Eating what I want

The best bit of intuitive eating is being able to eat whatever you want. It's the best bit and yet at the same time it is the worst. Being able to gobble down large quantities of gooey cakes, sugary chocolate and salty crisps sounds fantastic. And yet it isn't because it has consequences. And those consequences are exactly the same as for anyone else eating in that fashion: sluggishness, bloating, damage to teeth, nausea, weight gain. Those aren't nice experiences whether you're eating 'guilt free' or not. 

What does 'eat what you want' actually mean anyway? Broadly it means eating what works for you as an individual rather than what is recommended by a generic weight loss plan or what has the fewest calories/fat grams/carbs per serving.  We all have different tastes, different sensitivities to foods, different ethical, cultural or religious beliefs to take into account. Eating what you want makes a lot of sense. Why eat something you hate the taste of or which you have ethical concerns over? Why exclude something that tastes good and makes you happy? Of course, I'm excluding items which induce serious medical reactions in an individual but those seem to rarely be the reasons we hear people vocalising what they are 'cutting out'.

The problem I find, even ignoring items I dislike and those I exclude on ethical grounds, is finding a balance between the foods my mouth wants and the food my body wants. Does 'eat what you want' mean eating what tastes good to you or what leaves your body feeling good immediately afterwards and in the longer term? For me they seem to be almost mutually exclusive. My tastebuds will opt for processed foods which are high in fat and either sugar or salt almost every time. I like those tastes a lot - as do a lot of other people. I know though that, an hour after eating them, I'll be bloated and tired. Furthermore, longer term, my weight creeps up and I have to have yet another filling in my teeth. I could instead choose 'healthy' foods which I like but don't love. I know they'll make me feel healthier, but I'll feel deprived every single time and it will lead to a binge (which then leaves me back with bloating/tiredness/weight gain and a nice does of guilt and shame on top of it all).

I hate the way I feel in my body and how torn I feel on what to eat. I am literally over thinking it every single day. I know that I need to experiment with this more - properly. However, there also needs to be a time limit. I can't waste more years of my life feeling this bad. So, I'm giving myself the summer - July and August. I will allow myself to eat what I want (taste bud wise) for that time period with the caveat that I must do it in conjunction with the other principles of Beyond Chocolate. I will also properly commit to tuning in to my feelings and seeing what I notice. This is my promise to myself. If, come 1st September, I have lost some weight and/or I notice other positive changes in how I feel, I'll continue as I am for the rest of the year and then review again. If by September there's no change (or I feel worse), then I have to start looking at making healthier choices a deliberate action and find a way to deal with any deprivation which arises. I hope that using the other principles will allow me to find balance. I really do.

Jealous of the weight loss crowd

Intuitive eating is hard for so many reasons. Social conditioning is one I struggle with a lot. When the rest of the world seems to be talking about 'being good' or dieting and weight loss, it's really hard not to join in. More than that, it's really hard not to want to be one of the gang. I want it so badly. To weigh in each week and lose weight and know it's because I've worked hard. To have people admire me and tell me how great I'm doing and how fantastic I look. I see other women posting their 'before' and 'after' pictures on Facebook and the deluge of gushing comments about how amazing they look, how tiny they look and, gosh, it's hard not to want a piece of it. To be validated and adored.

It seems everyone is at it. My Facebook timeline sometimes seems full of Weight Watchers and Slimming Worlders. Befores and Durings and Afters. Those on my Twitter feed seem to favour the 5:2 diet - the #fastday hashtag a regular appearance. I toyed with the idea of 5:2. Eating what I want five days a week and fasting on two seemed like an easy way to go with my 'all or nothing' personality. If I picked days my son was in preschool and had my 500 calories as an evening meal with my husband, nobody would even have to know I was doing it. Swapping secret binges for secret dieting. Hmmmm...

