Great new Book that can HELP!

Oh I am a happy girl this afternoon.....because Amazon just delivered a wonderful ALLY to help me in my ongoing "war on weight!"

It's a new book called Taming the Feast Beast by one of my favorite authors, Jack Trimpey (he wrote Rational Recovery which really helped me to turn things around and get to goal). 
This time his wife, Lois, chipped in on the writing as well. She's a compulsive overeater herself.

It's about Jack's AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Technique) and applying it to weight loss.  FINALLY.  
(You see, AVRT wasn't designed for food addicts but for alcoholics. And so was his first book, Rational Recovery).

That said, just substituting 'food' for 'drink' enabled me to get his message and it was a powerful one, because it taught me all about what I call 'Fat Brain'.
And apparently I wasn't alone....because the need to apply AVRT to overeaters was definitely there, and obviously Jack (and his wife) heard about it and decided to apply it more cohesively to overeating.

The result is Taming the Feast Beast.  And it's fascinating....and compelling, and ALREADY is helping me.Here's what you can expect out of this book:

First, he talks about some of the falsehoods that Fat Brain (he calls it the Feast Beast, same difference) has used. Things like:
- "If I eat something, I'll feel better"- "Food is my greatest comforter"- "Overeating is the only way to deal with my frustrations"- "I don't enjoy any healthy foods, my only 'fun' comes from eating fattening ones"- "I have to eat; otherwise I get all nervous and tense"- "I can't stand to feel anxiety, it's too painful, so I eat to get through it"
Obviously all of these are NOT TRUE.  But how do you counter them?

Well, you counter them with RATIONAL THOUGHT.  With your intelligence.  The premise is, people with food addictions have a little voice inside them called "Fat Brain" that skews their judgement and cognition when it comes to food, especially when they're hungry. ALL humans have a voice inside, but in 'normal' people that "Fat Brain" voice doesn't really rear its ugly head about food all the time. In us? It does. Sometimes more often than others, but it's always there.  And it knows that we 'use' food for things other than nutrition, as well. That's another component of our thinking that's gone awry....but we can straighten it out by taming the beast AND learning to think rationally and intelligently about our lives and what we want and don't want.
For example, let's compare how my DH approaches 'being hungry' versus how I approach it.

DH: He doesn't stress overmuch...he's hungry, but it's not the end of the world. He's been hungry before. He simply....makes himself a sandwich!  The same ordinary sandwich he's made thousands of times, the same exact way, without even thinking too much about it. He's hungry, he's going to eat. And he's in no particular hurry, either. He's fine if he has to wait a bit.

ME:  OMG it's the end of the world I'm so HUNGRY I can't STAND it!  Look, it's been 3 hours and 15 minutes I'm gonna DIE if I don't eat soon or worse yet I'll binge on every food imaginable. I'm STARVING!  OK, what can I eat?  I want that and that and some of that and maybe some of that too and will that be enough? I better take MORE 'just in case'...
and I overload my plate and eat eat eat so quickly my stomach doesn't have time to get the message to my brain fast enough....and I OVEREAT.  Plus I go for the 'bad' foods (left to Fat Brain, that is, -before- I learned healthier eating habits here) and will eat the worst foods imaginable...my favorites being fried, fattening, or sickening sweet foods. That was me. ALL OVER. But even the concept of being satisfied with 'just' a sandwich....was alien to me. I had to have TWO sandwiches. Just in case. And they'd better be super-duper delicious wonderful sandwiches, not a plain ordinary ham sandwich. Blech.

I'm exaggerating but you get the picture. MY brain immediately goes into overdrive. I'm OVERLOADING my mental plate of food, salivating about everything I want to eat...and I want to eat LOTS and LOTS of food....one measly sandwich is NOT gonna do it for me. After all, I'm HUNGRY! 

So right from the start I'm thinking of TOO MUCH FOOD. My BODY, physically, would be completely happy with just that sandwich.  But there's a 'disconnect' in my BRAIN that doesn't equate satisfaction with that....it wants moremoremoremoremore.

That, my friends, is FAT BRAIN.  She takes over. The physical hunger has activated her and now oh boy, I'm in trouble....I better exert some strong self-discipline and control over myself or I am going to overeat, bigtime.

And the worst thing is, Fat Brain doesn't just get activated when we're physically hungry. She also "turns on" when we have an emotional problem! If we're emotional eaters, you'd better believe it!  After all, FOOD solves everything, right? (again, false thinking....that we need to override with our RATIONAL INTELLIGENT SIDE).  According to Jack, the idea is pretty simple. We acknowledge this about ourselves, WITHOUT taking away from our own self-worth....we are still wonderful human beings, inherently 'worthy' of all of the best things in life...there's nothing 'wrong' with us, we just have to deal with Fat Brain and LISTEN for her. Because for us, her voice gets overly LOUD when it comes to food. That's all! 
My DH has an inner voice, too....but his voice doesn't go nuts when it comes to food.
MINE does.
That's just the way it is.

