Re: The War with Food

Hi Everyone

What Ms Flabuless is going through is probably similar to what many of you go through and feel on a daily basis. This same problem afflict many of my clients and is one that is initially difficult to change. It is soooo difficult every day just to survive and avoid temptation in our world, as every day we are bombarded with up to 200 messages from the media, food companies, governments and the likes that constantly conflict. One message will tempt you to eat and the next message will tell you that you are putting your health at risk or that you don’t conform to society norm. As a result we begin to play this tug-of-war inside our own heads. At times it may feel as though you have a split personality - one personality tricks you into eating (the devil or child) and the other personality will be trying to fight against this urge (the angel or adult), and then after you have eaten you have the guilt or critical/judgemental personality. These personalities fight against each other more and more and rebel against each other with greater intensity (big binges, long binges) if you reform to a restrictive or deprivation mentality. By this I mean, depriving or restricting yourself for long periods of time until you can no longer take the deprivation and the emotional builder up gets so strong that you blow up like a volcano and you impulsively binge or go on unhealthy eating binges for weeks on end or stop activity for weeks on end. This is why, when you go out (away from your controlled home environment) you are hypersensitive to the signs and signals of food and feel overwhelmed and compulsed to eat.

So the first step in the battle is to first identify that you have an addiction. Many of you are using food for other reasons than for nutrition and energy. So you need to identify what your relationship with food is, in certain circumstances. For example, you may use ice cream, chocolate, chips etc to destress you when you feel stressed or anxious; you may use pizza or hot chips to comfort you when you feel lonely. The more awareness you have into the situations, emotions and foods you use the more power you have.

The next step is to find out where your emotional attachment to food came from and why. For example, one of my clients always binged on chips and chocolate at the end of the day. She could not pinpoint why it ‘had to be’ chips and chocolate until one day she had the light-bulb moment that her Grandfather would pick her up from school and he would buy her chips and chocolate. From that moment on, she was able to change her emotional attachment to the food and move past it. Over a 4 week period, we decreased the frequency and amounts of the food while we worked on other strategies and emotions until she no longer needed the food. She lost 30kg/66pounds within 6 months just by doing this.

It is important for you to learn how to control food and be able to have a small amount of indulgent food 2 or 3 times a week. So instead of buying a family block of chocolate and eating it in one sitting or one day, buy a small freddo frog or snack mars bar and have that. Eat it slowly and savour the taste. Many of you may find this a strange concept initially however, if you try this you will find that you will begin to lose weight without effort and rebellion and of course guilt and disgust.

Homework -
Step 1) Identify your relationship with food - write down the foods, the emotions and the situations in which you use the food

Step 2) Identify the initial/significant emotional attachment event that lead to you using particular foods in particular situations (as above)

Step 3) Identify whether you have a restrictive or deprivation mentality (and is this one of the reasons you binge?)

Step 4) Slowly reduce the amount of food you use in an emotional eat eg. instead of a large packet of chips, have a small one; instead of a family size block of chocolate, have a small bar

Step 5) Reduce the frequency of emotional overeating, binges or unhealthy food eating

Step 6) Develop new strategies to replace food - we will do more of this over the next few weeks.

I hope this helps and good luck.

“We create our own world with the ingredients we put into it, so take care with your recipe”- Greg Phillips

“If you want to change what you are doing you must first change what you are thinking”- Greg Phillips