At home is not always much easier. My husband has a naturally slim build and doesn't diet but he does want to eat more healthily. Of course, that makes me panic as it's like I'm losing my partner in crime. I'll casually ask if I should get something in for us to have for dessert or whether he'd like a chocolate bar and he'll say "I'm going to resist because I already had a beer earlier". I still go ahead and have what I was going to have, but suddenly I feel guilty about it. He's resisting and I'm not. He's being good and I'm not. He's going to end up fit and healthy and I'm not. Well well, little gremlin on my shoulder - what green eyes you have. Jealousy is a tricky emotion isn't it? It's not fair that these other people eat healthier or look prettier or lose weight and look amazing. I want that too...I just don't want to put in the hard work. Or at least, if I'm not going to get to be slim, I don't want anyone else to either.

Oh what a horrid feeling. This jealousy and anger. Of course, I could be part of the gang if I wanted. Count calories, cut out food groups and giggle about how naughty I'm being eating a biscuit. And the dividends would come - the weight loss, the admiration of other women. But if I could do that - if that was sustainable for me - wouldn't I already be doing it? Ultimately, that's not my journey and that's not how I want to 'belong'. Maybe one day, I'll lose weight again and people will tell me how amazing I look and want to know my secret. And if that's the case, then the secret is going to be listening to my body not counting calories or carbs. That might be someone else's journey, but this is mine, And that's ok.

Starting again...again

My erratic blogging came to a grinding halt again last year and now has come the time to give it another bash. There were enough posts on my generic blog ('lifestyle blog' they're apparently called - sounds a bit posher doesn't it) on the subject of overeating that I decided to import them into a separate blog. So here's my new home for all things overeating and intuitive eating... Kerry on Eating.

So, starting yet again with the blog and starting yet again with my journey into intuitive eating and understanding my overeating. I feel a bit of  failure. I've 'started again' so many times and never last more than a day or so. The Beyond Chocolate principles, which I was introduced to eight years ago, make so much sense to me and yet I can't seem to let go and allow myself to embrace them. Maybe that means that they aren't for me. But dieting isn't for me and I sure as heck don't want to spent the next fifty years overeating day in, day out. I'm so angry at myself for wasting the last eight years. Or maybe that's just the gremlin talking. I need to find a way forwards though. I don't want to spend the rest of my life overeating and hating my body. I'm the heaviest I've ever been and I don't like the way I look. My love of sugar has also led to a lot of damage to my teeth - at least ten fillings (I've actually lost count) in the last five years.

Where to start then? Back to basics I suppose. Care for the body I have the best I can. Revisit the Beyond Chocolate principles. Reread some of the intuitive eating books I have. Pick one tiny thing and experiment with it. For one day. One meal. One bite. Whatever it takes.

Evolution not resolution

Ok, so I'm about a week too late to do a post on New Year's resolutions. Although, as revealed by the kind of scientific research known as "doing a quick Google search", it seems the average resolution lasts only about a week; so perhaps I'm actually being rather timely.

I ummed and ahhed this December (or is it now 'last' December given it's a new calendar year...?) about whether to make any New Year's resolutions this time around. I always used to do it and yet ne'er has a resolution been kept long - or even medium - term (bar the one to stop biting my nails when I was about 13 - that's still going strong two and a bit decades on). So a couple of years ago I decided that I wouldn't make any New Year's resolutions and that's been that for the past few years. On the bright side it means I haven't broken any resolutions so I can feel smug about that. However, it also means that nothing in my life has really changed. Of course, we shouldn't strive to change our lives or 'better ourselves' if we are happy with things as they are - but most of us have a few things we'd like to work on or achieve. Hence this year I waivered between whether to make resolutions or not.

