Lose Weight Forever Through Eating Awareness
This is not really a diet; it’s a simplified version of eating awareness training as originally developed by Molly Groger. While her excellent book is currently out of print, you can usually find copies on Amazon and eBay. As with any major lifestyle change, you may want to consult with your doctor beforehand.
Body vs. Mind
The human body didn’t evolve to be a couch potato. We were meant to hunt gazelle and climb trees for fruit and to throw spears at saber-toothed tigers. By some fluke of nature our brains became supercharged, which has allowed us to systematically outsmart just about everything — including nature. The result is that, as animals, we’re overachievers, able to fend for ourselves so well that the days of chasing gazelle are long gone. To go hunting we merely have to walk 30 feet to a car then drive to a supermarket. In some cases we don’t even have to do that — a simple click of a computer mouse will result in the delivery of groceries, or fresh hot pizza, or an order of Chicken Lo Mein.
At the same time, our big brains are constantly inventing new and ever more fascinating ways to entertain ourselves without exerting physical effort. So now more than ever, we’re more likely to be exercising our fingers on a TV remote or game controller rather than exerting entire body effort to beat a flying ball around four bases, or to race a bunch of other people to a finish line.
So you see we’ve already put ourselves at a disadvantage. But add to that the fact that since we were babies, our parents used food as a reward and as a pacifier, programming our bloated brains to eat for reasons other than hunger. We now eat because we’re happy, sad, bored, frightened, or nervous. That would be a bad idea even if food still consisted of berries and gazelle spleens. But no — our misguided intellects have designed for us much more tasty morsels: chocolate bars, Oreos, French fries, Whoppers, and Big Macs. Yum! I don’t know about you, but I love these things — or at least my brain does, because the flavors are so refined they directly stimulate the mind’s pleasure center to almost sexual intensity.
Face it, we’re way too clever for our own good.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that only a few simple changes can make a significant difference in this dilemma.
Demote Your Brain
Here’s where you begin to unlearn and then relearn. For some of you this initial stage can be a bit tricky and seem weird, but that’s because you’re about to question some fundamental behaviors. The goal is to take the decision to eat away from your mind, and give it back to your stomach.
The idea is simple enough. When you’re hungry, eat. When you’re no longer hungry, stop eating.
For many people that seems to be a no brainer. To them it’s already natural. You’ll notice one thing these people all have in common: they’re thin. And in America they’re in the minority.
I once was one of those people, back before I got my first car, in those long-ago days where I had to ride a bike or walk everywhere. It was also before video games. I used to ride for miles and hike through the wilderness, and climb trees, and dig big holes in the ground with a shovel. I also was much less into eating, because back then there always seemed to be more important things to do. Sure, I watched TV, but there were only three channels, and I usually only had two favorite shows at a time … and they were on only once a week.
Things are much different today. I sit at a computer and type all the time. I love good food. I have hot and cold running DVD’s at the push of a button — I figure if I get into an accident and both my legs are broken, I have enough quality TV to watch for three months straight. Add Netflix to that and it could stretch to infinity.
Then there’s those bugaboos from childhood: You didn’t finish your dinner! You’re not a part of the “Clean Plate Club!” There are poor starving children in Africa. And left over from babyhood, when food was used as a pacifier: If I feel unhappy, a box of cookies will make things better. If bored, eat a tube of Pringles. Nervousness brings on munchies for candy like you wouldn’t believe. When things are going good, it’s time to celebrate by going out for a huge steak dinner … with ice cream for desert! Ice cream drowned in 5 pounds of caramel and hot fudge.
My peak weight was over 350 pounds. My doctor used to give me alarmed looks while checking my blood pressure, and began prescribing pills. I started noticing lots of little problems, like my back had become fragile, and my knees would make breaking-celery noises when I went up stairs.
Things didn’t begin to get better until I learned there was a difference between being “full” and being “no longer hungry.”
Learn To Listen To Your Stomach
Listening to your stomach doesn’t mean waiting until it growls and gurgles. It means relaxing your mind and letting yourself feel those signals it’s sending you. There are levels of hunger, ranging from slightly-maybe hungry to gnawing-open-pit-of-pain hungry. What you need to do is try an experiment, and practice it a few times during the next week.
Pick a time when you don’t have a lot of distractions, and skip a meal. Feel free to drink water (and I mean water, not coffee or soda, or anything with caffeine — which is an appetite suppressant). You’ll find that in the beginning, when you’re just starting to feel hungry, it’s hard to tell the difference between hunger and thirst. So when you start to notice that feeling, take a drink, and see it that makes the feeling subside. In many cases it will, and you’ve just learned your first important lesson. Sometimes when you think you’re hungry, you’re actually thirsty.
