Giving up foods and mental health

[QUOTE=2ndChance;948332]
I don't have a specific question, just wondering if other people experience things like this... I wake up in the morning and I don't want to eat eggs, I want to eat an apple. I want some oatmeal (made in the rice cooker with coconut oil and cinnamon!)[/QUOTE]

Then eat some oatmeal - in my opinion there's nothing wrong with it - I eat it several times a week as well - and if you want to avoid bloating or gas just soak the oats for a day with some rye flour, warm water and lemon juice. Carbs aren't bad, heck I even eat pasta several times a week and live to tell the tale - some people might truly benefit from reducing or even avoiding carbs and gluten, but is that your case? Listen to your body not other people's bodies.

[QUOTE=2ndChance;948332]
This site is all about debunking fiber but I've read other sites saying fiber is key to fighting colon cancer,"[/QUOTE]

Yes, this website, the forum in particular, can be extreme just like any other place that tells you on how one should truly eat and avoid - Eat what you want, and if it makes you feel fine and you get no problems with it then good - everyone is different - what works for some won't work for others.

I offer that food may be a MAJOR component of mental health.

I have a mantra that I have spouted for years..."If I eat right, I feel right. If I feel right, I exercise right. If I exercise right, I think right. If I think right, I eat right....". (Please excuse the poor grammar...but this works for my purposes.)

What I am trying to say is that for me, food is the foundation...and the cycle is self-reenforcing. I have found that if I eat crap...I feel like crap...and then think like crap. This leads to depression, frustration and irritation at both myself and others. I also stop being mindful and thinking as as clearly.

Admittedly, I am no doctor...but I know what works for me.

[QUOTE=2ndChance;948332]The day I ate a sandwich again, and I thought to myself "I can eat sandwiches if I want to, fuck it!" made me feel so much better. This is clearly a mental thing-- sandwiches may not be good for my body, but denying myself them when it's possible to have them is not good for my mind.[/QUOTE]

So "This is clearly a mental thing". Not necessarily. It's questionable whether there's any meaningful distinction between "body" and "mind" anyway.

Perhaps it was a relief simply feeling that you could have what you'd been denying yourself. However, I can give you a plausible mechanism by which the food could actually have lifted your mood.

You may have been rather low in serotonin. When you ate the carbohydrate, it caused an insulin spike. As I understand it, that spike tends to push a lot of chemicals out of the blood. However, [I]not[/I] serotonin. Since there is, in effect, less "competition" it can then get across the blood-brain barrier more easily.

What you did may have acted to manipulate your serotonin levels. It's just a back-asswards way to do it.

I'd suggest just eat primal and make sure you eat enough, too, in particular getting enough protein. But if you succumb to non-primal foods now and then, don't worry about it.

I wouldn't allow the fiber-fiends to panic you as regards cancer. You get plenty of soluble fiber in vegetables and fruit. Insoluble fiber, such as you get in cereals, doesn't do much other than irritate the GI tract.

IMO, you have a disordered relationship with food, and that's the link between food and mental health. I've read that in such situations, you need first to 'heal' your relationship with food by NOT restricting in any way. The idea is to focus on eating as healthily as you can, making sure that you don't deprive yourself unnecessarily.

Trying to follow a specific plan that dictates that some foods are 'off limits' or must be avoided will only mess further with your head. To be comfortable with food, you need to feel that you can eat whatever you wish.

Since you want to eat healthily, I really doubt that you're going to go off on some pretzel/triscuit binge any longer. In fact, those past experiences can be a reminder of how you don't want to eat. By all means, have your oatmeal!

If you'd like a good book about food and our minds, I strongly suggest Brain Over Binge. It's the story of a young woman who became bulimic as an adolescent and was in therapy for years--with no progress at all. She 'cured' herself by understanding how her own brain was dictating her binge eating--AND figuring out how to control that 'voice.'

IMO, the book benefits anyone with 'food issues.' I haven't had an eating disorder, but having been morbidly obese my entire life until recent years, I don't have a 'normal' relationship with food, and this book helped me understand myself.

[QUOTE=Lewis;948826]So "This is clearly a mental thing". Not necessarily. It's questionable whether there's any meaningful distinction between "body" and "mind" anyway.

Perhaps it was a relief simply feeling that you could have what you'd been denying yourself. However, I can give you a plausible mechanism by which the food could actually have lifted your mood.

You may have been rather low in serotonin. When you ate the carbohydrate, it caused an insulin spike. As I understand it, that spike tends to push a lot of chemicals out of the blood. However, [I]not[/I] serotonin. Since there is, in effect, less "competition" it can then get across the blood-brain barrier more easily.

What you did may have acted to manipulate your serotonin levels. It's just a back-asswards way to do it.

I'd suggest just eat primal and make sure you eat enough, too, in particular getting enough protein. But if you succumb to non-primal foods now and then, don't worry about it.

I wouldn't allow the fiber-fiends to panic you as regards cancer. You get plenty of soluble fiber in vegetables and fruit. Insoluble fiber, such as you get in cereals, doesn't do much other than irritate the GI tract.[/QUOTE]

word.

