My sister is asking me questions about where our weight issues came from. Why we over eat. This was one of her questions. Do you have a trigger food? For instance she knows when she has peanut butter and Jelly for breakfast; she tends to over eat. She is going to be asking other hard questions. I don't know if I am going to be able to answer all of them. I do know somewhere in my childhood A joke for our family became reality for me. "better eat now or forever hold your peace." As in the food may not be there. What about you? Do you have any of this stuff you battle or had to battle?
Just a thought.

Michelle

Black smoke began pouring out of the windows of Marfin Egnatia Bank. Angeliki and two colleagues, Paraskeui Zoulia and Epameinondas Tsakalis, were killed by the toxic fumes.<a href="http://www.bingcheapjerseys.com">cheap jerseys</a>
Court documents allege a series of failings by a bank executive,<a href="http://www.bingcheapjerseys.com">cheap jerseys</a> the bank's external health and safety consultant and two managers -- including asking staff to remain inside and locking the main doors during the riots -- that contributed to the tragedy.<a href="http://www.bingcheapjerseys.com">nfl jerseys cheap</a>
The documents say the staff were unable to access an emergency exit, <a href="http://www.bingcheapjerseys.com">nfl jerseys cheap</a>with a door for disabled people that could be used in an emergency blocked by the fire. Further, they said the bank did not have a fire safety certificate, <a href="http://www.bingcheapjerseys.com">baseball jerseys</a>unbreakable windows, or security shutters drawn in readiness for the riots.

We wholesale jerseys, there are
cheap nfl jerseys. the name and number,team logo are stitched on it.

Stress can increase your weight. You should de-stress throughout the day. reason to start taking steps to lower your stress is because stress can increase the hormone cortisol in the body, which is a hormone that can dramatically increase your chances of gaining belly fat, as noted in a study published by the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Stress can also lead to emotional eating, Many people are in the habit of eating for emotional reasons and as such, this causes them to consume more calories than they should.

Meditation is the most effective way to reduce stress and give you the inner peace, use a Plus Incense while meditating, it creates a favorable atmosphere which calms the mind and makes it suitable for enjoying the meditative and exercise experience.

I am sorry for falling off the planet again, but things got really busy. Thank you for responding. I read most of it to my sister. I will finish when she gets back from vacation. It gave her a lot to think about. I know she appreciated it. Now I am curious what my other sister's responces were to her questions. One sister I can communicate well with. The other, it is a more rocky relationship.
Our family gatherings always center around food. They tend to center around my mother's recipes. Mom has always been resistant to new recipes. Anyway thank you very much.
Michelle

I've been thinking about this question for a few days. I realized that I now understand why my sister and I have struggled for ages with food. My family is a cornucopia of mixed food messages. And, almost every family get together I've ever attended revolved around food and/or became a meal or snack food fest.

As a single parent, mom left the cooking up to me (at 12 my cooking range was pretty limited at first). Lots of convenience foods. We also spent lots of time eating out with my grandparents (grandma never cooked much except on holidays). This would have been okay had things not evolved into the following:

grandma: my mission in life is to comfort you in the only way I know how: food. If you want it, it's yours. When you're with grandpa & me, we don't care if you should or shouldn't have it. Fries? Go for it. Mono and aggrivated liver and the doctor said no fried or greasy food? You need cared for, so have the french fries and breaded chicken sandwich anyway.

mom: I see you gaining weight. You need to stop gaining weight. I'm not buying you x, y, or z until you do. I'm only keeping healthy foods in the house. But I have to work, and you're in charge of the house, making meals, and your sister and you'd better keep your grade point average up. My word is law, get going. Oh, buy your lunches at school.

We went to nutrition and exercise classes, the school nurse really tried to get us to lose weight, and the only thing that any of this type of "intervention" did was to dig us in even harder than ever. We couldn't do anything right anyway, so why bother with this?

My sister and I became master hoarders and food sneakers because of all of this. Some we smuggled in when mom wasn't around from the grandparents, some came from school (little debbies, junk food, etc.) and some came from wherever else we could buy it and not let anybody see it. Mom was gone so much that this wasn't hard to do.

Even when mom was around, we gorged on "healthy foods" because we both suffered from mom who couldn't show love in any way that worked for us syndrome and had no idea what was wrong. It just took some creating snacking and midnight raids.

