Eating out of boredom?

For one example of what you may have been doing to yourself, do you overeat when you are bored? Is it possible that you are simply bored to death because you are not living life to the full because of your extra weight? Let’s explore that for while and see what we find.

How bored are you?
Boredom can damage your health. Bored people eat more, drink more, and sleep more. They are more anxious, hostile, reckless, and irritable. They have difficulty concentrating and tend to watch the clock, believing time to be going very slowly. Despite the fact that boredom is widespread in our society, as we have more leisure time and more repetitive tasks, health professional are more likely to speak about
work- related stress than work-related boredom as a problem, and repetitive strain injury is considered a disease of the body, not the spirit.

If boredom is a disease of the spirit, what does that mean in terms of daily behaviour and attitudes? Clearly, boredom is a subjective experience, for two people carrying out the same repetitive task will report different levels of boredom. People with imagination may enter into an internal world of dreams; people with dexterity and high levels of concentration may work hard to complete the task quickly and move onto something else more stimulating. In terms of behaviour, bored people move from job to job, searching for a certain level of stimulation and variety. They also visit their doctors with stress headaches, get all kinds of virus infections and tend to go sick when the rugby is on the television.

Boredom is a state of mind, and I can prove it. I once worked during my university vacation in a solenoid factory. I remember a piece worker intently and speedily making solenoids at an astonishing rate. She was not bored at all. I was more relaxed, and dreamed over my task. My days passed happily without boredom. However a student colleague sat fuming through the day counting the hours to the coffee breaks, and left after two weeks, unable to tolerate this “boring and repetitive” job.

People who are easily bored love being entertained. They like noise and things happening, and the more colour and laughter the better. Not for them the holiday in a quiet place where there is time to rest and reflect: they will sit for hours fuming in traffic jams, driving half way round the country in search of things to do.

Their energy is prodigious, for boredom is the greatest motivator of all. It is wonderful to know that all teenaged children come home when they are hungry, but more miraculous still is the way that they get out of bed and go out when they get bored. Bored rich young men in particular were our greatest explorers and scientists, often making great discoveries by accident as they sought to find diversion from the endless boredom of being incredibly rich.

Boredom creeps up on you like a grey fog. At first imperceptible, the greyness increases until everything is enveloped in it and there is no way out. Unable to see clearly, one might remain in the fog for a whole lifetime, and I know many people who live empty lives and have no idea how bored they are. Often it takes a very good friend to point out that you have spent your whole life in a state of bored torpor and there are great and wonderful things to be done out there just waiting for you to do them.

So don’t let boredom ruin your health or your life: find out your bore score. If you are not too bored by the idea, why not fill it in and find out if you are sufficiently bored to get yourself going on that slimming diet, or are you goong to just sit there and dream of happier, slimmer days?

I like diets with a set menu plan 1.2.3.4.5
I tend to eat the same lunch each day 1.2.3.4.5
I often use ready-prepared meals 1.2.3.4.5
I buy the same food every week with little variation 1.2.3.4.5
I eat less than 2 fruits and 2 vegetables per day 1.2.3.4.5
There are not many foods that I like 1.2.3.4.5
I eat the same breakfast each day 1.2.3.4.5
I don’t like eating at foreign food restaurants 1.2.3.4.5

A high score means that you are very set in your ways, and your diet is boring, monotonous and repetitive. You are possibly undernourished and in need of a major physical overhaul.

A medium score means that food isn’t all that interesting to you, you do make a slight effort occasionally to eat a balanced diet, whatever that means, but you cant be bothered about all that healthy eating stuff, you just eat what you like.

A low score means that you are highly motivated to experiment with new taste sensations, recipes etc. Perhaps worrying about food and the progress or otherwise of your slimming diet makes for an interesting diversion to stop you getting bored at work or at the weekend.

Now you have found your bore score, you can see that we are all bored here in the Western world, where food is there for the taking. We don’t have to work for our pork pies by grinding the wheat, killing the pig, boiling the meat, making the pastry and baking the pie. A trip to the local supermarket is about as much work as we need to do.

Boredom with food is expressed in several ways, and it is important to recognise where you fit into this.

• Eating the same foods every day or every week is dangerous for your health because you need a wide variety of different food ingredients in your diet to keep healthy.
  
  
• Adding lots of salt, tomato sauce or some other strong sauce or pickle to everything, in an effort to liven up a meal reduces your ability to appreciate the subtle tastes of healthy foods served plain without condiments, and the added salt is very bad for your fluid balance and blood pressure.
  
  
• Not being bothered to plan the shopping or the cooking, just looking in the fridge to find it empty and getting a take away will lead eventually to a low-level malnutrition that will reduce your energy and leave you vulnerable to infections.
  
  
• Using tinned and packaged foods because they don’t take long to prepare because you don’t have the energy to stand there preparing a complicated meal, proves the point: it’s hardly surprising you feel so tired if that’s how you treat your body every day.

• If you don’t know how to cook anyway and cant be bothered/haven’t time/ to learn, then you are just a victim of the processed food industry, and they think about profits not your state of health.
  
  
• If you scoff at all this talk about healthy eating and say that life’s too short to worry about food, let’s grab a burger, and go down town, maybe you are young yet. You will learn, the hard way. You will gradually gain more and more weight and get more and more tired of feeling tired all the time.

Now you know what your “ bore score” is, maybe, just maybe you can see more clearly that losing weight is much, much more than just a number on the scales.

Losing weight is like losing part of yourself, and a part that you have got used to having around. It feels like is part of you and without it you will be somehow diminished.

In fact you will be greater, more powerful, more whole, less bored, if you are smaller ,than you can ever be while you are big. If you are prepared to get rid of that part of you, lose weight and grow smaller, then you are casting off something that has nothing much to do with you.

If you are prepared to face the truth of just how bored you are with life, then maybe, just maybe, you will be able to get going, and realise that life is there for the living, whatever size you are, and that permanent changes can be made in the way you eat every day from now on.

A good start would be to examine your diet honestly and see if you have become victim to food addiction. The most likely “food fixes” in this country are wheat, cows milk, potatoes and beet or cane suger. Just imagine excluding them completely from your daily diet and that will give you a clue about how addicted you may be to one or more of them.

An excellent way to lose weight in in fact to do just that, but make wheat, sugar cows milk and potatoes into “ Zero Foods”. I know because that is what I do to keep my weight at a normal level, and many others have found it equally useful as a way to lose weight and return to a more natural size, weight and shape. Not only that but the change of diet released me form years of undiagnosed food intolerance, with its associated psychological and physical symptoms. It set me free in a way I would never have thought possible 17 years ago. Until I discovered this way of eating then I did not realise how tired and bored I was. Now I see every day as a challenge, and my diet is filled with a wide variety of good food ingredients. Needless to say, I am no longer bored.