Posts Tagged ‘hunger’

This post is dedicated to Cindy, my girlfriend who forces herself to eat breakfast because of the prevailing dieter’s wisdom.

I am a good American girl.  I eat breakfast every day.  My mother would not let us walk out of the house without breakfast and I make sure that all of my kids get breakfast every day, too.  And, I’m smart and pay attention in school and perform well on tests.  AND, I’m overweight and three of my four kids are all fighting weight issues, too.  My husband drinks coffee for breakfast and my skinny 18 year old prefers not to eat breakfast.  I also know people who force themselves to eat breakfast because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do.  And, EVERY diet I have ever been on starts with “don’t skip breakfast” or “here’s what you eat for breakfast”.  Well, I’m trying something new - new for me anyway.  I’m skipping breakfast.  Seriously, now that I think about it, breakfast is a joke.  Bacon and eggs with toast and butter or a bowl of cereal with milk.  I think we can all agree that is not a good formula for maintaining a healthy weight.  So, let’s look at my “diet breakfast”.  I’ve done everything from bagels (loved the “fat free” days in the 80s), bacon and eggs (thank you Atkins), steel cut oats with fruit, nuts and flax seed oil, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, protein shakes, etc.  Oh, it makes me hungry to think about.  Hungry.  What an interesting idea.  It’s after 10 am and I am just now thinking that I might possibly be getting hungry.  I was not hungry at 6:30, 7:30 or 8:30 when breakfast is what is supposed to happen.  And when I do eat breakfast, I am generally hungry mid-morning.  And, then I have a whole new food conversation about snacks.  It’s exhausting and it’s no wonder I am behind in the laundry.  I eat (and feed my kids) so that I won’t get hungry later.  I’m running from my fear of hunger.  I don’t think I’ve been hungry except for maybe a handful of times in the past 20 years.  I would venture to say that most of us don’t even know what hungry feels like.

So, I’m experimenting with giving up breakfast.  I figure it can’t hurt.  I know all the sane dieter’s wisdom says that skipping breakfast sets me up to be ravenous at lunch and doesn’t give my metabolism a chance to start working and all that.  Well, let’s see what happens.  So far, so good.

For the last two months, I have been dieting.  More specifically, I have been cheating on my diet.  I am realizing that a shift happened.  When I first started following my current plan, I didn’t think of it as a diet.  I decided to change the way I eat, permanently.  I decided that my health and my weight were more important to me than eating what I want, when I want.  I decided that I was perfectly okay giving up certain foods - for life.  I acknowledged that bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, fast food, processed foods and junk food are not good for me and make me feel horrible.  I decided to change my lifestyle.  I found a lifestyle plan for people who want to lose a lot of weight quickly and easily and I followed it.  And I felt great.  It was easy - really easy.

A couple of months ago, it started getting hard.  It only started getting hard when I started cheating.  It’s really a mindset game.  You don’t cheat on a lifestyle, right?  You cheat on a diet.  I stopped thinking of my plan as a lifestyle and started seeing it as a really restrictive diet.  I had all kinds of people colluding with me, too.  A lot of my friends have tried the diet, based on my previous great results.  And a lot of my friends and family have had the pleasure of dining with me on my diet, too.  The general consensus is “I don’t know how you do that.  I would starve.”  Well, I think that’s the idea.  I wasn’t really “starving” and I was never hungry.  Hungry is not my problem.  I never eat because I’m hungry.  I eat because it’s time, because I’m bored, because I want some entertainment, because I’m stressed out, because I’m lonely, because … fill in the blank.  So, anyway, somewhere along the line, my very effective lifestyle became a diet and my new lifestyle is all about cheating on my diet, beating myself up about it and resolving to get back on.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  The cheats start lasting longer and my resolve starts being shorter.

So, here I am.  I am aware of where I’m at - the first step.  I have been avoiding this awareness, which is why I’ve been avoiding my blog.  I realize that it’s not helping me.  And, I actually humbly admit that I don’t know where to go from here.  I am still committed to my goal.  The only thing more painful than being fat and not losing weight, is being fat and gaining weight.  I refuse to lose any more ground.  I am committed to exploring my vision and looking at the solutions that are present in my life right now.  I know that it’s simple, just do it.  And, simple isn’t necessarily easy.

I think that I have spent most of my life clinically dehydrated.  When I was eating mostly processed and prepared foods, I wasn’t getting a lot of water from my food.  Sure, there’s water in fruits and vegetables, but I wasn’t eating primarily fruits and vegetables.  Now, I eat vegetables 3 times a day with every meal, even breakfast.  I also eat 2 or 3 pieces of fruit every day.  That really helps with my hydration.  I still notice that I’m hungrier when I don’t get all my water in, though.

