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Natural Diet Phenomena |
| Gratefulness Exercise. This will be most effective if read aloud. I am grateful for the food I eat, its taste, its texture, its variety and its temperature. I appreciate that I have food. I particularly appreciate the existence of the following foods:________(Fill your own blanks). A reminder- people who often feel appreciative or grateful are happier than most. |
Gorging on the latest seasonal fruit is not likely to cause much weight gain if other foods are minimized. But that may not be true for ice-cream or other high-calorie binges. There are ways, however, of minimizing problems caused by binging on ice cream, cake, chocolates, etc. Planning and limits are the keys.
I plan a particular binge every year. I happen to be someone who likes fruitcake, and I won't stop eating it while it is in the house. Therefore, I plan that my next few meals after its arrival will be nothing but fruitcake. My weight gain is about half a pound. It is the planning ahead to eliminate all other foods that makes the difference. If for several days I snacked on the fruitcake besides regular meals, the calorie overload could well add 2-3 pounds to my weight. Not surprising to most of you fruitcake haters, I suppose, is the fact that I don't seem to want fruitcake for another year.
You probably noted that I didn't set any limits on how fast the fruitcake could be consumed. Of course not! It is a food binge, not a test of willpower. The limit I set was to eliminate other foods. If chocolate sauce is your thing, eliminate the ice cream and eat the sauce by itself; or if frosting is the piece de resistance, then eliminate the cake part from your frosting binge. If cake plus frosting is it for you, then a food binge that eliminates one or the other will not be satisfying and will probably not work for you. Make your food binge cake plus frosting. Be alive to lower-calorie diet foods in your supermarket. Downing a whole chocolate cake or a dozen custard eclairs of the Weight Watchers' variety may be just as satisfying as consumption of the higher-calorie alternatives.
Psychological food binges (i.e., triggered by stress in your life) will stop when your reactions to life events are that of calmness instead of stress. However, this could require a long process of growth and therapy. Meanwhile, if you cannot seem to avoid weight-gaining food binges, I suggest that you try for yourself a binge with two limits: (1)eliminating non-binge foods and/or (2)adding "rabbit food" at or near the beginning of each binge session. (The last sentence may seem like a laughable fantasy. But it is your idea about your helplessness facing a food binge that causes it to seem laughable. You are not that helpless unless you believe you are.) These possibilities may not work for your binges. You will not know unless you try. (If you try unsuccessfully, criticizing yourself is not helpful, but making a new choice is helpful.) If you cannot seem to eliminate food binges, the above methods are worth trying.
