Have I learned to think like a thin person?

Comment Munchberry Re: Thinking about food all the time

Since your blog's name is the actual thing we are driving towards - you have far greater insight on such matters. I do wonder how to curb my obsession (I try) and how not to obsess on the curbing (so it won't take over my life - how it might become natural). I wonder if it is possible or if it is just going to be about finding work arounds. Any thoughts?

I replied: 

  

My thinking is changing, the connection and food obsession is loosening its grip on me. So yes, it is possible to change your thinking. In my case, there was no way that I could have gotten here on my own. Cognitive therapy was the key.

I know many people are happy and it works for them to use a work around. I couldn't live with the struggle any longer. Well I could, but the anxiety caused me to eat and eat and I was getting bigger and bigger.

I'll expand more in a blog posting....

I ate relatively normal, healthy, well-balanced meals, but I snacked horribly. This is how I described my eating habits to my doctors, therapist and nutritionists sixteen months ago.

I would overeat and even binge on snack food. Snack time was anytime that was not meal time. My appetite for snacks was insatiable. If ice cream happened to be in the freezer, I would eat a bowl before breakfast. If there was a package of Oreo cookies in the pantry, I would grab two or three or five at a time throughout the day until the package was finished.

At work, I would search the food court searching for the perfect snack to augment the lunch I brought from home. A package of mini Skor bars, mini Reese Peanut butter cups, or Hershey’s milk chocolate usually caught my attention. But I also munched on packages of chocolate wafers, chocolate chip cookies, two-bite brownies. I would plow through a package in a matter of hours, none lasted overnight.

I attempted to make compromises, but that usually meant drinking 500 ml carton of chocolate milk, instead of eating a package of chocolate. Or buying two cookies from Treats or Tim Horton’s instead of buying a package from the grocery store.

Of course, when I was in diet mode – snacking stopped – at least the unhealthy kind. But over the years, dieting had become increasingly more challenging. The amount of time that I could be in diet mode shrank and the time between Weight Watchers’ memberships grew.

Finally, I decided that I couldn’t be live like this any longer. Thankfully, unbeknownst to me, our family had just moved to a house that was located ten minutes away from a cognitive therapy practice. My hope for therapy was to change my negative eating behaviors into positive ones. I hoped to learn to think like a thin person.

So, have I learned to think like a thin person?

The best way to figure out that question is to compare my thinking before and after cognitive behaviour therapy:

Before cognitive behavior therapy:  I craved food all the time.  In particular, I craved snack/junk/fast food.

After:  Junk food cravings have decreased significantly. Instead of craving junk food, I now crave vegetables.

Before: I always ate everything on my plate, even if the food didn’t taste good.

After: I don’t feel the need to eat everything on my plate, including the food that doesn’t taste good.

Before: I would eat second and third portions of the starch/carb section of the meal.

After: I’m usually satisfied by one starchy serving. However, I will have second servings of vegetables.

Before: I was obsessed with taste. If food didn’t taste good, I would overeat other foods to satisfy this need for food to taste good.

After: I’ve accepted that sometimes food just doesn’t taste as good as I want. And that’s OK. If food doesn’t taste as good as I expect, it doesn’t trigger overeating.

Before: I could not keep ice cream in the freezer or cookies in the pantry.

After: I can keep ice cream in the freezer; it does not trigger eating. I actually don’t feel the need to buy ice cream. Cookies in the pantry will go faster than ice cream, but like the ice cream, I don’t feel the need to buy cookies.

Before: If I was out of the house (or away from the office) and I was hungry, I would use that as an opportunity (excuse?) to buy a junk food snack.

After: I prefer healthy snacks from home, so I take food with me. Or, I’ll wait until I get home or back to the office.

Before: At the office, I would hunt for food to satisfy a taste for junk/snack food.

After: I prefer the food from home. I only buy what I need for a healthy lunch (i.e. lettuce for a salad etc.)

Before: It was a struggle to leave any store without buying junk food.

After: It’s not a struggle. The need to buy junk food has vanished.

Before: If I went to a restaurant, I would favor an establishment that served high-fat, deep-fried, and processed food over fresh options.

After: I recently went out to lunch with friends, and I voiced the opinion that I was not interested in going to the pub or Swiss Chalet. We went to the Cora's instead.

Before: I would eat packages of chocolate bars or cookies at my desk in secrecy.

After: No eating in secrecy. I still eat chocolate (usually in the form of chocolate chips), but I have only eaten one chocolate bar (that I bought for myself) in six months.

Before: I preferred to drink hot chocolate for comfort on winter evenings.

After: I prefer peppermint tea that is comforting any time of year.

Before: The only way to stop the constant barrage of cravings was by using willpower, which was in dwindling supply.

After: If I have a craving, I let the craving come and go, I don’t let it turn into an obsession so it doesn’t trigger eating.

Before: Categorize food with "good" and "bad" labels.

After: It’s all food. Some food choices are healthier than others.

Before: Obsessed over the "bad" foods and didn’t want to eat the “good” foods.

