The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Share your daily McDougall menus and/or keep a journal describing your personal progress.

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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Tue Mar 14, 2017 10:43 pm

Here's the update:

I have put OA on hold. I am done with it, at least for now. It seems somewhat disruptive to my world view, to be constantly dunking myself in a different world view. Mostly, I am referring to the world view that God is my puppet-master, wearing his flowing robe, and holding his staff, and a bunch of lambs flocking in the background, making a buncha "BAAAAA" noises.

The thing is, there are a lot of wonderful people in 12-step programs, who honestly don't care whether I believe in God or Allah or The Forces of Good. They just care that I am willing to turn my life over to someone or something "higher" than me. And "surrender" my will. And confess that I have made a horrible mess of my life, and am not fit to stay in the drivers' seat.

My trouble is that I kinda believe there are many, many different wise ideas, wise beings, wise energies. Like, say I were to connect with the energy of Mother Teresa and say, "Take away my urge to binge eat, and by the way, what is your will for me?" Well, maybe she would say, "Hmmm, I dunno, have you thought about serving the poor in India?"

Also, if I were to ask (I love these kinds of things) a collective of beings from Pleiades, they might say something completely different (I don't know -- maybe they'd say, "Have you thought about being tutored by us, in assisting your planet through difficult times?"). So I would just sit there, not knowing which higher beings I should turn over my life to.

Well, I honestly believe that Mother Teresa had her lifetime on earth, and crafted a life that felt meaningful to her. And I believe the beings of Pleiades (or wherever, some star system somewhere), can or could incarnate here, if that works for them. I mean, if any of these lovely souls wants to come to earth in a human body, it would be so lovely to have them (back)k.

But for me, I think that I came incarnate on Earth as a free will human and as a creator being among other creator beings, and that it's up to me to self-express in some beautiful ways. Like, maybe I can ask other spirits for some input, but fundamentally, I believe i am here to self-express -- not to turn over my life or my will really.

What I'm saying is, the concepts of OA can stretch to a point (to accommodate alternative spiritualities), but then they break. The idea that there is a force that wants to humble me, and break me, until finally I realize I am powerless -- well, no.

So I have started picturing a path forward that DOESN'T involve OA at all. I think I can do something different. I don't know -- I'm not 100% sure yet.
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Tue Mar 14, 2017 10:59 pm

Ha! Well, having said that, I should mention that I'm kind of in love with STEP 1 of the Twelve Step programs, which is the idea that there are some patterns and behaviors that:
- didn't work
- won't work
- haven't helped
- aren't gonna help
- don't serve me
- can't serve me
. . . And whenever I find a group of my own behaviors that I go all STEP 1 on, it feels very final to me.

Like, at one point, I just took binge behaviors as a matter of course. My dinners were long binge sessions built on plant-based, calorie-dilute foods, and I just thought this was as it should be. And then I went all STEP 1, and decided that I'm 100% done with binge behaviors.

For me, that means, "There's nothing to go back to. You can't go back to binge eating. You can go anywhere you want from here, but you can't go back to what you used to do."

So, that was actually kinda disruptive!

I'm always surprised when I see people come to these boards but they haven't yet decided that SAD foods don't work. So they think, "This whole natural foods thing isn't fun for me anymore, so I'm just gonna go back to SAD foods."

But for me the thing I left (binge eating) won't ever be home to me again. I can't make it seem sweet and innocent anymore. I can't make a binge seem like a perfectly OK behavior anymore. Too much is too much. I've trained myself to see that binge eating is not my friend, and never WAS my friend.

And --here's where I was going with this -- the last two months have definitely left me in no-man's-land! My old grooves are done. I've broken up with my old grooves. But I'm in a clumsy state, like, OFTEN. And I don't do new behaviors, or even FIND new behaviors, with particular speed or anything. I'm not terribly precocious, and so I had great eating days on
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday -- but came totally undone on Monday and today.

But I am raising the bar for myself. I can see this getting good. And I'm getting good at this.

I think I've got some good ideas on the grocery shopping behaviors. More on this later!

One of the funniest things is that all this effing trial and error has me at the high end of my weight range. Have you seen how celebrities hold their handbag in front of their belly when trying to hide a pregnancy? I walk in this exact posture when I have some weird binge that i'm recovering from. It's hysterical and ridiculous!

