Fill your trolley: the psychology of food shopping

Deciding to lose weight is a life changing decision. It's a bit like marriage, you want to do it, you want to make it work, but are you going to become a different person? Will it change you? It's a journey you embark on in high spirits and with great expectations - with very little idea of where you'll end up.

It's not the big changes, it's the small ones that challenge you most. The things you used to do automatically without thinking - breakfast teapot for two not one; not taking the car keys off with you. When I started my weight loss programme,  I knew I'd have to eat different things, but I hadn't really worked out what that meant day to day and just how deep rooted those changes would be.

Going shopping, cooking meals are habits that are built up over the years so you go through the motions with barely a thought, you just do what you always do. I saw a study a few years ago that found a very high proportion of us have fridges and cupboards full of the foods our parents had, foods we grew up with. 

One of the scariest things about starting to lose weight for me was the first shop. If you're like me, you don't have a shopping list, it's all in your head, you can shop happily on automatic pilot. Well on my diet, my old list didn't work any more - panic! I was lucky, my weight loss plan gave me a shopping list, so I didn't have to work it out from scratch, but it was still very strange, like having a map to a new world.  

Some of the the territory was familiar; chicken, fish, fruit and veg, porridge, yogurt. So far, so good. But there were alien objects on the list, strange foods that made me feel I was shopping for a stranger. Crisp breads? Rice cakes? These were foods eaten by people on diets who don't like food! I remember my Mum eating them in the 60s, along with the grapefruit and the boiled egg diets that made her ill and a bit tetchy.

I was suspicious and unnerved.  I am definitely not a faddy diet person, I care about my health, these were not my foods, what were they doing in my trolley??  I consoled myself that they were only a small part of the list, and I wasn't ashamed of being on a diet was I (or was I? Hmm, another story). I decided to regard it like eating food in another country, I didn't have to love them, I just had to try them out, for a while.

The biggest change was the number of absent friends from my shopping trolley, foods that I always had in my house, and would no longer. Losing weight meant I had to say 'farewell' to foods I loved, foods I delighted in discovering and eating - cheese, bread, cakes and biscuits and wine.  I loved cheese; I loved the variety, the taste, the texture of cheese. I loved the social aspects of cheese, talking about a new discovery, sampling different tastes at the end of a lovely meal with friends. Low fat cheese would not cut the mustard.  These delights were absent entirely from my shopping list and I felt a sense of loss. I was a person who loved cheese who would eat it no longer. I missed cheese!

But I gradually came to love my new shopping trolley.  I love the colour of the fruit and veg that now fills it full to the top. Low fat yogurts replace cheese and I discovered Rachels Low Fat Organic Probiotic Rhubarb Yogurt which is better than ice cream (and now as dangerous!). We have lots of different fish too and very rarely eat processed meat. I delight in the diversity and abundance of my weekly shop, and I certainly don't feel deprived, my basket truly does overflow. The local farm shops are doing well out of us too as we treat ourselves to local seasonal veg and fruit. If you're in East Lothian try Knowes Farm Shop and Gosford Bothy Farm Shop. Haddington Farmers Market is a treasure trove of local healthy lovely food from around the area.

What we eat says a lot about who we are.   Our faith or beliefs can determine what we eat;  we have allergies and sensitivities; foods we we like and don't like, all of these say something about us. What we eat makes us who we are physically and psychologically. How many times have you looked at the shopping basket in front of you in the queue at the supermarket and formed a judgement? I do. I can compose complete life histories, if not dynastic sagas based on the content of the next shopping trolley. Have you ever hidden the white bread under the fruit in the trolley or explained to the check out person that the chocolate biscuits are for your Mum?  I have. Oh yes, food is much more than just physical nourishment.

Now, almost a year after reaching my target weight, I am happy with the new me. I like what my trolley says about me. It says this is a woman who loves to eat healthily and well.  Changing what I eat has changed my size but also changed how I see myself and I hadn't really expected that, it's a bonus. This idea I eat healthily is also a bit of a brake on indulgence, well I like to think so!

They say you are what you eat, how true that is!

Take care and happy shopping

Sue

I Hate Diets - They Don't Work!

I don't like diets. Diets mean doing without, eating abnormally. They are punishment for indulgence and lack of self control. I know that isn't really what the word means, but that's what it means to me and I'm not alone.  What's even crazier is diets don't usually work anyway. Only about 20% of dieters succeed in losing weight and keep it off for a reasonable amount of time. Diets don't work, so what do you do?

Diets fail because we don't stick to them when we're on them or  because we pile the weight on sooner or later when we stop 'dieting'.  Diets fail because they are miserable, unnatural and temporary fixes to a way of eating (and living) that has been going on for years. We all know yo-yo dieting is physically and mentally damaging and diet 'failure' can be a real knock to our emotional health and well being. Who in their right mind wants to stay on a diet, especially after you've lost the weight? All we want is to lose weight and get back to normal and get on with our (hopefully, slimmer) lives, and never have to diet again.