Eventually I decided I would walk the middle path. Resolutions have the flavour of being unyielding and specific and oh-so breakable. And indeed 'resolute'. Absolute. And I have been guilty of making these kinds of resolutions in the past - not just at New Year either (check out my '35 by 35' post - I hardly achieved any of that stuff!) - and I've found it just leads to a horrible sense of failure when I don't achieve my goal. On the other hand, not bothering to do anything at all differently didn't work out so well either and so it seems that some kind of plan/goal/sense of direction is still required. So I have gone down the route of making looser plans and having broad ideas as to what I'd like to achieve in the coming year and beyond. Not so much 'lose two stone by July' but rather just a broad idea that I'd like to get my weight down this year. I'm also keen to look into some free online courses this year - and have indeed already started the process - but didn't want to make a resolution to do anything more specific than that. I don't want to feel a failure because I didn't successfully finish three courses or get a qualification in a specific subject.

Another aspect to I've considered in making goals and plans is in looking at the process rather than the results. To use weight loss again as an example (since I'm a little overweight myself and it also seems to be a perennial favourite resolution with an awful lot of people): instead of setting a resolution to "lose two stone", consider the more process-based "eat more fruit and veg and join a gym". You could make the latter more specific if you wanted but the point is that  your goal is the HOW of losing weight and not the hoped-for end result. Firstly, you can actively control whether you go to the gym or eat a piece of fruit but you can't really control whether ultimately your body will respond by getting you to the weight that you've randomly decided appeals to you. Secondly, what if you didn't hit the exact weight you wanted? I know I would personally feel a failure if I only lost a portion of the weight I have aimed to lose. Whereas hopefully the weight loss is just a fantastic side effect of all that fruit-eating and gym-going (should I elect to do that...) and who gives a stuff about the precise number of ounces if it's in the right ball park...or even the right direction!

So, for me, I'm not making any firm resolutions. I want my life to gradually evolve. I don't believe in the New Year, New You rubbish that's peddled out by the magazines year after tiresome year. I don't want to be a whole new person. I just want the person I already am to continue to grow (though preferable not girth-wise) and to explore what life has to offer. And for me, in 2015, the things that spring to mind are: working on my relationship with food in the hope that this will both help my self-esteem and reduce my weight; looking at ways to be more organised in a bid to reduce stress; explore mindfulness; look into courses and volunteering opportunities; and try and make some headway with that huge stack of unread books...

Struggling to legalise and be healthy

I don't want to be fat any more. I'm at my heaviest weight  and I'm also not loving the way I'm eating either. Even if you take size out the equation for a moment (hard to do when I'm feeling frumpy) I still don't love the way that the food I eat is making me feel. As you'll know, I'm a big fan of Beyond Chocolate - it just makes perfect sense that this is the right way to eat. But, of the ten principles, I am still - six years later - stuck on 'eat what you want'. That's the one that most people dive into in the beginning, eating chocolate and cake and pizza and chips with gay abandon until they realise that actually they want something more nutritious as well. Except I don't seem to have got to the wanting something more nutritious stage. I still want chocolate and cake all the time. I'm still drawn to it every time and I still overeat every time and I don't live in hope that it will ever change.

Now, having been amongst the BC community for a few years now, I'm pretty sure I know what the responses would be if I was to say this on the forum or to Sophie or Audrey (the creators of Beyond Chocolate). I would expect the responses to be - and if I'm wrong and people want to throw some other theories in, please do! - that either I haven't legalised these forbidden foods I'm overeating or that I'm not eating them whilst also observing the other principles. And both of these suggestions would be correct.

When I eat chocolate or cake, I tend to do something else at the same time - watch TV, surf the net, play on my phone. Or otherwise they will be wolfed down standing at the kitchen counter whilst I'm making a cup of tea. Two or three doughnuts can easily be gone in less time than it takes for the kettle to boil. I don't want to savour or enjoy them - I just want to stuff them down. It's habitual. If I was truly following the BC principles, I would be allowing myself those foods, but waiting until I was hungry to eat them and then putting them on a plate and focussing and then stopping when I've had enough. But I don't. I always tell myself I will but then, when it comes to it, I tell myself 'maybe next time instead'. I just eat until I feel sick or until it's gone.

