I talked a little bit in the last blog about never feeling hungry during this process, and that's absolutely true. But I want to get a little more specific by talking about two different meanings of that word.
I heard a tape by Deepak Chopra once in which he talked about two different hungers: "stomach hunger," which is when your body is empty of fuel and your stomach is growling, and "mouth hunger," which is when you have the impulse to shove food in your mouth for no good reason other than boredom.
In my mind, mouth hunger is a major obstacle, but the real enemy is stomach hunger. When you get genuinely hungry, your body goes into emergency mode, and becomes increasingly more demanding that you do something about the situation. That's what leads to overeating, and breaking of the diet, and so it's the thing that I'm most concerned about always having under control.
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As I mentioned before, I've been making my meals 500 calories each, and that generally has been enough to get me through to the next meal without any hunger issues. Usually, about one hour before my next meal I'll start to notice that I'm hungry, and I consider that a good sign because I see it as an indication that I've emptied my tank before putting more fuel in it. In other words, all the calories for breakfast have been used before I put more in at lunch.
In theory, this should mean that I'm not putting on much, if any fat, because I'm not leaving a bunch of spare calories lying around for my body to store.
But sometimes if I eat a light meal, I'll get too hungry before the next one. Experience has taught me that ignoring that feeling never goes well. I either end up overeating at the next meal, or eating it too early (which makes me twice as hungry before the meal after that, which then leads to overeating.)
So I've learned to sensitize myself to how hungry I am between two meals, to spot if I'm getting too hungry too soon. I try to put five hours between each meal (breakfast at 8 or 9, lunch at 1 or 2, and dinner at 6 or 7) so at around the 2 1/2 hour mark, I sort of assess my status and see if I think my tank is too empty to carry me the rest of the way.
If I think it is, I put no more than 100 calories in to make up the distance. I'll eat like half of an apple with a little light cheese, or one of those small bags of cookies that are pre-measured to be exactly 100 calories.
That's never really satisfying in the sense that I almost always want more, but since another meal is coming soon I can talk my way through the need to stuff myself, and the feeling of hunger goes away just long enough to get me through to the next full re-fueling.
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Calling it a re-fueling brings me to the other kind of hunger, mouth hunger, because learning to think of food as fuel has been an important part of learning not to use food to combat boredom. Even now, after six months with this program, I still find myself restlessly staring at my refrigerator sometimes, thinking about what I could eat. And I have to remind myself that A) eating is an extremely temporary solution to boredom, and B) the price for treating food that way is higher than I'm really willing to pay. Losing a pound a week means that if I have one day a week in which I gain a pound by overeating, I'll tread water for the rest of my life and get nowhere.
So having rather easily dealt with the larger problem of stomach hunger, I've had to wrestle a lot with the problem of mouth hunger, and I've developed a few strategies that have, so far, worked without fail.
The first is almost a cheat, but tough shit as long as it works.
I drink a TON of coffee now. I compromise with myself by making it half-decaf and using low-fat cream, but the bottom line is that I drink way too much. It seems to go a long way towards solving my need to put hand to mouth, though, because I think about food less if I'm constantly sipping something. Drinking this much coffee is not ideal, and in the long run I intend to cut back, but for now I'll take what I can get.
The other is that when I find myself getting that restless, "Hmm I wonder what there is to eat," feeling, I've trained myself to identify it as boredom and immediately look for something to do. It sounds simplistic, and if it were stomach hunger it wouldn't work at all. But for mouth hunger it's surprisingly effective. If I can find anything else to put my attention on, just for five or ten minutes, it seems to break the moment.
<CENTER>-----</CENTER>
The most important thing that I've learned is to be ready for the bumps in the road, and have some kind of plan in place for dealing with them. That seems to keep me from doing what I would otherwise do, meaning something impulsive and bad for me
I've identified what are for me the biggest trouble spots in controlling my eating, and I've strategized a way for dealing with each one while still meeting my goals, and as far as I can tell this is going to be completely sustainable for the rest of my life.
It's been six months now, and in my experience if this plan were going to fail, it would have already done it.
