Hello fellow TD Club'ers. I have a question.

How many of you out there are working on the psychological factors that triggers your overeating? I'm sure all of us have heard that there are factors ... ISSUES behind overeating. And how many of you have heard that UNLESS you get down to those ISSUES that you will not have successful and CONTINUED weight loss. That you'll just gain it back?

Well, I'm working on my ISSUES. And let me tell you, it's hard. In fact. Lately it's scared me a little because of the pain I feel bellowing up inside me as I think about it and uncover some potential factors. And I'm not a "cries a lot" or "thinks too much" kind of person! I'm actually the kind of person who says..."AH GET OVER IT! SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP AND MOVE ON." I really believe in leaving the past behind and living in the here and now. I really believe in saying...it's their problem not mine, I won't let anyone ruin my life. I'm going to live my life and move on. But now I'm thinking I may have to go back a little to move ahead.

OKAY, so why the post? I'm wondering who has uncovered their ISSUES and if you have, how do you get through it? Because I'm feeling a little scared right now as I begin this journey. Is it going to put me into a depression? How do I avoid that? Is it possible to avoid it?

This is a very tough topic.

Other times, I have attempted to identify "issues" and deal with them. This time, I have consciously compartmentalized things. I am fat and want to be thin. The fact that I may be insecure, lack self-confidence, etc etc are all there but I'm not sure I'll ever completely resolve those. So for now, I am happy enough just to control the physical cravings with a WOE that deals with the fat in my life. I think if I tried to get into therapy mode at the same time, I would crack and I would still be fat.

I truly don't think my weight gain can be attributed to anything psychological. I feel like my medical condition has been diagnosed and now I'm in recovery. It's plain and simple in my mind....I'm allergic to carbs so have to eat fewer of them than most people.

I'm sure I have issues because of being fat, though. The older I get the less I worry about them I suppose. I'm hoping a lot of them will magically go away when I'm thinner. Those that don't go away, I'll deal with when they come up. Hasn't happened yet, so I guess I can't say what they might be.

I, personally, think that I got fat because my body could not properly metabolize the amount of carbohydrates I was eating, not because of any deep psychological reasons. Once I learned what the problem was and cut way back on the carbohydrates, I started losing weight without any problems. That is not to say that I think I am perfect -- I am just as neurotic as anyone else -- it is just that I don't think any psychological issues contributed to my weight gain.

However, having said that, I think that losing a large quantity of weight creates psychological issues that we need to learn to deal with. I've been fat for almost 20 years (since my first pregnancy) and now I have lost over 100 pounds. That is a greater physical change than I went through at adolescence or during either of my pregnancies and it has raised some of the same issues for me that my body changes at adolescence and during pregnancy raised. I need to learn who I am in this new body and I need to learn how people react to me in this body. I think that is something all of us in the TDC need to be aware of -- if we are not comfortable in our new bodies we risk that create psychological issues that lead to us gaining the weight back. Occasionally, recently, I have noticed men watching me or flirting with me. That never happened when I weighed 360 pounds, and doesn't happen all that often at my current weight and age, but it does happen sometimes and it is something I need to learn to get more comfortable with as I continue to get smaller.

The body changes were a bigger issue for me in the beginning when I was losing more rapidly -- changing a size every couple of months. I'd look at a piece of clothing or a restaurant booth and have no idea if I would fit because I didn't have a good conception of how big I was. One advantage I see to my weight gain having slowed to a crawl is that it is allowing me more time to adjust to my current size before it changes again. I seem to be going down a size about every six months now and that gives me a little longer to learn who I physically am before it changes again.

My first attempt at a journal entry started to dig up so much junk that I started over again rather than broadcast my pain. The eating I have done in recent years has much more to do with recent frustrations that I don't need to dig up the past but rather deal with the problems in the here and now. To tell the truth my biggest frustration right now is JUNK! Every time I try to get into an area to clean it out and dejunk it I get frustrated and find myself haunting the kitchen seeking what I may devour! rather than getting through the problem. I guess you could say that most of my overeating, esp between meals has been triggered by frustration and not being able to solve a problem NOW! For now I am leaving the past there. I can't do anything about it and I have long ago forgiven my parents for not being perfect. I probably did that the first day I was home with my first son!!!!

