Everyday Systems

I'm 29 and throughout the past decade or so I've followed all kinds of “intuitive†plans - a modified Weigh Down approach (without the praying), read most of Geneen Roth, Overcoming Overeating and others, all without success and a continued food obsession.

I have almost always been able to control myself well with regular food portions, no seconds and small plates, but my struggles come with an insatiable desire to continue eating after eating, especially sweets. I'm a constant grazer, sweets and chocolate addict, and I usually have to have dessert after my dessert.

I can control eating vs. emotions pretty well, except for boredom. I graze at work because I hate my job. It's not just this job, but every job I've ever had. I simply am lazy and hate working. I eat to pass the time. When I get home is another problem. I eat dinner as soon as I walk in the door and don't stop for a couple of hours. When I'm around people for too long, even my boyfriend who I love, I also want to eat. He has tried to be sympathetic, but it's hard for him because he has no eating issues and I just don't think he gets it. It makes me anxious when I'm in a situation where I can't hide and eat when I want to.

Previously, I have seen a psychiatrist who suggested that I eat only outside the home, or "close the kitchen" and go straight to bed. She said one of her patients had to have a "farmer's schedule" of sleeping from 8pm to 4am in order to control her eating. Well it simply isn't realistic.

I can't tell you how frustrating it is for people to say "Well just don't eat sweets" like it’s so easy to just stop. I avoid garlic and onions because they put a "food taste" in my mouth that sets off my chocolate grazing. I have tried to explain to people why I turn down certain foods and they look at me like I'm crazy. I guess to "normal" people, a food taste is hard to describe. Brushing my teeth doesn't work either. I can't make myself "get up and do something else," "clean the house" or any of the other tips I've read.

My height/weight is approximately 5'7" 145 lbs, but I don't believe in weighing myself to add more misery to my problem. My previous menus have been chocolate for all meals and chocolate in between.

After finding No S on the internet on Sunday, I started trying it on Monday. It has been so tough. For 4 days I have had 3 meals on one plate and no snacks. The only sweets I’ve had are 2 giant cookies after dinner each night. I am now out of cookies and didn’t buy anymore. I feel like at any moment I may fly out the door to the ice cream stand. It is so terribly difficult. Even though I ate cookies three nights in a row, I feel like the past 4 days have been a success, because the amount of sugar snacking that I cut out has been so significant.

My typical food this week has been:
Breakfast: Shredded wheat/soymilk; Eggs with broccoli/cheese; Banana
Lunch: Lean pocket, carrots, apple, granola bar
Dinner: Pasta, with marinara and pieces of asparagus and veggie chicken; Slice of bread; 2 cookies

So as you can see, this is such an improvement. But physiologically I have had such weird body feelings, and I have to wonder if it’s due to sugar withdrawal. My head alternates between this tingly, euphoric feeling, and extremely torturous cases of mouth hunger. No matter how much water I drink, I can’t get rid of the mouth hunger. My lips are dry despite keeping them moisturized and drinking water all day. The first two days of No S, my lungs were ticklish and I wanted to throw up, like after you run a mile being out of shape.

The past few mornings after waking up and looking in the mirror, I haven’t looked different, but I seem to have viewed my body differently. Almost, happy with it. I hope that this feeling doesn’t subside. I have read about people’s constant struggles with No S. But I hope it can become something permanent. I hate being chained to food, constantly thinking about it, needing it, planning my life around it. I don’t want to jump the gun after only 4 days, but I have lost all other hope. No S is the only thing I’ve heard of that makes sense. I don't even care about the last 10 pounds anymore, I just want to stop being obsessed with sweets.

Now that I have found this group, I feel relief but anger. Anger towards my parents for not setting the ground rules for eating. Allowing us to run off and eat alone and snack before and after meals. Anger towards our society for pushing this “6 meals a day†nonsense. I am so SICK of being told that my metabolism is going to slow down if I don’t eat for a few hours. I think this is an excuse that people made up so they can justify their constant eating. I will no longer justify my own eating based on some metabolism myth. People’s metabolisms don’t just break. Our bodies aren’t that stupid.

I remember sleeping over at a friend's house (a rare thing) and having dinner at the table, then retiring to my friend's room the rest of the night. Nobody in the family ate anything or went back to the kitchen. I literally laid next to her bed that night unable to sleep and raided her stash of Easter candy after midnight. It was humiliating the next day when she said she woke up and heard me eating candy. I just couldn't fathom how people could keep themselves from eating after dinner.

