Recently, one of my clients told me that she thought she suffered heat stroke after returning from a vacation in a very hot part of the country. She said that she felt terrible and had no appetite for three days. Though she wanted to eat, she couldn't make herself do so. I had two reactions to this: I felt very bad for her that she was so sick for such a long time, and I envied her that she had no appetite for three days.
The latter response is one that I didn't think about, but several days later, as I walked in scorching heat and sweat ran down my brow and thoughts of heat stroke entered my mind, I rolled it around a bit more thoughtfully. My thought as I wondered if I had drunk enough water or been in the sun too long was not, "it'd be awful if I suffered heat stroke, too." I was thinking, "at least I wouldn't want to eat for several days." As soon as I reached the end of this line of thinking, I realized that my relationship with food, much improved as it is, is still not in a good place.
While I have very successfully divorced myself from the idea that some foods are "good" and some are "bad" and will eat whatever I want (though in controlled portions), it became clear that I still embrace the idea deep down that "eating is bad" and "not eating is good". When I was in junior high school, while sitting near one of the more popular girls, I heard her remark that she thought she might be catching a cold or the flu. She said that she hoped that she was because she wanted to lose some weight and that would expedite the process. At that time, I thought about the fact that getting sick never made me not want to eat. In fact, it only made me want to eat more and more unhealthy food.
Eating is a part of life. It's for pleasure. It's for sustenance. It's an experience that we should approach with joyous anticipation at the variety of experience and quality of nourishment that we are about to receive. It's a part of our celebrations of important events and a component of building rich memories. Instead of viewing the desire to eat in such a light, some part of me still sees having an appetite as an undesirable impulse.
Part of the reason I feel this way, I'm certain, is all of the censure I have received all of my life for wanting to eat. Fat people aren't supposed to eat at all. They should lose weight in order to gain the privilege others have to nourish themselves. If they must eat, they must only eat for nutrition and never for pleasure. For fat people, wanting to eat is "bad". Not wanting to eat is "good". Part of me, the conscious part, has no interest in being a "good fatty", but obviously some unconscious part of me still subscribes to the idea that I shouldn't want to eat.
Not all of these feelings are inspired by direct societal messages about being a "bad fatty". Some of it is also the result of a life spent fighting urges to eat things that made me heavier and failing to resist those urges. The battle fatigue I sometimes feel at not acting on hunger immediately quite naturally inspires a sense that it'll all be a hell of a lot easier if I had less of an appetite.
Frankly, I do have less of an appetite now than before, but I still feel like eating more than I do most of the time (and definitely more often than I do). The bottom line is that I think I would eat nearly all of the time some days if I didn't resist my urges. And I know that doing so would result in an ever upward spiral of eating more until I started to put weight back on again. The appetite can contract through behavior modification and gradual reduction in portions, but it can so easily expand through similar increases.
Sometimes, I'd just like to dive into a pile of food and not come up for air until I'm ready to burst, and occasionally, I do that and regret it a little because I feel uncomfortably full. Fortunately, doing so rarely lands me at consuming more than 2500 calories in a day these days, so it's not a serious problem. However, I'd still rather not want to do it at all. I need to deal with the part of me that thinks being sick and not eating might be better than being well and eating. At this point in time, I'm at the recognition stage. From here, I have to work on healing my thinking in this regard so I can form an even better relationship psychologically with food.
Showing posts with label sick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sick. Show all posts
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Coping with bad days
Everyone has bad days. They are those times when you're so overwhelmed by something that doing all of the stuff it takes to stay on your plan to improve your health and reduce your weight seems like an immense burden. This isn't an illusion or an attempt to make an excuse to abandon your plan in favor of reverting back to what you “really” want to do, eat junk and be inert, as many people often conclude. It's neither your weakness nor a manifestation of barely suppressed desires to indulge when this happens.
