The FastDay Forum

Just a thought but maybe you self sabotage because somewhere deep down you don't feel like you deserve to feel good about yourself and healthy and if it has been drummed into you for years (like with me) then it's really hard to change that mindset. I'm not sure that I have but I do know now that I like feeling better physically about myself than I did - I'm just never going to think I'm a fab person but hey ho. It all sounds a bit psychobabbly I know but there might be something in it? And I used to feel that if all else failed there was food to comfort me - it did but it also reinforced all the bad things I felt about myself and the self hatred. In those pics you posted at your daughter's graduation you come across as attractive and bubbly - it is seeing yourself as that that can be hard when you're used to having low self esteem. It will take time....!

PS I forgot - you asked 'what's in it for you (to self sabotage)?' Well it's safer, isn't it? It's a bit scary to have to think of yourself in a different way - and the familiar can be comforting even if not pleasant at the same time.

I haven't re-written the following - it's my standard 'Gillian Riley on the topic of hunger' stuff. I do have some extracts elsewhere that I'll dig out but wanted to post this in the interim as some of it feels germane. As ever, it's a 'take what's useful and ignore the rest' topic.

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I ought to state up front that I firmly accept that there's an endocrine response to food that drives hunger for many of us and that there's probably an endocrine component (influenced by emotions and RL events) that can underpin a drive towards over-eating, self-sabotage etc.. There's increasingly enough intriguing information about the gut as second brain, the desires of some bacteria that influence our behaviour that make me think that our bodies don't have a unified agenda when it comes to food intake E.g., our rational mind wants weight change, our endocrine system and maybe various bacterial strains want what they drive us to want (and it seems some of them are very partial to sugar ).

There's also a 'conditioning' response to food of the sort that Dr Phil or the psychologist Gillian Riley (amongst others) describe.

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.

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, Riley 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.

Where Riley's book possibly diverges from Dr. Phil and similar approaches to his 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.

Riley's website
Eating Less
has an archive of free newsletters to download and people seem to find those useful.

As you might have gathered, there's a huge grey area of adapting Intuitive Eating concepts (as per Riley), Hunger-Directed Eating (as per Spinardi) and blending this into a fasting lifestyle. The main part of this for those of us who fast is to truly accept that we are doing this as a positive step for our overall health and that the fasting is freely embraced and is not a deprivation/restriction entry in some notional weight loss ledger.

More, later.

Comfort eating has had me in its grip. For me, it's a comfortable familiar place. It's also the only way I know how to be nice to myself.....as I am not good at being kind to myself in any other way.

So perhaps you should start here. Start a topic called 'Hazelnuts' weekly way of treating herself', where you can report on non-food ways of being kind to yourself and all of us can make suggestions on different ways to do so in case you lack ideas.

Just to second that this is an excellent idea and ties into a strategy that is promoted by a number of writers, including Martha Beck - author of The 4-day Win which is well-liked by some people as a way of moving towards discovering the reasons for esteeming and valuing ourselves that are not weight-based - and for experimenting with activities that entertain us/divert us/delight us that are not food-based.

NB: I loathe the writing style of this book but it nonetheless has some quotable parts and ideas that some might find useful. Along with Riley - I'll dig up some extracts.

Gillian Riley and the topic of the addictive desire to eat from her book, Ditching Diets and her website:
http://eatingless.com which is worth looking at for the blog and archive of newsletters as well as being useful to browse. As ever, take what is useful to us now and leave the rest or tuck it away for use at another point.

Riley has a thoughtful blog post on Desire, Craving and Preference which is a fine discussion of what she terms the addictive desire to eat and how the privilege of ready access to food (for most of us) is profoundly messing with what used to be a powerful reward system.
http://eatingless.com/articles/desire-c ... reference/
I'd end up quoting most of Riley's piece in order not to misrepresent her nuanced discussion of this so I won't quote it at all but strongly advise anyone who might be interested in the topic to at least read her post on this. It's appropriately weird to feel the cognitive dissonance of acknowledging that we need to act as if we can distinguish foodstuffs that satisfy our addictive desire to eat from the real food that we need to ensure our health and survival but these fine distinctions can be hard to make because there is conflicting information over which is which, and it can be heavily context-dependent.

