A for ‘addiction’

On 18 April last year, I wrote in my diary (and in my IE book) about food addiction. Last night, I watched an episode of Desperate Housewives 2, the bit where Bree realises that she does indeed have a problem with alcohol and she can’t live without it.

I was reminded once more that I do have an addiction myself – a food addiction.

If you have just started on this IE journey, this might not be obvious to you at all. Also, maybe it’s different for everyone else, I don’t know. However, I would like to write about this, because I believe that it was fundamental to my recovery, and it obviously still is something I need to think about and work on because for the past 3 months, I have been slightly off-course. I reckon that by thinking about my food problems as an addiction problem once again, I will be able to ‘rectify the trajectory’.

First, here is what I wrote in April last year:

Today, I reread what I’ve written for my book and feel like a fraud. I don’t believe a word I’ve written and the obsession has well and truly returned – again... What’s happened? I just want to diet and lose the weight. I don’t want to go through this process, I can’t bear it any more!

Oh I know what’s happened! I’ve read a diet book! I’ve finally bought and read Dr Phil’s latest book, The Ultimate Weight Solution. I’ve got the feeling he might be right. I’ve got the feeling I might have been fooling myself, for the past six years.

Let’s face it, nothing has changed: I still overeat, I’m still obsessed with my weight and food, I still watch what I eat most of the time, I still criticise myself for it a lot of the time, I still worry about my body shape and what will happen to it if I really do what the authors of Overcoming Overeating say (‘Surround myself with my favourite sweeties, cakes and chocolates?! You ought to be joking!’), and I’m still... fatter than I used to be. In the past six years, nothing has changed, except for my weight, which has gone up and up and up.

So who’s right in this story? Who to trust? Who to believe? How can I develop my own voice in this mess and trust it 100%, all the time, for ever?

Today, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible.

Today, I’ve come back to the conclusion that I am addicted to food and that I seem unable to get rid of my addiction.

Today, I’ve remembered the bit in James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces where he finally recognises that he is addicted and what it all means. And I’ve remembered how I completely related to that when I read those words, realising that I was addicted too: addicted to anxiety, to stress and ultimately (or is it primarily?) to food. How I couldn’t live a normal life because of this addiction.

Today, I feel again how I felt in that moment – what he said is true of all addictions. If it’s true for him, it’s true for me. I must stop fooling myself.

I need to sort this out. I need to stop using food as my best friend, as my worst enemy, as the kind of parents I wanted but never had. I need to realise that food will never be my life, never be me, will never help me, will never help me live my life in a more productive way, in a more serene way, in a more natural and healthy way. I need to stop using food as my crutch. Food is just food.

I don’t want to scare you or disappoint you, but on the IE path, I have found that there are issues that keep showing their faces. It’s not pleasant, but it happens, and you need to know that it will probably happen to you too, and over several months or years. Even after six years of knowing that diets don’t work, last year I still wanted to diet, I still had moments when I thought that dieting, depriving myself were the only solution. Right now, even after two years of knowing that I have an addiction and need to treat it as such, and after two readings of Eating Less by Gillian Riley in less than a year, I need to be reminded, again, that I do have an addiction and that it won’t go away if I keep forgetting or ignoring it and if I keep running away from it.

So today, you’ve guessed it, I’m going to read Eating Less for the third time, and hopefully this time I will take all it says on board and make it my way of life.

Watching Desperate Housewives last night, I was also reminded that if you suffer from an addiction, you need to take it one day at a time. I have been very good at that in the past year or so, and I believe that it is the only way to be on the IE path – be in the present, take things as they come, one day at a time. The same is true for addictions. Each morning, I have to decide that I will tackle this part of my life as an addiction and that I will not succumb to food that is not good for me.

Right now, I bet you’re thinking ‘This is not intuitive eating, is it?’ That’s exactly what I thought when I first read Gillian’s book. I rejected it straight away and thought ‘It’s complete rubbish, it’s just another diet book’ and put it away (I kept it for future reference, because I had mainly bought it as part of my research for my own book). I thought that if I have to think about food so hard every time it enters my mind, surely it’s counter-intuitive, so I don’t want it and I don’t even want to try.

