Month: January 2012

Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

Brain Over Binge: Part 2: What I’m Learning

Tomorrow makes one week since I started reading and implementing the tools of Brain Over Binge.  In that week I’ve come to realize a few things that are helping this process:

1) Not every urge or feeling means something. I used to believe that all of my urges and feelings were me, that by not acting on them I was somehow denying myself and being unauthentic to who I am. And on some small level, I already got this. Denying every feeling is uncomfortable and often the only thing I’m fighting is the feeling or urge in and of itself, not the actual thought or feeling.

Here’s an example: Sometimes I over think situations and my relationships with people. Often I find myself truly not understanding the motives of a person and examining them. I mull over every detail  in frustration until I feel nauseous and agitated. This is especially true when I believe their actions are wrong, hurting me or themselves. These thoughts take over my mind and I gave them freedom to take over. I do this so often that is became comfortable and familiar, like a bad habit. Like eating 10 cookies. But now, I’m acknowledging that sometimes I just default and it doesn’t mean anything about me or the other person. Not every thing needs attention, examining, or confronting. Sometimes I just need to achnowledge the feeling and move on.

This is the same with the urge to eat more. Those urges are not me, but sometimes it’s confusing to know the difference because I’ve learned to give weight to them in my own, evolved voice that reasons and sides with the urges.

This is what they sound like: You already ate that cookie, you might as well eat all of them and start over tomorrow. Your breakfast wasn’t perfect you might as well eat everything you want for the rest of the day. You’ve been so good these past few days, you can slack off today. You didn’t lose any weight today, might as well throw in the towel and get serious tomorrow. 

2) I do not need the scale right now. It’s true, eating less usually results in weight loss, but not always and not every single day. Logically I understand this. I know that a few days before my period I hold on to water. I know that exercise makes me hold on to water as well. I know that salty foods make me hold on to water. I don’t want to use the scale as an excuse or motivator right now. So today, I’m taking it out of the bathroom.

3) Finding my voice. One of the biggest challenges right now is finding my higher voice and listening to it. My higher voice is logical and doesn’t want to binge. It doesn’t want to keep eating or make myself sick. It wants me to succeed and move forward and grow. But sometimes it tries to justify and encourage my urges and feelings that aren’t me, my animal voice. It’s helpful for me to have a clear idea of what I do want on a very basic level so that I can easily access this information. It’s also helpful to have it written down and handy. Sometimes I can honestly convince myself that I want to binge, that it’s who I am, but I know better.

4) Knowing the difference between overeating (or eating too much) and binge eating. This one is very personal and looks different for everyone. This topic is covered a lot in Brain Over Binge. People who do not have any sort of binge eating disorder, eat too much on occasion. Having a second cookie, another slice of pizza, or seconds is not binge eating. Sometimes I simply eat more than what I need and that’s all it is.  To me, at it’s heart, binge eating is eating that is in excess. If it interrupts my life or causes me to be unhealthy, it is binge eating. I have never eaten as much in one sitting as the author of Brain Over Binge, but that doesn’t mean that my excess or binge eating hasn’t caused health issues  like obesity or disrupted my life by over taking my thoughts and actions.

4) Practice makes semi-perfect. Changing my mindset is taking work. It’s taking practice and meditation. It’s not always a huge struggle because I’m not fighting my urges, I’m just sitting with them, but it’s still new to me. I still fear that I can’t do this or that I’m fooling myself. I still hear the words of therapy and self-help books ringing in my ears that I need to fix my life or find fulfillment or get over depression or find self-esteem. Everday isn’t perfect, and I’m becoming okay with that. I’m just riding it out. It’s been helpful to create mantras of self-talk written down and handy. It’s also helpful knowing that my urges cannot access my movement and that I always have the choice to binge or not. It’s totally up to me. I know that it isn’t going to be easy at first, and I’m prepared for ups and downs, but I know it doesn’t have the be the biggest struggle in my life.

