Progress on eating habits

This is a response to a post titled ‘Why can’t I stop eating?’ I wrote last Fall. I outlined many of my challenges with eating terribly. My situation is radically (but not entirely) different now, and I felt like it is a good time for an update. I wrote that post because at the time, I was highly skeptical I could make meaningful progress on that front. It’s a bit funny to me in hindsight, only 6 months later things are very different. I’ll be sharing my progress and reflections in this post.

Habits vs compulsions

One of the realizations I had during this process was that habits and compulsions are different creatures. As I understand it, habits are deliberately curated behaviors, and compulsions are when you yield control to impulses and drives from the body. To me, this is an important distinction because habits have to be maintained, where as compulsions need to be managed. A habit can go away without deliberate effort to keep it, whereas compulsions will haunt you until you confront them.

For many people, eating is just one of many things they do during their life. In my case, my life has revolved around eating. Meaning that from the moment I wake up, to the moment I pass out to sleep, I am constantly thinking, planning, and negotiating about what I will eat next. In some ways, this was because throughout my career I felt enormous pressure and felt I needed to be constantly fueled to carry out what I could accomplish. I taught myself that my productivity was directly related to the level of C&C (calories & caffeine) I’ve consumed recently.

… While I’ve been far from successful in putting it into practice, my best understanding at the moment is that overcoming compulsive eating requires confronting the causes directly. The causes can be boredom, stress, pain (emotional or physical) which are all chronic problems someone in my situation will inevitably experience. Those in that situation with me will understand how tightly intertwined compulsive eating is with emotional eating.

A bad food habit would be choosing to eat at a particular fast food place regularly. A compulsion would be a sudden all-pervasive feeling that one needs to eat as much as possible as quickly as possible. By understanding compulsions and habits separately it becomes easier to manage both. Habits that are actually bad can be replaced, and compulsions can be anticipated and planned for. You can build good habits without making much progress on your compulsions, but I’ve found that many good habits help a great deal.

Meal prep and exercise are both great activities that can radically help managing compulsions. I’ve found the stress-relief effects of exercise effectively mandatory for making the progress I have. When it comes to tackling compulsions, I’ve found that anything that lets off the pressure even a small bit can make a huge difference. The hardest part is raising your own tolerance to discomfort. When using food as a crutch to bear other pains, it can be difficult to have enough tolerance left over to put down the compulsion to excessively eat.

Past vs present

To begin understand what I felt was wrong with me, I took the effort to define what a “good relationship with food” meant to me.

• Not consuming more calories than required

  Since the goal was to lose weight, I would ideally need to keep total calories below the total energy required to operate throughout the day.

• Acquiring all required nutrients

  Harder than it sounds! I still don’t quite have a good grasp of what’s critical. At the moment, I treat this as a reminder to prioritize nutrient density in what one does eat.

• Hydration

  Getting enough water is crucially important. Insufficient water intake can be a limiting factor on weight loss. Hydration quality matters too. Oddly enough, I’ve been surprised at how much getting some electrolytes in a day can make a huge difference on alertness waking up.

• Eating (more/mostly) food prepared yourself

  I’ve spent a fair amount of time learning to cook. It’s been absolutely invaluable in gaining confidence and building a better relationship with food. The satisfaction from making a excellent meal is an unfamiliar but incredibly welcome feeling. They don’t always turn out how I’d like, but I’ve learned a great deal taking it on. If you start small, learning to cook is a great exercise in micro-dosing failure.

  

Emotional eating

One of the problems I felt trapped with last year was emotionally-driven eating. That stress, anxiety or frustration was enough to make me want to really “pig out” to regain some level of temporary comfort.

Since adding strength training to my routine, I’ve noticed a huge reduction in emotional eating. The combination of the healthy stress release, and unfortunately the consistent pain both have improved my ability to withstand compulsions to over-indulge. While I’ve noticed things have changed for the better in big ways, I’m far from done. It is very easy for me to not maintain activity and then feel the overwhelming desire to cave in.

I’ve had an excellent conversation with a great canadian hero, Patrick Phillips about this. who told me “If you’re soothing the pain, you should sooth the pain.”. At the start, I counter-productively took this as a license to continue eating to my feelings. Now I have a more nuanced opinion on what that means. He put me on the path to taking on my negative feelings head on, and was a great help.

It may come as a surprise to some, but I’ve only recently been aware of how much chronic emotional pain I’ve been in. The side-effect of numbing yourself with self-destructive coping mechanisms for years is that you can completely forget why you have them. Eventually, all you remember is that you’re stressed out all the time but can’t really pinpoint things that aren’t too obvious.

If there’s one “hard line” I’ll draw, it’s that addressing the causes of emotional pain is essential. Not everything can be fixed, but understanding and facing your pain can give you a lot more power over it. It’s absolutely worth the time to recognize the degree your own numbness to anger, despair, regret, or whatever else. When one has walled themselves off from their own feelings, beginning to feel is overwhelming. It’s far from an easy task.

The great news is that it doesn’t have to be done alone. When overwhelmed with feeling the wounds of emotional pain for the first time in a long time, connecting with others is invaluable. This is because just as one begins to truly feel their pain, the numbness begins to fade. As that numbness leaves, it’s so much easier to actually connect with people, as you’re no longer distancing yourself from them with projection and indifference. It’s an opportunity to truly get to know yourself and others on a deeper level. While I would never wish this kind of numbness on anyone, I sincerely hope that those afflicted with it get to appreciate the kindness and comfort possible from their loved ones, God, and even strangers.

