Diet Survivors: November 2008 Archives
Are you twenty or thirty pounds overweight, and struggling to take off those last pounds?
I have a theory, and mind you, it's only a theory. It's not based in any research, although there may be some research available that I'm not aware of.
I know that after staying underweight for a while, my body rebelled, and now insists upon keeping me well within a healthy weight range by keeping me awake at night until I've eaten enough.
It won't even allow me to stay at the low end of normal, which I found out by having tried to work against it a few years ago.
I wonder if all the abuse of dieting--starving, bingeing, avoiding food groups, eating disgusting food--is enough to make our bodies rebel forever.
My theory is that our bodies might very well insist that they stay a little bit on the heavy side if we've battered them for too long.
Are you now using the normal eating approach, and you've lost some weight, but your weight has leveled off, leaving you still overweight? It may be your body's insistence upon protecting itself from further abuse.
This bodily reaction to diet abuse may be the reason some experts insist that the only way overweight folks can become normal weight again is to add exercise.
But exercise aside, if you've been overweight a long time, and you know that you've abused your body over time, and now you can't seem to lose the number of pounds you'd like to, consider that being a little overweight may be inevitable and maybe not be so awful. Perhaps it's better to quit fighting your body.
Instead, stick with hunger and fullness, and see what your body does. It may very well be that it will simply take longer than you'd like, or there may come a time when you accept facts.
What's imporant is that you're no longer abusing your body, and you're no longer preoccupied with your weight. You're free!
The hunger and fullness approach is the only way of eating that I know of that involves zero abuse, so why not make it your only goal?
Forget about goal weights. If you've waited for hunger, and stopped at eighty percent full, you've met your goal for the day.
And maybe this begs the question for some of you, "How awful is it really to be a little overweight? Is it so terrible as we think?"
It's possible that you're at your healthiest right now because, at last, you're making your body happy.
Our bodies are wiser than we think.
If you're a member of Diet Survivors, or you read this blog, there's never a need to buy a book. But if you would like to read a book, here's one written by the author of this blog:
Click on the book cover for more information
Normal Eating solutions: (You'll see after clicking how to subscribe to them)
Diet Survivors meditations
Diet Survivors message board
Food and Feelings message board
Find out more about Linda Moran's book,
How to Survive Your Diet.
Visit the home of the book, The Rules of Normal Eating
Learn more about normal eating at Eat Normal Now
In your haste to put your diet life behind you, you're probably chucking diet books, tossing diet foods, canceling old memberships, and cleaning out clothes of every size. Time to start over, right?
Sure. It can be cleansing to get rid of reminders of bad habits. But hold on. Remember that learning normal eating is about learning to think in shades of gray.
I don't know about you, but I kept my cookbooks. It's funny to think that if I had them shelved in the order in which I bought them, they would show the chronology of my diet efforts over the years.
Luckily, as each diet faded away, replaced by another, I somehow managed to have the forethought not to throw the old ones away.
And now I'm so glad. I have favorite recipes in each book. The books include:
- Suzanne Somers
- Atkins
- Joy of Cooking
- Fannie Farmer
- Some vegan cookbooks
- A grains cookbook
- Jane Brody's low-fat (translate that into high carb) cookbook
- The Gone with the Wind Cookbook (translate that into delicious)
- Indian vegetarian
- Indian meat-based
- Cooking Light magazines
- Atkins newsletters
- lots of others
I recovered from the diet life before the South Beach Diet became popular.
I alter the recipes whenever I darn well feel like. For example, in Jane Brody's, I add more oil to the Zucchini bread recipe. Yum!
Think about it. Now that you're a normal eater, you can use ALL your cookbooks! Isn't that exciting? Not only that, but if you have company, and your company is on a specific diet, you can pull out the right cookbook.
Of course, make sure you only use the delicious recipes.
I often cook with no cookbook at all, though, and that's because now that I'm not afraid to fry and to eat fatty foods, cooking is simpler. Yesterday I stuck four lambchops under the broiler, and served them with microwaved red potatoes topped with real butter. It was so simple, and so delicious because I didn't have to doctor up anything to make it taste better.
