Controlling unhealthy impulses
Discussion
I'm not sure if this is the right place for this thread but it certainly impacts on both my physical and mental wellbeing so I'll kick off here.
Basically, I have the self-control of an unattended five year old in a sweetshop which is starting to have quite a serious impact on my health and I need to get it in check. In particular I'm having real trouble getting a handle on my eating and drinking and find myself swinging wildly between periods of abstinence and binge.
Outwardly, I would appear to be pretty healthy since I cycle a lot (200-300km a week) so I'm not overweight and my general diet is good with lots of fresh fruit and veg, little processed meat and plenty of water. However I have periods when I eat excessively between meals. By which I'm talking scoffing a whole box of chocolates to myself or eating a jar of Nutella with a spoon. Yesterday, for example, I ate three healthy meals (porridge and banana for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch and mushroom risotto for dinner) but inbetween I ate a large bar of Dairy Milk, a large bag of Doritos and a tub of Ben & Jerry's. Which I know is just ridiculous.
And over the course of Sunday, I drank 6-7 bottles of beer, half a bottle of champagne and two-thirds of a bottle of red wine.
I keep promising myself that I'm going to get this under control but I seem totally incapable of having any sort of sensible balance. I'm either not eating junk at all or I'm eating excessive amounts of it. The same with the booze. And I hate myself for it because it makes me feel so s
t and lethargic afterwards and I regret punishing my body and wasting money. My underlying health is ok except for slightly high blood pressure although I suffered a stroke in 2013 at the age of 33 (not lifestyle-related) so I really ought to be looking after myself better. And not just for my own sake but for my wife and two young kids too.
Basically my impulse control is non-existent and outside of the food/drink stuff it's also led me to make some poor choices in other aspects of my life that I'm not going to go into here.
Has anyone else here had similar issues that they've managed to successfully address? I feel stupid asking because I'm a grown man who should be able to exercise a little more restraint but I keep trying and failing and I really need to break the cycle. Any advice or experience gratefully received.
Basically, I have the self-control of an unattended five year old in a sweetshop which is starting to have quite a serious impact on my health and I need to get it in check. In particular I'm having real trouble getting a handle on my eating and drinking and find myself swinging wildly between periods of abstinence and binge.
Outwardly, I would appear to be pretty healthy since I cycle a lot (200-300km a week) so I'm not overweight and my general diet is good with lots of fresh fruit and veg, little processed meat and plenty of water. However I have periods when I eat excessively between meals. By which I'm talking scoffing a whole box of chocolates to myself or eating a jar of Nutella with a spoon. Yesterday, for example, I ate three healthy meals (porridge and banana for breakfast, chicken salad for lunch and mushroom risotto for dinner) but inbetween I ate a large bar of Dairy Milk, a large bag of Doritos and a tub of Ben & Jerry's. Which I know is just ridiculous.
And over the course of Sunday, I drank 6-7 bottles of beer, half a bottle of champagne and two-thirds of a bottle of red wine.
I keep promising myself that I'm going to get this under control but I seem totally incapable of having any sort of sensible balance. I'm either not eating junk at all or I'm eating excessive amounts of it. The same with the booze. And I hate myself for it because it makes me feel so s
t and lethargic afterwards and I regret punishing my body and wasting money. My underlying health is ok except for slightly high blood pressure although I suffered a stroke in 2013 at the age of 33 (not lifestyle-related) so I really ought to be looking after myself better. And not just for my own sake but for my wife and two young kids too. Basically my impulse control is non-existent and outside of the food/drink stuff it's also led me to make some poor choices in other aspects of my life that I'm not going to go into here.
Has anyone else here had similar issues that they've managed to successfully address? I feel stupid asking because I'm a grown man who should be able to exercise a little more restraint but I keep trying and failing and I really need to break the cycle. Any advice or experience gratefully received.
Abstaining followed by binges and feeling remorse are more common than you think, and can be tricky to deal with. It's a great first step to have noticed the issue, and to be thinking about how you can get out of the cycle. I used to occasionally binge on whole bars of chocolate, big "sharing" packs of crisps and whole jars of nutella in the past. For me it used to mainly be when I was bored or feeling stressed by work.
As wacky racer said, part of what helped was not buying things to binge on. I actively avoided going into the snack isles at the supermarket for example. I found completely abstaining difficult, so I bought snacks that were healthier and harder to binge on, such as nuts, and dark or mint chocolate.
