Grazing my way through the day

Good Morning!  How are you all doing today?  I'm doing pretty well, just woke up and decided I'd do my blog entry, checked on Facebook to see what's going on - and saw a couple more comments about my refresher.
One of the comments was about how my Doctor had screwed me up a little last year by telling me the number of pounds I had lost between visits with him.  I was at a 6 week follow up, and he was concerned that I was losing weight too fast and "skipping meals".  It wasn't a substantial amount.  It was a double digit number, but not a high one, and would have been considered a normal weight loss if he'd done some math and realized the pounds per week weren't even what a normal dieter would consider good progress.

I was, and still am at this point, overweight by quite a bit.  I have enough energy stored that I can afford to miss a meal or two once in a while.  One of the rules of the plan is not to eat if you are not hungry, and the other is not to eat on a schedule as much as you can.  So if I wake up on the weekend, and I'm not hungry to eat anything substantial until, let's say, 11:30 a.m., I don't eat. I do drink some water, and have a cup of coffee, but that's because I'm thirsty.  When I do get hungry, I will eat what appeals to me, whether it's an omelet or a tuna salad or a burger.  I may go as much as 8 hours before I get hungry again.  It really depends on my activity level for the day (physical and mental) and when I start noticing I'm a bit peckish.

So the "three square meals, 3 to 4 hours apart" plan doesn't really work for me.  It would be more needful if I was doing more physical labor, which burns up a lot of the caloric intake.  The days I do more physical things, such as shoveling and roof-raking, cleaning up my son's old room, or cleaning off the front porch, require more food than the days I spend knitting or sitting in front of the computer working on a newsletter.  The days I'm at work require slightly more food because I am constantly up and down from my chair, working on huge spreadsheets, doing the monthly inventory, and generally using more calories than on my "lazy" days off.

So, the topic is grazing.  There are suggestions out there that eating 6 small meals a day can help you stave off hunger and keep on track for a low-calorie diet.  The reason that works is because if your diet includes things with sugar and starch, your blood sugar will remain more stable if you are constantly "grazing" small amounts of food rather than eating three normal size meals.
Where it falls down is people don't really know what a normal size meal is. We've been inundated with the huge plates of food at restaurants, over-sized bagels and muffins at our snack shops, huge cups of soda at the convenience store.  We, as a nation, do not know what a normal serving size is.  If we go somewhere fancier, where they don't load the plate up with sub-standard, cheap food, we get a little bent about how "skimpy" the meal was for the price.  So we try the "six small meals a day" route, and we don't actually measure the food that's going on the plate, we just take about half of what we would eat at a normal meal.

For example, I sometimes eat at a burger establishment that has a really nice tex-mex chicken dinner.  It's two chicken breast halves, grilled and covered with fresh pico de gallo, served with a side salad covered in tortilla strips.  They are pretty good about not putting the strips on the plate for me, so I don't have to play with my food before I eat it.  Now, we are talking 8 to 12 ounces of meat on the plate, depending on how big a chicken breast half they are using. It's generally a 6 ounce breast, so 12 ounces of meat on the plate.  The salad portion takes up the other half of the plate. (oh, there are three cups of different dressings. The cups are made from tortilla chips.  I usually pour the dressings on the salad and toss the cups.)
The above described meal is actually TWO servings of food for me.  It's dinner that night and part of lunch or breakfast the next day.  So if that dinner is really TWO dinners, then it should make up FOUR small meals, correct?  Well, that's the problem now.  Most people won't look at that and say, "This is really two dinners on my plate, so I'm only going to eat a quarter of the plate now, and then I'll eat another quarter in a couple of hours, and so on until I've had four small meals out of this."  They will eat half of the food on their plate, think they are eating a "small meal" and eat the other half in a couple of hours.  Now it's a good meal, it's got lean protein and lots of vegetables and very little in the way of carbs, so all in all it's pretty healthy.  Skip the ranch dressing if you're concerned about the fat content.
So imagine a whole day where you are eating six "small meals" a day. Instead of eating 12 to 18 ounces of lean protein, you are eating more like 24 to 36 ounces of protein.  Now add in the starch and vegetables to go with it.  That's a lot of food in one day!
There are guidelines as to what a "serving" of protein is.  An easy way to remember is that a serving of protein is about the size of a normal deck of playing cards.  So if you are doing the six small meals, and having protein with every meal, you are eating about 2 ounces of protein, or half a deck of playing cards.  That's a hard boiled egg for every meal.  Or about 1 normal sized McDonald's burger patty (they are about 1.7 ounces, precooked, if I recall correctly), without the bun and condiments.

