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.
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