All I did was wait until I was hungry before eating. And then I stopped when I felt, in my best judgment, that I was eighty percent full.
By the way, ever wonder how a mom fixated on hunger-sensitivity manages to feed four kids and still get out of the kitchen? Not easily. But my kids all now know how to use the microwave. I taught them just as soon as they could handle it. And that helps a lot. I cook their food, and then when they're hungry, they heat it up (with supervision.)
That's why God invented microwaves.
Hey. There's no rule here. Out of room on your shelves? You only use the web for recipes now? Fine. Get rid of the cookbooks. I'm only suggesting yet another way to steer clear of black and white thinking.
If I ever get rid of some of my cookbooks in the name of space-saving, I'll toss the ones with no pictures. I love cookbooks with pictures.
If you're a member of Diet Survivors, or you read this blog, there's never a need to buy a book. But if you would like to read a book, here's one written by the author of this blog:
Click on the book cover for more information
Normal Eating solutions: (You'll see after clicking how to subscribe to them)
Diet Survivors meditations
Diet Survivors message board
Food and Feelings message board
Find out more about Linda Moran's book,
How to Survive Your Diet.
Visit the home of the book, The Rules of Normal Eating
Learn more about normal eating at Eat Normal Now
The people I admire most are usually ordinary folks who exhibit a dose of wisdom and grace. As a mom of young kids, my social life tends to center around the school playground, where there is no shortage of fellow moms to admire.
I wonder if admiring others is a lost art. It seems to me that it sharpens our own sense of what's important when we look for it and exalt it in others. It also gives us a mirror, by which to become self-aware, and to make adjustments.
Think about who you admire. Are their admirable traits wrapped up in how they look? Did you realize that's what you were valuing? Make an adjustment.
Or perhaps they are people who overcame an obstacle or sadness in their lives. You could dig around a bit and found out what their thinking was that led to their success. Most folks love to be helpful, especially when they get to talk about themselves.
Sometimes we can get insight from folks whose lives are quite different from ours. One of those people on my kids' school playground is a professional singer. I had a job interview coming up, after many years of shelter as a homemaker, and I was pretty nervous. Actually, I was terrified. So I figured I'd ask this singer, "How do you cope with your terror?" Good question to ask a singer.
"Oh," she said simply. "Terror is my friend."
In other words, she's used to having terror hanging around. She said to be too calm is to risk a bad performance, and that you "can't unsing a note." After talking to this woman I admire, I felt ready for the interview.
I think finding people to admire has everything to do with recovery from eating issues. If you were to hang around the twelve-step rooms a while (those are the addiction groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc.), you would soon hear this slogan, "Stick with the winners."
You cannot stick with the winners if you are not somewhat discerning about who the winners are. That means really paying attention to people. I'd venture to say that the winners in the world of food issues are those with wisdom and a reasonable weight (or approaching one) and who have gone back to living their lives.
If you're a little open about your problem (do it carefully, and use discernment), you'll find those people, and they'll assist you. Why envy them when they're the ones that can help you most?
"Stick with the winners" also means keeping your commisserating with the losers (those that seem to stay stuck too long) to a minimum. Yes, it's nice to vent, and to find others who struggle, too, but venting has its limits. You want real solutions, right?
Here's a big mistake strugglers make: they see a thin person without food issues and assume that this person could not possibly have had problems in the past. In fact, they figure that this thin healthy person must be lucky and have a good metabolism. It's not true. And if it were, that means no human being on this earth is able to do what you're trying to do, right?
Find who you admire. Be discerning. Stick with the winners. Find out how they won. People have a good capacity to heal each other--even in cyberspace. Then you can win too.
If you're a member of Diet Survivors, or you read this blog, there's never a need to buy a book. But if you would like to read a book, here's one written by the author of this blog:
Click on the book cover for more information
Normal Eating solutions: (You'll see after clicking how to subscribe to them)
Diet Survivors meditations
Diet Survivors message board
Food and Feelings message board
Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.
Visit the home of the book, The Rules of Normal Eating
Learn more about normal eating at Eat Normal Now
