I’ve been working with my client, Jamie, for close to a year. When we first started working together, Jamie was feeling out of control of her eating much of the time. She was also a big mindless eater and was prone to snacking (standing up) throughout the day. Like most of my clients, Jamie and I first worked on getting some healthy eating habits in place, namely eating sitting down and mindfully. Because that’s all we were working on initially, Jamie had the opportunity to really focus on those things and make huge progress on them.
Jamie and I then moved on to harder skills, like finding other ways to cope with stress besides eating, making food plans for both week days and weekends, and going to bed on time. For a few months, things were going really well for Jamie. She was sticking to her plan most of the time, and whenever she made a small mistake, she would immediately course correct and get back on track.
But, like most people, Jamie didn’t stay consistently on track forever. That’s usually not the way it works. Most people get their eating under control, do well for a while, and then slowly (and accidently) start to loosen up in certain ways, and before they know it, are feeling somewhat out of control again. This is exactly what happened with Jamie.
When we met this week, Jamie told me her last two weekends had been a bit of a mess. The week days had gone better, but still not as well as they had been going in the previous weeks. I asked Jamie to give me some examples of situations that didn’t go well. Jamie told me that her husband had brought home a box of chocolates, and one night she got into them and ended up eating way too many. It was her son’s birthday the weekend before, and she would end up eating extra cake even after the party was finished. On a third occasion, she ate a bunch of nuts from a bowl at her friend’s house.
As Jamie was describing these situations to me, I suspected a common theme among all of them—all this eating was unplanned, and all of it was done standing up. I checked my theory with Jamie, and she affirmed that it was correct. Once we realized this, two important strategies to get back on track and feel more in control crystalized: Jamie simply had to refocus on eating everything sitting down (to help cut out the instant gratification of seeing a food and eating it in an unplanned way), and also refocus on sticking to her food plan and reminding herself, “If it’s not on my plan for today, I don’t eat it. If I want it, put it in the plan for tomorrow.”
Often when individuals get off track with their eating, taking some time to look at a few specific situations and trying to identify common themes in them can give great access into what strategies they need to employ to get things back to where they want them to be.