Showing posts with label gillian riley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gillian riley. Show all posts

Thursday, 11 September 2008

Day 32

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

  1. To cook a lovely chicken dinner because our best mate Wilson is coming for tea
  2. I will not eat while i'm cooking
  3. I have planned to eat the chicken, cauliflower mash, courgettes, mangetout, red pepper and a small amount of pesto sauce.
  4. 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!

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

"Eating Less" by Gillian Riley

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

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 ;)