I Finally Figured Out That Starving Is NOT My Best Skill!

Apr 16, 2010

For probably 15-20 years of my successfully weight-managed life I had truly considered my ability to starve to be one of my greatest assets, and I figured that people who didn’t suffer from food addiction just didn’t “get it”. They just didn’t understand how much I needed to starve, how it was the only time I truly felt in control of my eating, how well it seemed to work to balance my calories this way.

And, while I reserve the right to change my mind down the road as I continue to evolve, I do still feel that there are times when a couple of “skinny days” in a row are absolutely the key to regaining my emotional, physical, mental and caloric control. But I no longer do them with BARELY ANY food. It simply isn’t necessary. You can accomplish the goal of low calories for the purpose of banking ahead or paying back while still eating lots of food, without actually starving your body. At least then, your body doesn’t backfire on you later.

For me it was the extremeness of starving and binging, not the concept of calorie balancing, that didn’t work. That backfiring – that need to binge from the hunger, whether that overeating was planned or spontaneous – cost me not only lots more calories over time than if I had just not starved in the first place, but also kept causing me to need to starve off the binge, binge again from the starving, and on and on, ad infinitum.

I was deluded by the fact that if I didn’t eat, I didn’t feel hungry. Turns out, this was not a clue from my body that I didn’t need the food, by the way. In fact, one reason I wasn’t hungry when I didn’t eat at all was because I was running on stress hormones, and they were breaking down my muscle for fuel. My lack of hunger was really a sign that my body was dining on something else – me! I wish that I could get back all the cannibalized muscle fibers my body dined on since I was 18 years old while I was choosing not to feed it. I could use them now to rev up my 55 year old metabolism!

The simple tool of eating before I am actually hungry frequently works like a miracle drug to squelch my appetite. Who knew? It’s not that I suddenly don’t want cookies or potato chips ever again in my life, or wouldn’t thoroughly enjoy eating them. It’s that I don’t HAVE TO HAVE them. And I know you know what I mean with the HAVE TO HAVE them thing. I thought that the feeling that “I just can’t bear to be denied this donut” just came with the territory for someone with my eating history. I didn’t know I could literally nourish myself out of its gravitational pull.

Don’t get me wrong. Eating in advance of your hunger only fixes what it fixes. I am still eternally vigilant about my environment, because I don’t need to be hungry to be tantalized by my particular trigger foods. But if I am not actually hungry, if I have satisfied my need for real nourishment with proteins and fats, then I am no longer preoccupied with food. I don’t fantasize about Snickers bars out of context. I don’t exhaust myself fighting that seemingly irresistible pull from the endless array of junk food that will invariably pass my view in the course of a single day in America. I am not totally oblivious to it, but I am definitely not tortured.

Here’s a great analogy: You know how in pain management they urge you to take the pain meds at regular intervals and not to wait till the pain is really bad? They explain that if the pain gets “out ahead of you”, it can become nearly impossible to pull it back. Well, I think that that is true with hunger too. If hunger gets too far out there ahead of you, you can’t pull it back or satisfy it. I’ve noticed that if I get really hungry, I become totally unreasonable about my appetite.

For example, when I let myself get too hungry, I:

Think that healthy food doesn’t sound “yummy” enough.

Want fast food – the hungrier I get, the better it sounds.

Am likely to abandon the healthy things I brought for lunch and go out with everyone for an American lunch = crap.

Buy problem foods for the elves that apparently live at my house – I certainly wasn’t buying them for just lil’ ole me.

Take portions that would feed 12 people (and then eat it all anyway of course. After all, it’s on my plate).

End up with all kinds of things in my grocery cart that I never would have bought if I weren’t too hungry – I may justify it by telling myself that they are all healthy. But, none-the-less, they are things that I normally wouldn’t have bought at all .

Justify buying a piece of whole wheat carrot cake at Whole Foods – you know the conversation about what becomes “legal” at Whole foods!

Stare at the Entemann’s rack with longing and feelings of deprivation.

Try samples at Costco and then buy a container of 45 Jalopena Pepper Poppers for a cocktail party I will never have. Or buy 3 different dessert options for one house guest who “may” possibly be coming to dinner.

Eat whatever shows up in my environment indiscriminately – and oh, what a surprise – in America, it’s junk.

Cave in to the Godiva chocolates in the lingerie department of Nordstom’s – the most ridiculous place in the world to find chocolates one would think. But apparently not. I guess they’ve realized that there’s a good chance that you’ll be so depressed after trying on bras that you won’t care.

Eat stale things I find in my pockets and under my car seat – no matter what or how old they are.

Eat things I don’t even like – like generic grocery store quality cookies.

Eat things that belong to other people – and then of course have to finish it and replace it!

Eat things directly from the freezer while standing in my kitchen at 11 at night with my coat on.

Consider entire packages to be the serving size.

And on and on and on……

Good News: there is a simple tool that can effectively head a lot of this off at the pass…EAT FIRST!

BBBegin your final weight loss journey now…