From skwigg's journal:
I listened to a Jill Coleman (Jillfit.com) Moderation365 webinar today and I'm bursting with happy eating excitement! I'm also sleepy, so I'll just copy and paste my notes for now. :-) There are lots of juicy ideas here. Any thoughts?
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Moderation365
Choose the middle path with your eating. One end of the spectrum is deprivation, the other end is overindulgence. Both of those are stressful and uncomfortable. At every meal, ask what is the middle path where I will be completely satisfied and feel great?
The more you restrict yourself on Monday, the worse your eating will be on Friday. The more you restrict yourself earlier in the day, the worse your eating will be at the end of the day. Deprivation is not benign. There's always an opposite reaction.
Is your HEC in check? - Hunger, Energy, Cravings. If those are all out of whack from your current approach, any changes you try to make will not be sustainable.
Choosing moderation = choosing satisfaction. A moderate meal is a satisfying meal. Satisfaction is always the goal.
Satisfaction can be increased both with the food you choose and with the ritual or experience of eating.
Think about your typical meals. Which ones are totally satisfying? You really look forward to them and feel great afterward. Which ones don't quite cut it? Maybe you feel hungry an hour later, or you feel rushed, or the environment is stressful, or you feel uncomfortably stuffed afterward. The least satisfying meals are the ones to adjust first.
FOMO - fear of missing out. Leads us to order the most indulgent over-the-top choice in certain situations because we give ourselves the choice between totally going for it or ordering lettuce, or black coffee, or skinless chicken breast. The middle path is in between blowout eating and restriction. Maybe you do get a salad, but with cheese and bacon.
Don't give up the rituals that are satisfying to you - morning coffee, wine with a friend, taco night.
Tools to avoid going overboard: consistent exposure and mindful eating, especially with "trigger foods." If a food has been a problem before, you want to expose yourself regularly in small doses and be more mindful of hunger/fullness/emotions while eating. If you do overeat (you will sometimes, it's an ongoing practice) resist the urge to tighten up. Why? Deprivation leads to more overeating! Come back to the middle instead. If you overeat at night, you still deserve a satisfying breakfast. Always the middle way. Include enough favorite foods and preemptive treats to take the edge off and keep satisfaction high. If things get weird for a meal or a day, just come back to the middle. "Perfect eating" isn't an option so don't feel bad for not doing it. The idea that it could ever work is absurd.
Q&A - Do I keep exposing myself to tricky foods until I can have them around and not care? YES! Have a small portion every day until you're bored. You don't want there to be foods you can't have in your house because what happens when you're at a friend's house? At a party? At work? You don't want to turn into a trembling moron every time there's cake in the room (Jill didn't say it quite like that. LOL) You want to be able to trust yourself to take it or leave it.
The way you eat is the same no matter what day it is, whether you're at home alone, eating with others, in a restaurant, at a friend's. Sit down to satisfaction at every meal. Break the restrict/cheat cycle.
The goal is to eventually eat intuitively but in the beginning you may need to eat a little more strategically. Think about your current meals, how to make them more satisfying, and how to make them work with your schedule.
Q&A - Breakfast grosses me out. I'm not hungry in the morning. I eat something small and not very satisfying just to get through it. Do I have to eat breakfast? NO! Try waiting a couple of hours and eat something more satisfying when you're actually excited about it. Maybe this will work better for you. Maybe it won't. You'll know based on what happens with your eating the rest of the day. Honor your own process.
Q&A - What if I eat a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting every weekend as a "cheat" and feel physically icky afterward? Eat a smaller portion of Ben & Jerry's every day for a couple weeks until it's not as exciting. Maybe smaller portions eaten mindfully are just as enjoyable and feel better afterward. Limiting ice cream to once a week and labeling it a "cheat" keep it exciting and scarce.
Q&A - How do I share the moderation message with friends who are restricting and doing cleanses? Don't try to tell them that they're doing it wrong. Leave them to their own process of learning and discovery. You do you. Maybe you can be a positive example and share some of your own approach (especially on social media) without ever judging or commenting on what they do.
