As if fate would have it, I’m writing this on my cheat day.
I’m following the Slow carb diet, and Saturday is the scheduled failing day - I eat whatever I want and however much I want.
It’s 15:04 right now, and I’ve eaten more than 3 meals worth of food. I had a breakfast, with 2 eggs, 1 cup of black beans, and a cup of spinach. I had a lunch, a chipotle chicken bowl. And in between, I had half of a tuna wrap, 2 donuts, 2 peanut butter banana dark chocolate bars, 1 big bagel filled with cream cheese, 1 big insomnia cookie, 1 pork bun, some bite size bakery snacks, and some strawberries.
Even during my writing I went for a snack break: 1 slice of pizza, 1 pork bun, 1 cookie and some brussels sprouts 😋
I have an unhealthy relationship with food.
Any type of strict diet, including the slow carb diet I follow, probably indicates some sort of distorted relationship with food, and eventually, with wanting to control the body.
I was fat for a long time. I weighed about 170 lb from age of 15 to 29. And last winter, my weight came down to about 136 lb, and I am trying to keep the progress and hopefully get rid of some belly fat.
I’m not fully sure how I lost the weight. I think it took about 3 months of daily exercise (swimming for 1h or running for 1.5h) and some diet control (one meal a day). I did a bunch of other things, like weighing food to the grams, recording my weight every day. They might have helped too.
Last October, I would think everyday: imagine how much healthier and happier I’d feel, and how much better life would be if I lose 30 pounds.
Now I am on the other side of it with a slimer body, and instead of enjoying it, I spent way more time in fear, scared that I would go back to being fat again.
It’s yet another example of the illusion we tend to have: I’ll finally be happy if I ____ , fill in the blank.
Anyway, I went of the topic.
I struggle with weight loss and eating disorder and being fat, and I think I was going about it the wrong way for a long time, until I realized that for most people, being fat is a symptom.
Robert Sapolsky proposed that if you get to the answer of this question, you’d done more good to humanity than anyone since like Jonas Salk invented the Polio vaccine:
why is it that when we feel like nobody loves us, we eat Oreo cookies?
Carbohydrates are a great tool to release stress, it spikes blood glucose level, which changes the body’s stress response - stress hormones like glucocorticoids gets reduced, and we feel a whole lot better - for the short term.
Being stressed can make one more vulnerable to addiction, when met with the food industry’s precisely engineered dopamine inducing foods, food addiction can click like lock and key.
It makes sense that being poor would be a risk for obesity - it means higher stress level overall, and industrialized engineered food is among the cheapest dopamine they can afford.
I have seen people in serious life crisis or tremendous stress suddenly put on a lot of weight. It might be a protecting mechanism: craving food means there’s still something worth chasing in life, and having any source of dopamine is crucial to avoid falling into the deep crevasse of depression.
I think the body’s smart, and it’s doing the best it can to protect us - depression would be a worse outcome.
I wonder if getting fat, or addiction of any form, or depression, are all symptoms of deeper problems, like our job/ relationship/ family is too toxic for us, or we are insecure or ashamed of our identity, or deep down we feel our life has no purpose, or it’s going in the wrong direction, or there are some unhealed mental wounds like trauma.
It’s the body’s “check engine” light flashing on, it’s trying to send us a signal “hey, somethings wrong with our life, maybe take a closer look and find out what the problem is”.
And until we address the deeper problem, the symptom will remain, or if we manage to suppress it in one form, it’ll morph into another.
It’s like your hand writing is terrible, but instead of realizing the problem is your hand lacks the skill to produce good hand writing, you decide that it’s the pen’s fault. So you decide to hate the pen, and every time you pick up the pen you want to snap in half and you slap yourself in the face for using it - you are hurting yourself, ruining the pen, and all the while your hand writing’s still terrible. (Sorry I make weird analogies.)
Food is a wonderful thing. Comfort food can release stress, light up our mood; food’s an important element of every culture; preparing and enjoying food with loved ones are among the best experiences life can offer.
Blood glucose level has access to some of our most ancient circuits. Try to be friendly with food, and with ourself too ❤️