I still freak out when DH eats something that I have rationed out or set aside for another purpose. Partly because right now, I live on premade meals, and partly because of that trigger response to having stuff taken away because I "couldn't" seem to lose weight as a teenager. I have gotten better about seeing the freak out and reminding myself that there isn't anything that I can't get more of or make more of if I really want it.

I do have to admit that the freak outs have lessened some with DH being gluten free. We now have his & hers shelves in the pantries, fridge, and both freezers.

I still fall prey to the food based self medicating when I am depressed or upset, but mostly now it's more bored than any other emotion that causes mindless eating. Getting to this point required some serious counseling to deal with the abandonment issues, mental and emotional abuse, and the rewiring of my thought processes after being so radically controlled as a kid and the feelings of being unloved and unlovable by the only parent I had.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Coaster Girl,

as far as triggers go--definitely anxiety and depression

I agree with you guys who say awareness did not solve major problems. so true. i know. i am aware where it all comes from. that only gets me 30% there. what helped me tremendously was dealing with the depression, changing my personal situation, and little cognitive habits like slowing down when i eat, taking a breath or two before i start eating, talking to myself as I start toward the pantry, etc. those small habits helped me a great deal.

What I learned in my parents' house was about food as a social outlet. My mom hosted a Bridge Club meeting every few months. She and her friends took turns, and there was always an elaborate lunch before they sat down to their game. She would agonize for weeks about what to make. In addition, my parents belonged to a Dinner Club, again taking turns as host site. When you hosted you provided the main dish, and everyone else contributed appetizer, salad, side dish, and dessert. This also caused my mom a great deal of anxiety -- what kind of side dish can I make to go with Martha's chicken cordon bleu? I need a dessert that doesn't have chocolate because I made that last time. Dinner Club is at our house this month and I have no ideas for an entree! For my parents, I think food was a way of "keeping up with the Joneses."

I have been thinking about this lately, because I find myself dreading parties. I have a tendency to eat as a way of NOT having to make small talk. I also think DH uses his cooking skills as a way of impressing our friends. I often try to suggest non-food ways of getting together with friends, but somehow food becomes central anyway. Going to a movie becomes let's get coffee afterwards; going on a hike always seems to incorporate a picnic.

Wow, that was more of a stream of consciousness answer than I intended and I don't even know if it addresses Michele's question! But it does seem to be something I should explore further for myself.

quote:

...Do you have a trigger food?...

More like a "trigger mindset", boredom, stress, anxiety, depression...

All those things "encourage" me to overeat.

I grew up in two cultures, which had almost opposing mentality about food (and also my mother's influence--you can never be too thin)... both of my families have had a 'food = celebration' mentality. My great-aunt would say 'eat as much as you love me' (Egyptian side)

My parents were both crazy-obsessive over weight. Any piece of chocolate or junk food was not permitted, and at one point I developed food-hoarding behaviors to try to assert my independence. I never learned how to just deal normally with food... its complicated because there was the 'food is love/celebration' mentality coupled with the 'food is bad and you are fat' mentality from my parents...

I used to go around trying to create some kind of gooey junk food treats from what we had in the house... I did some pretty odd combinations too...

My grandmother (mom's mom) was much more balanced in terms of that kind of stuff... there was healthy food, but there was also some kind of sweets in the house too...

Like many here, I grew up using food as comfort rather than as nutrition. My parents had a terrible marriage and both wanted me to take sides. So one way of managing stress and making my unhappy mother slightly happier was to eat well - and she was a great cook too. Part of the silent deal was that she was skinny and I was chubby and not nearly as pretty as she was. I think lots of families have these unspoken deals about who gets to be what.

Most of my weight gain came thru pregnancy and postpartum parenting stress. I used my childhood skills to self-medicate and gained a substantial amount of weight.

As for triggers, my worst trigger is the coffee shop I visit daily. On a good day, I have a small sandwich with my coffee, or nothing at all. On a not-so-smart day, I have something sweet. My smart days are few and far in between.

Although I've devoted a large part of my life to analyzing myself and my issues, today I tend to think that analysis won't do it in the weight loss dept. It doesn't really matter WHY. What matters is handling it. And THAT is still hard work.

One thing I sometimes wonder is, What is it I see (or want to see) when I look at a full plate of food?

I grew up with food as reward and food as comfort. My family life was difficult and painful. Food seemed to make it better in the short term.