After: I prefer to eat healthier foods (real food) now. I see fast food, packaged food, and most restaurants as fake food; food that satisfies your mind but does not fuel your body.

Before: Routinely rewarded good eating with treats.

After: I don’t feel the need to do this.

Before: Followed dieting rules only when I was a Weight Watchers member.

After: I know that following a structured diet program will trigger eating, but I also don’t need the accountability that a structured diet provides.

Before: I had to be a Weight Watchers member to lose weight.

After: I can lose weight without Weight Watchers.

Before: Weighed myself only when dieting, otherwise I avoided the bathroom scale.

After: I’m not freaked out by the scale. I don’t celebrate losses and I don’t freak over gains. It is what it is.

Before: Avoided mirrors.

After: Well, I still do that, but I do look every now and again.

Cognitive behaviour therapy has changed how I think about food and eating. I'm delighted to write that I don't think about food all the time. I crave healthy food, and the interest in junk food has diminished. It is much easier to lose weight with this new mindset. I'm not losing weight quickly - that is a big trade off, but what I am doing is virtually effortless. In time, I know I will be 20, then 40, then 60 (and so on) down to a healthy weight. 

Although I will never be a thin person with a naturally smaller appetite, I am well on my way to becoming a thin person that naturally chooses smaller portion sizes, eats healthy food choices, and indulges in higher fat food choices on occasion. 

Next post: How I learned to think like a thin person

Last night's chicken burger

Interesting dinner last night; certainly not the menu, but my eating behaviour.

I'm not the cook of my household. But my husband and father were working on a backyard project for most of the day, so I donned the chef's hat for Sunday's dinner. In the morning, I noticed three zucchinis and a large fennel in the refrigerator. I absolutely love roasted vegetables, so I put the produce on the counter for dinner (I easily forget stuff right now - Mommy brain is in full swing) to go with the main entree.

I'd like to tell you that I cooked something really fabulous worthy of Saveur magazine, but I didn't. I went the easy route: PC menu chicken burgers with a slice of havarti cheese, roasted zucchini and fennel washed down with a glass of milk (still tasting like 2%).

The vegetables could have stayed in the oven for a bit longer, but when the toddler needs to eat, we eat. My husband wasn't too jazzed about the fennel ("I'll look up how to do fennel properly"), but I enjoyed eating the big pile of roasted zucchini and fennel. So much so that I favoured the vegetables over the chicken burger. In fact, I didn't finish the chicken burger.

But I wonder; what if I told myself that I could only eat the roasted vegetables and two-thirds of a chicken burger for dinner. I bet that I'd eat the entire chicken burger, even if I was full.


Previous post: Learning to tolerate the bathroom scale

You are drinking skim milk

"This is 2% milk, not skim milk." I tell my husband.

"No, it's skim milk. I bought 2% for the kids and skim for us." He replies.

"Did you buy the skim milk that tastes like 2%? You know I can't drink that stuff. It's disgusting." 

"I know you won't drink that milk, it's skim milk you are drinking."

I swirl the milk around in my glass, checking to see if the fat from the milk sticks to the sides. I do the same with my son's glass to compare.

"Are you sure you didn't put a bag of the boy's milk in our jug?" I ask.

"Yes, I'm sure. That is skim milk."

I've been drinking skim milk my entire life. (Yes, my doctor recommended skim milk for babies back in the seventies.) I've always found it to be refreshing and cold. Any time I drink milk other than skim milk it never seems as cold and the texture is too creamy and too much fat. Same for the skim milk that tastes like 2%, I just can drink it. I practically choke on the butterfat.

Every glass of milk that I drank on the weekend tasted like 2% milk. It took quite the effort to down a glass. All I could taste was the butterfat. And hubby was right, it's skim milk, not 2%. I bought more milk on Sunday, placed the skim milk in the correct pitcher, poured a glass from said container, drank from the glass and it still tastes like 2%.

Are my taste buds changing? Am I beginning to crave different foods? I've decreased the chocolate and baked good eating and recently increased the fruits and vegetables consumption. In the grocery store, I'm gravitating towards the greens section contemplating which box of salad to buy: baby spinach or spring mix? We hosted a casual pizza dinner on Saturday and I made a salad to accompany the pizza (usually I wouldn't bother). For lunch Sunday, I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich, along with a big salad and a plateful of beefsteak tomato slices.

I'm hoping this is some sort of a positive sign that I am making real and lasting changes to my eating habits. Like any sane person, I turn to the internet for a possible explanation. I googled "has the butterfat content for skim milk changed recently?" Nothing came up; I guess there wasn't some sort of shift in the dairy industry last week. After decades of struggling with food, it seems hard to believe that change (temporary or permanent) is possible.

I've only reached this state of diet nirvana once before. After a long run of being consistently on plan with Weight Watchers, I couldn't stand the taste of ice cream; all I could taste was the fat from the cream. Instead of Dairy Queen, I preferred TCBY instead. (Unfortunately, with the appropriate determination, I managed to rejuvenate my taste for ice cream.)

Is it possible that my taste buds are changing? Is it possible that my thinking is changing? Is it possible that I am starting to think like a thin person?

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