Does this sound like too much work to you?  It sure sounds like a lot of work to me!  If you are going to follow the grazing your way through the day thing, you need to know serving sizes and do math and pack accordingly.   I know I'm not good at only eating half of what's in the container and leaving the rest for later (Thank you Grandma and the Clean Plate Club!) and I'm fairly certain others have a similar issue with it.  So now you are washing twice as many dishes, cleaning twice as many food containers (unless you dish it out at work instead of eating out of the container.) and measuring everything until you can eyeball the serving size correctly.

I'm not saying it's a bad program to follow.  If you have the kind of life that affords you to eat frequently, and you can understand portion control, proper nutrition, and can actually DO it, then it can work for you.  I'm saying that grazing doesn't work for me, and if I am "skipping" a meal, it's because I am not, at that time, hungry enough to need to eat.

Please Don't. (Because I'm Happy)

     Ok, so I got down to a size 18 on top and 16 on the bottom.  Not unusual for a Woman with Extreme Bosom.  If I had a normal chest size, I'd have been more even.
That's where I stopped and stalled.  I know why I did it, I went back for a refresher on the hypnosis and I'm set back to 0 so I can start losing again and get to the goal.
     I lost sight of the fact that I am not on a diet.  I am changing my lifestyle.  I'm changing from someone who eats a lot of sugar and processed foods to someone who eats lean protein, vegetables, and at some point in the future some occasional starch.  I'm drinking water, sparkling water, tea and coffee.  Alcohol is also no longer part of my life.  These things are important to my physical and mental well-being.  They make me happy and help me maintain control of a little bit of the chaos in my life.
     Why is it that when someone starts taking care of themselves, other people feel compelled to push for details? One of the "rules" is that I'm not supposed to step on a scale and weigh myself.  I'm FINE with that.  I hate the scale, have always hated the scale, precisely because I could be in a size 16, and weigh 220 pounds, which is 60 pounds more than most people who are a size 16 weigh.  I'm a bit of a tank, with 22 inches from shoulder point to shoulder point, and size 11 feet.  I'm only 5'6" tall, (I'm certain I was supposed to be 6' tall.) so I'm somewhat broad.  I'm good with that.  I'm strong.  I know in my heart that the numbers on the scale mean NOTHING other than how much pull the Earth has on me.  So you could say I'm well grounded. :) (My husband says he wouldn't, but he's smarter than that and knows I'd remove some of his body parts if HE said it.)
     There are other things people who think they are "helping" try to do.

• "Oh, you don't want that." (when I notice there are sugary baked goods in the office, or candy in the bowls.)

 Yes, I might want some.  I'm not going to HAVE some.  My like of sweet foods hasn't gone away - it's just that I understand exactly what that sweet and fat laden coffee cake is going to do to my blood sugar and body, and I don't want THAT, so I'm not going to eat any.  So stop telling me what I do and do NOT want. Your telling me I don't want that usually has the opposite effect and makes me want to prove you wrong! (Welcome to My Stubborn Streak, otherwise known as Oppositional Defiance Disorder.) Your comment is not necessary.  If I see it and make a comment on how good it smells, you can ignore my comment or if you agree it smells good, say so!  Treat it like you would if I wasn't avoiding sugar.

• "C'mon, a cheat day won't kill you."

No, it won't kill me. Yet.   It will set me backwards on my goal.  My plan has specific rules, cheat days aren't part of my plan.  I know my own strengths, and very much know my weaknesses.  I just can't do "cheat" days.  I am in the stage where I must treat sugar like a drug or alcohol addiction.  I know I'm powerless over it, I give my will over to a higher power, and I just don't do it.
As someone I respect and admire said in a message to me, "You are either all in or all out."  For my health and sanity, I must remain "all in."

• "But I bought your favorite (insert sugary sweet thing here)!"

