Eating too much food

In the last five years or so, I gained a lot of weight. I was blaming it on age (people get rounder as they get older), or on low blood sugar (I don't feel good when I don't eat). But I'm finished with those excuses.

For the last five years, I've been working from my home, with the kitchen nearby, and making enough money to keep food in my fridge.

The problem is that I think I've been trying to treat my bipolar disorder with food. When I don't feel good, I think, “Maybe I need to eat,” and then I eat, and I feel better.

I don't eat junk food or sweets, but rather lots of cheese, milk, bread, and other kinds of normal but high calorie foods.

Cheese, photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livinginmonrovia/83604031/

And the truth is, I feel better after eating. Sometimes when I haven't eaten in awhile, I get symptoms: cold hands, shakiness, headache, anxiety, difficulty with concentration.... Not in that order, and not the same everytime.

But it turns out that it's not low blood sugar. I got a glucose meter and tested myself. I'm normal every time. So now I'm thinking maybe the anxiety and concentration stuff is the Bipolar, and the shakiness is from caffeiene. The cold hands and headache I can't explain, but I'm human and sometimes humans get those things :)

I've been taking chromium for the last year to help even out my blood sugar, and it is working.

So, in general, at least as long as I take the chromium, I don't have low blood sugar. It's all in my head.

I know that I have psychological hang ups with food. And food does make me feel better. I just never recognized that I was eating as treatment before...... I would hear about people eating for comfort, and it didn't exactly fit my situation. Because I'm not eating to make depression better, but rather to treat “that uncomfortable feeling” which is some hard to describe bipolar feeling. And I'm not eating sweets, but just normal food. So there's a lesson I've learned – it can still be comfort eating, even if it doesn't fit the stereotypes.

Maybe part of it is that once upon a time, I didn't have enough money to buy much food, and perhaps that is buried in my psyche somewhere. I remember putting food back at the grocery store because I couldn't pay for it.

I also remember getting really sick feeling when I needed to eat, but ever since I've been taking the chromium, I don't get really sick. But I do get a headache if I go long stretches of time.

So here's my plan of action, most of which I've been trying to do for the last week:

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  Eat fruit or vegetables for snacks instead of higher calorie food.
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  Go longer between eating meals. Hunger is an OK feeling. I can be hungry, and it won't be the end of the world.
• 
  
  If I really feel like I have low blood sugar, check my blood sugar with my glucose meter to see if I have low blood sugar. This is to determine if it's just in my head or not.
• 
  
  Don't eat sweets.
• 
  
  Eat smaller meals.
• 
  
  Continue to exercise every day (I try to walk 1 mile.)

Will it work? I don't know but I'm going to give it a try. I've worked on changing my thinking before, and I do seem to have success with it so I'll see if I can work on it in this area of my life too. I've just realized that a lot of the food stuff is IN MY HEAD!

If I stay busy or distracted by doing lots of things, I tend to forget about being hungry, at least for awhile.

I also noticed that when I feel cold, if I get up and do some exercises or even just move around, I stop feeling cold. So that's an alternative to eating.

I know I must not be the only one who has bipolar disorder and food issues.. I hope this helps someone!  

The biggest moment of realization for me though has been using the glucose meter.  It proves to me whether I'm having a physical or mental issue.  I bought a ReliOn glucose meter with 50 test strips from Walmart. Its the best deal I could find. 

I might be crazy, but I'm not hypoglycemic!

Living with Bipolar Disorder: 3 Tips for Easier Meal Planning

Do you try to plan meals? I do.  Before going grocery shopping, I think about what meals I'd like to have, what ingredients I already have, and which I need to buy.

However, because of my bipolar disorder, I can't usually stick to a weekly meal plan.  I have rapid cycling bipolar disorder and often my moods last just 1-4 days.  This often means that for part of the week my mood isn't feeling normal.  If I'm depressed, it's hard for me to get the motivation to cook a meal.

Here are my 3 tips:

1. Buy Heat and Eat meals to keep in your freezer. Even if you feel motivated to cook 7 meals a week, keep a couple of them in your freezer, just incase.

2. Use a recipe box to keep track of the meals you've cooked.  Write notes to yourself about the recipe. This will make it easier for you to tackle it when you aren't feeling as well.

3. Try using a crock pot. Also called a slow cooker, this lets you prepare the meal in the morning or the night before. You can prepare the meal when you feel well; not when you are hungry!


