Diet Rehab: Identify Your Mantra

We have to identify our problem with precision before we can do anything about it.

Our mantra tells us what we can expect from the world and from ourselves.  If we are going to change our behavior and get new results, we will get a lot further if we start by changing our mantra.  We cannot change our mantra until we identify our mantra.

Here are some "ravenous for dopamine" mantras:
* Something has to change
* I'm just not good enough
* I never really succeed
* I let people down a lot
* My life is not going the way I thought it would
* I cannot finish anything
* No one really understands me
* Is there all there is?
* I just cannot get started
* I cannot do anything right
* Something is wrong with me
* I just cannot get it together
* I feel helpless
* I wish I was somewhere else

If none of the above fit, take a few minutes and really get down the sentence or phrase that captures your core beliefs about who you are and how the world responds to you.  What words do you keep hearing (in your mind) that make you feel discouraged, unmotivated, and inadequate?

Mine:
- Something has to change
- I never succeed
- I cannot finish anything
- I cannot get started
- I cannot do anything right
- Something is wrong with me
- I cannot get it together
- Why bother?
- I'll start tomorrow
- I'll do it next time
- It won't make any difference, anyway.

I think my #1 is "I'll start over tomorrow", meaning I can do <whatever bad behavior/habit> now, because I can start over tomorrow.  Another way I tell myself this is "I'll do it later".  It's all about procrastination, banking on tomorrow.  There's always an excuse with me.

I need to STOP MAKING EXCUSES!

Diet Rehab, pgs 101-117 "Feeling Blue = Dopamine Deficiency"

Chapter 5: Feeling Blue: Ravenous for Dopamine

When you're feeling anxious and fearful, you're hungry for serotonin.  When you're sad, lonely or listless, you're ravenous for dopamine.  Dopamine is the brain chemical associated with thrills and challenges.  It comes mostly from the anticipation.  When our dopamine levels are healthy, life seems fun and interesting, and we are frequently tingling with excitement.  When our dopamine levels are low, we tend to feel listless and blue, trapped in a boring, dead-end life.  Lack of dopamine can also make us feel unmotivated.  It becomes harder to focus on long-term goals, to defer gratification, and to muster endurance.  Low dopamine levels can send us rushing for quick-fix foods and behaviors.  High-fat foods cue our brains to release unsustainable amounts of dopamine, giving us a chemical rush of excitement and pleasure, and setting us up for an addiction to food.

There are many reasons we might end up dopamine deficient.  Life circumstances might have been constricting or boring, lack of sleep, and stress can cause a dopamine deficiency.  You might have inherited a tendency to lower dopamine levels or developed them through a childhood marked by high-stress and high-risk situations, such as when children grow up in an environment of rage or abuse.  Any type of dopamine deficiency leaves us feeling low and listless.

If our dopamine levels are too low, we don't get the kick we seek from the high-fat food we turn to, and we continue craving fat until our dopamine levels finally rise.  If you are trying to overcome a craving for dopamine, be compassionate with yourself, because it may feel as though your entire body is conspiring to pull you back into the addiction.  Dopamine is the reward for any type of pleasure and it's hard to not want more and more of it.

A key dopamine stimulator is caffeine, which gives us a quick high followed by an uncomfortable crash.  Caffeine does suppress your appetite during the buzz, but you might feel hungrier than ever when you crash.  Lack of sleep lowers both your dopamine and your serotonin levels, and caffeine can interfere with your ability to get a restful sleep.

Dopamine booster foods are crucial for giving you the lift that you may now be getting from caffeine, nicotine, or high-fat foods.  You can also harness the power of your mind to replace pitfall thoughts, which generate discouragement, fatigue, and lack of motivation, with booster thoughts, which generate excitement, energy and determination.

Transform your mantra by adding booster activities is one of the most powerful thought- and mood-transforming tools you can have.

Diet Rehab, pages 71-100

Chapter 4 - Feeling Anxious: Hungry for Serotonin

Serotonin is a key brain chemical that's crucial for many mental and physical functions.  This peace-giving substance soothes, comforts, and encourages.  high levels of serotonin make us feel optimistic and hopeful about achieving our goals and triumphing over challenges.  Low stores of serotonin make us feel anxious, fearful, and pessimistic about what we can accomplish. 

