No More Munching

back on track 3rd time lucky

2009-03-23T18:59:00.002Z

Since I havent posted since january it might not suprise anyone that we haven't been following cambridge! Its been unbelievably hard to get back on track. We've been starting fine on a Monday, all raring to go and then failing miserably and not even managing 3 days. To begin with we were doing well managing our food, not overeating making sensible choices, but the last few weeks the old behaviour crept in. Its so hard when we are both addicts. If one of us wants to overeat its just too easy to get the other to join in. Anyway tale of woe over, we finally tried to start again last monday and i can happily say we now have a whole successful week done. Once you've got a week under your belt its so much easier to carry on - its just getting through that first week is so tough. Good news is I've lost 17bs and kel 12lbs according to our home scales. but not sure how much we had put on - somewhere between a stone and a stone and a half. We've just had an official weigh in so we can get an official weigh loss next week. According to the cdc
i'm now 270.5lbs and the lowest i got to was 258 - a difference of 12.5 lbs
kel is now 233.5 and her lowest was 217.5 - a difference of 16 lbs

we're both fired up and ready to get that excess of and get back to losing more - wish us luck!

round 2 day 6

2009-01-17T15:59:00.002Z

Bloody nora weighed myself this morning and i'm back to where i was when we stopped cd for xmas. Its only taken a week to lose 14lbs. (yes i put on a stone in a month!). to lose so much so quick surely means its all water and glycogen stores which in effect means that when i do get to goal thats about how much i'll put back on naturally not overeating. I think it might be a good idea to get a bit lower than goal - especially since i've put my goal weight as the first weight that will get my bmi to 25! Mind you its not really an issue at the moment since i still have another 6 stone + to lose. I feel really positive about it - having already lost 7 stone I just need to carry on the same way.

Round 2 day 4

2009-01-15T13:43:00.003Z

Well by the taste in my mouth and the increase in energy i'd say i was defo in ketosis! Feel great and i've lost 8lbs already! i'm meant to be working but keep doing wedding stuff instead - naughty munch. check out the wedding blog here

Round 2 day 2

2009-01-13T16:30:00.003Z

were back on 100% cambridge sole source as of yesterday. We tried and failed last week but i'm sure we will be fine this time. It was kels birthday at the weekend and i think we both knew we would eat so the motivation was completely lacking last week. I'm not in ketosis yet -i'm feeling starving but enjoying it in a wierd way but i'm also kind of grumpy - either from carb or nicotine withdrawal not sure which. I feel ok about everything though - even the few pounds that i've put on - i know if i can make it to day 4 it'll get easy again and once youve done a week of sole source you feel great and the weeks fly by. I'm thinking this time of sole sourcing for 12 weeks rather than the 4 weeks then an add a meal week but i havent discussed it with kel yet. I think the faster i can get to goal the better. At the beginning of last year i was a size 30 - 32 and i've begun this year a size 20 - 22 which is a fantastic achievement. when we started to come off cambridge in december i felt amazing about how i looked. I felt gorgeous! and that didnt really help to keep up with the diet. But i'm used to being this size now, its time to get to goal. We went to Cheshire Oaks yesterday and i bought a skirt from the Next Clearance shop - it was only £4 and a size 12!!! Optimism rules! God I cant wait to be a skinny munch x

Ups and Downs

2008-12-18T15:02:00.003Z

we've been struggling to stay on track the last couple of weeks. The pattern seems to be get weighed on a Sunday and eat Sunday and Monday night. Not good. And even worse eating hasn't just been limited to chicken salad this time. We've been visited by our good old friends chocolate and chinese. A bit of a disaster as far as ketosis is concerned. Wierdly the chinese wasn't anything like i remembered/ imagined, my palate must have changed. I cant say that i particularly enjoyed it for its taste - just the naughtiness of it. The chocolate on the other hand was DIVINE!
Looking at the positive side both weeks we have managed to get control and get back into the Cambridge diet relatively quickly. Our total weight loss to date is
munch 6stone 10lbs
kel 5stone 3lbs
probably best to focus on that positive news rather than the food!

At the beginning of this diet we were adamant that we wouldn't eat any other time except our eating weeks and even though Xmas fell on our eating week we would stick to Cambridge rules and not have carbs. Oh how we've changed! Its kels work do tomorrow so we are going and we are going to eat, there's a Xmas dinner party at friends on Sunday and we are going to eat there too, then we'll do ss until Xmas eve and then have a carby meal with mum, Xmas day we'll be as good as possible and just eat meals - no snacking on chocs or nuts - but there is no way i'm not eating my mums incredible Xmas cake and i'm not resisting the baileys either! Then we might eat on boxing day then ss until new years day wen we are having friends round. A bit different from our initial intentions! I'm not worried though which i was at the beginning. Before my mind was very black and white. either i sole soured or i overate. there was no middle ground of eating normally. And even though we have broken the diet and eaten, which i would class as addictive behaviour, i don't feel like I'm going to eat addictively through Xmas. I might be in complete denial but i feel as if we have eaten addictively in the last few weeks simply because we have been without food for so long and that if we did the version of Cambridge where you can have an evening meal we wouldn't have behaved the same. Not that i think I'm able to do that version long term and still lose weight - i know damn well I'm not capable of that yet without overeating eventually , but i think I'm now in control enough to be able to cope with carbs a few days over Xmas and still get back on cd ss for the rest of the weight loss. I hope i can anyway - there is a little monster in my right now saying 'but if you are eating on Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday why bother doing ss on Monday and Tuesday'. I'm not listening - he only knows how to behave addictively - i can chose to ss Monday and Tuesday so shut up! Does this diet shrink your brain? i sound like a right nutter!

oh and that terrible rumour has come true for me - my hair is dropping out at an alarming rate! its fine for me because I've got far too much anyway and its really thick hair but its very messy - it gets everywhere! kel is distinctly unimpressed with it 'dirtying' the house lol!

interesting article from the times online

2008-12-18T14:42:00.001Z

From The Times
December 18, 2008

Tackle child obesity: teach mums to eat
A leading campaigner on food and fat has a simple solution for the Chief Medical Officer
Susie Orbach
Dear Sir Liam Donaldson,
You've been alerting us to the obesity time-bomb for nearly a decade.
And quite rightly. Obesity is the manifestation of a food- and size-obsessed society that most shows us we are in trouble where eating is concerned. The latest information from the EarlyBird Diabetes study of 233 children from birth to puberty, published in the journal Paediatrics, shows that one in four children aged 4 to 5 in England is overweight despite normal birth weights. But, says Terry Wilkin, the study's lead researcher, it is difficult to know what is causing the upsurge.
Difficult? Well perhaps. But not that difficult. You don't have to be a psychoanalyst to know that childhood is formative and that one's earliest eating experiences - entwined as they are with our fundamental feelings of security, love, attachment and caring - form the basis of how we approach food and succour throughout our lives.

Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Mothers strive to and want to give their children all that is best and most reassuring. But in many cases, this doesn't happen because mothers themselves are troubled by erratic eating, fear of food, preoccupation with body size, frequent dieting, and its sister - bingeing.
Babies and children mimic. That is a crucial part of how they learn. So it is surely no wonder that if babies or toddlers pick up on a fraught atmosphere around feeding and eating, they will take that as the norm. And it shouldn't surprise us that when the children become more independent eaters they will reflect what they have learnt not only in their eating choices, but in the emotional feelings of safety, anxiety, fear, pleasure or satisfaction that go with food.
People don't eat compulsively because they are hungry. People don't eat excessively because they forgot to exercise or balance their calorie output against their calorie input. People don't eat more than they need because they are just plain ignorant or bolshie.
People eat when they aren't hungry because they are bored, anxious, angry, conflicted, nervous, sad or overexcited. They reach out for something cheap and tasty that feels momentarily like a treat; something that takes their mind off what hurts. The upset feelings don't get dealt with; they sit there and the next time they emerge, the person will again turn to food for soothing.
This behaviour is learnt when we are little - whether it is by being rewarded with food, by being given food to cheer us up after falling down or by observing a mother who is constantly dieting but then eats off a child's own plate. Food becomes not food but something imbued with magically comforting properties.
Sir Liam, you are calling for early interventions. Thank goodness. But is anyone in the Department of Health listening? Will they now? For at least ten years, I have been pestering the department (as, I imagine, have others) with economical, nay cheap, plans to provide support to help new mothers not pass their eating problems on to their babies. Helping mothers to come to grips with their own eating difficulties is surely the sanest and most effective way to help two generations in one go.
It's not difficult to see how to train midwives and health visitors to take a more nuanced and psychobiological approach to expectant and new mothers so that their eating attitudes, habits and psychological issues are addressed rather than their being told to feed on the right breast for ten minutes and then the left.
No disrespect to health visitors; I know that they want to help new mothers and their babies but at present they are undertrained and too rushed to take the time really to address what mothers and babies need.
But it needn't be so. Compared with the cost of treatments for obesity-related diseases later in life and what will inevitably become, in time, a lucrative pill for the pharmaceutical companies, it makes sense to spend some money now by employing more health visitors and extending their training so that they can underpin the crucial parenting job of introducing a child to food and eating in a relaxed manner.
Sir Liam, these are messages that the Government must take on board and work with alongside the often (but not always) sound nutritional policies that it disseminates. New mothers are keen to get it right for their babies. Let's help them to get it right for themselves and reverse their own, often unseen, eating difficulties.
And Sir Liam, about that taboo word obesity. I'm not so sure that you're right on why it rubs people up the wrong way. It could just be that calling obesity a disease rather than a description of size, castigating rather than understanding people's complex relationship to food and patronising them with oversimplified slogans about “energy in, energy out”, makes the kind of changes that you would like to see in our attitude towards weight seem unappetising.
So please, Sir Liam, can I talk to you about implementing some programmes that stand a good chance of addressing the eating problems that beset so many - and that are contributing to the epidemic in the next generation.
As Erasmus told us nearly 500 years ago “young bodies are like tender plants, which grow and become hardened into whatever shape you've trained them”. He wasn't wrong where it comes to food. So let's train people to relish it rather than fear or laud it.
Yours in frustration and hope, Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach is author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies, to be published by Profile in January

good news - hurrah

2008-12-01T13:32:00.003Z

at last! i'm now 18st 13. I am under 19 stone which i havent been for 12 years, basically since mini munch was born! I am so chuffed. last week was really difficult but i did what i said i would and had chicken salad for a few nights until by friday i felt ok to sole source. In total i have lost 6 stone 3lbs. definitely a huge achievement! yea me! A neighbour that we rarely see much of came over to talk to me this morning to tell me how different i look and to say how happy he was for me lol! loving it today!

control

2008-11-27T14:43:00.002Z

so monday and tuesday were awful after the ikea debacle on sunday. the addictive behaviour kicked in big time. I've talked about it (as all good self therapists should lol) and i think the fact that i ate in front of mum, she didnt really understand that eating week doesnt involve chips, made me feel all powerful and like i was 'getting away with it'. it gave me that buzz that secret eating used to. ON sunday night i had no idea that what i was saying about there being another 4 week stint till xmas and how motivated i felt about ss was just complete piffle. Monday night i binged. proper addictive behaviour. Tuesday i had all the good intentions in the world and was fine all day and yet the minute kel left for work that night i binged. again.
So my decision has been to follow the advice i'd read numerous times. if you are struggling to get back to ss then work down the plans. That doesnt mean i'm going to go up the plans tho first lol. the highest plan for me (other than at ikea) is add a meal so thats what i did last night. a very strict chicken, lettuce and cucumber. it worked. during the day if i had the addictive food thoughts they were easily banished with thoughts of the chicken to come. and after the salad i was fine too. a bit hungry but no binge. mind you kel was home so its much easier to stay on the str8 and narrow! Tonight is going to be the same and then i'm not sure about friday - we'll see how strong i feel. kel will be at on the late shift again. if on friday daytime i start having naughty thoughts about kel being out and nobody knowing what i eat then i will plan to have a salad. the thing about planing to eat as opposed to binging is a self esteem issue. if i plan to eat and plan a strict cambridge meal then when i eat it and nothing else with it the effect is positive. i feel good about myself. i took control and put a plan in motion so that i didnt binge. the effect of binging on your self esteem is the complete opposite and when you feel so low and have 'failed' its far to easy to do it again.

Slippery slope

2008-11-25T16:29:00.002Z

well whoever thought it would be fine to go to ikea and have meatballs and chips was very wrong. very wrong indeed. its so hard to get back to ss. i really want food. not just because i'm proper hungry (thats what coming out of ketosis does to you) but just because food is out there - it should be eaten. by me. now. ARGH. its just so hard.

The Beach Hut in November

2008-11-20T23:43:00.003Z

we're staying the night in a B&B in Holyhead so that we are already in anglesey ready for our big day touring round tomorrow looking for a reception venue. The best bit is that its add a meal week so we have been able to go out for a meal - hurrah! we had a gorge chicken and brie salad yum! tomorrow we are having a cooked breakfast - well its a B&B - we can't just do the 1 B! this is where we are staying.

Week 13 Wi

2008-11-08T11:01:00.003Z

Hurrah I've lost 9lbs this week. I've really tried hard to get enough fluid because last week i really struggled. Its just to cold to be drinking loads of water - it made me feel all freezing inside. So i got us both a smallish thermos flask and we are having brews or warm weak juice instead. It seems to have worked anyway. I'm now 4 lbs off a total of 6 stone! My Bmi is 41 and I'm in another stone marker, god 19 something sounds good to me, well much better than 25 something! we've been doing lots of wedding planning and haven't spent anytime this week thinking about the diet at all. That's feels really good because it means that food or lack of isnt my main focus and that's how i want it to be when i stop this crazy diet. I want to just think about food when its the time to like making shopping lists and making tea - not all day every day like i had been. Unfortunately it means i have stayed away from minimins and that's probably not a great thing to do to my team - think I'll head over there now and explain.

week 12 wi

2008-11-05T10:06:00.004Z

Hurrah - I've officially lost 5 stone! I started at 25st 2 and my bmi was 53 and 3 months later i am now 20st and my bmi is 42! Obviously there is still a way to go - i'm still obese but i feel fantastic, and i know i can and will get to goal. Been having a much better time this week already. I have not been going on the minimins forum for the last couple of days and i have stopped thinking about this diet so much. All i could think about was the Cambridge Diet - i felt suffocated by it. So I'm having a break from thinking about it and I'm just doing it!
I have set up a wedding blog because Kel was filling the pc with pictures and ideas i thought it would be nice for her to have one place to keep it all and be able to find it again. In doing it I've found some fantastic wedding sites out there really inspirational. Check out our blog at http://munchieswedding.blogspot.com/

oh and i finally stopped smoking on Saturday so that makes a grand total of 4 days so far. The Champix have really helped and they don't make me feel sick anymore. bonus!

No More Munching

2008-11-03T09:06:00.000Z

Ok well time to be honest, I’ve had a really bad week work has been a complete nightmare so stressful and my hormones are all over the place. I’ve got my period something I never used to have and it is making me deal with new issues. You may be thinking hang on this is a classic over eater here, finding any kind of reason to excuse her stuffing her face. I hear you and reply...yes you’re probably half right. For the most part though I felt like my body was begging me to eat something and it wasn’t like I thought oh I’ll have a planned day off like the women do on the forum which you know infuriates me. I just wanted to eat and I made my peace with that and just did it. So what did I eat? It was mainly bread but I didn’t eat in an addictive way I just had a sandwich for lunch or a pasty then I joined in the tea and biscuits with the girls at work a couple of days. I just wanted to take some time out and I don’t feel too bad. I made it to week 12 for heavens sake. The worst thing was keeping it from munch, it wasn’t just because I thought she would be royally peed off but more that she might give up too, anyway in the end of course I had to tell her keeping secrets is something we find impossible to do good or bad. Anyway she was just really worried I might give up, but I explained I feel ready to get back to it now. It really was just like I needed to be normal for a while and as you know I’d been obsessively thinking about food for ages and I feel like I’m over it now and can continue on excited to lose again.

