Just a quick hello as I am not quite ready to come back "full time" as it were but things are progressing.
I have been finding hard to kick this habit I have of chocolate and chips after work. No matter how much strength I wake up with my brain just seems to scramble and I end on the lounge after work downing chips and chocolate before I even know I have bought them.
Since September last year I have gained 16 kilos which is almost a kilo a week - insane!
On days where I do not have my chocolate and chips I have become so delusional that I started to think "Well, I am not having any junk today so I should lose weight tomorrow and then I can have some chocolate, hooray!". Uh huh - weighing in at 145 kg lol
I mean come on - what kind of junk addict brain thought is that
And then 2 days ago my lower back spasmed. Right now I can move, walk and stand but if I sit for too long as I go to get up I get shooting pain in my lower back.
I KNOW this is just from all the extra weight and having a muscle spasm in my back which will subside in a day or two now I have some anti inflammatory's and a hot wheat pack for my back.
The silver lining is that when I woke up yesterday morning and felt a pain shoot into my back as I went to get out of bed it gave me the physical jolt/wake up call I have needed I think.
Haven't had a single bit of junk for two days now and have zero desire for any.
All I am thinking is I have to lose weight so my back won't go out again so its been a motivator...despite being a real pain in the back!
Written by
Dave1961
25kg
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Keep going and build on the last two days Dave. Can you change your routine so that you do not pass the shops you buy your chocolate and chips in? They sound like a lethal combination - designed to stack weight on and cause depression! Do try and find an alternative like grapes and nuts? The best of luck mate, John
Ahhh, chocolate and sugar addiction take longer to get rid of but hey you already did two days ! It is a good start. If you really really need choc in a couple of days, buy 90% dark chocolate. It is so strong, it will help you getting rid of the habit. And change your route, or have a mantra. "No, I will not stop" go on the opposite footpath. Look in the other direction. Give it a few weeks and you will be laughing. Good luck in your quest. You want to get there so you will.
Best of luck Dave, you've beaten the sugar craving before, and if you've done two days without you're well into getting through the hard part, just keep going now and it will get easier as your body adjusts ☀️
Thanks Fran and you're right. Day 3 and feeling better.
Good luck Dave, and hope your back gives you less pain soon. Can you place tasks next to where you sit on the sofa that keep your hands busy or help to turn your thoughts away from cravings? Inspirational books, some sewing/crafts, maybe something to prepare for your garden? I find distraction really helps - replacing habits with other habits. That said, I succumbed to my wine habit yesterday, but overall I'm kicking it - only the 2nd time I've bought a bottle of wine this year. All the small changes help
SO true about small steps. Sometimes it can take us a long time to learn that. Interestingly every time my back spasms or I feel a jolt of pain I immediately think of chocolate or chips. Today when I was at the supermarket just the sight of them made me feel uncomfortable so maybe a few more days of back pain will finally kick my habit!
Dave, we really miss your posts, with all your philosophical thoughts.
Can you change your routine after work? Instead of going straight home past that dreaded shop, take a 30 minute walk direct from work? Even if it's only round the block, it may give you a chance to clear your head and break that routine. It's all habit, I hate the way I always get cravings for snacks at set times. Maybe if you shake up your routine it might confuse your head for a while.
Sometimes we need that wake up call to get back on track, you can do it 😊
Take each day at a time, go back to 'distracting' podcasts on your way back from work, and try to prepare healthy snacks on the morning for when you come home 😊
It is so hard, the comfort food is so easily accessible too, but you can beat this addiction, I know it, because I have managed it (and I live within arms reach of shops selling the stuff and I have really bad depression).
I remember when I was new on this site and struggling, you gave me some good advice about imagining a wall around a bad eating episode and carrying on with healthy eating as if it never happened (sorry my paraphrasing is terrible). Well, that stuck with me and has helped.
I hope your back improves soon, nothing worse, you have my sympathies!
Hi Dave, I'm glad you're feeling a little better and more optimistic over your choc/chip cravings! I've been looking for your posts hoping you were ok! You always have so much good advice for us all, so any advice from me would be like " teaching your grand mother to suck eggs! " but keep strong Dave, look after yourself and keep away from the evil shop ( you know which one ) good luck I'll be watching out for your next post, hoping it's a positive one X
Its really difficult to change entrenched habits so don't give yourself a hard time. You could say to yourself-just for this day I'm going to not eat any chocolate or not going to eat any chips. Just try and take away one of them, not both just for a day.
Great to see you, but sorry to hear your back spasmed - hope you recover really soon. I have lower back pain myself as of yesterday, so I sympathise. The good thing is that it's motivating you to tackle your chocolate and chips - and it's great to hear you've not had any for the past couple of days - really well done! Like you say 'things are progressing' and that's brilliant.
Have you tried cooking some sweet potato chips as an alternative, and having some with a nice piece of chicken and some roasted vegetables? Maybe a small piece of dark chocolate with hazelnuts in it to have the chocolate taste, but restrict yourself to just the one piece. I can hear you saying 'Noooooo Lowcal, I can't do that - I'd want the whole bar' - so maybe not, but I thought I'd suggest it.