My initial questions after reading what you wrote is;
1) how long do you go without things that tempt you before a binge?
2) have you noticed any patterns in when/ where/ why your binges occur? Or any associated moods/ thoughts?
3) do you try and hide your binges or do they occur in a social setting?
As wacky racer said, part of what helped was not buying things to binge on. I actively avoided going into the snack isles at the supermarket for example. I found completely abstaining difficult, so I bought snacks that were healthier and harder to binge on, such as nuts, and dark or mint chocolate.
My initial questions after reading what you wrote is;
1) how long do you go without things that tempt you before a binge?
2) have you noticed any patterns in when/ where/ why your binges occur? Or any associated moods/ thoughts?
3) do you try and hide your binges or do they occur in a social setting?
Louis Balfour said:
This thread does not deliver.
It probably could, but I'm not going there on a public forum!Codswallop said:
Abstaining followed by binges and feeling remorse are more common than you think, and can be tricky to deal with. It's a great first step to have noticed the issue, and to be thinking about how you can get out of the cycle. I used to occasionally binge on whole bars of chocolate, big "sharing" packs of crisps and whole jars of nutella in the past. For me it used to mainly be when I was bored or feeling stressed by work.
As wacky racer said, part of what helped was not buying things to binge on. I actively avoided going into the snack isles at the supermarket for example. I found completely abstaining difficult, so I bought snacks that were healthier and harder to binge on, such as nuts, and dark or mint chocolate.
My initial questions after reading what you wrote is;
1) how long do you go without things that tempt you before a binge?
2) have you noticed any patterns in when/ where/ why your binges occur? Or any associated moods/ thoughts?
3) do you try and hide your binges or do they occur in a social setting?
As you and Wacky Racer have said, removing temptation would be a start. I have one small problem - I live less than a one minute walk from a Tesco Express which is open 7am - 10pm every day to cater to my junk food and alcohol desires! So no matter how good I am doing the weekly shop, I have all the bad stuff on my doorstep and accessible in a round trip that I can easily make during an ad break on the tv.As wacky racer said, part of what helped was not buying things to binge on. I actively avoided going into the snack isles at the supermarket for example. I found completely abstaining difficult, so I bought snacks that were healthier and harder to binge on, such as nuts, and dark or mint chocolate.
My initial questions after reading what you wrote is;
1) how long do you go without things that tempt you before a binge?
2) have you noticed any patterns in when/ where/ why your binges occur? Or any associated moods/ thoughts?
3) do you try and hide your binges or do they occur in a social setting?
You're definitely right on the boredom/stress trigger though. I can sometimes go four to six weeks where I have everything under control before I then fold like a newspaper. I'll have a tough week at work or other stuff going on which is on my mind and I feel like I deserve a treat or want to try and switch off from something and then it's game over. But it's never one or two beers or a glass of wine or a normal-sized chocolate bar. I go hard.
Or on the flipside, when I'm quiet at work, and especially now I'm working from home all of the time, I have time on my hands and tend to fill it with unhealthy, unproductive stuff. Ideally I'd get out of the house and go for a ride or a run but because I need to be next to the laptop and phone, I end up sat in and I'll start snacking.
And I'm ashamed to say that I do hide my binges from my wife. Not so much with the booze because that will be in the evenings or over the weekends when we're together anyway. But during the week, I'll eat stuff and then try to hide the packets or wrappers in the bin so that she doesn't see them. She knows I snack a lot and can also see all of the Tesco Express transactions on our credit card so I know she knows to an extent, but I still feel the need to try not to make it too obvious what I'm doing.
I'm not in a situation where I want to stop drinking or having the odd treat here and there because I think it's healthy to have a bit of balance and indulge yourself every now and then. My problem is that I have no balance at all and I feel my relationship with the drink and snacks is totally out of control at the moment.
If you lack self control then do online shopping to reduce impulse\crave buys and just don't buy anything unhealthy. We buy enough treats for a Fri/sat night (though trying to reduce to one night) then not have anything like chocolate/crisps/biscuits in the house through the week - very easy to stick to.
What’s working for me is tracking what I’m eating *honestly* in MyFitnessPal (I’m sure other trackers are available). Just seeing that, say, a bar of chocolate has about the same calories as my egg/cheese/tomato/spinach lunch is focussing my mind.