I always thought “If I lived back when there was no junk food, how would I live without chocolate and snacks and how skinny would I be?†It really is the three meals. No other secret than that. All along, I think I knew it was right. But because it wasn’t a “diet,†I didn’t believe it could really be healthy. Now that I see how many other people have improved themselves by No S, it just renews my hope. I’m glad to know I’m not alone. I just hope that it becomes easier with time and the tingly feelings and obsession stops. Forgive the rambling but any comments are appreciated.

*hugs* (if you want them, of course!)

I won't play armchair shink, but if you "can't make yourself" do something, then the issue is probably something far outside the scope of something a bulletin board is really qualified to solve for you. Several things sound like known issues to me, but it'd be a terrible thing to do anything but suggest you talk to a professional.

While any of us here is genuinely interested in being supportive, I expect some experienced professional help (if you can get it/afford it/etc.) would do you a lot of good.

However, you HAVE done marvelously well this week. Maybe it's not so much "can't" as it is "very very hard". For what it's worth, finding the initial self-discipline hard for the first few weeks before habit kicks in is pretty much par for the course.

Good job making it those 4 days. The sugar thing is a hard habit to break, but it can be done. I experienced physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms when I weaned myself from sugar. There was no way I could go cold turkey and live with others in the same house! lol. So, I understand your feeling of accomplishment right now. I have had some awesome success with No-S helping me change some pretty set in habits (I no longer drink 6+ cans of Coke a day, and I've gone up to 2 weeks without having any pop or sweet drinks at all). You just have to do your best each day (or each meal) and repeat as many times as needed.

One trick I used for sweets was to only bring home enough for one serving or to last the day on the weekend (sharing with my family of course). If I wanted a treat, I had to leave the house to get it. The trick is being honest in your purchase and only getting as much as you need to get through that moment. If the only food you have in the house requires a bit of preparation to eat, you are less likely to snack on it.

To Noel, I'm not trying to scoff at therapy, but I really don't think that's what I need. I realize that it may help in certain cases, but previous attempts at therapy have not made me less food obsessed. I have no "issues" like abuse to work through, thank God. Other than the lack of food structure growing up, my parents were very good to me.

To Harmony, I hope that one day I'll be able to keep bags of chocolate in the house and only eat them on S days, but that's something that's for way in the future. It really is about taking it one meal at a time though!

After a couple of days I feel that I'm responding much more positively to structured eating rather than years of intuitive eating. I don't want to jinx it yet, though. I have to will myself to completely restructure my life, which has been 90% focused on food, simply because that is what I have allowed it to become. I need to take responsibility, and give my body what it asks for, but within structure.

A parent's love for their child is shown through gentle guidance and rules. In a way, I'm viewing this week as myself being reborn as a food child. I must start over with teaching and showing myself the proper way to eat, even though it is painful at the moment. Soon I'm confident that I will be an adult about my eating. I don't blame my parents, because I don't think they knew any better than I did. But I can't live, blaming someone when I have the power to fix it. I still have plenty of time to create a life with normal views on food.

Today I cleaned out my desk drawer at work. It was full of oatmeal, bars and other "emergency" food. I still hate my job, but by removing the option to eat instead of work, I'm getting a lot more done, which gives me slightly more pride in my work. I am no longer eating breakfast at my desk. I am waking early enough to cook quickly, and be forced to work as soon as I get there, rather than graze to avoid a project. It makes me look forward to lunch, and be sure that I'm getting a full meal in.

Tonight is Friday and I'm trying to make it one more day. It's going to be so hard to not go get ice cream after dinner, but I did it last night. My first day of no dessert. I know I can do it because I'll have lots of ice cream on Saturday. I hope that my body and mind can become retrained "like Pavlov's dog" so that I don't want dessert after dinner every night.

The evenings have been hard, because when I take out eating, I don't know what else to do. I sit in front of the computer, but without food, it seems to be more of a waste of time. I hope that eventually I can convince myself to go for a walk or read, but right now the changes in my diet are zapping my energy. I want to think about one thing at a time so that my body can become accustomed more easily.

I find myself sleeping on time because I don't know what else to do. Waking up the past few days hungry and wanting a giant breakfast feels so natural, and almost energizing.

Eventually I'd like to start adding exercise, but right now, I feel overwhelmed. I still have extreme mouth hunger, but the tingliness has subsided slightly. I have hope that it will go down even more. I read that insulin spikes the more often you eat, and I wonder if that's where my physiological symptoms are coming from. I think my insulin levels might be in "shock" right now.

I ordered the No S book used off amazon and I'm waiting for that to come in. I hope it'll have a couple of more nuggets of wisdom that will help me. I'm afraid that I won't be able to "stick with it" if I ever get into a period of stress in my life. Right now, I'm almost stress free, just bored. It really is sad to think how badly I've let boredom control my life. I hope that in future times of illness or distress, this foundation can help me cope better than food. It is going to take a LOT of work and agony to retrain myself. But if others have done it, then so can I.