Low serotonin causes emotional ailments such as anxiety, depression, and lack of self-confidence.  With melatonin, serotonin is central to our ability to fall asleep, to stay asleep, and to sleep deeply.  Healthy, stable supplies of serotonin are crucial for good sleep.  Low serotonin is implicated in hypertension. 

Digestion relies on serotonin, much of which is manufactured in the gut.  Serotonin helps our abdominal muscles contract so they can push food through the gastrointestinal tract.  Serotonin is a known pain reliever. 

If insulin spikes too often, your cells will eventually begin to adapt by reducing their response to insulin, which then leaves the glucose floating aimlessly in your bloodstream instead of transferring its energy to your cells.  When your blood sugar is too high, your cells aren't getting enough of it.  Your pancreas will initially respond by making more insulin to saturate yoru insulin reception, but over time the pancreas will start to reduce the amount of insulin it releases.

If your brain is low on serotonin, it won't understand that you're "full," and you're likely to keep eating, even when your body has had enough.  Low serotonin levels make you more likely to overeat.  The lethargic feeling we get when indulging in too many carbs and sweets, commonly known as "food coma." 

The weight you gain from your serotonin shortage can lead to all sorts of problems; one example is sleep apnea, which in turn can lead to restless sleep and sleepiness during the daytime.  The downward spiral of using food to make up for this general feeling of low energy, even as the food you choose depletes your energy further.

Gradually, serotonin pitfalls need to be replaced.  The addictive sweets and starches need replaced with serotonin boosters: foods and activities that help keep your serotonin at a nice, stable level.  if you don't reverse this downward spiral, you're setting yourself up for serious health problems.  It's very difficult to simply feed your serotonin addiction just a little.  Due to the nature of tolerance, you're going to crave ever-increasing amounts of sweets and starches, and your weight--as well as all the related health risks-- will continue to increase.

Carbohydrates cause the brain to release serotonin.  Without enough carbohydrates to perform this crucial function, dieters become serotonin-deprived and may feel anxious, irritable and depressed. 

Low serotonin levels produce anxiety; and anxiety and other forms of stress deplete your serotonin.

Booster mantras improve our brain chemistry by creating a positive, joyous, and confident approach to life.  Pitfall mantras, which are negative, make us more likely to turn to addictive foods, alcohol, or drugs, thereby keeping us anxious, pessimistic and discouraged.  A mantra is a brief but powerful statement of your core belief about yourself and the world.

The more you avoid the pitfall styles of thinking, and the more you add the booster attributes to your life, the easier it will be to move from a pitfall matra to a booster one.  The more you work on transforming your mantra, the easier it will be to avoid pitfall thinking and bring booster attributes into your life.  Self-medicating with food only makes a pitfall mantra worse and can lead to a downward spiral if the "medicine" you're choosing is an addictive pitfall food.  The "sugar high" is inevitably followed by a "sugar low", just as the temporary calm of noodles and white bread gives way to an anxiety and hunger that are even more intense than before.  You can lift your mood with booster foods--whole grains, plain yogurt, berries, and other serotonin-rich foods that feed your brain in healthy, stable ways. Understanding pitfall mantras is the key, and then replacing them with more positive changes.  A positive booster mantra will allow you to feel better about yourself, your life, and your future even before you've reached your healthy weight.

Identifying Your Mantra:
If you're struggling with low serotonin, your current mantra is likely to reflect anxiety, pessimism, and a lack of confidence.Here are some common "hungry for serotonin" mantras:
* Something bad is going to happen.
* If that could happen, then anything could happen.
* I'm not okay.
* If I don't do something in one exact way, something bad will happen.
* If I'm not a complete success, I'm a complete failure.
* If I don't weigh myself frequently, my weight might baloon.
* If I don't control my feelings, I'll fall apart completely.
* If I ever let anyone down, I'm a complete failure as a person.
* If others get close to me, they'll hurt me.

Transforming Your Mantra:
* I'm a resourceful person and can handle the things that come up.
* Things will turn out okay...they usually have before.
* I'm good at many things, and if a few things aren't perfect, that's okay.
* I do what I can...and I'm okay with that.
* I've done my best---and my best is pretty good.
* Even when things are hard, I can imagine that they will get better.