One more thought. The people posting on this board seem to be divided between those for whom discovering low carbing is like a lightbulb going off in their head (they suddenly understand why they got so fat, change their behavior, and start losing weight) and people for whom low carbing is much more difficult (they have tremendous difficulty sticking to low carb eating and post a lot about falling off the wagon). I fall into the first group and I think that most of us in the first group probably gained weight for purely physical reasons -- we were eating incorrectly for our bodies and didn't realize that. Once we realized it, we were able to fairly easily change our eating habits. People in the second group MAY be more likely to have psychological issues related to the weight gain that they need to deal with. I'm not saying they all do, just that if there are people with psychological issues that caused them to gain weight, they probably fall into the group that finds low carbing more difficult.

If you do think you are having psychological issues related to weight gain, I highly recommend Dr. Phil's book. He focuses on how to change your thought patterns now, rather than digging into your past to find the origins of those thought patterns. I like his attitude.

Liz, I think you have a good point about the light bulb. This is exactly the sentiment I have tried to explain to people who seem interested in listening. They don't get it until I relate it to alcoholism.

I don't remember when I didn't have overwhelming cravings and thought for years that if I could just make the cravings stop, I would be fine. Now that I know what makes the cravings happen and I know how to make them stop, it is as though weight is no longer an issue for me.

As for other psychological issues, they may be there, but I believe they can be separated from the weight issue - and I personally can achieve long-term weight-related success without weekly visits to a counsellor.

Liz & Hummelda, I think that both of you have a point about the light bulb but there are those of us who knew about the light bulb but for what ever reason didn't turn the light on! I have known since my teens that sugar was a problem for me but I was too...what? childish? greedy? selfish? to be willing to give it up. Denial would be a good word for it. I finally have gotten to the point that my body yells at me when I treat it poorly. While I have only just started Atkins I have been cutting way back on the sugary carbs over the last couple of years and have otherwise changed my eating habits, ie NO cereal for breakfast only protein and now fat.

Sometimes it takes the physical pain of years of food abuse to finally wake you up to what you have been doing all these years. That's why I almost envy the younger people here realizing early that they need to do something. One thing they don't seem to have is the long range view that we who have a shorter range to look at have finally developed, ie the years are going to pass anyway so we might as well put them to good use and not get upset when the weight doesn't just pour off.

One of my issues with staying true to LC is overcoming the cooking and shopping habits of years. It is still so easy to fix the old dishes!

Connie

In_Control - First let me say, what an excellent post. Too often on this board we focus on the physiological aspects of over eating, and people neglect to pay attention to the (often more important) psychological aspects. For many people it is psychological issues that caused them to abuse food and develop sugar problems in the first place.

That said, for me it is all about recognizing self-destructive coping mechanisms and replacing them with positive ones. When I get the "nervous jitters" that tell me to chew something, I drink water, chew gum, or go for a walk instead. When I am depressed or angry, I have learned to avoid eating when in the throws of these feelings rather than try to comfort myself by over-eating. I have found having control over your emotions and preventing yourself from doing something self-destructive is in of itself a comforting feeling, so the end result is achieved without the self-destructive behavior.
I've also tried to detach food from pleasure itself -- this is impossible to do completely as eating is a pleasurable activity, but I think obese people have a waaaay stronger pleasure connection with food than normal people. Like, whereas before I would be eating while watching a movie, now I try to change to focus to watching a movie while eating. I condition myself to focus on activities and stuff, using food in the background to enhance the pleasure of the activity. Before I was using activities to enhance the pleasure of eating. This is the wrong way to think.