Ps. Much to Munch’s annoyance I actually lost 5lb

day 80! by munch

2008-10-30T11:50:00.003Z

Well i cant say that I've enjoyed this last couple of days! working on yourself 'therapy' style is bloody emotional and draining. I've felt withdrawn and miserable and not really a useful member of society. Kel hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs either as you can see from her post lol! I have been functioning on autopilot almost - like I'm present but not really with it lol. Anyway today is another day and i feel a damn site more 'normal'. Kel and I have been doing lots of talking about our issues with the world and food. we are so different, even though we both deal with problems and bad feelings by stuffing them down with food, our issues are completely different and so we need to talk to understand each other.

This week i went to aerobics, we both went for the 1st time last week but Kel couldn't come coz of work so i went on my own! yea me! I really enjoyed it, the only thing that bothers me is leaving mini munch home alone. Anyway there was a young girl there doing the class with her mum so i asked the instructor and Lew can come and do it next week! when i got home i was still really energised so i taught him the routine. - to be told it was 'well easy' and i should try doing p.e at school as that's much harder lol

On Sunday just gone we went to a gay wedding fayre! Despite the trauma of navigating the stupid one way and pedestrian only streets of Manchester city centre and the 'too close for comfort tram incident' - a lovely time was had by all 3 of us! Kel enjoyed it because, well it was a gay wedding fayre and that's like her all consuming passion at the mo. Lew enjoyed all the free nibbles - (we didn't enjoy the sugar induced annoyance on the way home). I enjoyed meeting an amazing photographer Damian Hall and whilst we were telling him our basic wedding plan i realised 2 things:
1. OMG we are getting married.
2. Our wedding sounds brilliant - i really want to go lol

The other great find for me was a woman called Sue who lives nearby and runs a Reiki circle in our village - small world eh! Anyway it seemed like too much of a coincidence and a bit 'guided' so i went to the 'circle' last night. I had no idea what to expect having only had Reiki on a 1 to 1 basis before. I was really nervous - mostly about finding the right place lol so i made kel take me!! Anyway it was lovely and i'll definitely go every week. We started with the healing circle which is distant healing to yourself and anyone else you place in the circle. Kel had no idea what i would do there and yet she said while i was there (and placing her in the circle lol) she went for a lie down and felt a great sense of calmness weird huh? After that we had some dowsing - never done it before, really enjoyed it! We did a great colour meditation that works on your aura and then the session was finished by giving and receiving healing. I just received - no where near ready to give yet - lol total performance anxiety!

Discombobulated

2008-10-28T11:56:00.000Z

I don’t know what is going on lately I feel really stressed and horrible I don’t know whether it is work, money, home life or all of the above. I kind of feel like I’m trying to be normal but then munch points out that I’m not being so I get all confused I know that I’m irrational and perhaps needy I cant explain it! I just keep thinking I was so much happier when I was eating food I’m sure that’s not true and its just the demons inside telling me that to make me eat but I do feel like if me and munch sat down to a big plate of Chinese tonight it would make us happy again even for 5 mins. Munch is really miserable too I think she is going through the same thing, she is getting annoyed at the slightest thing I feel like I cant say anything right and she has said that to me too so I know its the same. The trouble is we have an amazing relationship as I’m sure close followers will know and so rarely argue that I think it’s throwing us all off. Munch is amazing with advice and much better than me but she says I never talk to her but I feel like all I ever do is talk about myself and never listen to her.

You may be wandering why I’m airing our personal issues on this blog. Well it’s because of this diet and the fact we are having to face our overeating demons (even if we can’t pinpoint what they are) that I believe this is happening. I know that I’m still an overeater I prove this to myself by eating too much on aam week and also thinking constantly about food so I guess this is why I’m behaving like this. I’m so proud of munch she looks incredible and has lost so much I’m proud of myself too and would never have thought either of us could do this so why is everyday not a party...I don’t know but I know that I love my gorgeous girlfriend more than ever and I’m sure we will work it out.

AAAAHHHHHHHH

2008-10-25T10:29:00.001+01:00

I can’t stop being a food addict I think about food and how much I want it all the time. I want chips from the chippy with mushy peas and fish finger butties I want a pizza and garlic bread I want a lamb tikka balti with mushroom rice and garlic naan, and of course all these are accompanied by a bottle of merlot. I even want simple things like a tuna mayo baguette or a sausage roll. I think about eating so much I feel like my heads going to explode. Munch says to listen to these cravings acknowledge that they are there but tell them I’m ignoring them. Okay well I’ll give it a try but its getting louder and louder. You would think by now it would be getting easier but its just sooo hard...Why! I’m doing so well I haven’t given in to these cravings so why haven’t I conquered them by now. I’m now reading Eating Less by Gillian Riley so I will let you know if it helps.

Shrink Yourself

2008-10-22T14:48:00.005+01:00

My new book has arrived 'Shrink Yourself' - Break Free From Emotional Eating by Roger Gould, M.D the guy who wrote the previous articles.

From what I've read so far, which isn't much coz I'm at work, it looks like its going to be really helpful. I've just read a bit that discusses one of the main reasons i have never stuck to any other diet plan like WW or SW.
He points out that as an EE (emotional eater) I am used to the immediate payoff that food gives. Whatever the problem or feeling the second i eat i will feel immediately better than i did. But, he explains, the reward you get from dieting - losing weight, happens slowly over time. So no matter how motivated you were at the beginning of the diet, after a while in your head you start to evaluate the future benefits of being slim versus the immediate payoff of overeating.
For me that has generally happened about 2 months in to whatever plan i was on. I would have big enough losses for the first 2 months (usually about 2 stone) to be enough of a reward to keep motivated and not need to overeat to feel better but there would always be that one week where you get weighed and you have only lost a pound or 1/2 pound and i would think that at that rate it would take me years to lose all of the weight. That would be it for me - straight to the take-away for the immediate relief that food brings. Then I would fall into the shame spiral and not go back to the plan/class. And the next thing i know i have gained that 2 stone i lost and another 2 as well.
Well on Cambridge i have got past that 2 month mark and by doing this work on emotional eating i have had a small loss week and i haven't relapsed back to the food to make me feel better. Yea me!

Its not till writing this post that I've understood the book title - SHRINK yourself - not just because you'll lose weight but because you will be your own therapist i.e shrink!!!

Little Monster

2008-10-21T16:09:00.000+01:00

Today I have felt weird really wanted to eat didn’t feel like I had anything wrong on an emotional level felt fine new haircut and I love it and feel great, but just want to eat really badly like I would go the shop and buy something but why... I haven’t in the last ten weeks

Munch made me talk things through and gave me reasons as to why I feel like this she talked about the little food addict monster that’s inside me that has always been there and over the years he has built up an army of reasons to throw at me as to why I should eat for example I said to munch cos I hadn’t lost anything on aam week and sort of hit a plateau lately I felt like I could just eat cos I’d stopped losing anyway she made me see that the nasty little monster was telling me that and that had I have lost 5lb it would have still said hurray you have lost weight that means you can still eat. Munch discussed a lot of things with me but the main point I remember was she said that he has been there most of my life and I’ve only spent ten weeks trying to get rid of him so far, so I should give myself a break (don’t know why the nasty little monster is a man lol)

I’m still getting to grips with the fact that I have an addiction so a lot of the time I need munch to point out that I’m not a bad person and I’m not crazy I’ve just got a high mountain to climb I know she will hate me for saying this but she is amazing and so inspiring and always knows the right things to say she will make an incredible CDC, I’m so lucky to have her as a partner for Cambridge as well as for life.

AAMW

2008-10-20T12:30:00.000+01:00

For me add a meal week is an opportunity to control food. After 4 weeks 'in rehab' with no temptation and lots of self-analysis its the week to put myself to the test. Its not about the nitty gritty of the food items i eat. I don't see a problem with having salmon instead of white fish. I'm not going to obsess about food - that's what my pre-cd head does. Its not a week where weight loss is the goal.
the week before aam, kel and i sit down with our notebook and make a plan of 7 meals that are exciting, nutritious, , very low (or no) carb, and low fat. But we don't adhere strictly to the cd manual. We plan as much detail as possible. we plan the portion size to be the size that a regular healthy person would have - not a dieter. We are very strict with ourselves on this point though and i visualise every meal as we plan it. We are very aware of our lack of portion control and that's why its vital for us to plan the week before. I couldn't decide the portion at the time of plating up -= that would be a recipe for overeating! We even plan when we will eat each meal and if it will be together. Kel decided that if she is on late shifts she has the evening meal for lunch and takes a cd pack for tea.

All of this planning is vital for us. AAMW is our 1 opportunity every 5th week to exercise some control over food. That isn't something that comes naturally to us so it requires work. Knowing what, how much and when we will be eating is the key to a successfull AAMW for us.

Munch and Kel's rules for AAMW

Follow the plan that was made the previous week.
Its ok to be excited about that days food but do not think about it constantly
Prepare and cook the meal without eating whilst doing it. Tasting what you are cooking is fine but not eating ingredients before they get to the table.
Eat the meal attentively - don't just wolf it down! Enjoy it. Recognise its healthiness. Finish the meal and be ok with that being the end of food for that day. Don't feel guilty about eating, just because you enjoyed it doesn't make it a sin.
do not eat anything that wasn't planned - just because you have food in the house this week doesn't mean you can eat it. Food isn't really calling you to be eaten as soon as possible - its for a planned meal.
At the end of the weeks weigh in try not to be concerned with the result. (practically impossible if you have gained though). If you sts or lose see it as a bonus. The real cause for celebration comes from achieving your aims of a week of being in control of food.

At this point we have had 2 lots of AAMW but we haven't yet succeeded 100%. My main problem is eating a few little bits while I'm cooking. Kel's problem is having food in the fridge that she is 'allowed' but eating it before the planned meal. This time round was much better that last time but we both obviously still have work to do. Even though i only ate some cucumber and lettuce whilst i was preparing the salad, which most normal people wouldn't see as a problem, for me that was overeating. It makes no difference what the food was. I ate compulsively. I was in a bad mood, i wanted food to anaesthetise me and even though i was aware of what i was doing, for that moment i lost control of food. I'm not going to let it get me down - I'm only 10 weeks into making radical changes to the last 17 years! Its going to take more time and by really evaluating and seeing my mistakes clearly it gives me stuff to work on so that eventually I'll be in control of food the majority, if not all of the time.

btw I lost 1lb!

68 days done and 68 days to xmas

2008-10-18T14:08:00.002+01:00

its true folks! that means there is every chance we could loose tons more weight lol

the benefits of blog addiction

2008-10-18T13:06:00.004+01:00

I love reading blogs especially from people who are in a similar situation.

2 posts in particular have really helped me today.

Firstly reading lose to gain's post really pleased me that someone else is working as hard as we are to understand our food issues. this week the forum has been getting to both me and kel - people posting 'oh no i accidently ate a big mac i hope i still lose this week, i'll restart tomorrow'. i might come across as being callous but these posts annoy me - i'm trying so hard and its not like i dont slip up but these posts give me the impression that people think this is just another diet. Its not! well it isnt for me. like i've said before for me this is rehab - thats a seriously big deal lol Its like someone in the Priory and working really hard all day to understand their coke addiction and prepare for the outside and someone else saying 'oops i just popped out and had a line - hope it doesnt send me back out of control' - you could surely understand why that would upset a few people! I might sound completely over dramatic but I dont really care! My food problem is life and death there's no under dramatising it anymore.

rant over! the other blog thats really helped me to day was the Lard Arms' post about how powerful feelings are when you dont have the anaesthetic of food. this is the comment i wrote (wow copy and paste is really lazing blogging lol)
Its so hard learning to deal with 'stuff' when you are so used to numbing pain with the soothing effect of food. All week i've been searching for a technique to you use to deal with my problems rather than using food like i did before. And you have said 'And since I am not eating the feelings away, I am really feeling the feelings!' and maybe thats the answer i need - that there is no technique - you have to just 'feel the feelings'. Maybe acknowledging them and really feeling them will help them to quieten down? Sorry for the waffle but i think you might have really helped me lol if i can just sort out the jumble in my head!

Lesson 3 answers from kel x

2008-10-18T12:03:00.006+01:00

Here Goes

1. Can you identify a time when you began to seek food for comfort? What was happening in your life at the time? If you can't remember when you started using food for comfort, try to describe time when this habit intensified or became more severe.

I’ve never really understood this as crappy as it sounds I had a really happy childhood with no issues to speak of so I don’t know what the big trigger was or why I overate. I lived in a house with lots of people and little money so it was every man for himself. I guess we ate cheap food, chips with everything so that’s how I got chubby but I was never really fat.

Okay ignore all that cos I think I’ve just realised.

It started when I was a 13 I had shall we say an unwanted sexual experience and because of that I became promiscuous which I thought was the only side effect but actually this is when the weight crept on I think maybe I was trying to make myself unattractive to avoid further sexual advances but then if this the case why was I promiscuous it doesn’t really make sense I don’t get it. So at 13 I kind of went up stone by stone from what I can remember so like at 13 I was 13 stone and so on. The weight just crept up and up and I don’t know why. At 16 I got in a serious relationship with someone who worshipped me and did not care about my size and then in my 1^st year at Uni I was so lonely and so far away from home I think it probably got worse.

Its funny because I thought that none of these things affected me and I still don’t feel like I had a specific reason to comfort eat as emotionally I felt fine and have always though I got fat because no-one told me not to.

2. How would you feel if you had to give up the habit of eating when upset emotionally? Describe what your life might feel like. Part of you probably says that you'll be fine, but what does the other part say? What does the part of you that's scared of giving up emotional eating say?

I do have to give up emotional overeating there is no doubt about, its incredibly scary like giving up any crutch or habit such as smoking (which as you know I’ve managed to do) so you would think it would be easy. Its very daunting especially when even though I’m exploring the reasons I cant see them as being why I overeat now my life has never been more on track but I still cant stop. I cant wait for the day I can fancy a bar of chocolate and have one guilt free because I’ve not had one all week instead of not being able at all to have one like now or having 3 a day like before.

3. What part of your relationship with food are you in denial about? Which part would you rather not know about? How might you get this out in the open to yourself? What would happen if you did this?

For years I was in complete denial I even had a problem and I’ve only just come round to the idea very recently.

4. Which of the 12 types of emotional hunger do you suffer from most? What are some ways you could begin to change your habit of eating when faced with emotional hunger like this? I’m sure I’ve probably suffered from most of these types of emotional hunger at one time or another but right now I think it’s Type 1 which is learned behaviour, Type 7 and maybe 2 but embarrassingly the main one I suffer from is type 11. Will have to get back to you about why and its probably to long a story.

q's to lesson 3 - munches answers

2008-10-15T15:11:00.003+01:00

1. Can you identify a time when you began to seek food for comfort? Yes I was 17. What was happening in your life at the time? I found out a family secret that was quite earth shattering at the time. I started using recreational drugs briefly and became a bit promiscuous. When I realised that it was making everything worse I discovers that secretly eating chocolate helped loads! If you can't remember when you started using food for comfort, try to describe time when this habit intensified or became more severe.

2. How would you feel if you had to give up the habit of eating when upset emotionally? – well there is no ‘if’ for me – I’ve already realised it’s a necessity. Describe what your life might feel like. Its as scary as can be – yesterday I had a bad day. I was low and knew that food would change my mood round but didn’t want to do it. The problem is I have no other coping mechanism yet so inevitably my mood got even worse. Part of you probably says that you'll be fine, but what does the other part say? What does the part of you that's scared of giving up emotional eating say? I would love to be like someone with no food issues - be able to eat because i'm hungry and eat anything because there is no guilt attatched and to be able to stop eating when i'm full (to even know what it felt like to be full would be a start!) I imagine having control over food to be very liberating but at the moment the thought of a future without my comfort blanket of chinese and chocolate cookies can be terrifying some days to be totally honest

3. What part of your relationship with food are you in denial about? Which part would you rather not know about? How might you get this out in the open to yourself? What would happen if you did this? Erm.. don’t know

4. Which of the 12 types of emotional hunger do you suffer from most? To begin with just 1 and 9. Some 17 years since I discovered the soothing effect of overeating I no longer have 9. Nowadays I would say 1 is the biggie but also sometimes 2, 3, 7 & 10. 10 is a weird one! I can distinctly remember a few years ago my mum saying I needed a gastric bypass and the minute she’d left I had an almighty bingefest all the while thinking ‘this’ll show you’ as if I was punishing her?! And only a couple of weeks ago when kel had quit smoking she called me from her night out and confessed having just had a cig – my first reaction was to eat to pay her back!! Ridiculous! What are some ways you could begin to change your habit of eating when faced with emotional hunger like this? Don’t know but I wish I did – on to lesson 4!

