How I cut down on calorie counting

A few people have asked how I managed to get calorie counting under control and stop it ruling my life. As I said in my earlier post, 'Numbers, numbers everywhere...', calorie counting still plays a bigger part in my life than I would like and I'm by no means 'clean' of that particular addiction. However, it is true that it doesn't rule me in the way it once did. I can't give any on-size-fits-all rules for getting calorie counting under control, but I will tell you a few things that helped for me.

1. I threw out my calorie-counting book. Physically seeing that thing in the bin was very cathartic and symbolic for me. It also meant I destroyed what had amounted to a near perfect record of the calorie contents of most of the foods I eat. At first I was able to recall many of their calorific values from memory, but eventually, without my 'calorie Bible' to peak in, I forgot most of them.

2. I stopped writing down the calorific values of the foods I ate (even when I did know the values in my head or from looking at the packet). It's much harder to keep track of how many calories you consume without a written record. At first this was scary, but over time it was liberating not to be able to calculate each days total.

3. I made a conscious effort to eat things that I was unable to know the calorie content of. A few good examples are: dishes containing lots of ingredients that you've deliberately measured by guesstimation; meals cooked by friends or family; meals in restaurants (not the kind of restaurants that listr calories on the menu though, obviously); foods that don't list calorie contents on the packet or don't come in labled packets (eg. loose fruit and veg from a green grocers).

4. I threw out my food scales, so I couldn't weigh my food portions precisely, making it harder to know the number of calories in portion of food I ate.

5. I made a mental list of things I found MORE interesting than calories, and tried to think about those every time I got the urge to calorie count. A few things that worked for me were:  the plot of Desparate Housewives, the future of the world economy,which of my friends I'll invite to my wedding (if I ever have one), what I'll name my kids (if I ever have any), what the hell Brad and Angelina talk about when they're alond together etc.

6. I tried to focus on the nutritional benefits of food rather than the calories (e.g. how much iron it contains, how much calcium, fibre etc).

It took me a while to truly get my calorie obsession under control; it was ages until I could get off to sleep at night without suddenly panicing and trying to calculate the calories I'd dutifully not noted down that way. But eventually, by deliberately making it hard for me to accurately count calories, I got used to not really knowing how many I'd consumed. Now I just want to keep on not counting.

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year Everyone! I don't usually make resolutions but this year I have. Alot of them are to do with improving my health and my relationship with food and my body. Here they are:

1. To make choices based on how my body feels and what I know I need.
(I talking about emotional needs here, as well as health needs.) This means eating as much as I feel I need, when I feel I need it; it means not going to the gym when I'm exhausted; it means not choosing nutritionally void, low calorie foods when I could have something healthy and natural instead.


2. No more calorie counting!
This is kind of implied in the first one, but it's partciularly tricky to do in practice so I think it counts as a single resolution. 

3. STOP SMOKING.
Pretty self-explanatory.

4. Relaaaaaaxe
I talking mostly about cultivating a relaxed state of mind here: worrying less, obsessing less about what people think of me etc. I also mean having fun in a more relaxed way - I don't need to get crazy drunk to have a good night and I don't need to be the loudest one at the table all the time (two traps I often fall into!).

This is a tough thing to change, so I'm going to begin by following Gretchin Rubin's advice (http://www.happiness-project.com/) and 'acting how I want to feel' by not vocalising my anxiety, trying to keep my body language relaxed, and acting calm even when I'm not. On a practical level, I also want to make sure I'm fitting in plenty of actual 'down-time' in my life too, so its not all work-hard-play-hard.


5. Have a 'can-do' attitude
It worked for Obama......

6. Keep my space neat and organised.

6. Get a new job that's challenging and rewarding.
I like my current job, but I know I could be doing something better.

If I had to sum up my resolutions in one, it would be to Look After Myself Better, Body and Mind.

Fingers crossed I'll be successful! What are your resolutions?

I had a great New Years Eve yesterday night, with a small group of friends in a lovely little pub in my old university town. It was nice to get out of the city and enjoy a low-key night catching up with good friends, instead of the usual, over-priced NYE madness that you get in London. Let's hope it bodes well for the New Year ahead. I hope you all have a great 2011 too!

Numbers, numbers everywhere.......

Calorie counting - a lot of us do it. But we do it to varying degrees. For me, it became a kind of obsession for many years. At the peak of my calorie-counting-mania (around this time last year) I kept a detailed journal detailing the calorie content of every scrap of food or drink that passed my lips. It lasted for months. If I wasn't sure of the calorie content of something, I'd look it up online. When I started seeing a therapist, one of the things she asked me to do was calculate how much time I spent looking up nutritional content online. On bad days, it could be up to 4 hours! I would add up the total points for each day before bed time, but I'd regularly 'check-in' over the course of the day to make sure I wasn't going above my self-imposed 1,000 - 1,200 calorie limit. Even worse, I'd get competitive with myself. In the same way that marathon runners try to beat their own best time, I would try to beat my lowest calorie intake. 