The problem is that it's still the Last Supper mentality. The last time I'll binge or eat so much of those foods because tomorrow I'll do better. Tomorrow I'll eat like a normal person. Except I've told myself that every day for the past twenty years and discovering Beyond Chocolate and the concept of intuitive eating hasn't actually got rid of it. Instead of thinking 'tomorrow I will diet' it's just 'tomorrow I will eat intuitively'. Not today. Not now. I just need to do it once more. This is where legalising food comes in and that's something I still really struggle with. I told myself I've legalised this food but I haven't.

Legalising forbidden foods is about acknowledging that you can have these foods whenever you want. And so, by not restricting your options or creating a 'I better have it now because tomorrow I will be on a diet' situation, you should be able to choose what you really want. It means that all foods are equal and don't have guilt attached to them. Beyond Chocolate suggests a way to do this is to stock up on large amounts of your forbidden food so that you can be reassured that it's always there if you want it. This is a great idea and I know it's helped lots of people. But it didn't work for me and I felt like a failure. Every time I'd go in the kitchen, I'd have some. There was loads - no one would even know it was missing. But of course I wasn't combining it with the other principles - just grabbing it and eating it without breaking my stride.

I didn't actually really believe I even needed to legalise any foods purely because I never really dieted and therefore I always allowed myself to eat the food. Why was I eating so much if I wasn't responding to dieting? Well, partly because just by planning to diet or 'be good' I was anticipating scarcity and therefore falling into the Last Supper trap (I blogged about this more in my Deprivation Without Dieting post). Also the crux of the matter is that, whilst I believe that I can eat these foods whenever I want, what I don't believe is that I can eat these foods whenever I want, in whatever quantity I want and not suffer for it. By 'suffer' I mean gain weight, feel sick, bloat up, lack energy, damage my teeth etc. And so I find myself in a bit of a chicken and egg situation; I will only stop eating such high quantities of these foods when I have legalised them BUT in order to legalise them I have to be able to prove to myself that I can safely eat them in the quantities I desire (which is going to be huge quantities because I'll only want less when I can prove that I can eat enormous quantities without suffering...). And so round and round I go. I want to eat less of these foods because I think they are negatively affecting my health in the quantities I eat them but how else do I legalise them? I'm still choosing with my taste buds and not with my whole body and I need to be kind to my body because it's not in a good state. Some days I just wish chocolate and cake didn't exist and I didn't have a choice at all. 

Deprivation without dieting

This week I've dipped my toe into the world of e-books and downloaded the Kindle app to my phone. The first book I downloaded is Gorgeously Full Fat as I love Sarah's blog of the same name and I'm really looking forward to reading more of her story. The second - which I have got stuck into straight away - is Josie's Spinardi's How to Have Your Cake and Your Skinny Jeans Too. This was recommended to me by a fellow Beyond Chocolater and so far I'm really enjoying it. I've read a fair few books on intuitive eating (or whatever you want to call it) and they have all been excellent in their way but some of them have been a little heavy going for my tastes. This is something I've always loved about Beyond Chocolate - the book is really accessible - and Josie's book is the same. The person who mentioned the book to me did say that it draws upon lots of research and I did wonder if that would make it a bit dry but it really doesn't.

This isn't going to be a review of How to Have Your Cake and Your Skinny Jeans Too as I'm not yet finished with it. I'm about two-thirds of the way through. I must admit that when I started reading it, I did wonder if I had erred in my choice. She makes it clear in her introduction that she is only dealing with overeating in response to dieting rather than emotional eating (she's going to deal with the latter in a second book which I'm really looking forward to reading) and I am definitely an emotional eater rather than a deprived dieter! The thing is that, unlike a lot of women who come to explore intuitive eating, I don't really have a history of dieting. It would be a lie to say I have never dieted, but it barely features in my eating history.

