Gosh, sounds like me! I am trying to have a somewhat peaceful state of mind, considering it's Christmas, but the turmoil inside is obsessed with food.
Some wonderful person on this forum recommended 2 amazing books - I got the first one from the library, then ended up buying it, it's that good. The authors are NOT related.
The Four-Day Win by Martha Beck
The Beck Diet Solution by Judith Beck
The Beck Diet consists of very short chapters, and you do a task each day or so. One day you would chose a diet plan. Another day you would do your shopping and clean the junk out of the pantry. Another day you would only eat sitting down. It keeps building on what you've learned.
The Four-Day Win is about changing the way you THINK. It's not really a diet. The author is a riot and has been in our shoes. The changes are baby steps, done in 4-day increments, which most of us can handle. Here is an excerpt from a chapter, just to show you her style:
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Every now and again, I'm invited to participate in organized attempts to help people lose weight - a TV show about dropping those last 15 pounds, a magazine article about keeping New Year's resolutions, that kind of thing. I'm always brought in to deal with the touchy-feely aspects of weight loss, while exercise specialists and dietitians handle the hard-core behaviors. These specialists outline their approaches (eat less, move more) and the dieters listen attentively, as though they've never in all their lives heard any such thing, though in fact they've been inwardly shrieking these two thoughts to themselves since the beginning of the Pleistocene Era. Sometimes, I raise my hand and ask the questions I know the dieters never will.
"I know I SHOULD eat celery instead of fudge," I'll say, "but what if I really, really want fudge?"
"Well," say the dietitians and trainers, "you can have a small square of dark chocolate!"
"But what if want real fudge? With marshmallows?"
"Oh, you don't keep that kind of thing in the house."
"But what if I sneak out of my house at 3 in the morning and drive to the Piggly Wiggle and buy a pound of fudge and eat it right at the cash register?" I say. Sadly, this is not a rhetorical question.
At this point, the experts' nostrils begin to flare a little. "Well, you just don't DO that!" they tell me.
The dieters and I (we will talk about it later) are ashamed. We look at our shoes. We promise ourselves we'll do better. We crave fudge.
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Hang in there until your thinking comes around. My body (okay, my mouth) hasn't quite caught up to the fact that my mind would REALLY like me to weigh less. But I know it'll get there. And yours will, too.
When I'm in a bad cycle - to the point that the food is affecting my energy and physical health - I give myself three days to eat whatever I want, as long as it's clean and healthy. This could be a 500-calorie smoothie twice a day, avocados, raw pecans, whole wheat pasta ... the foods I might avoid or eat in smaller amounts, even though they are good for me, in return for less fat or calories. If you can do this for three days, it will usually break that cycle of sluggishness from the sugar and fat, and you will be ready to keep eating those foods, just more balanced and in regular quantities.
I hope this helps and you're not alone in your rut!