I’ve heard a lot of different recommendations on how much water a person should drink.  Of course, we all know the standard 8 glasses a day.  Well, that there is a lot of glasses to keep track of (have I had 5 or 6 - I’ve lost track). And what exactly is a “glass” anyway?  I know, I know - 8 ounces.  Who drinks out of 8 ounce glasses, though?  My glasses are at least 12 ounces and we drink water out of one quart jars.  So I only need to drink two of those a day?  Okay.  I’ve also heard that you should drink half your body weight in water every day.  So, I should drink over 100 ounces of water a day.  That sounds like a lot.  Maybe it’s only about 3 of those jars.  My current plan calls for 2 liters of water a day.  I remember how much I hated the metric system when I learned it in elementary school.  Gosh, I can’t tell you how much easier I think the metric system is now.  I really prefer to drink liters instead of ounces.  I like the one liter Smart Water bottles.  I drink one, refill it and then drink another one and I’m done.  I play this game with myself.  I don’t let myself have a Diet Coke until I’ve finished my first liter of water.  Then, I drink the second liter after.  Sometimes, I don’t finish the second liter because I haven’t made a good enough incentive.  But, I notice that I am more likely to get hungry or have food cravings when I haven’t had all of my water.  It’s a good thing to remember.  The water really helps.

Why do we teach our kids to clean their plates and to finish their food? I guess I grew up knowing that “there are kids starving in China” so I need to clean my plate. How does this help the kids that are starving in China? or Africa? I’m not sure. I guess I need to clean my plate in gratitude for the abundance that I have and in gratitude for the delicious food that I’m so lucky to have? I know my parents worked hard to put food on the table and to waste it was, well, a waste. I know that these are questions for me now. For most of my life, though, they weren’t questions, they were just statements. It was a fact. It was “the way it is supposed to be”. I was taught to clean my plate. I was taught to eat what was put in front of me. If you finish all your pasta, you can have dessert. What? If you eat all of your mashed potatoes, you can have a cookie. Really? I can have mashed potatoes AND a cookie? Wow! Those were the days!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not looking to blame anyone here. I’m not looking to blame my mom or my grandma or McDonald’s or the “starving kids in China” or anyone else. I don’t want to blame The Depression or the industrial revolution or the food guide pyramid or anything else. The fact of the matter is that I am overweight. And I am overweight because I overeat. Cleaning my plate is just one part of that. And, it’s likely more a symptom than the whole problem.

The challenge is that I don’t always have the discipline to stop eating or to leave food on my plate. In order to help myself with this, I have to be very conscious and careful about what I put on my plate in the first place. I am not putting food on my plate that I don’t intend to eat. I still have to deal with the food on the kids plates (because, I will certainly not be teaching them to clean their plates). One of my tricks now is to chew gum while I’m cleaning the kitchen. It keeps me from finishing their food or having a taste of anything while I’m cleaning up.

What I am realizing is that it is a bigger waste to finish my food or the kids’ food than to throw it away. I’m not saving anyone from starvation either way. I am not helping the family budget or reducing the grocery bill by cleaning my plate. I am just putting the waste in my body and on my body. I’m carrying the waste around with me. That’s what the fat is. And, that is a bigger waste. So, I’m not doing it any more. I’m retiring from The Clean Plate Club.

I was so nervous to weigh in today.  There was The Onion Ring Incident this week and I’m also on my period.  I don’t feel thinner.  In fact, I feel bloated and hormonal, complete with break out.  Ugh.  I am NOT 15 any more.  Anyhow, I very reluctantly got on the scale this morning and I’m down another 2.2 pounds!  Woo hoo!  I’ve lost 28.8 pounds so far!  So, you get a picture today!  It was taken my a budding young photographer, so please forgive the quality.

While I am excited about my weight loss, I also want to speak to the noise in my head.  That crazy voice in my head has stuff to say.  Having lost weight after cheating on my plan this week, the voice says, “Maybe you don’t have to be so vigilant on this diet after all.  Maybe you can have a cookie or a bite of pasta or a piece of toast and still make it work.  Surely, a small taste of ice cream would be okay.”  Do you hear the seductive lure and the justifications?  Well, I say, “NO!”  I am committed to myself and to my weight loss and I am choosing to recommit myself to excellence.  One of the things that helps me with that is my new found ability to say no to food.  I didn’t realize it, but I was saying yes to every food choice I was offered.  It actually didn’t feel like a choice at all.  If I was “offered” a food choice, I automatically said yes.  Saying no took great discipline and was generally accompanied by some combination of guilt, shame, deprivation and punishment.  I only said no to food when I was punishing myself either for a binge or for my body.

Instead of punishing myself, I am taking back my ability to choose.  And, I am choosing to love myself and to love my body.  And that means saying no to some food choices right now.  But, choosing to say no from a place of commitment to myself is actually empowering.  I don’t feel deprived.  I really don’t.  I feel astonished, actually.  I never knew how to leave food on my plate or have a bread basket on the table and not have any.  I didn’t know how to go to the movies and skip the popcorn and candy.  I didn’t know how to make food for my kids or have cookies in the house, but choose to eat something else.  The choice I am really making is the choice to put myself first.  I am acknowledging that I am worth it.  I am saying yes to me.  I am also choosing to be curious about my impulses to eat that aren’t about hunger and nutrition.  The learning here is fascinating.  The learning is what this blog is about.