So how do we deal with Fat Brain?  The book lists an easy, 5-step process: BEAST:
B - a Bingeing opportunity comes up
E - but you recognize the Enemy (Fat brain!) talking to you
A - you Accuse the Feast Beast (or Fat brain) of MALICE
S - you exert Self-control and use self-worth reminders, and
T - you Treasure your health and happiness, and your "Big Plan" (Read more about the Plan in the book).

And I am thrilled to report that I've ALREADY tried this and it has ALREADY worked.
I blogged this morning about being upset with my scale....which traditionally can send me into a tailspin. NOT GOOD. 

And when I got home from the gym, Fat Brain immediately started in on me about how my planned Lunch was "NOT" going to be enough.

 "NO WAY", she yelled. "YOU NEED MORE!  After all, you're upset! And what you're doing is not working (not true by the way)...so you need to come up with something ELSE...(also not true)...so that means you should EAT NOW and then RESTART TOMORROW with ANOTHER idea, ANOTHER food plan!"  (yikes, talk about nuts...!  but the sad thing is, this kind of 'logic' - which of course ISN'T logical - has WORKED on me in the past!) 

Well, I followed the book's recipe and here's how I handled it:

B - I could see that this was an inherently dangerous 'Bingeing opportunity' (I'm home alone this particular lunchtime, no one can see me or stop me!)
E - BUT I recognized that FAT BRAIN, my Enemy, was doing the talking....telling me what to eat, and justifying it all over the place ("it's been a hard day...you worked out SO HARD....you're upset with the scale so why not just go for it, obviously what you're doing ISN'T working so eat whatever you want today and RESTART TOMORROW (there are lots of key words here that she uses over and over again)....
A - So I Accused her of malice...telling her that she -IS- the enemy, she's LYING, she doesn't have my best interests at heart, and then
S - I exerted Self-control, knowing I had my Food plan which called for a small spinach salad, a full lean of PS ricotta cheese, and my fruit for the day which was 1 cup cherries, and that's what I ate!  I ate slowly and mindfully and kept telling myself I was WORTH eating healthy for;  and that I KNEW how to take care of myself, and
T - afterwards I took a deep breath, and had a big SMILE on my face and Treasured the fact that I DID IT!  I am re-learning the process to deal with Fat Brain....realizing how crafty she was....how she 'stayed in the closet' through my strongest periods doing the 5/1 but she CAME BACK OUT when I reached Maintenance!

Unfortunately that's true for many of us!  That's why the percentages of people who 'make it' are so skewed against us (85% regain, gang...85%!) 

Because once you get to Maintenance, guess who comes back out to play?
Guess who wants you to eat again? 
AND NOW....she has a NEW argument....and it goes something like this:
"You're SKINNY NOW!!  You can AFFORD to eat!"

And there are variations on this theme, too:
- "But you KNOW what to DO now. You can always go back on the 5/1 at ANY POINT in time and lose the weight 'just like that'!" (the old "I have MF in my back pocket excuse")
TRUTH:  It's not so easy to go back on the 5/1, guys....once you've gotten used to eating all the food groups again! I don't WANNA give up my fruit!

- "But LOOK at yourself. You can allow yourself some leeway. Your jeans are a little LOOSE, even!"
TRUTH:  My jeans are loose because I've been wearing them for 3 days. Once I wash them, and they are fresh out of the dryer....oh baby, it will be a different story!

- "Those extra few pounds won't matter"
TRUTH: Those extra few pounds add up to another extra few pounds and another..and pretty soon guess where I'll be?  Once I reach my 'scream' weight (that's my upper limit, the weight at which, when I get on the scale, I SCREAM LOL)....then it's time to
'circle the wagons' and DO something about it.

And all the other fallacies come into play, too. "One won't hurt". "I need this I'm UPSET". "It's FRIDAY for pete's sakes". "It's a holiday"  (BEWARE of this one this weekend, gang)". "It's my birthday". "It's my anniversary". "She went to ALL THAT TROUBLE to make me that _________ (insert food here)". "I'm angry". "I'm stressed". "I'm nervous". "I'm sick". "I'm tired".

These are all FAT BRAIN excuses, guys. 
Anyway, I'm really enjoying the book...and even though I haven't even finished it yet, I believe it has a LOT OF VALUE for those of us struggling with our food addiction.

Check it out when you get a chance!  It's out in paperback, and I believe it's available on Kindle as well:
Taming the Feast Beast by Jack and Lois Trimpey
If the link doesn't work just go to Amazon and do a search for 'Taming the Feast Beast', and it'll come right up.

Happy reading!