Week 24: Identifying Problems and Finding Solutions

I've arrived at a plateau this week, it seems. I didn't lose weight or body fat, so I guess I'm going to have to make some adjustments to my eating plan.

For instance, I've gotten accustomed to eating a snack in the evening. I don't want to eliminate it altogether, since I find I'm hungry if I don't eat something. I don't know if it needs to be so big, though. Usually I have fruit and yogurt or milk, but maybe I don't need both, since I go to bed so soon afterward. I'll try that out this week, see what happens with it.

I could also skip the third bread occasionally.  Usually I have that at supper, but maybe I can do without it now and then.  Of course, I do look forward to it.  I could also cut down on the ounces of meat I have at supper--go for four ounces instead of five.  All these are minor adjustments, but maybe they'll have an effect, even if I adopt only one.

Another thing I need to do is exercise more, although finding the time is the problem.  Maybe morning dancing is a good choice, combined with a walk at lunch.  Or perhaps I can do more frequent walks of shorter duration at work, say five minutes per hour.  It's something to consider . . .

This was the week I was supposed to launch Step 7, Eating Only.  I had some limited success, but mostly in the area of trying to pay more attention to my food and to slow down the process more. I'm still reading while eating lunch and breakfast, but trying not to let it distract me too much.  I may have to accept only partial fulfillment of this step.

I had a bakery bagel for my extra bread this past week.  It was pretty good, but not that spectacular.  I think I would've enjoyed a piece of toast more, to tell the truth.  But these things have to be tried so that I can learn what really motivates me to eat something.  If I feel bagel-deprived, eating a bagel (and really paying attention to what it tastes like) should help me get over that feeling.  I guess that's the best reason to gradually add "forbidden" foods to my diet: to de-mystify them, you might say.  I think my bagel experiment did that fairly well.  A bagel is chewy bread with a nice crust.  Nothing miraculous there!  The problem with a bagel is that typically it's big (and therefore high in calories) , but a quarter of a bagel is not satisfying the way a piece of bread would be.  So maybe the solution is to find something that would give the same satisfaction without tipping the scales.

As Shirley tells us with respect to the Controlled Trade technique, when you eat something on that list, you should know why you're eating it.  What craving is it meant to satisfy?  Don't gulp it down just because you can.  Determine what you hope to get from it; then once you've eaten it, you can evaluate its success in giving you what you wanted.  I can do that with any number of foods I consider to be treats and thereby learn how to incorporate them into my diet in a sensible way.

And that's the essence of this program: gaining the knowledge you need to make rational decisions about eating.  Those plans that only change what you eat are doomed to fail because those with eating disorders need to change how they eat in order to stay permanently thin.

See you next week.