Five Ways To Regain Control Of Your Eating

Valerie Agnew

It’s eleven o’clock in the morning. You’re on your own in the house and you’re feeling fed up. You haven’t had a good week - you ate some of the kids’ leftovers at the birthday party, and you threw all precaution to the wind when you went out for a meal at the weekend. You’ll have gained weight this week, you just know it, so you are standing in the kitchen with a two-litre tub of ice cream and you’re eating it! You can’t seem to do anything else. You just can’t control yourself! Many Tesco Dieters have a similar story to tell!

One minute you’re resolving to be good and stick to the plan and the next minute you have completely lost control. Any Tesco Dieter who has had this experience of losing control (and there can’t be many who haven’t) will know just how it feels. You might THINK you have no control over your reactions - that you’re trapped, BUT control is far easier than you might THINK! The first BIG step, and it may seem like an obvious one, is to FACE UP to the fact that you are capable of losing control and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in doing so. So many Tesco Diets members are two faced (and I mean this kindly!) They present a slimming face to the world. Their fridges are shining examples of Tesco Diets perfection and display cottage cheese, fresh fruit, yogurt and other low fat foods. However, their other side is a chocolate devouring demon that is capable of buying six Kit Kats at the supermarket and eating them one by one while disposing of the wrappers on the way to picking up the children from school. It is important to FACE UP to this fact! You will find that 90% of our members ‘lose control’ at some stage, and it is good to know that you are not alone with this problem.

The other reason for FACING UP is that by admitting that you lose control, you are taking away a little bit of the mystique of the situation. You see, no matter how much we may hate to admit it to ourselves, there is something about binge eating that is attractive because IT IS FORBIDDEN. When we are trying to lose weight, a number of foods are denied to us - unfortunately no one has found a way of losing weight without cutting down on some food, particularly the FAT content. These things are usually the ‘nice’, ‘tasty’, ‘treat’ food items that we enjoy so much. Equally unfortunately, the human being, once something is denied to him or her, WANTS IT EVEN MORE. This is HUMAN NATURE.

Of course this is not the only reason we lose control and binge eat. Very often the need to ‘stuff’ ourselves with food when the going gets tough has its roots in childhood. It is still a sad fact that many mothers, albeit it a loving way, would stop the crying or the ‘tantrum’ with a sweet. But what does the child learn when the mother does this? That if you want something and you can’t get it, a sweet will do instead. And when the child grows up and has many more sophisticated needs and says ‘I need a holiday, I need a new job, I need a more satisfying relationship, I need the money to pay this bill etc.’ What does he or she do? That’s right…heads straight for the fridge! What I am really trying to say is: no matter how insane your behaviour might appear to be when you sit to eat a bag of buns, there ARE REASONS for doing what you do. We may be doing what we have been taught. When the going gets tough - EAT! Learning NEW HABITS without understanding the old habits is like building a house without foundations. You cannot learn to be in control of eating until you understand why binge eating is a problem. There are REASONS for doing what we do, AND, there are MEANS of CONTROLLING what we do! If you lose control say to yourself ‘Right. I lost control. But every time that happens I shall use it as a learning opportunity to make a note of my reactions and why and when it happened and to try to avoid that situation again’. That is the most important thing of all. This way, you CAN regain control.

1.     Replace this behaviour! Resolve to REPLACE that feeling of wanting to eat with the desire to take a luxurious bubble bath, or a walk, or something more beneficial to your body and your mind.

2.     Be patient! It might take a little time to replace that deep seated reaction that says, ‘Its late, I’m fed up so I’ll just go to the fridge and see what is there’, with ‘its late, I’m fed up so I’ll run a bath!’ Be patient with yourself.

3.     Wait it out! If tempted to eat something, WAIT a minute. If you last a minute, wait another minute and so on. If you wait five minutes, chances are you will forget about what you wanted to eat in the first place!

4.     Move a muscle! This means instead of sitting moaning about what you would ‘love to eat’, GET UP AND DO SOMETHING. Walk, exercise, tidy the house, wash the car etc.

5.     Believe in yourself! Tell yourself, ‘I am in CONTROL and I am the boss here’! Tell yourself in every tempting eating situation ‘I don’t need it, I don’t want it, I won’t eat it!