USA A OK!

2008-10-15T09:53:00.002+01:00

First of all let me just say i complained to munch that she doesnt write on the blog enough like she used to and would be dissapointing her fans lol x So she has gone into overdrive which is cool but you will need to set aside your whole lunch break to read it!!! which is fine cos most of you wont be eating anyway. Speaking of which i'm blooming starving this morning!
For those of you who dont know i'm pretty obsessed with all things american i'm not as bad as i used to be but i still love it and would move there in a heartbeat regardless of George Bush and proposition 8 (what the F**K) I think ellen degenerous does what she can for us but she could use some help from time to time.
Anyhoo as obsessed as i am with USA i am equally obsessed with us getting married as im sure you know. So I'm watching the wedding channel and have to say americans can be extremely annoying i dont even think its cos they are on tv i think this is what they are actually like...scared and now slightly put off.
I'm off again today its a regular day off not cos i have lesbian flu which i still have btw and its quite annoying cos my daddy has cancer so cant be around sick people so ive not seen him for 5 days and i normally see him every day its so weird.
Munch finally has the smoking tablets im sooo happy there are so many reasons for her or anyones for that matter to give up smoking dont worry im not gonna preach but bein a non smoker does make me feel all holier than thou which i find quiet amusing as having been a smoker for 17 years i never saw myself without a cancer stick...who hoo
Well havent i chatted about a lot of crap that means nothing...arent you glad your not sat having a coffee with me you would'nt get a word in. Well have to go got to watch scott and terenas 40s style ceremony tissues at the ready xxxx

Emotional Eating 101 pt 4 of 4

2008-10-14T23:24:00.000+01:00

Emotional Eating 101 (Part 4 of 4)
by Roger Gould, M.D.

In Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series, we discussed emotional eating and food addiction—how it develops and the hope for recovery. The next logical step is to discuss what you can really do about this addiction.

Attacking The Addiction

Let me start by saying that attacking the emotional eating addiction directly is the only way that works. Trying to hold onto the emotional eating addiction and work around it never works for long.

With that said, let me briefly tell you about six different ways that people try to work around, or hold onto, their emotional eating addiction. So many of my patients follow a weight loss regimen that looks good, sounds good, and seems to work for a while, but ultimately fails. We'll take a look and see why.

You certainly know people following such regimens. Neighbor John runs five miles a day and still has a potbelly. Sister Lara goes to Weight Watchers, drops twenty pounds, and then gains it all back when her boyfriend jilts her. Uncle Ron follows the Zone Diet, although recently you noticed candy bar wrappers in his briefcase.

All these people follow weight loss methods that rely on deprivation and discipline and nicely avoid dealing with the issues that drive overeating, emotional eating and food addiction. I call such methods "the failure strategies," and if you want to avoid wasting any more of your time and energy on strategies bound to backfire, then you have to give up relying on methods like these.

Of course, everything you know about weight loss to this point in your life endorses these approaches, so it might seem odd to you to disparage them now, to reject them as doomed methods. Please notice that I'm not telling you to eat with abandon or to give up exercise—not at all! I'm simply letting you know that these approaches won't work on their own. Just remember that 99% of all diets ultimately fail.

Failure Strategies

Failure Strategy #1: Deprive and Binge
Almost every single diet book and diet plan leads to the deprive-and-binge approach, and so this is the most common strategy. It begins with deprivation. As you know, when you diet, you deprive yourself of what you really want, applying willpower and discipline to keep yourself away from the fridge. It's a painful and difficult thing to do, and unfortunately, the method doesn't work for long because you really don't want to deprive yourself. Eventually, your emotional eating patterns kick in, and then the diet ends. Willpower can only work for so long. Unless you are really addressing your emotional hunger and food addiction, this approach can never work.

Failure Strategy #2: Binge and Run
This is the approach where you allow yourself to overeat, or try to exist side by side with your addiction, but try to compensate for it with exercise. Compensating your diet with exercise is essential, but it only works if you also limit your diet and try to break your food addiction. This strategy doesn't work primarily because in order to compensate for eating excess, you have to exercise so much that you increase the risk of injury, which poses special problems if exercise is your chief weight loss method. Any time you need to stop exercising in order to heal, your weight balloons up quickly. I've seen patients in my practice who put on substantial weight after injuries and then couldn't lose it, though they had been trim athletes at one time-albeit athletes with food addiction. Also, if you continue to eat unhealthy foods in excess, you weaken your immune system no matter how much you exercise, and so the risk of illness increases, illness makes exercise difficult, and anytime the routine slackens, the weight returns.

Failure Strategy #3: Binge and Purge
The binge and purge cycle of bulimia is a very dangerous strategy, and luckily it is normally viewed as an unhealthy approach to weight management. People can die from the electrolyte imbalance that happens with chronic purging, or they can end up with chronic esophagitis and gastritis, various forms of malnutrition and vitamin deficiency, and a secret life of agonizing shame. They appear to be thin, "together" people on the outside, but they feel like frauds on the inside. Bulimia is a very "expensive way" to control weight, and it must be given up before too much damage is done. There is no possibility for success with this strategy, but people try to hang onto their food addiction by compensating for it through purging.

Failure Strategy #4: Going Public
I call the fourth failure strategy "Going Public." I've seen many variations of this strategy, including losing weight for a specific event such as an upcoming wedding or family reunion, or making a public declaration that you've started a diet, or buying clothes that fit only if you lose weight, or paying to join a support group that encourages success but rejects you if you fail. There are many other ways to set yourself up to "have to" succeed, all of which lead to failure because the basic emotional eating problem is not addressed. Try as you may, you can't fool your own emotions.

Failure Strategy #5: The Blame Game
Do you curse parental genes for giving you a slow metabolism? If so, you've fallen prey to the fifth failure method-blaming the extra pounds on your metabolism. You might say that the blame game is more of a "failure attitude" than a failure strategy, but here the watchword is "failure." As long as you believe that genetics predispose you to being fat, you can tell yourself that your hunger is written "in the stars" and indulge your emotional eating habit whenever life gets difficult, doing nothing to change the underlying pattern.

I have seen so many patients who have made this claim, supporting it by telling me how diligent they have been about exercising and how careful they have been about their intake. When I do a detailed inquiry about their exercise and eating habits, it turns out that they have simply been fooling themselves. One patient, Joe, was a real classic. He didn't bother to count the three beers at night or the daily trip to the ice cream store. Somehow those calories didn't count. Most of the others failed to count little things that added up, and almost all didn't exercise nearly enough to compensate for what they ate.

As long as you blame the extra pounds on a slow metabolism, you've fallen prey to another ruse-unless, of course, you've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism or take certain prescribed medications. Some medications do cause weight gain, either by changing your metabolic rate, making you retain fluids, or by affecting how your body converts calories to energy versus storing calories as fat. That's a different story. But if you don't have hypothyroidism or prescription drugs to blame, then your metabolic rate is in the normal range and you need to gain control over your eating habits in order to lose weight.

It might be true that you have a metabolism that's a little faster or a bit slower than your neighbor's, and beginning at age 25 it does become slightly slower over time. It is indeed more difficult to stay thin if you have the slowest metabolism on the block or if you're well into middle age. You do need to eat less and exercise more than your neighbors do in order to stay in balance, but balancing calories in and calories burned is still the only answer.

If you can't quite accept the idea that you can't blame metabolism, look at the latest research showing that high-strung people stay thin not because of metabolism, but simply because they fidget more and move around more than you do and therefore, they burn more calories. The study showed that sedentary people sat 163 more minutes a day than fidgety people, who took 7000 more steps and expended 350 more calories per day-a non-rigorous form of exercise, perhaps, but one that does, nevertheless, contribute to weight loss. And so, again, metabolism alone can't be blamed.

The limiting reality is that nature has built into us an extremely sensitive weight balancing system. If we stay almost perfectly attuned and responsive to our built-in biological hunger signals, we just barely maintain a healthy weight. If we override that attunement or misalign it because we eat to satisfy emotional hunger instead of biological hunger, the whole system goes out of whack.

The average person consumes 60 million calories during his or her lifetime. In order to stay at a steady weight you have to expend 60 million calories. That's the basic balance. If you make the slightest mistake in this balancing act, you immediately become overweight. For example, if you're an average man who needs 2700 calories to remain at a steady weight but you take in 2800 and only expend 2700, you will gain twelve pounds every year.

That's just an apple a day difference. If you make an even smaller error each day during your adult lifetime, you'll be 20 pounds overweight for every .001 error. It's very easy to be overweight.

Blaming metabolism instead of your eating habits is just a way to avoid taking responsibility or a way to avoid giving up your patterns.

Failure Strategy #6: Medicate the Hunger, Trick the Metabolism
In our culture, many seek a magic pill to dissolve cellulite, reverse weight gain, and make getting thin a breeze. This search constitutes the sixth and final failure strategy.

All the pharmaceutical companies are looking for the big blockbuster solution that will control the hunger gland. The last "miracle pill" released on the market, Phen-Phen, ended up killing people, but the drug companies haven't given up since the American public would much rather take pills that kill hunger than address the emotional source of the compulsion to overeat.

Phen-Phen wasn't the first weight loss medication to endanger health. Dexedrine, a form of speed, was commonly used for weight loss but has largely been discredited. Many people who started taking Dexedrine to lose weight ended up addicted, less hungry and less dependent on food, but more dependent on the drug. Unfortunately, as the bumper stickers say, "Speed Kills." Speed increases your resting metabolic rate so that you burn more calories without having to exercise, stimulates a more rapid heart rate, and makes you sweat more. You stay up later and you have more energy to move around, but you can't use the method for long without physical damage. The speed category includes ephedra, which was a major ingredient of many herbal appetite suppressants until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned it in December 2003. (A federal judge in Utah ruled against the FDA ban in April 2005, so drugs containing ephedra could still return to the market.)

The same problems exist with thyroid supplements. If your thyroid is intact, taking more to speed yourself up will work for a while, but at a cost to your natural balance.

And as long as you continue to eat too much and don't address food addiction directly, the method won't work and your health will suffer.

Reality Always Wins

Now you've seen that the six failure strategies don't work because they all attempt to stimulate weight loss while keeping the emotional eating option intact. When you follow one of the failure strategies, you make a hopeless bargain with yourself: "I will deprive myself for a while as long as I can go back to binging sometime. I will discipline myself to run, as long as I can eat as much as I want when I am anxious. I will risk my health and harbor a shameful secret of purging as long as I can stuff myself at dinner. I will suffer public shame in order to overeat again. I will mess up my insides with speed and attack my hunger rather than attack the sources of emotional eating. I will blame my metabolism for my weight and put myself at risk for obesity related diseases so I can eat what I want."

These strategies circumvent the reality of emotional eating. They keep the emotional eating habit alive in a rainy-day bank account in case you need it to cope with the next life stress. In a sense, when you use any of these strategies, you try to create a new alternative—don't surrender, don't attack, hope to win. Unfortunately, you can't win as long as you hold the eating remedy in reserve for difficult times, because reality guarantees that you'll backslide under stress, throw off that delicate "calories in-calories out" balance, and put the pounds right back on.

If you want to control you weight for a lifetime, you do have to attack and dismantle the emotional eating habit. There is no way around this.

To break the addiction to food, you will have to go through a healing process.

You will have to face down each of your sources of emotional hunger and find a way, through decisions and actions, to deal with the underlying life issues without using food to cover them up. It's not enough to simply recognize these sources. You will have to do something about them to put them to rest. You will have to include them in your conscious problem-solving mind, not stuff them down with food.

It's not something that you can do overnight. Its process you have to learn, and a life skill you have to practice.

If you have become convinced that you have to address your food addiction now, here are your alternatives.

Find a good therapist who understands this addiction and will guide you through the healing process.
Find a support group that will tackle and keep focus on the 12 motivations for overeating, and will be sophisticated enough to help you develop new skills in living in order to master these motivations.
Try to do it yourself.
Try to do it yourself with our MasteringFood program to help you.
Try to do it yourself with the MasteringFood program and our online counselors to help you.
Form your own support group online, and let the MasteringFood program become the guide and workbook for the group.

If you truly want to lose weight for life, and if you really want to break food addiction, these are your logical choices. Some are easier than others. No one can tell you what's right for you and it may take some experimentation on your part to find the right approach. Nevertheless, we urge you to choose one today and begin working on it as soon as possible. No one ever regrets trying to end food addiction. They only regret giving in.

Now that you've read this article and thought about it a little, it's time for you to personally evaluate how it applies to your life. Below are some questions and activities that you should answer and do before the next article becomes available. Taking these questions and activities seriously will help you get a better understanding of emotional eating.

Think back to a time when you tried to lose weight with one of the failure strategies. Describe the attempt in detail. Was emotional eating the main reason it was unsuccessful? If not, why didn't that strategy work?
Assume you are going to attack your emotional eating patterns by yourself. What strategies are you going to use that you haven't tried before?
Assume you have to choose one of the basic approaches to ending emotional eating. What are the pros and cons of each one? List them and try to come to a decision about which is best. Consider things like cost, availability, and chances for success.

Thank you for completing Emotional Eating 101. We hope you found the information and activities helpful. If you need help with emotional eating or food addiction, we are always here to help.

Roger Gould, M.D., the creator of Mastering Food, is commonly recognized as a pioneer and expert in the field of adult development. He developed a revolutionary, interactive approach to therapy, which has been studied by UCLA and tested on over 20,000 people. The latest study, conducted by UCLA and Kaiser Permanante, found that each of Dr. Gould's Guided Sessions are about as effective as traditional in-person therapy. According to Psychology Today, "Dr. Gould's program is the only online therapy program of its kind that is based on proven research results."

Emotional Eating 101 pt 3 of 4

2008-10-14T23:20:00.002+01:00

Emotional Eating 101 (Part 3 of 4)
by Roger Gould, M.D. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we discussed emotional eating and food addiction. Today, we are going to talk about how food addiction starts and the initial steps to breaking it.

Learning the Patterns
Just like everything you know how to do in your life, you learned to be addicted to food. We touched on this subject in the last article when we discussed how people overeat because it worked for them.

All addictions follow the same basic pattern. First, you are in a distressed state of mind and the substance (whether it be alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, or cupcakes) offers you almost instant, albeit temporary, relief from your distress. If it works the first time, you do it again, and again. When it becomes the mechanism of choice, you are addicted. It is the short route to the temporary control of personal stress. If you are addicted now, it means you became too dependent on this mechanism and you created a short circuit to feeling good that now works against you.

It's a short circuit in many ways. It's the fastest route to feeling better, so in that way it is literally a short circuit. But it is also a short circuit in another sense. The more you use this mechanism, the more you bypass some essential work of life, and short circuit the new learning and new ways of managing your feelings that can make life more fulfilling and a lot easier. You are trading the short-term gain for a real long term-loss.

The more you eat, the more you avoid doing what is necessary to resolve the stress, depression, and anxiety in real life. The more you avoid, the less you learn about how to manage your mind and your life, or at least those critical parts of you that have not fully matured and been brought under rational control. It's a vicious cycle. Gradually the stabilization of mood and mind state is more important than the rational and thoughtful management of your life.

It may feel like this patterns has been with you since birth, but it has not. You learned that eating can give you relief, so you eat. But, you can unlearn it. Realizing this is one of the first steps on the road to recovery.

Although food addiction is learned behavior, I don't want to make it seem that the unlearning process is just a matter of education or reverse engineering. No, once food has become installed as a primary regulator of mood and emotions, it is an essential part of the person's mind, or at least feels that way. Food is no longer food. The taste is largely irrelevant. It's the mental effect that is being looked for in the burrito, not the calories or the flavor.

Some have described the relationship between the self and food as that of a lover that you jealously possess, hoard, hide and clandestinely have as your own. There is a great deal of truth in that description, but it doesn't quite get to the quality I hear in my patients. What I hear is that it is more like this eating pattern has become a part of one's mental self the same way an arm is part of one's bodily self, and defended in a parallel way. You wouldn't let anybody convince you to cut off your arm. In the same way, you won't let anybody convince you to give up this mechanism of internal control. This is why unlearning food addiction is so hard. It feels like you are unlearning an essential part of yourself.

