For the past 2 weeks, I've been living in a suburb in California and in a situation which is vastly different from the cabin on the island I was on before. This makes the second big transition for me in about two and a half months. First, I left the Asian country I had been living in for over two decades and returned to the U.S. and stayed in an isolated rural area. Now, life has kicked up a notch and is more stimulating, but is also moving ahead.
It is the moving ahead part which has been daunting. I've been happy with the ability to walk around and see new places and things. The environment I'm in is closer to the one I was in for most of my adult life. That is, there are people around, places to see, and things to do. However, I'm also living in a huge house after living in two tiny spaces and have to face the steps that most people take for granted and view as normal.
It's hard to convey how complicated life in America feels to someone who hasn't encountered the changes that have happened. It's a little like stepping out of a time machine. Debit cards? Never used one. Driver's license? Haven't driven for about 24 years and it's long expired. Supermarket self-check-out? Never heard of it. Cell phone? Never owned one. All of these things require that I take a deep breath and go through the processes that others are completely accustomed to. In doing so, I feel stupid, naive, and disconnected from this reality. My sense of being an alien in my own culture is more profound here than it was in a bucolic setting, even though my satisfaction with suburban life is much higher.
All of the stress of adjustment has taken a toll on my eating. I have twice now done what I call "wobbling". That is, I eat more than I should for a period of time (a hard wobble), then I start to eat better about every other day (a less shaky wobble), and then I reach a point close to stability. When I was on the island, I wobbled hard for at least two weeks and was shaky for nearly another 3 weeks. It was only toward the end that I felt a return to normality. Here, I have also been wobbling pretty hard for about 10 days, and have started to regain my footing a little faster.
One of the things about this wobbling with my eating is that I never mistake it for the start of falling down. It is inevitable during difficult times and particularly with a complete loss of routine to wobble. I haven't panicked or felt that I'm a terrible person for this. I don't see myself as weak or a failure. I know I can recover and I will find my old equilibrium back. Even though I've gone through two intensely stressful changes and there is really no end in sight for the foreseeable future, I know this is temporary. I give myself the time to adjust and the luxury of not living everyday to my personal standards because I deserve it during this time.
A lot of people feel that it's "wrong" to "cut themselves some slack" during stressful or hard times. I should make it clear that this is not me letting myself go on some sort of eating free-for-all in which I gorge and make myself sick. I don't do that. Part of the benefit of using portion control and not denying myself any food is that there really is zero appeal to going on a all-out food binging marathon. I tend to serial graze too much at these times, though there are also out and out occasions in which I binge a small amount as conscious stress reduction. I know what I'm doing. It is like a cutter cutting herself. The relief is completely real, like a drowning person coming up for air. Even though the behavior is self-destructive, I can't deny that it is effective. It's something I have not yet extinguished, but I do less of and with less collateral damage than before. It's an ongoing process and getting worked up about it isn't going to help anything so I just try to do better the next day (and usually do).
The situation has mainly been my eating more than I need and not tolerating hunger for very long. It's the difference between buying a bar of chocolate and saying "I'll eat one square a day" and ending up eating two, or eating at night before bed rather than going to bed a little hungry. I may or may not be gaining a little weight from it, but I'm not overly concerned as I'm sure it'll stabilize and go back down again in the coming weeks. I think that attaching drama to stressful times and the subsequent changes in eating habits only makes it harder to recover.
Interestingly, people worry horribly if they overeat when stressed, but not when they don't eat enough when stressed. They know that, eventually, their appetite will return and they'll eat enough again. I know that, eventually, my appetite will abate and I'll eat "enough" again. Having confidence that normal will return is having already won most of the battle.
Showing posts with label binge eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label binge eating. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Stress Loop
I don't think I have ever met a person who is at a weight which does not satisfy them who has not said, "I eat when I'm stressed." In fact, it's one of those things that people commonly say they have to conquer in order to succeed in their weight loss goals. Well, I have bad news for everyone who has felt that way; it is in your nature, your very biology, to eat when you feel stress.