But I'm getting the hang of it, and just need to stay two pounds south of my wardrobe's max weight! :)
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Fri Mar 17, 2017 9:53 am

Back to the Brian Wansink book:

One of the main themes of his books & his research, is that if you do a couple smart things in your grocery shopping habits, you can easily and painlessly change your food landscape.

Like, it strikes me that people commonly and regularly set themselves up for failure. Things like:
-- going places where things are sold in large quantities (like 1-pound bags of walnuts, half-gallon vats of ice cream, boxes of cereal that contain three to four cups worth of food and loaves of bread that have more than ten slices); because if you serve yourself from a big stash, then it's pretty easy to think that you're not overdoing it.
-- Ex: (Like, if I have a family-sized box of cornflakes and a 1/2 gallon of plant milk, then it's pretty easy to pour 2 cups of cereal and a cup of plant milk, and think i'm eating sanely; but if I go to a restaurant and they serve me a cup of cereal and a half cup of plant milk, then I eat it and feel just as satisfied)

On that note, I have begun to buy things in a smaller quantity. The things that come in large quantities (like grapes -- in most grocery stores, you cannot buy a handful of grapes; they only sell giant sacks of grapes) -- I have begun to leave them alone entirely

My Current Strategy: Buy one item at a time, not several
Example: buy a red bell pepper, buy a potato, buy a pear, buy some broccoli

If I come home with the above, then I eat it, and there is no sense of restraining or restrictng myself. I don't have to say to myself, "Just eat one potato and leave the rest till tomorrow" because I buy the right amount for myself right off the bat.

Eating one red bell pepper really DOES seem to be just as satisfying as buying and eating three. (I honestly used to buy three as my default -- I know that sounds excessive! -- I used to buy one red, one orange and one yellow -- just as a matter of course, to eat at a single sitting)

Anyways, I have been going by the philosophy of buying one raw vegetable, one cooked (or cookable) vegetable, one fruit, one starch and (optional) one fat.

I don't enjoy nuts or avocados that much, but since I'm not terribly prone to overdoing it on nuts or fats, I've been leaving that option open for days that I feel particularly munchy. For right now, I'd rather see myself eat a handful of nuts, rather than buy three bell peppers and two pears and three potatoes and a cup of rolled oats and then revisit the volume-eating patterns that I used to do.

That is rambly, but that's the scene for today! :O
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Fri Mar 17, 2017 10:21 am

So, me and grocery stores are interested in two different things. The grocery store wants me to load up my cart and buy a lot of stuff. They give me a big grocery cart, because even if I only fill it 1/3 of the way, they stand to make a bunch of money off of me. They put giant ziploc bags near the bulk foods, because even if I I only fill a one-gallon bag 1/3 of the way, that is still more than I would buy if I were filling sandwich-size ziploc bags.

I think that my time in OA has made me very aware of binge eaters in our midst! In the big chain grocery stores, they sell 2-pound bags of candy that can be eaten by the handful. And there is a self-checkout lane for people who are totally ashamed of buying a 2-pound bag of candy, because you know that they are only minutes away from their binge.

It is telling that the Brian Wansink concepts work at all levels. People who buy from a humongous display of candy, can easily put two or three bags of candy in their cart, and not think they're overdoing it. As humans we are attuned to the fractions and percentages, but were are not well attuned to the baseline quantities of things. So when the forces of the universe set us up with humongous baseline quantities, we mostly go astray!

Side note, but in OA, people commonly tell the stories of their binge eating days. For example, kids who eat from a pillowcase-sized stash of assorted Halloween candy, can easily sit down and have twelve pieces of candy, and then come back for more in an hour, and do you notice how the pillowcase doesn't even look less full than when you started? That's the principle behind the Brian Wansink ideas. If we serve ourselves directly from a humongous blob of foodstuffs, then we fail. However, if the kid were to put six pieces of candy on a dinner plate, and then eat it, he woudn't overshoot the mark in nearly the same way as in the pillowcase scenario.

So, shopping at Walmart, where the candy aisle is bigger than your RV -- that in itself seems to prompt us to buy too much.

