Obsessions

Your activity level leads me to believe that you are under eating. Are you using Spark people's nutrition tracker and fitness tracker to be sure that you're eating enough to fuel your body? If you're constantly thinking about food, craving food, and eating fruits & veggies only - your body might be asking you to provide it with other fuel. We need protein and carbohydrates along with healthy fats and many minerals to fuel our bodies and brains in order to perform our daily tasks. When you add such a disciplined activity as Ballet and dance to that equation, you need some good fuel in order to be healthy.

If your relationship with food is starting to interfere with your life, please start by talking to your mom about the issue. If you can't talk to her, try talking to a school counselor or an instructor you respect.

If you are dancing up to 3 hours a day 6 days a week and only snacking on raw veggies, you may not be obsessing about food. You may just be truly HUNGRY all the time - ie your body may be trying to tell you that it needs more food/ fuel than you are giving it. In the attempt to be "dancer thin" you may be taking in too few calories......

I find myself thinking about food all the time too. I imagine what it will taste like, I imagine the mouth feel, I fantasize about eating it. Anything can spark this, even a description of a meal in a book or an ad on tv.

To combat this, I force myself to take a second to figure out if it is actual hunger or a mouth craving (for instance, sometimes I just want the taste of cheese or ice cream or whatever, but I am not hungry at all). If it is a mouth craving, I will drink some tea or flavored water or chew a piece of gum, and really focus on the taste and how good it is. If I determine it is actual hunger, I ask myself if it is enough hunger to warrant a snack or if I can wait until the next meal, and sometimes just drinking a bunch of water or tea will be enough to get me through. Before I have an unplanned snack (I try to log all my foods for the day first thing in the morning so I can stick to my plan), I think about my daily calories and whether or not the snack will be worth it to me to go above my daily calories, and I ask myself if I will regret it in the morning.

Usually by the time I have gone through all this rigamarole, the craving has passed or the hunger is dissipated. If not then I eat a healthy snack, add it to my food log, and don't let myself regret it.

ABELLERINASDIET,

I agree with the others, have you ever talked to your doctor about your obsession with food ? I know there is a lot of pressure on ballet dancers to maintain a certain weight. If you find that you're constantly obsessing about what you eat, you should talk to your doctor. While many women worry about their weight, they shouldn't obsess about it. That's not healthy.

The food we eat should nourish our bodies. So, if you find you're fighting with yourself over whether or not it's okay to eat something, then you should talk to your doctor. they can refer you to a good therapist who can help. You might not have an eating disorder, but these types of obsessions could develop into one.

If your doctor doesn't think a therapist is what you need, they may refer you to a dietitian. A dietitian can help you craft a nutrition plan that will help nourish your body. Dietitians aren't just for helping a person lose weight. They can help a person become healthy too if they've been on unusual "diets".

Don't be afraid to talk to your doctor. It would be good to talk to a professional.

Hi.

I saw on your SparkPage that you dance 6 days a week for up to 3 hours. That's quite a bit of dancing and activity. How old are you? Do you go to college or university? Have you discussed your obsession with your Mom? Doctor?

Coach Nancy

As you are finding this obsession seems to be out of hand and interfering with your life to a degree, you mind find it beneficial to talk with your Dr about this and what is going on. It may be that a referral to a Therapist for a little while will give you the tools to get these thoughts out of your head and manage them if they ARE there.

Is there something emotional going on which is adding to this 'need' to want to eat? A lot of people find that it goes hand-in-hand.

Below are a couple links which you may find helpful:
www.sparkpeople.com/resource/nutrition_art
icles.asp?id=1703

www.sparkpeople.com/resource/wellness_arti
cles.asp?id=693

Good luck,
Kris

Okay, confession time: last year, in spring I went on this super crazy 800/900 calorie diet to try to lose about 10/15 pounds for some ballet competitions. Spare me the "800 calories!! You can't even survive on that!" I know... Im off it now dont worry. Learned my lesson. The point is, those few months made me REALLY obsessed with food. Like the common "I'm so deprived" thoughts and feelings but add to that: I always think about food, I hear a crackling and my head zips over to see someone opening their granola bar, I always wonder what people have for lunch, I always ask people for a piece of their lunch etc etc... Even when I'm totally full I still want to eat everything. And the things I eat are yummy, and I eat a good amount now but I've just developed this obsession and it's ruining my efforts and makes everything so much harder! I even sit at home and I have to say to myself: "no Morgan, you're full. Why would you need some carrot sticks?" just because if I don't I would just sit there eating anything until my mom got home or something. Don't get me wrong, I'm healthy, I don't sit there binging on chocolate, I sit there continuously eating chopped vegetables And healthy stuff it's just that I can tell I'm just obsessed and eating because I can. Any help?