21–30 of 49 posts
This behavior is dangerous. I would advise consulting with both a dietologist and a psychologist. > I feel that I should be resting instead, but I need to work XY problem it seems
Well, eating what you enjoy even it's fast food or snacks is OK if you generally eat healthy otherwise (not giving in ever is more like self-punishment). But the "lots of it" part is not. And the craving might leak to other days ("screwing up your diet" way more) in the end.
>Is there any alternative? It definitely screws up my diet.
Motivation and craving like that might be related to serotonine/dopamine as others suggested. So could try exercize, and also might want to look in creaping burnout and/or depression, and either cut down some work on those days, or check for anti-depressants.
Also ADD might be an issue (using food as motivation and trouble regulating a healthy diet are common traits).
"Is there any alternative?" Try exercise. May or may not work, but a quick high intensity exercise only for few minutes gives me usually energy for the next few hours. Run stairs, do pushups and squats or whatever.
I'd ve said the same. During my PhD I started training martial arts, and one of the things that struck me is that it changed how often I ate and the quality of the foods I craved. Of course, it's all related to oneself. Good luck! Do consult with a medic and try tracking bodyweight. Only yesterday I saw one of the 'smart' scales that allows you to do all sorts of calculations and monitoring. A behavioral psychologist…
Getting pulse racing for a few minutes is the easiest things ever and does not require anything else.
It does not need skill, monitoring, strategy, motivation or external consultation.
Just few minutes likely suffice for a ridiculous amount of bang-per-buck benefit.
I agree that an organized exercise regimen has improved my wellbeing as well but that's a whole different discussion IMO ;)
1. drowsiness around and after lunch time which sounds related to your problems even if mine where just from lunch and onwards and every day of the week
2. a feeling of being jittery (not worried about anything particular but a strong feeling that I should do something, so strong that I have a hard time doing anything). Often related to coffee consumption.
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As for solutions and attempted solutions, here is what I got:
1. (Discovered by chance:) if I skip breakfast I don't get drowsy after lunch. Why? No idea. But it has worked for maybe 8 years or so so it is not just that it feels novel.
Please be careful with this. I am not at doctor or a food expert. This might not be for everyone. There might be good reasons for why everyone tells us to eat breakfast to stay focused during the day, but with my brain, my guts, my work, my habits and my body it is completely the other way around.
Be espescially careful you consider this or consider mentioning it to someone else if you or they have a history with eating disorders. I have recently supported someone through a bout of mild anorexia and it was really scary.
Personally I am somewhere around 180cm and weighs well above 80kg so for me the reduced food intake is a pure bonus.
2. For the jittery feeling I have tried a lot of things:
- replace coffee with energy drinks: works but is expensive and you lose the social aspect of drinking coffee together. But it also means that for me it doesn't seem to be only the caffeine that makes me jittery but the whole composition of the coffeee.
- eat things from my childhood, hoping my brain or guts would make me feel better: didn't work for me
- eat fat or protein rich foods: works for milder cases. Now I just drink half a liter of full fat milk as a meal replacement
- skip chewing gum: works. This one is annoying. Chewing gum has helped me keep my teeth clean after lunch but at one point I realized it seriously wrecks my digestion.
- physical activity: not a food but I think it is worth mentioning still. Hard monotonous exercise (spinning bike in my case) seems to work. On a related note, drowsiness can sometimes be cured by beating the living crap out of a punching bag "for all it tried to do against my family" or something.
- sometimes just disconnecting works: again unrelated to food: I just stop whatever I can't do anyway because of the jittery feeling and read a passage from the Bible or something. Find something that works for you.
What does your normal day to day food look like? Do you eat enough, healthy, varied, etc, or do you think "no time for food, I must work"? Food isn't a "performance enhancing drug", it's food, you eat it because you need to. You seem to have a weird relationship or perception of food if you call binging on a day to be "performance enhancing".
It absolutely is, athletes need to have specific diets to maximize their performance for example. And food can certainly raise motivation (or destroy it) depending on how it's used.
Both the quantity and quality of food matters. Specific foods also boost brain function, carbs help power through exercize, protein helps build muscle, other food substances help with sleep and mood, and so on.
'Food is just food' is not even wrong.
>You seem to have a weird relationship or perception of food if you call binging on a day to be "performance enhancing".
Doesn't sound weird at all, just unhealthy.
Up to 2 liters of coffee (cappuccino) plus a liter Energie Drinks is what I thought to need nearly daily. Reality is, the way I work, it's just not realistic to work 8 hours a day or 5 days a week.
I think 40 hours / week is fine and sustainable, as long as you're not expected to be 100% throughout. That amount of caffeine is insane and (I think you know this yourself) a patch for something else that you're missing, like normal food and a good amount of sleep per day.
Only when I reduced to 35 hours i felt I have productive time next to work. And today I maybe work 4-8 weeks a year at 60 hours and the rest closer to 10 hours a week.
I am not sure how other people cope with that, but 40 hour weeks are crazy time consuming in my book.
> Do you think it's healthy? Well, eating what you enjoy even it's fast food or snacks is OK if you generally eat healthy otherwise (not giving in ever is more like self-punishment). But the "lots of it" part is not. And the craving might leak to other days ("screwing up your diet" way more) in the end. > Is there any alternative? It definitely screws up my diet. Motivation and craving like that might be related to s…
I have had two problems that I have solved or tried to solve by changing my food consumption habits: 1. drowsiness around and after lunch time which sounds related to your problems even if mine where just from lunch and onwards and every day of the week 2. a feeling of being jittery (not worried about anything particular but a strong feeling that I should do something, so strong that I have a hard time doing anything…
If you want to, you could try a small, but protein heavy/carb light breakfast. That can help boost your metabolism.
Oh dear, not healthy! First of all, you are getting a brain chemical boost from the eating, but it’s probably the least effective way to nudge your brain into a different state. You are eating a lot of high sugar and high carb foods so that’s going to make you crash within a few hours (or minutes). Some better things to try: -A nap -Meditative resting, music, knitting, folding laundry ect. -Tea -Short high intensity…
- Increasing protein and vegetables.
- Decreasing chocolate and other sugary snacks.
- Exercising on a regular basis.