1. Eat WHATEVER you want
2. ONLY eat when you are hungry
3. STOP eating when you feel full
4. ENJOY every bit

2 OUT OF 4 ain’t bad, right???  I mean, if this were baseball I’d be batting .500… which is pretty amazing… right?

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

I remember once while we were playing after a rainy week, I stepped on the edge of the ravine and my foot slipped.  It wasn’t like tripping over something and finding yourself on the ground wondering what just happened.  It was slow and obvious.

First my left foot slipped just a few inches.  Then when I tried to firmly plant my right foot on to higher ground, away from the edge, I felt it sink into the mud and then slide back toward me.  My left foot was still slipping toward the edge.

I grabbed for near by branch, but it slipped away from me and I found myself now doubled over, hands on the side of the ravine, an inch into the mud.  Things started happening more quickly.  I was falling into the ravine and the more I did to correct it, the faster I found myself falling.  In the end, I was covered in mud and at the bottom of the ravine about ten feet below, luckily unharmed.

The last two days, I have noticed that I have started eating a little bit faster.  I have the next bite of food on the fork before I’ve finished the bite in my mouth.  And when I feel the beginnings of ‘full’, I’ve shoveled a few last bites in, knowing that I was putting myself past full and into the stuffed range, because I didn’t want to stop eating.

In other words, my foot as landed in the mud and I feel myself starting to slide.  Unlike when I was a child, I am not going to panic.  Rather than grabbing blindly around me and stepping more and more into the mud, I’m going to stop, evaluate the situation, and make my actions from here deliberate.

Something about the “I can make you thin” program has clicked with me like no other program I have done.  I’ve never understood before that my addiction was not to food, but to the act of eating.  I never understood exactly what emotional eating was before either.  Now armed with this new information, I have very successfully resisted the temptation to eat at night before bed or between meals when I wasn’t hungry.

I’ve pushed back the plate when I was still on the first portion instead of the third and I’ve left food on every plate since I started the program December 1st.  I have never before dealt with the opportunity cost of eating one food OR another since I’ve always just eaten both.  Now instead of saving the ‘best’ bites for last, I eat them first since my first bites might actually be the last bites of that meal.

I have started many programs out there, but this is the first time where I feel I can answer the toughest question anyone starting a new weight loss program can ask – “What makes this time different”.  I can’t tell you what it is about “I can make you thin” that clicked with me, but I can see it clicked.  My understanding of myself and my addiction is different.  And I think that might just make all the difference in the world.

Enjoy every bite of food. Focus while you eat and eliminate distractions. Including but not limited to no eating food while watching television. These are ideas that McKenna has laid out in his book.

The first few days I followed this to the letter. Then slowly began watching TV while eating, think “no problem”.

Sadly, I have noticed that I can’t stop eating when I am full and be in front of the TV. Furthermore, I have a strong distain for that fact that I have discovered I enjoy the act of eating.

It has become excruciatingly clear that I must divorce these two activities from each other if I am to be successful at following the principles laid in “I can make you thin”.

The strange thing that has happened is that I am experiencing the five stages of grief after this discovery and I’m not quite at acceptance yet. Seriously, this revelation has not been one of enlightenment but of grief, sorry and depression.

I now know for the first time in my life when I am really full – good. That food and TV can’t be united in matrimony – good.

I’M NOT HAPPY ABOUT KNOWING THIS!

I feel like a child whose parents are saying “we only want what’s best for the kids” but are still making live in a broken home, deserted.

I’m so offended, that now I’ve fallen of the wagon and ran away for the last few days.

Oh crap! I thought I was near stage five but it seems I have digressed back to anger, which of course is only stage three.

Associate professor Stacy Wood mentioned her study on our ability to remember how we felt regarding various events in life.  She mentions three states she observed regarding how we feel:

1. How we expect to feel about an event should it occur
2. How we actually feel when an event occurs
3. How we think we felt during the event after it has occured

What she found was interesting (at least to me).  We have expectations on how an event will feel that may not (and often do not) match the way we actually feel when the event happens.  That’s not too interesting until you found out that the way we ‘think’ we felt during an event tends to match the way we ‘expected’ to feel rather than the way we ‘actually’ felt.

