Escapism - My first week of trying the Zac Alstin approach - not edited

Sorry to anyone who reads this, this is not edited because I just dont have the time nor will to.
Its more of a collection of my thoughts rather than a proper journal entry. As Im writing this Im at the end of day 8 and feel like shit. Lets see if I can go back to it tomorrow, but it feels like Im back to my old habits of overeating.

Day 2

Today I had, in total,  two coffees with milk and honey, a jelly pouch worth 90 calories,

An orange and mulled wine.  And then a lot of snacks and rice balls.

To be honest, as I’m writing, im making myself some mulled wine.

Why? Because the cravings I have are crazy, and very anxiety inducing. Once I get past a wave, I feel great, as if I’m never going to be hungry again, and then another wave of anxiety/intensity come over me. I think for me the biggest challenge isn’t hunger per say, it is the intensity that comes with not being full. I’m not sure if other people experience this in the same way, but basically it feels like I’m more present “by force”, everything I look at seems more intense, in the way that the colors seem more intense, sensations heightened… At the same time as a underlaying feeling of being “prepared for anything”, in case someone might come and “attack” me, be it verbal or physical.

Mind you, I’ve never been in a physical fight. However, I wish I could exchange all my physical fights for verbal ones. I’m what people call “sensitive”, and although already 26 years of age and a lot improvement, I gues I don’t feel completely safe around people.

Day 3.

Yesterday I gave in. However, after buying everything and starting binging, it felt as if my body had less interest in it. Before I overate I tried hard to tune in and see what is going inside, to identify the source of this nervousity, and tune in. Felt like the craving was bigger. Actually, I believe if I stopped my thinking, because thinking allows for excuses to form, and focused on the feeling alone, asking questions such as “What needs my attention?“ „I‘m here for you, what do you want me to notiice?“ What unresolved energy is there to be resolved?“. As I‘m writing this, I realise that it feels like my body has stored a lot of „unresolved energy“. I do believe that being hungry brings out the „worst“ in us. However, at the same time,  yesterday was a new experience for me in the sence that(before I overate) I felt very energetic even though it was already 9pm.
That feeling of alertness at that time of the day is something I highly enjoyed.

I want to go back to this idea of unresolved energy. As I‘m writing this, im on a train, going to see my friend. Another hunger pang just passed and I‘m feeling laser focused.

Im enjoying this state, however it doesnt change the fact that I love to eat.
Or at least, I‘ve kept on telling myself that for a long time. However, the brains ability to learn and rearrenge itself is infinite as long as one live, and Im going to take an advantage of that.

I remeber a time when I was a kid and I hated eating. Literally hated it. Imagine that being possible.

So, during my life, I have gone from someone who hated eating to somone who lives for eating.
And on the other spectrum you have people who very obese since kids but loose weight during puberty and keep that way.

Another problem for me is that I can hold of hunger for a long time, even starve, but then when it comes to the act of eating, often I cannot hold myself back.

Dear one, you have to remember that as long as you have extra weight on you, you are not starving.

Last time I ate was aroun 12:30, so over 7 hours now, and im feelign lightheaded with some warmmth spreading over my enni.

What i will remember today is to magin somoe i admire in terms of attitude to food.

And keep on asking „is this your main source of pleasure?“.

And just stay curious during this whole process.

Day 4.

So today and for the next few days I‘m staying at a friends place. And the problem arises when my friend is someone who knows me from before, when I loved overeating.

For some reason, I feel like if I don‘t eat with people when they are eating im betraying them?

And I feel like I should keep on apologising and make excuses as to why I‘m not eating when others are. Im brought up in a society where saying that you are dieting is socially unacapptable, everyone should just love themselves the way they are, pointing out to a friend that they are overweight is big faux pas. And to be honest, I used to hate those that ate less than me, especially when I was in my late teenage years and early twenties. Now I know that them having what I want does not know there‘s less of it for me.  But this is off topic.

What I want to write is what I focused on today and it was mindset. Basically, the reason I‘ve often binged when eating less is because I could be in „punish“ mode however long it took, without eating or eating little, and then waiting for my „salvation“ which is when I would sit down to eat.
I hated every single minute of being hungry, hungry here meaning „not numbingly full.“

And so, if you are using willpower to not eat, you are doing it wrong. Technically it should be as as easy as asking yourself „Can you keep going without this?“. However, to be honest, the old diete mind sets in for me, and technically I feel I could go forever, while ignoring my stomach pangs.

