Subtle Food Addiction - Creating Healthy Habits

[cn03]

I recently did a 24-hour water fast and recognized cravings for unhealthy food I wasn't fully aware of before and even caught myself opening the fridge automatically. This journal is about me experimenting with different techniques for cleaning up my diet and killing food addiction. I will write about all my thoughts, feelings and struggles regarding this process.

This journal is not about weight loss, in fact my weight is average. I want to change my diet for the sake of living a healthier life and feeling more comfortable in my body. Also I believe this is a good place to start with Self-Actualization work, especially with mindfulness and discipline.

My current diet consists mainly of: 

• bread, noodles, rice, oats
• sweets, cookies, chocolate etc.
• milk, yoghurt
• greasy / salty food, meat

I also eat quite irregularly, unconsciously and very quickly.

Techniques I want to try:

• water fasting
• intermittent fasting
• cutting out certain foods
• sticking to a fixed diet plan
• mindful eating
• (whatever else I stumble upon)

Let's get started!

I will do a few water fasts in the next weeks, gradually increasing their duration. By that, I want to get a better sight of the addiction's magnitude, see how fasting affects me and evaluate if creating a water fast habit would be helpful. Also I will try to drink at least 2 liters of water throughout the day, regardless of fasting. Maybe I'll already add other techniques on top of it, but I will write about it if I do so.

[cn03]

Sugar and society

I watched a 90 minute documentary yesterday, featuring Dr. Robert H. Lustig, an anti-sugar scientist. The video exposed the sugar industry and their propaganda, showed how integrated sugar is in western society and was also about the various health risks it comes with."Name one holiday in which sugar doesn't play a major role" was a quote from it that really opened my eyes. Pretty much every single holiday we celebrate (Christmas, Easter, New Year's, birthdays, Mother's day, Valentine's day etc.) invovles a whole lot of comsuption, sugar especially. It improves our mood and therefore it is probably the most accepted drug in our culture. We often express love or sympathy by giving sugary foods to others.

The video inspired me, but I decided to take it slow and only cut out sweets, ice cream etc. until the 24th of December. Even from that I expect cravings and I don't think it will be easy to resist the temptations at this time of the year.

Today's Water Fast

After binging and not sleeping enough the last day, the challenge was surprisingly easy. What I noticed again is that I fantasize about greasy / salty food and open the fridge automatically sometimes. Not eating some free sweet stuff at school was easy though. I drank some green tea, mint tea and water with a pinch of salt, way more in total than I usually do. My energy levels were actually above average and I didn't feel as much nausea as last time. Earlier the day I was quite hungry, but since waking up from a 3 hour nap in the evening it's better. Nevertheless I'm looking forward to eating again tomorrow.

I'm planning to do one more 24 hour fast in about a week before increasing the duration.

[cn03]

The Problem of Availability

I could not cut out all sugary food completely, but at least I ate less of it than usual in the first 2 or 3 days. I recognized how much better my body feels when I don't binge any sugar. At the moment there are so many sweets available at home, due to Christmas. I would grab some of them here and then, get some cake without even thinking about it and then get some more sweets.

When I'm about to buy something unhealthy at the supermarket, I can think about my decision twice and eventually decide against buying it. But if there's something available already and I can consume it right away without preparing anything, I don't really think about my decision. Therefore, my aim now is to constantly remind myself and becoming more mindful of my cravings and impulses. Just getting rid of all sweets would only be a superficial solution, because there is always something else available, whether it's sweet cocoa powder, honey or something my parents bought for themselves.

A good point to start is wearing an old watch for some time: Whenever I see it (and I certainly will when I'm about to get some food), I'm reminded not to binge any sugar and not to eat when I'm not hungry at all. If that works, I could imagine using that technique for other commitments too in the future.

24 hour Water Fast

I can honestly not imagine being able to fast for a much longer period of time than a day. Right now I'm about to finally break my current fast after 26 hours and that's all I can really think of, although the experience was similar to my first 2 fasts. I will try 48 hours in 1-2 weeks.

[cn03]

Progress!

I've not been wearing the watch since New Year's Eve, beacause cravings became easy to recognize and resist. Instead of binging on everything sugary there is, I eat a small piece of dark chocolate or some fruit when I feel like it, which is once or twice per day at most. I make sure to have 4-5 regular meals instead of many irregular snacks. Recently I had to fast for 20 hours in order to get my sleep schedule regulated, which was way easier than usual, too. I've even replaced milk with almond milk and I've been eating less wheat by replacing bread with oats.

So things are looking great, I'll keep working on my diet for sure. Although it's going quite smoothly at the moment, I expect an ego backlash to happen anytime soon.