All animals react to stress by consuming energy if they have access to it. Bees will gorge on honey when stressed. Coral gorges itself when subjected to the bleaching effects it experiences due to global warming. Humans may indulge in a pint of ice cream. Stress causes the body to dive down to glycogen storage in the liver and muscle to get more glucose and to get more glucose from substances in the body other than carbohydrates. The body wants to replenish the stores from these effects. It wants you to eat if you can because the expectation is that experiencing stress means you will soon have to act, and you will need energy to act.
In modern humans, we experience stress related to mental rather than physical threats. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that we experience worse stress than our ancestors as the years go by. Part of the reason for this is that civilization takes a toll on us. We can't act on our frustration or aggression by murdering a competitor or running away from our problems. We have to sit there and take it for days, months, or years. We have to endure the stress without reacting to it. Our ancestors could escape and return to a less stressful state of being. We cannot.
Since each person responds to stress with a different intensity of reaction (based on their nervous systems and resulting sensitivity), one person may blithely go about their day feeling no suffering. Another, in the same circumstances, may be consumed with anxiety. We cannot choose to be oblivious. We can only choose how we respond, but even then, our biology is directing us to eat.
So, why isn't everyone who experiences stress on a continual basis overweight? Well, more and more people are becoming overweight in developed nations everyday. In addition, the aforementioned differences in sensitivity to stress play a part in whether or not you have a stress response. In order to want to gorge as a result of stress, you have to perceive the stress and we aren't all equal in that regard. Additionally, some people are better at ignoring those cues to eat due to stress or consciously pursue other outlets (such as exercise, sex, or emotional outbursts).
The thing that occurred to me today as I took a long walk for exercise and was gawked at, laughed at, pointed at and treated disrespectfully by far more people than one might imagine was that those of us who are already overweight are stuck in a stress loop. Being fat means you are subjected to stress that thin people are not. You may want to control your eating, but your body is responding to the stresses you feel every time you step out of the house by cuing you to eat. You eat because of that stress and stay fat or get fatter which in turn makes certain that you continue to suffer stress (either externally imposed by judgmental strangers or internally so from your own self-rejection or physical suffering as a consequence of your weight) which again makes it harder not to eat.
I feel anxiety every single time I leave my home, and varying degrees of stress depending on how the winds of fate treat me when it comes to the amount of abuse I suffer and my particular sensitivity on a given day. My life has been a barrage of stress every moment I'm not safely cocooned in my home.
In knowing the biological response to stress, I believe we can gain power. The first point about this from which we can draw strength is in knowing that wanting to eat when you are stressed is not a character flaw. It is nature. The bees aren't beating themselves up for gobbling down honey until they are so bloated they cannot move. You are smarter than a bee, so you can plan a mental response, but you shouldn't berate yourself up for a physiological cue to eat when stressed, nor castigate yourself for resisting and failing anymore than you should be angry at yourself for responding to a grumbling stomach by eating something.
The second way in which this benefits us is that we can control our responses when we can predict them. If you know you are going to endure a stressful situation (like a visit to the doctor or a job interview) and will want to eat, you can plan to eat something after the experience. You can even plan to offer yourself "comfort food" and you can know that there is no need to punish yourself for wanting to comfort yourself with food. If you diet, you can plan a day of maintenance level eating or find some sort of lower calorie "treat" to give yourself what you need. Control does not mean you resist every impulse and bodily cue, but rather that you deal with them in a healthy manner.
For me, this is going to mean some mental work. I'm a very sensitive person. Again, this is not by choice. It is merely my biology. I cannot become less sensitive because I want to anymore than someone with their ear pressed next to a speaker turned up to level 10 can decide to not experience the volume of the sound by will. I've long thought that I should practice meditation to make my overall resting state more relaxed, and I believe this realization about eating and stress makes the need rather more imperative. Though I can't change my nervous system, I can mentally prepare myself to disconnect more effectively from the world around me or at the very least learn to return to a state of mental and physical peace more rapidly through making myself familiar with relaxation techniques. The stress will still be there, but I hope to train myself to "calm down" from it or react differently to it. It may or may not be effective, but it is worth exploring the options.