But this  is not about starving myself. It´s about eating just enough to keep going, and going focused and with sufficient energy. Im not sure if I accomplished that correctly, BUUUT I did NOT pig out when we finaly sat down to dinner. Actually ate a good amount, but now around 10pm I am feeling a bit of that „nervous energy“ that I used to associate with hunger.

Day 5

Today is day five of this super-concious journey of mine. I‘ve felt extra present for the entire time.

Probably due to the fact that you have to be really sense wheather you are truly, can‘t-keep-going-without-food type of hungry. And wow it‘s hard. And what exactly is so hard?

Many reasons, but all of them realted to one source: I am working against a 10+ year long habit of only feeling calm when I was full. And a loong story of dieting, starting as early as 14.

The past few months I have finally „understood“ that I wil not live forever.

I‘m twenty-six, and if I´m lucky enough to live until 100, I have finished 1/4th of my life.

And in many ways, I am not proud of myself. A large part of it is connected to being „fat“, but also this fatness has influenced my life in other aspects. I used to binge, whochwould lead to food coma and loooots of self hate that used tpo influence my relationships wiith other people greartly.

I am not obese, only around 8kg of where I felt at my best, in terms of looks and lightness of the bodyþ. OF course, I also exerised more at that time, so I will have to factor in for the look-good/feel-good part.

Back to whats hard part:

1.       It´s hard recognise what feelings are coming up instead of just giving in to the hunger.  

Often times What I Feel is mostly just nervous energy, and I believe I

Will have to find a way to resolve it. Now I just try my best to dwell on it.

2.       I don‘t ever „need“ to eat

I do feel hunger pangs but each time I ask myself „Can I keep going?“ ad the truth is 

That even when I feel great hunger, dizzy and lightheadness, I can still keep going, if I just rest for a bit. This will vary between people, some might have an easier time identifying when they cannot go on than me.

Today I woke very hungry. Because I‘m on this new journey, i wanted to make sure that I wasn´t „fake-hungry“. If felt like I wasnt, I drank 700ml of water to see if it was just about the water.

Afterwards I still felt unusuaally high nervosity and stomach pangs.

Part of me got very negative about it, thinking that since I ate late yesterday and had an additional cup of warm water with honey right before I went to sleep, it must be fake hunger and thus my approach is failing because I „shouldn‘t“ be hungry. Thankfully I‘ve done so much crash dieting and self-work following those that I kmow that as soon as you feel like you are „failing“ at any point, or that you have to „fight/wightknuckle“ against something, then the approach is wrong.

So in the end I decuded to buy myself a rice ball for breakfast, and a soja latte to go with it.

Eating the riceball was a strange experience. One part of me was already satisfied with a bite of anything, the other wanted to devour the ball as fast as possible, and buy more.ost

Because of my history of intermittent fasting, I again felt the feeling of „screwing everything up“ when I ate the ball for breakfast. However, what I m looking now is not to loose weight „at any cost“, but to find an longterm approach that will work fo me, while also remembering that if you eat in the morning, you will likely eat less in the evening.

An hour later, Im not that hungry, more tired, that could be just linked to the fact that I only slep 6 hours and woke up feeling a bit cold.

Extra body sensations:}

Sharp pain in my appendix/stomach, could it be fixing itself?

Regular warmth in the face.

Day 6.

A really interesting and challanging day, with lots of insights.

I woke up today in a food coma. Yesterday I had binged heavily. The reason was me eating too much for lunch, and that the allowing for „whatever, you fucked it up either way, might as well relax for a while“. Staying with a friend that also loves to eat, and gave me some chocolate, resulting in me goring myself on dinner and then later the additional chocolate and biscuits.

I woke up today, already feeling strong fake hunger. I just gave up on paying attention and thought I might as well eat if Im going to feel this shitty the whole way. Interestingly, after eating a bowl of oatmeal, I didn‘t feel better depsite the craving going away, if anything I felt even more tired.

This was around 10am. Then I went sightseeing. I was so tired the entire time, felt like I had no stamina. I knew it wasnt because I hadn‘t had food, because the night before I ate more than enough and had just eaten what would be considered by majority a filling breakfast.