However, I’m not sure when, say four or five months later, I found myself thinking about it all again, about chemical addiction, about sugar and salt, and realised that perhaps there was at least some truth in it. So I read the book again. That time, it made a lot more sense and I started to believe in some of the principles outlined in it, simply because I had come to the same conclusion.

By the way, this is a big thing (I have found) when you are on the IE path. No matter how many times you read a book or a blog or you hear something: it is only when you come to that conclusion (whatever it is) by yourself that it truly becomes your principle too, that it becomes true for you too and that you can incorporate it into your life naturally.

Today I’m writing about all this mainly because in the past two weeks I have had insurmountable cravings for white chocolate Magnums. I indulged every time I wanted one. I was very glad the days that I didn’t fancy one (to me, it meant that IE was ‘working’), but I was very glad to indulge the days that I badly wanted one (it also meant that IE was ‘working’ – I was listening to my body and doing as it dictated). However, slowly slowly, I came to realise that it was the intrinsic ‘qualities’ of the Magnum that made me want to eat Magnums. And then I remembered: the more you eat of that crap, the more you want to eat it. I remembered: A-D-D-I-C-T-I-O-N.

You feel like you’re doing it right, like you’re doing it the IE way, because you listen to your body and feelings and cravings and ‘do as you’re told’ (in the sense of ‘do what your body tells you to do’). But after a while, you realise that it’s only because you’ve been eating that thing that you keep wanting it, and that you’ve entered the vicious circle, once more.

OK, so what is the solution? Well, here is what I found: all you have to do once you’ve realised and understood this (and accepted it, as well, which is another matter...) is to force yourself a tiny little bit for a couple of days to say ‘no’ to your cravings, to reason yourself, to remember that it’s only the sugar and the chemicals that make you want to eat more of that thing. I promise you, if you do that for a day or so, the cravings will go and you’ll be fine again. When I had done that a few times, I realised that it was then a lot easier to go back to IE. It was the sugar and the chemicals that had confused my body. After that, my body wasn’t chemically craving the particular food any more, so it was free to tell me what it truly wanted and needed, and it usually was healthy food, with a few unhealthy foods, such as a few crisps or two squares of chocolate or a biscuit.

But let’s go back to my recent Magnum cravings. I remembered Andrea Wren’s post on A perspective on eating what you want and what I wrote in her comment box. Well, it’s helped me remember that indeed, we are on this journey to treat ourselves and our bodies better, and this includes eating less junk food and more good, healthy, wholesome foods, in order to feel good, in mind and body. From then on, it made it easy for me to stop wanting white chocolate Magnums and stop eating them, cold turkey. The ultimate goal was to feel better and to help my body stop craving things that, really, it didn’t crave at all.

Here’s the deal: IE is a very delicate thing. Attaining balance is very hard (I’m sure you’ve noticed!). After a while, you’ll realise that, really, it’s just like dieting: you need to eat healthily (because you want to feel good about yourself) and you need to move (because you want to feel good about yourself). You need to do both these things to be the best person you can be. However, the process is completely different (as I’m sure you know by now). When you diet, you just follow some rules dictated by somebody else and you end up rebelling. When you are on the IE path, you come to the same conclusions but all by yourself (and so you don’t need to rebel), and you don’t need to count points/fat grams/calories/carbohydrates, that is (and it’s the best thing): you don’t need to think about it, you don’t need to obsess about it. Little by little, step by step, you just find your own balance, by trial and error, and it’s your balance. Needless to say, it takes a long time... but you will feel really good because you will have done it all by yourself and because you will have freed yourself. The taste of freedom is better than anything else, in this process. Losing weight sure feels good, but oh, the freedom...!

I’m aware that this is a very long post, but I had to write it, first for myself, as a HUGE reminder of how my life truly is (addiction is a big part of it, I must stop fooling myself once and for all: my brain keeps thinking that food is the ultimate solution to a good life, even though my life is already wonderful, so I need to look into this more deeply), and second in the hope that it might help somebody out there. Even if only one person finds out that the same is true for her/him, then I’ll be happy and this blog will have served its purpose.

