Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This commercial from Weight Watchers is SPOT ON about how I feel about food.

Weight Watchers is a great diet, but it never helped me get beyond the bingeing. Even when I got down to 150 pounds on their diet, I was still bingeing and purging with exercise. It’s a great diet, but I just couldn’t follow it.

That’s because, in my experience, the eating problem is not just diet and exercise. That is only the physical aspect of the problem. There is also an emotional and spiritual aspect as well. For me, working the Steps of the Overeater’s Anonymous program helped clear up the emotional side of my problems. Meditating every day helped me with the spiritual side.

It was only when I had ALL THREE working and cleared up did the bingeing go away. Weight Watchers gave me a diet and it’s a pretty good one if you want to follow it. But what I needed was more and I didn’t find it until I lost every bit of pride and walked my butt into the door at Overeater’s Anonymous.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

I LOVE this video showing me how to eat various fruits!

The hardest part of eating some fruits is finding out how to cut them up or get them out of their rind.

After seeing this, my only thought was, “But how do I eat a star fruit?!” Fortunately, I found a video about this as well.

I have seen star fruits and kiwis in the store so many times and wondered how they are eaten and what they taste like. I was scared to buy star fruit, but now that I’ve seen this, I’m stoked to go try it!

This is one of the quotes that convinced me that I had been living my life incorrectly.

It reads:

The secret of all success is to know how to deny yourself. Prove that you can control yourself, and you are an educated man; and without this all other education is good for nothing.

• R. D. Hitchcock

I had known that living a life of hedonism was wrong. I had learned that over the years, but I never knew of the concept of sophrosyne. I had never been taught that self-control and moderation could create a healthy state of being. Sure, I had heard the phrase, “All things in moderation,” but it wasn’t a way of life for me.

In fact, I loved to find objections to that rule. Really? All things in moderation? How much rat poison is moderate?

Despite that, the concept of living a moderate life has brought me FAR more happiness than hedonism ever did. Being able to deny myself has given me more peace of mind, happiness and calm than over-doing it ever did.

And YES, all my other education was good for NOTHING in the face of that hedonism. NOTHING. It didn’t matter that I had a degree. It didn’t matter that I was a writer. NOTHING mattered except more and more eating. There was no way to stop it, no matter how much I learned about the dopamine response, it was useless without the ability to deny myself.

And I haven’t learned how to deny myself, really. I just handed all those decisions about food over to a part of mind that continually makes better decisions than I ever did. Should I eat that? What does my FitBit say? Has my meal alarm went off? What does Lose It say? Do I have any calories left? I don’t make those decisions anymore, because when I did, I chose hedonism. I can’t be trusted to make those decisions, so sophrosyne is in charge, not me.

I am so surprised that this quote means so much to me. It has literally saved my life.

I saw this quote today and it made me think about my eating disorder.

It reads:

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

• Robert Frost

As far as my binge-eating disorder goes, I had A LOT of education about it. I read everything I could about it, but that didn’t stop me from bingeing. No matter how much I learned about it, I couldn’t stop my bingeing. Education helped me realize that it was a disease, but it didn’t help me cure it.

That’s because there is no cure…

They have yet to really find out what causes bingeing and how to cure it, so until then, the only option that I have is Overeater’s Anonymous. I have found some semblance of recovery with them and I cling to them and the precepts for dear life, because my life truly DOES depend on them.

Also, because of all my research I did trying to cure myself, I can hear about the eating plans of others without losing my temper or self-confidence. What works for others may or may not work for me. It doesn’t bother me if someone has a different plan than mine because I realize that this disease attacks our brains differently. Each of us abused different foods, so each of us have to have different food plans to recover.

Robert Frost is RIGHT! Education DOES help me from losing my temper or losing my self-confidence, but it never helped cure my disease.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

This is not an entry filled with low-calorie recipes. This is not an entry about tips and tricks for avoiding unhealthy food.

This is an entry about family.

You see, holiday eating is hard because we have more contact with our family. If you have unacknowledged pain of the past, holiday eating is hard. If you have mistakes that you haven’t apologized for, holiday eating is hard. If you have resentments that you haven’t released, holiday eating is hard.

If you want to make holiday eating healthy, deal with all the debris of your personal and family life. If you want to make holiday eating healthy, apologize for your mistakes. If you want to make holiday eating healthy, forgive your family members and acknowledge your part in the disagreements.

Until you do that, healthy holiday eating will always be a difficult challenge.

Original Image via: Helpful Hints for Healthy Holiday Eating

I saw this poster on Symphony of Awesomeness. It’s from an article on PostiveMed and it reminded me of how it felt to be so desperate.

Here are the 12 Tips:

1. Water: Drink lots of it. Before meals and between meals. Dehydration often masks itself as hunger.

2. Eat Your Calories: Don’t drink them, except for healthy smoothies. No sodas (even diet)or most juices. Eat your fruit when possible, the extra fiber helps you feel full.