Thanks to therapy and hard work I managed to get my behaviour under control. But 'under control' is not the same as 'gone'. 'Under control' is good enough for my therapist but not for me. I don't want calorie counting to play any part in my daily life and my food choices anymore, because I know its preventing me from making healthy food choices that respect what my body needs. But unfortunately my internal calorie calculator has not been totally switched off yet. When you've counted calories for as long as I have, it becomes second nature: something you do without thinking. I'll often be day-dreaming, letting my mind wander (last thing at night, for example, or when I'm walking to the shops) and suddenly realise I've accurately calculated my calorie consumption for that day. And, once I have that information, I find it very difficult not to start worrying or obsessing about it - deciding I've either eaten too little or too much based purely on the numbers, no matter how full or empty I feel, and then making 'action plans' to compensate later by eating more/less. Years of calorie counting also means that I now have a pretty good memory of the calorie content of most foods and I find it very hard not to make food choices based on that, even though I know that's not the healthiest way to be. I also find it difficult not to check the labels on food and not to let the numbers influence whether I eat it or not. I know that this is not a way to be healthy or happy, but how do you break the habit of a lifetime (almost)? If you have any hints and tips, or have your own calorie counting stories, please share them with me.........

The Whole Sausage

So, now that the festivities are over I have a loaded question to ask: did you enjoy Christmas? Like most people who have had or still have an ED, I have a love/hate relationship with the festive season. I love getting together with my family, I love crowding around the Christmas tree and I adore getting and giving presents. But ultimately there's no getting away from the fact that a lot of Christmas is all about food. Lots and lots of food. Rich food, creamy food, meaty food, stodgy food. Whereas most of the year you can get away with refusing something that's out of your comfort zone with the old 'I'm not hungry'/'I'm trying to be healthy'/'I just don't like that' excuses, at Christmas excuses cease to be socially acceptable. You just HAVE to eat. And this year, for the first time in years, I wanted to. I really did. I desperately wanted to be normal and enjoy Christmas in a normal way, but I just couldn't quite break the old habits. I've made some progress, but I'm still not able to completely let myself go and quit restricting for just one day. I ate a few chocolates on Christmas afternoon but ended up 'compensating' by  refusing canapes later; I said 'yes' to a chocolate biscuit on boxing day but then didn't allow myself a snack when I was hungry later; I took a sausage at Christmas dinner, but only ate half. Still, given that my last few Christmases have been well and truly sausage free, I guess half a sausage is kind of progress. Perhaps next year it'll be a whole one. Here's hoping! 

Health Food Bloggers

First of all I have to say sorry for being silent so long! I moved out of my parents house and into a flat and things just started getting a little manic. Anyway, the good news is I didn't use food to cope with all the change etc.


Anyhoo, I recently read a (now out of date) article on Marie Claire online about health food bloggers, entitled 'The Hunger Diaries': http://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/news/articles/health-blogger-controversy. The basic argument in the article is that these bloggers purport to advocate healthy eating and healthy living but, in fact, their detailed chronicalling of their exercise routines and eating habits is obsessional and borders on disordered. The article goes on to suggest that these bloggers might actually encourage eating disordered behaviour in others.


 I decided to check out some of the blogs myself to form my own opinion. Some of the blogs mentioned include katheats.com, carrotsncake.com, graduatemeghann.com, healthytippingpoint.com), hangrypants.com and  eatliverun.com/. Well, after checking them out I have to say: Marie Claire, I think you're wrong! I actually really liked the blogs, particulary  katheats.com and eatliverun.com/. The blogs seemed more like celebrations of food and eating, than the diaries of obsessional, punitive undereaters. Most of the bloggers described healthy, varied diets; if you follow them, you're just as likely to come across a recipe for rice pudding or peanut-butter cookies as a grilled chicken salads and there's not a diet food or weight watchers ready meal to be seen. It's true that many of the bloggers do have weight loss stories to tell, but all of the seem to have gone from being genuinely overweight to a healthy weight, none of them resorted to drastic diets and only one of them mentioned calorie counting. I suppose describing what you eat and cook each day could be described as obsessional, but then, surely you can be passionate about food without having an ED. I mean, has anyone every accused Gordom Ramsey of having an ED? I can't help thinking the fact that the bloggers are (1) woman and (2) young and attractive, has something to do with Marie Claire's spin on their blogs. No, I think these blogs are more about health and balance than obsession and starvation. If anything, I've learned something about the difference between 'normal' healthy eating and the kind of disordered-eating-marquerading-as-healthy that I engaged in in the later stages of my own disorder.