H for ‘holding on’

Today I have realised once again that the reason I am not losing weight any more is because I am still holding on to the extra weight, to the extra fat. Somewhere in my brain, some cells work very hard at making other cells believe that somehow, the extra fat protects me from something. Intellectually, I know that it’s nonsense, I know that fat doesn’t protect me from anything, but my unconscious has other views on the matter. My ex-unconscious, actually – the one that I used to have when I was younger, the one that genuinely thought that by eating and putting on weight, my life would miraculously be better and I would be protected from evil.

I am now 30. It is time to get rid of this ‘ex-unconscious’. It shouldn’t still be alive in a part of my brain. It should be dead and gone. At 30, one should not believe that fat has a role any more, other than filling up the space between one’s bones and one’s clothes (with a bit of skin in between, of course).

Come on, get rid of it! Throw it away! Part with it. Put it on a boat and let the boat drift away on the Thames. Say goodbye to it. It doesn’t serve any/its purpose any more. You are a grown-up woman. Don’t be scared.

These are all things I used to tell myself but somehow, along the way, forgot to repeat to myself and so slowly slowly, my old demons have come back and it feels like my fat belongs to me again and I cannot part with it. I would feel bare, naked without it. I would feel transparent. I would feel vulnerable. I wouldn’t feel like myself any more. Again, intellectually, I know it’s all nonsense – fat doesn’t do any of that, it can’t do any of that. But the symbolism was so strong when I was younger, that it can still be strong even though I am now an adult and know better.

‘Holding on’ should be banned from our vocabulary now. We don’t want to hold on. We don’t want to hold on to our fat. It is the thing we most despise in us, it is the thing we so desperately want to get rid of. But if we are to manage without it, we need to recognise its power over us, to acknowledge that it has been useful in the past. We need to love it, in a way, before we can say goodbye. Love it to leave it. That’s my new mantra.

Today, I’m saying goodbye. I don’t need it any more. ‘Fat, you can go now. You don’t help me any more. Without you, I will feel naked, vulnerable, different, but you still need to go, to leave me alone, to leave me to my own devices. I’ll find a way to cope without you and without food.’

I have often found it very useful and enlightening to talk to my body or my fat in this way. In Beyond Chocolate the authors (Sophie and Audrey Boss) recommend writing a letter to your body with your dominant hand and then write another letter, this time from your body to you, with your non-dominant hand. I have done it, and I have been amazed at all the stuff my body had to tell me.

Why don’t you try, and then tell me in my comment box what you found out?

S for ‘scary’

Starting on the intuitive eating path was the scariest thing I have ever done. Every day, for a few months, I had to make the conscious decision not to diet. Practically every moment, and certainly every time I ate, I had to decide to give up dieting and to start a new way of life, no matter what the consequences would be. Every day, I had to choose between weighing the cereals in my breakfast bowl and trusting my judgement; between counting my points (the Weight Watchers system, as I’m sure you all know) and eating to my heart’s content; between eating only three times a day and eating as often as was needed; between eating my sensible salad and devouring what I really felt like eating – whether it be a bowl of chips or a banoffee pie.

Every day, I had this intense fear of weight gain. It was unbearable sometimes. I had to stop and think and remind myself what would happen if I did diet – ultimately, I would be even fatter and my problem would be even worse. I had to believe that. After a few weeks, I just knew that and didn’t have to force myself into believing it – it had become second nature. My brain just knew. My brain had stopped ignoring the past. The lessons of the past were obvious – diets don’t work, diets make people fat, diets make things worse and all the harder the next time around. Diets are not the answer. But the fear of putting on more and more weight and not knowing when it would stop was there, every day, minute after minute.

I bought myself a pair of jeans that was so big I knew they would not feel tight for a while, and that helped. It reassured me and it freed me from thinking about my body so much and worrying about weight gain. Feeling tight clothes on you is the worst thing for a dieter, but also for an ex-dieter. It makes you want to go on a diet right now and for ever, to keep the weight off. Yet the new, more sensible self reminds the old self that the ultimate result is only more weight gain, so there is no point. Indeed, you MUST NOT go on a diet.

Of course, the inevitable happened: the pounds piled on, until I reached 75 kilos. It was about 6-7 kilos more than my weight just before the decision. I quickly realised and accepted that it was a small sacrifice if the feeling of freedom was guaranteed. And freedom definitely was my priority. I had just had enough of being obsessed with food and my body shape and hunger.

