During a typical working day, we can divide our time into four key areas - work, rest, play and food.
Around sixty five percent of our daily activities involve play and resting. But, someone with an eating disorder can spend a disproportionate amount of their physical and emotional time around food, be it counting calories, eating, worrying about what they’ve eaten, planning to binge or exercising.
Do you know how much time you spend on each of your key areas - work, rest, play and food?
Monitor Your Food Thoughts
Start by monitoring your food thoughts over a week. Keep a small notebook with you with each page divided into two columns. On each day, write your activities in the left column and note whether it falls into the Work, Rest, Play or Food category. In the right column, fill in the estimated time you spent thinking about food while doing something else – as an example you may be commuting to work but thinking about calories.
Add up the time spent on each category. Draw a large circle and divide it into slices under the headings of Work, Rest, Play and Food. The size of each slice should indicate the percentage of time you've spent on each area.How does it look? Ideally, your Play and Rest slice will be 65% and the Food slice should be less than 10%.
Replacing Thoughts with Activities
If your pie chart shows a high preoccupation with food then you have some opportunities to make real changes in your life.
- Increase your social activities. Schedule time with friends, join a short course or group that interests you.
- Structure your day. Plan meals in advance rather than waiting until you’re overly hungry or worrying about unknown calories.
- Ask family and friends for support. Being around people eating healthy, balanced meals can be helpful.
- Identify people around you who are supportive of your efforts and spend more time with them.
- If Work is your biggest slice of time, think about why and whether this can be changed.
- Discover your own triggers. Next time you focus on food and calories, think about the situation you’re in and how you feel about it. Can you change the situation rather than transferring those feelings into food?
Take small steps. A realistic goal such as half an hour listening to music is achievable. Too high expectations can lead to feelings of disappointment and failure which may activate the desire to overeat or count calories.
Once you've embedded some changes, redraw your pie chart. Taking gradual steps to decrease the size of the Food slice will allow you to reclaim some of your own time and spend it socialising or having a well earned snooze!
