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ms spock
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That is a really clever way to manage it @NinjaWolf!
I have to really be aware of this, because if that part takes over the binging begins. Or I eat four or five bowls as "meal" and then continue grazing for the rest of the day.
It is really hellishly difficult at times.
I feel guilt and corrosive self doubt for breathing and being alive, so it permeates my whole life.
I am really new at this. It is the first time in my life not living in a food coma. It is a totally new world that I have walked in.
Absolutely! There are many people discussing on Connect (the Weight Watchers type of forum like this one) discussing their depression, anxiety and emotional eating, the challenges that we have with food are widespread in our communities, we are certainly not alone in struggling with food!
That is a learning process that requires being present in real time which is a struggle for me.
No it is not that they are really small portions, no foods are off limits, and if you eat too much you just track then get back on track the next day. I will comment on this again after the next couple of paragraphs.
One thing that fuels the obesity crisis, opioid crisis and so forth in my opinion is the lack of emotional connnectedness, lack of solid attachment as a child, the inability to emotionally regulate, the living in constant fear of being shamed, humiliated, physically abused in a multitude of ways, castigated, and bashed, kicked hit, smacked in the face, and all the forms of sexual abuse from the feeling up to the invasive touching through to anal rape - this meant I couldn't emotionally regulate as a child and a teenager. So obesity and drug addiction (see Portugal on drug addiction they are treating as an attachment disorder) have to do with not feeling social connectedness, attachment and having some meaning and purpose in your life.
I think that this is a time of immense fear politically, and globally, and I feel devastated that a generation of Australians ability to understand evidence based science in order to understand that climate change is a fact, and not a theory. Our politicians, despite having the literacy skills to understand the scientific research, have preyed on people's fears and ignorance. This is not ethical or appropriate in my mind.
It is interesting in America young Republicans who are educated recently understand that climate change is a serious concern. The only people who don't 'believe" or who aren't science literate enough to understand the research are the older Republicans who were educated 30, 40, 50 years ago. So even in the Republican party in America there are very different understandings of what science is and how it works.
So all this fear politically, socially and globally and those who have massive stress (like PTSD or Complex Trauma, or economic insecurity) in their own lives means they look for some way to manage feeling hopeless and scared. So people overeat to soothe their fear, so the politics of division, attack and trashing - well we all pay a high price for politician's self indulgence, and not being leaders of dignity and respect of others, no matter what persuasion they are - we have to learn to work together. They are not behaving, across the board, Turnbull and Shorten are just pits of negativity paying out on each other like students in a High School Playground. Our leaders are not an inspiration for us to be better than we are, to encourage us to fearlessly and courageously step forward, to embrace the uncertain, and to question our own inherent biases and prejudices, we all have them in one way or another. This means uncertainly for our young people who don't feel confident of their futures, and the future of the planet.
So these are ways of looking at disordered eating, overeating, the obesity crisis, and other addictions like drugs, shopping, alcohol, Internet etc, but food can also be an addiction as well, a way to ward off big feelings, and to manage living in deep deprivation and in ongoing entrenched day by day abuses. Disordered eating kept me alive living in hell for 15 years, and then being stalked by my Father, and manipulated and trashed by my Mother. I had black periods where it all doesn't feel worth it - that it would have been better to stay home and let my Father kill us all, so the pain ended.
I didn't really believe it but my psychiatrist said to me along time ago that
obesity was habituated overeating. But I am seeing recently that this is true. I have emotional eating issues, of that there is no doubt. But I also have a skewed understanding of what a reasonable portion size is. So one of the things Weight Watchers gets you to do is to look at portion sizes, and it does help a lot.
So no Weight Watchers is about eating a reasonable amount, and you have to have all the food groups each day to the best of your ability. People have lost 60, 40, 25, 20 kilos, some people come to lose 10 kilos, once you have made your weight goal, which is not based on disordered eating or eating disorders skewed visions of your body, then you become a life member, and the goal then is maintenance, and managing those weeks where you want to splurge a bit, by eating a little less on another couple of days. For me I was at the 20-25 kilos above a reasonable and sensible weight for my height and gender, but that is not the main focus of me as if I get locked up in weight loss I will crash and burn. I have tried to have a different focus - that is of awareness.
So no it is not that Weight Watchers are into really small portions, just for weight loss, well that is not the way that I am choosing to see it. There are no foods are off limits, and if you eat too much you just track then get back on track the next day. There is an emphasis on not feeling deprived or that you are going without. My psychiatrist said to me once that one of her clients got Jenny Craig meals, and the biggest thing for him about that was the shock at seeing what a reasonable, nutritionally balanced serving size is, he was eating a lot more at one meal for more than several days of more mindful and appropriate sized portions.
So for instance, instead of eating a sandwich, I would eat a whole loaf of sandwiches and so on and so forth. Even two sandwiches would be okay, but I was eating a lot more than that. Weight Watchers is just helping me to become a lot more aware of meal sizes, and really given how much I have eaten I have done well not to be a lot more obese than I am, and that would be down to all the exercise that I do each week.
I don't have the two or three squares of chocolate per day or whatever the reasonable amount is, I would eat a block or blocks of chocolate.
How lucky is that? How fortunate is that? I am so grateful. When my sister undermined me by bringing chocolate into the house it was so painful for me.
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