Food addiction has the same imperative quality as the heroin addict who has to have his fix, or the smoker who must have one more drag, or the alcoholic who must have one more drink. If this comparison seems too harsh, think about how many people you know, including yourself, who have endangered their health through their eating habits. This is what we are up against when we battle food addiction. On some level we learned the behavior as adults or in our youth, but it goes even deeper than that; food addiction goes deeper than nicotine, alcohol or cocaine ever could. We need food to survive; it is even mixed with happiness in our infancy. Unlearning food addiction, or better yet, rebalancing your relationship to food, for this reason is not a simple process. It's not just a matter of reading one article and being cured. And you obviously can't go cold turkey from food to sober up!

Nevertheless, you do not need food to handle your emotions, your stress, or your internal critic; you do not need to overeat to handle your life; you do not need to overeat to make things feel okay, although it probably feels like you do. The process of breaking food addiction is learning that you don't need to overeat to be okay. It's usually a rocky road, but you can succeed.

The First Step: Confronting Denial
Everyone who is addicted to food in the way we have been discussing has the same starting point in this healing process.
You know, but you don't really know.

That is to say, you are living with a big internal contradiction about your addictive relationship to food. Some may call it denial. You know there's a problem, and you know you know. But, you know you are afraid to dig to find out what is below the surface. You may be reluctant to go there, but you are not in denial that you need to go there. If you were in total denial, you probably wouldn't be reading this right now.

Let me tell you about Kaisa, who is a 49-year old married woman, who at 5'4' weighs 202 pounds. She said the following as I began to help her with emotional eating and food addiction:
"I am generally quite a happy person, living a fulfilled life. Why then is there a feeling of being unfulfilled in me that seems to be fulfilled only by sweet carbohydrates? I just can't imagine a day without dessert. Without having a dessert I would be anxious and missing something for the rest of the evening."

As a psychiatrist, the first thing I see in this statement is the addiction. She may indeed be a happy person, but she is also an addicted person who is trying to get rid of the feeling of being unfulfilled. And from my way of thinking this is a contradiction. She may be happy on the surface, but she is covering up something important, something that just doesn't go away for very long.

The second thing I see is the illusion of safety that dessert delivers. "I would be anxious and missing something for the rest of the evening." Those pieces of cake are powerful medications that operate on the placebo principle. If you think it will work, it will work for a while, as long as you continue to believe. But it's not the sugar that is the medication. Sugar doesn't have those medicinal properties. It's the symbol or the meaning of the sugar that is at work to create the illusion of warding off the anxiety.

I knew from experience that at this point in the process I could never convince Kaisa to experiment and give up her cake to see what would happen - to see if she will really have uncontrollable anxiety for the rest of the evening without this placebo prop. She wouldn't do it. She was terrified by the prospect of out of control anxiety. She knew there was a problem. She knew she knew. But, she was scared to go any further.

Let's examine another starting point. Helen, a housewife in her early thirties, said this about her eating habits:
"I don't keep my weight in mind when I sit down to a gourmet meal, so I eat as much as I want to. Therefore, I don't control my portions. I don't listen to my body and eat not only to satisfy my hunger, but mostly for the pleasure of eating, that I want to prolong. My diet is not well balanced, because I eat too many sweets."

This is what I see in case after case. Dieters like Helen have enough information to analyze a situation and give advice to themselves, but that is not enough to be able to do something. It's only a baby step in that direction; it's a little bit more knowledge, a little bit more consciousness, but it's still just scratching the surface.

That's the position I find almost everybody who starts this process and I presume that is where you are. They know there's a problem, but they are afraid of moving forward or getting everything out in the open.

While working with Kaisa, I helped her think about what it would be like if she didn't begin to change her eating habits. Here's her sober prediction of the future if she doesn't make these changes. She wrote:
"I would simply not lose weight or even gain weight. I will focus more and more on eating as a source of pleasure this will diminish me as a human being and

prevent me from growing and focusing on things that are worth it. I will feel out of control. My self-esteem will diminish. I would hate every morning, waking up and realizing how I look like and having to put on clothes that are too small and too tight. I will be afraid of food instead of enjoying it."

This negative vision of the future is a strong motivator to do something in the present but it is still not strong enough to combat the compulsion to over eat below the surface. The hope for success and the vision of what failure means has been there for years and hasn't done the job.

As our worked moved on, Kaisa realized she was not just a happy person who had a compulsion to eat too many sweets. There was much more to the picture. She realized she overate whenever she was depressed, bored, or feeling empty. She ate too much when her children clung to her, when her husband neglected or ignored her, when she had no one to talk to. She wrote about one specific incident right after it happened so it has a fresh feel to it. She said:
"I got home from work today and no one was there. I had a medium sized dinner and decided to have dessert. Right now, unfortunately, I can't imagine my day without dessert. So I had it, and instead of one piece that at this point of life I'm allowing myself to have, I had two pieces of cake. I know that with two pieces of cake a day I am not going to lose weight. I didn't even keep my weight in mind while I was eating. I just lived in the present and thought only about the pleasure and satisfaction and feeling fulfilled by that dessert. I probably would have had only one dessert if someone was there, but since no one was there, I had two."

As I talked to Kaisa about this incident, it became more and more apparent that she would eat when no one was there because she was lonely. As she began to let this secret out of her, as she began to acknowledge this fact, and as she snipped the last threads of denial, she began to really make progress.

Think about your own state of denial. What part of your relationship to food are you aware of but reluctant to acknowledge out in the open? Don't let this exercise lead you to despair. Just try to let some secrets out of the bag. It will help.

Everyone who is still addicted is in some form of denial because that denial fends off a worse feeling, the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, which probably feels like a vague but powerful shadow hanging over your life. The denial has a twisted logic that goes something like this: "Why know all about something that I can't do anything about." But as you continue on in this forum, and continue on your path to recovery, I hope to show you that you can do something about this addiction, and that you are not helpless, and the problem is not hopeless. You can unlearn emotional eating, but the first step is to get past this hopelessness and to start letting go of denial.

The Second Step: The 12 Types of Emotional Hunger
The second step to stopping food addiction is to become familiar with the 12 types of emotional hunger. The more you can "see" your own reasons to continue your addiction to food, the more clear you will be that there is something you can do about it, even though you will probably need some form of help and guidance to do it well and effectively.

Through my research and practice, I've identified 12 distinct sources of emotional hunger, each driven by a different type of motivation. These different types of emotional hunger are what fuel emotional eating patterns, make you overeat, and until they are handled without food, will keep your food addiction alive. You'll probably recognize some of these motivations easily, while others will seem less applicable to your life. Some of these may not apply to you, which is good. However, battling just one of these can be difficult.

Type 1. Dulling The Pain With The Food Trance.
If you get hungry when you feel angry, depressed, anxious, bored, or lonely, you suffer from Type 1 emotional hunger, and you use food to dull the pain that these emotions cause.

Type 2. Sticks And Stones May Break Your Bones, But Cake Won't Heal What Hurts You.
If you react by getting hungry when others talk down to you, take advantage of you, belittle you or take you for granted, then you suffer from Type 2 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid confrontation.

Type 3. A Full Heart Fills An Empty Belly.
If you crave food when you have tension in your close relationships, you suffer from Type 3 emotional hunger. You eat to avoid feeling the pain of rejection or anger.

Type 4. Hate Yourself, Love Your Munchies.
If you tend to become hypercritical of yourself, if you label yourself "stupid," "lazy," or "a loser," you have Type 4 emotional hunger. You eat to "stuff down" your self-hatred.

Type 5. Secret Desires Have No Calories.
If your hunger gets activated because your intimate relationships don't satisfy some basic need like trust or security, you suffer from Type 5 emotional hunger and you use food to try to fill the gap.

Type 6. Forty Million Big Gulps And The Well Is Still Empty.
If you stuff yourself to make up for the deprivation you experienced as a child, you have Type 6 emotional eating.

Type 7. It's My Pastry, and I'll Eat If I Want To.
If you eat to assert your independence because you don't want anyone telling you what to do, you have Type 7 emotional hunger.

Type 8. I Can't Come To Work Today—I'm Too Fat.
If your appetite kicks in when you're faced with new challenges—if you use food to avoid rising to the test, or to insulate yourself from the fear of failure—you have Type 8 emotional hunger.

Type 9. Aroused by Aromas, Not by the Chef.
If you eat in order to avoid your sexuality—either to stay fat so that nobody desires you or to hide from intimate encounters—you suffer from Type 9 emotional eating.

Type 10. I'll Beat You With this Éclair.
Type 10 emotional eaters stuff themselves to pay back those who have hurt them, often in the distant past. They use their bodies as battlegrounds for working out old resentments.

Type 11. Peter Pan and the Peanut Butter Cookie.
If you eat to make yourself feel carefree, like a child, you have Type 11 emotional hunger. You eat to keep yourself from facing the challenges of growing up.

Type 12. That Stranger In Lycra Wearing Your Face.
If you overeat because you fear getting thin, either consciously or unconsciously, you have Type 12 emotional hunger.

Experience has shown me that you can't treat all of these very different motivations in the same way—each requires a distinct strategy. For instance, if people have talked down to you all your life, you might have become sensitive to that behavior, and your hunger gets triggered whenever someone belittles or patronizes you. You eat to give yourself comfort, to lessen the sting of insult.

First you shut down, and then you eat. Your strategy will involve finding the appropriate behavior to address the grievance directly. On the other hand, if you overeat because you want to avoid sexual intimacy, you have a very different set of motivations, and you'll need to do a different type of work.

I suggest you read over this list several times. Try to think of times that these types of emotional hunger drove you to eat. The more you are familiar with these different types, the easier it will be to recognize them in the future, which means you'll have more control!

Now that you've read this article and thought about it a little, it's time for you to personally evaluate how it applies to your life. Below are some questions and activities that you should answer and do before the next article is posted. Taking these questions and activities seriously will help you get a better understanding of emotional eating.

Can you identify a time when you began to seek food for comfort? What was happening in your life at the time? If you can't remember when you started using food for comfort, try to describe time when this habit intensified or became more severe.
How would you feel if you had to give up the habit of eating when upset emotionally? Describe what your life might feel like. Part of you probably says that you'll be fine, but what does the other part say? What does the part of you that's scared of giving up emotional eating say?
What part of your relationship with food are you in denial about? Which part would you rather not know about? How might you get this out in the open to yourself? What would happen if you did this?
Which of the 12 types of emotional hunger do you suffer from most? What are some ways you could begin to change your habit of eating when faced with emotional hunger like this?

Emotional Eating 101 pt 2 of 4

2008-10-14T23:19:00.001+01:00

Emotional Eating 101 (Part 2 of 4)
by Roger Gould, M.D. In Part 1 of this series, we discussed emotional eating and hunger and how they compel people to eat. In this article, we are going to explore how emotional eating really is a symptom of food addiction.

Food Addiction
As we all know, dieting is the most common private approach to obesity and it just doesn't work. The last two decades there have been more people dieting and more diet programs yet obesity has increased over 20%. Dieting programs and fads have a 99% relapse rate. Their failures have been proved by many studies. And as we've said, the problem is not so much what you eat, but that you can't control how much you eat. This means that you're addicted to food.

This may sound harsh, but you have all the evidence you need. Do you struggle to control what you eat? Have you been overeating for years? Have you put your health at risk because of your eating habits? Does the idea of giving up food as comfort make you nervous? Have you tried to change your eating habits but failed? If you answered yes to any of these questions, it should be pretty obvious that you are addicted to food.

Many people ask at this point, "Aren't we all addicted to food?" In some sense, yes, everyone is addicted to food. Obviously we need to eat to survive, so in that sense we are always seeking enough to keep us healthy. That's the essential addiction common to all animals. The biological hunger drive is a basic survival mechanism, but that is not what we are talking about here.

When we say food addiction, we mean that you are compelled to overeat for reasons other than survival or health. You are not responding to the biological hunger drive. These other reasons fall in the domain of psychology. You may know some of them already, but you don't know all of them, or all of them well enough yet to break the addiction.

Food addiction comes in all sizes. In fact, you can use your weight as a rough measure. If you are overweight by one hundred pounds or more, that means food is so overly important to your mental equilibrium that you will sacrifice all your health to keep it as a coping mechanism. If you are twenty to fifty pounds overweight, you are probably very dependent on food, but realize that it's not the only way to handle life. If you just can't seem to lose those last 10 pounds, then you are on the other side of the spectrum and probably use food as a reward, but not too often.

But where does it come from? We all eat every day; so why do some of us become addicted and others don't? The potential for food addiction starts innocently at birth. When a mother feeds her baby, the baby stops crying. Babies equate the mother's milk—food-with survival, love, and peace of mind. Even a pacifier, which has no warmth, taste or nutritional value, is close enough to that primal experience to soothe the infant. It's normal to be addicted to your mother's soothing function as an infant, and easy enough to make food the pathway back to that comforting state of mind.
As adults, we all continue to use food as a tranquilizer from time to time. But some people begin to overuse this method of coping and, little by little, it becomes the preferred way of dealing with problems. Using food to cope can get out of control when food is constantly seen as a source of comfort and tranquility. It's okay to eat for sustenance, for the love of food, and even—in moderation—to fend off a blue mood or to give ourselves a reward. But there is a big difference between occasionally using food to fix our moods and compulsively overeating as our primary coping mechanism to deal with the stress and strain of daily life. When someone overeats on a daily basis, it's almost certain that they are addicted to food. The addiction matures slowly over life, but it's not entirely clear why some of people get addicted while others don't.

The worst part about it is that overeating works. It really is a powerful way to temporarily change the whole state of your mind. If you are anxious, eating can rid you of anxiety. It can give you time to regroup. Some people have described how eating puts them into their own bubble, and makes all the worries go away for a while. Others have described a state of feeling insulated and protected instead of vulnerable and raw. When you are addicted, eating has become a way to silence your mind whenever it presents you with ideas or images you'd rather not deal with. In that sense, it does work; it temporarily banishes uncomfortable thoughts and the feelings associated with them. And when you are addicted to this feeling, you have very little control over how much you eat.

If all this is true, and emotional eating is a sign of food addiction, and if you are really addicted to food, does that mean you have no control over what you eat? That's the interesting dilemma. You always have a choice. It is definitely you who lifts the fork to your mouth or buys the cheeseburger when you just finished telling yourself you were going to watch it and lose some weight. You may make the right choice sometime, but when day after day and year after year you make the decision to overeat (which I define simply as eating much more than you need to stay in caloric balance), you will have to admit that you are acting like a person who is compelled to do something that you have consciously decided not to do. There is no way around this unless you tell me that you want to overeat and you don't want to control your weight.

In most cases, however, this compulsion to overeat sets up a very painful process. It makes people feel weak and out of control and actually afraid to commit themselves to another diet because they are certain they will not be able to defeat this adversary.
I have heard the inside story of this struggle for decades from patients I have seen. So often I have heard people describe their relationship with food exactly like an addiction. I'll take you through a few examples to let you get an inside look.

Several years ago, I asked Mary, a 35-year-old married mother of two, what it would be like if she finally succeeded in controlling her weight. She said, "I would be on top of the world. Last year I lost about 65 pounds and I was a totally different person. I could wear really cool clothes instead of the dreaded plus-sized fashions. I didn't hate what I saw in the mirror—it was a stranger looking back at me, but one that I had admired from afar. I was able to get off my blood pressure medication as well. But somehow I knew it was only temporary, because of my lifelong battle with fat. It started with a donut—one donut—and then I would eat three or four at a sitting, especially when my boss was cranky; donuts were my salvation. Now, I hate to buy clothes. I'm back on medication, my knees ache, and I am feeling tired and hopeless again."

Mary had strong motivations to change but her goals were thwarted by her dependence on food as a source of comfort. When I asked Mary to give herself a positive vision of her future to keep her weight loss efforts on track, she was hesitant to even describe what success might feel like. "My fear of failure is like a ghost in my life … chasing me around every day."