Diet Rehab, pgs 53-67

Pitfall thoughts feed your anxiety, self-doubt, hopelessness, and despair.  This leads to behaviors that cause more of these unpleasant feelings.  Pitfall thoughts make you feel helpless, worthless, and unsafe, and they can contribute to feeling stuck, trapped, and bored. (pg 54)

Seven Pitfalls:

#1- Personalization
Personalization is when I assume that something is happening because of me.  I choose an explanation that involves blaming myself.  If you personalize something, just about every explanation for anything that goes wrong, begins and ends with you not being good enough. Blaming myself and taking things personally makes me feel hopeless, helpless, and unworthy.

#2- Pervasiveness
Pervasiveness is when any problem in any area of my life invades all the others.  If one part of my life goes bad, I shut down in all areas.  I allow one weakness to nullify all my strengths.

When something goes wrong in one part of my life, it is easy to let that affect all of my life.  The antidote to pervasiveness is perspective.  (pg 57)

#3- Paralysis-Analysis
This pitfall involves getting stuck in my own thoughts, trying to analyze what is wrong with me every time a sad, angry, or unpleasant feeling surfaces. (pg 57)

#4- Pessimism
Pessimism in this context means believing the worst-case scenario.  If there is a good evidence to think that something won't work, or that danger is approaching, then by all means, take appropriate action.  When pessimsm is your default response to any setback, it is time to reframe your thoughts.  Don't confuse what's possible with what's probable.

Pessimists are always imagining the worst-case scenario, in which any setback can easily be seen as the beginning of a catastrophe. This thinking leads to depression, anxiety, and despair. 

#5- Polarization
Polarization is seeing things in terms of "either/or"; black or white, yes or no, on or off.

#6- Psychic
This is the frame of mind in which we are sure we know what another person is thinking, we believe he or she should know what we are thinking and what we need, and we also think we know the future.  We think we are sure of a lot of things that we actually cannot really know.  Giving up our "psychic" pitfall thinking can be very difficult because it often feels as though we are giving up our claim to know the truth and to protect ourselves.  Sometimes we are living inside our own fears, wishes and projections.

#7- Permanence
Using the past or present to judge the future.  It is very tempting to judge the future by the past, especially because that makes us the expert.  We know what happened in the past, so now we can know what's going to happen in the future.  We can protect ourselves from disappointment and maybe even avoid the hard work of transformation and growth.

Booster Attributes:  The 7 P's to Master

Pitfalls erode your brain chemistry and booster qualities improve your brain chemistry.  The more of these booster attributes you fill your life with, the fewer pitfall thoughts you will have. 

Booster Attribute #1- Purpose
Filling our lives with purpose is the best way to cultivate lasting and meaningful happiness.

Booster Attribute #2- Peace
Bring peace into your life.
Filling our lives with peace has a direct effect on weight.  A lack of peace increases the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which tells the body to store fat in the most dangerous place, the belly.

Booster Attribute #3- Pride
Enjoy the qualities and achievements that you are most proud of.

Booster Attribute #4- Power
We all need to feel powerful, to experience a sense of competency and mastery in some area throughout our lives.  You can increase your sense of power by knowing you are a good parent or that you are really good at something else.  People who do not feel power are prone to hopelessness, anger, low self-worth, and sadness.

Booster Attribute #5- Passion
When you engage in an activity you are passionate about, time seems to fly.  Fill your life with things that are captivating.

Booster Attribute #6- Productivity
Distract yourself with something that makes you feel productive.  Clean out the "junk drawer".  Redirection, when we're feeling sad, helps to decrease many pitfalls in our life, especially paralysis-analysis, persuaveness and pessimism.

Booster Attribute #7- Pleasure
Do something that makes you happy.

