You really have to organize your life like a sober alcoholic would, trying to keep those trigger foods completely out of sight so they’re not an option. I still struggle when spouse brings home some processed snacks, though some of them aren’t a problem for me (for example, I ate so much ice cream during the pandemic that I no longer am tempted by it).
My coach at the gym is a competitive body builder/athlete, in incredible shape. They said they can’t keep any kind of nut butters at home because they’ll eat too much of it, though one trick they had for that was to keep it in the freezer.
One thing I learned in my recent WL journey is a bunch of new food substitutions.
I think that what perhaps is happening for many of us very active people who find our weight creeping up as we age is a perfect storm:
—mostly long slow endurance exercise, which tends to be catabolic (consumes muscle mass)
—little to no strength training
—intense effort followed by excessive rest (instead of effective, moderate strength effort and zone 2 cardio/high NEAT)
—gradual increase in processed foods and general higher calorie foods, increase in overall daily calories, becoming accustomed to high cal/low satiety foods as frequent (daily or several times/day) reward
—more alcohol, more fast food, more restaurants
—more sedentary life with way more screen time
—low NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, things like daily step count)
—gradual loss of muscle mass and gain of fat leading to slower metabolism
I was blaming my increase in weight on factors out of my control plus middle age. Now I am realizing that all the above (except for the drinking/fast food/restaurants, I don’t do those myself) was happening. And it’s slow and insidious, and takes conscious effort to go against this tide!
Anyway see my other posts for what is working for me now in terms of body recomposition!
I've studied addiction for years and it really does help for understanding consumption motivation.
It's important to understand that the most addictive substances are the fast-delivery ones. Drugs are more addictive if they get you high faster. The brain craves whatever is the shortest path to satisfaction.
With eating, this means that the brain will scan your house for whatever is in it that's edible and zero in on the fastest, most calorie dense option it can come up with.
So if you have the makings of a salad, which will take time to assemble, or you have a fatty ultra processed item in your freezer or pantry that can be heated up quickly, that's what you're going to crave.
I work with a few clients on eating psychology, and the first step I work on is to understand cravings. We simultaneously tackle the emotional self-medication motivation beyond eating and logistically tackle the access problems.
If you want to crave whole foods, you have to kind of mindfuck your own brain. You have to make whole food options the fastest/easiest/laziest option.
In my house, I can have cookies or cake, that's not a problem, but I have to make them, which I'm basically never motivated to do when I'm snacky, so I don't crave cookies and cake because those take time.
In my house, the fridge is perpetually packed with extremely lazy, whole food eating options. I bulk cook meals and pre-portion them, I keep hard boiled eggs, hummus, and veggies at all times, and bananas.
When I have an urge to eat, I can observe my brain do it's food scan and settle on hard boiled eggs, raw peppers, and hummus as the most tempting option. It's a passive process, I don't have to exert any will power to choose whole foods over ultra processed snacks, and my brain won't crave ultra processed snacks because that would require going to the store, which takes more time.
Making the decision making process passive, for me, was always the key to how I lost a lot of weight and kept it off.
I don't have a ton of willpower, if I depend on willpower and active decision making for healthy habits, I would be fucked. I've always had to create systems that make the outcome I want the most passive and automatic one.
So that means the two-pronged approach of working *with* how the brain craves food AND addressing the self-soothing aspect of eating for comfort/boredom/etc, by making sure that eating as a coping skill is effectively replaced with an alternative coping skill.
Because if someone eats as a coping skill, taking that skill away just increases the very stress they were eating to manage, which is more likely to make any eating modification fail and rebound hard.
It has to be easy to be sustainable.
For example, since my leg got mangled, it's been much more challenging for me to bulk cook. DH can help, but it's not at all efficient or pleasant for us to cook together. We ended up buying a lot more processed food options over the last year as a result and were not at all happy with that solution.
So instead, I've hired a cooking assistant to lighten my work load. It costs about the same as buying more processed food, and makes healthier options easier.
I work within the assumption that if it's not easy, I won't do it. Taking care of my body must be the easiest and most pleasant option for it to be a sustainable solution.