I think that the link between stress and eating is one that people already understand on a basic level, but they tend not to go beyond the level of blaming themselves for eating in response to stress. In my opinion, lasting weight control needs to adopt an effective plan for dealing with the reality of the biology of stress rather than focusing on simply stopping the fact that we feel compelled to eat under stressful conditions. I have no confidence in "sheer force of will" when it comes to denying the body's basic urges, but I do have faith in our ability to adopt an effective plan to handle them once we become aware of the full scope of the issue.
All animals react to stress by consuming energy if they have access to it. Bees will gorge on honey when stressed. Coral gorges itself when subjected to the bleaching effects it experiences due to global warming. Humans may indulge in a pint of ice cream. Stress causes the body to dive down to glycogen storage in the liver and muscle to get more glucose and to get more glucose from substances in the body other than carbohydrates. The body wants to replenish the stores from these effects. It wants you to eat if you can because the expectation is that experiencing stress means you will soon have to act, and you will need energy to act.
In modern humans, we experience stress related to mental rather than physical threats. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that we experience worse stress than our ancestors as the years go by. Part of the reason for this is that civilization takes a toll on us. We can't act on our frustration or aggression by murdering a competitor or running away from our problems. We have to sit there and take it for days, months, or years. We have to endure the stress without reacting to it. Our ancestors could escape and return to a less stressful state of being. We cannot.
Since each person responds to stress with a different intensity of reaction (based on their nervous systems and resulting sensitivity), one person may blithely go about their day feeling no suffering. Another, in the same circumstances, may be consumed with anxiety. We cannot choose to be oblivious. We can only choose how we respond, but even then, our biology is directing us to eat.
So, why isn't everyone who experiences stress on a continual basis overweight? Well, more and more people are becoming overweight in developed nations everyday. In addition, the aforementioned differences in sensitivity to stress play a part in whether or not you have a stress response. In order to want to gorge as a result of stress, you have to perceive the stress and we aren't all equal in that regard. Additionally, some people are better at ignoring those cues to eat due to stress or consciously pursue other outlets (such as exercise, sex, or emotional outbursts).
The thing that occurred to me today as I took a long walk for exercise and was gawked at, laughed at, pointed at and treated disrespectfully by far more people than one might imagine was that those of us who are already overweight are stuck in a stress loop. Being fat means you are subjected to stress that thin people are not. You may want to control your eating, but your body is responding to the stresses you feel every time you step out of the house by cuing you to eat. You eat because of that stress and stay fat or get fatter which in turn makes certain that you continue to suffer stress (either externally imposed by judgmental strangers or internally so from your own self-rejection or physical suffering as a consequence of your weight) which again makes it harder not to eat.
I feel anxiety every single time I leave my home, and varying degrees of stress depending on how the winds of fate treat me when it comes to the amount of abuse I suffer and my particular sensitivity on a given day. My life has been a barrage of stress every moment I'm not safely cocooned in my home.
In knowing the biological response to stress, I believe we can gain power. The first point about this from which we can draw strength is in knowing that wanting to eat when you are stressed is not a character flaw. It is nature. The bees aren't beating themselves up for gobbling down honey until they are so bloated they cannot move. You are smarter than a bee, so you can plan a mental response, but you shouldn't berate yourself up for a physiological cue to eat when stressed, nor castigate yourself for resisting and failing anymore than you should be angry at yourself for responding to a grumbling stomach by eating something.
The second way in which this benefits us is that we can control our responses when we can predict them. If you know you are going to endure a stressful situation (like a visit to the doctor or a job interview) and will want to eat, you can plan to eat something after the experience. You can even plan to offer yourself "comfort food" and you can know that there is no need to punish yourself for wanting to comfort yourself with food. If you diet, you can plan a day of maintenance level eating or find some sort of lower calorie "treat" to give yourself what you need. Control does not mean you resist every impulse and bodily cue, but rather that you deal with them in a healthy manner.