Continue the experiment, paying close attention to your feelings of hunger as they grow over time. When water no longer does the trick, then you know you’re experiencing real hunger. Memorize this feeling. This is your cue — your ONLY cue — to eat.
When you feel you’ve mastered the art of identifying genuine hunger, the experiment is over. It’s time to take the next step.
You’ve established you’re hungry, so go ahead and eat something. Don’t worry about carbs or calories, just make sure it’s real food and not Hostess Twinkies or an ice cream cone. If you’re craving pizza or fried chicken, then indulge yourself. But eat slowly without distractions — no TV, no talking on the phone — and pay very close attention to signals from your stomach after each swallow. The moment your hungry feeling goes away, stop eating. You’re done.
This is one of the hardest things to get used to, because here is where your mind — not your stomach — is going to tell you to keep eating. Your mind will say things like:
- I can’t possibly be full. That was only seven bites!
- This food is too good, there’s no way I’m stopping now.
- I paid for this huge meal. If I don’t eat more than this I’ll be wasting money.
- If I don’t eat more, he/she will think I don’t like his/her cooking.
- Etc.
Here’s where you’ll come to a startling realization: we really do eat way too much food! Also, here’s where we must accept an unpleasant fact: when we do eat too much, we are abusing our bodies.
I’m going to repeat this because it’s so important. We as a society eat too much food, and when we do, we are abusing our bodies. We are abusing our bodies just as sure as a smoker is abusing his lungs; as sure as a demented glue sniffer is abusing his poor damaged brain.
Is saving food, or money, or someone’s misguided feelings worth shortening your life? Is it worth wrecking your health, causing you to spend more on healthcare and the like? Is it worth the stunted self esteem of being labeled a fatso? The shame, humiliation, and the self-loathing?
Freaking no, man! No! It is not. And so you must ignore your brain when it sends you these signals to keep eating, or to begin eating in the first place, and listen ONLY to your stomach.
Only your stomach!
So continue practicing the art of listening to your stomach, determining when it is really hungry (as opposed to thirsty), and only eating until the feeling of hunger goes away. If you eat until you feel full, then you’ve eaten too much.
Don’t freak out if just a tiny bit of food satisfies your hunger. Remember that the moment you feel hungry again, you can eat again. This is not about starving yourself. You can eat as many times a day that your stomach tells you to eat. You can eat just about anything. But only eat until your stomach tells you it’s no longer hungry. If that means seven tiny meals a day, then so be it.
Also, begin to really trust your cravings. Once you get in tune with what your body actually wants, and not what your mind wants, you’ll realize that you’re craving things because of what’s in them, like specific vitamins you may be low in. Once you’ve been doing this a while, you’re going to begin craving certain vegetables, like carrots, or perhaps specific proteins like fish or chicken. You might think to yourself, for example, “Mmm! Jell-O sounds good!” Yes, Jell-O is good for you — your body may be craving the gelatin it needs to grow your fingernails.
Your body instinctively knows what it needs. It knows when it needs food, and it knows what kind of food. All you have to do is listen to it. Trust it. There’s millions of years of programming in your DNA, the result of millions of generations of your ancestors who survived the harshness of live, all leading up to you. You inherited all that wisdom. Trust it.
Help Your Body Outsmart Your Brain
As clever as your human intellect is, it’s really a spoiled brat. It’s used to being in control of when, what, and how much to eat, and now that you’re shifting the job back to your stomach where it belongs, your brain is going to fight it. It will complain, throw tantrums, and try to sabotage you. You must accept this and be ready for it with a arsenal of tricks to help your stomach retain control:
- Prepare smaller portions: As you begin to get a feeling of how much you’re likely to eat before your stomach says “enough,” only prepare that amount. Maybe even less, and if afterwards you still feel hungry, follow it up with something like apple or orange slices. Make it a habit to keep healthy, readily available snacks that you can use to top off your meal and sate your hunger.
- Order a to-go box up front: At restaurants you know that they’re going to serve a portion that’s more than enough, and you know that there will be some left over. If you have the to-go box right there and handy, you can put the extra food away the moment you need to. This sabotages the brain’s penchant for sitting there and picking at the food just to have something to do while you’re talking. Box the leftovers up and put them on a chair or under the table — out of sight, out of mind.
- Deface the food: Say you’re in a situation where there will be no to-go boxes, and you can’t just get up and leave. Say, a business meeting in an all-you-can-eat Chinese Buffet. You’ve served too much, they won’t let you take it home, and it is sitting there on the table tempting you to pick at it. Now is the time to deface the food. Put something ugly on top of it. Mix a inappropriate sauce into the plate, or dump an entire shaker of salt on it, or take your napkin and squish it into the food. Make it unappealing. Short circuit your mind’s temptation for mindlessly continuing to eat.
