Mistaking HungerWritten by Caryl Ehrlich
You are not hungry most of time. You are not always hungry when something smells good, looks good, or tastes good, whether or not you think you are. All food is prepared to tempt your taste buds, even though you’re not hungry. You are also not hungry because there is stress, a deadline, pressure, a personal or business problem, anxiety, tension, it’s morning afternoon evening when alone with friends weekdays weekends day time night time money problems it rained it didn’t came with dinner it was there . . . You are not hungry 24 hours a day, though you might think you are. There are many daily food encounters: friends offering food, a maitre d’ describing dessert, smell of popcorn in a movie theater, to name but a few. Acknowledging visual and emotional blitz helps interrupt knee-jerk reaction that causes you to eat even though you’re not hungry. Just knowing you are not hungry most of time is a helpful piece of information. You may even have pinpointed reasons you’re thinking of food, reasons that seem to justify your eating when you’re not hungry. I’ve heard excuses as varied as “I got so angry because I couldn’t get a cab” to “I got caught in a downpour without an umbrella.” Many of these reasons might seem a valid enough reason to make you eat. They are not. Certainly anger might tempt you to use food as a drug to keep feelings down. If you eat when you’re angry, does anger go away? Or perhaps frustration weakens your resolve. At which point is your threshold for discomfort seriously challenged? Bored? At exactly which point does a yawn become a yen? Tired? When does food become a replacement for sleep? Does emotional pain diminish when you eat? Is celebration any better because you come home stuffed, bloated, and full of gas, uncomfortable and with lowered self-esteem? Is it worth it? Consider, if you will, that your past behavior has not worked. A clear vision of what you’re trying to accomplish will. Most of all, you need a mind open to possibility of change. One man I almost taught was so afraid to change that he was locked into where he hung his coat, where I sat, and where he sat. He was terrified I was going to pull off his covers and yank away his security blanket of whatever food he was holding onto – whichever food he thought made him comfortable. He was so uncomfortable with even thought of change, he would not tell me how much he weighed, or what he wanted to weigh.Of course it’s possible that some discomfort might occur while you’re changing. The very act of weighing less than you did before is a change. And there is no change without change. But there are ways to lessen discomfort of journey from where you are to where you want to be; to offer options, suggestions, tactics, tips, tried and true assignments that work more and more as they are practiced. After all, you learned to use food to calm yourself down. You can learn a new method, a new automatic response. Do you eat out of habit, not hunger? Identifying habits requires guidance, introspection, and patience, but most of all honesty. Once you acknowledge, “Yes, I do that,” you can decide you don’t want to do that anymore and begin to do something else, instead. It is unrealistic and self-defeating to expect to go from habitual, compulsive, or addictive eating behavior to a calm, rational, in-control eating person by reading an article, even this article. You can, however, alter automatic, learned responses by creating new and effective alternative behaviors that will result in permanent change. The new behavioral choices add up to a permanent weight loss, incrementally, not rattattattat. It’s worth repeating: Your original patterns evolved over a lifetime. Now you can consciously plan person you want to be. Food does not contain a narcotic. Food only has power you gave it by doing same thing with it each time you encountered it. Food has power you vested in it as part of a ritual distraction with your mind, many times since childhood, when you might have learned how to cope with stressful situations by using food inappropriately. It might have worked then, but it’s not working now. Now you need to find a new way that will work now. I’ll show you what to do if you are not hungry but are tempted. There are many things you can do when food is offered, baked, cooked, prepared, and present just for you. Learn how to handle compelling urges at office, in a restaurant, or at home. Learn that an umbrella-topped pushcart, wafting a familiar aroma, doesn’t always mean you have to eat a hot dog. Hunger demands to be fed. An urge passes. Know difference? The next time you’re at home and thinking of food, and you just ate a little while before, set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes and distract yourself with some activity. Sometimes I set timer, get busy with some other project, and when bell goes off, I not only forget I set bell, I’m not even sure why I set it in first place. One woman recalled a walk she took one summer day. She spied a man eating an ice cream cone, (a visual stimulus). She used mental repatterning techniques she’d created to distract herself. She’d practiced and repeated words, “Alert. Alert. Cross street,” which she did while laughing. She reassured herself that everything was going to be okay, and she prompted herself to calm her breathing.“Two minutes later, I’d found most adorable sequined hat in a store window,” she recounted. The moment clearly had passed. The techniques were there in her memory bank because she had written specifics of her plan, reviewed it daily to remind herself of details, envisioned it in her mind, so that when ice cream cone appeared, her new automatic response to say, “Alert. Alert. Cross street, take a deep breath, and keep walking,” kicked in. It is a process everyone can learn. It begins in your mind.
| | Nicocure - Stop Smoking with NicocureWritten by Ratliff J
Nicocure is a new generation aid to help you give up smoking. Nicocure gives you best possible chance of success and our workplace trials with thousands of smokers over ten years have demonstrated this. If you've decided to quit, you've come to right place. Nicocure is a simple to use product, which blocks up to 99% of nicotine and tar you would normally inhale. Used as part of our tried and tested program, it can help you be free of tobacco in 30 days without many of withdrawal symptoms you've seen your friends suffer from. Maybe you've even had them yourself. Try Nicocure, and take first step to claiming your life back.Kick Nicotine Habit Naturally Would you give an alcoholic more drinks to get him to quit? Would you give a dieter more cake and candy to help him lose weight? Would you give a drug addict more of his favorite drug if you were trying to get him to quit? Of course not! So why would anyone want to put MORE nicotine in their bodies when it's nicotine they're trying to lose their addiction to? It all comes down to fact that to quit smoking you eventually have to get off nicotine. And withdrawal from nicotine is VERY unpleasant. It's single thing that causes even most committed "quitters" to go back.
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