I honestly think that even going into the aisle of Whole Foods, where there are yards and yards of shelf space filled with cinnamon rolls -- I think that ALSO prompts us to go astray. Like, our lizard brain sees yards and yards of shelves filled with cinnamon rolls, and somehow assumes that buying one little package of cinnamon rolls isn't buying very much. I mean, "one little package" of cinnamon rolls, may in fact be six cinnamon rolls, and maybe the cinnamon rolls contain three days worth of sugar and fat in each one, but our brains don't work that well, and so "one little package" of cinnamon rolls seems reasonable if we are foolish enough to set foot in that aisle.

It is funny, because i like to shop at the organic market in town (which is the size of a Whole Foods), and some items are shelved in very small displays. Like, snap peas, at this time of year, are in a display basket of only three or four cups of snap peas. Because they are not very easily available, and they are costly. So, it would be weird for me to empty the whole amount into a produce bag and carry on my way. By contrast, there is a huge display of cabbage or potatoes, and I could easily throw a LOT into my cart and carry on my way.

Well, I am a natural conspiracy theorist, and I think that people are tricking us by displaying things as "fields of abundance" -- do you notice how sometimes the produce only runs one or two items deep, but the visible portion makes it seems like there are MOUNTAINS of the item. They like to trick your eye into making the shelves seem overflowing with abundance, because then I'll unconsciously buy more.

Well, that's a lot of words for one day! Done! :)
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Fri Mar 17, 2017 10:51 am

I want to share a couple more things, because I think they can help people other than just me:

Well, i've been pretty clear about the fact that I'm pretty far out there, as my spiritual beliefs go, right?

So, I had a past life reading done once, where I was told that in one of my most recent lifetimes, I was a US soldier who was deployed to Vietnam as basically a spy, to scope out the internal war that was happening, before American forces were sent there en masse.

And while I was doing some reconnaissance (sp?), one of my fellow soldiers snuck up on me and slit my throat, and that's how I died in that lifetime.

Well, in that lifetime, I was able to discern the identity of the man who had just slit my throat, but couldn't make any sense of why he would want me dead.

I was told by the woman giving the reading that my guides want me to be aware that people often have their own motives -- it's not necessarily about me personally. In that lifetime, the man who killed me wanted to get a promotion that I was in line to get. He DIDN'T have a grudge against me personally -- it wasn't about me at all -- it was about him and the promotion he wanted.

And in our current lifetime, I feel it's a really important lesson, that there are People Who Do Not Have Our Best Interests At Heart. The guy who is a midlevel marketing manager for Bertha's Cinnamon Rolls may be a nice guy on the surface, and not a killer at all! But when he advises his bosses to package these things with large globs of frosting on top (because we'll be more apt to buy them) or to make sure that the boxes are always clear on top, never opaque, because that'll make us desire the cinnamon rolls even if we would not othrwise want them -- well, that guy is just thinking of his own income, and focused on his own career -- he would just as happily sneak up behind us and shove a piece of bacon fat into our artery, because it's not about us -- he's only thinking in terms of himself.

There are a LOT of People Who Do Not Have Our Best Interests At Heart! But I believe we can stay on our guard. They lob their spells at us, and I believe we can recognize and reverse their spells. In doing so, I believe we can prevent them from incurring such crappy karma anyways!

When someone puts a three-gallon bowl of potato chips in a room, that is a spell. We are the ones who are smart enough to say, "No way, man. That is bullcrap. I don't enter into rooms like that."

Someone who puts out a three-gallon bowl of potato chips is Someone Who Does Not Have Our Best Interests at Heart. They are not necessarily malicious. Maybe they just want to be popular. Maybe they only have one bowl, and it is a humongous punch bowl. It doesn't matter. All we need to know is, they did not in that moment say, "What is good for Traci? How can I serve food so that she will stay healthy? Would Traci do better if I filled some opaque ziploc bags with chips, and only offered them to people at their ideal weight?"

Nope. They are just doing what they are doing. And it is up to us to reverse their spells and stay out of their sphere of influence. We can't be stupid and think that people have our best interests at heart -- mostly, they don't.

