Day 319 & To Break Apart Eating or Not

Day 319 Record Keeping
Day 288 Fixed Meditation 
Day 234 Bodyweight Exercise  (3x8 one armed wall pushups)
Day 161 Writing (creative and exercises)
Day 334 Eating = 67
Day 91 Work = 57
Great sleep, great wakeup. Eating has been spotty. had a beer last night it definitely immediately bloated me and it was not comfortable. Homemade pizza was on the docket last night and I had it on eggplant - the bread looked really good and I almost cheated. Took a pic instead. Today had pita because I felt really cheaty. 

To Break Apart Eating or Not
Despite the many conversations I’ve had on how to do this eating habit, I think I need to divide it further. And this was the subject of a very long series of conversations.

Lydia reasoning is that like a strong addiction, food is something that needs to be quit cold turkey to gain its global benefits.

So let’s take smoking. Let’s divide it into 1) smoking idly during the day, 2) smoking during a smoke break at work and 3) smoking at night while out on the town. These three things have different emotional triggers.

To her, tackling the problem one at a time doesn’t free you from the physical addiction - you don’t feel better and you cannot know what it’s like to not be a smoker. You’re still smoking at some point in the day, so tobacco is still in your system. The feeling of having your system cleared compared to the memory of it being in your system is a juxtaposition that is highly beneficial and motivational.

Another motivation is the feeling of significant progress. In eating, we both lost a significant amount of weight in the beginning. That would not have happened if it we broke the habit up.

My counter was that there are so many factors in eating that are situational that cause me to have only a partial handle on my eating habit. It’s just way too wobbly, and this is after almost a full year. The time really isn’t important, what bothers me is that I’m not seeing enough clear improvement across time.

What’s going wrong? I already felt the difference in the first two months, and I definitely feel the global benefits. After I eat something cheaty I feel pretty bad. But it’s not enough.

Maybe this is one of those things that needs both. I’ve already done the cold turkey method and it worked to a degree. Maybe what I need to do is do a series of challenges like the no bread challenge. If so what would I do?

No bread, definitely worked well. No beer. Two glasses of wine challenge. No cheese? Automatically snacking on something that’s clean if I feel an urge to cheat? Eating around cheaty parts of meals in a restaurant? In any case I do feel the flash diet really helps even if I don’t post it up here.

The key is really zoning in on  the thing that really is making me fail right now.

Day 287 & The Holiday Effect, Cont.

Day 287 Record Keeping
Day 256 Fixed Meditation 
Day 202 Bodyweight Exercise  (2x8 uneven pushups, 2x8 35lb rows)
Day 129 Writing = 81 (editing meditation book)
Day 302 Eating = 63
Day 59 Work = 64
Great sleep, great wakeup. 

Holiday Effect, Continued
Yesterday night, my mom said my dad wanted to go out.  I thought to myself “great, this is an opportunity where I can test my holiday protocol.”

Pizza. He wanted pizza.

I did good up to a point. I ate my meal, my dad got pizza, I even toasted it up for him. He got some wine which he shared with me. Great.

After having a long conversation, I had a bit of a personal scare, so my emotions were all over the place. Then I toasted up some of my dad’s leftover pizza and ate it all. Then I snacked on cashews - no problem, but then I ate some Doritos, finishing a bag.

So not so good when it all comes down to it.

Here’s what went wrong:
Once I learned that there was going to be a situation, I need to immediately do my implementation intention AND at least read through my mental contrasting. I should also do the whole Flash Diet thingy and take pics of the food I eat.

I did none of those things - I was distracted with work or something and didn’t immediately do it, so the next thing I knew the pizza had arrived and I was amidst the situation without proper preparation.

So this is good - I know that something works, the time I did it, it worked. The time I didn’t, it didn’t.

So I’m going to  make this an official thing - throughout the holiday season, I’ll be doing a Holiday Effect Project just like my No Bread Challenge. I’ll be posting on the blog about avoiding such temptations in an attempt to have a solid set of protocols and know what works and what doesn’t while navigating this discipline-tricky time of year.

The Holiday Effect Part 2

Yesterday I described the Holiday Effect, how this time of year tends to really mess with self discipline.

Specifically, a last minute trip to my personal kryptonite, Tex-Mex food.

What I did was use mental contrasting and implementation intention. I also took my phone along and, a la my No Bread Challenge and the Flash Diet, took pictures of the bread, tortillas, etc, that I would have problems with.

 

This went well, and the picture taking really underscored and boosted my willpower. I even, in the last picture, took an appetizer - a breaded and fried stuffed jalapeño, and took it out of it’s breading and ate it. That’s a lot of willpower for the problems I had and described before we went.

Here’s where I can improve:
-Make the implementation more detailed. I didn’t describe how I would treat getting a Margarita, so I ended up getting one and drinking the rest of my dad’s when he couldn’t finish it.
-Ask for more food. I was hungry after sharing fajitas for one, so I ended up eating a little bit of the breading after I ate the de-breaded stuffed jalapeños. After that I was still hungry, and I could have very well just asked for something more in order to be full. The key is eating enough - or at least having enough options - you can always take the rest home, which makes it easier for the next few days. In that way you can think of it as an opportunity in addition to being a challenge.

Again great job - I didn’t eat ANY chips, no tortillas, no rice, maybe half a spoon full of the beans, and none of the sopapilla that they ordered. More than anything implementation intention and the “flash diet” of taking pictures helped. Did mental contrasting really help? I don’t know, but it really helped with underscoring the situation before I went out.

Let’s see how it works the next time - AND it may very well be a great protocol to put into motion when I’m home or visiting friends for the holidays in general.

Day 176, One Drink Too Many, & The Flash Diet

Day 176 Record Keeping SRHI = 84
Day 144 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 82
Day 90 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 80 (3x5 knee diamond pushups)
Day 17 Writing = 45
Day 190 Eating SRHI = 69
Day 7 No Bread = 40 
Great sleep, great wakeup. Felt depleted yesterday. Drank a little too much yesterday. 

One Drink Too Many

Felt pretty carb depleted, ended up eating a plate of patatas bravas. Some of the best I’ve had and it was well worth it. Met a colleague at a place that specialized in gin. Had an amazing gin drink, then made the mistake of ordering another. 

Good and bad points with this. The good was that there was some of the best looking bread on the table - and the most tempted I’ve been so far to eat it. I was buzzing, and I automatically let it sit there.Secondly, one drink had me buzzing, which demonstrates the progress I’ve made this year cutting back on booze. 

The bad was the completely unnecessary decision of getting another drink. I think as I get better at curtailing drinking, I’m going to viscerally understand that it’s a prop that I’ve associated with being out and social, and I’m realizing it’s something I need less and less. I’m getting more used to just ordering water as a go-to, and this is fantastic evolution.

When I got home, I had the munchies, and was incredibly proud that I just automatically made a snack of chorizo, tomatoes, and mushrooms instead of grabbing some chips at the store. And it was so utterly automatic.

The Flash Diet

During this no bread challenge I’ve decided to not only do a modified SRHI, but also count the number of times I’ve had to say no to bread.

A while back I read about dieters experiencing significant success in diet control by taking pics of any food they ate (the “flash” diet). That level of distancing oneself seemed to help them make better decisions, and I felt it helped last night when I decided to be that annoying guy at the table and take a pic of my bread basket. I decided I’ll do this for at least a month and see how it goes, and if it helps long term. And last night I felt that it did indeed bolster my control. So here’s my pic!