Diet / health sabotage

what I didn't understand about diet and exercise is that it pretty much defines what kind of future you will have.

healthy people can physically care for themselves.
unhealthy people require caregivers.

exercise means being able to
get out of bed
move on and off the toilet
walk
carry a plate
traverse stairs and sidewalk curbs
open packages
reach into your cabinet
carry groceries
chop vegetables
bathe yourself

I took all that for granted and so much more. Have to get healthy and strong. because even short periods of incapacity see huge losses in strength. or so says my physio team.

so you dont just have to get healthy to stay healthy. it's also so you can weather times of physical/medical adversity.

ps. I ######6 hate how there is so bloody much sugar errrywhere!!!!! errywhere!

Hi,

It's really frustrating. Host says we need to be on a diet and he's right but it's like super complicated. Evan loves cookies and stuff and sometimes gets them as a treat - which works to calm him down but that's like a TON of sugar. I like stuff like pizza which should be off our list but isn't. Cody's idea of a diet is to stop eating - like forever. We can't seem to get what 'Diet' actually means.

How do you guys figure out something that everybody can do??

Iain

Hey Iain,

Yeah it's rough. We haven't figured it out yet.

What worked for us before our awareness / DID crisis, doesn't work any more now. Pretty much same stuff you described, lots of different ideas about what we should eat, what we wanna eat, etc.

If we ever do get it sorted, we'll share the secret for sure!

Hey BeccaBee,

Yeah that's stuff that folks kinda take for granted, like we just don't think about it, till it's gone. We've been there a few years back, it wasn't good.

Good luck & keep up the fight!

Viola

diet means the foods you eat regularly. so you can't go on a diet. you have one already. you can change your diet tho.

here's the thing. can't take away the specials for the littles. like pancakes is special for us. we don't get to have them all the time because too much pancakes makes you sick. but never have pancakes isn't fair. so sometimes we have a pancake. sometimes we have a cheeseburger or hot wings. but mostly we eat plants and some meat.

diet just means favorite foods are sometimes is all. oh and it also means dont get too full. if you too full for doing stuff after you make you tummy too full. only eat 70% full in the tummy.

it's hard because we was always hungry before. but now we try to remember we dont be hungry every day. so we dont have to eat all the food right now. we will have food later too.

we lost many weights we was sick. now we regular again and numbers going slow like they are supposed to. but we shrinking from the edges in so still have to buy same stupid size clothes. we did the math and be normal in 2 years. we gonna buy all the clothes then.

Very good advice, young Bee. We modified our diet about three months ago, reducing bread and other carbs, and eating more salads. We also started a walking program, but we had to suspend it when the heat wave started. We'll get back to it soon.

The other thing is not to work late all the time. We feel bad because our attention wanders sometimes during the day, especially if something triggers us. So we try to make up for it by working late. It's not healthy to do this all the time, though. For one thing, it ruins our body clock and our sleep habits.

One step at a time. Trying to be patient with ourselves.

MDs

MakersDozn wrote:... working late. It's not healthy to do this all the time, though. For one thing, it ruins our body clock and our sleep habits.

MDs

such an important point. circadian rhythm is so important in all aspects of health but we hardly ever talk about it or remember it. I've been trying to get strict on bedtime. well consistent is the more cooperative wording. we do better on a schedule. I need to get my $#%^ together now that I am back at work and have a game plan for lunches.

It's useful to notice too if you have any trigger foods. For us, there are a few types of food that if we have it in the house, it is TOO STRESSFUL to have and so we eat it all. Not because we're hungry or enjoying it, but because we need it to be gone. Maybe one day we can fix our reaction to those items, but for now, it's just good to know and not buy them.

M and other Crows

***Possible TW for wild animal eating habits***
(yeah, sounds weird, but trying to play it safe)

We keep a minimum of food in the house to avoid disordered eating. We can't eliminate it completely this way, since as long as there's some food in the house, there's a risk that we'll eat it at an inappropriate time.

We've noticed recently that there's a preference that the night eaters have. For example, they'll avoid the Light-N-Fit yogurts because yogurt doesn't involve any chewing. But they'll go straight for the microwaveable breakfast sandwiches, because they require chewing, and even better, they have meat. The symbolic value of chewing meat in a semi-conscious, visceral way is what appeals to them. No rationalizing, no intellectualizing, just tearing into it the way wild animals do.

It's an outlet for their/our seemingly visceral need for justice and retribution that doesn't seem attainable by any other means.

***End TW***

Realizing this doesn't make it easier to solve the problem, but it does provide additional insight into the feelings behind their actions.

MDs

I feel like we have a bit of a 'war' going on inside right now over food. Maybe war's not the best word. It's not like, violent or whatever. It's a struggle, with two sides, but it's not like active fighting? Cold-war lol. Or something.

Anyways. There's still the desire in some parts, to eat the 'unhealthy' foods. They want their junkfood, their processed foods. But the last couple days especially, we're noticing that when they eat the 'forbidden' stuff that they craved, the joy & satisfaction is gone, or its reduced.

*** trigger warning, body image, food problems ***

There's negative feelings too, like disgust or stuff, at the food, at the idea of the food, the physical sensations of it.

The 'good' tastes get dulled or muted, and the 'bad' sensations get amplified.

And the feeling of our body gets more noticably bad. Feeling its size and shape is gross and uncomfortable and stuff.

Our appetite seems to be shrinking or gone at times too, though if you put food infront of us we'll still eat it, for now.

*** end trigger warning ***

I think this might be coming from V1... like she can't 'force' others to stop eating or stop over-eating. But maybe she can make it unpleasant enough that they stop on their own.

I think this is how it started a few years ago, when she first got active when Steph was here.

TBH I'm ok with this. Both me and Arin want to lose weight and if this is what it takes, that's fine. I don't know if it's good or bad in the long-term.

V2

We need to do more work on distinguishing the non-DID stuff from the DID stuff. Listmaking usually works for us. For non-DID aspects, there are issues like trouble sleeping if it's too hot, the difficulty of losing weight as we get older. For DID stuff, it's the desire to soothe somebody's emotions with comfort food, or stay awake because they're teens who just want to chill.

It's been relatively easy for the adults to resolve not to eat high-calorie foods, to get exercise, to get to bed on time. But when it's not the adults who are fronting most of the time -- outside of work, parenting and couple other areas -- we have to acknowledge that resolve alone hasn't been and won't be effective. Pleading hasn't helped either.

We know we have to negotiate. But to do that we have solid communication with certain alters and we don't yet, due to the abominable trauma they hold. So we have to work on that first in order to help the ones who have a significant influence on food, sleep, exercise, finances, etc. And we have to admit that the "responsible" alters who are now adults, like me John, have at some level willingly and routinely passed control to others. I think the truth of that is clearer right now from having stated it.

Case in point, my adopted son was very heavy a few years ago. Nowadays he works out for hours each week and does all sorts of aerobic exercise. He's in good shape but he still does sporadic, major binges on pizza and sweets. His recall of these binges is always a bit foggy, which was a clue. His littles clearly love sweet foods but it seemed to me it wasn't all of his littles doing this, it was a little. So we were able to identify and welcome somebody new, appropriately named Sweets. Unlike many other littles, he wasn't really aware of being in the present.

I'm trying to work with him so that he gets to reward himself with the things he loves periodically, not alone but together with me and ideally after a meal, and not a massive but a reasonable amount. It's a work in progress and I'm trying to discover such patterns in our own system.