In general my mood was shit. Instead of sightseeing, I just kept on thinking of how shit I feel and how all I want to do is to sit down somewhere with a coffee and a cake..

But I kept on trying to stop the chaos, to connect to myself and indentify what is the source of this negativity. And it worked: I realised how sad I was. This sounds weird without context, but l just felt a strong sense of wanting to cry and being very tired, all at once. Ended up with going to the public toilet and just resting htere for a few minutes. (Mind you, japanese public toilets are very clean, this one smelled nice and was also warm on my bum.)

After this, i felt less tired, and just made my way to the castle. I‘ve had experience where I felt similiary to what I felt today and ate, believing that i might need the energy, but being late afterwards.

Today I just ordered my coffee, added milk and honey, and drank that. My mood definetly improved, but the desire to eat, even though i was clearly not physically hungry, came up again and again.

So I tuned in again and again. I realised how difficult of a process ths will be. Finally I realised that I‘m just sad for no reason or too many reasons, and feel overwhelmed by everything that is happening in my life, in addition to feeling like there is „good“ career choice ahead of me. So as you can see, some stuff came up.

In the end, I had a few moments where  I really wanted to eat and all the words excuses kept popping up, but because I knew of my binge from yesterday and that I had eaten brunch plus sugared coffee and having some extra weight on me, I just knew that this was not genuine hunger.
The reason why the cravings were so strong was because I felt guilty and sick after the binge, the brunch hadnt made me feel better, and so I just felt miserable. Paradoxically, I tend to treat that with more food. But this time, might be thanks to the recent journaling=method I learned from Universal man series on youtube, I didn‘t.
And around 7pm I knew I would not eat dinner if I am to stay true to my „Can I keep going“ phrase.

And so today I did something that has been impossible for me in the past months, with much less „willpower“ required: I skipped dinner.

I can skip breakfast and lunch, but skipping dinner for me has always felt impossible. However, today I did it, even when lots of temptations appeared. I am proud of myself, and it just goes to show that consistency in your approach really is the key. Sure, I binged yesterday, but today is a new day and what you do every moment matters and amounts to the total whole.

An additional bonus of this method is that, despite often feeling hunger pangs, I have so much more focus and intensity, and natural sense of „wanting to do things?“.

Let´s see what tomorrow brings.

Days 7 and 8

Complete fucking failure. I start out by eating nothing except for coffee, was really enjoying feelng empty, but thinks started going downhill from when I arrived to Tokyo.

To make a long story very short, I arrived quite hungry, but still able to „keep going“, to my hostel. Then something very minor happened: After spending around 6 hours + 30 min of inner cty commute, I finally found the hostel

I was supposed to stay at and check in. Then I was shown my room and.... They hadn‘t made my bed.

Additonally, the sheets were japanese style, and their cover sheet was the biggest pain in the ass.

I was overtaken by fatigue, anger and sadness, hopelessness, all at the same time. „the feeling that “

and  and then I have a big trouble conecting to my inner source, or hatever you want to call it.

Anyways, after very angrily and „fuck-the-world“ly making my bed, I just went mayhem. I first found a chinese restaurant,  ate there, and then just went to three different convenience stores and bought something and each store. And ate. And felt the calm, felt the feeling of „not having to think, utter peace“ flow over me. I hate myself. I fucking hate myself. I seriously fucking hate myself for always betraying my own words.

My problem is also, that even though I might realise that I can „keep on going“, I just get so sad that I want to cry. Just a very depressive state, with a great sense of hopelessness.

And then, if I tell myself: „You‘re just eating for pleasure“ I go ok, now what?

Only relief I get is when I hit my head (it calms me down) or if I eat.

Im going to be fat forever and forrever have this problem, Im done with trying, I hate people who dont have to worry about this. Why does the only thing that calms me down make me this fat blob full of shit.

Im sick of travelling, I just want to find my own room and cry.

I hate being around these fucking people who have restaurants everywhere, only talk about food and tasty dishes, and how much they „love“ eating, but then weight fkn 45kg.

I dont know what im going to do tomorrow, part of me just wants to sleep the whole day and night so I wouldnt eat anything and would end up loosing weight. Im suck of this fucking struggle, everyday thinking aobut food, not being able to focus on anything else except for fucking food and how fat i am.