Additional thoughts about the "HEC in check" part. She's really talking about maintenance. It's important to learn to maintain in an enjoyable way where you like the way you eat, aren't thinking about it too much, and your weight is stable. If you can do that, then you can make one adjustment at a time to begin to create a deficit. If you're currently dieting and your HEC (hunger, energy, cravings) is not yet in check. Making another run at a deficit while you're still feeling restricted and food-obsessed will likely only perpetuate the deprive/overindulge cycle.
Additional, additional thought. She actually doesn't weigh herself or encourage weighing. For maintenance, she means maintaining your size. Like your clothes fitting or your circumference measurements being stable.Â
From skwigg's journal:
A few more notes and thoughts from Jill Coleman's Food Obsession Bootcamp.
This week was about control versus trust, and the mindsets surrounding abundance/scarcity and situational eating. I loved some of the questioning she suggests. If you're feeling scarcity and worried there won't be enough food, ask yourself, "What's the worst case scenario?" You aren't actually going to die. Maybe you need to go out and get more food, or maybe you wait and eat later. Ask, "Is this the last opportunity I will ever have to eat this food?" Probably not. Probably you could get more any time. Ask, "What am I missing out on if I skip it?" Maybe you're only missing out on feeling stuffed and disappointed. Ask, "Will I regret skipping it?" Tomorrow morning are you going to be sad or pleased that you passed on the whatever it is? Remember that the flash of disappointment from turning something down tends to be fleeting. Maybe 30 seconds or a minute or two. Then you probably either won't care or you'll feel good about it.
Situational eating can be people or peer pressure (grandma insisting you have one more, everyone ordering appetizers). It can be fear of missing out (food FOMO). Maybe you always get popcorn at the movies or dessert at a restaurant and are afraid you'd really be missing out if you made a different choice. Situational eating can also be emotional eating or brain shut-down where you link certain eating behaviors to certain events, like snacking when your show is on television or rewarding yourself with takeout food after a stressful day at work. Some tools are to reaffirm your goals. With food pushers or peer pressure, resist the urge to get defensive or make excuses. "No thanks, I'm good." is better than blaming them, explaining your whole approach, or trying to get their approval. Choose food that is both moderate and satisfying from the middle range of the deprivation/indulgence scale. You don't have to either say no or eat everything.
Have a mental plan, and then make another one if it doesn't work out. She gave an example of her husband ordering a dessert she didn't care for. She passed, but planned to pick up her favorite frozen yogurt from the place next door. They were out, so she shifted the plan to have something she enjoyed at home. Roll with it. You always have choices. Mindfulness gives you time to decide and implement. You don't have to eat something you don't really want just because it's there.
More random notes:
The goal isn't to not binge. The goal is to never feel deprived.
Rules are a crutch. They keep you dependent and give a false sense of control.
If you can feel more satisfied on Monday, you'll indulge less on Friday. If you can feel more satisfied at breakfast, you'll indulge less at lunch. Don't think about days or meals in isolation. Each one affects the others.
You can never trust situations and circumstances (what your mother in-law is serving, whether there will be healthy food options in a meeting) but you CAN always trust yourself. The ultimate freedom is knowing you can eat anywhere anytime and choose the best option for you. (Self-trust)
Start questioning the rules you may have internalized. Things like: 100g of protein per day, 5 servings of vegetables, no carbs at night, or drinking a gallon of water. They are a mental drain. If you're trying to keep track of lots of external food rules every day, you won't have enough energy left to practice mindfulness. Our minds weigh all decisions the same. Your willpower doesn't care about impact. It will treat grams of sodium in peanut butter or white rice versus brown (little rocks) the same as decisions that actually matter like eating satisfying meals when hungry (big rocks). Too much food noise depletes your willpower for no reason.
Eat according to your HEC (hunger, energy, cravings), not the clock. There is no external formula that will solve all your problems, make the process effortless, and give you the body of your dreams. Easy is earned through practice. (Oh, snap! Isn't that last sentence the truth!)
Ask: Is this way of eating making me more or less neurotic? If it makes you more obsessed, don't go there.
This week's homework is to pick 3 of your "rules" and shirk them. Again, I've shirked all of my rules to bits already. :-) I don't have any new ones I want to work on. This will be a really exciting week for people who are just moving away from obsessive rule-following. Nothing bad happens, I assure you.