In the middle of the night....I go walking to my fridge

Thank you Billy Joel for the title inspiration. :)

Well, I've been working with this new diet (and I use that word with its actual definition attached) for a few weeks now, and I have to say that I've made some progress. It's a multi-layered process that starts with determining if I'm stomach hungry or mouth hungry. Basically, do I want to eat because I am actually hungry and need sustenance or because I am reacting to something else?

It's a lot more difficult to determine than you might think. I mean, I know when I'm having a craving. It's almost always something ridiculously unhealthy and I want it in that moment so badly that I have to have it. I obsess over it until I get it and usually feel bad after having it (although that's a whole other issue) But just the act of determining where my "hunger" is stemming from is harder to do.

But I think I've more or less figured it out. It's not 100% accurate all of the time, but I can usually tell when I'm actually hungry. It's sounds so silly to even type that sentence. Knowing if you're hungry or not should be one of the easiest things to do. In fact, it should just come naturally. Either I'm hungry or I'm not. Simple. End of story. But I haven't actually listened to my body and its needs for a long time and the less that you "check in", the more faint the signals get. So that's what I've been doing: "checking in". Every time that I want to eat, I ask myself "Am I actually hungry?" and wait for an answer. Sometimes, I get a very definitive answer, like my stomach will growl, but other times, I have to really try to figure it out.

Now this doesn't mean that I am always able to stop myself from eating even when I do determine that I am mouth hungry. But, as my therapist has to remind me, listening to your body, "checking in", and figuring out what is going on is Step 1. Stopping yourself from eating is the advanced course. So I have to remind the perfectionist in me that I am doing well and making progress, even if I'm not as far along as I want to be.

Because this is the thing that bugs me and is the reason for the title of this post: I am pretty good at listening to my body throughout the day. I can usually tell what type of hunger I'm experiencing and even pack a healthy lunch and snack for work to get me through the day. When I get home, I have a nice dinner and a little dessert. I feel satisfied and proud of the choices that I've made that day. I'm even making progress in not using food as a way of soothing myself.
But at night, usually after 9pm, I tend to sabotage myself. I get hungry again and a little snack turns into a few snacks/what may constitute a meal or I just find myself in the kitchen looking for something to eat. And the thing is, sometimes it's difficult to tell why. There is no direct underlying emotion to trigger the urge. I'm not bored or tired or lonely or anything. I just want to eat. Some of it may stem from old habits (they die hard apparently), but I don't know. I've tried just staying out of the kitchen with little success.

It's so frustrating! And it brings up the whole "Well, I've just screwed up this day. All that work for nothing" mental dialogue that makes me want to just throw in the towel. Once again, this comes from the "all or nothing" mentality of my perfectionist side that is incredibly difficult to change. It honestly feels like if I could get my nighttime eating under control, I would be fine. I know there are many parts that go into making this problem, but it seems like this part is the main problem at the moment. Get this together and we're good.

So I still have a lot to work on, but it is a process. Onward and upward.

Old Habits Die Hard

You know, when you've done something for 20-some odd years, it's really hard to change it. Not impossible. Just very, very difficult.

Which is, of course, what I'm dealing with trying to change my eating habits. I'm trying really hard to only eat when I'm hungry and not bored, or stressed, or anxious, or sad or whatever. But I'm failing.

And I know that this is part of the problem itself: seeing it as failing. I've used food to cope for most of my life, so trying to change a habit of about two decades is going to take some time. Not to mention that this is a whole new way of approaching things and there's going to be some trial and error. And that's ok. I'm on a journey after all. It doesn't have to be perfect; I just have to move forward in the direction that I want to go. But, like my relationship with food, my tendency to be hard on myself and want things to be perfect is an old habit and difficult to break.

So I guess a better term is that I'm struggling or that there have been several errors during this trial.
I'm usually pretty good during the day. I have breakfast before work, pack my lunch, and have a small snack packed for either before or after lunch, depending on when I need it. Then I get home and have dinner and a small dessert. All in all - great! The problem comes later in the evening. A few hours after dinner, I find myself going back to the kitchen for something else. Usually, it's something sweet, but not always. And then later, I go back again for a little more.
And I know that it has to stem from emotional eating. I'm not that hungry after dinner. If I am, it's when I have dinner early, so there is more time between when I eat dinner and when I go to bed. In those cases, I have a little something between dinner and bed and I'm fine. But those times are rare, as I usually don't get home from work until 6:30 or 7.

But it's not always easy to even figure out the cause of the emotional eating. What am I feeling? How can I dissipate the feeling without eating? Not to mention that sometimes, habit truly takes over. I get up, go to the kitchen, grab something, eat, and then realize what I just did.

*Sigh* I can tell already that this is going to be a long process.