Food addiction

There’s an important line to draw between emotional eating, and the highly addictive traits of various foods. The strategies for tackling these problems are very different despite having many commonalities. I believe that that “food addiction” is a bit of a misnomer, as one is not addicted to all kinds of foods, but very specific signals often from highly/ultra-processed products.

When one eats fast food or other meals that require no preparation, it’s almost impossible to avoid various addictions. Apparently vegetable oil itself can be addictive, to say nothing about sugar. Many explain food addiction in a simple way: your brain interprets food as a reward, and numbing that reward center requires more and more to be satiated. I’ve been told by those close to me that I have a classic addict’s reaction to large amounts of greasy/sugary/fatty food. I’m told that I “become a different person” and that I light up instantly the moment I realize I’m going to have that hit.

This is inherently a difficult thing to tackle directly. While I’ve been able to quit caffeine ‘cold-turkey’, there is no way I could do the same with food even if it was conceivably possible. This is where I imagine the best bet is to manage the addiction by pushing that effort into preparing food if one is mobile and capable enough. Personally, I still struggle to even comprehend that I don’t need as much food as I want.

There’s some debate if cannabis is actually addictive. Drawing a distinction (above my pay-grade) between physical and behavioral addiction. When it comes to the addictive properties of various fast-foods and processed products, I don’t have particularly strong feelings on where that line is. What is clear, that a process of weaning off it, or going “no-contact” is what’s required to overcome dependency on terrible foods.

I’m often told that judging foods as “good or bad” is itself an eating disorder. At least at the time of writing this, I wholeheartedly disagree. I am convinced that if we see food as a tool for nutrition we can objectively make decisions about which foods are good and bad. By defining the purpose of eating as nourishing the body, you can easily rate nutrient-dense foods over what some people call “empty calories”. I really don’t see the harm of perceiving an energy dense but nutritionally lacking product as paying a huge opportunity cost compared to foods that do provide valuable nutrients.

Now, it’s possible that these lines get more blurry when one approaches a healthy body weight. At my size, my body is not lacking energy at all, so my preferences are focused on that. Not everybody is going to be in the same lifestyle situation. For example there are people on the other side of the spectrum who need to gain mass rather than lose it. All I can say is that experience is totally alien to me so I can’t speak to that.

I have found changing what I regularly eat along these lines very helpful for reducing any feelings of being ‘addicted to food’. I gradually came to understand that I didn’t need all the calories my body was screaming for, and that when prioritizing nutrition I felt a great deal better. I still have to be incredibly careful with portions though. I still have a very warped perception of what is “needed” vs what I need to reach my goals.

Helplessness

The biggest change since I wrote that post is that I no longer feel helpless. Learning to cook and making significant mobility gains have radically transformed my life and confidence. Clearly it is showing, because I got a comment from somebody recently; “Wow, I didn’t expect such a cynical take from you Gabriel, I thought you were a ‘whitepilled’ normie”. My response was “I am whitepilled! Losing almost 100lbs will absolutely do that to you! But don’t mistake my pleasant demeanor for ignorance.”

I’ve noticed a great deal of learned helplessness in my situation. I can only guess, but I believe this is the greatest contributor to people becoming bed-ridden for the rest of their lives. The more weight you gain the harder it becomes to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. For example, even now that I’ve made big strides towards becoming more mobile: I still agonize over the resistance of simple things like standing, getting up from sitting or lying down, and walking.

While I won’t deny to being quite lazy. A great deal of my efficiency is the embodiment of “If you want something done the easy way, find a lazy person to do it.” I believe this learned helplessness is what causes people to being trapped into a state of [perceived?] laziness.

You’re not going to think to run around and take on all kinds of activities when simple tasks like going up stairs, walking, or carrying things feel almost entirely out of reach. It is horrifying to think about how things that once only seemed out of reach eventually fade into being actually out of reach.

Overcoming helplessness, just like getting into it is a ‘gradually, then all at once’ phenomenon. Any small actions you can take to build up your mobility, autonomy, or even creativity will absolutely pay huge dividends in the long run. What’s clear to me is that all these major factors are related. Helplessness can cause emotional difficulties, which can drive emotionally eating terrible foods, which can then drive addiction to them. As somebody who has been in this situation, I wish I could be able to properly describe the pure terror of being in it. Every day feels like an endless nightmare you’re just working to avoid as much as possible. It’s not at all an easy situation to fix.

What’s worth reiterating, is that I am not some superhuman iron-willed guy who ‘just happened’ to suddenly overcome it all. It took a great deal of time and effort on my part, yes, but it took more than just what I had. Based on what has worked for me I am wholeheartedly convinced that anyone can make the same kind of transformation with the right support, education, and time. Turning it all around is very complex and a very difficult task. I am frustrated that people treat Ozembic (and other GLP-1 agonists) as the individual ’taking the easy way out’. I would go as far as to say it is society that is taking the easy way out by pushing these drugs on people.

One of the greatest, but most tragic lessons I have learned during this time is how much can be achieved if we really worked to support each other more. Even relatively small gestures can make a massive difference for the right person. Yes, discipline and individual effort is absolutely required to make this process work, but giving up on people isn’t what good people do. I say this, because this is applicable to a lot more than just weight loss. I have a much deeper understanding of what caring for one’s loved ones really means, and how far one should go for them.

I am immensely grateful for the progress I’ve made already. I had a great deal of support and assistance along the way. I am humbled by the investment that my other half is making in me by assisting me focus on this journey as my top priority. My goal is to reward that investment with as much effort as I can muster. I am incredibly blessed and I hope that sharing what I have learned can help someone. I am now a pound away from being down 100lbs. It really feels like my journey is only beginning to get really exciting. There are difficult moments, but I’m beginning to feel “higher highs” as all the changes start to harmonize.