For me, this is going to mean some mental work. I'm a very sensitive person. Again, this is not by choice. It is merely my biology. I cannot become less sensitive because I want to anymore than someone with their ear pressed next to a speaker turned up to level 10 can decide to not experience the volume of the sound by will. I've long thought that I should practice meditation to make my overall resting state more relaxed, and I believe this realization about eating and stress makes the need rather more imperative. Though I can't change my nervous system, I can mentally prepare myself to disconnect more effectively from the world around me or at the very least learn to return to a state of mental and physical peace more rapidly through making myself familiar with relaxation techniques. The stress will still be there, but I hope to train myself to "calm down" from it or react differently to it. It may or may not be effective, but it is worth exploring the options.
I think that the link between stress and eating is one that people already understand on a basic level, but they tend not to go beyond the level of blaming themselves for eating in response to stress. In my opinion, lasting weight control needs to adopt an effective plan for dealing with the reality of the biology of stress rather than focusing on simply stopping the fact that we feel compelled to eat under stressful conditions. I have no confidence in "sheer force of will" when it comes to denying the body's basic urges, but I do have faith in our ability to adopt an effective plan to handle them once we become aware of the full scope of the issue.
Friday, April 16, 2010
A Disconnection
On some level, all people with eating-related issues have a disconnection between their actions and the consequences of their actions. Sometimes, that disconnection is a rationalization like saying that you’re already fat so it doesn’t matter if you eat more. Sometimes, it is telling yourself that you are stressed out and deserve to feel better and using food is no worse than a variety of other destructive coping mechanisms.
I’ve lived a life full of those disconnections, and up until the past 10 months, I didn’t truly internalize what it was like to have a full connection between my actions and the consequences when it comes to food. That being said, I was always aware on some level of the destructiveness of what I was doing. I ate mindlessly and happily at times, but the consequences were always something I was aware of deep in the back of my mind. The fact that those consequences existed became clear when I felt guilt or regret at what I was doing.
Last night, I had what has to be the most profound and disturbing disconnection between my eating and my thinking. Since I started this change in lifestyle, it has been the most terrifying moment I’ve experienced. I’ve had plenty of emotional responses, including a sense of free-falling without a net because my coping mechanism has vanished, a sense of emptiness, and a loss of identity. This was something quite different.
Yesterday evening, I had a pretty decent day calorie-wise up until about 9:30 pm. At that point in time, I wanted to eat a pretzel, just one pretzel. When I got the bag in hand, I just kept eating them, and then I went and found some chocolate-covered potato chips that have been sitting around for the last two and a half months and dug into them. I just ate and ate and I was completely disconnected from any sense of the consequences. I felt no guilt or remorse. I felt no concern about the damage I was doing to myself either physically or emotionally. I was so profoundly removed from any emotions related to my actions that I was almost in a state of dispassionate observation of my behavior. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, was craving things, was hungry or was comforting myself. I really felt nothing.
At some point, I threw away the rest of the chips, and terror set in. This profound fear was related to the fact that I was so removed from the consequences of what I did. This was the food equivalent of a “psychotic break” for me, and my first thought was that I needed to just get back on the horse I’ve been so successfully riding and do better tomorrow. I wasn’t even going to mention this binge to my husband because I figured it was an aberration, but as the clock ticked by, I knew this was not a mere blip in the continuum. This was something profound brought on by my life circumstances and it needed to be dealt with.
In the past three months, my husband has been involved in some professional training in addition to his heavy working schedule. I rely on him for a great deal of support in my life because most people don't treat me very well based on my weight and I have trust issues as a result. He's the only one I can confide in without fear of judgment or willful misunderstanding of what I'm saying. You'd be surprised at how hard some people try to come across as helpful while using your words to elevate their own esteem at your expense.