We have to look below the surface to understand what's really eroding Mary's confidence. Her personal secret is that she doesn't believe she can actually give up food as her best friend when she is distressed. She's locked in a vicious cycle and she needs help. While she doesn't look like an addict, she is one. Her addiction is legal, socially acceptable—even encouraged—but it's no less destructive than the addictions that have been outlawed or so stigmatized as to become unpopular.

In countless stories similar to this one, I have come to understand the pull of the addiction to food. It didn't surprise me at all to hear one patient say she felt there was a "demon" inside of her tempting her towards food. For many people, their emotional eating habit is so strong they don't believe they can ever break it. Instead, they try to work around it.

For example, Norman was thin when he was younger because he ran four miles each morning, rain or shine, to justify his enormous appetite. Food was the only thing that calmed his anxiety, but he knew he had to compensate for his overeating to stay trim. If he had a fight with his wife, he would stuff himself at dinner, and then just go out and jog another few miles. But after a knee injury, Norman couldn't run anymore. Twenty years later, Norman is 55 and very overweight, and he no longer exercises at all.

Jan's story is similar. Early in her marriage, Jan was bulimic. She would eat two dinners and the better part of a cake every evening. Friends marveled at her ability to stay thin. What they didn't see was what she did when Jan was finished stuffing herself, she would find a private place and force herself to throw up. As soon as she was finished, she promised herself never to do it again, but the next time she found herself binging, she had to purge to make up for it. Jan was fortunate enough to find people who could help her beat bulimia. Millions more are not that lucky. Bulimia is their way of compensating for their primary addiction to food. They can't give up their insatiable need for food, so they control their weight through vomiting, tearing up their insides in the process.

Emotional eaters have become dependent on food to survive the challenges of daily life. There's no other way to explain their behavior or craving. They are addicted to food as much as an alcoholic to alcohol, a smoker to smoking, or an addict to drugs. They don't think they can make it without this handy non-prescription tranquilizer, and they're fearful of trying to do so. In that sense, overeating has become a mental compulsion. It's not that they really want to overeat, but that they are compelled to overeat. This sometimes-useful coping mechanism is transformed into a compulsion because it works so well, but only for a short time. That means that every time they are distressed, they automatically generate an image in their head of which food will make them feel better. These activated images of relief are there to tempt them until they're satisfied. That's how a compulsion works.

Unless an emotional eater finds a new way to make peace with his or her distress warnings, the unconscious compulsion to overeat will win out time and time again. It will win no matter how motivated and disciplined the dieters consider themselves. Even those who succeed in losing weight for a year or more find this strange inner opponent coming back to claim yet another victory after they hit a stressful patch in their life. Until food addiction is broken and the emotional eating pattern under control, weight loss is impossible.

Now that you've read this article and thought about it a little, it's time for you to personally evaluate how it applies to your life. Below are some questions and discussion topics that will be the focus of the discussion for this article.

Try to pinpoint the times when you were tempted to break your diet or overeat. What were the main causes? Were you anxious or angry? How about depressed or stressed? If you do ate during these times, how specifically did it make you feel? Content or safe? Numb or detached? How many distinct patterns can you identify?
Beside emotional eating patterns, what evidence for food addiction can you find in your life? Your weight might be one piece of evidence, but there is probably more if you think about it. Try to think of at least a few things besides your weight that show food addiction plays a major part in your life.
Hint: In what ways have you acted in the past that might seem strange to someone who didn't suffer from food addiction?
You undoubtedly have positive motivations to lose weight. What are these positive motivations? Try describing what you would feel like if you reached your target weight. After you're done, ask yourself why these motivations aren't strong enough to carry you to success?

Emotional Eating 101 pt 1 of 4

2008-10-14T23:11:00.003+01:00

I've found a great thread on minimins have a look at the debate on the forum its very thought provoking. i'm posting the article here as well because its so good.

Emotional Eating 101 (Part 1 of 4)
by Roger Gould, M.D. This is the first of several articles on the subject of emotional eating. Over the next couple weeks, we are going to explore emotional eating, how it leads to obesity, why it should be considered a real addiction, and the strategies that work and don't work in dealing with the addiction.

Emotional Eating
If you are like most people, you are keenly aware that diet programs don't work for long. It's safe to say that no new diet or exercise regimen, no matter how biologically sound it may be, is likely to result in lifelong weight loss. But why is that? It's because you can't control what you eat.

The bottom line is that you already know how to lose weight. You know that if you eat less and exercise more eventually you'll see the pounds come off. But if you know that eating less and exercising more will result in weight loss, why don't you just do it? What's getting in your way? Or, if you do succeed in losing a little weight with a diet, why do you usually regain the weight you lost? Why can't you hold onto healthier habits as a way of life? Why do you overeat despite your best intentions?

The answer to all these questions is the same: emotional eating. Most simply defined, emotional eating means you eat to satisfy emotional hunger; it means you use food for comfort or as a way to cope with life; and it means you eat for reasons other than what your body needs.

Take any moment in time, focus the camera lens on your neighborhood, take a close look, and you'll find emotional eating. You'll find dozens of people—maybe even hundreds or thousands—breaking their diets at this very second. All those people woke up this morning determined to stay away from fattening treats or eat reasonable portions, but by afternoon, many had one hand on the Twix Bar and the other on the forehead, wondering why, why on earth they had no willpower. In fact, you are probably one of those people. Maybe boredom at work has propelled you to the snack table, or a snub from a friend or an ugly new assignment. Whenever you reach for a boredom-breaking snack despite your commitment, or whenever you eat to quell anxiety, that's emotional eating. Whenever you binge after a fight, or double up on portions because your day turned sour, that's emotional eating. Whenever you feel that sharp craving for your favorite food, that's emotional eating.

When it comes to emotional eating, people aren't eating to feed their body. No one needs a candy bar after a fight to make it through the night. When people eat at times like these, they are eating to satisfy, numb, or avoid their emotions. And unfortunately, it's all too common.
People who are suffering from emotional eating are driven to eat so they won't have to face what's bothering them internally. And in many ways, they become addicted to this way of handling life. They feel compelled to eat in this way and can't control what they eat. That's why diets don't work. If you're struggling with emotional eating and can't choose to eat less and exercise more, you can't lose weight. It's that simple. And since no diet ever teaches you how to control what you eat, they are doomed to fail sooner or later. In other words, unless you can learn to stop emotional eating, you will never be able to lose weight and keep it off. Period.

Emotional Hunger
Emotional hunger is what fuels emotional eating. Unfortunately, you will always have emotional hunger no matter what you do. That's part of being human. However, emotional hunger is not so much the problem as how you deal with it.

People who suffer from emotional eating usually only deal with emotional hunger by eating. And, since life is rife with emotional turmoil, emotional eaters are normally overweight. They are so attached to dealing with the ups and downs of life with food that any suggestion that they can stop emotional eating makes them nervous. Many people cannot imagine being able to handle a bad day without turning to food for comfort. In this way, the tendency to handle emotional hunger with food is no different then a smoker's tendency to handle stress with a cigarette.

When you are an emotional eater, the odd thing about emotional hunger is that you feel truly hungry, and at the moment when the craving for food grips you, you can't tell that your hunger originates in your mind, not in your belly. People who are not emotional eaters, who never really satisfied emotional hunger with food, usually eat less when they are troubled by emotional hunger. Their emotional hunger doesn't feel like physical hunger, just as a non-smoker's stress doesn't give them the urge to smoke.

I like to think of it this way: emotional eaters eat when they aren't really hungry because they have two stomachs—one real, the other a phantom. The hunger in your belly signals you when your system has a biological requirement for food. If that was the only signal of hunger you received, you'd be thin. It's the phantom stomach that causes the problems. The phantom stomach sends out a hunger signal when unruly emotions and unsolved personal agendas start pushing themselves into awareness. A short-circuit occurs, and you feel so hungry that you're compelled to eat.

I see the power of the phantom stomach demonstrated almost daily in my work with patients. The other day, a patient who had just finished breakfast told me in the middle of a difficult session that she suddenly felt extremely hungry. As soon as we started talking about her sexual problems with her husband, her appetite kicked in and she could hardly wait to get to McDonald's. Her phantom stomach was shouting, demanding action.

Phantom hunger has such power that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it. I saw this fact demonstrated in Technicolor when I consulted at the Pritikin Institute in Santa Monica, California, where clients paid ten thousand dollars a month to take part in a controlled diet and exercise program. Although the tuition for the program far exceeded the cost of attending the most expensive private university in America, I frequently found participants sneaking out for hamburgers and french fries at a corner stand. These were all highly motivated people sent to Pritikin by their doctors because of serious, life-threatening health problems, but positive motivation clearly wasn't enough to help them resist phantom hunger. As you know, all dieting programs depend on positive motivation, ignoring the obvious: that there's such power in the emotional forces underlying the desire to binge or overeat that if you don't expose those forces and conquer them, you'll always be at their mercy—you'll always have weight problems.

In a later article, we will discuss the 12 types of emotional hunger that I have identified, but for now, let's point out the main differences between emotional hunger and physical hunger so you can begin to differentiate between the two in your daily life.
First, emotional hunger normally comes on like lightening, while physical hunger develops slowly. Emotional hunger is like a rocket going off: it happens suddenly. Physical hunger develops little by little: first there's the tummy rumble, then the grumble and then it really starts complaining with hunger pangs. But, the slow stages of physical hunger are very different from the quick onset of emotional hunger.

Second, emotional hunger demands food immediately, whereas physical hunger is bit more patient. Much like its quick onset, emotional hunger demands immediate satisfaction. On the other hand, even if you are ravenously hungry, your physical hunger will wait for food.

The third difference between the two involves mindfulness. Satisfying physical hunger involves a deliberate choice and awareness of what's being eaten. How much of what's being eaten is noticed, meaning you can stop when full. However, emotional hunger on the other hand usually doesn't notice how, why or what's being eaten. Emotional hunger will even demand more food even after the person is stuffed.
Fourth, physical hunger is open to different types of foods, but emotional hunger often demands very particular foods in order to be fulfilled. If you're physically hungry, even carrots will look delicious. If you're emotionally hungry, however, only cake or ice cream might seem appealing.

Fifth, satisfying emotional hunger often results in guilt, or promises to do better next time. This is in sharp contrast with physical hunger, which is viewed as necessary to survival and therefore has no guilt attached to it.

And sixth, emotional hunger, of course, results from something emotionally upsetting, while physical hunger results from a physical need.

Whenever you feel compelled to eat in a way that doesn't match the patience or speed of physical hunger you are struggling with emotional eating and hunger.
Now that you've read this article and thought about it a little, it's time for you to personally evaluate how it applies to your life. Below are some questions and activities that you should answer and do before the next article becomes available. Taking these questions and activities seriously will help you get a better understanding of emotional eating.

How hard is it for you to see emotional eating in your life? Is it very visible? If so, describe the instances you've got in mind. Do you think instances like this are the main obstacle to you losing weight? If it's not so visible, why do you think you have trouble eating less and exercising more?
Do you have trouble differentiating between emotional hunger and physical hunger? Describe a time when you may have mistaken emotional hunger for physical hunger. What was happening at the time to make you emotionally hungry? Why didn't you deal with it directly, instead of using food?
Until Part 2 of this series becomes available, examine your hunger whenever it arises. Try to use the six distinctions we laid out as a guide. Do you feel emotionally hungry more often than physically hungry? Do you always give into the emotional hunger or do you sometimes find another way to satisfy it without food?

can't think of a title for this post

2008-10-14T16:55:00.003+01:00

because i'm too miserable to be creative or even be normal. Don't know whats wrong either and doesn't feel like hormonal type blues so god only knows whats the matter with me. I'm not the kind of person to let problems or random negative thoughts to get me down for too long - mind you that's probably because in the past i would change my mood with food . just going to list my thoughts see if it helps to clear my mind a bit

feel like i haven't been a good enough parent and the reason lew is being a cheeky little bugger is that he has no respect for me. Really worried that i don't have the skills to raise a happy and confident male teenager and the result will be a moody unsociable yob.
i don't earn enough money - i realise that everyone lives to their means and that if i earned more we still wouldn't have loads of excess money but still - £800 a month is a pittance and i feel like i have no way of increasing it. I know how much money the shop makes and unless the general public decide to forget about the credit crunch i cant increase my wage.
My doctor is rubbish. Just not interested in me at all. begrudgingly gave me champix but said they probably wouldn't stop me smoking - honestly! he never made one comment when i told him I'd lost 4 1/2 stone. If i have any chance of any post diet related surgery i need to change doctors asap.
kel is still really poorly and i haven't had a kiss or cuddle for days!
cant think of anything else but still feel like moaning
oh i know wilsey is really down, medically and mentally and i don't know how to help. mind you when you feel like turd no-one else can really help - i should know, kel has been trying to cheer me up to no avail.
i really really want to eat - i know its aam and i can eat but i want to overeat and have that lovely comforting feeling and the blank mindlessness that comes during a binge.
and i'm only 2lb lighter than i was 3 weigh ins ago which is extremely annoying when i haven't cheated at all. hopefully aam will kick start things again.

didn't feel much better after writing it down but just re-read it to spellcheck and it does seem a little over dramatic! I think the truth of it is that i dont want to binge to change my mood and i havent really learnt any other techniques (other than thinking about winning the lottery but that's not helping this time just making me angry! usually works well though!)

anyone any suggestions? and please don't say have a bath - its what everone seems to say and i really cant see how having a cold top half and being squished will make me feel better!!

not quite

2008-10-13T11:43:00.001+01:00

hi all not quite the stone munch was looking for only 6lb bit gutted cos i wanted to be 16 something this week and am 17.1
Not staying to chat i'm really poorly still xxx

day 60!

2008-10-10T16:41:00.000+01:00

who'd have thunk it! Us two foodies (that's me being polite - what i mean is fatties) have done a vlcd for 60 days! I'm very proud of us both, yes we have had struggles when our food addict gremlins have shown up and maybe the odd bit of chicken has been eaten when it shouldn't but on the whole we have been bloomin fantastic. Yea us!

I'm getting excited now about add a meal next week. We've worked out the menu and imagined each meal (A LOT!) I feel much better this time round. The run up to the last aam i was in a state of pure panic! I know now though that i will be able to eat what we have planned and not overeat, not pick after the meal has gone and even better i know that once the week is over i will be totally able to stop and continue with another 4 weeks of ss-ing. I guess the fear i had last time was due to my feeling of ss being rehab - total abstinence is safe, ketosis means hunger is a very brief and fleeting thing and the lack of food choices means the lack of food 'issues'. But reintroducing food however limited surely would bring all the negative stuff with it? I was as surprised as anyone that at the end of each meal i felt full, satisfied and elated that i had some control over food. And come the sunday night and time to get ready for ss-ing for another 4 weeks i was fine and had no need to read the lecture I'd written myself the week before anticipating mega tantrums.

I'm starting to miss our little man a bit today - he's in Tunisia with my mum. He's told me to tell everyone he's in North Africa - apparently that's way more impressive! I don't know - any foreign destination sounds good to me, i haven't been abroad for 5 years! Funnily enough thats how long we have had the shop! in fact except for my illness last year I've never had more than 3 consecutive days off work lol
Mum and i had a chat before she went away and she has committed to letting me take a whole week off next year either the may hols or Easter. I am determined that we should get a last minute cheapo holiday abroad. Kel isn't as sold on the idea - she sees every penny spent as a lost opportunity to save for the wedding!

Talking of saving money I still haven't stopped smoking, kel and mum have been non smokers ages now - very naughty Munch. Made an appt with smoking cessation woman at the village chemist (for some bloody stupid reason my doctors don't do it) when i got there she had gone home ill. Tried to rebook it yesterday, took me a day or so to stop fuming, and was told she has now gone on holiday till November - honest to god! that is a well good enough reason to puff away in my opinon! No i am going to stop - spending an £5 a day on cancer sticks is ridiculous. I've got an appt with the doc on Monday anyway (i want to show him i've lost 4 stone so that when i go having lost 14 stone and need a tummy tuck he wont be too surprised lol) so I'm going to ask him if he'll prescribe champix coz its worked on mum and kel. We'll see what he says - i didn't think much of him but I've only seen him once so I'll give it a go.
wow that was a bit of a long post - sorry!

manflu

2008-10-10T13:17:00.002+01:00

I'm so illllllllllllllllllllll...feel all sore throaty and achey want to just lie in bed groaning really want to eat cream cakes and watch cartoons like i did when i was a kid...dont worry tho i wont got to go to work poor me xxx hope everone out there in blog land is doing well I'm having a really good week not sure on the stone but according to my scales im half way there fingers crossed weigh in sunday xxx

3 stone by xmas

2008-10-07T16:19:00.002+01:00

Ok so ive just joined a pledge to lose 3 stone by christmas, what do you think my chances are?
The odds were against me this morning i turned up at work to find the guy who works in our kitchen was off sick, so muggins here as any good manager would stepped up to the breach. Yes i merrily made sausage, bacon and egg butties not to mention pies and cakes but i was a good girl and remembered munches notion of me losing a stone by next sun and left well alone. Bl**dy hard though, this sort of thing doesnt seem to get any easier.