I don't spend a lot of time rehashing childhood pain. I have spent a lot of time doing that and I think it served me well in many ways, but I no longer feel the need and am grateful that I have the skills to stay thin.

I don't keep trigger foods in the house most of the time. I hate the stress of resisting. Even when it seems easy to resist the chips, I know I at a very low level stress walking my the pantry. I don't need extra stress. Plus, I am probably going to eat the trigger food- eventually- next week or next month and I can't afford the calories.

For me, so much of weight loss and maint. has been simple skill building and planning. For me, the emotional epiphany did not help me lose weight. Knowing WHY I overeat never helped me. I do better with cognitive behavior shifts. The irony is that I think that positive emotional shifts happened when I cleaned up my thinking and my eating. I tend to be pretty concrete - so this makes sense in my case. (I know Beck's book has had very mixed reviews here, but it helped me tremendously.)

I have lots of food issues relating back to my childhood but as Denise said, the more important part for me was figuring out how to change the behaviors more so than identifying it.

My parents were in Europe during WWII and like Iz's mom, my mom was actually starving. She ended up with scruvy it was so bad.

I also have chefs and foodies in the family so lots of food=love mentality and meals being a huge social event. Not to mention that big gatherings with friends and family were always revolving around food which were the times when my parents weren't fighting and actually having fun.

I have plenty of trigger foods that I don't keep in the house and stay away from. I find that when I'm eating poorly (high fat/sugar/white carb items), I overeat because I'm not satisfied. When I'm eating highly nutritious foods, it's easier for me to stay on plan.

PS... one thing I've reconciled is that NOBODY had the perfect childhood. Even people with PERFECT parents end up with issues... since how weird is perfect??? Some of the people I know who I THOUGHT had the happiest childhoods have some skeletons in the family closet. We ALL hit adulthood with multiple issues of one kind or another. And some of these will be food issues.

I think that it really helps to identify whatever issues we ended up with. And even more important... problem solve and strategize to cope and to figure out how to eat the right amount of calories despite whatever baggage we might have.

A lot of people stop short at the problem solving part, and kind of get stuck at the identifying the problem part.

I can absolutely trace some of my most-ingrained food issues back to my childhood.

When my father left my brother alone after dinner to go hang out in a bar all evening and then brought us home either Coke & snacks or ice cream and sundae fixins, I learned the concept of food as a salve ("I'm sorry I left you alone--here, have some chips"), for comfort, as reward, and as love. To this day, I have a sweet tooth that will not quit.

My father weighed 130-135 pounds his entire adult life (at least from the time I knew him) and instilled in me a hedonistic passion for food and eating. But instead of inheriting his ability to eat with abandon and remain pencil-thin, I inherited my mother's big butt and thighs. The "eating should be a celebration" mentality that I got from my Dad has led to a lifetime of eating the wrong foods and to dissatisfation with "diet food."

I recently finished two books by Geneen Roth (my first by her) and she deals with some childhood issues, so that may be of help. While I was disappointed in the first (Women Food and God), I still got some valuable information out of it. My disappointment with that book led me to look for another that would give me more of what I was looking for--and that's how I found Why Weight? which is more of a workbook than a book book.

I absolutely recommend Why Weight to anyone who is trying to figure out why they act (and eat) the way they do and to help identify issues that they can work on.

There is a great book called "The End of Overeating" by Dr. David Kessler.

About half the book is devoted to restaurant food and how the combo of sugar, salt and fat affect the brain.

Chile's, Applebees, and every fast food and chain restaurant in the United States have the BEST neuroscientists money can buy researching how we think and what makes us want to eat and order more. Are the best of the best researching brain tumors? Nope. They are working with Chile's chefs to make, "I gotta have it!" addictive food.

And a lot of it has to do with the combo of salt, sugar, and fat.

P & J sandwich would have all three of these ingredients. Although MANY people have figured out how to not let one P & J sandwich trigger a whole day of overeating.

I personally think that it is really important to learn to talk to ourselves the way we'd talk to a 5 year old and learn to eat ONE sandwich and be happy with that.

But "The End of Overeating" is a really good book and it takes complicated concepts like neurology and why we like some foods... and make them easy to understand.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: GoingSkiing,

I think that my sister and I have some issues going back to childhood. My dad was an alcoholic and things were often quite chaotic and unorganized in our house.

I remember there often being parts of meals available. Like there would be bread... but the cheese would be moldy. Or there would be cheese, but the bread was moldy. Or there would be cereal, the the milk would be sour. Or boxes of mac and cheese... but no milk.