Did I lose you?  Let me use an example – I love to eat.  I love to over eat.  I expect that eating a second and third dessert will feel great.  Then I actually eat the second (or third) slice of pie and feel miserable.  But if you ask me next week how it felt to eat three desserts today, I’m going to tell you how good it was.

How can this information help me?  I’m not sure yet, exactly.  But I think that if I can somehow remind myself how miserable it feels to overeat before I actually overeat, I might be able to avoid overeating.

I want to correctly remember how overeating feels.  I want to expect that this miserable feeling is how overeating will feel.  If I can change my ‘expectation’ regarding how eating, when I’m not hungry, will feel, then maybe I can change my actions when I’m faced with a table full of awesome looking treats at a company holiday party…

Today I was eating with Stephanie using the techniques taught in this book; eating slow, chewing each bite, enjoying the food completely before taking the next bite. Stephanie actually made the comment that she has never seen me eat so slowly. Less than 10 bites in, I was full. Completely full.

For someone that loves to eat as much as I do, this is bad news. I know that most diets tell you that you have to have portion control and moderation, but this one doesn’t do that. Paul McKenna simple asks you to stop eating when you are full. Soon after learning how to recognize what being full means, I realized that I am always full on this diet. Have I really been overeating every single meal for the last 30 years?

I used an example earlier equating the activity of eating to playing with a puppy; this doesn’t seem to resonate with most of my readers. What if I told you that you can drink alcohol but only if you are actually thirsty and you have to stop as soon as you are no longer thirsty? I now see why ‘less filling’ would be a selling point.

Or think of when the Catholic Church told its congregates that they can have sex, but only to procreate. Do skinny people ever eat just because they like the taste of something?

Its too early to say, but I think this might be a life changing moment for me. I used to think my issue was an addiction to food but now I know its an addiction to eating. I don’t have to give up eating any particular food but I may have to give up the activity of what I’m going to call recreational eating.

Sayings like “nothing tastes as good as thin feels” never worked for me. Maybe because I don’t care what the food tastes like, I am addicted to the act of eating, regardless. I think “Eating isn’t as fun as being thin” might work better for me..

One of the suggestions from Mckenna is not your weigh yourself any more than once a month (every two weeks tops). The thought is that weighing yourself often doesn’t help you listen to your body but to the scale.

I get it and it’s true. If I weighed myself while trying to lose weight and it was a bad number, I may eat less. I understand my eating less was really starving myself off and on all the time.

Being in tune with what your body is goal and I think that is beginning to happen for me.

Still, I want to know how much I weigh.

PS: I would enjoy hearing others who have read or are reading “I can make you thin”.

Today I made a point of eating each bit of food like it was the only bite I had.  I savored it.  I chewed it slowly over and over while noticing every favor.  I didn’t put the next bite of food in my mouth until I had completely finished the first.

This forced me to slow down, giving my body more time to signal that its full – but had the added benefit of allowing me to enjoy food.  I know it sounds a bit crazy, but the truth is, to enjoy eating is not the same thing as enjoying food.

Have you ever watched “The Biggest Loser” when they show clips of FAT people shoveling food into the face at a ridiculous pace?  Eating produces endorphins, similar to the affect you could get from working out (hmm… interesting).  Eating at such break neck speeds shows an addiction to eating, not to food.

Eating on purpose like this allows me to enjoy food.  That’s cool – not a lot of diets out there have a real claim to that one.  It reminds me of a quote from Ratatouille:

Linguini: And you’re thin for someone who likes food. [crowd gasps]
Anton Ego: I don’t LIKE food. I LOVE it. If I don’t love it, I don’t SWALLOW.

This is upsetting – I’m not starving myself – I’m really not.  I wasn’t stuffed of course, but I only stopped eating when I felt full.  I keep telling myself that something has to be wrong here.  How can I be full after half a hotdog?!?!?!

I read more of the book today.  I am learning that I am an emotional eater.  Until today, I thought an emotional eater was that chick that just got dumped, curled up on her couch eating rocky road ice cream having a good cry.  But in his book, Paul McKenna talks about emotional eating as eating to change the way you feel regardless of your hunger level.