Since my husband has been so busy, we've had some problems. It has been nothing seriously bad. Mainly, I have told him that he needs to be more mentally there for me when we're together since he has a tendency to space out or to only pay half attention to me. That isn't a criticism. I think what he's doing is very draining and difficult. He has tried to be supportive and do better, and has improved, but I believe it has not been enough. What is more, I have been suppressing my needs all along in an attempt to not be so needy when he's so busy. It's not the sort of grudging, self-martyring suppression that some people (particularly women) tend to do. It is a very self-aware "I need to be a grown-up and not be so needy and selfish" form of suppression. In essence, I need to allow him to do what he needs to do and try and be more self-contained.
My husband and I have always been exceptionally close. In fact, the way in which we are so thoroughly intertwined intimidates and perplexes people at first. Our bond is exceptionally strong, and the last few months have made me feel as if that bond has gotten a little looser. It's no easy feat for me to back away and be more in my own head.
The conclusion that I reached, and my husband reached instantly as well when I told him about this binge, was that this was a cry for help. This was my acting out on my suppressed feelings in such a way as to force him to be more concerned about me and to engage more with me mentally and emotionally. It was something that I needed so deeply that I simply acted on it and removed myself from all of the logical connections that existed between my actions and the consequences.
The part about this that scares me is not related to calories or weight gain or fear of losing control. The part that scares me is that I can be so calmly out of control as I was. I'm sure that I have eaten as a psychological response before, but never in this fashion. I've always been a very self-aware person and this was a short period of time where I acted without any knowledge of why I was doing as I was. I didn't see it coming, and I had no desire to stop. I'm hoping that understanding the (likely) cause of this will derail any chances that it will happen again.
I’ve lived a life full of those disconnections, and up until the past 10 months, I didn’t truly internalize what it was like to have a full connection between my actions and the consequences when it comes to food. That being said, I was always aware on some level of the destructiveness of what I was doing. I ate mindlessly and happily at times, but the consequences were always something I was aware of deep in the back of my mind. The fact that those consequences existed became clear when I felt guilt or regret at what I was doing.
Last night, I had what has to be the most profound and disturbing disconnection between my eating and my thinking. Since I started this change in lifestyle, it has been the most terrifying moment I’ve experienced. I’ve had plenty of emotional responses, including a sense of free-falling without a net because my coping mechanism has vanished, a sense of emptiness, and a loss of identity. This was something quite different.
Yesterday evening, I had a pretty decent day calorie-wise up until about 9:30 pm. At that point in time, I wanted to eat a pretzel, just one pretzel. When I got the bag in hand, I just kept eating them, and then I went and found some chocolate-covered potato chips that have been sitting around for the last two and a half months and dug into them. I just ate and ate and I was completely disconnected from any sense of the consequences. I felt no guilt or remorse. I felt no concern about the damage I was doing to myself either physically or emotionally. I was so profoundly removed from any emotions related to my actions that I was almost in a state of dispassionate observation of my behavior. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, was craving things, was hungry or was comforting myself. I really felt nothing.
At some point, I threw away the rest of the chips, and terror set in. This profound fear was related to the fact that I was so removed from the consequences of what I did. This was the food equivalent of a “psychotic break” for me, and my first thought was that I needed to just get back on the horse I’ve been so successfully riding and do better tomorrow. I wasn’t even going to mention this binge to my husband because I figured it was an aberration, but as the clock ticked by, I knew this was not a mere blip in the continuum. This was something profound brought on by my life circumstances and it needed to be dealt with.
In the past three months, my husband has been involved in some professional training in addition to his heavy working schedule. I rely on him for a great deal of support in my life because most people don't treat me very well based on my weight and I have trust issues as a result. He's the only one I can confide in without fear of judgment or willful misunderstanding of what I'm saying. You'd be surprised at how hard some people try to come across as helpful while using your words to elevate their own esteem at your expense.