Thank you.  I appreciate that you were thoughtful enough to include me in whatever celebration/kiss up to the other denizens of the office/make up for a screw up/grazing day shenanigans that are going on.  (really, that was not meant as sarcasm.)  I even appreciate the fact that you know exactly what cookie/cake/candy is my weakness.  What I don't appreciate is that I have very politely declined your offering, and explained that I am not eating sweets at this point.  And yet you persist, because somehow your money and efforts to appease or entice are far more important than my efforts to live a healthier life.  
The other half of that is, if you are paying that much attention to the things that are my weaknesses, why not pay attention when I say I'm not eating them anymore?

• "You are choosing to do this.  It's not as if you have Celiac/Crohn's Disease/Deathly Food Allergies/insert medical diagnosis here."

People who follow a gluten free diet or have specific food allergies are also choosing not to eat those foods.  The consequences for not following their specific plans range from mild stomach illness to severe pain and even death! There is nothing, short of having your jaw wired shut and being fed through IV or other means, that prevents you from eating anything you want to eat, except for your free will and awareness of what's in the food.
When people started showing up with nut allergies, it was mostly up to them (or their parents) to manage their allergy, by finding out what items contain nuts (or peanuts) and avoiding them as much as possible. This gradually evolved into schools banning peanut butter or nut products from school cafeterias in many locations to protect the few children who are deathly allergic to nuts from an accidental ingestion.  People with Celiac and Crohn's used to have a very hard time convincing people that this was a real thing with real consequences, and now you see Gluten Free items all OVER the place!
I'm not asking for special consideration.  I'm asking for the SAME consideration you would give someone who is following an EXTREME gluten free diet would ask for.  If I ask, for example, that the office lunch be from a place where I can order a salad instead of a sandwich, pizza, or other food I am choosing not to eat, please respect that as much as you respect our co-worker who has Celiac.  If I ask not to participate in the office pot luck, please don't make a big thing out of it.  I admire that you see it as a team building exercise, but can we find something to do that doesn't involve FOOD?  Don't try to guilt me into participating, and please don't allow my co-workers to do the same.
And by the way, I do have a medical diagnosis.  I'm MORBIDLY OBESE.  MORBIDLY.  Do you understand what the word MORBIDLY means?  It means my obesity can have deadly consequences if I don't take action and get lighter.

So really, if you encounter me in a food situation, and you find yourself devolving to one of these behaviors, please, please don't.

Random Thoughts of Wierdness

I was reading someone elses' post about being a chubby vegan.  She was writing about the fact that people will see her carrying a green smoothie and thinking to themselves, "that girl will try anything!", meaning she will try any kind of crazy diet to lose weight.  She was appalled at the fat shaming that is done by the vegan community to try to convince people to stop eating animal based food.  Here's the link to the article I read.
About a year ago, I wrote something in my journal about the way people watch fat people at restaurants.  I have observed over the years when I was much bigger that people do watch what I'm doing at restaurants, especially at buffet establishments.  I can't say that I know what they are thinking, but I can say from the looks on their faces I can guess, because I found myself thinking the same things when I watched my even-bigger family members at the same restaurant.

"How many plates is that, four?  Has she gone up four times already?"
"Notice she doesn't go anywhere near the salad bar?"
"Honey, put down the Mac and Cheese and step away from the steam tray!"
"No wonder she's all by herself at a booth, she needs the room for all that food!"
"DAYUMN!"

Now, I was pretty convinced I didn't eat nearly as much as the "fat" people in my family.  I might have gone up twice at the buffet and then gotten dessert, but I rarely went up for four plates full of food.  I didn't have to excuse myself to the restroom so I could throw up and then come eat more food. (True - two of my aunts had gastric bypass and did exactly this on Mother's Day a few years back when we all went to a buffet place with my Mom and Grandma.  That Buffet place was NOT my idea.)

Then one day I mentioned something at work about food.  One of my co-workers said, "You are eating all the time. You eat candy and drink full-sugar soda all the time. ALL THE TIME!" Which was, of course, an exaggeration because I didn't drink soda all the time, I drank mostly coffee and tea and once in a while would splurge on a full sugar soda made with cane sugar.  It just happened to be the few times she had lunch with me.  The candy thing may have been true, because some delightful person had placed a couple of candy dishes in key locations where everyone in the office has to pass by them or spend time next to them and what's the harm in a couple of chocolate kisses?

