Granular thinking: January 2007 Archives
As intuitive eaters, we strive to find our hunger and fullness signals. There is no better way to achieve this rhythm for life than intuitively. 
But is it so black and white as hungry vs. full? Not really. It's just slightly more shades of gray than that.
Has this happened to you? You just finished a tasty sandwich, and you even felt good about putting down the sandwich unfinished. "Full," you declare, contentedly.
Then, twenty minutes later, you start thinking of the fudge in the fridge that your kids made the other day. Yum. You start feeling hungry again. Is that really hunger?
Sure it is. You weren't hungry for sandwich anymore. Now you're hungry for fudge.
Hunger is something we chase around until it's truly satisfied. That's why the greater powers of the universe invented dessert. It's okay to feel full of sandwich, but to find a little room for a brownie.
In fact, it can be even more shades of gray still. You might be full of sandwich, but not full of potato salad. It's a good idea to try testing each bite as you eat, and decide, bite by bite, which morsel you'd like next. Some folks will take nicely to this. Others like to eat the whole pile of potatoes first, then the whole slice of meatloaf. To each his own.
What's important is that if you focus in on what you really crave, bite by bite, not just meal by meal, you'll achieve satisfaction at the soonest possible point because every bite was "just right."
At first, you might feel hungry, then full, then hungry. You'll learn that it's normal to chase hunger around until it's truly satisfied. You might even top off that cube of fudge with a clementine. No guilt.
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Recently someone on my Diet Survivors message board asked me about pregnancy. She expressed frustration over craving more food, and craving more fats in particular. How does one handle learning intuitive eating while pregnant?
There is no one right answer, of course, but as a non-dieting advisor, here was my answer, adapted for this blog:
Okay, you asked my advice about pregnancy. This is my Linda-wisdom. It's about me (I've had four babies) but I believe it may apply to others. Keep in mind that I had four horrible pregnancies (but wonderful kids.)
When you're pregnant, you've been invaded by an alien. It lives inside your body, tells you what to do, what to think, and erases sections of your brain at will with a big blackboard eraser. It's that blackboard eraser, by the way, that gets caught in your esophagus, preventing food from getting down there.
This alien builds what the medical community calls a placenta, but it's actually a rebuilt model of your sucked-out brains. That placenta, consisting of the mother's cerebral cortex, gets tossed into medical waste eventually, never to be seen again. You're left with nothing but a brain stem when the alien finally leaves the premises.
This alien demands rich foods, carbs, fats, and lots of it. It dismisses the whole notion that you have any autonomy or free will. It knows everything better than you--a notion which, as you know, sticks around for twenty years or so.
For now, you're just a walking incubator. My suggestion is to toss all your plans out the window, bond to your alien, and let it have what it wants. Keep in mind that it really doesn't want you to overeat too heavily, because that could lead to diabetes which is bad for it. It's a very self-serving creature.
If you can get through each day feeling as though you acted reasonably enough, and didn't depress yourself too much, declare it a good day.
In a year or two, after the baby is weaned, you'll have your body back, but you'll have to do some dumpster-diving to find those placenta brains.
The way to handle being on this board while pregnant is to take it all in academically only, for later use after you retrieve your cerebral cortex. Keep all you read here a little bit at arm's length.
It is my belief that expectant mothers are so preoccupied with heavy expectation that they might prefer to go real light on the expectation of themselves.
Does that help?
Check out the free Diet Survivors newsletter
This blog is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free
Diet Survivors newsletter.
Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.
