The FastDay Forum

@Sue.Q? Step away from the carbs!

Happy holibobz @Sue.Q i wd find it very hard if i had a hubby or anyone else in the home munching merrily on stuff i was avoiding,yet you have lost tons of weight whilst this is happening
@nursebean yep me too.. I love to eat while watching tv..terrible habit andhard to break grrrrr...

1interesting everyone. I agree a lot about the mind over matter SueQ and NurseBean it's like the movies isn't it? People stuffing buckets of popcorn down, I bet they never ever eat popcorn anywhere else. I'm stubborn and have always refused to be part of the pack, especially when it comes to anything illogical :-):-) read Dr Phil's Ultimate Weight Solution, he would say watch tv on your treadmill or have a bath or go for a walk, anything incompatible to eating crap. Hard Sue when there is rubbish in the house, I always marvel when people say they have to have this for their kids. Really? Shouldn't kids be lead on the right path? Anyway I am just back from Indian dinner, carbed to the eyeballs and stuffed to the gills, thank god for tomorrow's fast!

@Sue.Q? Step away from the carbs!

@nursebean Deffo will do on my return,
& @Candicemarie but will go with carb caution while away with far less stuff on hand to nibble on
just hope the deserts are rubbish that'll help me no end.
Strangely enough I ate more carbs yesterday than I have in a month but mindfully as my beef casserole dinner contained no potatoes for me and had desert with cream
Guess what I weighed less today!!!!!!! Weird or what?

Take that loss@Sue.Q well done

Actually, sounds as though carbs suit you @Sue.Q! Are you going away somewhere?

I don't think I could ever give up eating while watching tv. Its two of my favourite things...together!

it's like the movies isn't it? People stuffing buckets of popcorn down, I bet they never ever eat popcorn anywhere else. I'm stubborn and have always refused to be part of the pack, especially when it comes to anything illogical :-):-) read Dr Phil's Ultimate Weight Solution, he would say watch tv on your treadmill or have a bath or go for a walk, anything incompatible to eating crap.

Very interesting topic, @GMH, in so many ways.

I firmly accept that there's an endocrine response to food that drives hunger for many of us. There's also a 'conditioning' response to food of the sort that Dr Phil or the psychologist Gillian Riley (amongst others) describe.

I've just posted a lengthy screed about a frequently recommended book by Josie Spinardi in a thread about over-eating on non-fast days: 5-2-diet-chat-f6/eating-days-are-my-downfall-t13192.html#p203320

In other IF forums, a book that is frequently recommended and praised on the topic of hunger/over-eating/the addictive desire to eat and how to control them is Gillian Riley's Ditching Diets (DD). Apparently, DD has a lot of practical advice about not only understanding what it is that you want to achieve, and motivation for it, but how to distinguish hunger from an addictive desire to eat etc.

I haven't read the book but the usual example is that if you're not hungry but always buy popcorn, a hot dog etc. at the cinema - you're eating because you're conditioned to eat in that context and are probably experiencing an addictive desire to eat. There's a nuanced distinction between the concept of food addiction, with which Riley doesn't seem to agree, and an addictive desire to eat.

Anyway, she argues that some people need to acquire new, healthy habits and stop reinforcing conditioned responses related to food, such as over-eating at the cinema. She constantly emphasises that what/when/how much we eat is our free choice - and sometimes our choices may lead us to over-eat or eat something that makes us feel wretched but it must always be our choice made with full awareness of the likely consequences. And with the knowledge that sometimes we choose to over-eat or collaborate with an addictive desire to eat - and that's fine.

ETA: I got lost in my own point. Where Riley's book possibly diverges from Dr. Phil is that she argues avoiding your trigger situation (e.g., eating at the cinema) or substituting another activity (e.g., treadmill rather than snacking while watching TV) can only take you so far. We have to learn to experience an addictive desire to eat in a familiar context and be comfortable enough not to act on it - in that way, we can gradually extinguish that conditioned response and create a new habit.

I've collected so many soundbites from the book that I really should purchase it at some point. I think Riley's website
Eating Less
has an archive of free newsletters to download and people seem to find those useful.

@nursebean - the "Fat Fast" is an Atkins thing - it's basically a very-low carb plan you can follow for a few days to get you off a plateau. I tried it just out of curiosity really. I did it Mon-Fri this week. You bascially eat 1000 cals a day, with 85%+ of this coming from fat so typical "meals" are 1oz macadamia nuts and 2oz cream cheese, 2oz pate, 2 hardboiled eggs with 2tsp mayo............ I found it quite easy. Not 100% sure how much I really lost because my weight had jumped up a bit before I did it but whichever way you look at it I am between 5 and 7lb less than I was last weekend. I did develop a headache towards the end and had a dreadful night's sleep Thurs and am relieved to be eating again but I could contemplate doing it again in future to speed things up. I think I was in ketosis from testing my blood but my wee didn't go pink like @Debs!