So, there's my bonus conspiracy theories for today! :)
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:27 pm

Ha! Well, since I am dishing about my past life rreadings, then I will mention one more, because it has a lot of bearing on how I approach my current lifetime.

I was told that i've had several lifetimes in which I lived in societies that systematically harmed, oppressed, or took advantage of some people. For example, I was told that I had a lifetime as a shaman in Africa, where part of my "sacred" duty, was to remove the clitoris of each woman in the village who reached puberty. For her own good, of course.

And in that lifetime, I became increasingly aware that what I was doing was not good for the women or good for the society as a whole. I decided I would no longer accept this role, and would no longer go along with the nonsense.

But the lesson my soul wanted me to learn, was to have the discernment to see harm being done, and to speak to others about what I saw. Instead, I took poison, ended my own life, and never bothered using my voice on behalf of the women who were being mutilated and on behalf of the society that was fooling themselves about their motives for doing this.

So, in this current lifetime, I kind of assume that it would be good to not only have the discernment to see who is doing what and how people are getting harmed, but to SPEAK truthfully about what I see. I don't know what qualities others came here to develop, and so I'm certainly not saying that others are here to speak truthfully about what they see, BUT: it seems pretty obvious that by being someone who understands the tricks and the manipulations around food, is a larger set-up of "In this lifetime, do I choose to be Someone Who Does Not Have Your Best Interests At Heart?

So, I have honestly been pretty vocal about my experiences with food, with binge eating, with the traps that are laid all around us, with the lies that are being spread by People Who Are Willing To See You Suffer.

I mean, I am not a rescuer, by any stretch of the imagination. I see people who are in the throes of their addiction, who are knee deep in the narrative of, "I've tried everything, and I just wanna go on statins and not have to fight anymore", and it is not my place to question their chosen narrative.

But if people are willing to hear about things that I see around me, then I'm happy to share. In particular, I think that people who have developed excellent health on a plant-based diet, are offering service by being transparent about what they DO and how they THINK and which STRATEGIES they've employed, to get to where they are.

Like, in OA, they say that I can only give it away if I have it. I can only share the strategies for the things I have done successfully. If I have only gotten 90% of the way to optimal health, then the trail I walk, can only lead anyone else 90% of the way to optimal health.

So I've got the blueprint for some of the main things. I've gotten maybe 97% of the way to optimal health, if I had to throw a number on it. I say often around here, that I used to weigh 135 in my SAD days, and these days I run between 100 and 108. My weight is in a pretty good place. My energy levels feel really good. I like how I eat, and I like what I eat. So if anyone wants to know how the hell to do this thing, I can tell you about all the things I have done, and I can tell you that they will probably also get you 97% of the way to optimal health.

There are other people here too, who can share with you, how they got the health they have gotten -- there are many ways of devising a health-supporting diet, and I think you can follow my path, or someone else's path, or forge your own path. Just because I like certain foods in certain ways, doesn't mean you have to do the same thing -- I just offer my experience so that other people can create their own experience.

Reining in binge eating is taking some extra work, and don't look to me as having any lasting success in that regard. It is still in progress!

But there y'go. That's my vocal bit!
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby sirdle » Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:41 pm

roundcoconut wrote:That is rambly, but that's the scene for today! :O

roundcoconut wrote:Well, that's a lot of words for one day! Done! :)

roundcoconut wrote:So, there's my bonus conspiracy theories for today! :)

roundcoconut wrote:But there y'go. That's my vocal bit!

You're not stopping already are you? What am I going to read while eating dinner? :lol:
"Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment chop wood, carry water." -- Zen proverb
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:46 pm

Ha! There is a line in a Beastie Boys song that goes, "The gift of gab, is the gift that I have."

Did I mention I have a coffee mug now that holds 14 oz of coffee? So I maybe, possibly, conceivably, am a teeny bit caffeinated ths morning! :)
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby sirdle » Fri Mar 17, 2017 1:28 pm

roundcoconut wrote:Ha! There is a line in a Beastie Boys song that goes, "The gift of gab, is the gift that I have."

Did I mention I have a coffee mug now that holds 14 oz of coffee? So I maybe, possibly, conceivably, am a teeny bit caffeinated ths morning! :)

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I hope you know I'm just teasing. I love reading your posts!

