"You can't learn to ride your bike unless you are perfect and don't fall off"
If that were the case, then none of us would have ever learnt to ride a bike. When you start out riding you fall off again and again, scraping your knees, battering your shins and elbows, and bruising your butt.
But does that stop you? You hope right back on and have another go. This time you wobble around for longer than last time and then fall off again. One day, you get the hang of it and you ride more than you fall.
I keep falling off my eating "bike". I still haven't found what works for me. Yesterday I felt so depressed about how I look that I pretended I was sick and didn't go to work. Instead of resting and enjoying my day off, I ate my way through the house and the neighbouring cafes.
But I am not going to fill my head with thoughts of failure or punish myself for having no will power. Falling of your bike is not a sign of weakness, stupidity or inadequacy. It is a part of the learning process. Today I feel battered and bruised (sick and bloated) but I thank god today is a new day and I get to try all over again. I only know one thing - I will figure this out - I don't care how long it takes and how often I fall. One day soon, eating will be as normal and natural as going to the gym every day.
Katie
ReplyDeleteThe main reason I keep reading your blog is that I ride this roller coaster with my food too - I often wonder if this is what is like for an alcoholic. The first day on the wagon is the hardest, day 2 gets a little easier and after a week of good eating you're on a roll. Then...an event comes along or just the dreaded - I can have one treat and will hop back on the wagon straight away and its all over red rover. The cycle starts again the irrational filling of the body with food until by the end of the day I have grazed through everything in the house and usually the corner shop as well. It isn't frantic stuffing bingeing in a short period but more continual graze throughout the day on every bad thing I can find. hang in there kiddo there has be hope for us and know that you're not alone.
Lori x
I think there are so many people who have these some problem areas. I just finished ready "if not dieting then what" it had so many lightbulb moments for me. Definately helped with the guilt I would feel about having an eating 'moment'. Once the guilt was gone I could rationally decide what it was I felt like eating. It is definately a learning process. Keep at it honey.
ReplyDeleteBig hugs Katie!!!
ReplyDeleteWith most "addictions" you steer clear of them completely (eg. drugs, alcohol, cigarettes). With food, you must continue to eat and be confronted with food on a daily basis. I think this is what makes it so hard. Not to say you are "addicted"....I am though! I am like a junkie when it comes to chocolate, biscuits, etc.
I am confident that one day the "training wheels" can be removed from all our bicycles!!!!
Although your food may not be 100% at the moment....you should feel proud that you are still training. This is half the battle won.
i wish you could see that this is just the same as what i do with denial.
ReplyDeletethough lately i've be troughing it and i've gained weight. so much that i would rather stick pins in my eyess than admit how much.
i feel huge. huge and enormous and i send stupid texts to my bestfriend tania wailing on about it.
in size eight jeans. but no matter what the size or what the behaviour, it is the inability to control yourself that is the root problem.
we'll talk about it no doubt on saturday yes?
xx
You are judging yourself so harshly Katie. This is going to be a long comment.
ReplyDeleteIt is what Geneen Roth (author of "Breaking Free From Emotional Eating") says about judgement:
A judgement is a continuous, high pitched silent scream. It hurts to listen to it. First you try covering your ears. Then you try leaving the room. Soon you become frantic; you'll do anything to make the shrieking in your head stop.
Eating makes it stop. Eating takes your attention away from the shrill and focuses it on the taste. Eating provides relief from whatever you are judging yourself about, until you start judging yourself for eating. Eating makes it stop until eating makes it start. So eating doesn't make it stop.
Nothing will stop a judgement but the awareness that it is a judgement. You can't fight-and win-against a judgement. It is like pruning a plant, only to have it grow back sider and busier: When I tell myself that I am fat, my response is to eat more, not less.
Judgements evoke a set of feelings, impressions, and beliefs to which we react. It is what we infer from judgements that sets us spiraling down into self-doubt and worthlessness.
Judgements do not lead to change. Change happens the way a plant grows: slowly, without force, and with the essential nutrients of love and patience and a willingness to remain constant through periods of stasis.