 

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Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

How to Reduce Stress By Uncluttering



Stress is terrible if you can reduce stress you will live a much happier life. We all live life as best we can but almost always there are conflicting priorities and way to much to do in a day. Over time we will find that there are things that just never get done until they become a big priority.

I fight with this all the time just like I am sure you are. And I just want to give you a few tips that I hope will help you to lower your stress level, get more done, and be more happy with your life.

Reduce Stress by Uncluttering

I have had some experience with this great method to reduce stress. It takes just five steps to drop your stress level and you can make a big difference today although it may take a couple of weeks to straighten out your schedule completely. So if you are interesting in doing this to change your life then here are the five steps.

How to Reduce Stress By Uncluttering

Reduce Stress by Uncluttering

1. Assess your current situation – The first thing to do is to see what it is holding your thoughts and getting in your way. Do you have too many clothes that don’t fit? Do you have a spare room or storage room that is a mess? Do you have paperwork that you need to file. There are lots and lots of problems that people have that are not a big problem (like outstanding credit cards, or lack of cash) and it takes a day or two to clean up.

2. Use the “Getting Things Done” method of Processing – This means that all of those things, items, thoughts, junk, and undone tasks can all be written down and available to be done. This may seem redundant to the actual doing and the previous step as well but don’t worry. Just get each of these things and write them down on a piece of paper each by themselves.

3. Setup an action schedule for just the next 7 days – This means that out of all of those things outstanding what can you complete in the next 7 days completely. Try to get some tough things and some easy things so that you can have victories that you can build on. Some of these may be one step like “Take old clothes to Goodwill” or “Organise the Garage” but it is amazing to feel the stress lift once these stupid little jobs are finally out of your head and out of the way.

4. Run through the next 7 days and act, act, act! – Action is the only important thing at this point. The planning and schedule are done and now you can get some stuff completed. Make sure that you make a big deal in your own mind of each and every task completed.

5. Celebrate and Re-assess – After the week of action you can sit down again and reassess what you have completed, how much you have been able to reduce stress in all parts of your life, and what is still outstanding. This exercise should have led to a much better frame of mind and most importantly a realization that through action you can make a lot of changes in your life. You can now see if these are more things that you can complete or if you can cut back on what may have been a hectic week.

The Results of this Uncluttering Stress Reduction Process

I find that I do this kind of thing at home as well as completely separately at work. There are many parts and places in our life that become stress points for us and by reducing stress in one spot will help you live a much more calm and fulfilling life in another part of your home, marriage, or worklife.

Try to run through this process to reduce stress at least once a month to make sure you are always staying ahead of the game.

Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

Brain Over Binge: Part 1

I never thought, in a million years, that words from any book would ever help me to stop overeating or binge eating for good.  I wanted to believe they would and it never stopped me from buying them. I read many thousands of words telling me that I was an emotional eater, a stress eater, an addict, disordered and diseased. I read many more thousands of words telling me that I had deep seated issues and until I resolved them I would never stop eating too much. And I read even more thousands of words telling me to cut out flour, sugar, salt, potatoes, honey, red meat, beans, to count calories, to cut carbs, to calculate points, or to cut the fat. I was told moderation and lifestyle change more times than I care to say. Two words that I never truly got.

And then Beth came along and left this comment:

Hello! First time commenter!

I’m not sure if anyone has suggested this book, or if you have read it. Brain over Binge by Kathryn Hansen.

I’ve been a binge eater most of my adult life, and after reading this book, I stopped. I’m not sure how or why, but I did. Dieting and restricting causes bingeing, that I know.

Take care good luck to you in the new year!

I was intrigued and went over to Amazon to read the reviews. Within five minutes I was already into the first chapter on my Kindle. I couldn’t wait to buy the book, the reviews peeked my interest and I was ready to dive in. The words used to describe the book mention bulimia, which I do not relate to in any sort of way. So I want to say first, that if you have struggled with any form of eating to the excess, please consider reading this book. Whatever you call it, overeating, binge eating, bulimia, etc., if you suffer for the urge to eat beyond being full, if you’ve had moments of autopilot eating, if yeou’ve eaten on numerous occasions to the point of being uncomfortably or painfully full, if you have moments of being able to consume large amounts of food- this book is for you.