A whole stone!

2008-10-06T17:24:00.002+01:00

Hi its kel, i know long time no speak i'm just so blooming busy all the time i should be a size 8. Well i did amazingly well at the conference food wise...unfortunately everytime my wine glass was empty (i only intended to have one honest) it kept being topped up i was trollied. All that sugar it doesnt bare thinking about. Also its extremely dangerous to have all that alcohol whilst on cambridge so i dont advise it at all, fun though till the next day. Anyway i still somehow managed to lose 3 pound better than putting on. I love this diet. so two months in and 3 stone not bad. Family party on sat night and they were all impressed which is ace.
Munch is my inspiration she looks amazing i cant stop staring at her, i'm sure its very annoying and perhaps a little disturbing but i cant help it. I'm a little concerned my weight loss is slowing down so munch has set me the goal of losing a stone this week, I cant see it myself but i'm gonna try.
Wish me luck x

While Kel's away Munch will ?

2008-10-01T11:26:00.004+01:00

Blog lol. She's gone to a works conference at Alton Towers. Jammy devil! I'm so so proud, she's been nervous all week because not only will there be about 1000 people and she only knows 3 but all the food and drink is paid for by the company and while she doesn't want to ruin the diet she didn't feel as if she could refuse the meals in front of the big bosses (especially as I want her to learn to network lol). anywhoo spoke to her a couple of times yesterday and she was having a fantastic time, shes made new friends, had ss+ food (no carbs and low fat) and best of all been on 4 rides! The night time do was 60/70's themed and they all had to dress up or else! so she went all hippyfied - she text me a pic of her last night all done up in a long blond wig - hilarious but also you could tell how much weight she's lost coz her cheekbones are fab. I sent it to mum who was well impressed and said wouldn't it be lovely when kel is at target if she has long hair OMG Kel would die! One of her big motivators to losing weight is to have as short and funky a lesbo crop as she can lmao

Measuring success by the scales

2008-09-30T14:02:00.003+01:00

KD - super super cambridge guru from the minimins forum has posted this brilliant thread this morning. Thank you KD

Measuring success by the scales

Fact: Stick to the plan and you definitely lose weight
Fact: You can control what you put in your mouth
Fact: You cannot control what the scales say.

So what do you celebrate? The scales showing a loss, or the fact that you kept to the diet all week?

What if you stick to the diet, but the scales don’t reflect your effort?
Will you be disappointed, even though you have done everything correctly and couldn’t possibly do any better? Knowing that you will have lost weight…but it didn’t mean anything because the scales are giving the wrong result?

What if you ‘cheat’ and the scales show a big loss…does that mean you’ve succeeded and need a pat on the back?

Or even if you’ve been 100% and the scales are showing a loss? Does it mean more to you? Does that mean you’ve done even better than 100%?

I think the scales are a wonderful tool. I weigh daily, and love seeing them give the same reading day in and out, but that’s not what I really celebrate.I celebrate being in control of what I put in my mouth, because that’s what I have done. I don’t celebrate what the scales say.

So if you’ve stayed the same one week, or just lost that one pound….if you’ve kept to the diet 100%, then be proud, because that’s what it’s all about. Stick to the diet and the weight is coming off….whether or not the scales agree. And you’re worth the same amount of applause than those who have lost more.1lbs, 1 stone, it doesn’t matter.

You can’t do better than 100% after all So do me a favour, and next time you go to your CDC for a weigh in, if you’ve been 100%, go in rejoicing. Tell him/her you are going to be one of their success stories, because you were in control this week and will be next. If the scales reflect this, that’s just the icing on the cake. You’ve lost weight anyway. You don’t need a mechanical instrument to tell you whether you are in control or not.

week 7 wi - HOLY SH!TE

2008-09-29T12:51:00.003+01:00

well according to my cdc's scales i have lost 17 pounds this week! I'm finding it very hard to believe since its week 7 not week 1 and i havent done anything different. The lovely people on minimins.com have all been great and think its very likely to be right since i have got a lot to lose but still keep thinking that the scales must be broke! I feel a bit ungrateful for not being over the moon and jumping for joy but i dont want to be all disappointed next week when i found out that it was a mistake! Its very negative and not like me at all but hey - tough!
on a much more positive note everyone can now tell that i've lost some weight and even i can see that i look a hell of a lot better in my clothes.

day 48

2008-09-27T10:33:00.003+01:00

well check me out i've stuck to a diet for 48 days - bl**dy nora! Got to say i'm mightily impressed with myself - go Munch! I'm very excited about weigh in tomorrow, according to my scales i've lost 6lbs but i'd really like it to be at least 7 by tomorrow morning lol never satisfied

We're babysitting again tonight which is fab coz Kacey is just a bundle of gorgeous fun. I've never known such a happy child - she giggles about everything - not in a simple way though lol! She is so content in herself last time we had her when she woke up in the morning she was sitting in her cot playing with a dolly and giggling to herself for ages we just couldnt stop watching her. I'll probably be extremely broody again by tomorrow night when we have to give her back but its worth it to spend a night and a day with our adorable little monkey. Lew is mega excited too, he loves her to bits. I'm really impressed actually both with his attitude towards a little one and how he actually treats her. He loves playing with her and talks to her in a fab way - like a little daddy lol - i'm quite surprised really because as wonderful as Lew is I didnt expect a 12 yr old boy to be at all a*sed with a toddler let alone get excited and bang on about wanting baby sibs.

Week 6 Weigh In and shopping trip

2008-09-22T11:46:00.004+01:00

When you work a 6 day week it is just not right to get up on a Sunday before 10am but for some stupid reason we booked our weigh in with our CDC for 9. Needless to say after saturday nights overindulgence we found it incredibly difficult to rise and shine and were a tad late! Despite the previously mentioned naughtiness we both lost 6 pounds this week hurrah! This means in total I have lost 3 stone 2.5 pounds and Kel has lost just 1 pound under 3 stone - in 6 weeks OMG so chuffed.

When we got home we decided to root out our old clothes that have been languishing in the garage since we moved house. Kel now has quite a few 'new' outfits but i just have 1 pair of trousers and a couple of tops that now fit. I also found a brand new pair of gorgeous pinstripe trews with the tags still on but they dont do up - yet! So inspired by our fabulous weight loss we went into Hanley to spend my birthday money and the best bit - i bought a top from a shop that wasn't Evans!! YIPEE at last - only us chubs can really understand how god damn awful it is to only be able to buy clothes from one shop and how liberating it is to finally be able to look elsewhere.

So this week we are both very determined and have promised to SS 100% and hopefully we can have a great big loss next. Its all so exciting lol!

Saturday Night Naughtiness!

2008-09-22T10:51:00.003+01:00

On Saturday night my birthday surprise was being taken by Kel to the Regent Theatre in Hanley to see the Blues Brothers Party

Even more of a surprise was that Mum and Lew met us there with pork pie hats and shades on lol! Even though I would have said its not my kind of music I had a brill time - boogied in the aisle and sang myself hoarse!

Afterwards Kel and I went to Pink and we were very naughty and had a couple of alcofrolic beverages oops! I had such a great time, the drag dj's were hilarious, the cabaret fantastic - sooo much better than in Crewe's pitiful excuse for a gay bar. But where oh where have all the gay boys gone? the club was mostly full of women gay, sr8 and curious lol and a few older gay men - very strange! The usual mix, especially in Crewe, is 90% young gay men on the pull and a 10% mix of Dorothy's old male and female friends and a couple of fag hags who just want to dance and not be bothered by men. Got to say Pink was brilliant fun, really lovely refreshing atmosphere and great dancing although just like every drag queen they refuse to play much R&B! They did however play Justin's Sexy Back - to which I did a Wade Robson inspired number LMAO

The evening was finished off with a small box of doner meat on the way home - naughty munch and kel!

Fab Fat Blog Find

2008-09-16T16:26:00.002+01:00

OOh just found a fab new blog - new to me not to blogland. In fact seeing the amount of readers its got i am probably the last person in the world to read it. This particular post and its comments are a great read. havent got time to go on need to get off the pc like an hour ago but had to make reference to it asap. might update later.

Week 5 Weigh In

2008-09-15T11:45:00.003+01:00

Well add a meal is over and its back to sole source this morning. Not worried about it at all and i haven't had to read my tirade to myself yet. This week we have really enjoyed eating but been restrained and not gone overboard and have both lost 2lb each. Since i was expecting to stay the same i am chuffed that we have lost anything. I am thinking of this journey in terms of blocks of 4 weeks with a week of aam before starting the next 4 week block. So our totals for this 1st block are

kel 2st 7lbs
Munch 2st 10.5 lbs

it might be a little unrealistic to expect the same losses for this next block of ss but another 2 stone in 5 weeks would be great - fingers crossed (and mouth shut lol)

True to form

2008-09-11T13:28:00.000+01:00

Wilson has just rang to say she has a prior engagement for tonight that she had forgotten about. Mind you she has let me know before I've bought food so i'll forgive her just this 'once ' lol. Actually I don't mind because it means i can go on the wii fit again lmao it's now letting me on it without making rude comments about me so last night I did an hour and a half! Dont get me wrong though - i had a couple of breaks throughout the night! I get REALLY sweaty doing the aerobic stuff pretty minging but i love it - especially the step plus one - I just need to beat Kels massive score!

Day 32

2008-09-11T12:18:00.003+01:00

Feel great today. I am putting Gillian Riley's advice to action re Times and Plans. So today i will have my second meal replacement - gorgeous chocolate shake - no sooner than 3pm. The plan for tonight is

To cook a lovely chicken dinner because our best mate Wilson is coming for tea
I will not eat while i'm cooking
I have planned to eat the chicken, cauliflower mash, courgettes, mangetout, red pepper and a small amount of pesto sauce.
I will not eat any of the potatoes or gravy and if i need them tasted i will ask Lew to do it for me.

I feel supremely confident that i will stick to the plan but i hope that i will feel an 'addictive desire' to snack while i'm cooking or eat the potatoes because then, according to Gillian that will give me a chance to retrain my brain.

Can't wait to see Wilsey, she's been in Oz for a month and we've really missed her. We call her our adopted teenage daughter, she's 29 but very naughty !!and treats us like her parents - coming for tea and bringing her laundry, trying to bend the truth when she's been extremely naughty and generally being very teenage. But we can't help but love her, she's pretty adorable really, like a naughty overexitable puppy! I can't even begin to imagine what exploits she will enthrall us with this evening!

"Eating Less" by Gillian Riley

2008-09-09T14:32:00.001+01:00

This books is great. I'm on chapter 3 already lol. It makes a fantastic point about weight loss not being the primary goal but rather to make controlling the addictive eating the priority. I have always said that even though I am more than double the body weight i should be, it is the horrible way my mind works, the binging, guilt, depression cycle, that i have always found worse than just being fat. Its not just that being fat makes me feel bad - its the awful things i do, like lying about and hiding food, stuffing food in when i dont even want it, taking out my nasty mood on my loved ones, and the headaches and tiredness that I really want to end.

What Gillian is saying is that if weight loss is your primary goal then not only are you not really dealing with the main issue - like an alcoholic making his red face the thing he wants to be rid of rather than the actual act of drinking excessively: but also that weight loss can be the very reason that you become demotivated and overeat.

I'll confess about what made me so miserable last night and made me want to eat everything in the house. As planned I went on the Wii fit as soon as I got home and it said that I was too heavy to use it! Don't laugh! Its like that joke about a fat person getting on the scales and them saying 1 at a time please!!
Now I had been on the wii that morning and the night before so I flew off the handle and was distraught about what weight i must have gained during the day. I suppose I was especially distressed because it was my first day on add a meal and I had chicken salad for lunch. So what did I do? I went on the scales and they said 4lb up from what I weighed the morning before. Did I allow myself to think that you always weigh more in the evening than in the morning and thats why we all know to be consistent in our weigh in times? No. Did I feel good about having managed to leave my lunch till the alloted time rather than wolf it down early? No. I became wracked with guilt about eating - and the solution? Eat some more! So i had some chicken and veg (thank God thats all we have) And the result - a thoroughly miserable munch all night and when i woke up this morning I felt exactly the same.
I guess what i'm trying to say - none to elequently, is that yesterday I fell into the trap of prioritising my weight loss and therefore when the loss was in question I lost the motivation for doing CD so I overate.
I dont yet know the answers - but I do know that i'm putting the scales away tonight and i'll be focusing on not overeating when we have tea tonight. And when I achieve that i'll be basking in some positive self-esteem for having achieved todays goal. I am going to try to go on the Wii again tonight even though this morning i was adamant i wasnt going anywhere near it ever again and if it is rude (lol) I will just understand that my weight fluctuates and i have nothing to feel bad about because i have followed CD to the letter today and I will be able to go on the Wii again soon. So there!

day 30 by Munch

2008-09-09T13:09:00.000+01:00

Feeling really down today. I know why and its a bloody stupid reason but all the same i am miserable and today would definitely be a binge day. But I am not binging and i have no inclination to because i know that it would make me even more depressed. So i could look on the positive side and see growth in that comment - but i cant coz i'm miz lol!

The post lady has just been and delivered my new book EATING LESS by Gillian Riley. Its all about food addiction and understanding and conquering it. In the first chapter it lists 21 characteristics of a food addict to see if this describes you - 20 of them describe me - omg!

this particular passage really hit home

' To varying degees addictions temporarily change the way we think and feel; they make us high, drugged, absentminded, or numbed in some way. Overeaters can go into a kind of daze while eating a perfectly ordinary meal. A food binge can create a state of intoxication or stupor not unlike that produced by alcohol.
This altered state of consciousness can create a buffer between us and our feelings which brings us a sense of comfort, and this is why we often turn to our addictions when we are unhappy or stressed. '

I'm amazed that someone can describe exactly my experience - bodes very well for this book helping me to get a grip on my food addiction. I might have cheered up a little bit ;)

Week 4 Weigh In and Start of AAM

2008-09-08T11:17:00.001+01:00

I feel amazing! This week i have lost 8lbs which means I have lost 2st 8.5lbs in a month! I LOVE CAMBRIDGE!! lol It also means that I have finally been allowed on the Wii Fit! I've been dying to go on for ages so went on last night and loved it. So much so that I went on again first thing this morning instead of having a lie-in!! sooo unlike me!

Kel's weight loss this week has been incredible - 10lbs !! I'm so proud of her and she has quit smoking! 4 days now - and i wanted to be her inspiration for stopping lmao - its totally the other way round - i'm still puffing away. I'm going to go the no smoking clinic and get champix like she has.

Its the first day of Add a Meal (aam) today - hurray cant wait !! We are having a chicken salad with artichokes and roasted red peppers as well as the usual salad leaves and cucumber. I have made a dressing by watering down some mayo and adding a small amount of pesto - it has fat content obviously but no carbs so should be fine for staying in ketosis. I made it all last night so that we can have it for lunch today coz Kel working late tonight. I Will make a shake 'muffin' for supper when she gets in.

I am totally clock watching waiting for lunch time! Just goes to show that even with a month in 'rehab' the minute I am allowed food my food addict nature kicks in! I am determined not to eat it before 12 though - I will not give in to my addictive desire ( phrase I've picked up from minimins.com lol). So i'm distracting myself with drinking water and posting this blog and oh yeah - doing some work lol.