Next up I'll talk about what I think the impact of this has been on my life, physically and mentally. Thanks for reading,
Jeff
I heard a tape by Deepak Chopra once in which he talked about two different hungers: "stomach hunger," which is when your body is empty of fuel and your stomach is growling, and "mouth hunger," which is when you have the impulse to shove food in your mouth for no good reason other than boredom.
In my mind, mouth hunger is a major obstacle, but the real enemy is stomach hunger. When you get genuinely hungry, your body goes into emergency mode, and becomes increasingly more demanding that you do something about the situation. That's what leads to overeating, and breaking of the diet, and so it's the thing that I'm most concerned about always having under control.
<CENTER>-----</CENTER>
As I mentioned before, I've been making my meals 500 calories each, and that generally has been enough to get me through to the next meal without any hunger issues. Usually, about one hour before my next meal I'll start to notice that I'm hungry, and I consider that a good sign because I see it as an indication that I've emptied my tank before putting more fuel in it. In other words, all the calories for breakfast have been used before I put more in at lunch.
In theory, this should mean that I'm not putting on much, if any fat, because I'm not leaving a bunch of spare calories lying around for my body to store.
But sometimes if I eat a light meal, I'll get too hungry before the next one. Experience has taught me that ignoring that feeling never goes well. I either end up overeating at the next meal, or eating it too early (which makes me twice as hungry before the meal after that, which then leads to overeating.)
So I've learned to sensitize myself to how hungry I am between two meals, to spot if I'm getting too hungry too soon. I try to put five hours between each meal (breakfast at 8 or 9, lunch at 1 or 2, and dinner at 6 or 7) so at around the 2 1/2 hour mark, I sort of assess my status and see if I think my tank is too empty to carry me the rest of the way.
If I think it is, I put no more than 100 calories in to make up the distance. I'll eat like half of an apple with a little light cheese, or one of those small bags of cookies that are pre-measured to be exactly 100 calories.
That's never really satisfying in the sense that I almost always want more, but since another meal is coming soon I can talk my way through the need to stuff myself, and the feeling of hunger goes away just long enough to get me through to the next full re-fueling.
<CENTER>-----</CENTER>
Calling it a re-fueling brings me to the other kind of hunger, mouth hunger, because learning to think of food as fuel has been an important part of learning not to use food to combat boredom. Even now, after six months with this program, I still find myself restlessly staring at my refrigerator sometimes, thinking about what I could eat. And I have to remind myself that A) eating is an extremely temporary solution to boredom, and B) the price for treating food that way is higher than I'm really willing to pay. Losing a pound a week means that if I have one day a week in which I gain a pound by overeating, I'll tread water for the rest of my life and get nowhere.
So having rather easily dealt with the larger problem of stomach hunger, I've had to wrestle a lot with the problem of mouth hunger, and I've developed a few strategies that have, so far, worked without fail.
The first is almost a cheat, but tough shit as long as it works.
I drink a TON of coffee now. I compromise with myself by making it half-decaf and using low-fat cream, but the bottom line is that I drink way too much. It seems to go a long way towards solving my need to put hand to mouth, though, because I think about food less if I'm constantly sipping something. Drinking this much coffee is not ideal, and in the long run I intend to cut back, but for now I'll take what I can get.The other is that when I find myself getting that restless, "Hmm I wonder what there is to eat," feeling, I've trained myself to identify it as boredom and immediately look for something to do. It sounds simplistic, and if it were stomach hunger it wouldn't work at all. But for mouth hunger it's surprisingly effective. If I can find anything else to put my attention on, just for five or ten minutes, it seems to break the moment.
<CENTER>-----</CENTER>
The most important thing that I've learned is to be ready for the bumps in the road, and have some kind of plan in place for dealing with them. That seems to keep me from doing what I would otherwise do, meaning something impulsive and bad for me
I've identified what are for me the biggest trouble spots in controlling my eating, and I've strategized a way for dealing with each one while still meeting my goals, and as far as I can tell this is going to be completely sustainable for the rest of my life.
It's been six months now, and in my experience if this plan were going to fail, it would have already done it.
Next up I'll talk about what I think the impact of this has been on my life, physically and mentally. Thanks for reading,
Jeff