You have a mental issue that is manifesting itself as a food issue. Eat whatever you want if you think that will make you happy. Though your past experience seems to be that eating is going to be a huge issue no matter what you eat. Working on the mental problem may solve the food issue.

[QUOTE=Phil-SC;948798]I offer that food may be a MAJOR component of mental health.

I have a mantra that I have spouted for years..."If I eat right, I feel right. If I feel right, I exercise right. If I exercise right, I think right. If I think right, I eat right....".

I'm with Phil.

I also think you would do well to continue talk therapy, but with a better therapist!

From the age of 13 I had significant mental issues. Around my middle twenties I started to get happier. The older I am, the happier I get. Perhaps I am gaining wisdom. I just wish it hadn't taken so long! With all the info you have at your fingertips, you can succeed!

You have just gotten out of, and still feel the effects of puberty. If you don't eat well and take good care of yourself during puberty, you are thrown way out of whack emotionally and physically. While those feelings, that [I]identity[/I] linger, realize that you are young enough to recover quickly! Give the Primal lifestyle a good hearty long try. You don't want to be 60 still feeling the way you do, do you?

I see us humans as bags of chemical reactions. So much of what we blame on emotions and mental issues have a physical solution. For example, I went through menopause recently. I did not realize I was going through menopause at first. I just thought I hated everything, was over-thinking, paranoid and depressed. So the light bulb finally lit and I took an over the counter pill, Estroven. That got me into a better mood. Then I looked at my crappy diet, and went Primal/Paleo. Almost instant happiness, mind-clearing and pain-free living resulted. The crazy out of control hunger ceased and I began to hunger for exercise. Truly, my mental health is vastly improved. All by physical causes.

Good luck! You can do it!

[QUOTE=Phil-SC;948798]I have a mantra that I have spouted for years..."If I eat right, I feel right. If I feel right, I exercise right. If I exercise right, I think right. If I think right, I eat right....".[/QUOTE]

Phil, this is really, really good! This is my cycle as well, I have just never been able to put it so succinctly.

Thanks!!

I feel very much the same way, but I am trying to come to accept that the real goal is not to be ripped and beautiful, but to be happy. And if being happy means not having a perfect body, but enjoying an apple or buckwheat or something else, to the last bite, so be it. I have read Susan Alberts' books on Mindful Eating maybe 3 or 4 times each, and I resist less and less to what she is saying. Judgments, mindless dieting, cravings - that just leads to harm. I am more and more leaning towards trying to forget everything bit the basics, that the whole, unaltered foods are the most comforting, but food is not the ultimate comfort. I think that dieting made me worship food as a source of happiness, both due to chronic hunger and to the restrictions. I don't think I want to live the rest of my life in fear of eating something wrong.

OP, I've totally been having all these thoughts for the last month or so.

You know, I have a friend who is gorgeous, but always carried an extra few pounds. Occasionally she used to moan about feeling fat, but had a healthy appetite and enjoyed her food. Another friend convinced her to do weightwatchers. They both slimmed up, but after about six months, friend A started binging. She never had issues with an ED before this point in her life (she was 29 at the time). She did however, have a history of suffering from depression. Friend B doesn't, and didn't have any binging episodes.

I suffer from depression and an ED and I initially thought that cutting out addictive foods would be helpful. They were initially. But after about three months I "fell off the wagon". My body should have been "clean" but when the high of "getting clean" was over (change is addictive too!) I wanted my old pattern back.

Addiction is more than physical for some of us, and if you've got a tendency towards it then food just becomes another delivery system for physical highs that are inextricably linked to concurrent self loathing.

I personally think that, if you've got these tendencies, the restrictions set up a framework of denial and punishment, which just keep fuelling the addition. I've had drug, cigarette and alcohol [I]dependencies [/I]over the years which were crutches for my anxieties and sadness, but I think they never developed into full blown addictions cos I never hated myself for doing them or felt like i needed to stop. Over the years I became more comfortable with myself socially, and I gradually stopped doing all of those things. But they're not off limits.

The food thing is harder for me cos' it's linked to physical appearance and the inbuilt programming that skinny is beautiful. If you suffer from feelings of worthlessness, your physical appearance just becomes another way to punish yourself- "I don't deserve to look as good as I could". Sigh. Then adding in the restrictions, a diet / getting ripped becomes another thing to fail at, hence another thing to feel guilty about.

I think Emmie made some great suggestions and I think finding the right therapist is amazing, but it's something that you have to stick with for quite a while to see results.

[QUOTE=Leida;1057813]I feel very much the same way, but I am trying to come to accept that the real goal is not to be ripped and beautiful, but to be happy. And if being happy means not having a perfect body, but enjoying an apple or buckwheat or something else, to the last bite, so be it. I have read Susan Alberts' books on Mindful Eating maybe 3 or 4 times each, and I resist less and less to what she is saying. Judgments, mindless dieting, cravings - that just leads to harm. I am more and more leaning towards trying to forget everything bit the basics, that the whole, unaltered foods are the most comforting, but food is not the ultimate comfort. I think that dieting made me worship food as a source of happiness, both due to chronic hunger and to the restrictions. I don't think I want to live the rest of my life in fear of eating something wrong.[/QUOTE]

Love your approach Leida, as always :)