When we have “bad days”, we (usually) lose motivation because we are overwhelmed and doing anything that requires the least bit of effort is like contemplating adding that last straw that will break our (figurative) backs. Your nervous system feels stimulation when physical or emotional discomfort are being endured. It's one of the reasons people who are in pain have less patience than people who are not. At these times, making any effort is hard.
Most people define “effort” as movement or activity, but even thinking about something when you're having a bad day is going to require energy. Your brain, after all, requires an immense amount of energy relative to other organs. Incidentally, this is why college students tend to gain weight. It's not the stress so much as the studying. The brain makes them want quick energy, and they often turn to quick and dense delivery systems like candy.
For women, myself included, menstrual cycles and pre-menstrual cycles tend to be the times when it becomes very difficult to stay on plan. It's not only that your bodily systems are disrupted and its energies diverted to monthly regulatory processes, but also that we tend to develop cravings and want to eat more. Again, this is not weakness, but a function of biology. Fighting back against such strong impulses when you're feeling poorly is an order of magnitude harder than on those days when you're doing well.
Today, I'm having a “bad day” because of my period. I feel foggy, impatient, have a headache, and I want to eat rather than resist when I'm hungry or having a craving. I feel like the least little bit of effort including having to think in any way about what or how much I'm eating is too much and I'd like to just put my head down on the desk and withdraw from everything. All of my understanding of the underlying factors doesn't change the fact that I feel like crap and that resisting any urge right now feels like it's going to take a Herculean effort which I cannot muster.
So, how do I cope? I start with acknowledging that this is going to be a hard day, and that I may end up eating a few more calories, and it's going to be okay if I eat up to 2000 instead of sticking to 1500. It's also okay if I decide not to exercise because I feel bad. And I'm not lying to myself. One of the things which I think people on “diets” tend to do is never let themselves off the hook, push themselves every single day and berate themselves when they “fail”, even when they feel like crap. I think that we have to be reasonable with ourselves and our lives. By giving yourself permission to eat a little more and do less when you feel bad, you take the pressure off of yourself for the day. You immediately improve your chances of coping effectively during the short period of time when you are doing poorly. While there is a chance that you will suffer from a “lack of progress” during the days you do this, you at least will know that you will not suffer a serious setback or suffer needlessly for incremental gains.
The result of consciously cutting myself slack early on when I feel terrible is that the sense of being overwhelmed immediately is reduced. Instead of feeling the crushing weight of my physical difficulties coupled with my mental fog and having to deal with my eating and exercise goals, I only feel the first two. I take away some of the stress that I can control so that I can more effectively deal with the ones that I can't. I actually feel relieved just by giving myself this permission. And if I need to act on that latitude, I will, and I will absolutely not feel bad about it. It's important to remember that one day a month, one day a week or whatever is not going to sabotage your progress, especially if you're not pigging out on far more calories than you could burn in two days. This isn't permission to go crazy, but rather to be more flexible. And that is generally “enough” if you're not in the very earliest stages of your plan (when it's harder to stick with it).
When you're trying to lose weight and doing poorly, you tend to focus excessively on the part of your life which is the hardest to stick to, the diet and exercise. It's the first thing you want to jettison and start over again tomorrow, but there is much more to life and making it easier to cope when you're not doing well. Rather than focus on the part which is hardest to follow, focus on the other parts which may tax you on a bad day but are effortless on other days and determine how you can improve your circumstances throughout the entire day by letting any non-essential activity go. Plan to procrastinate and indulge wherever you reasonably can.
For each person, streamlining your day is different, but I'll give some examples:
When we have “bad days”, we (usually) lose motivation because we are overwhelmed and doing anything that requires the least bit of effort is like contemplating adding that last straw that will break our (figurative) backs. Your nervous system feels stimulation when physical or emotional discomfort are being endured. It's one of the reasons people who are in pain have less patience than people who are not. At these times, making any effort is hard.