In terms of commercial diets, the only one I have done is Slimming World. And when I say that I 'did' it, I mean for about two days. I went to my first meeting on a Monday evening, got weighed and bought a bunch of books before sitting through what was probably the dullest evening of my life going round the room and everyone saying how much they had (or hadn't) lost that week. Tuesday and Wednesday I stuck to the diet and by lunchtime on Thursday I admitted how bloody miserable I was and jacked it in. Maybe that was because I hadn't stuck with it long enough to learn how to make syn-free pizza out of boiled potatoes or whatever but I don't think so. Other than that, my only forays into dieting have been good old-fashioned calorie counting. But again, those efforst have been few and far between and have lasted for well under a week each. So I'm certainly not someone that's lost 3 stone on a diet - in fact I doubt I've lost 3lb that way. That's not to say I've never lost weight; I have...several times. My weight has yo-yoed up and down within a 3-stone range multiple times during my adult years. But it's never being through dieting. It's been when I've been happy in my life and food just hasn't been something I have been obsessing over (and when I've been doing some kind of regular exercise) - so basically intuitive eating before I even knew what it was. Thing is, although I know I can do intuitive eating and that the weight does fall off that way, it's actually a lot harder to do when you're trying to do it.!

Most of my disordered eating history comes in the form of binge eating or emotional eating. It's rare I've been on the opposite side of the pendulum (dieting) but overeating - that I'm good at. So, I'm really excited for Josie Spinardi's second book as I think that will be really relevant to me. But, I got stuck into her first one anyway. Initially I thought that it was a good read but not really relevant to me as I don't diet, and haven't really done so in the past, so surely none of my overeating is the sort that's a direct reaction to dieting/restriction. However, the thought suddenly occurred to me that it actually is still relevant...

The type of overeating she refers to is the type that is a response to deprivation - the fact that you eat the chocolate because you've deprived yourself of it on a diet or (what she calls Eating Cuz You Ate) continuing to overeat 'forbidden' foods because you know you're going to deprive yourself as soon as you get 'back on the wagon' tomorrow. And it's this second bit that applies to me. I don't ever diet or deprive myself but, subconsciously, I do plan to. I find myself thinking that I might as well eat lots of cake/chocolate/biscuits/crisps today because tomorrow I'm going to 'be good' (not specifically go on a diet but a promise that tomorrow I'll do Beyond Chocolate 'properly' or make healthier choices etc). And I really think that my brain sees this as deprivation in exactly the same way as it would if I were on a diet. I never make that fresh start because I sabotage it before it begins and I don't think I ever properly understood why. So maybe you don't have to diet or restrict your food to feel deprived - just thinking about it is enough. And that would totally explain why pretty much every single day for the last twenty years I have said 'today is the last day I overeat - tomorrow I'll have a fresh start' and that fresh start never happens because every single day just ends up being one more 'last day'. That's a lot of last suppers and probably very few of them have been enjoyed because I'm shovelling them in in anticipation of self-imposed scarcity rather than actually enjoying them in the knowledge that I can chose to eat those foods if and when I want.

Even six years after discovering intuitive eating, all I still want to eat is the sugary, junky stuff and maybe that is down to this subconscious planned deprivation too. I see other women on the intuitive eating journey who have now lost their taste for these foods and genuinely find themselves fancying fresh, wholesome food more often than not. And my gremlin tells me that that's because they are doing it 'properly' and this is what I'm supposed to be eating too. But, firstly, everyone's journey and dietary preferences are different. And, secondly, this subconscious belief that I'm supposed to end up in a place where I don't want to eat junk food seems to make me want it more because I might never eat it again once I'm doing it 'properly'. And seeing this in writing, it just sounds completely nuts. For starters, I may well still fancy these junky foods sometimes when I'm eating intuitively. And if I don't want them, then why would I want to eat them anyway? Why would I miss them if I get to a point I don't fancy them? So, surely it's a win-win? I either continue to fancy and enjoy them or I don't fancy them and then won't miss them. I'm seeing this as the same as being deprived of these foods and it's not the same at all. It's about choice. My choice. I just need to be brave and let myself choose based on what I really want and not on what I think I can't have tomorrow, or next week, or next year. I can have it all. Or not. It's my choice.