I have always read that people with eating issues have those issues because food is "the one thing they can control." But that makes absolutely no sense. How can you be in control when you are a slave to the food? By placing your meals in structure, you are taking back control of everything!

DISCLAIMER: ARM CHAIR PSYCHOLOGY BEING PRACTICED HERE. DO NOT USE IN PLACE OF PROFESSIONAL HELP.

With the greatest tenderness I say that I'm afraid you eat from more emotions than just boredom as evidenced in your post. A 2-hour dinner? Being around people for too long? I think that is not just boredom, but your feelings are also very human and eating is not a crime. Some people don't have the feelings in the same situations, but many do. They may smoke, bite their fingernails, fidget, indulge in mood alterers or just browbeat themselves on the inside to deal with them. You eat. Join the club!

You are not going to turn around these urges in a few days or even weeks unless your motivation-your reason to overcome them- is bigger than the motivation--quick comfort-- to give in. I doubt shame can be a good motivation, since most of us have already felt a great deal of shame to no avail.

I don't know what your motivation will be but mine this time was plain old fear/desperation. I recognized that I had lived for most of my 56 years in the clutches of this stimulus-response. I mourned all through my teens about not being able to just eat what I wanted and went from 132 to 145. I got up to 155 before my first real attempt to diet at 18, but I finished college at 155. In the ensuing years, I fretted at how hard it was and how I just couldn't seem to control it right up to 200 lbs. I kept trying to tell myself that I should be acceptable to others = men no matter what my size, but at age 50 reading that the older men were, the more they believed that women should be responsible for their weight got me down to 160. Falling in love and not being chosen got me back up to 185.

This time I realized that if I didn't just face down the urges, but also find a way to live with food, that I was going to go around and around in pain FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I do not have another 40 years to figure this out. I could see that No S is the sanest way to deal with this. But I had reached the point of truth for me. For others it might be less dramatic; and for still others, even more.

Yes, it is hard. But what are the options? No S, or something close to it; or traditional dieting. Or living the way you are living. There is likely no magic that will make this easy, if that is what you are secretly waiting for. But with No S, IT GETS EASIER! Believe me, going 4-6 hours between satisfying meals 5 days a week is going to do for you what nothing else has done for me for 40 years. You are so lucky to have found this! Grab it and hold on!

BTW, I hope you are not in this for much weight loss as you are well within your normal BMI range. This doesn't mean you won't lose weight. But you might not, at least soon. However, the misery you were in with your eating is a far more important problem to solve. And not reinforcing those urges with food is the most effective cure you can find.

You don't have to have your life perfect to get thin, but I do encourage you to pursue finding work you like more and finding the right balance in being around people or not. Some temperaments are energized by being around others-natural business people, sales people, public school teachers, managers. Others may like people but be drained by being around them; many artists, musicians, scientists, college professors, engineers, doctors; people who must work out their own perspective and be consulted for their expertise. These people are the minority in the population, by the way. If I may be so bold, I would say that you have not found your tribe yet, and that that is part of your anxiety with work and people. It is only natural to look for an outlet. As I said, you don't have to solve this before you disengage from food, but it might help to be doing both.

For work issues, I highly recommend the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. http://www.jocrf.org/ Not a cheap service, but with a research sample of over 500,000 over the years, incredibly accurate. I wish I had found it at age 29; I really believe the course of my life would have been different. It is worth the trip to a major city, if you don't live in one. And the money? Believe me, if you don't face this issue, too, you will face much greater either monetary loss or emotional pain over the next 20 years than the fee for the service will cause.

Even if you think that emotions are not your issue, just for fun look at Shrink Yourself. The eating plan here is highly superior, but the systematic look at our crazy attachment to food and what to do with the time we used to spend on it, once we aren't fretting over it, is eye opening. I have yet to hear from any female overeater who does not recognize herself. If boredom is really the major issue, answering the question What would I do if I didn't eat? is an essential goal. You might take a hot bath; you might go to law school. It will depend on what you really need. BTW, I did the online course before No S, as well as reading the book. I wish I had just sent the money for the course to Reinhard, although I respect Dr. Gould a lot.

I have one more area that I have found very helpful, but I've already overstayed my welcome. You can private message me, if you are not inundated already.

You are doing marvelously well for your first try. It is worth it!! Every white knuckle moment! If you can stand the thought of planning to stick to it for 3 months, do it. If you can't, just get through your 21 days. You have found gold!