Most people define “effort” as movement or activity, but even thinking about something when you're having a bad day is going to require energy. Your brain, after all, requires an immense amount of energy relative to other organs. Incidentally, this is why college students tend to gain weight. It's not the stress so much as the studying. The brain makes them want quick energy, and they often turn to quick and dense delivery systems like candy.
For women, myself included, menstrual cycles and pre-menstrual cycles tend to be the times when it becomes very difficult to stay on plan. It's not only that your bodily systems are disrupted and its energies diverted to monthly regulatory processes, but also that we tend to develop cravings and want to eat more. Again, this is not weakness, but a function of biology. Fighting back against such strong impulses when you're feeling poorly is an order of magnitude harder than on those days when you're doing well.
Today, I'm having a “bad day” because of my period. I feel foggy, impatient, have a headache, and I want to eat rather than resist when I'm hungry or having a craving. I feel like the least little bit of effort including having to think in any way about what or how much I'm eating is too much and I'd like to just put my head down on the desk and withdraw from everything. All of my understanding of the underlying factors doesn't change the fact that I feel like crap and that resisting any urge right now feels like it's going to take a Herculean effort which I cannot muster.
So, how do I cope? I start with acknowledging that this is going to be a hard day, and that I may end up eating a few more calories, and it's going to be okay if I eat up to 2000 instead of sticking to 1500. It's also okay if I decide not to exercise because I feel bad. And I'm not lying to myself. One of the things which I think people on “diets” tend to do is never let themselves off the hook, push themselves every single day and berate themselves when they “fail”, even when they feel like crap. I think that we have to be reasonable with ourselves and our lives. By giving yourself permission to eat a little more and do less when you feel bad, you take the pressure off of yourself for the day. You immediately improve your chances of coping effectively during the short period of time when you are doing poorly. While there is a chance that you will suffer from a “lack of progress” during the days you do this, you at least will know that you will not suffer a serious setback or suffer needlessly for incremental gains.
The result of consciously cutting myself slack early on when I feel terrible is that the sense of being overwhelmed immediately is reduced. Instead of feeling the crushing weight of my physical difficulties coupled with my mental fog and having to deal with my eating and exercise goals, I only feel the first two. I take away some of the stress that I can control so that I can more effectively deal with the ones that I can't. I actually feel relieved just by giving myself this permission. And if I need to act on that latitude, I will, and I will absolutely not feel bad about it. It's important to remember that one day a month, one day a week or whatever is not going to sabotage your progress, especially if you're not pigging out on far more calories than you could burn in two days. This isn't permission to go crazy, but rather to be more flexible. And that is generally “enough” if you're not in the very earliest stages of your plan (when it's harder to stick with it).
When you're trying to lose weight and doing poorly, you tend to focus excessively on the part of your life which is the hardest to stick to, the diet and exercise. It's the first thing you want to jettison and start over again tomorrow, but there is much more to life and making it easier to cope when you're not doing well. Rather than focus on the part which is hardest to follow, focus on the other parts which may tax you on a bad day but are effortless on other days and determine how you can improve your circumstances throughout the entire day by letting any non-essential activity go. Plan to procrastinate and indulge wherever you reasonably can.
For each person, streamlining your day is different, but I'll give some examples:
- If it is a hot day, give in and use the air conditioner. If it's cold, turn up the heat. Choose the luxury setting just for this day and go back to enduring things for the good of the environment tomorrow when you feel better.
- If you had plans for cleaning or cooking that are not absolutely essential, abandon them. Laundry can wait.
- If you have errands to run which can wait, do not do them. This includes things which may seem innocuous like going to the hair salon or shopping.
- Turn off your cell phone if you can. Turn on your answering machine. Don't risk having to deal with people who may add stress to your day.
- Don't check your e-mail or social networking sites.
- Laying around in your pajamas all day (if you're not working, obviously).
- Playing mindless games.
- Watching stupid television or movies that make you happy.
- Drink diet soda or tea or coffee with sweetener when you want them as often as you want them.