Cheers, :-P
"Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment chop wood, carry water." -- Zen proverb
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:22 am

A couple thoughts this morning:

First, I definitely want to post a selfie at some point -- it's only fair, right? If you're going to put your shit out there, then take a damn selfie already and post it.

I hopped on a scale this morning and am 107, which is the high end of my range, but not ABOVE my range, and I was just happy for small blessings, because my food choices got really ugly for a few days last week!!

One thing I noticed in the aftermath of making some really rough food choices last week was that I've lived the last year and a half in an amazing wardrobe- and confidence-nirvana. Being between 100 and 108 has really meant that I've felt great in my clothes on a ridiculously consistent basis, and that has been delightful. Feeling pretty never gets old for me! I just like feeling pretty.

But in the middle of my rough-food-choices, I did indeed have visibly more body fat in my middle section, and was relegated to my most accommodating pair of jeans, and y'know -- I did my best to roll with it, but I tend to enjoy wearing form-fitted clothing, but the little sweater I pulled on one day really fit more like a sausage casing than I prefer!

On a side note, I had a good laugh that the weight at which I resemble a sausage casing is one that would be screened for anorexia as it's slightly below the 111 pounds that represents the low end of a normal BMI, if you asked a medical chart.

It's always kind of hilarious, because if you take a small-boned AA-cup and pack some extra weight on me, I mean, there is a distinct muffin-top effect. It's pretty obvious.

One other thing that is pretty funny is that when I had these weird binge days, I was really honest with the people around me about it. I literally told people, "God, I probably went for over a year without straying into the sugar, but for whatever reason, I was stuffing my mouth with sugar last week at work." I pretty much kept telling people that I have a history of binge eating, and when I get into the sugar, things go a little crazy.

I find it actually IS helpful to tell people that sugar is a binge food for me -- that way, they kinda understand what I'm talking about. Surprisingly, people often understand addiction, and many people have their own experiences of sugar-high and sugar-binges. I've not met anyone who -- if I tell them that I have a history of binge eating on sugar -- encourages me to partake in sugary stuff that's being handed around.

Well, anyways, I'll put up a selfie at some point. I've been back in a good state of mind and have been making good food choices for probably five days now. So, I feel very normal and safe now.

Oh! I should mention that I got sick last weekend (my first cold since last winter) and I think I had some rough food choices there too -- just extra helpings of starches. I'm not sure why I decided that more food would help anything, because it really didn't. But I'm back to normal, and back to having a smart auto-pilot re food!

That's the update. More thoughts, but they'll wait!
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:01 am

Here's a brand-new just-taken-today selfie:

Image

Keep in mind that I hardly ever walk out the door without contacts in or eye make-up on, but oh well -- I threw up a non-glam pic in the interests of keeping it real.

D'y'see what I'm saying though? The idea that I would get screened for anorexia at this body weight is ridiculous. (This pic is me at 5'4", 107lbs, so technically 18.4 BMI, which is a hair below the 18.5 that a chart declares is the lower end of the "norm") It's clearly a little higher than i NEED to be (body fat in the midsection that isn't filling any function whatsoever), even though there are perhaps people with larger frames and more muscle mass who wouldn't look right at this particular weight.

But there y'go! That's what I look like on my day off when I am giving my eyes a rest. I think I have chronic folliculitis at the eyelashes from my love of putting a few false eyelashes into my lash line -- putting industrial strength lash glue into the hair follicle has taken its toll.
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:01 pm

Here are some more musings about food and eating and feeling pretty:

For starters, on Tuesday I asked my coworker how she gets awesome bouncy ringlets in her hair, and she told me her protocol. So when i got home, I tried out her technique and SHE WAS RIGHT -- I was able to make some pretty, bouncy ringlets in my hair! That was so much fun for me. Gotta take a pic some day.

Now, thoughts on the food:
I honestly think that Brian Wansink has delineated a set of strategies that, one by one, don't seem to offer a ton of effectiveness, but several strategies are taken up, make a massive difference in one's food satisfaction and eating environment. And in one's food choices. And in one's sense of satiety. And in one's feelings of SUCCESS with health eating. This is huge huge huge -- to feel like a master of the food, rather than a slave. Just very, very empowering!