Every journey is personal and individual, binge eating is not black and white. As I read Kathryn’s words, a women who has never been obese or even overweight I can honestly say I’ve never eaten to the excess that she describes in Brain Over Binge. I’ve also never exercised for hours on end to burn the calories I’ve consumed. This is her form of purging and why she calls herself bulimic.

But I am obese, and it’s not because of moderate or “normal” eating. It never has been. I’ve been thinking about my weight since I was eight years old and dieting for so long  that I’ve never really known what normal eating looks or feels like. I’ve never known what it wa

I’ve had glimmers of hope, mainly with intuitive eating, but my urges to eat more always took over. I’ve been saying tomorrow I’ll be better for so long, it’s become my default response when things became too much.

Since reading Brain Over Binge, I’ve debated how I’d approach presenting this information on my blog. And after much debate I decided that I could only best explain how I’ve changed as a result. The book is too in depth and I fear I would do Kathryn and her research much disservice to explain it in any other way. You can read more about her and purchase the book on her website here: Brain Over Binge.

I would love to discuss this book more in depth with those that have read the book or plan to read the book and would like to open my comments up for that.

I was in no way compensated for my opinion. I’ve linked directly to Kathryn’s site, not Amazon, for those interested in purchasing it. 

Thursday morning after reading the first few pages of Brain Over Binge I decided that I wanted to eat a biscuit while reading the book. I rarely eat fast food biscuits, but this morning all I wanted to do was eat while reading a book about eating. I can’t make this stuff up.

Normally, a day that starts with a 900 calories biscuit meal doesn’t end well. Because I wasn’t “perfect” at breakfast I would normally use that as an excuse to eat what I wanted for the rest of the day and start over tomorrow.

But something changed in those next three hours. I learned that I am not all of the horrible things I always believed I was because of my binge eating. I learned that I am not an emotional eater or addicted to sugar like I always thought. I learned that when I changed my career, hair, or bought something new, I was trying to change my life. I was trying to fulfill and fill ever corner of my life with events and stuff in a desperate attempt to recover.

I believed that somehow, changing any part of my life would make me complete so that I could stop overeating once and for all. I’ve searched in vain for over ten years for ways to make me whole. To fix me. To dull the desire to keep eating. I believed that I just hadn’t found the right program to tell me how to be better. The right experience, job, relationship, or outfit. I believed that I had to turn my life upside down to make real changes. That I’d have to give up ever food that I ever binged to be better, to stop slowly killing myself and to gain control once and for all. On some level, I already knew all of this, I just couldn’t believe it was that easy.

After those three hours of reading I said to Josh “I finally get it”. And then I started to sob, mostly because I felt like three thousand pounds had been lifted from my shoulders. All I could say was “There’s nothing wrong with me! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?! I’m not crazy, lazy, stupid, diseased or suffering.”.

And Thursday, for the first time in my life I learned how to almost effortlessly calm myself and take control. In just a few hours my day had turned around. It wasn’t perfect, I hadn’t solved my life’s problems- I just ate and moved on and I felt normal. Instead of stuffing or fighting my urges to eat, I just sat with them and reminded myself that those thoughts are not me. I am not every thought or urge that I have.

Friday I played with fire. I made cookies. I ate two and put the rest away. And these weren’t just any cookie, I declared them my favorite cookie. They were amazing. I made a lovely dinner or salad and lentil soup. Nourishing and healthful food that I truly craved and then had two cookies and moved on. Even as I type this, there are a bowl of cookies on the counter and that all too familiar voice to eat all of them and start over tomorrow, is dull. It’s almost nonexistent. And for that, I am grateful.

I realize that this post is full of hyperbole, as is my fashion when I get excited about something, but I can honestly say to you that I will never binge again. I will never hide or sneak food. Eat in the car or give myself the promises of tomorrow. And as they say, the proof is in the pudding, I so look forward to sharing this journey with you.

 

 

 

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