Heat and Eat Meals
No matter how motivated, happy, and energetic I feel while I'm grocery shopping, I try to buy some meals that are all ready to go.  The one predictable thing about bipolar disorder is that it's not predictable.  Heat and Eat meals are ones that I just put in the oven or microwave and then they are all done.  The downside is that these are not usually as healthful as the ones I make myself.  Often they have more salt or fat in them than I'd like.  There are a lot of things you can get of the heat and eat kind.  For example, frozen lasagna, frozen breaded fish and fries, corn dogs, frozen chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, etc.  I realize that I could also make my own home made meals ahead of time and freeze them, but I haven't gotten around to doing that.

A lot of the time it feels like when my mood feels normal, I use that time to do everything that I didn't get around to doing when I didn't have the energy, and well, cooking for many nights in advance is just not one of the things I end up doing.

Using a Recipe Box to Keep Track of Easy Meals
I also try to plan out a lot of easy meals.  These are ones that I actually make myself, but I don't find them hard to do.  I keep a recipe box and makes notes about recipes I've made so that making them a second or third time is even easier.  After making the recipe several times, it becomes MY recipe, and I know exactly what to do.  It makes it less intimidating and I might even attempt it on a less than perfect mood day.

Crockpot Meals
I have a crockpot that I like to use, and the minimal preparation required for making a pot roast in my crockpot is something that I can get done in the morning, and then it will be all ready to eat in the evening. This also holds true for many other crockpot meals.

My best time of day is usually in the morning.  I usually have the most energy and positive mood then.  My worst time is late afternoon/early evening.  Therefore, if I wait until my worst time of day, I am less likely to be up to making a complete meal.  So, the crockpot helps in the time shifting :)

Strangely enough, it seems like I'm always hungry for dinner right around 7pm.  I've tried moving around dinner time and having it earlier so that I could prepare it during a better time of the day for me, but so far, that doesn't seem to work well... I still get hungry later.

Dirty Dishes?
I read somewhere that one of the most common reasons for eating out was that all of the dishes were dirty. This makes some sense, as if you have to clean the dishes and cook food, that's a double big chore.  I try to avoid this problem by at least doing some of the dishes in the evening or morning so that they are ready for dinner time.  I also have accepted the fact that I can cook dinner even if the dishes are dirty. I just clean what I need.


All this said, sometimes we eat out.  Last night we had take-out chinese food, and it was just the perfect way to enjoy the evening.  No work needed, and lots of great food.

P.S. The Angus Burgers pictured at the right are sold at Costco and they are super yummy. They take 2 minutes to heat up in the microwave and come out just perfect (not rubbery at all!).  I don't know how they do it, but it is the perfectly addictive heat 'n eat meal.

Do you have any tips for meal planning?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Dieting?

Dieting is a common goal for the New Year, but unfortunately, I think trying to make radical changes to your diet can make your moods more chaotic. Speaking for myself, when I try to eat much less food, I tend to get more anxious, have trouble sleeping, etc.

It's easier for me to replace a healthful food with an unhealthful food, than it is for me to focus on just eating less.

Having high expectations might just be setting yourself up for disappointment when you feel that you have 'failed' your diet plan.

What has worked for me -

1. Eat oatmeal some days instead of a bagel.

2. Sometimes, drink water or unsweetened tea instead of juice or milk.

3. Eat an apple or some other fruit/vegetable snack with my lunch.

What hasn't worked for me:

1. Decide not to eat before bedtime.  This advice is widely given, but I often have trouble falling asleep if I don't eat something before bedtime.  Or, I fall asleep but then wake up in the middle of the night or the early morning just starving (and grumpy).  So I feel better if I eat when my body tells me to eat, which often means a bedtime snack.

2. Decide to completely eliminate all 'bad' food from the house. Although this sounds like a good idea because we eat what we have around the house, it has one major flaw.... If we don't see anything tasty at home we may decide to grab some fast food! See, I don't live in an isolated world where all I have is my home kitchen.  I have fast food places all around me.  So although I do try to buy fewer 'bad' foods at the store, eliminating my favorite snacks altogether is just going to make it likely that I will want to get some food out.... which is probably worse than just not eating a perfect diet at home.

Above picture Creative Commons licensed and is from Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/di4b0liko/2260545180/