More on Riley below (to reduce the length of this post).

The following Gillian Riley-based material is not specific to Hazel, it's a follow-on to Riley's discussion of the addictive desire to eat and what it says about the usual narratives of emotional eating, comfort eating, and similar concepts. (I'm trying to avoid some rabbit holes - I won't always be successful, I do think there are probably some caveats but it's not my opinion that's relevant here.)

Riley argues that we have an addictive desire to eat. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing - it's a neutral observation. There are times when we might act on that desire and times when we don't: as long as our response to the desire is our own choice, and taken with full acceptance of any concomitant consequences*, then our response to that desire is the right one for us at that time.

Riley (and various other authors) would say that the strong message to emerge from the popular media's discussion of the psychology of weight loss is that rather than accept that we have an addictive desire to eat, we've been encouraged to create a plausible reason or sophisticated justification. "I'm angry. I'm lonely. I'm bored. I'm in pain. I need comfort." All of which we've been conditioned to accept as reasonable and even rational.

Except, that's not what is happening. That's our cover story. The truth is that we have an addictive desire to eat. So, the bright and breezy advice that we might attempt to distract ourselves from this desire to eat with a DVD, scented candle & bubble bath, phoning a friend, etc., may well do little to nothing for us. We're not eating because we're angry/ lonely/ bored/in pain/need comfort. We just want to eat!

However, just because we experience an addictive desire to eat does not mean we are compelled to act upon it. Anyone who has white-knuckled their way through adapting to a fasting lifestyle probably knows this. What matters here is that white-knuckling through this has to be not only our choice, but the free choice of an autonomous adult that does not push us into feeling restricted, deprived, or like a rebellious chimp. (afaik, Riley doesn't discuss fasting so I'm adapting here. And throwing in the Chimp Paradox just because I can.)

Riley et al suggest that a lot of our individual psychological resources/stamina are/is mis-directed away from addressing our genuine issue, the addictive desire to eat/over-eat, and applied to the justifications for it. Which is exhausting, diminishes our resources, and is mostly guaranteed to get us nowhere. One of the reasons there are such dire statistics about weight maintenance is that even when people do reach goal, we haven't addressed our addictive desire to eat, no matter how much work we may have done on mitigating stress, loneliness or other justifications. So, we tend to rebound into the overeat-shame-guilt cycle.

It might be helpful to discuss Gillian Riley in the context of fasting if other forum members would be interested in this.

My crude summary would be that when we want to fast, we can. (NB, there are caveats but this is not the place for them.) Once we've chosen to fast, if it's our whole-hearted decision, and taken as an autonomous adult, then we might feel some physical discomfort, and might have some fleeting, "What am I doing?" thoughts, but we're not locked in a struggle that consumes us. We're not feeling deprived, mutinous nor obsessing on the food we're not eating.

If we've reasoned ourselves into fasting, but don't fully accept our decision, then FDs can be uncomfortable and over-shadowed by a sense of restriction, rebellion, and deprivation. They may be successful FDs in that we don't eat over the calorie allowance we allocated, but, they do not necessarily represent progress in recognising our addictive desire to eat, and may rebound on us later. (Detouring off into Josie Spinardi, she says that the extent of over-eating/binge-eating is in direct proportion to the sense and period of restriction that triggered it.)

I'll post more if it's helpful but didn't want to hi-jack this into a Riley thread. I'll dig out some material from Martha Beck's 4-Day Win later this week.

*This ranges from being aware that consequences might encompass someone being trapped in a cycle of eating disordered behaviour that is harming them (e.g., binge-purge) or that eating [X] might trigger cramp/bloat/abdominal discomfort or that eating [Y] has become contaminated with shame.