Bored? Then, what’s in the fridge?  Tired but don’t want to go to bed? What’s in the pantry?  Uh… WOW!  With those guildlines, I am an emotional eater.  How did the author know that I’ve said “I never feel full?”  Mr McKenna goes on to describe me as though he has known me for years. 

As an emotional eater, I never ‘felt full’ because I wasn’t hungry to begin with.  I was eating to change my mood.  Today, I did not eat to change my mood.  I ate when I was hungry and I stopped when I felt physically satisfied.  Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to eat more, but not because I was hungry.  I want bother re-iterating my feeling on this other than to say, I miss my puppy.

I’ll admit that the second half of that dog didn’t fill me up, but I was satisfied.  And I haven’t felt hungry all day.  Can this be right?  Obviously, I can’t maintain this low of a calorie intake – but I’m not going to stray from the principles… at least not for the month of December.  Albert, be prepared to buy my copy of this book.

The good news is I realized it and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

The morning and afternoon was fine but late afternoon I received some bad news. Not like anybody died news, but still upsetting.

In the book “I can make you thin” the author presents a hunger scale. It is as follows:

1. Physically faint
2. Ravenous
3. Fairly hungry
4. Slightly hungry
5. Neutral
6. Pleasantly satisfied
7. Full
8. Stuffed
9. Bloated
10. Nauseous

The idea is to eat when you are a 3 or 4 and not eat past an 8. This makes the overall goal to live in the 5-6 range.

After dinner I allowed myself to emotional eat. On previous days I used a calming technique that is shared in Mckenna’s book. Today, for some reason I didn’t use it. I didn’t even think of the method from the book.

Until halfway through my eating and then I used the calming method and stopped eating.

Tonight’s emotional eating was different. I felt my body being full. I knew my body didn’t need what I was eating, that this was pure emotional eating and I did it anyway. In the past I really believed I “needed” it.

This is a major success story for me. You may be thinking “How is emotional eating a success?”

You see fat people believe they are fat because they are physically hungrier than skinny people. We blame genetics and need. We insist that we are hungry and that skinny just don’t understand and they don’t.

Yet, I heard it and I felt it, that message from the body that I was full. I ignored but I heard it. Fat people don’t hear that or feel that until they are a 9 or 10 on the scale. Wither how we were raised or what we have done or a million other reasons we don’t hear it.

I heard it and if I start listening I really believe I can become one of those skinny people who don’t understand. That’s success!

This “success” is also a part of the program. The book even states I may have times I get away from the ideal I have now chosen for myself. I did fail my new chosen relationship with food tonight but I still won.

I will learn from it and stay with program. I plan to re-read the book and reinforce the calming and craving techniques because when I needed them I didn’t even think to use them.

As I write this post I am a strong 9 on the hunger scale and I upset with myself. Yet, I am high on believing that my body is in love with me, enough to talk to me.

The program with all those programs for me was twofold:

1. White-knuckle all the time.
2. Coming off the program.

The white-knuckle was a zone that I would enter into in order to follow the diet program. Eat this and don’t eat that. I could be in this zone for long periods of time but always knowing I could not live in this zone for the rest of my life.

This always led to the problem of coming off the program and eventual weight gain, AGAIN.

Paul McKenna has changed my total perspective of food. Okay, maybe it is more like changing it not changed.

I still have trouble looking at all the food on my plate and saying “I’m full, leave it”.  That’s not my biggest problem though. I have noticed that TV watching and over eating went hand and for me and that has been hard to break.

Who knew you could say no to so much food by just asking yourself “am I full”?

Today I did eat more but I don’t believe it was in a rage or crazy craving. I do have to vigorously fight one urge, weighing myself. I’ll explain more about this one tomorrow.

Breakfast:

Cooked 2 eggs, 1 potato, ½  red onion, and ¾ a red pepper. Ate all the veggies nut a little egg and ¼ of the potato.

Lunch:

Fiber bar and yogurt. Ate it all.

Dinner:

Salad & pudding. Didn’t eat all the salad. Later had 2 spoonfuls of peanuts with some chocolate chips and then 3 slices of ham (for the record I don’t think I ate any of this on a binge or emotional craving).