Diet Rehab: Serotonin & Dopamine Pitfall Foods

Serotonin Pitfall Foods:

Breadsticks, Crackers
Cake
Candy
Coffee w/flavored syrup
Cookies
Doughnuts
Fruit Juice
Hot Chocolate
Ice Cream
Jam/Sweetened Spreads
Milk Chocolate
Muffins
Pancakes
Pie
Soda
Sugar (white, brown, powdered)
Sweetened breakfast cereals
Syrup
Waffles
Whipped Cream
White Bread
White flour
White pasta

Dopamine Pitfall Foods:

Bacon
Breakfast pastries
Brownies
Buffalo Wings
Butter
Cheese dip
Cookies
Corn chips
Cured meats (Salami, Slim Jims)
Deep-Fried crackers
French Fries
Fried Foods
Full-fat coffee drinks
High-fat creamy cheese
Movie theater popcorn
Mozzarella sticks
Potato Chips
Sausage
Soda

Diet Rehab, Dr Mike Dow (pgs 36-43) Addiction, Yo-Yo, Reward Response

Continued From Previous Post:

How Stress Can Make You Fat:
When we're stressed, our adrenal glands produce cortisol.  Cortisol is intended for the times when we have to jump into action...part of the "fight or flight" response.  It raises our blood pressure.  It tells our cells to store fat, to create fat reserves.

If we combine the rush of cortisol with sugary, starchy foods we crave under stress, and we have a recipe for insulin resistance.  This is is a condition where our bodies stop efficiently metabolizing blood sugar.  As a result, more calories are stored as fat.  We have trouble losing weight and we start gaining.

Cortisol and other elements of our adrenaline rush speed up our metabolism initially, which suppresses our appetite so we can focus on the task at hand.  When the rush wears off, we're super-hungry because our body expected us to burn off all that extra blood sugar and fat.  It creates hunger to compensate for this supposed activity.

If you've had some "pitfall" thoughts that have created additional stress, your stress and subsequent hunger-- will increase. 

Cortisol also suppresses our immune system and deplete our serotonin and dopamine levels, sending us into a state of anxiety and eventually send us toward depression.

The fat cells around our body are particularly sensitive to cortisol and to high insulin levels.  This area of our body is also very effective at storing energy.  This is why when we stress, it leads to weight gain on our bellies. (pgs 36-37)

--------------------------------------------

Addiction and Yo-Yo Dieting: (pg 37)

We need to maintain healthy serotonin and dopamine levels to feel good, and if we are not eating the right foods or engaging in the right activities, our levels will fall too low.  We may force ourselves to forgo our "medication" for a few weeks or even months.  Unless we genuinely learn to replace it with something healthier, we will always be tempted to come back.

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Getting to Know Your Hunger: (pg 39)

When Do I Feel Hungry?
x_after something upsets me.
x_after something wonderful happens.
x_because I am bored.
x_when I feel like I deserve a reward.
x_based on a cue: after a TV show is over, when I get home, etc.

How Do I Feel Hungry?
x_suddenly I am ravenous
x_gradually, my hunger goes from being small, to a pressing one.
x_I crave particular foods or types
x_I feel desperate
x_I feel calm and pleasant anticipation
x _I am constantly hungry.
x_I am constantly looking forward to my next meal.
x_I look forward to the food itself
x_I look forward to some other aspect of the  meal: the break, the time with family or friends, the chance to get away from work or out of the house.

If you are hit with constant hunger, there could be a huge emotional hunger in your life that is not being met.  If you are eating healthy meals and snacks filled with booster foods, usually we will feel gradual hunger every two or three hours.  If we have stuffed ourselves with a big meal, we may not feel physically hungry for at least six hours, as physical hunger usually comes on slowly and gradually.  Eating when you are bored, to give yourself a break, on a set schedule, or in response to a cue might mean that you're eating food you do not really need.

Just restricting your access to food does not change the reasons that you were eating excessively in the first place.  If your brain chemistry remains unbalanced--if your brain is still looking for dopamine and serotonin--keeping yourself from eating too much at one time will not change the dynamic.

The Reward Response: (pg 42)

Sugar and starchy foods relate to our hunger for serotonin and the high-fat foods feed our need for dopamine.  Whenever anything pleasurable happens to us, we get a little shot of dopamine, a tiny burst of Yes!  That little bit of dopamine serves as a reward for anything we do that feels good.

This dopamine reward is one of the reasons addictions are so hard to give up, even when we have physically detoxed from them.  Even when the physical addiction is broken--when there are no more withdrawal symptoms and our body is back to normal--that dopamine reward beckons and it can be very hard to resist.

End of Chapter 2.  To be continued.

