Taming the appetite turns out to be quite the beast of burden for someone like me with a propensity for compulsive behavior. I eat. Maybe I’m a food addict… I’m certainly not a foodie… most people who’ve eaten my “cooking” would agree that I don’t seem to have a particularly sophisticated palette. But what I AM capable of is eating beyond hungry, beyond satisfied, beyond full. It’s annoying. When I started using my plate, taking note of what I ate and at what times, I was disturbed by the frequency with which I put food in my body. I was pretty much putting something in my mouth once an hour or so (didn’t even have to taste that good). It seemed clear I was satisfying an oral fixation, more so than pangs of hunger. It was a war: my mouth and hands vs. my stomach and mind. Hands and mouth had had the upper hand for a little too long. So I tried to find ways to make it hard to stomach the overly caloric, unhealthy stuff. I drank a couple of glasses of water before eating––stealing space (turns out the majority of the time we think we’re interpreting a hunger brain signal, we’re actually misinterpreting our body’s request for water). I ate hella fiber… anything for a false feeling of fullness. And because taste wasn’t that important to me, I made sure I had a good supply of healthy food.
I can’t figure out if it’s the smartest or dumbest piece of advice I’ve ever heard, but a personal trainer on the T.V show The Biggest Loser, recommended satisfying a craving for chocolate cake with a sugar-free piece of chewing gum. Um… okaaaaay…. If I want a chocolate cake, I don’t think a five-calorie stick of GUM will suffice! But I listened and allowed myself to develop a chewing gum addiction, which gave me something to put in my mouth when I wasn’t hungry but wanted to be chewing. And of course I overdose on gum… but it’s better than overdosing on trail mix or granola bars or some other healthy snack (because I learnt that I could take something healthy and wonderful and make it my enemy––the thing hurting my cause). 4 or 5 granola bars, a super-sized fruit drink, oats and nuts cereal serving size for 5, still left me with 3000-4000 calories at the end of the day. It was better (than say a tub of icecream or whatever), but still hurting the cause.
Sometimes Hand, Mouth and Mind gang up on Stomach. It’s called denial. Denial is a powerful and useless beast. If I don’t write it down, it’s like I didn’t eat it. I don’t like to think about my slips, so I forgive myself for my transgressions pretty quickly and keep it moving. But if I don’t own it, then I don’t feel the need to make up for it at the gym, or even consider the fact that it’ll rear it’s ugly head in my weekly Wednesday weigh-in. Once I write it down, it happened and I can then deal with it. Secretly eating a brownie turns out to be the same amount of calories as eating it publicly. So I try to own it, accept it, and keep it moving (although public eating can have its own drama... and we can definitely talk about that). Same with weighing myself: I step on the scale every Wednesday, no matter what. If I pig out on Tuesday and feel like I know I’ll be heavier… not stepping on the scale doesn’t stop the weight gain. So I just do it, and whatever the number on Wednesday is, I own it. It’s the reality. Denial, avoidance, procrastination, and rationalization, that's easy, holding myself accountable, that's necessary.
