The Want/Get Cycle

Disordered eating is so difficult to solve because it actually has two engines. One is the chemical influence on our brain. The other is how it fits into the Want/Get Cycle.

We want, we get, we live

Most of our brain is geared to make us want life-enhancing things like air and water and food and sex and accomplishments and love... and so we figure out how to get these things.

It keeps us alive.

So when this survival drive gets crossed with a craving for processed junk food, it can become incredibly powerful. When we are down or bored or hungry, what a handy packaged cheap solution it is!

Because one of the strengths of our brains is their marvelous flexibility. It lets us adapt to many different circumstances, and create a way around obstacles which thwart us.

But it can become a serious weakness, too. If our brains are clamoring for us to contemplate our bad marriage or difficult employment or ill health, we can temporarily "turn off" the clamor by doing something.

Anything. Really, anything at all. We need to recognize that in some ways, it doesn't matter what the thing is. It's the wanting and the getting that becomes important.

That is why it is so incredibly common for people to turn into a restaurant drive-through and sit there thinking: I can't do anything about my job right now, I've got bills to pay! I can't do anything with my relationship right now, they won't even talk about it! I'm not going to think about that blood sugar warning from my doctor right now, not with all this stuff going on!

Waiting for the food increases the wanting for the food, whether it is picked up from a store or served to us on a platter. It builds up in our minds as The Goal. And when we finish eating, it's Mission Accomplished!

Of course, the other problems are still there, afterward. We might even be contributing to some of them, from health concerns to getting our energy back to feeling lousy about our mood and appearance.

Want something. Get something.

The best way to avoid disordered eating is to not use eating as a substitute for something else. Want something else, and get something else.

That's using our brains!

Change does not have a masking function

In graphics work, it's valuable to work with a "mask." That's why masking tape has that name; we use it to protect the woodwork from the wall color when we are painting a room.

Does the butterfly complain it is not
a caterpillar any more?

But it does not work that way with our bodies and our psyches. When we embark upon a change in our eating, it's going to change more than our pant size.

It's normal to think losing weight is only a matter of changing our physical shape. But we also hope for more, don't we? We hope it will let us be more active, more attractive, more outgoing and confident and assertive.

And yet... should our usual routines and meals become too different, then we sabotage ourselves with:

This is too much change.

Other people don't eat this way.

I miss that thing too much!

Until we are right back where we started, or even, worse off. If we regard our food changes as temporary, our results will be, too.

But sometimes we panic because we are changing too much. Who are we now? Well, we've changed. Isn't that what we wanted?

That is what change IS. It changes everything. But we are still ourselves; we just have the tools to be more ourselves.

That's our goal, isn't it? To be different from the way we are now? That will not happen unless we embrace it.

Because none of us gets to pick and choose all the ways we become different.

My life without bread

I had a gluten free triumph recently. One of my favorite restaurants has a "bagel & lox" plate, and as my eyes lingered upon its listing in the menu, I was inspired to ask for the salmon, cream cheese, capers, and onion... as an omelet. It was delicious.

Needs to have vitamins added.

This confirmed the fact that the tasteless "edible plate" part of our meals are not the truly satisfying part. We get a mental zap from wheat. After processing, it has so few nutrients that most of our bread products are fortified. It keeps our fingers from getting sticky.

But the more I ate wheat, the more I wanted. This is the opposite of "satisfying."

It's kind of amazing how much people freak out when they hear I don't eat bread. Nutritionally, culturally, culinarily; those damn grains are seen as absolutely essential.

Yet dropping them was a dramatic boon to my health. My tummy flattened more. I lost about eight pounds without changing anything else. I was less hungry between meals, and could go longer before I got hungry. My arthritis no longer required painkillers so I could sleep, and continues to improve.

What helps greatly is my auto-switch mental system. Instead of "bread," I think "eggs." Whether it's a Oopsie Roll, an omelet, or a deep-dish quiche, from sandwiches to pizza, what I want will usually pair beautifully with eggs.

Once I got this concept embedded, I don't feel deprived at all.

Deprived of convenience? Sometimes. Deprived of cheap & easy access? Definitely. But when it comes to what used to sit on that bread?

I can have whatever I want.

Dealing with derailments

Stuff happens. We have two choices; rage against the vagaries of fate, or adapt ourselves to changing circumstances and make the best of it. Only one of these choices results in success.

Over the past couple of months I've been dealing with pneumonia (which could be life-threatening) and a mean sinus infection (I'd rather have the life-threatening thing, thanks) which led to three rounds of antibiotics. They all had to be taken with food.

