Day 37 of 183. 146 days to go.

I am longing for the Cambridge Diet. I have heard from many people that the Cambridge Diet flavours are really yummy and that they taste so much better than LighterLife ones. The LighterLife ones are all starting to taste a little metallic, a bit bland, unwelcomingly familiar, and weak. The flavours of the LighterLife soups were so strong when i first tasted them, now they seem so bland and weak.

The bars are a bit boring as well. I mean, it is great to have a bar everyday, i look forward to those very much, knowing that i shall be having something to actually chew. But even they are becoming disapointing.

The Cambridge Diet bars are said to be amazing. Very chocolatey, etc. Lighterlife don't do a chocolate bar. Along with the nut bar, which is a good copy of a museli bar, they do a fruit, a toffee and a lemon bar coated in white chocolate effect. They all taste very metallic. And the nut bar is starting to taste fusty.

Since i'm doing 183 days, as you know, I'll definately move over to the Cambridge Diet by the end of this 100 days that i have committed myself with LighterLife. Even though LighterLife do a different phase in the group set-up, i don't think that i can tolerate the flavours for, what will end up being, six months. Three and a half months is bad enough.

I had forgotten how thoroughly exhausting and draining shopping can be. Now that i am refurbishing my lounge room, i am seeking fabric that i would like in the new colour scheme that can be then used to be made into curtains for that room.

Both yesterday and today i have been out shopping for fabric. I have various fabric swatches that i've brought home to set against the existing furniture, etc.

As i was wandering around, yet another fabric warehouse (no interior designer shop for me, it has to be a discount fabric shop to keep costs down from the usual £20 to £30 per metre to more like £8 or £10 per metre. I need 40 metres, so it makes a vast difference) i took a break to have a cup of tea in a cafe. It looked plesant enough, as part of the warehouse, with tables and chairs outside in the sunshine. It was like one of those old fashioned cafe's that i used to see on the roadsides of A-roads, or by market stall places and the like.

A group of mums and kids were a couple of tables over from me. They were eating various meals with great big thick chips that looked light and golden. Crispy on the outside, mashed potato-ey on the inside.

Not wanting to watch them eat those delicious looking chips, I amused myself by reading the menu. I realised that had i not been doing a vlcd, and abstaining from food, that one of two things would have happened ordinarily.

One, either i would have become hungry, and bought a favorate food dish, or even a shopping basket full of them to take home, and then begun eating them as soon as i got back into the house. Or, two, i would have ordered off the menu there and then and eaten there and then outside.

I continued amusing myself further by imagining what i might have ordered. And scanning the list i visualised each dish that appealed to me and imagined how it would taste and smell. And how it would feel inside of my mouth.

To my surprise, the chips didn't seem nice. I thought that they would be hotter than boiling hot and that i would probably burn my mouth on them. And the other things, i just imagined them to be stodgy and fairly bland.

I still did feel attracted to eating, though, and i realised, with a sip of my tea, that the appeal lie in having the bulk of the carbs going into and filling my stomach.

I was horrified to realise that i imagined myself eating a plateful of something, say a vegetarian cooked breakfast, plus a side order of chips and a large bread roll, or something.

And to continue with thinking through what i would do, i realised with even more horror that i would still want...no need .. more. More bread, or cheese, most likely. I wouldn't be able to stand the humiliation of ordering and eating so much in public, so i'd probably leave there and buy more on the way home to eat once i got through my door.

What is wrong with me?
That is gross.
Why do i want to do that?

I never used to be like that. You know, I have always overeaten and then dieted off any surplus weight as it has begun to get a problem. Overeaten, yes, but coninuously placed item, after item, into my body until i can take no more, is just plain crazy!

At LighterLife they use the addiction model to frame what has gone wrong with us. They are saying that we are addicted to using food to produce a state within ourselves. And usually that state is about dealing with feelings. So, eating, binging wovereating, is seen as a way to self-medicate and used for this purpose.

I am concerned about my return to food. Being abstinent is useful for losing weight. But then what? I believe i will still have the problem there. Its still there now, isn't it?

What will i do?

I just want to get rid of the urge to do that.

It is an urge.
Its not craving. Not a food craving. For me its an urge to load my system up with food until i get the full-to-the-brim feeling of being totally stuffed.
Only then do i feel sated.
That is the sensation that i crave.
That is why i feel the urge to buy food and stuff it inside of my body.
I do enjoy the chewing and tasting.

How do drug addicts stop the urge to take their drug of choice?

Like a heroin addict, its one thing to go cold turkey, and yet another thing to life a life free of heroin once functioning again.

How do they find joy, enthusiasm, structure, fulfilment, satisfaction, calm, and sensual pleasure without the heroin that used to do all of that?

Is it a matter of just doing without it and dealing with each urge as it comes along?

Unbelieveably, as i am writing this, i feel a very, very strong hunger pain in my stomach. It is actually painful.

Great!
I have to go to bed like this now.
I'll have a glass of water and read the next chapter of my book and hope for it to go.