even have a craving. I have to want to eat, otherwise it doesn't work. And what I do after I do that, the later parts of the day, is I start tapering off by eating light things often, whenever I get that snacking feeling. Light things obviously means fruit, vegetables and salads. They don't have to be raw, though I do push myself to eat raw food without depriving myself of other stuff I might feel like more. But it's important to work with one's food preferences, that's the whole point I'm trying to make here. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at the DMV or post office, but I know I have no wish to eat my day's allotment there. Anyway at home, when trying to eat light, any cooked vegetable recipe works. There's also several Weight Watchers recipes for 0 point soups that are great. I make adjustments to these recipes to fit my tastes. If I'm really in craving mode, I will make a piece of 40 calorie toast and spread Herb and Garlic Tofutti on it because I like carbs and salt more than sweets, but I get sweet cravings too and I have a lot of dessert-type recipes I found. And I drink a lot of decaf and tea. I read about a study where chimps who ate more at night gained no more weight than those who ate during the day. So so much for that theory. If you can go the whole day without feeling hungry like I used to be when I was younger, apparently it doesn't matter. Space it out that way. But if you're having trouble making big changes to the way you're eating, find small ones. Work with your dominant needs.

[Dan Goodwin]

My first thought Hannah is can't you carry some healthy snacks with you, rather than have to resort to the temptation of hot dogs or burgers?

[Hannah]

I've kind of tried that and it didn't work because of this emotional eating issue. But, you know, it's because I thought, oh, I'll bring an apple. If I know I'm going to be stressed, and need a treat, I need to find the substitute that will work, that's my whole point here. I might try bringing a couple of fun-sized chocolates (will have to look things up -- maybe even a whole candy bar might work better than that friggin hot dog), AND an apple, AND a small hard roll with Tofutti -- I don't know. I have to work it out. All I know is I don't want to eat my day's worth in one sitting because I LIKE TO EAT. That's what I call working with one's preferences.

[Dan Goodwin]

So would you take a variety of snacks because you might have a craving for any one of them? For example just taking an apple wouldn't be any good if you didn't want to eat an apple, and you wanted chocolate.

[Hannah]

Yeah, I think that would be it.

You know, a few years ago I went on that Cabbage Soup diet. Only I didn't eat the soup because it didn't sound good, even though I'm sure it's good to eat the soup for the reason that it fills you up. But for me I just figured I'd rather eat the ingredients separately. Anyway, basically five days a week all you eat is fruit and/or vegetables, and my Dad was really leaning on me to lose weight and I was desperate so I tried it. So I was like, well, what am I going to eat? So when I went to the store, it wasn't just like, okay, I feel like a side of salad or a potato with dinner tonight and straight to those. It made me take a long look at ALL the fruits and vegetables and consider them and what I could do with them. And that's what started me on this substitution idea. It was like, well, since this is all I can eat, which ones would I prefer? That led me to discover there's a WORLD of food out there.

[Dan Goodwin]

I agree, I've discovered far more about food in the last 5 years or so than I knew about and ate before.

I guess there has to be some forward planning involved, and while I personally would hate to map out exactly what I will eat at every meal for the next seven days, it makes sense to have in a range of ingredients that cover all the dishes I do like to cook and eat, then each day go with what I have the urge and inspiration to cook.

It's like anything else creative. Painting for example. I couldn't say "Tomorrow I'm going to paint a picture of rolling English hills, then the next day an abstract based on shades of red, then the next day a pencil sketch of my cat." It doesn't work like that.

But if I have the ingredients all there - the paper, canvas, brushes and paints - I can paint any of those thing when the inspiration takes me. Or something completely different.

[Hannah]

Yeah it showed me once again, it's happened before, how being more restricted can make you more creative by forcing you to focus and notice things you'd overlooked. And it's usually the simplest of things -- I had never made fruit salads before that diet. I put lemon juice (out of the bottle) on them and when it mixed with the juice from the berries, it was mighty delicious and very satisfying. Of course on that diet I ate an entire casserole of it per meal. I'd never bothered making baked apples or buying unsweetened apple sauce, you can microwave bananas, I would cheat a little and put some fat free, sugar free Cool Whip on both. And so on. I don't buy anything I'm going to have a lot of trouble not overeating, also. I mean that's basic. That's why I'm not sure about those snack sized chocolates. I couldn't have a bag of those in the house. But they sell them individually some places, like penny (well 25 cent) candy.

Still, for me, I can't stay on 500 calories a day and everyone says this is ridiculous anyway -- but I can't lose weight! I envy people who overeat because I think they're the ones who lose weight on diets. For me, a large amount of exercise is my only hope.

[Dan Goodwin]

Exactly, whatever diet you're on, it has to be balanced with physical exercise, there's no short cut there. Like we've talked about on other threads, for me it has to be something enjoyable where the exercise is a bonus by-product, I don't do any exercise on machines, just to do exercise.

It's also, like anything, about knowing what works for you, or rather trying different things, sticking with those that work, and dropping those that don't.

[Hannah]

It's hard to find a sport here that adults do just for fun, meaning it's not prohibitevly expensive -- that's one problem with me exercising for fun, the other is that I have serious back problems and really have to be careful what I'm doing anyway. I took up ice skating as an adult, which I loved, but I in fact think that's what led to my back problems -- or at least exacerbated them to the point where they got serious. So I've got to exercise just for the sake of it -- fortunately, that too comes with emotional rewards.

[Hannah]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08132008/news/nationalnews/phelps_pig_s...

[Anne Westlund]

Food is good for something! Thanks for the link, Hannah.

[Hannah]

And it also shows to what degree exercise can play a part in determining weight. Though we all know plenty of people who don't do much and eat chips regularly without gaining an ounce, and there's probably even more people like me, who are the reverse.