I’m essentially a practical person. I counted calories religiously for 2 weeks. Lost a couple of pounds in the first few days, only after that to see one of those pounds come back on and stay there…occasionally hovering slightly up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think much of a weight loss method that works like that. So over the last 3 or so days, I have had to think on this and consider some making some changes. But what changes? How do I do this?
When I was a child, I didn’t know the first thing about diet rules and weight management. And I didn’t care. Food was for when you were hungry…and then you wanted it now. If you weren’t hungry, food didn’t interest you. I remember once being told to finish eating a roll on my plate…and then throwing up right at the table. It wasn’t me being ornery…I just simply was full and literally couldn’t hold it down. (Strange, I don’t remember my dad ever forcing me to eat more than I wanted ever again.)
Of course, like most kids, I loved candy and sweets. I’m sure I would have been happy to consume any sweet morsel offered me at any moment, but those instances truly were rare treats, and I never had the option to eat them to excess. Those opportunities didn’t happen all that often, and even so, I was very active. I easily absorbed them with no change in my body. I may have even run around more afterwards. In fact, yes. I am sure I did. I was a hyper little kid.
Then, over the years I heard an increasing number of rules. “Finish your plate!” “Don't spoil your appetite!” “Don’t eat dessert before dinner.” “You need three meals a day with all the appropriate food groups.” Later, I dove into dieting where I learned that food had these interesting things called calories and carbs and all sorts of technical sounding information. If you limited those things, weight would magically drop off. And it did in the beginning. A fascination for diets was born. A new game! Ha! All I had to do is follow the rules and win!
Diets are like crack for rule following girl such as myself. Once you try it, you are hooked on the rush…the power!
I’ve always loved rules. My husband laughs at me because I always want to know the rule and to unquestioningly follow it. If it is posted on a sign somewhere, there must be a perfectly good reason for it!, all thought out by the people that come up with rules and laws. I’d follow a road sign right into a creek and still wonder if I was the one who messed up!
I love to play games and want to know and understand the rules from the beginning. I was never one for cheating at Solitaire. What is the point? If you are going to cheat, then don’t play.
Rules are so neat and tidy. If you do ‘x’, then ‘y’ will follow.
That is, until the last few years of one diet fail after another. Over and over I followed the rules of this or that diet, expecting weight loss to systematically follow. Over and over I failed, sometimes it was because the rules were too challenging, but more often it was because the rules were not producing the promised results. What alchemy is this? If I follow the rules and don’t get the product, then I’m going to quit that game. What is the point?For that is another little tidbit about me. I am competitive! I like to win.
One way I thought I was a rebel was that I weighed myself everyday, contrary to conventional wisdom, and I was rather proud of this little uncharacteristic rebellion. But the truth is that weighing myself everyday had become an unwritten rule I have followed for quite some time. I have stubbornly resisted the naysayers who say not to do this. I thought…well it helps me. But today I wonder, has it?
I have let fear rule my thought life. I told myself, if I just give up diets then I’ll be as big as the people on My 600 Pound Life. My family will leave me. People will hate me and stare at me and throw things at me. God will wash His hands of me.
Ok, so maybe I have blown my fears up a little out of proportion, but there is some truth to some of them. Being out of control of your eating will lead to greater and greater weight gain. Which leads to worse health issues. Which impacts your family and thus your relationships.
But here’s the kicker. All that might be true. But how has weighing every day, trying countless diets, counting calories, and obsessing over it every day of my life worked out for me?
I have only steadily gained weight through the years of these behaviors and right through those fears which were supposedly keeping me in check. Fear has loomed large. Guilt and shame take up a lot of real estate in my head. And the weight just keeps ratcheting up. I have gotten to the point where I don’t even believe I am capable of sustained weight loss and being at a comfortable weight again. Where did that thought pattern come from?
So now it is time to try some radical changes in my mind and in my behaviors.
For one, I need to lay off the scale. I mean really. It’s not helping me. If I am losing, then I tend to either celebrate by eating, or get all excited and get even stricter on my diet, which leads to self sabotage eventually. If I gain, then I feel like giving up. Again, more self sabotage. How does this help me? I have been seeing a wise counselor lately, and we were discussing this issue today, and she said that I should only get on a scale if I am prepared to be kind to myself, and when I have stopped giving a little machine the power to change how I feel.
I need to stop counting calories and being all rule “follow-y”. Seriously. It is not helping. It just makes me feel deprived and “diet-y” and when I don’t get the results I want, then I feel hopeless and quit. That’s not working for me either.
I need to go back to listening to my body and work on not using food for anything other than nourishment. I knew how to do that as a kid, and for a few brief times in my life as an adult. But I have forgotten how to trust my body. Even some of the very good tools I learned about giving my hunger a number on a scale and keeping it between those imaginary numbers is a danger for me right now. Because it is a rule that exists outside of my body’s need. And heaping guilt on myself for now following the hunger/fullness number scale system doesn’t help me either. It’s time to question all the rules I have blindly followed, without abandoning the principle. The principle is to eat when you are hungry and not to eat for emotional reasons, but the numbers I name my hunger levels elevate the principle to a blind rule.
My counselor (who happens to have specialized in eating disorders) told me today that normal eating is not necessarily the same day by day or meal by meal. Some days or times you might eat lighter than usual…sometimes a little more, but the average is that you eat when your body needs food, stop when you believe you have had enough, and if you occasionally have an event where food is, you might even… gasp… have some food when you are not hungry!! The hallmark of normal eating though, is that you don’t eat for emotional reasons, but that if you sometimes eat even when you are not hungry, your don't feel guilt. You move on, and in kindness to your body, you wait to eat when you are hungry again.
Most of the time, normal eating should look the way it did when I was a healthy, but skinny, kid. I couldn’t be bothered with food if I was having fun or busy. And when I was done eating (full),, I stopped…with no regrets, and no desire to keep shoving it in. (Watch out if you were the one who urged me to keep eating…bleck!)
Even the old idea of writing your food down and trying to live by all the latest wisdom in the diet world is right now a danger for me. Food journals and their numbers, diet rules…where have they gotten me? It’s time to try kindness and common sense. To choose to listen to my body…really listen. And I don’t mean listen to appetite, but to my body. And learning to trust that, for example, when I eat nothing but carbs for breakfast it will leave me hungry an hour later (when it may not be convenient to eat), but that including eggs in my breakfast will keep me going for a while. This is something I have learned over the years about my body, and I should pay attention to that little nugget of wisdom, because it is not a rule…it’s an observation.
So I’m going to try this. What have I got to lose?