So I was forced to examine my own habits and while she really was exaggerating about my doing it ALL the time (I am Ms. Literal) I was frequently eating and drinking lots of things not exactly good for my waistline or blood sugar.   The other thing this made me aware of is that while I am watching how other people eat (and judging them in my head), other people are watching ME eat (and judging me in their heads).  That's not a pleasant realization.  In fact, it was kind of frightening.  It got to the point where I was convinced people were watching me eat when I was by myself and criticizing me in their heads.

Even if I ate "sensibly", I was convinced people were commenting on it in their heads, "Oh, really?  who do you think you're fooling?  You're probably going to stop at a drive thru and order a sack of cheeseburgers after you leave here!"

And yes, I know how crazy and creepy that sounds.

In reality, I'm not that important.  No one except me and the people I give the information to is keeping tabs on what I eat.  No one is looking at what is on my plate except me, maybe my dinner partner, and the people who prepared the food or carried it out to me.  I can tell you I've fallen a bit off the diet in the last 6 weeks, and I can tell you why it's happened. (I forgot to take my supplements and my body started reminding me that I need to eat more things with B vitamins and fiber in them.)  I haven't "given up" when I've had, say, a piece of bread at one meal.  I don't say "Oh, well, the whole day is shot, guess I'll have three slices of cheesecake!"  I go back to square one as if I hadn't had the piece of bread, and I know it will take some time to work out of my system and be back on track, but I do NOT let it ruin my day or my program.  I am planning on going back for a Booster in June, right after I come back from vacation.  Because I'm not at my goal yet.

Fat Girls (and Guys) aren't the only people who are judged by what they are eating.  Have you ever seen a skinny person eating a hugely fattening item and thought to yourself, "Eat two, you need it!"  Have you ever secretly urged a stick-thin person to have a cookie?  Have you ever wanted to smack a thin person who pinches a little roll on their stomach and bitterly complains about how fat she is in her size 8 pants?

Let's stop this madness.  Let's just enjoy being who we are and let other people enjoy being who they are and let's just stop focusing on the size issue and start focusing on the HEALTH of the people.  The people who, regardless of their size, are out their riding bikes and roller skating and dancing and enjoying the heck out of their time on this planet.

Back to Normal

What is Normal, and how do I know I'm back to it?
Last weekend my husband and I flew down to North Carolina to visit his folks for Easter.  We haven't seen them in 4 years, and I haven't flown in almost 5.  The last time I flew I almost needed the belt extender on my seat belt because it was REALLY tight.  I flew to and from Atlanta cursing the small seats, the narrow aisle, and the general lack of room in the airplane's lavatory.
This time I was prepared.  I had my jacket off before I boarded the plane, I wore loafers to make the security check-point mess go faster, and I had three packets of tissues because I was starting my annual spring-cleaning of my sinus cavities by having everything run right the hell out my nose for three days. (stupid damn allergies)
I requested the window seat because I like to watch take off, and as I stowed my jacket and purse, sat down and put on my seat belt, a funny thing happened.  I got out my Nook, started to read a book, and it struck me that I was comfortable in my seat.  Well, as comfortable as any airline seat not in First Class gets.  I looked down at the belt, which I had snugged against my hips as I was directed, and realized there was easily 6 inches of belt sticking out from the buckle.  In all the times I've flown in the last 25 years, that hasn't happened at all.  Not only was there belt sticking out of the buckle, I wasn't bumping my husband out of HIS seat next to me.  My fanny actually fit in the seat!
Let that sink in for a moment.
If you're a large person, there are things you start to dread.  Movie theater seats.  Airplanes.  Public restrooms.  Waiting room chairs with arms.  Turnstiles. The chair in the lab when they draw blood for tests.  Wheelchairs.  Touring old houses with narrow stairwells.  You start assessing doorways and chairs, you start looking for ramps instead of stairs, and you almost always use the handicapped stall if it's available; and if it's not, you will wait for it to become available. You get adept at turning sideways and standing on tip-toe. You slowly learn that you just don't fit in this world, and you become hampered in your movements.  I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that it exists.
I was happy the day I was able to put my wedding ring back on.  I was excited the week I realized I had finally dropped out of double-digit sized underwear.  I was ecstatic to realize I was down to the same size clothing I had worn as a senior in high school. I was, and am, still a big woman. I'm just not nearly as big as I used to be.
I had to force myself to stop using the handicap stalls in the restrooms.  I used the toilet on the airplane.  It was still very small, but it wasn't uncomfortably so.  I could easily turn around in it.  I walked face-on down the aisle of the airplane.  I didn't have to turn sideways to fit.
So, what does all that have to do with being back to normal?
If Normal is what is OUTSIDE my head, then I'm back to normal.  I can shop in a regular clothing store, I can buy clothing off the rack, I can tell my husband to buy a pack of underwear in a certain size and they will fit me.  I don't have to guess if I will be able to fit in the bathroom, or be able to get through a doorway or aisle.  I don't have to look for the special seats in the movie theater that are usually reserved for someone who is sitting with a wheelchair person.
It took a couple of months to get what was INSIDE my head to match what was OUTSIDE.  I was still thinking like a FAT person; limiting my choices and basing my decisions on what my body had dictated I could and couldn't do for the last 25 years.