Since my husband has been so busy, we've had some problems. It has been nothing seriously bad. Mainly, I have told him that he needs to be more mentally there for me when we're together since he has a tendency to space out or to only pay half attention to me. That isn't a criticism. I think what he's doing is very draining and difficult. He has tried to be supportive and do better, and has improved, but I believe it has not been enough. What is more, I have been suppressing my needs all along in an attempt to not be so needy when he's so busy. It's not the sort of grudging, self-martyring suppression that some people (particularly women) tend to do. It is a very self-aware "I need to be a grown-up and not be so needy and selfish" form of suppression. In essence, I need to allow him to do what he needs to do and try and be more self-contained.
My husband and I have always been exceptionally close. In fact, the way in which we are so thoroughly intertwined intimidates and perplexes people at first. Our bond is exceptionally strong, and the last few months have made me feel as if that bond has gotten a little looser. It's no easy feat for me to back away and be more in my own head.
The conclusion that I reached, and my husband reached instantly as well when I told him about this binge, was that this was a cry for help. This was my acting out on my suppressed feelings in such a way as to force him to be more concerned about me and to engage more with me mentally and emotionally. It was something that I needed so deeply that I simply acted on it and removed myself from all of the logical connections that existed between my actions and the consequences.
The part about this that scares me is not related to calories or weight gain or fear of losing control. The part that scares me is that I can be so calmly out of control as I was. I'm sure that I have eaten as a psychological response before, but never in this fashion. I've always been a very self-aware person and this was a short period of time where I acted without any knowledge of why I was doing as I was. I didn't see it coming, and I had no desire to stop. I'm hoping that understanding the (likely) cause of this will derail any chances that it will happen again.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Devaluing Food
One of my former coworkers once showed me a video of a birthday party for one of her adult siblings at her home. In the video, her family was serving up a chocolate cake and her sister was asked if she wanted a piece and said, "just a very tiny one." I asked my coworker if her sister said that because she was on a diet or being careful about her weight. The reply was that her sister simply had no serious interest in food and this had been the case for the sister's entire life.
I remember thinking that it was inconceivable to me that someone could have so little interest in food, particularly in chocolate and cake. I think this is yet another factor which influences people with weight problems to overeat. The pleasure they extract from food is higher than that of an average or underweight person. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the pleasure centers in a fat person's brain were lit up like a Christmas tree by the consumption of various foods and the bulbs quite a bit dimmer for those areas of an average weight person's brain.
This is an aspect of how I consider food which I have been working with for myself for quite some time. There's a fine balance to be reached between not exposing yourself to food which you find so good that it triggers a complete loss of control, and denying yourself pleasurable food entirely. If you eat foods which cause you to lose control, you fail. If you deprive yourself completely, you're all that more likely to fail because the denial will cause you to over-value the experience of having your pleasure centers stimulated by food you actually enjoy.
One of the reasons people are keen to start a diet after the holidays is that all of the copious consumption of treats during the season has resulted in a devaluation of such foods. They've had it for a long time and have lost their taste for it. After they diet for awhile, the deprivation makes the food seem more and more appealing.
That balance is different for each person because the "trigger" foods for each person vary, and everyone responds uniquely to denial. That being said, there is no doubt that not having something makes one feel that it is of greater value. That applies to everything, not just food. One of the reasons that some teenagers are so obsessed with sex is that they aren't having it. One of the reasons old married couples aren't as preoccupied with it (on average) is that they have had a lot of it and can have it any time they want.
When it comes to food, devaluing it is tricky. You can't have as much as you want or you won't lose weight, but if you completely deny yourself, you become obsessed with it and find it that much harder to succeed. This is why I talked about allowing indulgences in a former post. The mistake a lot of people make though is that they only indulge when in despair or after long periods of deprivation, or they choose to indulge in trigger foods where they lose all control.
For me, the balancing act comes from several sources, but the biggest one is to focus heavily on the experience of eating instead of cramming the food in my mouth and swallowing so that I can cram in the next one. The first bite of food is the best. Your taste buds aren't acclimated and the flavors or the most satisfying and intense. After that first bite, you are going to have seriously diminishing returns on the pleasure of subsequent bites.