Back in the saddle

2008-09-05T10:12:00.003+01:00

Well i cant believe it I had done so well! Last night I ate a chocolate from a tin of roses someone had left at work. I didnt even want one, didnt even think about. I have been craving sausage rolls, pork pies, cheese on toast, pizza but did i blow my diet for something worthwhile NO for a measley square of dairy milk when i havent even missed chocolate. This just shows me what an addict I am I wasnt hungry it was just there. I really wanted to lose 5lb this week and then it would be 2 stone in a month and i'm really concerned now that I wont. Whats weird though is that its not like other diets, normally before now if i'd messed up on a diet I would just think oh sod it now ive ruined it and eat away but on this i just want to get back in the saddle. I dont know whether it is because I'm getting so much support from munch of course but also lew my dad her mum and people at work that i dont want to let anyone down. Maybe its because i have a goal now cos of the wedding! Actually what i think it is, is because i believe in this diet i believe it can work and quickly and ive never felt that way before.
Anyway fingers crossed for sunday weigh in i'll let you know.
Love kel
PS quit smoking today too aaagggghhhhh

News Just In

2008-09-04T23:38:00.002+01:00

Kel has just come home off a late shift and informed me she has eaten a mini dairy milk! OMG OMG OMG!!!! Since she doesnt come on the internet much i am going to force her to look at minimins.com for some help and motivation. I might give her some support and some of my superior wisedom - i haven't yet decided lmao. Naughty naughty kel

BY Munch FOR Munch!

2008-09-04T14:53:00.003+01:00

Feeling much more positive today. Been doing lots of reading on minimins.com about food addition. Have been panicking about next week when we will add an evening meal - A LOT. Feel slightly calmer about it now. My fear is that next weeks weigh in if we do lose an acceptable amount of weight then i will feel like what is the point of sole sourcing if we can eat and still lose weight. But just had a bit of a revelation so writing it down to read next week in case thats exactly how i feel!

To Munch - you are sole sourcing because you have an unhealthy addiction to food and by removing it for 4 weeks at a time you effectively go into rehab where you can have a break from the addiction and will over time unlearn your addictive behaviour and develop a new positive relationship with food. If you were able to eat an evening meal continually and lose weight you would have done it by now - think of all the other diets you have done. Of course you lose weight when you stick to the plan but for you longer than a week is difficult still because eventually you will be faced with a choice of food and you will choose something that will trigger a binge and you will be off the weight loss path. Eventually you will be able to eat like a 'normal' person but before that you have too steps to make - lose all your excess weight and relearn a healthy relationship with food.
Try to remember how relieved you were to discover this diet and how perfect you thought it was for you. You have always said that being in control of food was as important to you if not more as being a healthy weight.
Now get back to sole source!

Day 23 - Worst day so far

2008-09-03T12:54:00.004+01:00

Yesterday - day 23 was the hardest by far. Don't really know why but every little thing wound me up and stressed me out. I felt ill, headachey and bloody miserable. In the past I have always soothed my emotions with food and the fact that i couldn't/wouldn't made me furious and vile. I was so horrible to Mum, Kel and Lew - sorry guys xx

I kept thinking about the food we can have next week on Add A Meal week and I wanted it there and then. I wasn't hungry at all - it was definitely the kind of binge crisis I have always had. Before the Cambridge diet the minute i got to work I would have ordered a sausage and egg baguette, a large tuna and mayo bap and a chocolate bar from the delivery guy and eaten it all straight away even though i would have told myself that the bap was for lunch. Then i would have spent the rest of the work day looking forward to popping to Tesco on the way home where i would have bought a luxury bag of 4 big choc chip cookies and eaten them all before i got home ( a 15 min drive) I might even have bought chocolate for me and kel to have after our dinner which if i was feeling as bad as i did yesterday would have been a big takeaway.

Glad i have just written that all down - makes the fact that i put some mushrooms in the Cambridge soup i had last night seem positively restrained lol

I really need to get my head round the addiction to food. I am worried that I will lose this weight but not deal with why i overeat and then either put it back on or more likely be forever miserable trying to maintain. As important as losing weight is i really feel that changing my relationship with food is equally important for me. I HATE the fact that it controls me.

If you do LighterLife you get counselling as well as food replacement packs but there is no way i can afford that for two of us. I love the Cambridge and it is definitely working. But I do think I need to work on my mind as much as my body. Don't quite know how yet - Mum has suggested talking to my GP about getting a counsellor. It really p's me off that if my addiction was drugs or alcohol there would be loads of support services.

Mum has really helped today - i was explaining (trying to apologise for my shocking behaviour yesterday!!) saying that i am just used to making myself feel better with food and mum pointed out that actually after that immediate rush i would have felt worse than i did before - and she is dead right but i couldn't see that yesterday.

If anyone has any helpful suggestions please let me know x

The Dreaded Hospital Visit

2008-09-02T11:20:00.005+01:00

I've finally been to the hospital for my check up with the neurologist. Last year I was seriously ill in hospital with Benign Intracranial Hypertension . I was in hospital for 2 weeks and after a lumbar puncture (the most awful experience ever) drained all the excess spinal fluid away I was allowed home. I was put on tablets which would presumably be for life - as they have no idea why BIH starts or stops. I was obviously told to lose weight and stop smoking and I took the advice and felt the episode was a huge warning of what could happen if I carried on overeating.

Unfortunately when I started the Cambridge diet I was told that I couldn't take my tablets anymore because they are a diuretic. I wasn't too worried because for a couple of months I had had no BIH symptoms, just side effects from he tablets and I kept forgetting to take them which had had no ill effect.

So yesterday I went for the first check up with the neurologist and I was petrified! That whole time last year was traumatic and it took me a long time to recover - not just physically but mentally and emotionally. I was convinced he was going to say I was ill and he'd need to admit me or at the very least say I was stupid for coming off the tablets and make me start taking them again and therefore stop Cambridge. But he said I was absolutely fine!!! He was pleased with my weight loss and not bothered about the tablets at all. It such a huge relief - yee hah I'm a happy bunny today!!

What Buffet?

2008-09-01T10:24:00.001+01:00

We survived fine! The smell of the food was quite powerful and other people are quite odd about you not eating - either feeling sorry for you or taking the mick and waving food at you - but hey that's family lol. Mini munch as ever won most supportive son - there's no way you could cheat anywhere in his proximity. Even when we make shakes into cookies he quizzes us on whether we are allowed them. Slightly irritating but very well meant bless him.

So after our complete abstinence at the buffet we came home and had a bit of broccoli and 4 mushrooms in our veg soup and a tetra-pak ice cream - yummy. Since we have been losing weight fine we are going to have a very small amount of veg either Sat or Sun night every week unless we stop losing weight at the same rate we are now. Having the veg is giving us something different to eat to alleviate the mind numbing boredom of soup, and a mini goal to get through the week and it also kind of makes you feel a bit 'normal' ! It isn't making us crave other food and isn't making us hungry so I am happy to do it at the moment but if anything changes or the amount creeps up then I will put a stop to it because we are so committed to our weight loss.

Week 3 Weigh In

2008-09-01T10:11:00.001+01:00

The official Cambridge Diet Weigh in results are

total weight loss to date

Kel - 1 stone 9 pounds
Munch - 2 stone 1/2 pound

Woo Hoo we're both very very happy!
My BMI is now 49 which means I've met my first goal !!

Weirdly we worked out the percentage of fat lost of our total amount to lose and we have both lost the exact same - 7.9%

Day 20 - One More Sleep!

2008-08-30T14:31:00.003+01:00

Very excited, only 1 more sleep till 1st proper CDC weigh in hurrah! Felt brill just typing that title - day 20 woo hoo made it this far!

this week we have got a little bored of the soups (Kel has got very bored!) so we had 2 tablespoons of greens with it the other night - it was a nice change but can't say it was very exciting. I have also made the oriental chilli soup into crisps and chocolate shake into cookies as per the minimins.com forum which Anisah recommended. They went down a treat as did the chocolate tetra ice-cream. Instead of getting the usual 7 shakes and 14 soups think i will get 14 shakes - 7 of which will be chocolate ones!

I keep watching cookery programs! its a bit bizarre because you'd think when you don't eat food that Nigella is the last person you'd want to see but I cant help it! its like a guilty pleasure! We love chatting about what food we are going to eat when we are at goal and its all lovely interesting and healthy food - we definitely wont be going back to the chips with everything lifestyle. Its really exciting - well it is for us Cambridge diet obsessed sado's lol

I am still losing a pound a day according to our scales and Kels pattern is still sts for a few days then lose loads. We can really tell from our clothes now so after we have been weighed tomorrow we are going shopping for some new trousers. When kel sneezes in her work trousers she has a tendency to moon the customers!

that's all folks - will post tomorrows weigh in as soon as I can - probably Monday. Oh and I'll let you know how tomorrows posh christening goes - or rather how lovely the buffet looked and amazingly we didn't have a morsel - PMA or what?!

day 17

2008-08-27T10:07:00.002+01:00

Its all going well for both of us although we get quite hungry at night we are coping and drinking our water to get us through it. Just had yummy fruits of the forest shake for breakfast. Weighed myself this morning and its the first time I've stayed the same but considering its TOTM I'm really happy because i would have normally gained a couple of pounds. Also not had any of the related symptoms - no nasty PMT so neither kel nor mini munch are cowering in a corner! Love the Cambridge diet!!

week 2 BMI

2008-08-25T15:06:00.003+01:00

Just redone my BMI and its down from 53.5 to 51.24 which means not to far off my 1st goal of 50. Cant wait till Sunday coz it'll be week 3 weigh in but the first proper weigh in since we started because our CDC is back of her hols. Very excited and its keeping me motivated! May have lost more on her scales because ours are rubbish and I didn't start using them till either day 2 or 3.
exciting stuff lol

end of week 2 weigh in

2008-08-25T14:21:00.003+01:00

well according to our scales this weeks weight loss is

Kel 5lbs
Munch 8lbs

which means Cambridge diet total weight loss so far

Kel 19lbs
Munch 18lbs

day 14 - exhausting trip to the seaside

2008-08-25T12:11:00.006+01:00

What an amazing day we had! We've decided that after much debate we will get married in 2010 - seems long enough away to be able to save and be at a happy weight - there is no way I'm getting married fat! Since we are a non traditional family we wanted to do something a bit different and anyway we aren't allowed to get married in a church - (I'm not going to get started on how I feel about that) Last year we checked out Chester Zoo as a wedding venue and it was amazing for the ceremony and the reception but just way out of our budget unless something drastic happens like the lotto or Mum meeting a millionaire. Since Kel's favourite place in the world is Anglesey we went on a day trip checking out all the locations licensed for civil partnership on the island.

Plas Newydd came out on top by a mile. Its only available for the ceremony which means finding somewhere else for the reception but its gorgeous and was Kels late Mum's favourite spot on the island. We went everywhere and except for Treysgawen Hall everywhere else is just a normal hotel/restaurant which could be anywhere really.

As we were walking out of the last hotel a car pulled up to us and beeped - it was our closest friend M who lives in London and 2 other really good mates LB and N - incredible! No-one even knew we were on Anglesey - it was just a total extremely happy co-incidence! They we're going to N's house which happened to be right next door the hotel we were standing outside of to eat a chippy takeaway. By this point we'd been on our day out for about 10 hours with just a breakfast shake in Plas Newydd car park so we bravely sat and 'enjoyed' our second shake while they polished off fish chips and peas lol I've got to say I was mightily impressed with myself for not having any problem at all.

On the way home though we both started to have a headache and feel a bit queasy. We had only had 2 shakes and about 2 litres of water all day. We stopped off at a services along the way coz Kel was bushed - hardly surprising since she'd been driving all the way there, all round Anglesey and all the way back home! We had a black coffee each and looked through the food menu imaging what kind of food we will eat when were out of 'rehab'! It wasn't as torturous as it sounds - I really enjoyed it actually!

We finally made it home feeling really exhausted and lightheaded. Its by far the busiest day we have had whilst on the Cambridge diet and its difficult to 'eat' when you need to when you are on the road. It would have been lovely when we stopped off at the services to have been able to have a soup but I don't know how you would do that. Anyway we polished off our soup immediately then stayed up for far too long discussing how the hell you work out who goes up the aisle and in what order when there are 2 brides, only 1 parent each and a son between them!!! mind boggling stuff!

Day 11

2008-08-21T17:28:00.002+01:00

Last couple of days have been a struggle for both of us. Think we are in agreement that the cambridge diet is much easier while you're at work and busy even if in kels case there is temptation its much easier to stay strong in front of other people. But at home I definitely feel weaker and we both are quite whingey and moany (sorry Kel!!) Lewis's pizza last night was complete torture - deep pan pepperoni mmmm. So i cut a small disc of pepperoni in half so we could both have a tiny something and we chewed that little morsel to death. It was amazingly delicious! I tasted it much more than would have in the past.
I'm really struggling with quitting smoking. I have started everyday as a fresh day being a non-smoker but everytime I've had a visit from a smoker I've pinched a fag. and last night had a few of kel's. Ok so I've only had a bout 10 in 4 days but still its not quitting is it! And right now i really really want one and its making me VERY GRUMPY. Not a very pleasant or effective saleswoman today! In fact customers beware especially if I can smell smoke on you!
on a positive note according to my scales i have lost a pound a day the last few days so thats good.
Have been reading lots of good cambridge diet blogs which are keeping me motivated. The latest one i have found http://cambridge-diet-08.blogspot.com
the writer has been drinking 5l of water on average a day so think I'll try upping mine and see what happens - i probably have about 3l tops. Its worth a try!

Day 8 Weight loss so far

2008-08-18T11:18:00.003+01:00

Its day 8 in the Cambridge diet house and our weight loss according to our scales is

Kel 14lbs
Munch 10lbs

can't wait for our CDC to come back off her holibobs and weigh us properly because both of us are trying not to get too excited because we just dont trust our dodgy scales!

days 6 & 7

2008-08-18T10:30:00.004+01:00

Wow this weekend has been really difficult both food and fag wise.

Saturday daytime was easy because both so busy at work.

Saturday night was just terrible Kel was desperate for food and I was really craving cigarettes and it was impossible to do anything to support each other so we argued! Guess I could have predicted it really - it was bound to happen at some point. The lesson learned is that visualisation of yummy food and imagining eating it only works for me - definitely not Kel!!

Sunday day we stayed in bed as long as poss so as not to crave our usual weekly treat of cooked breakfast.

Went to the replacement Cambridge Diet Counsellor (CDC) - ours is on holiday for 2 weeks. Not impressed. Don't get me wrong, she was a lovely lady and it was a lovely setting but not a good experience. While we were there I wasn't really as bothered but the more I've thought about it the more awful i think it was.

After asking us the normal how have you got on questions she then asked what would we be doing for the second week! Hardly motivating us to do SS is it! Felt like saying 'well I think I'll be mostly having quarter pounders with cheese'. Then when we said we'd be doing Sole Source for at least 4 weeks then maybe Add A Meal on week 5 then back to SS etc she seemed genuinely surprised and went on about how not many people manage it! Honest to God what a let down.

Things went from bad to worse really when we couldn't find out how much we'd lost this week because (a) the scales weren't the same as our usual CDC's and (b) they weren't good enough to weigh my weight. You can just imagine how good I'm feeling about that right now - writing it is making me cringe.
To top it all off she advised us that if we really really struggle we could have a bowl of vegetables with the veg soup on top (not so bad) but then she took some crackerbread out of her cupboard and said you can try these they're only 19 calories and lovely with low fat phili!!!!!! OMG !!

To my mind she can't understand how this diet works - I said to her that that surely would bring us out of ketosis and she said 'oh yes' like that was ok! My basic understanding of why this diet works and the main reason I have been able to abstain is that ketosis burns fat and has the side effect of stopping the worst of the hunger pains and that if you eat carbs or too many of any calorie then you will come out of ketosis - start storing water, putting on weight and be incredibly hungry!

I can understand a CDC advising you that if you are losing the will to live (lol) then go ahead and eat veg or lean protein rather than fall of the wagon. But to advise us to have crackerbread - nasty cardboard crap thats all carbs - its just wrong surely. God we've got to go back next week to get our provisions. Mind you she has got an adorable dog for me to play with!