What's for dinner?

This used to be a simple question to answer.
The eating program I am following right now permits me to eat as much meat as I want, only as much vegetables as I have meat, and a bit of cheese for flavoring.  To a lot of people that sounds pretty restrictive, and in some ways it is.  Anything fried is right out, with the exception of chicken wings, because most fried things are either breaded or a starch.  Baking takes attention, because I can't use breading on anything, so I do a lot of things with sauces.  Casseroles are odd without their starch components.  There aren't a lot of "convenience" foods available that don't include some form of breading, so I don't have a lot of ready to cook items in the freezer.
See what's happening here?  I'm being forced to cook mostly fresh foods.  I'm being manipulated into planning my meals.  I'm either going to go out to eat WAY more than I should, or I'm going to exercise my brain and figure out how to get a decent meal at home in under 30 minutes that doesn't involve the word BURGER.
It's not a complaint, exactly.  It's a realization that I've spent far too much of my life relying on those prepackaged foods, those boxes and cans and plastic bags that seem to live forever in my pantry and freezer.
I posted a while back about how much crap/food I removed from the pantry when I did my big purge back in August.  I used to think I had about 2 or 3 months worth of "food" in the house, when all I really had was a metric ton of sugar and starch.  Now I look in the half-empty pantry, and then in my freezer, and realize as long as I can figure out what to do with cans of tomato sauce and chicken breasts or tilapia, I can eat for a couple of months.  Well, I will have to thaw out a turkey and a chicken at some point, but the real point is there IS food in the house.  It just takes planning to make it a meal.
What's for dinner tonight?  I'm trying a Beef "Enchilada" casserole, substituting whole kernel corn for the corn tortillas, and layering it a bit like Shepherd's pie.  (I am allowed to eat corn, but only on the cob or taken off the cob.)  I'm not sure how this is going to come out, but if it works I'll post it.  I know the sauce has some flour in it (after all, I made it) but there are carbs and sugars in other sauces and it would have been the same if I'd bought a can of it, except the can would have been full of other things I don't want.
(After Dinner Note: The casserole was tasty, but there was too much sauce.  It came out more like a baked chili.  Eric and I both agree it needed a starch component, such as rice or pasta, to really fill it out.  Less sauce next time.)

8 months later...

Ok, so I'm not so good at daily, or even weekly updating.  Here's what you missed:
I've been on the eating program for over 8 months now.  I've dropped from a size 26 to a size 16/18.  I've lost 12 inches (that's right, an entire FOOT) from around my waist, bringing me down to about 39/40 inches around the waist.
No, I don't have a more recent photo.  I'll remedy that soon.
The holidays were tough.  I usually spend November and December in the kitchen, baking cookies and making candy to give to people for presents.  This year, I knit 17 hats.  You read correctly, I knitted hats.  I made Cunning Hats for my Sci Fi geek friends and family, I made warm snuggly hats for folks, and I made 1 Smurfy hat for my brother Victor.  It kept my hands busy and kept me from being in the kitchen and I gave people lovely warm things that said "I think of you and want you to be warm."  With the way this winter turned out, it was probably a great thing that I made these hats.  I also made some scarves, some fingerless mitts, and a couple of pairs of socks.
There are many things I have noticed in the last 8 months as I changed my eating habits and thinking about food.