But of course, this feeling of freedom is not a given – it is something we attain on our own accord. If we don’t allow it in, it just won’t happen. Sometimes you have to force yourself to stop thinking about food and body shape, and that’s when freedom comes in. Yet it is also a natural consequence of not dieting – the freedom of choice, of being different and accepting it, of weighing a little bit more than before and a bit more than we would want to, while knowing at the same time that at least it won’t ever go up like that again, or at least that it won’t go up for ever.

At that point it felt like I had ‘got it out of my system’. I had eaten everything I fancied every time I fancied it. However, another year passed and it felt like I had been at a standstill for 12 months. Nothing much was happening to my weight, but nothing much was happening inside myself. No breakthrough, no BIG REALISATION, no progress in the IE department, despite having first encountered and started applying the principles in December 1999 when reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.

I realised that I hadn’t got it out of my system at all, and probably because I hadn’t ‘done it properly’. I was still putting the brakes on when it came to eating, I was never letting myself go completely, I was still scared of that ‘Evil Weight Gain’ and what people (especially my parents, my family) would say. I’ll admit it: I still didn’t trust the system completely.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more I understood and accepted that there really was no other way. I just had to be patient, and take it one day at a time. I decided I also absolutely needed to ‘do it right’ from A to Z. I realised I had never done it properly in the sense that I had never surrounded myself with forbidden food for any length of time: I did it for a week, but then I always got scared and finished my supplies and never replenished them. Out of all the principles, it was the only one I hadn’t followed, and yet it was pivotal to the success of the method, if I were to believe the authors of Intuitive Eating and those of Overcoming Overeating, Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter.

And so I filled my cupboards and freezer with my favourite foods, freely and unashamedly, telling myself this was going to be for good, ‘I’m going to do it properly this time, there’s no going back, I’m doing it no matter what, it is the ONLY WAY’: white chocolate, milk and hazelnut chocolate, Digestive biscuits and Ben & Jerry Cookie Dough ice cream. And I ate. Loads. As often as I (thought I) was hungry. And even when I wasn’t (that was the bad part, but I still went along with it, because I knew I had to).

Then one day I weighed myself and was shocked at seeing more than 80 kilos on the scales. I hadn’t seen it coming. Well I had, my jeans were getting tighter, but I had ignored that bit.

It stopped me right in my tracks, as it were. I became very scared. I was getting married two months later, and I had never weighed so much in my entire life. It was time to stop. It was time to reason myself. And that’s when I reread Geneen Roth’s Breaking Free from Emotional Eating and came across a paragraph that reminded me that no matter how many biscuits or how much ice cream I ate, I would never make up for all the years of deprivation, of not allowing myself these particular foods.

These lines really meant something to me that day, and from then on, I stopped eating for England and for the past. I started focusing on the present, asking myself how many biscuits I truly needed right now. It turned out it was never a lot. It certainly was never five or ten! It was just one or two. I also became ‘reasonable’: I told myself ‘Come on, that’s enough now, you’ve already had two, you don’t need any more, and you know it’. It worked for me because I wasn’t rebellious any more – I knew there was no need to be, since I could still eat anything I wanted.

Yes, despite the weight gain and the fear of putting even more on, I still didn’t go on a diet (I simply couldn’t; I tried for two days and failed miserably), I still told myself that I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. But I also reminded myself that just a little was enough. I didn’t need to eat that much. And of course, I had to fit in that dress... It was a good incentive, yes...

Since the wedding, my weight has been going down slowly. Some days I’ll eat what I consider ‘crap food’, some days I’ll eat really good, healthy food. Most days now, I eat well and respect my body. It doesn’t want to eat loads, it doesn’t want to eat bad foods, it doesn’t want to eat things it can’t cope with. We’re partners now. And I try not to think about the weight loss too much. It only stops me from focusing on the real, better goal: the one of having a healthy relationship with food and with my body.

N for ‘need’ (1)

Today at meal times, I repeated to myself: ‘No, you don’t need extra food, you don’t need a treat (or several!). You’re fine as you are. You’re not hungry any more. You can live without extra food. Food is not your crutch.’

