I mentioned in a post recently about scrubbing my teeth with an overloaded toothbrush when I was wrestling with a craving, and I got a flurry of messages from various people in the posse who were keen to share their own tips in terms of some of the little things that work for them in the daily battle to keep on the right path. So I thought it might be a useful idea to put a couple of those things out there – I’m really quick to poke fun at things that strike me as ridiculous, so it’ll make a nice change to actually promote some of the things that work for some of you guys. Kind of like a public service but without the accompanying photo of a smug string bean who wants everyone to know why she’s so fabulous.

I guess the toothpaste thing was rooted in the fact that when you have the taste of peppermint in your mouth, things you love taste different. Me, I love a nice cup of tea, but if I have a mouthful of morning tea when I’ve just surfaced and brushed my teeth it tastes like crap you know? Quite a few of your suggestions worked on the same principle. Unless you live alone and are incredibly disciplined when you’re doing the supermarket run it’s not always possible to avoid having naughties in the house so any coping strategy is worth a try, right?

One of the notes I got was from a lady (hi Suzanne 🙂 ) who found it really hard not to binge on her daughter’s creamy yoghurts after she’d put kids to bed – until that is, she mixed a teaspoon of vinegar into one of the little pots and forced herself to eat the whole thing. Now when she thinks about that yoghurt, the raspberry and vinegar combo is what she tastes in her mind and given that it was disgusting, no more craving yoghurt and no more binges. Simple, but brilliant.

Pat (hi Pat 🙂 ) said she stomped all over her craving for fish and chips which regularly made the wheels come off her diet by putting them on a plate and putting the plate in the fridge until they’d gone clap cold and were really greasy with congealed fat, and then taking a few mouthfuls – she said they tasted rank, she could feel the cold grease sticking to the roof of her mouth and she’s never fancied fish and chips since.

Changing the memory of the way something tastes in your mind seems to be something that works well. It’s definitely filed away in my ‘useful things to know’ drawer although for me, depending what’s driving my binge it’s often not the taste as much as the need to just eat something and often anything.

I’ll chuck another one into the mix if I may…one of the things that my hookie spooky magic lady encouraged me to do when I was being taunted by the asshole in my mind and fighting the urge to binge, was to write down four things.

The first one, what was the asshole in my mind telling me to do right in that moment? His ‘pitch‘ you know? How was he selling it?

The second one, what about someone who really loved me, cared about me, wanted the best for me. What would they advise me to do in this moment?

Thirdly, someone I really looked up to, who I perceived as having it all figured out, in control of their life…someone I wanted to be like…what would they do? How would they act in that situation? (I picked Davina McCall – might seem a bit random but she’s had addiction issues of her own, way in the past now, and that girl really knows how to dig deep. I adore her – she’s faced down her own asshole and totally blown him out).

She told me to then re-read those three things, before writing down the fourth thing, which is what I decided to do, after weighing up all the advice, considering the options and understanding the consequences of each. Write down my decision, good or bad with the reason why…and own it.

It might work for you, or it might not. For me it has, once or twice but I didn’t do it enough times to really embed it as a strategy. But either way, it was interesting to look back after the event and look objectively at what was going on in my head at the time because generally you forget, when the moment has passed.

Anything’s worth a shot out there on the battlefield, right?

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