Becoming Superhuman

[Not me]

I have really learned to appreciate the process and just the thought of mastering my emotions and my eating habits gets me very motivated and excited. I truly feel like I'm getting better and better every single day. Today I wasn't that strict probably because no one was home watching me when I ate. I ate some bread and ice cream and really had urges to eat more and more. I just walked around the house looking for something good to eat but really couldn't find anything so I just had to stop. The urges are still there but I'm better able to handle them  and stop the train of binge eating much earlier than before. I'll be leaving to Italy for the rest of the week and I'm looking forward to the challenge of eating moderately among all that delicious food .

Once again I meditated only for 30 minutes before bed.

[Not me]

Kicking ass! Yesterday I stopped eating much earlier than I had before. At first it felt a little weird cause I thought I was still hungry but then I just drank some water and the hunger quickly subsided. I felt much lighter the whole evening and I didn't have to eat for six hours after that . I meditated for something like 40 minutes on the plane and was quite distracted because of the movies that were playing from the screens everywhere on the plane. I have taken lots of notes from self-help books and programs but haven't really reread them. Yesterday when I was rereading my notes from change anything I realized there's so much I forget from the books and it would be really helpful to reread those notes more often and make sure I actually implement the ideas in my life. Anyways feeling really good and looking forward to smash some obstacles tomorrow!

[Not me]

Destroyed some pizza and nutella croissants yesterday . I ate a big breakfast and a big dinner about twelve hours apart and only one sandwich in between. I'm getting better and better at dealing with hunger every day. Tomorrow I will try to eat all my meals so that I stop eating before I'm full and wait for the fullness to come (I think I have read somewhere that it takes 15 minutes for the fullness signal to reach the brain). If I keep doing small improvements like this every day, I think I will soon have this area of my life fixed and I can move on to the next one.

Meditated for 20 minutes right before bed.

[Not me]

I ate my lunch so that I stopped eating before I was full, but I didn't do the same with dinner. I think some belief change would be helpful because I'm used to always finishing my plate and eating until I'm absolutely sure I'm full. Tomorrow I will make sure I stop eating earlier on dinner. I won't think I need to eat a certain amount or get a certain amount of protein but instead I will just focus on satisfying my hunger. This way I will consume much less calories but won't be starving. I have also been doing self-hypnosis for a week now and it feels really good.

I meditated 20 minutes before bed. I was super confused about who I am. Immediately when I start to meditate I feel like I'm entering this weird state where my sense of self starts to shake and change place and I have no idea what's going on let alone who is meditating.

[Not me]

Just started listening to The willpower instinct. I listen to audiobooks couple hours each day while I do chores around the house. I have been doing visualizations every morning visualizing myself fully in control of my mind and feeling amazing because I'm in control of my life. I always feel very motivated after it. 

Previously I have been focusing much more on the end goal and not so much the process. I have obviously heard advice like "it's the journey not the destination" but it has never clicked for me. It really clicked for me a week ago when I realized I have been focusing on the present moment but I haven't really taken the joy of enjoying the process of getting better and better each day and focusing on small improvements. But I'm glad at least now I'm aware of that.

It has soon been two weeks since I last binged and I believe this is the longest time without bingeing since last summer. Obviously I still need to be very aware in critical moments but I'm much more in control of my eating than I used to be. One thing I did was give 50 euros for both my little sister and little brother and told them that if you see me eating any grains (this means mainly bread dor me) you get to keep the money and if I don't eat any grains I will get it back. This was super powerful because no matter how big urges I had, I just couldn't eat grains. The pain of losing money was so great. 

Yesterday I ate quite moderately: a moderate lunch, a small snack and a big dinner. I will focus on eating till satisfaction but no more for at least a week now. One thing I'm interested in is finding a weight loss buddy to hold each other accountable for staying in a caloric deficit every day. So in case someone is interest, you can message me . 

I have been in Italy for theee days now and haven't really had much time to meditate. I have been asking who am I always when there's been free time and meditating for 10 to 20 minutes in the evenings.

Some things I have been doing in my life recently: waking up earlier, finding ways to overwrite old behavioral patterns, going into a dark room or wearing sunglasses one hour prior to bed. And finally stydying portuguese for my exchange year in Brazil. I'm really excited to live in a country so far from my home for so long. I still have four months in Finland so I think now it's really a good time to go all out on personal development.

 

 

Here's a cool picture I took of Rome

 

 

 

[Kaarina]

Hey! I read all the things you written here, it really motivated me, to see how much change you're able to do with yourself, especially that I deal with the same problem with food. I was surprised to see that you're Finnish hahah, I'm half Finnish but I live in France.  Umm...So yup  reading your daily journaling just a moment ago motivated me to really take self-actualization more seriously and I kinda got able to visualize the journey I should be undertaking. I'm in highschool too, knowing that someone whose the same age (or eventually one or two years older/younger) is doing these things while I procrastinate, encourage myself I think to get my own life handled. Thank you!

(probably made some grammar mistakes, my English is not perfect yet...)

[Not me]

@Kaarina Haha I'm glad to hear that! I actually live close to a place called Kaarina . I think if we get our life handled and develop ourselves now when we are in high school, we will be so much better off later in life and life will actually be amazing instead of just constant struggle.