A lot of overeating comes from mindless consumption. This is because eating is a compulsion for fat people rather than a conscious activity. Every bite of a treat or indulgence should be a fully conscience one. If you're not concentrating on the taste, texture, and smell of the food, then you're not really having an indulgence for the experience of the food. You're acting on your compulsion. I try to close my eyes when I have something I am eating for pleasure and really experience it, and I try not to eat more than 3 bites at a time. If I want more, I can go back later. The food isn't going anywhere and I may get another new burst of flavor after giving it a rest, or I may find that I don't need the experience again on that particular day.
I don't rule out eating anything I want to eat, but I don't eat everything I might want to eat. It may be a type of psychological trickery, but knowing that I can having anything I want any time I want rather than putting up walls between myself and desirable food stops me from obsessing on it and assigning it greater value. This may not work for everyone, but it is working for me.
I remember thinking that it was inconceivable to me that someone could have so little interest in food, particularly in chocolate and cake. I think this is yet another factor which influences people with weight problems to overeat. The pleasure they extract from food is higher than that of an average or underweight person. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the pleasure centers in a fat person's brain were lit up like a Christmas tree by the consumption of various foods and the bulbs quite a bit dimmer for those areas of an average weight person's brain.
This is an aspect of how I consider food which I have been working with for myself for quite some time. There's a fine balance to be reached between not exposing yourself to food which you find so good that it triggers a complete loss of control, and denying yourself pleasurable food entirely. If you eat foods which cause you to lose control, you fail. If you deprive yourself completely, you're all that more likely to fail because the denial will cause you to over-value the experience of having your pleasure centers stimulated by food you actually enjoy.
One of the reasons people are keen to start a diet after the holidays is that all of the copious consumption of treats during the season has resulted in a devaluation of such foods. They've had it for a long time and have lost their taste for it. After they diet for awhile, the deprivation makes the food seem more and more appealing.
That balance is different for each person because the "trigger" foods for each person vary, and everyone responds uniquely to denial. That being said, there is no doubt that not having something makes one feel that it is of greater value. That applies to everything, not just food. One of the reasons that some teenagers are so obsessed with sex is that they aren't having it. One of the reasons old married couples aren't as preoccupied with it (on average) is that they have had a lot of it and can have it any time they want.
When it comes to food, devaluing it is tricky. You can't have as much as you want or you won't lose weight, but if you completely deny yourself, you become obsessed with it and find it that much harder to succeed. This is why I talked about allowing indulgences in a former post. The mistake a lot of people make though is that they only indulge when in despair or after long periods of deprivation, or they choose to indulge in trigger foods where they lose all control.
For me, the balancing act comes from several sources, but the biggest one is to focus heavily on the experience of eating instead of cramming the food in my mouth and swallowing so that I can cram in the next one. The first bite of food is the best. Your taste buds aren't acclimated and the flavors or the most satisfying and intense. After that first bite, you are going to have seriously diminishing returns on the pleasure of subsequent bites.
A lot of overeating comes from mindless consumption. This is because eating is a compulsion for fat people rather than a conscious activity. Every bite of a treat or indulgence should be a fully conscience one. If you're not concentrating on the taste, texture, and smell of the food, then you're not really having an indulgence for the experience of the food. You're acting on your compulsion. I try to close my eyes when I have something I am eating for pleasure and really experience it, and I try not to eat more than 3 bites at a time. If I want more, I can go back later. The food isn't going anywhere and I may get another new burst of flavor after giving it a rest, or I may find that I don't need the experience again on that particular day.
I don't rule out eating anything I want to eat, but I don't eat everything I might want to eat. It may be a type of psychological trickery, but knowing that I can having anything I want any time I want rather than putting up walls between myself and desirable food stops me from obsessing on it and assigning it greater value. This may not work for everyone, but it is working for me.
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