Another psychological trick that I found of extreme importance is to get over the deprivation mindset. I do have a deprivation mindset with food. When I was young, my mother infused us with very very bad eating habits. All throughout most of the year, she wouldn't allow us to eat pleasurable food... at all. She just wouldn't have it in the house. However, on the rare instances when she did buy junk food, she allowed us to binge on it. It was a feeling like "I am never gonna get this again; I better eat it ALL and frequently before someone else does". In many ways my mother and the eating habits she allowed us to develop are why all of her children (me the worst) struggle or have struggled with over eating. I don't blame her, she grew up in a similar household where she went through over eating-encouraging cycles of deprivation and then being allowed to binge. I am just recognizing the fact this psychological issue has been passed down from generation to generation, and it is time to address it and break it.

Even today when I am eating something that I enjoy, I have a subconscious feeling like I better binge on it because I never know when I'm gonna get it again. It is sick to say this, but the taste of pleasurable food for me also triggers this paranoid protective hording urge, too. Thin people don't think like that; they don't feel deprived with food. When they eat good food they just eat what they need and don't feel like they will never eat it again. My neighbors, all thin as children and now adults, they were the exact opposite of the spectrum. Their parents, even though they did teach them to eat healthy, gave them lots of access to potato chips, candies, cookies and cakes. It was because their parents never made a big deal out of food, and never made their kids come to feel like they would ever need to want for it, that they didn't wind up wanting to binge on it when snacking.

So the problem for me is irrationally feeling deprived. Today I overcome this by telling myself I can eat anything I want. I consciously tell myself I can have donuts and chocolate and all that crap if I really want it... but do I really want it? The answer is no. The reason I feel like I want this junk is because I feel I can't have it and might never have it; once I realize I can eat whatever (lc substitute) I want in moderation, should I want to, the desire to over eat goes away.

So, for me it is all about reconditioning myself to think like a non-obese person. The pervasive feeling of being deprived is a big psychological trigger for me, and I need to develop alternate coping strategies and change my thought patterns to overcome feeling deprived.

Liz, I think for all overweight people the reason they got fat is both emotional and physical. You can't get addicted to carbs unless you were abusing them in the first place. For some of us (such as myself), the emotional component is less important than the physical component. These types lose weight easy and rarely if ever cheat. But, just because it is less important for us, doesn't mean it is not there.

People who over eat primarily for emotional reasons, or are on a diet which is incompatable with their body, these types will run into the emotional pitfalls of dieting earlier... usually during weight loss phases. Maintenence is the real test.

When it is time to maintain weight loss, and you are no longer in "dieter mode", behavioral and psychological problems come out to be delt with. Once you aren't enforcing strict control over how and what you eat, you are likely to just fall into "natural" behavior... and if you're "natural behavior" hasn't been checked out and changed you won't maintain.

There is a reason very few people fail to maintain weight loss, and that is because most people don't realize their "natural behavior" and was the principle cause of their gain in the first place.

this is a tough thing to discuss and an important one, I think. Even today, when there is plenty I still go into the kitchen and look in the fridge and pantry and I feel good when it is full.

I was the eldest of seven kids and my family was in the military. My father was enlisted (he later became an officer and money got better but i was older then) and my mother didn't work. We sure didn't have much of anything.

My parents always dished my plate and we had to eat what there was even if we didn't like it. We could have seconds if there were seconds available. I was underweight as a child and I am shocked to see some photos of myself. The kids teased me at school for being skinny. I just didn't get enough to eat. I spent my childhood stealing food and I got very good at it. I stole other kid's lunches, shoplifted food, stole food in other people's houses, and even broke into cars that had visible candy or snacks on the dash. I would eat my lunch on the way to school and then not have anything.

The good news is that as an adult I have always had enough and too much!! Once I got out on my own I discovered the wonderful world of eating everything I ever wanted. I think I ate myself right into insulin resistence and yo-yo dieting added to my problems. I love to eat and I forgive myself for that!