Add in my husband's chronic illness (he's great for bringing tea, but cannot get out to the grocery store) and the fact that I'd eaten my store of frozen meals during the first illness. Now we have a series of challenges that would only be topped by being teleported to Planet of the Vegans.

Fortunately, the only thing that would be wrong in these kinds of circumstances is giving up. Which I won't do.

Not every schedule gets kept.

The "every twelve hours" regimen of the antibiotics was a challenge because I generally skip breakfast.

When I discovered eating breakfast actually made me more hungry by lunch than if I skipped it; I started skipping it.

And I couldn't just have a snack with that pill, either. One of the rules which works for me is No Snacking.

It seems that when I eat a tiny meal, my pancreas doesn't release a tiny amount of insulin in response. It releases TANKER CAR of insulin. So I have to eat a meal. Every time. In this case, every twelve hours.

That is another beauty of eating low carb; a good, satisfying meal keeps me going for hours and hours!

Since I was too exhausted to cook, I relied on deli meat and block cheese and pre-sliced mushrooms and bell peppers which work well nibbled together in stacks. I grilled burgers four at a time and ate them wrapped in lettuce. I bought a lot of rotisserie chicken and bagged coleslaw and blue cheese dressing.

Even when the antibiotics upset my stomach, I just sighed and added more food; even foods like black beans or sweet potatoes that are normally too carby for me. They seemed to be soothing to my stomach, and they wouldn't do the harm that a bowl of chicken noodle soup would do.

When we eat low carb, there are very few options in the boxed and frozen sections of the supermarket. When we eat gluten-free, there aren't any. So I don't regret the extra effort, ever, that eating fresh and unprocessed requires.

It simply comes with the territory.

Why I'm not "cheating" for the holidays

It's that time of year... when the focus of our entire civilization turns to eating. Which always seems to lead to the same old New Year's Resolution to "eat right and lose weight!" Which, of course, occurs after the holidays.

Time to reset our biological clocks

None of this is necessarily bad. Festive occasions involve feasting, especially at harvest time, especially when we are facing a shorter day and a longer night. These biological cues seem to trigger a hungry response.

I plan to eat and drink and be merry!

It's my choices that are different from what they used to be.

This year, it's just the two of us, so it's shrimp cocktail, turkey breast, Waldorf salad, roasted sweet potato, and a pumpkin cheesecake. I'll have a couple of rum cocktails. All adjusted to use lower carb principles as needed, such as non-sugar sweeteners, actual butter, and full fat mayonnaise.

Fine for me, cooking in my own home... what about going to Grandma's? What about that famous Jello salad/special pie/homemade biscuits?

That depends. If we are able to have a few bites of our favorites as part of the meal and then get right back to eating low carb the next meal; no harm done. But if we plan to "eat like a normal person" we should at least understand the dimensions of the pit that yawns before us.

There will be bodily reactions. The true dimensions of what is considered "normal eating" becomes clear when we don't eat that way... then attempt to return. Eating wheat sparked reactions so subtle it took me years to notice them; a bloated tummy and my aching hands were actually wheat reactions, not normal digestion and aging.

Now, accidentally getting some wheat results in Stomach Lining Blowtorch Syndrome, which is very unpleasant. This is only the start of how rotten I feel for the next 24 hours. I can't look forward to biscuits and pie crust; they are literally off the table.

Even if you don't have a specific gluten reaction (and how would you know? Recent research indicates that as much as 1/3 of the population are like me and don't know it) the effects on the body of "lotsa carbs" is some form of digestive upset. People living with indigestion have become so common it's not even remarked upon; the drug store aisle keeps getting restocked and everyone thinks it's "normal." But how can that be?

We might have thought the "carb coma" and bloated feelings are standard holiday experiences, but when we add in extra urping and belching and tooting; it's not very festive.

When we live in the background noise of constant digestive rebellions, we don't realize how much of what we eat signals distress to us. Eating low carb, eating more "primally" lets us know that so much of what we have trouble eating is on purpose.

The body is signaling that "normal" isn't good for us.

This is your brain on carbs

There's one huge hurdle when it comes to changing our eating patterns to lose weight and regain our health.

We got this way because we are addicted to fattening substances.

We have to kick our addiction.

That's the core of obesity, eating disorders, being unable to pass a bakery, and trying to get over a failed relationship with applications of premium ice cream or plates of spaghetti.

Carbohydrates have a drug-like effect.

