Habits are actions that do not require prior thought to execute. For example, when we learn how to drive, each action is mechanical and deliberate, thinking in steps: Put on seabelt first, turn on ignition, look both right and left, then look in rear-view mirror, then put gear in reverse, and s-l-o-w-l-y release brake pedal and s-l-o-w-l-y press on gas pedal to back the car out of driveway, etc. Things get a bit easier after we have our driver's license, but we are still careful and deliberate in our actions, thinking carefully about each step. Eventually, we find that we are arriving at our destinations without focusing on each particular action; somehow we were able to travel some miles, with the radio on, a passenger next to us chattering away, and yet we are not distracted. We have formed a habit.
It is that way with other aspects of life, such as brushing one's teeth or taking a shower. We don't need to think about it, we just do it.
And the same goes for what we put in our mouths. And yet, this seems to cause enormous trouble. We somehow can't seem to develop a "habit," an unconscious action - or lack of action - surrounding food and our style of eating.
In January 1997, I joined Overeaters Anonymous and adopted many of its tools, such as 3 meals a day with nothing in between; no flour or sugar; and weighed and measured meals. Somehow I was able to develop a habit around some of those tools that I carried for 15 years, to wit: no bread or baked products, no candy or other sugary desserts. Everything I ate was sugar-free. I had stopped eating between meals, and that fortunately became a good habit to have, because previously, I would eat one candy after another, or chew gum feverishly, or otherwise binge.
Then, around seven years ago, I began to relax the program. It had become easy. Imagine! So, I second-guessed this business of nothing between meals, and started munching on corn chips and sunflower seeds. Still no white flour or sugar, but I deluded myself that corn was OK, and therefore, corn chips would be as well. Not! The problem with between-meal eating is that it's unregulated and "loose," kind of a "snack" to but the hunger pangs, but unless one is very disciplined in taking a reasonable amount, that "snack" can turn into a meal, indeed, into a binge. And slowly but surely, that's what happened. I would buy a bag of roasted, salted sunflower seeds in shells, and proceed to crack each tiny morsel between my teeth and spit out the shell, crunching away on the minute kernel. Of course, I wouldn't stop with just a handful, so that by the time dinnertime arrived, I had already overloaded my calories for the day by hundreds!
Here I am, therefore, again questioning what I had second-guessed myself after all those years, why I had given up my well-formed and hard-won new habits. Why? Because it was easy. Because once a habit is ingrained, the behavior becomes easy. Just as driving is now easy, so was my eating. So I became cocky.
Fast forward to now. Well, actually, to last September, 10 months ago. I was in Japan at the time, and some voice in my head challenged me to resume my consumption of bread. I don't remember the rationale, don't remember why I chose to forgo that previous 15-year habit. I began eating bread again, and enjoyed a great variety of different breads while in Japan, and once back home, it was simply a continuation of the same: more and different breads without limit, desserts of all kinds, ice cream -- because if I was forfeiting my discipline with bread, may as well do the same with sugar, I reasoned. Besides, I concluded, I had probably been consuming sugars in other forms all along!
And off I went. No more nothing between meals; no more avoiding flour and sugar; no more waiting for reasonable mealtimes, and leaving alone the small noshes. I was off and running.
And struggling.
The past 10 months have been fun. I have used food as entertainment, enjoying all my old "friends," the candies, macaroons, ice cream and chocolate muffins. I've enjoyed freshly-baked bread and butter (real butter), pancakes and waffles. Sometimes I even wondered how the heck I ever did without them. And yet, I did - do without them, that is. For 15 years. And during those 15 years, I did not feel deprived! That is the most astounding aspect of this: I DID NOT FEEL DEPRIVED. Those foods were always there, always available to me at any moment, and yet I made a choice, moment by moment for a full 15 years.
Yet here I am again fighting the old demons, again struggling with staying abstinent of those foods that cause me trouble: the breads (there are lots of different kinds), muffins and fried foods, candy bars and ice cream.
So the question comes up: What do I want? For some reason, it was important enough for me to go 15 years without eating those things, and without feeling deprived - that's key. Now I dread giving them up again. They've got a hold on me, again. They are ruling me, controlling my mind.
So what do I want? I want to "own" my eating. I want control, I want choice. Of course, I realize I have choice every moment of the day, but when I'm under the influence of craving something, it sure doesn't feel like it. OK, so a solution is to not get hungry. Force myself to have a snack, but a measured one. One of the tools of OA that I found very useful was Don't let yourself get too hungry, too tired, too lonely or too angry (HTLA). Really good advice. Another tool that worked for me was nothing between meals. That poses a problem if I eat lunch at 11:30 and dinner at 6, I'm super hungry at around 4. Don't let yourself get too hungry doesn't work, then, does it? So a forced snack is in order. But again, it should be measured (don't allow the tiger out of the cage too many times in a day!).
What do I want? I want to fit back into the clothes I used to love so much! And why not? That's not asking much. It's a question of a few pounds. Perhaps that is the problem, that it should be so easily attainable, that no real "effort" is required. Bah humbug! In Buddhism, it exhorts us to exercise "right effort," do the right thing for yourself. If you know that you suffer the next morning with guilt and shame at having broken your word, then don't break your word.
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