- Don't force yourself to eat things you aren't really interested in eating for health purposes. I know this may be a controversial thing, but if you don't feel like eating a damn vegetable today, don't. It's not the end of the world if you go a day here and there which isn't nutritionally stellar.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thursday: August 20, 2009
One of the problems with not counting calories everyday is that you can easily lose sight of how much you're eating. This past week, I've felt like I've been eating too much every day, though I honestly have not been indulging or eating a lot. I've just simply felt an acute lack of a feeling of taxing deprivation. Maybe I have adjusted, or maybe I've had a few too many experiences where I went for a (healthy) snack when I should have avoided having one. At any rate, I felt like Thursday would be a welcome "reset" point where I'd try to steer myself back to a point of a better sense of control.
One of the reasons I've felt a little more "indulgent" (for lack of a better word) this week is that I've been sick with a cold. In the past, I've often taken the misery I've felt while sick as an excuse to indulge, particularly with ice cream. I'd feel that feeling bad meant I had earned the right to dive in and enjoy things that made me feel much better. More often than not, eating too much of things like ice cream and chips tended to just make me feel worse. That wasn't so much because of guilt, but because too much junk food will have that effect on a person.
Since I have a history of surrendering all control when I'm sick because I really don't have the energy to resist, I think I've probably been less involved in consciously stopping myself from eating. Rather than ask "why am I going to eat this?", I ask, "why not?" In the end, I would tell myself that I could "afford" that extra snack as it wasn't too bad for me and I'd been pretty well-behaved on the food front all day. I'm guessing that, while this hasn't set me back any, it has retarded my progress.
Since I entered this Thursday with a strong motivation to get back on track, I planned it pretty carefully and forced myself to ride out some pretty intense hunger pangs. The good start to the day began with putting 5 hours between breakfast and lunch, and breakfast was yogurt and fruit again so this was a struggle. The 200 calories from breakfast were certainly not enough to satisfy my body for that many hours, but I soldiered through by distracting myself with work. I wanted to add in a bit of exercise, but still didn't feel very well and couldn't manage the energy to get to it.
From a resisting the urge to eat viewpoint, this was one mighty tough day. By dinner time, my mind and stomach were screaming in my ear and I was overwhelmed with hunger pangs, but I kept beating them back mentally. It was really rough, but today's total came in at 1192, so I can say that it was a complete success.
One of the reasons I've felt a little more "indulgent" (for lack of a better word) this week is that I've been sick with a cold. In the past, I've often taken the misery I've felt while sick as an excuse to indulge, particularly with ice cream. I'd feel that feeling bad meant I had earned the right to dive in and enjoy things that made me feel much better. More often than not, eating too much of things like ice cream and chips tended to just make me feel worse. That wasn't so much because of guilt, but because too much junk food will have that effect on a person.
Since I have a history of surrendering all control when I'm sick because I really don't have the energy to resist, I think I've probably been less involved in consciously stopping myself from eating. Rather than ask "why am I going to eat this?", I ask, "why not?" In the end, I would tell myself that I could "afford" that extra snack as it wasn't too bad for me and I'd been pretty well-behaved on the food front all day. I'm guessing that, while this hasn't set me back any, it has retarded my progress.
Since I entered this Thursday with a strong motivation to get back on track, I planned it pretty carefully and forced myself to ride out some pretty intense hunger pangs. The good start to the day began with putting 5 hours between breakfast and lunch, and breakfast was yogurt and fruit again so this was a struggle. The 200 calories from breakfast were certainly not enough to satisfy my body for that many hours, but I soldiered through by distracting myself with work. I wanted to add in a bit of exercise, but still didn't feel very well and couldn't manage the energy to get to it.
From a resisting the urge to eat viewpoint, this was one mighty tough day. By dinner time, my mind and stomach were screaming in my ear and I was overwhelmed with hunger pangs, but I kept beating them back mentally. It was really rough, but today's total came in at 1192, so I can say that it was a complete success.
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