I have to be really careful when on this WOE that I constantly remind myself that I COULD have anything I wanted. No one will stop me and I have my own checkbook now! Right now, I know that I can drive to Albertson's and buy $100 of nothing but sugarey crap and eat it all myself.

So I remind myself of that and I feel fine and stick with my low-carbing pretty easily. This WOL agrees with me because I do not deal with deprivation well. I also remind me that food is fuel not a hobby. I have pretty well addressed my emotional pull to food over my lifetime and when the issues still come up, I understand what it means to me. I say to myself "there is plenty and you can always CHOOSE to eat anything and everything you want". As long as I remember that, I do fine. Orchid

What evidence do you have for this statement? My husband is thin and always has been. He was underweight when I met him and is now a "normal" weight for his height (5'10" and 170 pounds). It's a standing joke in our family that every time we go to a restaurant he treats it as though it is the last meal he will ever eat in his life. He agonizes over what he will order and then is always second guessing himself, thinking that he should have ordered something else. I never do this and I'm the fat one.

Please don't try to second guess my psychological state. When I was your age, I did not have a weight issue. I did not have a weight issue until I was 27 years old and got pregnant with my first child. I did not suddenly develop psychological problems when I got pregnant with my first child -- my metabolism changed and, yes, the way I ate changed because I took the advice of the government and started eating more carbs and less fat (this was back in 1985). Yes, we all have an emotional relationship with food. We are human and this emotional relationship with food starts at birth -- watch a nursing baby with its mother. Food is a way we nurture each other and nurture ourselves. I am making a nice dinner for my family for Valentine's Day -- that doesn't mean that they or I have psychological problems that will lead us to get fat.

Yes, I abused carbs because my body cannot tolerate them and I didn't realize it. Believe it or not, I never read anything serious about low carbing until July 2002 and as soon as I read about it and realized what was going on, I stopped abusing carbs with absolutely no difficulty at all. I thought I was supposed to eat lots of carbs because I (for reasons I can no longer fathom) believed the USDA food pyramid. That is why I am fat. Please don't tell me that you understand me better than I understand myself.

Excellent thread. Like some have said....they don't have psychological issues....but for many of us there are. While the weight sheds....we try to shed some of those issues too. It's hard.....I mean this is baggage that many of us have been carting around our entire lives.....baggage that has been comforted and controlled by food. I would say for me......and I'm not speaking for everyone....just me....addressing the issues, this has been one of the most difficult challenges. As someone who was within 20 pounds of my goal weight two years ago....I can speak first hand and say that if you don't come to terms with these issues.....I don't mean solving them.....just accepting them for what they are worth....they will continue to rule and control your eating habits. Here I sit again trying to lose what I had already lost, because I didn't address what was part of the problem in the first place. Unfortunately there are no easy answers to our problems or questions....just taking it all one day at a time is the best we can do.

Alright, you know yourself better than I do. If you insist you ate normally, have a completely normal relationship with food, but still became almost 400 pounds, who am I to say you are wrong. You don't have to get offended and be rude. I wasn't trying to call you a liar, I was just saying that the number of people who claim they don't have any behavioral problems with food is grossly incongruent with the number of people who actually do. Just because you have a "lightbulb moment" with low carb doesn't mean you don't have issues with food.

All I am saying is that a very, very tiny fraction of atkins dieters keep the weight off... and it is about the same as other diets. The facts are, most people do not succeed at maintenance. This is because for the overwhelming majority of obese people there is a psychological/behavioral component there causing weight gain or impeding successful maintenance, and they fail to address it.

In other words:
MOST obese people think they eat normally and maintaining weight will be easy once they find a plan that works.
MOST obese people do not maintain successfully, even on their "plan that works".
You can't argue with facts, can you? Those are the facts.

The facts may not apply to you personally, you might be a statistical anomaly. I played the odds when I recommended you examine your behavior with food, don't take it as a personal insult. I would say it to anyone who was dieting for the simple reason that it applies to like 90% of people.