For me the mention of the word 'diet' sent me to the biscuit tin, so I needed a good story to tell myself. I worked hard to focus on eating to keep healthy and happy. I had to accept I was an unhealthy eater and got to be 4 stone overweight and morbidly obese because my normal eating habits were unhealthy.  I had to learn that healthy eating isn't just about what I eat, but how much; it's eating to keep my body within a healthy weight range/shape. I needed a new 'normal'.

Story 1 - I was getting back to normal weight by eating 500 calories per day less than I needed. Not dieting, just getting back to normal.  Story 2 - I had to learning how to eat healthily - for ever, not just until I'd lost the weight.

Over that year long weight loss programme, I put in place a new and healthy eating pattern that I have kept on even though now I don't need to lose weight anymore. What's different?  I was a classic - bacon roll, chocolate bar and milky builder's tea for breakfast; tuna mayo baguette and cake for lunch, big dinner - cheesy sauces and puds. Snacks during the day and a biscuit or two with Mum when I went to make her tea (Hands up carers if you believe that biscuits eaten during caring activity are calorie free!). 

Now  I have porridge, apple and yogurt for breakfast and soup, a roll and banana for lunch.  No cheesy sauces and we don't have puddings on a weekday.  Things are relaxed a bit at weekends and holidays, but we don't go mad - well not very often!  I love the way I eat now, I find my food delicious and satisfying.  My body feels better, I feel less sluggish and I enjoy treats when I have them.  I still enjoy my food and I still like a big full plate, but it's a healthy plate.  I am at peace with my eating!

There's a big hard sell on dieting and losing weight, but for most of us, it's about so much more than shifting the weight, it's about living healthily. Even the big diet companies are recognising that the real answer is not just to make easy money by getting us on the diet cycle, but about promoting healthy lifestyles for us and our families.

So, if like me your extra weight is down to a long standing pattern of unhealthy eating, just cutting down won't solve your problem in the long term. The real answer to losing weight is eating to be healthy, and that for many of us is about learning new ways of cooking, thinking, living.  So don't waste time dieting, get healthy.

Good luck!

Sue

ps My Race for Life is next Sunday, wish me luck!

3 Things I Do to Stay Slim: What My Diet Taught Me

Why did I have such a struggle with my weight? Why is it so easy for some folk to stay slim? You think it's be a fairly straightforward thing to sort out and we all have our own ideas, but the answer is different for every one of us. There's lots of judgement and blame dumped on people who 'weigh too much': we're lazy, greedy, undisciplined and just eat. We have to defend ourselves of course: it's not our fault, we're fat because of things out of our control - our metabolism or our genes.  But of course the real answer is a bit of both - we're all fat or thin for a whole range of reasons, some things we can control, some we can't, and the mix is unique to us.  The main thing is to know the difference between what we can control and what we can't.

Having to face up to being fat meant I had to think long and hard about how I got to be 56lbs overweight. I'd always been a healthy weight, with a few 'fat' periods over the years, but I piled on the pounds as I reached that 'certain age' for women. For quite a while I just accepted that it was inevitable and I blamed my hormones, my age and being stressed for putting on weight. Even if I did accept that I could at least take a bit of control, I just didn't have the time or the energy. I was busy coping from moment to moment and sorting out my weight was really not top of the list. Like thousands of women in their middle years I was a human dynamo, working, caring, shopping, cooking, the works; keeping loads of plates spinning, not noticing that the one with 'Sue's Health' on it was about to crash. It was only when I realised my health was threatened by my weight and that I'd be the one being cared for that I was forced to look again  (see my blog below -  Facing up to being fat: time to take control).

When I reached my target weight, I couldn't diet any more, I had to make up my own rules and I didn't know what to do at first. I realised that over the year of my diet I had learnt to eat and cook in a new, healthy way and that in the process I had come to be much more aware of what made me fat in the first place. The big reason I had got so fat was that I refused to pay attention to what I ate or what I weighed. I stuck my head in the sand, steadfastly ignoring the fact that what I was eating was making me fatter and fatter. My diet had confronted me with the truth that I was not eating healthily, that my eating habits were making me fat and ill and that if I wanted to stay slim I had to pay attention to what I was doing to myself.

I identified 3 things I now do differently and which help keep me slim:

I have taken control of what I eat.  My worst bad habit was I never ever used to think about what I ate. I ate what I liked, when I liked and felt deprived if I couldn't.  I could have written a PhD on calories and fat and all that stuff, I'm not stupid, but I never once sat down and worked out how many calories a day I was eating. When I started using the food diary, I was horrified, in particular how much saturated fat I was eating. I was amazed I wasn't even fatter given what I was eating. I ate far too much of everything. What an eye opener. No wonder I couldn't exercise it off!