This is so interesting I agree with unleashing the hunger monster as soon as I have something to eat so prefer not to eat at all on my fast days and do 19:5 on my feed days. However, I travelled for business this last week and didn't get enough sleep and it seemed that I had uncontrollable hunger and insatiable sweet and carb cravings struggled on my Wed and Fri fast just about made it, infact I think I was way over my 500 cals on Fri, and I was feeling absolutely exhausted....

The carb roller coaster is my downfall as well. If I start the day with carbs I will eat and eat all day long. I can derail it if I realise whats going on by having a high fat, high protein lunch or dinner to break the cycle. but that can mean going over your calorie allowance for the day. Yet if you don't derail or stop the snacking you will go over anyway with less desirable foods.

If I am watching TV and want something to nibble I make a coleslaw ( cabbage, carrot and onion) but don't add any mayo, just lemon juice or balsamic vinegar and sit and stuff my face with that, or I make some crudities and nibble them.

I don't think I could ever give up eating while watching tv. Its two of my favourite things...together!

Now, come on Beani Bobs @nursebean you swore you could not live without breakfast and here we are wrestling over the 16/8 crown If you can give up breakfast ( never thought that would happen! ) you can give up nibbling extraneous calories whilst watching T.V. Come on girl, think about it,

Ballerina x

Agree with @Ballerina - @nursebean - as someone has in their signature and we all know


LITTLE PICKERS WEAR BIGGER KNICKERS

@SSure really interesting post, I'll go look at that other thread in a minute. As for the behaviour changing tactics, yes in a real world it would be better to be able to watch TV and keep our hands empty (oh and our mouths LOL), but if you have to break the pattern by doing something else (classic NLP technique), so be it.

But I have to have my say on carbs: there are carbs and there are carbs! Since 2000 when I found a brilliant doctor who told me to eat LOW GI CARBS, not high GI, I was into this. If u eat white fluff bread, white sugar, white rice etc u have fast release of sugar into your blood, not so with low GI. Also I used to do South Beach diet...first 2 weeks no carbs, well if you want a way to obsess about food, end up bingeing on ANY carb you can lay your hands on, that's it! I never got to phase 2, I used to keep restarting phase 1. Hideous! But u lost a lot of weight in that first 1.5 weeks then I remember finding 5:2...it was a really?! Moment. Really?! I can drink wine, eat cakes and lose weight? Really?! Yes!! So to digress somewhat...it was really simple, do 5:2, lose weight slowly (if u don't have that much to lose), do 4:3 (this was at least proven on humans to work) and lose weight fairly fast and eat what you want the other 4 days. No more obsessing about carbs. For the record, I have eaten low and hi GI carbs on feed days and lost weight easily. I only followed 2 rules, 500 cals on fast day, eat whatever you want, whenever you want it on feed days = weight loss. Counting calories is easy to do (u soon have an idea of how many cals are in things and do a 10 second calculation in ur head), but eating less calories is quite diffucult, 500 cals is not a lot of food, but with mind over matter, eating more filling calories, it's not that hard.

Here's to what works for you, in the easiest way possible.

Fascinating topic, @GMH.

I struggled with this when I began IFing - it's something I have to constantly be aware of. For instance, since I'm a vegan, I eat a lot of flaxseeds for Omega 3.

I have these most mornings, freshly ground, with a little fruit juice. A few months ago I started adding sesame or sunflower seeds either ground or whole to the mix - and none of these combos flicked my hunger switch in the slightest.

However, in an attempt to add more nuts to my diet, I've recently I've started adding flaked almonds to the seeds - and this definitely causes me to be hungry for the rest of the morning!

So I've decided to go on to a 16:8 regime - and have the seeds and nuts as part of my lunch. This has caused me to re-think my regular lunch - and I've reduced the bread element by 25%, which can be no bad thing.

I like to think of this WOL (and myself! ) as a work in progress!

Here's my thinking on the whole 'Hunger switch' subject:

http://nobreadisanisland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/52-diet-intermittent-fasting-aand.html

FWIW, at meal time I've found that it's very important to not open the refrigerator or pantry doors until I've made a conscious decision about what the main parts of the intended meal will be. This way when I do open those doors, I see that most items won't fit that menu and will be quickly dismissed.

If I instead mindlessly open those doors looking for ideas, absolutely everything looks good, open packages (crisps? cookies? that partial bag of mini-chocolate bars? ... ) will be sampled to see if they fit my completely undecided ideal for something to eat. And guess what - with no criterion to judge by, everyone one of them will. Now it's too late...