How to manage the Xmas Binge

A timely post from Charlotte: Cookie Detox on how to manage the sugar cravings and crashes that come with Christmas treats.

Comfort Food – Doing it Right

Taking time to relax on my approach to food does feel like its working for me. I think my diet is settling into a more natural pattern – being aware of when I’m hungry as opposed to needy. Trying to keep wheat out of my diet as much as possible – my food journalling has made pretty clear that wheat has an unpleasant effect on how I feel physically and has suggested quite strongly a negative effect on how I feel emotionally. It seems there might be something to the intuitive eating theory that becoming aware of how something affects you will change your interest in eating it. I’m not trying to deny myself although I do need to ‘fight’ the urge for some wheat products. And fail at time although I the donut I ate at work was so unsatisfying I don’t think I’ll be tempted again for a while. I’m not trying to ‘diet’ or lose weight, but I am trying to feel good. So that means working towards a healthier diet, one that meets my emotional and physical needs.

A long day at work, and still nursing a badly sprained ankle, I was hungry and in need of something particularly comforting today. Part of me wanted to stop off at the shops and grab something – a big bag of crisps or something else equally snacky, a nice easy fix to the desire. But it wouldn’t really. Somehow, for the first time in a while, I was able to recognise that. Instead, I made myself sweet potato fries. And they were tasty:

Sweet Potato Fries:

• pre-heat oven to 200C
• cut up a large sweet potato into sticks
• melt a tablespoon of coconut oil
  on a tray
• mix a generous amount of paprika, a little sprinkling of cayenne pepper to taste, and a little ground black pepper into the oil
• roll the sweet potato in the oil and bake for approx 20min turning once.
• sit down with a good book and enjoy

Should you listen to your body?

• When listening to your body doesn’t work
• When not to listen to your body (part 2)
• Gluten and mood disorders
• Stress, lack of sleep and weight

Food is so much more than Nutrition

Food is fuel, but food is so much more. Food is pleasure and comfort, punishment, resignation and despair. Food is sensual and a subsitute. Food is a treat, a gift to oneself and one’s loved ones. Food is a symbol of morality, self-control, indulgence and lack of discipline. Food wears the coat of many many colours.

Are women more likely to take refuge in food as both a pleasure and a punishment? It does seem that way. Is that the manifestation of the specific cultural pressures women face, hormones or a combination of both? Does one play off the other – cultural pressures influence towards dietary restrictions and indulgences that have their own effect on the body’s hormones which then have their own effect again on appetite, weight and mood?

Sometimes it seems that there’s truth in the saying: when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Paleo for Women’s Stefani Ruper had a very timely post on binging that really resonated with the place that I’ve been for a couple of months now.

The psychological deprivation may be worse. It puts us in a state of hyper-awareness about food. The decision to restrict induces a constant struggle to eat less and exercise more, and it makes it nearly crucial for a woman to constantly check herself against her desires, lest her stock-piled hunger pick her up and shove her head-first into the overeating rabbit hole. The more a person thinks about food, the more he doesn’t want to think about food, but the more he ends up emphasizing it in his brain and thinking about it anyway. Then the more he messes up, and the more guilt he has, and the more negative he feels, the more strongly he needs to eat. So deprivation is one huge psychological factor. And so is the need to medicate against negative self-talk. Food is a powerful, powerful drug. And this whole process, a vicious, vicious cycle.

I have been very distrustful towards the idea of intuitive eating. Several of the blogs I read encourage it as a healthy (mind and body) approach to diet.

Charlotte (thegreatfitnessexperiment.com) has also recently posted on using a food journal to examine the interaction between food and emotions.

In the past when someone has asked me if I am an “emotional eater” my response has always been “Duh, yes! Isn’t everyone?!” I know there are some people out there who see food purely as fuel and nothing more but for the majority of us, food is intimately connected with our emotions. This isn’t a bad thing (survival 101?) but understanding the interaction would be very helpful. So that’s why I’m doing this. And, one of the great things about keeping a mindful journal is that I still get to write other stuff not just about food.

Is Fitspo just as damaging…

Charlotte recently wrote about a subject that’s been increasingly bothering me since I joined Pinterest and that’s fitspiration (ie fit inspiration). Aside from the fact that I’ve had to unfollow several boards of friends if I wanted to open it up at work (hey some of us eat at our desk half the time!) and a lot of fitspo is a bit over the line nsfw-wise, but also because so much of it seems to be just another unattainable ideal with added shaming messages for not reaching it.