If change is what you want, you need to learn a gentler way of dealing with yourself and others.
I hope this has helped you take a step toward not judging yourself so harshly. It doesn't help you any, it doesn't force you into doing what you think is "the right thing", it only brings about what you are trying to stop.
Stay strong Katie, but most of all be kind to yourself xxx
Miss K, My advice, be kind to yourself and remember that no one is perfect. I weighed in today at 57.8kgs. That is a 55.2kg loss. Im FAR from perfect. Today I had choc biscuts for lunch. So what? (Mind you im not doing any comps or anything.) As soon as I learnt to be kind to myself and that its normal to eat crap now and then, or even everyday, my life (well the eating part of it) is fantastic.
ReplyDeleteCheryl XXX
Honestly I think most failure to eat "properly" is due to low grade starvation from maintaining insufficient calories and/or body fat for your own personal body.
ReplyDeleteOn the 3rd I had a massive eating day, of a kind I haven't had since I was around 100 pounds (I'm 5'5). I fully accept that the reason I occasionally am hit with these "binge days" is because my fat tissue is convinced it is starving.
Fat tissue controls our eating, you know.
A hormone leptin made from fat cells literally controls how we view food - emotionally, and how rewarding it is.
June article discussing brain differences between leptin depleted and leptin supplemented weight loss patients
We can trick our fat tissue for awhile. When I was psychologically focused on being thin, I was immune to hearing the cry for food. It's only when we stop trying to whittle down that all of a sudden we are helpless to see and hear just how starved we really are.
I'm not suggesting the solution is to give up control of weight completely. That wouldn't make us happier, either. My point is THIS:
1) Binging after weight loss and heavy exercise is overwhelmingly a physiologic phenomena, a body rebelling against starvation and a calorie intake that is insufficient to maintain a stable level of energy
2) We must strike a compromise between our comforts and our goals; if we are binging constantly because our body, at the cell level, needs more body fat and more food, is it really productive or conducive to happiness to continue to attempt to maintain unrealistic, unhealthy and infertility-making levels of body fat?
For example, I would rather have a few more pounds of body fat, and very stable way of eating, than my "goal" body fat, and binge every third day. I did make that choice, I gained almost 10 pounds and increased calories significantly, it has made all the difference.
I just want to stress binging is not psychological, it is physiological, attempting to solve binging with psychology is like trying to have a talk therapy with a kwashiorkor child about the size of his swollen stomach. The behavior appears chosen, but nothing about binging is emotional (other than the way we feel about that loss of control). Real changes in hunger hormones, serotonin, precipitate the binging behavior and those changes are controlled by food and body fat.
The only way I can maintain my weight (120lbs) and not be totally starving miserable is to eat extremely high fat and low carb. The fat is very, very important to heading off most of the starvation symptoms after massive weight loss (160 lbs total lost)... maybe it might help you to raise fat and decrease carbs a little bit? Or to do a cycling diet where you eat carbs while "bulking" but less carbs and more fat when "cutting" or "maintaining"? A lot of lifters seem to use that approach.
babe
ReplyDeletei know what you mean and all i can say is that sometimes we will always be changing the tyres on our bike and the bike themselves-sometimes we will never find the right bike to ride but the point is to learn and enjoy each ride and help it to make you stronger mind body and spirit each time-use the negs as a learning not a lashing curve :) jewel xxx
It's okay you know. In life we are going to have good days and bad days...high calorie days and low calorie days.
ReplyDeleteWhat really matters is what you are doing 90% of the time. Nobody should be trying to comply 100% of the time FOREVER. That's just not a happy healthy thing to aim for.
CJ
just try and keep it in perspective.
ReplyDeletemy counselor used to tell me: "Everybody has something they have to deal with. there are people out there with no legs, or arms, or can;t see or hear, or talk: be thankfully that your issue is only with food."
and he's right. you can do something about this, a lot of people can't do anything about their issue.
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