From skwigg's journal:
I meant to talk more about carefree eating in my last big journal post. I mentioned it but then didn't really elaborate. What is carefree eating? One way to describe it is eating freely without fear of consequences. It also involves being totally in the moment with your food. All other worries seem to fall away. Dieters and restrained eaters may only experience this during a binge or cheat. That was certainly the case for me for many years. The rest of the time there was constant chatter about numbers, guilt, self-control, and how I might compensate.
My thinking made overeating more appealing because it seemed to be the only escape from my thinking. Oops! That was the revelation. It wasn't really about the food. I felt relieved or hopeless based on what I was telling myself. During overeating episodes, I shut up for a minute. That was the magic. There was no drama or calorie math while I was still chewing. This made it appealing to keep eating more food for longer stretches. Again, oops! But I knew as soon as I stopped eating, the guilty, anxious noise would come rushing back in, so pass the cookies. Anybody relate?
The thing is, you don't need to overeat in order to feel carefree and not concerned about outcomes when you eat. Now, I experience something like Friday night ice cream peace at every meal. I think of Jill Coleman's line, "Control is the opposite of trust." When trying to fearfully control outcomes, craziness reigned. When I began to trust myself, stay in the moment, and focus on the behaviors I wanted, nearly every eating experience became carefree. Eventually.
This is where Georgie Fear is a super genius. Once you establish effective habits, you don't need to think so much. There's no need to count everything, or swear off certain foods, or stay out of restaurants, so there's no need to take a break from your eating with a forbidden food bender.
A few of my habits:
Eating satisfying meals and not snacking much.
Eating when physically hungry.
Eating plenty of nutritious whole foods with nothing off limits.
Eating to feel good before, during, and after my meals.
Eating dinner several hours before bed and going to sleep feeling light and comfortable.
These habits support a lean body and a healthy weight. If I’m following my habits, I can trust that I’m not gaining weight or undermining my values. There’s nothing to fret about or analyze to death at mealtimes. There’s just me enjoying my food. Note that taking someone else’s habits and trying to follow them like diet rules doesn’t have the same effect as establishing your own habits over time and allowing them to become automatic.
It’s also important to be able to recognize and release stressful thoughts. “Is that true?” If a thought hurts probably not. If constant fearful chatter about food, weight, and calories is the problem, more thinking isn’t the answer. Trying to counter or reason with those crazy thoughts keeps the circus in town. Dismissing them as unhelpful brain goo and staying fully present in the moment is how you find peace, and it doesn’t need to involve overeating. I loved this little graphic that Byron Katie included in her newsletter.
From skwigg's journal:
I am in weird and wonderful new territory with my eating. I've realized that I have a nearly complete lack of calorie awareness these days. Much of what I eat either has no nutrition label or I've never looked at it. I don't catch myself running calorie totals in my head anymore, or using math to choose between two foods. All of those numbers and rules have gradually fallen out of my head and been replaced with more pertinent information like: Does it taste good? Am I hungry? Will this be satisfying? Could I add something to make it even more nutritious or tasty? How do I want to feel after I eat this? When do I intend to eat again? Those last two questions help guide the portion.
I've been easing into this for years. Maybe what feels so fresh and different right now is that I've let go of daily weighing as well as calorie awareness. During the early years of eating more intuitively, it was extremely reassuring to see my weight. It was daily proof that nothing bad was happening. I knew I wasn't eating too much or too little. That allowed me to begin to let go of calorie and macro chatter and focus on results. Not just weight, but how I felt, how I performed, my health, my mood, my energy. As I was learning, I had wanted to focus on those other non-weight factors but would always sacrifice them if they were at odds with some rule or number. Some examples: I believed in an "oh,shit!" weight and would crack down if I crossed it. I would eat to satisfaction unless satisfaction was too many calories. In which case I would restrict in the moment and wildly overeat later, because logic. LOL
It was important to experience those various stages of trust and to move on when I was ready. Now when I don't weigh, I still know everything is ok because I love the way I eat, I feel good about my habits and food choices, my clothes fit, and I'm fit. Clearly things are going well. This new level of freedom and trust feels really nice. My training wheels are off and I'm flying!
From skwigg's journal:
I've been thinking about thoughts since they are the key to "carefree" anything. I realize how much mine have changed with practice and consistency. They definitely didn't change quickly or dramatically. Thought patterns are kind of a sticky mess. Habitual ones about good/bad, right/wrong, all/nothing can be very clingy.
Specifically, I'm thinking about that urge to escape or take a break from your everyday eating. It's the feeling that used to come up with every vacation, weekend, restaurant meal, or night home alone. NOW IS MY CHANCE! If you're feeling that, it's a flapping red flag that you are eating (or maybe thinking) too restrictively. Maybe your fat loss intentions are a little too aggressive. Maybe you've tackled too many habit changes at once, or one habit that was too big of a leap and needs to be scaled. Whether the goal is fat loss, maintenance, or performance, if the process is dialed in, it will start to feel easy. It will feel like, "Oh, I love this! I could do this forever." That never happened to me one time during a diet, not unless I was momentarily high on starvation endorphins. Otherwise it was always a countdown to the cheat day, the weigh-in, the end of the contest, or achieving my goal. ***Then I would be able to eat how I wanted.*** Yes, I should have had welts from all the red flags whapping me in the face. That's the story of every diet or batshit "lifestyle" I ever attempted. Endure, escape, rebound.
The key is to do away with the "endure" part and allow whatever thought/habit process you follow to be an enjoyable and sustainable one. When that is the case, you no longer want to eat completely differently because it's Saturday. What you normally do is already fun and flexible and can accommodate any situation or type of food. These days, I can eat a meal out of a vending machine, or at a waffle house, or at home alone on a weekend, and I'm going to eat the same way I always eat, which is a satisfying portion of whatever I want whenever I'm hungry. Sometimes it takes quite a lot of food to satisfy. Sometimes I want to be very full. No problem. That only means it will be longer until I'm hungry again. It's not a moral issue or a reflection of character. It doesn't seal my fate somehow, and it definitely doesn't require corrective action. My next move will be the same one as always: I'll eat a satisfying portion of whatever I want whenever I'm hungry.
As I've talked about in my journal, I want fruits and vegetables and cake and chicken and chocolate. I eat to feel good mentally and physically, so if I'm eating "whatever I want," I don't want all french fries, not anymore anyway. I did when I was dieting, because the biological urge to consume energy-dense whatever ASAP is a powerful force when you're chronically hungry. That does calm down though once feedings become predictable and sufficient.