The rest of the afternoon was rubbish for me coz I was bored being on my own - lew in Anglesey and kel at work. I used to love having the house to myself. It was a really rare treat that i would long for and savour. Not so anymore. I was really lonely, bored and de-motivated. Thinking about that makes me feel weird. I have been so independent as a single Mum for all these years and now whats going on? lol co-dependency? argh lmao I think I'm loving it really!! very strange!

I've done something stupid. On the way to pick Lew up I went into a shop and bought 10 fags. Its not as though i was with smokers and caved or was particularly stressed - i just don't understand why for once i couldn't talk myself out of it. I knew exactly what I was doing - i didn't need to be in the shop for anything.
I don't want to tell Kel because i want to show her its easy!! lmao and I can't tell Mum because she's just given up as well and don't want to encourage her fall off the wagon. Just spoken to her on the phone - lied, so now feel doubly shitty.

Kel came home off the late shift and immediately confessed to having had a small piece of chicken!!! So i confessed my sin and we had a bit of a laugh, cry, cuddle moment!

Now that I'm writing this I'm thinking that possibly the experience at the CDC effected our ability to abstain. But don't want to make excuses its no-ones fault but our own. The only thing we can do now is climb back on the horse! Tomorrows another day.

Day 5 - by Munch

2008-08-15T22:00:00.003+01:00

Yeeehaaa this is what the forums and blogs are all talking about and they are dead right ketosis is fantastic! Finally feel amazing and not hungry cant believe I haven't eaten a single morsel of food for 5 whole days. its incredibly uplifting being so proud of yourself! Really really proud of Kel too coz never known her to be so motivated and positive thinking and she has decided to see a stop smoking clinic on Tuesday hurrah!

Tonight I've had so much energy - bloomin heck! Don't feel like me at all! I've driven up to Manchester to drop Lew off with Chris coz they going to Anglesey this weekend (we are very jealous of course although our stuff hasn't quite dried from last weekends hilarious camping catastrophe!)
Drove back the long way with Scott Mills floor fillers blaring dancing away having a great time then when finally got home ran in and got DVD and went straight to blockbusters then Tesco to get more loo roll (coz we never stop weeing) and when i got home again must have been about 8pm- I mowed the lawn! Honestly - me mowing the lawn bet the neighbours had a laugh! then went on a tidying spree and finally did that huge pile of ironing! wow love love love this diet.

Only slightly negative thing- on the cambridge diet the choice seems to be either drink the recommended amount of water and spend every 10 mins on the loo or don't and spend ages on the loo unsuccessfully trying to poo!!! Either way on this diet you get to see your bathroom far too often.

Day 4 - by Kel

2008-08-14T19:30:00.003+01:00

Woke up feeling great and stayed that way all day. Its tough at work what with the sausage butties and lovely stuff on the delivery but I coped ok. Had chocolate shake for lunch - its to die for! mmmm think it'll be 21 choc shakes from the CDC!

major achievement tonight - I'm cooking Lew's tea! I felt like I was neglecting him making him do his own micro meals so making him oven chicken and chips. And I'm really ok with it which i think is incredible! Bloody starving tho coz i can smell it!

todays craving - Bacon Baps with brown sauce.

Day 4 - by Munch

2008-08-14T16:00:00.003+01:00

I feel rubbish and kel feels great - no fair! The cambridge diet feels really difficult today. It's not that I'm particularly hungry or anything just feel a bit down and listless. Might be coz i was expecting this Ketosis euphoria I've been reading about and I don't feel like that at all. tested wee and i am in ketosis so nothing to worry about. cant even be bothered to blog :(

Effects of not smoking

2008-08-14T10:35:00.003+01:00

today is my 4th day not smoking. Feel really pleased with myself and have found it really easy - I havent been around anyone smoking yet tho - kel has been going outside. Starting to get the bad physical effects now - coughing up the crap on my lungs. but i know its only temporary because i've given up for long long periods before so i know that the good bit is round the corner - no more breathlessness, no more heavy leg feeling and tons more energy. Just got to get thru the phlegm stage!

Day 3 - by Kel

2008-08-13T20:00:00.001+01:00

Really struggled today and omg might as well have spent the day on the loo. Its ridiculous going for a wee every 10 mins! Todays craving - Cheese pizza

Mini Munch is so funny

2008-08-13T15:09:00.002+01:00

Kel is off work so Lew at home watching tv. He has some good taste from me - Heroes but has been corrupted by Kel - big Brother. Kel has just rung to say he has decided that Hiro and Kat should date! lmao

lew's dialogue :

Hiro "Flying Man"
Kat "hiwarious!"

Munch Goals

2008-08-13T13:44:00.007+01:00

This is what I am going to achieve by stopping smoking and doing the Cambridge diet. I was feeling a bit demotivated so thought it might help to have a clear list of my goals and stages of weight loss.

The reason I will continue to be a non-smoker and Cambridge dieter is:

To have enough energy, to be able to breathe well enough and to have a small enough body to be able to do anything I want and enjoy life as much as possible.
To learn - to ride a horse, a martial art, yoga.
To be in control of food rather than it control me.
To understand my addictions and have strength to overcome them
to take Kel and Lew to Alton Towers and us all be able to go on what we want.
To go swimming with Lew more often.
To inspire/motivate/empower Kel to quit smoking and so reduce the risk of Lew starting to smoke.
To be able to buy cheap clothes because can buy them in any shop
To never start smoking ever again.

Step by Step Goals

To reduce BMI to 50 (done 25/08/08), 45 (done 28/9/08), 40, 35, 30 then 25 then re-assess target weight goal
To be under 20 stone, under 15 stone, target weight

Day 3 - by Munch

2008-08-13T12:31:00.005+01:00

Last night got up for a wee 3 times - so did Kel but not at the same times and we have now run out of loo roll which is hardly surprising lol!

Woke up famished but managed to stay in bed for as long as poss so didn't have to have 1st shake till got to work at 9.30. Had fruits of the forest which was yummy - much better than i expected, in fact reminded me of the taste of a cherry flavoured corner yoghurt. I've got to say I'm really impressed with all the 'meals' I've had so far the have all tasted lovely.

couldn't wait past 12 for my lunch shake just too hungry - hope it does get easier like other cambridge blogs have said. Have had a bit of headache today but nothing to moan about - actually I'm really surprised because when i read other blogs and did research before starting the diet i expected to have horrendous headaches because I'm prone to them anyway.

Need to get some ketostix and see if I'm in ketosis. That would help in the motivation department.

I have signed up for Mike's motivational emails and have looked at the archive. The article Strategy for success has got me thinking so next post from me will be about my goals and in a positive, way forward, type of thinking.

Day 2 by Kel

2008-08-12T20:47:00.002+01:00

OH MY GOD I want food.
I can't stop thinking about it.
It's so hard working with food and not being able to eat it.
For the first time every in the delivery today we got my
fav cheese - port salut - and on offer is some garlic mush pate
OMG can you imagine being left in a room with just them and a french stick?
Coz I can!

And today we had visitors at our store so a buffet was laid on with
my fav foods and it was just pure torture.

I cant believe I've had so much self-control - I've shocked myself!

I'll write more later - if I haven't fainted from hunger!

update- tonight I've weed 8 times in 2 hours!

10 pm -I'm feeling much better now - not completely starving just manageable mild hunger. Munch on the other hand is about to gnaw at my arm - and her tummy is rumbling really loud!! Poor Love! trying to convince her that hunger is a good sign and just to drink more water lol not cheering her up but I know she'll be fine really!

Day 2 - by Munch

2008-08-12T17:16:00.003+01:00

Last night was a pain, waking up every couple of hours desperate for a wee. Dreamt I'd eaten food and broken the diet so woke up feeling crushed slowly realised it was a dream - what a knob!

Today had Vanilla shake with coffee - warm like a Latte - was OK.

lunch had toffee walnut shake - yummy. defo having that one again.

Bit personal and gross but had 3 poos today - got progressively looser and greenish black! sorry if that TMI!!

still at work so not had tea - looking forward to it coz I'm ravenous lol
been fine with the smoking - or lack off! feel really strong about it only have the occasional moments where i think I'll go have a fag then remember but i tell myself "you don't smoke - why on earth do you want a cigarette? how weird!" Its working so far lol!

Day 1 - by Munch

2008-08-11T23:00:00.002+01:00

Bl**dy hell can't believe I'm doing this diet - its drastic and difficult! I'm really proud I'm committing to it though - 1 day done quite a lot more to go!

Had cappuccino shake warm with coffee for breakfast, butterscotch for lunch and oriental soup for tea. Got to say very impressed with the flavours - all really nice. Prefer the soup to the shakes so far so next week might have soups for lunches.

Didn't feel full after any of the 'meals' hope like other people have said that I will after a couple of days. Drank loads of very very diluted cordial as agreed with CDC which did take the edge off the hunger. In total think i had about 3.5 litres.

Managed okay not smoking - had hunger pangs and cravings for food more than fags. Probably because i know i can give up smoking - I've done brilliantly before - this time need to not start again lol! That's how i'm thinking about it - as of now i am a non-smoker - why would a 34 year old obese woman decide to start smoking? That's what i need to keep asking myself if i feel desperate for a fag. lmao - check out Alan Carr.

Mood wise I was okay most of the day - got a bit nasty later on in the evening because felt drained but cheered up when Kel came home from work.

Day 1 - by Kel

2008-08-11T22:00:00.001+01:00

Well, we got weighed last week when saw CDC and then this weekend was meant to be our final blowout - and it was! Pretty much ate all my fav food and felt huge last night so thought we'd better get weighed again or else we wouldn't notice much difference next week. So glad I did - I've put half a sodding stone on! in a week! how crazy is that!

Anyway, So I've done day 1 - and it was ok! Started really positive with my boss being really supportive. Had Cappuccino at 9.30am and it was really thick and filling but by 12 i was bloody starving. But I put off lunch for as long as poss coz i knew with work i wouldn't get to have last 'meal' till 9ish. I managed till 2pm and then kept full with plenty of water - haven't weed so much in all my life.

Well its gone 9pm and I've just had my chilli soup - it was gorgeous.

I've managed a day on a diet without cheating! HURRAH!!

I felt it easy not to cheat - when you're on a 'normal' diet and you are eating its easy to fail by saying you'll be good and have a jacket potato but then smothering it in butter or looking at yoghurts in the shop and seeing the pork pie and somehow that's what you've got - (ooh can you tell I'm hungry)
But CD takes food out of the equation - I'm not tempted by naughty food because I simply don't eat food!

I have had some side effects already - too much weeing! headaches and tiredness. Also I've had more black coffee than normal so feel a bit hyper but tired - weird!

I'm really hungry and its only 10pm but think I'm gonna persuade Munch its bed time!

Back in Blighty!

2008-08-10T23:00:00.003+01:00

rundown of Lew's 12Th Birthday Anglesey Camping Holiday

Thursday night - stopped on way to have a subway meatball marinara because we'd always wanted one and this would be our last chance!! OMG sooo delicious. Arrived Moelfre put tent up - got a bit wet but not too bad. I love camping - love our king size airbed and the fresh air. Love sitting outside the tent on posh plastic chairs and drinking wine.

Friday - visited Penrhyn castle Kel's fav place - lew and I loved it. Best Bits - the audio tour, the Folly by the pet cemetery, the bog garden and the afternoon cream tea! Later went to benllech beach had doughnuts and watched lew throw himself in and out of the sea - it looked freezing! Had fish and chips at the tent - perfect!

Saturday - OMG what happened to the weather?? It was like camping from hell - mad mad wind blew the tent in on itself and lashed rain everywhere. Tried to stay inside the tent holding up the sides (hilarious) but gave up because getting drenched so sat in car watching all hell break loose on campsite! By mid morning we realised that no way could any of the beds dry off in time even if we could put up with the top of the tent blowing in right down to the floor! Put the tents down in the p*ssing down rain - never been wetter in our lives! We couldn't stop laughing - Kel couldn't see at all - glasses no good in sooo much rain! Our motto (stolen from Run's House) Team work makes the dream work has never been truer - how we don't fall out and argue is amazing lol

Drove off Anglesey hoping weather might be a bit better - we were wrong! Found a B&B in Caenarvon for £30 for a family room for the night. Checked out Dinas Dinlle beach where Kel used to stay when very young and on way back had stunning home made burgers in an expensive pub!

Money becoming scarce!

Sunday - Lew opened all his pressies - very happy boy! Had amazing cooked breakfast then had lovely time at Caernarfon Castle - lew enjoyed himself once he was persuaded to be a bit independent. I Got very scared being so huge inside very tiny narrow stairwells and terrified coming back down the turrets. Thought about coming back next year when been on the Cambridge diet would be a good idea - would probably notice a big difference in experience. Went back to the Island in the afternoon so Lew could spend more time on the beach - fab day for all of us very chilled. Made our way home around 6 but decided to use the old historic route through the mountains instead of the boring A55 .

Got home quite late - had very last Chinese meal and last fag before life changes tomorrow! feeling very nervous as well as excited! Bring it on!
The good life here we come!

Happy Campers

2008-08-07T12:39:00.005+01:00

Hooray - we're off on our holibobs tonight! 3 days in Moelfre in Anglesey in a tent! Not exactly a luxury hols but hey beggars cant be choosers. The weather is gorgeous today so fingers crossed it stays like this coz don't fancy putting the tent up in the rain - its bad enough we cant leave till 5 since I'm working. Its quite good though really - Kel has had the week off which means she's been at home doing all the organising and packing while my contribution so far is to remind her to pack my phone charger!

I'm taking 3 books with me - the Alan Carr Stop Smoking book , Amanda Hamilton/ Sandy Newbigging Life Changing Weightloss and a cheapy crime novel from Asda.

My intention is to stop smoking and start the Cambridge Diet on Monday when we come back home! Talk about aiming high! So next week i'll have post holiday blues, and nicotine and sugar withdrawal - mmmm i'm going to be such a lovely person - poor poor Kel and Lew!

Excited to Start

2008-08-04T17:00:00.000+01:00

So Kel and I have decided we are definitely going to do the Cambridge diet! We have done tons of research and been to see the Cambridge Counsellor and bought the stuff so now we just have to start. We have decided on Monday 11th August 2008 - not for any other reason than we want to start asap but we are away this weekend camping for Lew's birthday. Kel wants to drink wine sitting by the tent watching the sun set over the sea - how romantic! I just want to have my last fill of seaside junk food and the yummy doughnuts in benllech!

No More Munching

back on track 3rd time lucky

round 2 day 6

Round 2 day 4

Round 2 day 2

Ups and Downs

interesting article from the times online

good news - hurrah

control

Slippery slope

The Beach Hut in November

Week 13 Wi

week 12 wi

No More Munching

day 80! by munch

Discombobulated

AAAAHHHHHHHH

Shrink Yourself

More reading on Food Addiction

Little Monster

AAMW

68 days done and 68 days to xmas

the benefits of blog addiction

Lesson 3 answers from kel x

q's to lesson 3 - munches answers

USA A OK!

Emotional Eating 101 pt 4 of 4

Emotional Eating 101 pt 3 of 4

Emotional Eating 101 pt 2 of 4

Emotional Eating 101 pt 1 of 4

can't think of a title for this post

not quite

day 60!

manflu

3 stone by xmas

A whole stone!

While Kel's away Munch will ?

Measuring success by the scales

week 7 wi - HOLY SH!TE

day 48

Week 6 Weigh In and shopping trip

Saturday Night Naughtiness!

Fab Fat Blog Find

Week 5 Weigh In

True to form

Day 32

"Eating Less" by Gillian Riley

day 30 by Munch

Week 4 Weigh In and Start of AAM

Back in the saddle

News Just In

BY Munch FOR Munch!

Day 23 - Worst day so far

The Dreaded Hospital Visit

What Buffet?

Week 3 Weigh In

Day 20 - One More Sleep!

day 17

week 2 BMI

end of week 2 weigh in

day 14 - exhausting trip to the seaside

Day 11

Day 8 Weight loss so far

days 6 & 7

Day 5 - by Munch

Day 4 - by Kel

Day 4 - by Munch

Effects of not smoking

Day 3 - by Kel

Mini Munch is so funny

Munch Goals

Day 3 - by Munch

Day 2 by Kel

Day 2 - by Munch

Day 1 - by Munch

Day 1 - by Kel

Back in Blighty!

Happy Campers

Excited to Start