I remember my brother making a lot of mayo sandwiches. Just mayo and bread. Nothing else. And ketchup sandwiches. Some of this might have been weird little kid food preferences... but it was also, in part, eating what was available.

My sister (as an adult) has a "thing" about not running out of food (or toilet paper). But she's never had a weight problem. I don't really have the food storing "thing". Although I have over bought on TP.

I also remember driving my mom crazy because she would go to the store and buy Ding Dongs or HoHo's or little bags of potato chips for our lunches and we would eat them when she got home from the store. However, when they were gone... they were gone and it isn't like she got back in the car and went and bought us more potato chips.

This "when it is gone, it's gone" philosophy goes back generations in my family. My mom said that during WWII when sugar and butter were rationed, her grandmother would occasionally make a batch of molasses cookies and a batch of sugar cookies. They'd eat all the sugar cookies first and when those were gone, start in on the molasses cookies... and when they were gone, they were gone and that's that.

It isn't like they binged on cookies. But I got the impression that if you wanted 1 or 2 cookies every couple of hours... you just helped yourself... and when they were gone, they were gone.

It is possible that this philosophy/behavior goes back in my family to my family’s caveman days. Probably goes back to yours, too. The people with birdlike appetites died. They are NOT our ancestors… because the prehistoric people who said, “I’m full on my little bitty portion. I can’t eat any more!” didn’t live to reproduce. Hunter gatherers needed to be able to survive a bad day of hunting, a bad week, and a bad season. Them that said, “Yum!!! Food!!! Eat!!! Eat more!!!!” and laid down a layer of fat when food was available, survived. And THEY are our ancestors.

So yeah… we ALL got family issues with food… going back a few thousand years to prehistoric times.

Re: trigger foods? I used to have trigger foods... but I don't so much any more... but I've put a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE amount of time and energy and figuring out the appropriate amount of calories needed, in general. AND working on emotional eating and figuring out appropriate portion sizes of "trigger foods".

And I also don't keep brownies or choc cake or ice cream in the house 24/7 just to prove that I don't have trigger issues any more.

I recently read a book called, "Thinking in Circles about Obesity" (I don't recommend it. It is VERY technical reading.) He does have a chapter on our capacity for Self Regulation" or what we might call "will power" or the ability to eat the appropriate number of calories.

There have actually been studies done on will power and we all seem to have a limited reserve of it. He used the analogy of a storage tank. The author also pointed out that most dieters SQUANDER their will power in various ways.

The author doesn't say this, but I think that keeping trigger foods in the house is probably the ultimate in squandering the very limited (and precious) amount of will power we possess.

We need will power every time we drive past McDonalds or walk past a bakery window or sticking to our list in the grocery store and not buying candy or every time we look at a restaurant menu. We live in a world with too many calories and need to call on our self regulation reserves often.

I think that it is dumb to squander my will power saying, "I won't eat the crackers!!!!" every time I look in the pantry. Better not to keep them in there 24/7. Probably better to buy them a couple of times a year and enjoy them... and when they are gone, they are gone.

oh sure, in our family, food was the focus of so much. there was definitely a sense of deprivation. my parents both came frm the warn in China (1940s), and at one point,o during an evacuation, my mom almost died of starvation. her skin turned dark and she was near death. My oldest auntie nursed her back to health with rice water. so i think there was a sense of--you better eat now, becuase you never know when you will get food again. also, with my mom, she always told me i was too skinny. even in grad school when i had a double chin (I knew I had gained weight), she was always coming after me with "you need to eat eat eat!" food was love. we were not a family that expressed with words. no one said "i love you" but if mom made a special dish, that was her way to say it. i do remember i never thought about being fat.nobody ever dieted. nobody ever felt bad about not going to the gym. we just ate until we were full, and we ate whatever tasted good. i was well into my 20's before i started to worry about being chubby.

i am pretty sure that my weight gain was largely due to not being able to express my feelings in healthier ways. i was in an empty marriage. i hated my job and i di dnot know how to get out. so i ate, and i went up some dress sizes. because eating felt good and comforting.once i started to take a hold of my life, the eating became more natural and i stopped thinking about "diet". it was a hard struggle--years and years of trying to break unhappy habits.

my mom still tells me to eat eat EAT! and i still feel bad if i refuse her food--it is like refusing her love.