Meet my gremlin

I've had a really broken night, so could really do with spending the remaining 45 minutes before I go to pick X up from pre-school having a sleep. However, I've had a crappy morning (AKA failed clothes shopping trip) and my gremlin has been yelling in my ear all the way home from town to the point that I was holding back the tears as I turned into my street, barely able to swallow as my throat hurt so much from the effort of keeping it in. So, I really needed to come and blog. To let you meet my gremlin.

A few years ago, someone made a post on the Beyond Chocolate forum asking people what their gremlins looked like. I'd never thought about it before but my instinctive reaction was that my gremlin was Amanda Tanen from the TV show Ugly Betty (many apologies to Becki Newton who I am sure is lovely in real life!). Amanda is beautiful, shallow and extremely bitchy to other people. I could imagine her in my head, speaking to me, the way Amanda speaks to Betty. Constantly putting me down. Something that didn't occur to me for ages after Amanda popped into my head as my gremlin personified was something else about her character. If you've seen the show, you'll know that when Amanda's stressed or depressed, she binge eats! A stereotypical bully - nasty and vindictive but also actually quite insecure underneath it all.

Now, Amanda's still there in my head (long after what was one of my favourite TV shows has come to an end). Still representing every popular girl I wanted to look like but never would. But she's not top dog any more. About a month or so back, I tweeted that I was feeling angry. I also made a blog post on the subject. The following day, whilst in the shower, I had a momentary realisation about my gremlin. A glimpse of her if you like. And it wasn't Amanda.

The gremlin I saw was actually me. Not me now, but me as a child. And she was angry. So there you go. My gremlin is 11 years old. She has brown hair and blue eyes and is of average height and size for her age. Before the time when she stopped getting taller (at 5'3") and started getting wider. She's fairly bright and does well at school; enjoys it from an academic point of view. Socially speaking though, school is hell. She's been bullied for the last couple of years and has been hoping that secondary school will provide a fresh start. A chance to be popular. Or at least left alone. And now, here she is in her first year at secondary school and has realised nothing's changed. People are still mean to her and it's probably going to be another 5-7 years of feeling like something you scrape of the bottom of your shoe. She has very few friends and her body is developing ahead of many of her peers'. Especially her breasts which make her horribly self-conscious.

Eleven years old and so very very lonely. Mum always seems to be working and there's no dad or siblings around (one much-loved sister but an enormous age gap means she's already well into her twenties at this point and living 150 miles away). And school sucks. And she's spending her spare time in her head with her imaginary friends and imaginary siblings just to stop the loneliness. Or fantasising about what life will be like when she's finally pretty and finally popular - whether she's 15 or 25. She's definitely going to get there one day and it's going to feel amazing. And she's discovered eating sweets and biscuits is a good distraction too. She's pretending not to care, but really she's angry. Angry with the world and angry with me.

So now she lives on my shoulder, still being angry. Telling me I should overeat because what's the point of not? Nothing's ever going to change! I was supposed to have 'succeeded' by now. I wasn't still supposed to be this pathetic as a grown adult. How is she supposed to endure her childhood and teenage years knowing she only has me to become? Knowing that she doesn't get to be pretty? That she doesn't get to become one of the popular people or someone who oozes confidence? Not at 15 or 20 or 25 or 30...

I let that girl down and bloody hell is she angry about it! And she's sick of staying quiet and pretending she doesn't care; she wants to be heard! Just for once to feel like her feelings are important. And so she became my gremlin so that someone might listen. But all I hear is her yelling how pathetic I am and how I might as well keep stuffing my face because I'm never going to be pretty anyway and I'm never going to change and I'm not important enough or worthy enough to bother making an effort. I don't deserve it.

I want to hate my gremlin. To yell at her and tell her to f*** off. But part of me feels sorry for her because she's lonely and so desperately unhappy and just a child. And I'm also scared because she's right. I didn't change and I let her down. She deserves better and so do I.