Goals of the Week 39

My b/p goal last week was to not binge on breakfast. And I can say that I did that every single day. I usually try to stay at 400 calories, but I only consider breakfast a binge if it goes above 600, because I can eat 200 less calories at lunch easily. So every day I had about 500 calories at my morning meal, and it sort of helped with the binging. Mostly I binged at lunch when I found out that my boyfriend was not going to be joining me. I just get annoyed and lonely whenever that happens so I pig out. My goal for this week is to go one entire day eating no sugar whatsoever. I did it last week- except for a starburst in the evening. And it was great! I didn't get sleepy all day, I felt good, and I didn't feel like I binged on anything. If I can get my motivation up I'd like to do it again. 

My goal was to spend no more than 5 dollars at the vending machine again. And again I failed. I only have four weeks left until the vending machines will be gone, so I might as well pick a different goal. I think my goal for this week will be to stay positive. I've been getting annoyed a lot lately because of unrelated school stress. I snap at people more, and get more emotional, I'm more worried, and I'm more sensitive. I need to take a step back and keep my cool, otherwise I'm going to lose my focus. 

What are your goals?

You are the Future You

Another piece of advice I received this week is to think about yourself in terms of who you want to become. When you're faced with a choice, think to yourself "what would future me do?" and apparently this helps you make positive life changes. 
So far this week it's helped me not buy chocolate cupcakes on two occasions. I think the reason it works is because the future you is still you, so if future you can make certain choices, you can too. 
I've only used it as a technique for avoiding binges for two days, but it's fairly successful, so give it a try!

Behavior Calendar

Another useful tool I’ve been using is my hand dandy behavior calendar. Every day, at the end of the day (meaning right before I got to bed) I record the number of calories in, the number of calories burned by exercise, whether or not I binged and purged, and the names of the three people I had positive interactions with. If I ate normally, I highlight the day and it counts towards my monthly goal.

I think having a behavior calendar can be extremely useful. First, it helps you figure out what kinds of things occur on a day when you eat poorly. I noticed that on days I was binging I was less likely to have positive interactions with people. So I changed my behavior accordingly to integrate more positive interaction, and it helped.

Second, it helps you to realize how often your behaviors occur. Just seeing it in simple colors is really powerful.

Third, it can be motivation. I mean, not much motivation, but highlighting a day at the end is kind of nice. And seeing a mostly highlighted month is a good feeling.

I think it’s a good tool and I recommend it to you.

Below are two examples of months (april and February) that I am keeping/kept track of with a behavior calendar. 

Goals of the Week 38

I decided not to spend any time on this blog last week because I had so much schoolwork to do. Reading is fun, but it takes up SO much time, and so does writing out posts and everything. Hopefully this week I can write all my wonderful post ideas and catch up on everyone's thoughts. 
My b/p goal for last week was to eat no bread on Monday or Tuesday. I definitely did not do that. In fact, on Monday, I bought an entire cake and ate it through monday tuesday and wednesday. My goal for today is to not binge during breakfast. If I can have a good start to the day I'm more likely to continue the trend. 
Last week my non b/p goal was to spend no more than 5 dollars at the vending machine. I'm keeping it for this week because last week I spent around 15 dollars. The goal helped though! Until wednesday. I can do it this time. 

What are your goals?

Goals of the Week 37

Well, I didn't make it through yesterday. I kind of thought that post might jinx me. But I don't feel so bad about it because I did get 15/31 days, which is basically half, right? And this month I set my goal one day higher to make up for it. 

My goal for last week was to not eat bread because of Passover.

I made it about three days, which isn't too bad, even though I feel really guilty about it. I shouldn't have given in. I care a lot about keeping the tradition of not eating bread because it makes me feel connected to my family and my religion. But I did. I'm just glad I didn't continually binge on it, which could have easily happened. My goal for this week is to eat no bread for today and Tuesday, which are the remaining days in the holiday. 

My non b/p goal was to focus on schoolwork. I guess that happened. I still need to focus on schoolwork because I have two tests coming up and a project due today, but it was more important last week. This week my goal will be to spend less than 5 dollars on the vending machine. 

Gonna be a toughie. 

What are your goals?

The Importance of Deadlines

Something about deadlines makes you get stuff done. You have a project due in 24 hours and it’s not started, you work your butt off and voila, it’s finished. Even though if it were two days before the project was due you wouldn’t have been able to finish it in one day. 

There’s a science behind it, which I think is kind of cool. The science says that people have a certain amount of discount for the future. That is they value the present time more than what they would do in the future. So having fun now instead of doing work always looks like a better option, even though it might hurt in the long run. Anyway, people can’t really control their discounting, but they can control how big penalties are if they discount too much. Deadlines, imposed by yourself or others, come attached to a penalty which is so bad that doing work in the present is actually better than doing work in the future.

It makes sense. If you had five years to write a paper, would you write it right away? Or wait?

Now apply that to EDs.

My new year’s resolution was to binge less than half the year and to purge less than half the year. So each month I keep track of my progress and I have those thirty days to eat normally 16 days. If I don’t meet my goal at the end of the month it means I’ve gained weight because I’ve binged more days than not, and it means that I’ve failed in my goal. Those two penalties are somehow enough to keep the binging at bay. The first half of this month was littered with binges. And there was a week and a half where every day was a failure. When I came back from break and looked at my behavior calendar, I noticed that if I wanted to keep my goal I would have to keep the binging down to three times in the remaining two weeks. That’s a tall order for someone who’s been on a binge spree. And yet somehow I did it. I had almost an entire week without binging. Maybe not just because of my deadline, but it definitely factored in. If I make it through today without binging I will have completed my goal exactly.

I guess what I’m saying is that if you really want to get something done try setting a concrete deadline and imposing some penalties if you don’t meet it. I mean goals that you know would be good for you if you completed but somehow can’t make yourself do. For me, the deadline takes away some of the choice to engage in behaviors. I want to purge, but I’m not allowed because I’ll fail the goal. I want to eat the pint of ice cream, but I can’t.

I’m amazed and ecstatic that it’s working for me, so I wanted to share it. 

Just thought I would share that it has been a week and a half since I last purged!