I hadn't looked at Riley's blog for a few weeks. Re-reading my preamble above about the endocrine system, gut bacteria etc. I then read Gillian Riley's blog entry for 14 Nov: Q&A: Becoming a fire fighter http://eatingless.com/qanda/qa-becoming-fire-fighter/

She addresses the issues from the viewpoint of eating less and its association with lessening systemic inflammation: it's interesting to see her moving this way (tho' I doubt we'd agree on the completeness of the evidence base in some matters).

Thanks so much @ssure for all the work you have put into this thread. I really appreciate it and am going to follow up all the links and keep reading until it all sticks in my brain....because it makes so much sense.

Over the past few days, I have been giving great thought to committing to change. There are so many areas of my life that I need to change, but obviously, I would be setting myself up to fail if I tried to tackle absolutely everything at once. Aware that I am a wallower, I am planning to bring about some small changes during fast days initially. Doing things differently for 2 days out of 7 and then seeing the progress...is what I hope will spur me on to attempt to achieve more & more over the other days. I also hope that it will reinforce my commitment to the fasting process, because there are days when I don't embrace it very willingly on the psychological front! I would like to get to the stage where I welcome both fast days wholeheartedly....for a multitude of reasons. In short, I'd like to go into each day with a happy heart!!

To everyone that has posted so far......my heartfelt thanks. It is so amazing to have access to all your wisdom and insight. We are all at different points in our journey, but the compassion, support and advice I have encountered from Day 1, has never wavered. Bless you all xxx

[quote="Madcatlady"]Happy Fastiversary @Hazelnut20 .....Great advice from others - I wonder if there is some kind of self-help book with exercises you could maybe work through - I've seen similar for things like confidence etc......."

I highly recommend this book: The Diet Survivor's Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self-Care (Kindle Edition) Judith Matz(Author) Ellen Frankel (Author)
Changed my life, this one did. I carry it on my kindle & refer to it often.

Regarding the self-esteem issue, Marianne Williamson's quote was eye-opening & enlightening : “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

You can do it, you already have. Keep up the great work.

[wildmissus]

@Hazelnut20, sorry for the late reply. You asked if I still reflect on false beliefs or have I filed them away. Well, I don't reflect on them as much as I used to as I have less false beliefs now. I don't believe in filing things away or putting them in a box as I that doesn't deal with the issue. Some issues are what they are and can't be dealt with as such so don't need to be over analysed but are still a part of us and need to be accepted as such. Other issues just need to be brought up and spoken about once to be dealt with and I've done this through hypnotherapy and quite a few tears! As I've accepted more things about myself I've been able to move forward. The one thing I still do (but less so than before) is that I still think everyone is better than me - more attractive, slimmer, more successful, you name it. As @ssure has mentioned the one thing that I have got better at is being more aware of my thoughts - I used to be a terrible overthinker. I am now able to catch myself overthinking, take 5 mins to reflect on the overthinking but not judge myself for it.

One thing specific to fasting that I often forget about is the main reason I started fasting - health benefits. It is so easy to focus on the weight loss and then the failure of not losing weight but for me the health benefits. ie. of losing weight and fasting are paramount. If there is a chance that I might avoid some cancers, alzheimers, etc in the future then fasting is the way to go.

I haven't had a proper chance to read through all of this thread properly, especially the info ssure has provided but I will. I have however done my usual - had that light bulb moment when I realise that I am not the only one! So for that Hazelnut thank you for this thread.

I will dig up the 4-Day Win material at some point. I just wanted to drop in a nicely written paragraph I've just seen quoted from Susan Alber's Eat Q (I haven't seen the book but saw it mentioned elsewhere and took a 'look inside'):

"A combination of mindfulness and emotion-regulation skills adapted from the EI model, EAT helps you harness your emotional intelligence to alter your relationship with food and make healthy eating decisions. It can help you manage your eating, withstand cravings, and recover from slips or binges, even if you've struggled in the past. Here's your direction: increase your EI, and you increase your ability to stop emotional eating...However, to make the best use of this new tool, you must be willing to see the `problem' of overeating in a new way. It's not a nail you can pound into submission with a hammer--this is, with dieting. It's a mind-body issue that restriction can't fix." (p. 60)

For me, this is of a piece with the other writers who state that the over-arching issue is always that we have an addictive desire to over-eat and that emotional eating is the acceptable narrative for that whereas it's a signal that there's a deficit in our toolkit* for handling emotional issues.

