What a novel concept

This week I started a new "diet", I suppose you could call it. It isn't a fad, really - I'm just going to try to eat only when I'm hungry, and keep an eye on my calories.

ba-dum.

No, wait, really, it's not that simple. The revelation for me after a visit with my family (where we invariably dissect our genetic makeup) and a long discussion with my husband over the holidays (this is the man who will have a piece of fruit as dessert when there is cheesecake available!) was that it's OK to be hungry.

All the diet books emphasize you should only eat when you're hungry, which is great if you actually know what hunger really is. I have spent the last few years trying that (and it's a good thing to do, of course)... but none of the diet books say gosh golly gee-whiz, you know what, you don't have to eat when you are hungry.

What a load off my mind that thought was! For years, as soon as I get the tiniest bit hungry, I would immediately eat. Or if I got the tiniest inkling that perhaps, just maybe, hunger would be coming my way any time in the next hour, then I would eat. Unfortunately this doesn't work well because I tend to feel hungry within a couple of hours after eating, regardless of the size or nature of meal I had. So I was constantly 'allowing' myself to eat because I was truly truly hungry (ok just a wee bit hungry, but truly truly a wee bit hungry), and even if all you're eating is a 200 calorie snack, those calories add up over the course of a day... particularly for someone as short as I am, where the normal allowance of calories to maintain my weight is roughly 1800 which ain't much.

I am not new to the dieting concept. In January 2001, I started a bet with some friends to lose weight, we'd all put $200 into the pot and whoever lost the most weight by the end of March would win all of the money. For some reason, that shared bet motivated me like nothing else had in the past 10 years (except getting dumped by the then-love-of-my-life for another chick, which was great for my waistline and not so good for my self esteem). I decided that my diet would be, get this:

Eat less.

Now I admit, it took me a while to come up with that one. But for some reason the $400 dangling over my head enabled me to actually stick to my diet, and by the end of March I'd lost 13 pounds whereas my partners in food-crime hadn't lost a thing. And somehow they'd forgotten about the whole bet thing anyway.

But the important thing is, I'd shown myself that I could do it, so over the rest of 2001 I made my way down another 25 pounds, to where I was actually fairly happy with my weight (ok not bikini-happy, but who is? I read something once where Cindy Crawford said she hated doing swimsuit modeling because of her "fat ass"). It was a wonderful year actually, since I just played the calorie game and two taco bell tacos has 340 calories which is a decent number of calories for a dieting person's lunch. People who saw me losing weight didn't understand it, since they also saw me eating junk food. I think that's one of the reasons so many diets fail, is because people try to not only eat less but eat better at the same time - one at a time, I say!

Before:

After:

(Look! a chin!)

Hurrah for me, wheeeee, I did it. I managed to keep it off for the next 9 months and then -- get this -- I did a silly thing for someone who was happy with their body... I got pregnant and played it "50s style", i.e. eat whatever you want for the only time in your entire life.

65 pounds later I had a wonderful boy and having had many delicious desserts in that time span, I don't regret it a bit. It took me ages to start going down again - I learned one of the dirty secrets of new motherhood which is that it's quite easy to gain weight after giving birth to the baby, breastfeeding be damned or perhaps it even causes it. You're so dang hungry all the time that you eat much more, and you're so sleep deprived and stressed out that the only thing that is always there for you, never screams and never makes you bleed is food. But by 15 months post-partum, I had made it down to within 10 pounds of my lowest ever, which is where I am today:

I want to have another baby eventually, but you're not allowed to call it baby fat after #2 if it's the baby fat from your first pregnancy, so I would like to get down those 10 pounds.

And so, it is 7pm, my son is in bed, my husband is cooking dinner (yes, he's awesome) and I have had a fairly small amount of food for the day, mostly in balance bar form. I am hungry and am looking forward to dinner... but it's OK.

P.S. He did the dishes too. And put the baby to bed. What a man.

Comments

[Amanda]

Great site!! I totally could've written that post as I have tons of "duh!" dieting moments myself. Eat only when you're hungry? Maybe I should try that along with a clever idea I read the other day about exercising more than once a month! Ya think! ;)

Now I'm battling the same idea - why lose more weight if I'm only going to get pregnant again soon enough?