I know how much I weigh - Another bit of ostrich type behaviour  - I never weighed myself before I started the diet. I didn't believe in scales, not sure why. That first weigh in was quite a shock. Now I always know what I weigh and regard this as essential information to help me keep control of my health. I don't have a set weight but I have an upper limit and I know if I'm going up and up or staying more or less stable.

I control my weight by what I eat, not by exercise -The third insight I got into why I was fat was that I have a real tendency to rely on exercise to control my weight; rather than eating less to lose weight, I exercised more. I do love exercise so it's no hardship, but it's a bit unsustainable.  To have a fighting chance of maintaining a healthy weight I had to look at what I ate and learn to eat to exercise not exercise to eat. Taking up running has really helped, I have to eat well and be disciplined in the quality and quantity of food I take in and of course I have new  running targets now to replace the weight ones.

Three small but important bits of insight into how I got fat are now helping me stay slim. My relationship with food, like many other folk, goes back to what I learnt as a child, things I took for granted and never thought to change. For me, my weight was not a problem until I came up against some brick walls - hormones and age and not being able to exercise it all away. I was out of control until I had to look more deeply at why the weight piled on when it did. That helped me find things I could do to make a difference. It's not easy but it is helping me make it work.

I'd love to know if you got a better understanding about your weight from dieting or some other way. What have you learnt about your eating habits? Has it helped you take control? What have you done that's made the difference?
Take care

Sue

Facing up to being fat: time to take control!

I've had quite a weekend! It's been fantastic to spend time with my sister and her lovely family and we all had far too much good food and drink and lots of laughter. Life is short and sharing the feast with your loved ones is one of life's greatest pleasures. We're so lucky to be blessed with both in abundance in our family. I am so, so tempted to just to keep going with the treats, but I know I'll regret it! But when to stop?

I've been pondering how easy it is to get back into the unhealthy eating habits I used to have and how that's fundamentally about what goes on in my head. I bet I'm not alone! I think I knew deep down that I had to lose weight for years, but did a fantastic job of ignoring how fat I was getting and how it was affecting my health.  I refused to weigh myself and played ostrich as my dress size crept up.  My 'fat days' clothes became my everyday clothes, soon to be replaced by bigger 'fat day' clothes, and so the pounds piled on. My chronic indigestion and sore knees were just worry and age. But hey, I was happy and loved, so what did those things matter. I ate good organic food, butter not marge and exercised regularly, walking, Pilates and yoga, even the odd cycle. What did I have to worry about???? 

I had to face reality early one morning 18 months ago as I tried to get into my winter tights.  I tried putting them on standing up and I tried sitting down, but I couldn't reach over my tummy. I tightened my muscles, I breathed out as far as I could, still couldn't reach. I had to lie on the bed with my legs in the air to get anywhere near my feet. It was like dressing a dying fly.  I was hot, bothered, and totally embarrassed.

There I was at 51 years old struggling with one of the most basic activities of living - getting myself dressed. What would happen as I got older?  This wasn't just about facing a cold winter in pop socks - I was pretty well insulated and already some way down the matronly fashion road.  This was about seeing for the first time the likely consequences if I did not radically change what I ate. I think I finally accepted that
 I wasn't fat because of my upbringing, it wasn't someone else's fault, I was fat because of what I chose to ate.

I knew I wanted to keep moving and active.  Most of us are lucky enough to take basic things like dressing ourselves and being able to move at will for granted.  I had watched my much loved Dad live with Parkinson's Disease which gradually took away his choices and his movement. Yet here was I also losing my mobility because of  what I chose to eat.  It felt wrong to do that to myself.

So that December morning another bit of the jigsaw fell into place and I faced the truth about my weight and began to take responsibility, to take control. I didn't start dieting right then, it was at least another six weeks before that happened, but I had finally accepted that I needed to act. The young, fit me inside was getting ready to fight back. Somewhere in my head things were starting to change, my time was coming.

I think back to that morning when I have problems getting back into eating healthily. I remind myself that it's up to me what I choose to eat, that I have a tendency to ignore facts that I don't like and that I want to stay young and fit and healthily for as long as I can. I think of what Dad would say and how he'd be right behind me, probably trying to get me to take up cricket before it got too late!

That feels better! So, a nice walk this afternoon I think and our favourite healthy chicken and veg curry for dinner - I'm looking forward to getting back to the straight and narrow!

Hopw do you get yourself back on track? Have you any ideas for how to cope? Please let me know!

Here' me and Ali after our aniversary lunch at Greywalls in Gullane, very full!

Take care

Sue