Anyway, wishing you a great weekend and a good week ahead.
Thanks @Lowcal wise words as always - although I know what I am like and if I try and fool myself with sweet potato chips I usually just gorge on those and then feel unsatisfied and up going to get real one - hopeless!
Is that a new little badge I see there Miss Administrator?
Hi Dave - yes, it's a new little badge, and thank you for your kind words.
Fair enough on the sweet potato chips - probably best not to have those.
I challenge your word 'hopeless' as you are a great and wonderful guy, and don't you forget that! Good to hear from you, as always, and hope you enjoy the remainder of the weekend, and that next week is a good one.
Lizzie its so true isn't it? We punish our poor bodies constantly but as soon as it gets a chance to bounce back its amazing how quickly it can recover.
Aw Dave so sorry to hear about your back pain. I truly empathise. The wheat heat packs are brilliant aren't they...I have a set of three so that I can just keep on nuking those packs in rotation on bad days.
Picking up on what NHS2015 said, I agree with mantras, and carefully worded ones at that!
I found the other evening that I had a temptation to eat something else...actually ANYthing else, even tho I wasn't hungry. I kept saying to myself "I am not hungry, I am not hungry" but it wasn't working, food was all I could think about for some reason. Then I remembered a snippet of information I was told when dealing with child behaviour issues. It said, rather than say something like "Do not run in the corridor", it is better to word it as, "Walk in the corridor". Something to do with putting the suggestion in the mind of the child apparently, although my memory is a little rusty. Apparently, you are meant to say what you want to happen, rather than what you don't want to happen, as you instantly put the idea in the child's head and they are all up for challenging you most of the time.
Armed with this revelation, I changed my little chant from "I am not hungry", to "I am full". I was kind of surprised, but it actually did work - lol! Just using the word hungry made me think of the feeling of being hungry. Equally, using the word full made me think of the feeling associated with being full. Not sure how much, if any, psychology is involved in this, but it seemed to work better for me, I'll be using "I am full" in future lol.
Can you use "I will only eat healthy foods" or something like that...they reckon that if you say or think these things to yourself on a regular basis it can help. Personally I have varying results, but it doesn't cost anything to try it out, all this positive reinforcement stuff.
Hope you get some relief from your pain soon and well done on sticking with it through the pain. I find that I am more likely to cave in to bad old eating habits when I am in pain so I think you are doing a great job, keep going, we are all behind you!
I love this comment its so true and has so much good stuff in it - thank you so much
I wrote a post not long ago which is kind of similar to what you have saying and I am so glad you mentioned this because it reminded me of that post.
I had decided that instead of telling myself I could have chips or I should not be eating chocolate or I was wrong for stopping exercising or or or.... I started saying to myself "Make a better choice" and left it to my instincts to decide what that would be.
It resulted in walking away from the chocolates and picking up some nectarines and choosing to just walk a little slower for abit longer....
Total sympathy with the spasms. For the bad habits, 2 options spring to my mind. One is to stop going to your trigger places. So stop going past those shops, go round to home a different way. If you find yourself in the shops, make a plan to buy something other than chips and choc. And when you get in, perhaps go and have a bath or a shower so that you don't sit down straight away. Might be a good idea to have something ready to eat. I find a mug of veg soup, straight from the fridge and into the microwave sometimes hits the spot. Good luck with your plans, your back and your displacement activities.
Thanks heaps for this and your right. I have gotten lazy in my after work habits and chocolates and chips have become the thing I use to sedate myself so I don't feel bad about just sitting on the couch when I need to be thinking about and acting on alternatives which didn't trigger the habits.
Hi Dave it's always great when you post and I am so sorry you are having such a time of it. I still feel I am always only a few seconds away from binge eating so I understand your struggles. One bad eating makes the next one seem inevitable and it is not - you posted about that yourself a few months back.
It took me about six months of trying really hard to kick the binge eating and it was another year after that before I actively started to try and lose weight. In the interim I started exercising.
Everything the others have said about mantras, changing your journey to work, meal planning and healthy snacks are things I have tried and so I know they work -most of the time. On the really bad days before I got fit enough to cycle everywhere I also sometimes used to get a cab back from work rather than walk -slowly on an injured leg- past all the snack shops, cafes etc and that worked really well for me.
Recently I have been experimenting with fasting - first like many others trying to not eat between 19:00 and 09:00and then once last week I tried a twenty four hour fast. This took a bit of planning but felt like pushing a reset button on my appetite. I am actually looking forward to doing this again next week.
I really enjoyed learning a bit more about your journey and especially how patient you have been about small steps =- clearly it pays off
I actually went on a supervised 14 day fast many years ago at a health retreat.
It might sound insane but its actually not bad for you as long as you are in decent shape and I felt AMAZING at the end - jumping out of my skin so yes I am a fan of the fast and definitely something I will think about.
Dave you are but human with all the weaknesses that come with it. If it takes a pain in the back to motivate you again then so be it. You know you really want to so let's see you back on here and getting rid of that weight.
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Losing it in lockdown
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