A New Approach

So I haven't updated this thing in over a year. Yeah.... I could say that it was because I had a busy year, and to some extent, that's true, but mostly, I'm lazy and didn't feel like typing out a big, long, post. Let's be honest.

But, I've got the motivation to start writing again, so I'm going to go with it for as long as it lasts.


Last year, I was on track to getting healthy. I was exercising more, eating within my calorie limit, and losing weight. I was feeling pretty good. I definitely had my bad days and slip-ups, but overall, I was going strong. It didn't hurt that my sister got married last September and I was the Maid of Honor. Pretty good motivation for losing as much weight as possible. Then after the wedding, I decided to give myself a little break and not worry about what I ate for a few weeks. Which, of course, turned into a few months. I ate whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like eating it. And most times, that meant junk food in large quantities.
Around November/December, I decided that I needed to get "back on the horse" and tried to eat better. I got back on My Fitness Pal and made a resolution to start exercising again. It didn't stick. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't stick to it. It was incredibly frustrating, especially since I had such success before.

Now, as those who know me know, I have been going to therapy for several years now. I started going after suffering with a bout of depression and then began going regularly after my dad died. Well, naturally, one of the many topics that my therapist Amy and I talk about is my struggle with weight and its effect on other aspects of my life. She has always been a proponent of what I call the "it's ok" method. Meaning that if I eat a big, healthy salad, it's ok. Conversely, if I eat a burger, fries, and a brownie sundae, that's ok too. The most important thing is to check in with my body and try to make good choices that fit what I really need and/or want.
I'll be honest and say that I have always been a bit skeptical of this theory. How could eating poorly be just as fine as eating healthy? If I let myself eat whatever I want, I'm gonna choose the burger and fries over the salad every time. How is that going to help me lose weight?

But a few weeks ago, we were talking about food and weight and such and it came up that I actually felt best about all of that stuff during tech week of all times. Tech week, also known as "hell week", is the week leading up to the opening of a theater performance which consists of full run-thrus of the show every night. Since I also work full-time, this meant that I would go directly from work to rehearsal every night. I decided that for the week, I wouldn't worry about my diet. I was also working 40+ hours that week due to personal issues with some of the employees, so I figured that I had enough on my plate (no pun intended) without worrying about food. I would pack my normal lunch, but I also packed dinner for myself out of the leftovers that we had in the house. (I didn't have time between work and rehearsal to stop and get food, so if I didn't pack it, I wasn't eating) Luckily for me, Mom had cooked earlier in the week, so I had either chicken or salmon and rice for dinner every night. I weighed out a few ounces of the meat and about a 1/2 - a full cup of rice in the morning, with a Cheryl's cookie for dessert. I was always satisfied, but not stuffed and I felt good.
This was a revelation for me! I didn't worry about what I ate, gave myself permission to eat whatever I wanted, and I ended up not only making good food choices, but not overdoing anything and still felt satisfied.

So I ended up going to the library a few days later to see if they had the next Game of Thrones book (I just finished the first one) and decided to see if they had any books on this theory of eating - i.e. that it's all about checking in with your body and eating what you want. Well, I found two books that looked interesting. One was "Full Filled: The 6 Week Weight-Loss Plan for Changing Your Relationship with Food and Your Life from the Inside Out" and the other was "50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food". I've known for a long time that I have a poor relationship with food and that I use it as a coping mechanism, so I figured that I'd give them a shot. Well, I can't give an opinion on the first book, as I'm still working through the 6-week plan, but I will say that the 50 Ways to Soothe book is really cool. Some of the methods are kind of no-brainers and some are not something that I'd ever do, but that's part of why the book is great. It has so many different types of methods, from breathing exercises to interpersonal interactions to how to use your different senses to relax. It also does talk a bit about emotional eating and gives some examples from actual people's lives.

But the proof is in the pudding as they say, so I tried out one of the techniques. I was at work and, as usually happens, I got stressed out by some frustrating customers. There were some cupcakes in the backroom that one of the employees had brought in and I wanted nothing more in that moment than to eat one. Instead, I used the cleansing breathing technique which is just breathing in, holding it for a few seconds, and then releasing it in little bursts. It helped. I still wanted those cupcakes, but the urge was not nearly as strong, so I could keep myself from running back and grabbing one.

So I guess to make a long story short, (too late!) I'm changing my approach to food, weight loss, and health. It's about listening to my body about what I want to eat and only eating when I'm hungry, not as a way to cope with whatever emotion that I'm feeling. After all, it makes sense. Worry leads to stress and long periods of stress have been proven to have a poor effect on health. If I want to be healthy, I have to stop the cause of my stress: the worry. I mean, if worrying about all this stuff would make me thin and healthy, I'd have been thin and healthy years ago.