Why do we do it? Because our brain doesn't see treats.

It sees brain-drug.

Carbohydrates have known, studied, and cumulative effects on our mood-controlling brain chemicals.

When we feel bad, we know carby food makes us feel good... if only for a moment.

The funny thing about "addiction" is that it doesn't have to be a psychoactive substance because that is what our brain supplies.

Gambling, shopping, hoarding, and anger are also addicting behaviors because they reliably give the brain what it wants... the rush of relief from its current, less-pleasurable, state.

Since we have variations in our internal wiring, some people can use recreational drugs and easily stop; and some can't. Some people don't find stress relief in food, but in alcohol. Others remain social drinkers, or non-drinkers, their whole lives, but will blow their life-savings at the track during a time of crisis.

All of these things are present in many lives, but only in some do they become a problem. So the issue is not in the substance; we have, in human history, tried to ban certain things and behaviors in an attempt to stop them completely, only to find we have made the problem worse.

If we are one of the people who turn to treats as stress-relief, we have to eliminate them from our lives and find other, better, ways to handle stress. The good news is, once we break the feedback cycle... we can remove the desire to have these foods.

Because it is empty, and because it is my stomach

How did I become overweight? Oh, there isn't any question, is it? I ate too much!

This is your stomach on high carb.

By the time I was a teenager we weren't eating the meat and vegetables I had grown up eating; we were now too poor.

Ironically, we were eating Food Pyramid years before it came out; because we did what poor people always have done. We "stretched" our expensive meat and vegetables by dicing them up and scattering them through a cheaper base like macaroni or rice.

I would have a serving of such casseroles, along with a glass of lowfat milk. It was lowfat because I would cut our whole milk with nonfat powdered milk to save money. This was one of my periodic duties; mixing the milk at night and letting it sit in the fridge so it didn't taste so horrible.

My mother was trying to feed four growing kids on a low budget. None of us knew she was actually working from the future USDA Food Pyramid: with its small portions of fat and meat and dairy and its huge portions of grains.

Yes, another irony: the famous Food Pyramid could have been shortened to: eat like you're poor. Which can lead to the famous "poverty paradigm." In countries with food shortages, poverty results in overweight mothers, and skinny, stunted, children.

The science writer Gary Taubes, in his book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It, points out that this makes no sense:

If we believe the mothers were fat because they ate too much, and we know their children are thin and stunted because they're not getting enough food, we're assuming that the mothers were willing to starve their children so they could overeat. This goes against everything we know about maternal behavior.

I would have my serving of casserole and low fat milk and two hours later I would be screaming-off-the-wall hungry. Fortunately, there wasn't any shortage of milk or casserole; we were not that poor.

So I'd eat again. And again. I would be sobbing with frustration when, late at night, I'd find myself searching the fridge for more, loading up a bowl with cereal and that milk, the cheap bagged cereal that wasn't sugary, it was puffed wheat and puffed rice and sugar from the sugar bowl.

I didn't know that low fat/high carb is the kind of food that simply pours glucose into the blood. If it gets too high, it's deadly poison; so the body responds by flooding with insulin. This hormone yanks the glucose out of the blood and into our fat cells.

When the load is so high, the blood sugar dips too low; and we become ravenously hungry.

Over and over.

Our toxic food environment

It's becoming more popular to recognize the "toxic food environment" we all live in as citizens of industrialized countries. Except the advocates of such a concept usually get the toxic part wrong. High fat and too many calories are the factors they claim are behind the Obesity Epidemic.

Except the way I lost weight, and have been keeping it off, was by increasing my fat and calories.

Wheat and sugar -- the obesity factory of the future!

How can an entire industry, combined with the weight of modern medical knowledge, be so wrong?

Because they have fallen into the trap of not knowing what it is they do not know.

They have observed that lowering calories lowers weight. Then, they stopped thinking.

This is how we get told that we are fat because we are simply eating too much. And we should get our giant behinds off the couch and move more, too.

Except... such methods have a failure rate of 95%. I don't want to do anything that has a failure rate of 95%! Yet when this is the best our "experts" have to offer, is it any wonder that people feel despair over changing their overweight fate?

I lost my weight, and have been keeping it off for a staggering seven years, by increasing my fat and calories; and lowering my intake of dietary carbohydrate. This actually targets the cause of overweight; overproduction of the hormone, insulin.

According to the "carbohydrate theory of overweight," carbohydrate drives insulin which drives fat.

What truly makes our food environment toxic is the overwhelming abundance of carbohydrate.