Charlotte writes:

Looking at rock-hard body after rock-hard body it occurred to me that fitspo may be thinspo in a sports bra. After all, the problem with thinspo is that the images represent a mostly unattainable ideal that requires great sacrifices (both physical and mental) to achieve and I daresay that most of those “perfect” female bodies, albeit muscular instead of bony, are equally as problematic. Many people will say that while it’s rare to be born with skinny genes but that muscle can be built with hard work in the gym. And I agree. But in most of these pictures, we’re not looking at your average woman who does Bodypump twice a week and can now lift her children with ease. We’re looking at a very exclusive set of dedicated athletes that train very hard and eat a very particular diet to maintain extremely lean figures. A second argument would be that super skinny is unhealthy while exercise is very healthy. Again I agree. Except that for the majority of women to look like the girls in these fitspo pictures they’d have to be young, probably not have had kids and quite possibly have an unhealthy devotion to exercise and eating. And let’s remember that women need body fat not only for spawning but also for our own health. I’m not saying every fitness model has an eating disorder. I promise! I am saying though that compulsive over exercise can be just as deadly as other eating disorders and yet it so socially sanctioned that it’s often promoted as inspiring.

 

Going through my own pinterest fitspo board, I noticed that the only images I’ve pinned are ones where the woman is doing something not just looking fit.

 

Its not my fault, its my brain chemistry…

As I’ve spent most of the day feeling a little less than vibrant after celebrating a friend’s birthday last night, it seems timely to come across this study – Rose-colored beer goggles. Its not as though I ever actually say ‘never again’, I can’t lie to myself that much. But I certainly do say ‘not for a while’, which is vague enough it might hold true.

But each any time I end the night lying on the cold bathroom floor wanting the world to stop spinning or leaning over the toilet bowl; or waking up feeling like light physically huts, or that headachey, stomach seediness, that doesn’t go away well into the night, I do try and feel like I’ll remember to be better next time. Not drink as much, drink more water, don’t accept a joint when the world is already spinning…

Does it work? Sometimes. I’m usually pretty good at drinking water throughout the night. But after a few drinks you lose track of time, and if its not convenient to get to (some bars and clubs are bad for getting water) you can not get round to it. And as I’m sure most people are aware – once you are aware you really need water, its a bit late…

Is Food Variety Important? | Mark’s Daily Apple

I usually take a salad for lunch at work. Its a decent sized salad generally made up of baby spinach leaves, some lettuce, rocket or watercress, (little) tomatoes, celery, red capsicum and cucumber. Its topped with an assortment of tinned tuna or salmon, avocado, mushrooms and dressed with some kind of oil and vinegar (usually just olive oil and balsamic).

I’ve had several people ask me if it gets boring having the same thing every day. I’ve always wondered how they can think that – to me the bowl is a variety in of itself even when the ingredients are the same for several weeks. Throw in – do I want mushrooms or avocado? Do I want salmon, tuna, boiled egg? Are radishes in season? Which bite-sized tomato does the supermarket stock this week? As far as I can see my boring salad is the epitome of variety. It interesting that the people who suggest my lunch is boring are the ones who seem to get the same thing everyday to me. Its a sandwich and a bag of crisps. Sure the sandwich filling might vary a little, and sometimes its a pannini or a baguette instead of sliced bread. But its essentially the same.

So Mark’s article on food variety – Is Food Variety Important? got me thinking. My satiety from the salad varies, although I always enjoy unless I’m still badly hungover and need still need something greasy (yes yes, but I still manage to do my job). Its physically filling but some days I feel hungry again as soon as I’ve started breaking it down and moving the water content of the salad through my system (at least from what I understand about digestion). I’m trying to pay more attention to it  to try and notice what’s going on: breaking the no refined carbs rule the day before tends to add to it. But so can exercise – both strength training and cardio – depending on how well I manage to refuel afterwards.

But I do find it interesting that while the salad might need tweaking to meet all my nutritional needs, I’m still satisfied with it. I’ve had other meals that I’ve loved that have lost their allure because I ate them constantly until I was sick of them. Mark’s article links to a few studies that suggest that’s a way to wean yourself off the bad stuff, but I don’t think that will work for me . To much variety in the world I could easily just move from one junky thing to the next.