- Sip water: Unconscious eating is a nervous habit. You can replace the act of picking at food with sipping a glass of ice water. It will satisfy the nervous habit, and it’s good for you. Extra food turns to fat, but extra water does nothing but clean out your system. The only downside is that it may cause repeated trips to the bathroom.
Besides all these tricks you can pull on yourself (and I’m sure you can come up with an endless supply of your own), you can also enlist the help of your friends and family. Explain to them what you’re doing and why. Get them in on it. Help them help you. Who knows, they may even join you — then you can help each other.
This is also important: if you succumb to your brain’s urgings and do overeat, don’t beat yourself up over it. This is a learning process, not a fad diet. What you’re attempting to do here is modify your lifestyle. It’s not going to be an overnight cure. You will no doubt stumble from time to time, but when you do, simply shrug it off and keep going. If in a moment of weakness you eat an entire box of Oreos, or a jumbo two pound mushroom Swiss cheeseburger, then make it a learning experience. Pay attention and memorize the feeling of being over-stuffed. Memorize how uncomfortable your stomach feels. Take a mental picture of how awful you feel, and show it to yourself the next time you sit down in front of the same type of meal.
Falling down once or twice doesn’t mean you just give up and lay there until you die. You pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and keep going. Life is like that anyway, so why should eating be any different? The point is to enjoy yourself while you’re here, and you can enjoy eating, too. Eat when your stomach says you’re hungry, eat something you enjoy eating, and stop the moment you’re no longer hungry.
Amazing how difficult such a simple thing can be.
What Else?
Surely there must be more to it than this. Right?
Wrong.
You don’t have to count calories, you don’t have to eat only low carb food. You don’t have to completely cut sweets out of your diet. You don’t have to measure your serving sizes. You can completely disregard anything you’ve ever read about dieting. The only thing you have to do at the “South Beach” is take a nice walk in the sand.
No fasting is necessary. Meditation is optional. Eat organic food if you’d like. Have an occasional Twinkie, it’s okay.
Listen to your stomach. It tells you two things:
- I am hungry.
- I am no longer hungry.
That’s all you need to know. Where eating is concerned, your stomach is the boss. If you feel full, you’ve eaten too much, or you’ve eaten too quickly. Slow down, pay closer attention to your stomach’s signals, and learn when to detect when the hungry feeling has gone away. When it has, stop eating.
Period.
You will lose weight. How fast it happens depends on how far out of balance you are from your natural weight as determined by your DNA. In most cases you’ll lose more weight up front, and it will gradually slow as you approach your natural balance. It will take some time, so don’t be in a rush. Maintain patience. Even better, simply put it out of your mind. Don’t obsess on weight loss, but instead concentrate on making your new eating habits so ingrained in your psyche that you do it without thinking — like scratching your nose or breathing.
If you do that, your body will take care of itself, and weight will never again be a problem.
Bonus Objectives
If you live a sedentary lifestyle, commit to walking every day. Walking is the best exercise. It’s also the easiest. Don’t overdo it, but slowly build up to a healthy mile or so a day if possible. If you do this, it will dramatically increase the benefit of your change of eating habits.
Drink more water and less soda — including diet soda. Flavor the water if you have to. Use a squeeze of lemon or lime, or a dash of spearmint extract.
Diet soda can actually keep you from losing weight. The reason is that your body isn’t smart enough to tell the difference between an artificial sweetener and a real one, and so it still releases insulin to counteract the sugar it thinks you just consumed. Insulin released in your system makes it harder to lose weight. You’re much better off drinking water or tea sweetened with just a hint of citrus than you are drinking something with an artificial sweetener in it.
One last but important tip: accept and learn to love yourself as you are. Under no circumstances should you compare yourself with a supermodel or hunk actor on TV. Those people are not normal. Statistically they are genetic freaks. Random chance, as well as some very expensive dental and plastic surgery, have given them uber-attractiveness which has been even more augmented by make up, professionally styled hair, and custom tailored clothing. Repeat after me, right now, out loud:
“IT’S NOT REAL!”
I mean it. I want you to speak these words to yourself. I want you to say them every time you see one of those commercials or billboards.
Those images you see are not real, and they’re not realistic. Don’t compare yourself to them. Don’t compare yourself to anyone. You are you. If you love and respect yourself, you’ll treat yourself better, you’ll treat others better, and things will naturally become better. You will inspire others. You will enjoy life more.
And that’s what it’s all about.
Further Reading
- Eating Awareness Training
by Molly Groger
- Intuitive Eating
by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
- The Rules of “Normal” Eating
by Karen R. Koenig
- Eating Mindfully
by Susan Albers