And it worked! I have felt fabulous all day, because I listened to myself and fulfilled my morning promise.

P for ‘principles’

I know for sure that all I need to do to find my body (I don’t like to use ‘to lose weight’ – these are dieting-days words) is:
- to pay attention
- not to overeat

That is all it takes.

And then forbid myself to think about it toooooo much, of course. Thinking about it too much makes me focus on the wrong thing(s) (When will I be hungry next? When will I lose weight? Am I going to be hungry at lunch time? etc.)

Yes, the two principles outlined above our my life-savers. And they are all I need to change my life.

What are your life-saving principles?

S for ‘strong’

- Every time I eat when I’m not hungry or I overeat, I then feel bad about it and feel like eating even more or even more often.

- Every time I eat just what I need and want, I feel good and in control and I feel like a normal eater: there’s no need to think about food! My body is in control, my body tells me what it needs and wants.

- Every time I don’t pay attention to what I eat (e.g. by reading or by thinking about something else, not focusing on the present), I send a signal to my brain that says ‘I don’t care’. And when I don’t care, I feel bad and... you know what happens next.

Question: Where do you get the strength to pay attention and then to stop? Basically, where do you get the strength to be strong?

My answer: I find that the first moments of the day are when I decide things. I decide to be strong, I decide that today I will not overeat/will pay attention/will not get distracted/will respect food, my body, myself. Come eating time, I remember my morning promise and reiterate it. It helps me stay strong and aware throughout the meal/eating experience, and it then gives me the strength to stop when I’m full or have had enough of the taste.

G for 'guilt'

I’m finding it hard to stop and ask myself this question during the day, so I’ve decided to sit down and write it all out here.

Why can’t I stop eating when I’m full?
Why can’t I decide that enough is enough, before I eat the last crumb?
Why do I think that food is good and I can’t live without its nice taste in my mouth?
What makes me believe that this problem will never be solved, not entirely, not really?
How can I change my beliefs about myself, about my ability to solve this problem?
Do I really want to change?

I feel guilty for not trying hard enough.
I feel guilty for not being there for one of my friends who needs me right now.
I feel guilty for taking too much on.
I feel guilty for not doing enough.
I feel guilty, guilty, guilty, and this is not helping my eating patterns!

Therefore, I MUST stop feeling guilty.

E for ‘enemies’

I realised today that my first enemies are my habits. I have three habits (as far as eating is concerned – I have many more for other things!!):

1) I read while I eat my breakfast and most of my lunches (those I spend at home when I don’t go to work and my husband is not at home, i.e. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays).
2) I put too big portions on my plate/in my bowl.
3) I finish what is on my plate/in my bowl no matter what.

My aim from now on will be to eliminate these habits, and for ever. Indeed, I have managed to stop reading and/or serving too big portions and/or finishing what’s on my plate/in my bowl for long stretches of time before, but I always go back to these horrible, ancestral, learned habits. This MUST stop if I am to get to my normal body weight and shape.

What are your habits and why would you like to change them? How are they detrimental to you/your IE goals?

The idea

I have written an entire book about intuitive eating, originally in the hope to have it published and that it would help anybody who would read it.

Recently, I’ve thought about it some more and I think I want to remain anonymous, so I have given up on the idea of having my book published. Also, I haven’t lost as much weight as I think I can by following my own principles, so I don’t think I would be taken seriously. ‘Who is she to tell us what to do when she’s obviously not quite there herself?’ is the type of comment that might welcome me if I ever tried to send my book to a publisher.

However, I still like the idea very much, and I still want to help people on their path to recovery from food addiction or overeating or whatever they want to call it. So I have decided to write a blog about it all – my experiences, my book, my diaries, my ongoing (though fading) struggle.

In this blog, I will probably mix it all up – some lines from my book, some lines from my diaries, and some lines about the present and my current problems (yes, they do recur every now and again).

There was a time when I thought that it was probably better to stop thinking about it completely and live life to the full. This only lasted for a few months. My demons are coming back slowly. And I now know that the only way forward is to think about them again, write about them, and provide advice – to myself and to others. When I write with people in mind, I also write with ‘me’ in mind, and so I help myself by helping others – and, hopefully, vice versa.

Welcome to my blog!