Do you find that when you're consciously 'dieting', all you think about is bloody food?!

[Tansie]

I use the word 'dieting' to mean 'consciously doing something about your weight' before I'm corrected, be it SW, PMK, Cambridge, whatever.

I don't necessarily mean 'Are you ravenous all the time?'- just what the title says, you find yourself constantly musing about what you've eaten and what you will eat.

I guess if you're on an 'eat less' diet, as opposed to a completely new or even 'alien' w.o.e, you eventually get used to your woe thus cease to constantly think about it!

I couldn't calorie count- I'd get obsessional! I eat 'mindfully'.

But I do 'worry' a bit about what I'm going to eat next. Occasionally I almost panic . Will it be too much? If I eat that I won't be able to have the other! I'm hungry and I really fancy a bread roll but if I do (carb alert, carb alert!) I will be 'on rations' come dinner time. Hardly 'mindful', is it? So sometimes I end up quite seriously under eating which of course is a great enemy of weight loss!

Once again, it's all comes down to retraining our minds as well as our bodies, doesn't it?

So -just me?!

I'd be genuinely surprised if that is the case- but I'd also be grateful for the hints and tips those who don't constantly think about food employ to not do so?!

Well, doing something differently - in this case eating - does involve conscious thought, before it can become second nature. Mindful eating is a particularly conscious way of eating, although in a very different way to conventional dieting. It sounds as though some of your concerns about food may be hangovers from previous ways of eating/dieting. Can you reassure yourself that the process will work, but that it needs time to do so, and in the longrun, a bread roll (eaten mindfully!) is neither here nor there?

No, it isn't just you!

Apparently when you exercise, the first bit is awful then you get into a rhythm and it's all right. That's how I am with my diet. The first month was horrific and I was OBSESSED with food. Now, I'm mostly ok; but you do need to get beyond the first week/fortnight.

If helps when you see the rewards too like when you fit into a pair of jeans or a dress :)

Glad it isn't just me!

I'm on week 7 of my mindful eating campaign and I must say I do find myself thinking about my w.o.e an awful lot of the time! Not 'about food' as such, I guess but about what I will and won't put in my mouth!