3. Use Smaller Plates: And a bigger spoon or fork. Trick your body into thinking you are eating more food. If you see a plate filled with food your brain thinks, “Wow, I just ate a whole plate of food.”

4. Pile Up Your Food: Heap your food into a tall pile, same philosophy as above, a tall pile of veggies looks much bigger.

5. Veggies First: Put your vegetables on your plate first. They should cover about half of it.

6. Make It Look Bigger: If you eat half a chicken breast and save half for another meal, cut it the long way so it looks bigger.

7. Spice It Up! Spicy food fools your taste buds into being more satisfied with smaller amounts. Tip: Sprinkle popcorn with a spicy pepper blend, delicious!

8. No Fad Diets: Starvation mode freaks your body out so that it holds onto every fat cell for dear life. In case you need it later.

9. Love Yourself: If you don’t love yourself heavy, you won’t love yourself skinny either. It’s not a magic fix-all for problems, you did not get heavy overnight, you will not lose it overnight either.

10. Change Your Life: There is no magic cure, the ONLY way to lose weight and keep it off is to consistently burn more calories than you take in. It’s a life change, not a two week change.

11. Make It A Mantra: Today I will eat food that nourishes my body and makes me feel good I will do some gentle exercise to stretch my muscles because I deserve the best I can do for myself.

12. Keep Track of Inches: When you think you have hit a plateau in weight loss its your body exchanging fat for muscle. Muscle tissue is half the size of fat and burned calories more effortlessly.

These are all valid tips, but not ONE of them could help me when I was at my worst. Eating disorders don’t need tips. I could drink water and use small plates, but that didn’t stop me from bingeing. I didn’t need tips. I needed a complete overhaul of my spiritual and emotional life. Going through the steps with my sponsor gave me that and I work on it EVERY day now.

The funny thing is, when I take care of the emotional and spiritual side of my life, I don’t need to worry about the physical aspects. I don’t want to binge. I don’t need tips to shed pounds. They just came off because I didn’t feel the CONSTANT need to eat anymore.

Every time I see tips like this now, it’s just reminds me of how hopeless I felt before I found Overeater’s Anonymous.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

I saw this motivational poster on thefitnesselements and I didn’t know what to think about it.

It reads:

There is no diet that will do what healthy eating does.

This seemed like arguing semantics to me. ANY plan of eating you choose could be considered your diet. Any plan of healthy eating is, in fact, a diet.

Then again, this poster does remind me of a truth that I have found.

Diets just don’t appeal to me anymore.

I used to scour fitness magazines and book stores, looking for “inspiration.” Whenever eating healthy became hard, I would look for a new way of eating that would solve my problems. Until I learned the truth about my eating disorder.

It’s NEVER About The Food

Whenever I am having a hard time eating healthy, I know that something ELSE is wrong in my life. Maybe I was rude to someone and didn’t apologize. Maybe I was hurt by something someone said. Maybe I am holding onto a grudge or resentment that I just need to let go.

Whatever my problem, it is NEVER about the food. If I am tempted to eat poorly, I do NOT need a new diet. I need to apologize to someone, forgive them or accept them as they are. There is something in my life emotionally that I need to deal with, not a diet.

The truth is, it’s also never about the exercise either. Whenever I am tempted to really bump up my exercise program, that is yet ANOTHER indication that something is off in my life. I don’t need to increase my speed or do hill work. I need to apologize to someone, forgive them or accept them as they are.

This motivational poster is RIGHT. There is no diet that can do what healthy eating does. In fact, diets and new exercise regimes can’t do anything for me except give me a clue that something else is amiss in my life.

This video is a profile of Overeater’s Anonymous by American Medical Review in 2010. It is a good introduction into the program. Fast forward to the 1:10 minute mark to skip past the cheesy graphics and announcer.

This video isn’t a replacement for attending meetings. It’s just an introduction. Nothing can replace the fellowship of other people with eating disorders. If this gave you hope, find a meeting here:

• Overeaters Anonymous – Find a Meeting

If the idea that your eating disorder is a spiritual problem (not just a physical and emotional one) bothers you, read this series of entries about how I found recovery without believing in God.

• Starling Fitness – My Higher Power

There is hope for you. You just need to be brave enough to get yourself to a meeting.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

I just saw this little public Service Announcement for Overeater’s Anonymous. It’s a really good depiction of what it felt like to be powerless over food. It wasn’t dramatic, it just was THERE ALL THE TIME. I NEEDED to be eating everywhere: at work, at home, at the park, in the car, EVERYWHERE.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.

I saw this screenshot from the video game, Animal Crossing on redribbonpresents and it made me laugh out loud.

It reads:

I think I’ll just sit down and hope that a taco truck drives up and serves me delicious tacos.

That’s not a really good food plan, Ankha.

Then again, how many times have I done the EXACT same thing. I refuse to plan my meals because I want the “freedom” to eat what I feel like. That’s EXACTLY like sitting down and hoping for a taco truck to come along. If I want to eat what I feel like eating, I have to PLAN it! Why did it take a screenshot from a child’s video game to remind me of that?!