I have officially deemed myself a Weight Watchers dropout. Not that I don’t like the program or think that it works. I do believe that it is one of the best systems for losing weight for many people – I’m just not one of them.
As you may know, you get a certain amount of points allowed per day based on your current weight. Every food is worth so many points. The points values are calculated based on calories, fat and fiber. So, two items with the same amount of calories, the one with less fiber would have more points. So, theoretically if you eat “good” foods such as fruits and vegetables, you will have plenty of points to make it through the day. So, while it’s true that you can eat what you want when you want it, it isn’t entirely true because sometimes you are out of points when the thing you really want will cost you a lot of points.
My problem is that I am an emotional eater. I eat when I’m bored, anxious, sad, nervous, angry, pretty much anything except hungry…oh, yeah and when I’m hungry too! The other issue for me is that the minute something is deemed off-limits, then it’s all I can think about. I have dreams of it and want it with every fiber of my being. So, while technically WW allows you to have whatever you want (you just count the points), if you are out of points – YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!!!
Many years ago, I lost quite a bit of weight and the way I did it was to be VERY permissive with myself. I was actually working for a psychotherapist who specialized in eating disorders and this was a method she employed with her compulsive eaters, AKA emotional eaters. I told myself I could have whatever I wanted. The deal was that there were a few ground rules…
1) Eat only when hungry – that’s physically hungry. For some of us it takes a while to figure this one out – we’ve never allowed ourselves to actually experience it
2) Stop when satisfied – NOT gorged to the max, just satisfied. A friend and weight loss coach once told me that she finds this point is when in the middle of a meal she sighs – that is her body’s indication that she is satisfied. I have used this one as well – simply because sometimes there is no other indication.
3) Eat with no distractions – thoroughly enjoy and focus on what you are eating. This means no TV, no eating in the car, no stressful conversations while eating, no reading while eating. Focus totally and completely on your food – on the taste and smell of it, the texture. Enjoy it to the fullest. This also makes it easier to determine when you are satisfied.
4) Eat only what you really want to eat. If you eat what you think you should eat, you will never really feel satisfied and then you will reach for it later and probably consume way more than you would have if you had just allowed yourself to have it to begin with.
Geneen Roth, in her book – When Food Is Love”, describes her first few weeks of eating only what she wanted. She ate chocolate chip cookies both baked and the raw dough and variations of each at every meal for about two weeks until she got to a point that she never thought she’d want to see a chocolate chip cookie again. Some of us have deprived ourselves for so long, that we want those things fearing we will never get to see them again. These first few weeks can be scary as our minds adjust to believing that we aren’t going to be deprived anymore.
Now, when we stop using food to cover up our emotions, we are still left with the emotions we have to deal with. There are many methods for doing this including therapy, journaling, meditating, screaming. The most interesting one is the one used by Paul McKenna in his book and TV show of the same name, “I Can Make You Thin”. It is EFT or the Emotional Freedom Technique which consists of a series of tapping motions that you make on various meridian points on your body in conjunction with stating appropriate affirmations. This actually works surprisingly well IF you can remember to do this when you’re in the middle of a binge.
Well, for what it’s worth, I’ve canceled my WW membership and re-read Geneen Roth’s books and am now starting down my path of dealing with the emotional eating rather than the weight. It probably means I’ll be blogging more so I can vent my emotions through my writing. Stay tuned!
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This is an excellent book for any artist – writer, painter, etc. One of the exercises she has you do id the Morning Pages. These are three pages that you write each morning and they can be total nonsense. The idea is that yo just keep writing for three pages. If you get stuck then you can just repeat the last thing you wrote over and over again or you can write “I don’t know what to write.” Anything. The idea is really just to do a mental dump so that your mind clears and is better able to keep it open for more creative ideas and endeavors. 
Daring To Be Me! 