1. I eat almost no fried food at all.  Since I don't eat breaded foods, the only fried foods I have are buffalo wings and mahogany wings (from the local Chinese restaurant.)
2. I eat very little mayonnaise.  If it's not in a salad, I generally don't eat it.
3. I tend to find one or two things at a restaurant and only ever order those when I'm there.  It's just easier to decide before we go what I'm in the mood to eat.  
4. Surprisingly, Cracker Barrel has the most choice of meals for me.
5. Not surprisingly, I don't eat at a lot of Italian places.
6. Pepperoni slices and cottage cheese make a pretty good breakfast.
7. Reuben omelets are awesome!
8. Most restaurants are really good about accommodating your preferences.  Asking for burgers without the bun isn't blinked at most places.  We won't talk about Denny's.
9. I find fish proteins do not stay long with me. That is, I eat fish and about two hours later I'm hungry again.  Beef, pork and chicken tend to have the most staying power, so I eat less often when I have these.
10. Berry-flavored breath strips taste like mentholated cough syrup.  YUCK!
11. I don't have much patience for people who whine about their weight while eating cheesecake for breakfast every day for two weeks.  Especially skinny women who do that.
12. I almost never stop at a drive-thru for food.  I get unsweetened ice tea, but it's virtually impossible to get something to eat on the run that I can eat while driving.  So my fast food consumption is virtually non-existent.
13. I don't enjoy people pushing food on me.  I'll eat my damn vegetables if I want to.  If I am not in the mood for them, BACK OFF!  And no, goddammit, I don't want the damn cookies!  BACK OFF!
14. "Liquid egg substitute" is disgusting.  Eat real eggs.
15. Oh, butter.  How I miss you.  I do use butter in cooking, but I don't actually eat as much as I used to because with the exception of vegetables and Corn on the Cob, my Butter Delivery Vehicles are quite limited.  

So, if you look at what I just wrote, you see there are a lot of little habits that just changed as I got used to my new way of eating.  No fast food, no drive-thru snacking, no fried foods, very little in the way of extra added fats.  I hadn't even realized just how often I was eating during the day (about every 90 minutes) or how much money I was spending on it (about $100 a week for snacks, breakfast and lunches from the drive thru.)

Taken in a list, it's a lot.  Coming to the realization that these things just STOPPED as I learned for myself what my limits were?  That was worth the time it took.

"Why don't you just get surgery?"

OK, this is a question I've gotten a couple of times from people. 

"Why don't you look into gastric bypass/lap band surgery?  It would be easier than the diet."

There are many answers to that.  The first and foremost is I am terrified of surgery.  I've had ONE surgery in my entire life, and the whole concept of being under anesthesia and cut open and worked on scares me, plus the risk that I might have complications or simply just never come out of the anesthesia in the first place scares me.
The second is I have looked into both options.  If I was going to go with one, it would be lap band because the idea of totally taking out some of the route the food goes through is abhorrent to me.  Making my stomach space smaller would work better, but it's not necessary.
Thirdly, it's not easier than a diet.  You have to go through all sorts of counselling before you have either operation done.  You have to follow a very restrictive diet leading up to the surgery, so you get used to the diet you will be eating AFTER the surgery. Yes, you will still be on a diet after surgery.
So, given my terror about surgery and the fact that I would still have to follow a diet, why go for the surgery at all?
Fourth, and this one is important, I don't medically NEED the surgery.  While I have some co-morbidities such as high blood pressure, asthma, a family history of heart disease and diabetes, and am also pre-diabetic, most of those things are under control with diet and medication.  Actually, since I went to hypnosis my blood sugar has stabilized, my blood pressure is a nice 118/78, and my allergies and asthma are manageable.  The edema I was experiencing has dissipated, and I'm feeling pretty healthy right now.

I have family members and friends who have had gastric bypass and/or lap band surgery.  Four have gained back a lot of the weight they lost.  Three have kept off the weight and greatly improved their health.  I truly feel without the behavior modification involved in the counselling or hypnosis, it doesn't matter what people do, they will not be successful in the long run.  Sure, they will lose weight and need new clothes and that will be exciting. It's when it's no longer exciting and people aren't commenting any more on how nice you look and how much weight you've lost and that extra donut hole looks so good...and another won't hurt... and another...and then you are back where you started from.

I don't want to lose weight to fit into an imaginary size I've never been.  I want to be the healthy, active woman I used to be before I started substituting food for love.