[Not me]

Yesterday I had to wake up at 3.30 am to catch a flight so I only got like four hours of sleep. That really messed up with my hunger and I was constantly hungry and craving junk food in the evening. I ate a healthy and moderate-sized lunch but in the evening when I came home I ate tons of unhealthy food. That was a kind of a semi binge. It didn't go as far as before because I was just eating for hunger but the hunger didn't seem to go away so I just kept eating and eating. Then eventually I forced myself to go to bed hungry. I knew I ate too much but I still felt good about myself since that was the best I could do at that moment. I will try to eliminate mistakes by always developing some kind of a plan so that if the same problem comes up again I will be much stronger in that situation. So in this case I decided that if I am not able to get sufficient sleep, I will take a nap, drink lots of water, eat very slowly, assume full control over my actions and drink lots of bcaas (branched chain amino acids) to shut the hunger down.

Yesterday I discovered that by slowing your breathing down to 4-6 times per minute you will increase your heart rate variability and willpower.

I meditated for 20 minutes.

[Not me]

The hunger was still there yesterday and I was like "try me b*tch!" and just stayed hungry like a boss. I ate a healthy lunch, a big, not so healthy snack and a small dinner. Today I will really make sure that I only eat until my hunger is satisfied. I'm now doing self-hypnosis, visualizations and affirmations every day. I thought I knew everything about willpower but turns out there were a lot of things I didn't know or fully understand. I will have an exam week soon and I will really do school work hard for a week now. School is pretty easy for me so I never do homework just to save time for more important things. But if want very good grades I will still have to study hard during the exam week so I guess all my free time will just go to studying for a while.

Yesterday I meditated for 20 minutes. After exam week I will definitely get back to meditating at least an hour every day.

[Not me]

Really killing this! Hunger had no absolutely no power over me yesterday. Now I feel I'm ready to start my journey to 7% body fat. My goal is to lose about pound of fat per week. This means I will eat about 500 calories under my maintenance every day. This means I will eat about 2000 calories daily. I will eat 30% protein, 35% fat and 35% carbohydrates. I will count my calories in myfitnesspal and report them here as well to make sure I don't cheat. I'm currently doing four morning training workouts in my school and three gym sessions per week. My sleep is quite good now and I'm now waking up very refreshed. I have been doing self-hypnosis for a while now and for the first time in my life I can feel real change and optimism from a subconscious programming method. I do self-hypnosis 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening and every time it gets better and better. The method I'm doing is The power of self-hypnosis by Igor Ledechowski.

I meditated for 25 minutes in the evening. 

[Not me]

Yesterday I went swimming in the morning and then just studied for the rest of the day. I ate a huge lunch, a small snack and a small dinner. My total calories were 2500. Seems like I need to eat a little less food to get to that 2000 calories. Today I will have my first exam and the rest of the day will be just studying. It's funny because I thought studying was gonna be super draining and boring but I actually enjoyed it a lot once I got to that flow feeling. I studied for about 7 hours yesterday which is probably the longest I have ever studied in one day.

One problem with listening to audiobooks while I do other stuff is that I can't take notes and in the past that's why I haven't taken much notes. But now that I've realized how helpful rereading the most important ideas in a book are, I have started to schedule separate time to take notes from books.

 

Once again 25 minutes of meditation right before bed. Feeling like I should meditate much more but still thinking getting good grades from exams is more important at the moment.

[Not me]

Okay 2400 calories yesterday. I was at 2000 but I still felt quite hungry and decided to eat some more. I won't try to be perfect with this but just get most days right. Also really feeling like I should be outside more. I always feel much much better and happier when I leave the house and go for a walk. But in Finland it's so cold outside that you can't really do everything outside.

I have come up with a list of most important things to do to make fat loss successful:

-Changing self-image

-Tracking calories, bodyweight and taking waist measurements

-An eating plan you can do consistently

-Eating mindfully

-Getting social pressure to do it, putting money on the line and other ways to make sure you follow through

-Weightlifting

-Acceptance of who you are and acceptance of mistakes

-Focusing on the process not the end goal

-Eating lots of vegetables

-Eating until hunger has subsided but no more

-Intermittent fasting

-Eating less than you burn but not starving yourself

-Sleeping enough

-Noticing where and when you fail and developing a plan to overcome that

 

I meditated for 30 minutes before bed.

 

 

[Not me]

Despite studying only for a couple of hours before the test and not doing any homework during my entire chemistry class I killed it in the exam. Feeling good about it because I though I was gonna totally fail . When I came home from the exam my body was still in a super energized state, kinda stress-like and after eating my normal meal I felt those old binge urges coming hard. I realized I hadn't really enjoyed my meal and that was why I still felt hungry and not satisfied at all. And I realized the urges I feel are a feeling of lack and being stressed out at the same time. I didn't need to act on the urges and at first I didn't but then an hour or so later I felt real hunger and I just ate food so damn fast with zero enjoyment. I didn't eat any unhealthy foods but just too much regular food. My calories were 2900. Sometimes in the past I have eaten something like 6000 calories in one night so this wasn't like any real binge. But I won't let real binges happen ever again and I will cut out this kind of overeating as well.