The final part of Alber's book presents 25 tools for putting the EAT method into daily practice - as ever, this looks like something where you might take what is useful to you and ignore the rest (or stow it away in your mind against it being useful for you or someone else in the future).

*E*: Embracing Your Feelings, Learning to Reconnect
1. Build Your Emotional Vocabulary
2. Words That Make You Go "Mmm"
3. Be Here
4. Firm Your Muscles, Firm Your Resolve
5. Emotional Status Updates
6. Rating *Want* to Eat Versus *Need* to Eat
7. The Mindful Bite
8. Open Mind, Closed Mind

*A*: Accepting Your Emotions, Understanding Their Meaning
9. Play to Your Strengths
10. Mental Makeover: Reframe That Feeling
11. Try a Little Tenderness
12. Predict Your Emotional "Weather"
13. Take a "Time-In"
14. Give Habits the Slip
15. Squash Your Desire to Emotionally Eat--Write Away
16. Dig In to a Therapeutic Dose of Produce

*T*: Turning to New, Positive Alternatives to Eating
17. Taming Your Impulses
18. Empowering Words
19. Eat.Q. "Yoga"
20. The Craving Block
21. Believe It, Achieve It
22. Cash Only, Please
23. Ordering Up Emotionally Intelligent Eating
24. Follow Your Nose
25. A Tool for the Chew-Happy

"I can't promise that you'll always manage every feeling or always make the eating decision that benefits your health and well-being. But as you learn more about the emotions that drive you to seek comfort in food and sometimes sabotage your decisions, I hope you'll feel an incredible transformation and awareness grow within you. You'll be able to move ten steps ahead of and actually stop emotional eating in its tracks--now, not after the fact...My goal is to help you exit diet mode--the emotion-driven state of mind that persuades you that merely restricting your food intake will result in permanent weight loss--and enter Eat.Q. mode. There's a world of difference. Diet mode is `you feel it, you eat it,' while Eat.Q. mode is `you feel it, you use it.'"
(pp. 32, 86-87)

NB: I'm comfortable with the cognitive dissonance of fasting and advocating psychological approaches that argue against dieting - because I don't feel that I diet, and I don't experience fasting as deprivation or restriction. Definitely a YMMV area.

ETA: *I always struggle with the notion of a 'deficit in our toolkit' as it sounds so judgmental but I really don't think it's meant that way. Some people have such an huge amount of *stuff* to deal with that it feels impossible not to be overwhelmed and whereas being overwhelmed occasionally is going to happen - the problem can be for people whose lives are overwhelming on a chronic basis (which is a damaging reality). Sometimes, there is no fixing some of those circumstances in the short-term, so at the risk of diving off into Viktor Frankl's logo therapy, the only thing within one's own power to change is the personal response. So, I hate this phrase, but do acknowledge the power of shifting the way some circumstances are perceived and our personal response. Frankl (Holocaust survivor): "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves".

Albers has also written a well-received book: 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food (I haven't done a Look Inside for that so can't comment but the reviews look positive and stress its mindfulness approach so I'm assuming it can't be the usual bromides about baths, phoning a friend etc.). Has anyone read it?

ETA: definitely a YMMV thing but it looks like there's a niche of people who respond well to 'gamifying' anxiety. E.g., the app, Personal Zen, has been the subject of some clinical research (albeit limited): http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-well ... ve-anxiety

I like the look of this because it's not just about distraction but also influences attentional focus and I believe that this has a substantial influence on the way that we perceive and respond to our circumstances.

[carieoates]

Wow....great thread, very insightful, oozing intelligence and from very kind thoughtful people. For which I thank you all for. Especially @SSure