I also took a couple of photos of my massive gut, which I’m unhappy about, to remind me that I am making some progress.
And, as has been said a lot, removing the temptation from the house helps.
Oh, and I’ve tried to knock the booze on the head by moving to the alco-free varieties... I really like the Punk AF and Erdinger Alkoholfrei Wheat Beer.
I also took a couple of photos of my massive gut, which I’m unhappy about, to remind me that I am making some progress.
And, as has been said a lot, removing the temptation from the house helps.
Oh, and I’ve tried to knock the booze on the head by moving to the alco-free varieties... I really like the Punk AF and Erdinger Alkoholfrei Wheat Beer.
Edited by bigandclever on Tuesday 15th September 12:19
Thanks for all the responses, and particularly the suggestion of CBT. I've just had a quick look on the NHS website and it seems that you don't even need to get a GP referral to start a course. I definitely need to speak to my wife before I sign up to anything though as I want to keep her in the loop, especially if I have external help. But it's something I'm going to explore further.
I think one of my problems is that I don't have a very tangible incentive to stop. I'm 6' 1" and weigh between 75-80kg most of the time so I'm not overweight and my fitness is good (I can ride 100km in under 3.5 hours or run a 45 minute 10km without any trouble). I've signed up to a series of duathlons in November to motivate myself to stay on the straight and narrow but I know I can finish them without any problem so any benefit from cutting back would just be an improvement in my times which isn't proving very motivating!
I know I'd be doing my body a massive favour by stopping and that I would sleep better, feel better and have more energy. But again, the hook just doesn't seem strong enough to override the urges when they hit.
I did see a health-related programme on tv recently which was talking about internal fat and it did make me wonder what a mess some of my internal organs must be in considering the amount of crap I throw at them. Perhaps I need to be focusing on that a bit more.
I think one of my problems is that I don't have a very tangible incentive to stop. I'm 6' 1" and weigh between 75-80kg most of the time so I'm not overweight and my fitness is good (I can ride 100km in under 3.5 hours or run a 45 minute 10km without any trouble). I've signed up to a series of duathlons in November to motivate myself to stay on the straight and narrow but I know I can finish them without any problem so any benefit from cutting back would just be an improvement in my times which isn't proving very motivating!
I know I'd be doing my body a massive favour by stopping and that I would sleep better, feel better and have more energy. But again, the hook just doesn't seem strong enough to override the urges when they hit.
I did see a health-related programme on tv recently which was talking about internal fat and it did make me wonder what a mess some of my internal organs must be in considering the amount of crap I throw at them. Perhaps I need to be focusing on that a bit more.
Wacky Racer said:
Remove all temptation.
I got into the habit of having a full tin of rice pudding every night about 8pm, most times when I wasn't hungry.
Don't by it now, and tend to have an apple instead.
Is probably right idea. I probably drink too much, get in after work & have a beer or two easy. I got into the habit of having a full tin of rice pudding every night about 8pm, most times when I wasn't hungry.
Don't by it now, and tend to have an apple instead.
I worked in Kuwait & Saudi & basically was dry the whole time wasn't an issue didn't miss it.
BoRED S2upid said:
Is there any relationship between the binges and exercise? I know when I do 100km on the bike I can’t stop eating when I get back but then I have just burnt off a couple thousand cals. Just need to eat the right food not the junk and beers.
There was quite an interesting talk on last weeks Pint of Science festival on the relationship between diet and exercise. Starts about 30 mins in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b59YY6zTkSUTyre Smoke said:
I'm still struggling to see the problem with 7 bottles of beer, half a bottle of champagne and most of a bottle of red. I'm seeing a fail in not finishing off the red.
That's just a session. Not out of the ordinary at all.
That's pretty much your weeks limit, over probably. In one.That's just a session. Not out of the ordinary at all.
BoRED S2upid said:
Is there any relationship between the binges and exercise? I know when I do 100km on the bike I can’t stop eating when I get back but then I have just burnt off a couple thousand cals. Just need to eat the right food not the junk and beers.
The relationship is actually inverse. I end up doing big chunks of exercise because I feel guilty about the amount of junk that I've eaten and try to burn as much of it off as possible. Part of the reason that I know my relationship with food isn't healthy is the fact that I'm not eating because I'm hungry or I'm eating well past the point where any hunger has been sated.
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