Next time I feel stressed I will first do slow deep breathing for two minutes and really relax myself, then drink 10 grams of bcaas and see if I still want to eat something.

10 minutes of meditation and 10 minutes of self-inquiry. Really feeling like meditating more.

[Not me]

My morning ritual at the moment is waking up, doing self-hypnosis for 5 minutes, doing exercises from the six pillars of self-esteem for 15 minutes and writing this journal for 15 minutes. Then I usually go to my morning training which I have four times a week in my school. Yesterday I took a cold shower and after that did a 90 minute walk which felt just amazing. I felt totally fulfilled and whole, like there was nothing I needed. I finished The willpower instinct yesterday and started listening to Transformation mastery be Julien Blanc. I will still have to take notes from The willpower instinct but right now I have to focus on my exams and don't have time for that. I often get temptations during the exam week to just go and spend all my time doing personal  development and reading books. There are thoughts in my head which say something like "School doesn't even matter. After all it it is just a system designed to make you conform to societal norms and get you to go to work as soon as possible so it's useless and you should just focus on what matters." I'm not quite sure if I should believe these thoughts or not. Most times apart from exam week I listen to them and don't give a damn about school but when it's exam week I'm not quite sure if I should believe them or not. Overall I really don't know how big of an importance school plays in my life. But I think I will at least spend some time studying and not totally neglect school just to be safe.

I meditated for one hour and ate 2200 calories.

[Not me]

I read that if you are trying to change but keep using familiar feelings as feedback for your efforts to change you will always back. This has helped me a lot because now that I'm eating much less in the evenings I'm feeling uncomfortable new feelings that I'm not used to having. I think they are just my subconscious trying to pull me back or something but if I keep going they will probably change with time. 

Yesterday I ate 2000 calories. I had some hunger basically the whole day but it didn't bother me that much and it didn't affect my performance in the gym or doing my studies either. I have been lowering my protein intake too. Before I always wanted to make sure I get at least 150 grams of protein per day but now I just try to hit 100. I've read that high protein diets lower testosterone and that's not what I want especially because testosterone is one of the main hormones for muscle growth and fat loss in males.

 

I meditated for 20 minutes before bed.

[Not me]

Felt really happy the whole day and just smiled all the time! I ate 1800 calories. I am really getting better and better at dealing with hunger and I don't see it anymore as some kind of sign that I must eat now. I still have two exams left and most of my time will be going to studying. I actually have my English exam today so we'll see if this journaling has made my writing any better .

I have known everything I have to do to get fit for a long time but never have I been able to do it. I think the missing piece has been social influence. Now that I have this social pressure on me I find I have much less cravings and almost no desire to eat junk food. Previously I have always told myself that I will eat just a little bread and then it has become an all out food orgy. Anyways now I'm really grateful that I have found the thing that was missing  in my plan and can finally be free from binge eating. It just feels so good to not be stuffed all the time and I feel so much lighter. 

My sleep is still suboptimal on some days and I will start working on it after my exam week is over.

I meditated for 10 minutes in the evening.

[Not me]

Poor sleep is probably the biggest thing sabotaging my process. Yesterday I was just craving food all the time and hunger didn't seem to go away. I was also having much harder time not listening to my urges and I just ate every two hours . Next time the urges are this strong I will remember how amazing I will feel when I know I'm in control of my mind and body and just let my body send as much hunger signals as it wants. Then I will remember to take my bcaas and just go outside the house so I can't eat. My calories yesterday were about 3300.

I discover that body awareness is key when you want to lose weight. This way you will stay in touch with your hunger signals and know when to stop instead of just eating for pleasure.

I will have my physics exam today. I didn't really want to study for it so I didn't. Physics is the hardest subject in my school so I will probably just barely pass the test. Or maybe I'm on fire and just get the best grade. Who knows. It often happens to me.

I meditated for 30 minutes.

[Guest username]

Keep going!

 

What are you study methods? You should have no problem crushing your test with adequate prep (in most cases).

[Not me]

Had no cravings whatsoever and and hunger din't bother me at all. I ate 1900 calories and felt totally satisfied. The more I observe my bodily feelings the more I realize how out of touch have I been with my signals of satiety. I have often kept eating despite being already full and thinking I still need more food. I also feel my self-acceptance has improved. I have practiced doing it any time I have felt like binge eating and it has helped.

My exam week is now over and today starts the last period of school in Finland for a while. I will have lots of psychology and I'm really excited about that. It is my favorite subject but I rarely have it .

Meditated for 20 minutes before bed. Now it's time to get back to doing meditation seriously again! I also realized I need to just be more. I feel like for the last year I have been constantly trying to get somewhere and neurotically improve myself all the time.

[Not me]

@username Thanks man! I usually try to learn as much as I can in class but when preparing for an exam I usually reread my notes and focus on recalling them successfully. Then I usually study proper answers for possible essay questions and if the subject is mathematical, I do lots of calculation exercises. My gpa is indeed quite high but I just don't really care to study for physics. So it's probably all about the lack of preparation.