Habit Change: Motivation

During an IM conversation a friend said she continued to overeat because she was 'addicted' to food. I prefer to view my overeating as a series of well-practiced habits, rather than 'addiction'. I practiced overeating for many years, especially while I binged and purged. So I have well-practiced overeating habit patterns in my brain. When I don't consciously try to stop eating at 'just enough' or 'comfortably full' or even 'satisfied', I can easily slip into old habits of eating until my plate is empty, getting up from the table to get a bite (or even more) of something sweets to satisfy my mouth cravings or even eat bites of leftovers while I put food in refrigerator containers. Obviously I don't just have one kind of overeating habit.

I also need to consider my motivation to replace overeating with eating just enough. I was VERY motivated to eliminate bingeing and purging, but only recently became motivated enough to do whatever was necessary to change those habits. After many years of regularly bingeing and purging, I slowly decreased my binge/purge episodes. Learning and practicing intuitive (hunger/fullness) eating helped me decrease those episodes by 50% (I went from over 40 episodes a year to under 20 a year when I learned to obey my stomach cues.) After a few years of averaging once a month, I committed to totally eliminate binge/purge episodes. I tried committing not to purge no matter what. However, I have a long history of reflux, nausea and vomitting from illness. I realized there are occasions when I get so sick (especially in the middle of the night) that I uncontrollably vomit and continue dry heaving for hours afterward. So I decided that I needed to commit to not binge, which can make me reflux and easily throw up.

I recognized that I DECIDED to go from overeating to bingeing when I told myself "Oh what the heck, I'm overeating anyway, I feel uncomfortably full, I might just as well eat whatever and as much as I want, get sick and throw up." So in order to prevent binges, I needed to commit to commit to STOP eating when I felt discomfort, rather than continue eating past the point of discomfort. After enduring several episodes of feeling uncomfortably full, I learned to stop sooner and sooner.

I also learned to eat foods I really enjoyed, so that I wouldn't feel so 'deprived' that I wanted to eat all the foods I missed all at once in a binge. So I did 'antideprivation' eating, which made me eat the foods I craved when I craved them. I didn't make perfect progress toward eliminating bingeing. After 5 months of abstinence, I binged once this year in January and 2x during March. However, those 3 episodes just motivated me to work even harder to examine how I decided to binge and change those thought and behavioral patterns. I also tracked on my calendar the days that I did NOT binge. The days turned into week, and then weeks turned into months. Now I have not binged (or purged) for 8 months. I believe with the same kind of motivation and conscious examination of my thought and behavior patterns I can eliminate overeating.

However, I have NOT always been motivated to change my overeating habits. I rationalize that I'm not overweight. I can overeat at one meal and then eat less at other meals that day and not gain weight. Although I know that continual overeating (and eating before I feel hungry) can cause weight gain, I can easily rationalize that I don't need to stop eating when I no longer feel hungry, because I don't need to lose weight.

Nevertheless, overeating causes reflux and that uncomfortable 'stuffed' feeling. When I take probiotics (usually with dinner), I get that 'stuffed' feeling more easily, because my intestines become bloated as they adjust to additional 'good bacteria'. I can feel uncomfortably full more quickly when I take probiotics. So I use that 'uncomfortable' feeling as my 'stop eating' signal. Unfortunately, I sometimes continue eating until I feel uncomfortably full at meals, when I don't take probiotics.

So my greatest motivation to stop eating at 'just enough' is comfort. I previously described that motivation in my 'comfort diet' post. However, I wonder whether that motivation is enough, because I continue to eat past comfort sometimes. So I may need to look at the specific situations where I overeat and the different kind of overeating habits I practice. Maybe I use different rationalizations for different situations or different overeating habits. I will discuss that in a futuret post.