[28 cm unbuffed]

Hey man, just an idea that's on my mind for a while now - what do you think and do you practice cheat days?

I'm going full vegan and I was thinking, if cheat day once a month, when I can eat whatever I want is a good idea. 

It's like treating your ego - dealing with an ego backlash, before it even happens. 

 

[cn03]

On 7.1.2020 at 7:26 AM, 28 cm unbuffed said:

Hey man, just an idea that's on my mind for a while now - what do you think and do you practice cheat days?

I'm going full vegan and I was thinking, if cheat day once a month, when I can eat whatever I want is a good idea. 

It's like treating your ego - dealing with an ego backlash, before it even happens. 

 

If it actually prevents ego backlash for you, do it. For me, trying to observe my cravings mindfully and have a "natural" ego backlash seems better. I don't see the point in eating whatever I'm secretely craving, when I even feel more like eating what is good for my body, you get the deal. I haven't had a "real" ego backlash yet though, so I might change my mind.

[cn03]

Wheat and Fat

On 7.1.2020 at 6:41 AM, cn03 said:

I've been eating less wheat by replacing bread with oats.

Well, that was a lie, I only eat oats after getting up mostly. Recently I ate some bread with cream cheese and after that some greasy fried fish from my school cafeteria. That's the stuff that I'm used to to when it comes to breakfast in school. When I come home, I like to eat some pasta when I don't feel like more oats, because it's cheap, ready in 5 minutes and it's my childhood dinner.

Whenever I eat stuff like that now though, my body feels kind of sick (probably a mix of placebo effect and mindfulness) and I remember some of Leo's words about leaky gut disease. Seems like I'm gonna have to eat significantly less bread, pasta and fried food according to the signs of some bald internet guy and my body. I will take more salad, fruits and oats instead of bread to school and will cut out pasta almost entirely.

Neuroticism about Food

Whenever I guilt myself for eating even a small amount of "bad" sugar, I try to remind myself of how much I have improved already and how little impact that little piece of cake has on my overall health and self-improvement progress. I think that would be easier if I was actually doing meditation practice regularly, so let's see if I can integrate that habit simultaneously.

[cn03]

Ego Backlash (?)

I ate quite some unhealthy stuff on saturday, but on sunday I smoked some weed and it got even worse. There was some cookie dough and chocolate that high me thought was just so good. It made me feel quite sick and showed me how significant a change of one's diet can be for the body. Since the end of that backlash I've been feeling way more stable, at least as far as my nutrition goes. I still find myself running around in my house when I'm bored, but without opening the fridge constantly.

Anyway, here are some tips from Sadhguru and how I've integrated them so far:

• 2-3 meals a day: Usually, I don't have appetite just after getting up, so I eat my breakfast at school and another big meal when arriving home. I don't even think of snacks.
• Fresh, living and natural food: I tend to eat less processed food anyway, because it contains sugar, wheat, low quality products or chemicals I have been concerned about even before starting this journal. Also, I make sure to eat more fruits and vegetables.
• Proper chewing: That one goes with mindful eating, which I am not used to at all. But I'm working on mindfulness in everyday life at the moment, so I hope I will remember this journal entry tomorrow and make some progress here, too.
• A "balanced" diet: Instead of only eating oats, I try to eat other grains and potatoes additionally. I also try to balance out almonds with other nuts.
• Water consumption: Sadhguru recommends to drink body temeprature water, 10% more than your body tells you to drink. Not a small sip every minute, but a glass or two at a time. I leave out hot tea and cold water, which is no problem for me.

[cn03]

2nd sugar binge this week, I feel horrible. It almost feels like there was never any progress. Instead of observing my cravings mindfully and letting them go I just listened to them, which was a mistake of course. Detached Acceptance™ is the key, not just acceptance.

[cn03]

It's a mind game.

And it's crazy. Just a few hours ago, after today's sugar binge, I felt like quitting self-actualization. I started to compare my life with others and thought that as long as I am not living much more unhealthy than the average person, my life is going to be okay. I wanted to go back to my old state because I somehow thought it was a more pleasant way of life than all that hard work of self-improvement. Now I feel like I got the right attitude and I'm done with unhealhty food, which is probably also false. As soon as different factors come together, I will crave all that crap again and maybe also listen to my mind.

I'm (very) slowly starting to become conscious of how sneaky our minds can be and I now know that the root solution is to disidentify with the mind. I hope that next time my mind is telling me bullshit when it comes to food, I will recognize it as such. I'm not sure how many weeks or months of hard work I'll have to do until my diet is fixed and if I will even reach that point, but I just went shopping for some more vegetables and fruits, trying to move forward again. Now that I know how a (mild) ego backlash feels like and that the mind is an asshole, I feel like I know what to do but I also fear I will forget.