Finally, here's an extract from a post I read on eatliverun.com/. It's the author's explanation of why she chose to quit the gym:  'I realized the gym made me miserable and I really didn’t like running, cycling or the elliptical. [.....]So I quit the gym and really, quit working out all together.[...]Now, my exercise comes purely in the form of walking (hiking in the summer) and yoga. Sometimes days go by and I’m too busy to do either…and I’m totally cool with that.'
She adds: 'I’m really not scared of gaining a few pounds because of something extremely delicious. I’d gladly gain five pounds if it means I get to indulge in a daily sweet and bacon every once and a while. I honestly can’t imagine life any other way.'
Does that sound disordered to you? Me neither. Now, if only I could be a bit more like that.......

How to cope when a friend has an ED too.

So, my dilemma is this - I'm recovering from my eating disorder and I think my recover is going so-so so far (which is no small achievement!) but I have a friend with an ED too, and she's struggling. She's not someone I met through a support group or anything. I knew her before either of us had any issues with food and eating. We were at school together from the age of 11, in the same friendhship group and always got on well.

Unfortunately, however, our decent into the dark world of ED coincided. We did an internship at the same place the summer we were both turned 17. My friend (let's call her Jane) had just started the Atkins diet, even though she was slim, healthy and beautiful. I was already starting to worry about my weight and calorie count. I think, on some level, her extreme dieting motivated me to go to take my restrictive eating to another level. By the end of the summer we were both looking noticably unwell. Our weights had plummetted and neither of us could function well in school because we were on such low-calorie diets. However, whereas I managed to drag myself back to weight that was non-anorexic (although still unhealthily low for my height) over the course of the next year or so, Jane just got worse. She ended up in and out of different eating disorders treatment hospitals for the next two years, until something snapped and she found the strength to gain weight, enough weight to convince doctors to discharge her, let her move on with her life and go to university etc.

But, like so many people (including myself) her issues with food and weight were far from over. Three years have now passed since she was finally discharged from hospital, and she still uses her eating as a way to cope with stress, just as I sometimes do. But, whereas I feel I'm making some progress, I think she's going backwards, and I don't think she's committed to complete body-mind recovery in the way I am. The problem is, when I see her, it sometimes destabilises me. I look at her - she is still very beautiful and glamorous - and I wonder whether I might not look better in jeans if my legs were as thin as hers. Its a dangerous path to go down. But what do I do? Do I cut her out of my life completely, after over 10 years of friendship? It seems a shame and, to be honest, I'm not even sure it's an option because we have so many friends in common. I would love to have the strength to continue to be a good friend to her, without letting her issues effect the way I feel about myself, and perhaps I do have the strength to do that....but I'm not sure, and maybe hanging out with her is therefore too much of a risk. I'm really at a loss as to what to do in this situation. If anyone has experienced anything similar, I'd love to hear your stories and if anyone has any wise words, I'd appreciate it.

Calorie counting and coping

Yesterday, I felt like I was doing so well. I’d eaten a snack without agonising over it, eaten a breakfast without weighing the cereal. Then came lunch time. I went out for lunch on my lunch break, went to a salad bar (Tossed) and promptly began to agonise over what to chose. It doesn’t help that each sandwich has a little card next to it with the calorie content. Eventually I chose a feta cheese salad. Choosing feta was brave, and I even had a vinaigrette on it, but it didn’t fill me up. On the way back to work I stopped off at Pret a manger and bought their Love Bar and ate half of it. Back at work I resisted and resisted looking up the calorie content of my lunch on line (both Tossed and Pret have online nutritional info) but after 20 mins I caved. There I was, back to square one, calorie counting. And, what’s more, it was awful! 484 calories! A whole 184 calories outside my comfort zone! I felt like screaming: ‘Will there ever be a day when I can eat a filling meal without agonising over it before and after?’

But then, something interesting happened. It got to 4pm (the time that I’m usually crawling the walls with hunger) and I felt.....fine. I could concentrate on my work without being distracted by a gnawing feeling in my stomach. Even by the time I left work I was still only peckish, not ravenous, which meant I could chose a pre-dinner snack calmly and sensibly. Suddenly a 484 calorie lunch didn’t feel like such a big deal after all. Sometimes, I guess, you have to sit-out the bad feelings in order to get to the point where you feel okay. I suspect that's true for short-term situations but also for longer-term recovery.