Diet Rehab, Dr Mike Dow (pgs 1-35)

I decided to begin another book, and I'll be doing it slowly, like TCE.

Introduction:
"I'm going to make a confession: I used to have a food addiction.  Although I've since kicked the habit, every so often I want one of the foods I used to be addicted to."  Dr. Mike Dow

From me:
"I have a confession to make: I have a food addiction.  I crave different foods and haven't figured out how to get control over it yet."  ~ Me

Introduction:
Self-medicating (with food) is not just a metaphor.  Anti-depressants like Wellbutrin lift dopamine levels, as do nicotine, amphetamines, cocaine, bacon, potato chips, and other high-fat foods.  Serotonin and dopamine are helped by Prozac and Zoloft and street drugs.

We do not want to feel as bad as we feel, so we turn to our addiction to self-medicate.
Just as you can form an addiction to alcohol, nicotine and drugs, so can you become addicted to food.

When your life is full of serotonin-and dopamine-boosting activities, and when your thoughts trigger big doses of serotonin and dopamine and the self-esteem, optimism, and energy they bring, you will no longer crave the fix of different foods.  (This is a "light-bulb" moment for me.)

Part One:  Understanding Food Addiction
~Willpower is not the problem.

If your life is stressful or if you feel chronically anxious and unsafe, your serotonin levels probably have been low for a while, making you all the more vulnerable to the power of sugar and carbs.  Like wise, if your life feels boring and restricted, if you chronically feel blue and lethargic, your dopamine levels have likely dropped even before you started worrying about your weight. (pg 25)

When you do weight-loss surgery, if you do not address the patients' brain chemistry, they'll continue to feel miserable and deprived.  They'll still crave the foods that make them feel good--that did, actually, generate the brain chemicals that we all need to feel good-and then, as happens to most people who have weight loss surgery, they aren't able to stick to the recommended behavioral changes for one year after the procedure.  (pgs 25-26)

We all have to feed our brains with the right foods and activities or we'll never be able to be free from the addiction.  (pg 26)

Two: How Food Addiction Makes You Fat:

~Discover Your Food Habits
01- Is there at least one unhealthy food that you consume every day?
Butter, Salt, "White" foods.
02- Do you panic if you think you might not have access to this food everywhere?
No.  I do, however, think about when & how I will get it next.
03- Have you ever felt you might need to cut down on this? Yes.
04- Has anyone suggested you change your eating habits? The doctors.
05- Do you ever feel guilty after eating or drinking? Yes.  I also feel a lot of discomfort.
06- Is this unhealthy food on your mind within an hour of waking up? Yes.
07- Do you feel powerless when you have a craving? Yes
08- Have you tried, but failed, to cut back on this item in the past? Yes
09- Do you turn to this food when you're feeling low or high, or when you're not even hungry? YES!
10- Have you felt as though your self-esteem and relationships might be better if you didn't have these cravings? YES!
11- Do you seem to think about eating most of the time? Yes
12- Is there a difference between your private and public eating?  Yes
13- Do you tell yourself you could quit consuming this item whenever you want, even though you've never been able to?  Yes
14- Do you look forward to the time when you can eat this item?  Yes
15- Are you envious of people who have a casual attitude toward food?  Yes
16- Do you sometimes enter a translike state when you are eating?  Yes
17- Does most of your eating occur late at night?  Yes

The Dangers of Tolerance:

One of the key hallmarks of an addiction is tolerance: when you keep needing more to get the same high. (pg 32)

* First you enjoy "something".
* Then you need the "something".  You still enjoy, but it "hurts" not to have it.
* Finally, you need "something" desperately, just to feel normal.  You feel lousy without it.

Making It Through Withdrawal:

The other hallmark of addiction is withdrawal--the pain of giving up an addictive substance that the body has come to rely on.

Withdrawl symptoms:
* Problems with memory
* impaired concentration
* changes in sleep patterns
* anxiety
* depression
* fatigue
* increased reliance on other addictions
* moodiness
* irritability
* headaches

Because of tolerance and withdrawal, food addiction is not a stable solution to the problems of unbalanced rain chemistry.  You are always going to keep wanting more--and you're always risking withdrawal symptoms the moment you cut back.  It is hard to revel in the pleasures of food when food feels like your jailer.  (pg 35)


To be continued.