The philosophy is basically that if I align my environment with my long-term intentions, I mindlessly make the right choices almost all of the time. He totally calls bullshit on the whole "eating mindfully" thing (and thank god, because I totally think that's crap!). Like, if I sit at the table (not on my futon), with a bowl of peas, I seem mindlessly eat a bit more thoroughly (chew better, spoon the food to my mouth rather than shovel it) and feel a bit more satiety.

And if the only change I ever made was to sit at the table rather than the futon, maybe that would only change my intake by 5%, so maybe over the course of five months, my body weight would settle at a number three pounds lower than what it is now. So, by itself, that's not the kind of results that would wow anyone, except that it's painless and permanent, so it's the best kind of result!

And on top of that, I've changed up my bowls, plates and spoons to ones that are more moderately sized. Eating oatmeal from a teaspoon mindlessly controls the pace, and improves satiety in a roundabout way. Eating the oatmeal from a cereal bowl rather than from a giant pasta bowl also seems to shrink the intake painlessly. I mean, if I got done eating the 1.5 cups of oatmeal that fit into a cereal bowl and needed to go back to the store for extra food, I guess I coudl, but mostly it's been fine not to eat the 3 cups of oatmeal that would've fit into a giant pasta bowl.

I mean, that's another avenue of change that probably only shifts a person's satiety by 10%, and so maybe my weight settles four pounds lower than it otherwise would've been over the course of three months. Not earth-shattering, but hugely effective!

So THESE are the things that feel really good to me! It was a tricky transition, because I was very GOOD at my old eating patterns (binge eating on beets and broccoli) and I definitely made some choices last week to binge eat anyways, but now the new patterns are settling in nicely.

That's all for the moment! :)
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby landog » Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:34 pm

Nice pics!!
I like the one with the kerchief.
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:18 pm

landog wrote:Nice pics!!
I like the one with the kerchief.


Thank you! Need I mention, I favor the fashions and hairstyles of the 80s? The sensibilities of the 80s were just so over the top. Like Shiela E, or Debbie Gibson. :)
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Re: The Eating-When-Hungry Journal :)

Postby roundcoconut » Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:41 pm

Time for another update!:

I've been practicing my new habits and deepening those new grooves in my life. Every time I sit at the table at home to eat my lunch or dinnner, it is a small win, and one that makes future wins easier and more automatic. So, I feel really good about what I'm doing.

Ditto, every time I practice "correct" silverware at home -- I switched to eating with a common teaspoon (instead of a tablespoon or soup spoon), or with a dessert fork (instead of a cleverly designed pitchfork), as a way to mindlessly control how much food I'm putting in my mouth with each bite.

My old habits were definitely to eat large quantities of food after work, in an extended food-fest, while sitting on the futon. It served its purpose, but I realize that every time I sat on the futon and went to town on large portions, I strengthened those patterns. (I definitely used to chain-eat my food, meaning that while the beets were cooking, I was eating two apples and then when the beets got out of the instantpot, I was cooking onions and bell peppers in the microwave, and then while the onions were cooling down, I had oatmeal in process, and at some point, I was signalled to stop because either I was stuffed, exhausted, or out of food.)

So what I'm doing now is a HUGE improvement.

I also am doing new patterns as far as cleaning up the InstantPot before i ever sit down to eat my food, and having a routine for cleaning up my dishes when I'm done, and setting them out to dry. There's a sense of finality in that -- having a clean kitchen and a nothing left out that suggests that there could be more food on the way.

I actually AM fascinated by a few of the thinnest women I know. One of them is my boss's girlfriend (who's quite nice and quite pretty in addition to being thin), and she will bring her mom into the restaurant I work at, and they'll split a salad, and split a sandwich and then they'll go DO something together. The food is not the main event, and they apparently just never learned to provide themselves with large portions. (The mom, by the way, has no extra body fat either.)

There is another thin woman i work with, who brought pasta to eat for her lunch, and it was in a recycled gelato container, so only a pint. I thought, "I would've packed twice that amount if it were my own lunch!" So, it is useful to watch people who have not inflated their portion sizes drastically, the way most of america has done.

Well, those are my insights! Gotta get back to work. :)
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