Eat 4 Today – The Commitment. The Commitment is not one size fits all.

Hey {{{{{{{{{{Puget!}}}}}}}}} It is good to see you back here!

One of the best advantages of this site is that we get to discuss different points of view about what to do and how to do it for whatever ails us.

I guess my point of view is naturally going to stroll over to the older folks’ side a bit when we talk about eating and nutrition.

As you know, one of the challenges that many elders face is eating enough. Sometimes it is a decrease in appetite that the shamans will say is a normal part of aging, other times it may be due to an illness or even a medication for that illness. I know that sometimes the pain medication I take suppresses my appetite as much or more than a cup of coffee!

The other night I was trying to encourage katiebird about weight, telling her that if she would just be patient, those extra pounds that may show up like uninvited guests in the 40s and 50s start to melt like chocolate in the tropics once the 70s get well underway.

From my admittedly anecdotal experience, ladies, especially seem to welcome this phenomenon and dash out gleefully to buy new clothes, but as the years pass, their shamans and their families may begin to worry whether they are getting enough, and fear that they may be losing a bit too much weight.

Since catching dye bead eaze, one thing I know that you will appreciate I learned that most of the calories I had been consuming were not very good quality. They were not providing me with much nutrition.

Consider this: From one day to the next, I dropped 800-1000 calories from my daily intake simply by ceasing to drink coca-cola. Add to that no more sugar in tea, the reduced amounts of those white carbs you so correctly warn against – another example: rice has been a staple of my diet all my life. Yes, white rice. My custom was to essentially fill my plate with rice and then add smaller amounts of the other foods on top of it.

Now that has reversed. I take a small serving of rice and completely drown it in vegetables and/or dal. (Most of the dishes I eat do not have huge amounts of meat. For example one boneless chicken breast will accent vegetables in a big pot of curry that will give Madame and myself at least two meals each, and still have plenty to offer whoever else might be around)

Chicken broth and/or yogurt have replaced heavy cream in many foods, and as you know, vegetables, even with a small amount of chicken, does not have very many calories. And I used eat two or three large round breads, sometimes more. Now I have a wedge, or none at all.

So while I have learned that most of the calories I consumed before were not very nutritious, that does not change the fact that I still need a certain number of calories every day.

And if I am going to get those calories from low calorie foods, that means I have to eat quite a lot of those low calorie foods, and so it is really in my best interest to take seconds or even thirds. And for me, eating between meals is not the question. The question is what exactly do I plan to eat between meals! If it is a bit of dal or some grape tomatoes or asparagus in vinaigrette, that is one thing. If it is one of your famous white carbs or a sweet treat, that is something else entirely!

That is why *my * Commitment is to eat what I am supposed to eat when I am supposed to eat it. And I allow myself quite a bit of flexibility in that “when” while keeping a tighter check on myself with the “what.” If I feel like I want some salad between meals, then I would do well to go eat some, because by the time mealtime rolls around, I may not want to eat anything at all!

For me, maintaining my weight has been a struggle, but so far, I have managed to avoid becoming too slender, and I know that I am consuming a better quality of nutrition than I ever have.

For all I love to talk about the foods I miss, and I do miss them, a lot of the time I do not want to eat anything, even devils food cakes or kashmiri chicken! But I have to eat, and I have to eat more of the foods I traditionally ate less of, and less or none of what I traditionally ate more of.

So while many here have as a goal or a facet of their commitment the losing of weight, mine is to NOT lose weight, so I customize my commitment accordingly.

Thank you for worrying about me. My way would not work for everybody. And for me it would not work for some things. The biggest one in that category is coca-cola and sugar in tea. I have not had even one sip of coca cola or tea with sugar since November. And one of the ways I have been able to do that is by allowing myself that little bit of No Sugar Added ice cream, or the South Beach cookie, even the half the sugar orange juice helps keep me from drinking coca cola. And it also helps me from eating an entire pint of Godive Belgian Dark. Letting myself have a bite of cake helps me not eat half the cake. And the devils food cookie incident has reinforced that for me.

katie calls it a shutter. Now that I know the power of that shutter, that my instinct was right, if I do not control my treats – and part of control is having them – then they will quickly cease to be treats, and if I do not allow myself that little bit, my shutter will snap and I will go mad and have a LOT.

I’m not saying that is universal, I’m saying it is me. I know it would be more virtuous, more transcendent, more noble, perhaps, to renounce it all forever and resolve that never again would even a spoonful of potato, or No Sugar Added ice cream, or white carbs of any kind pass my lips.

And I will be the first to stand up and give all props to those who can do that without sinking the whole ship. But while that might be the way of the man with true inner strength and superior character, the skin I have to live in, and manage to keep padded with the correct amount of flesh, and the sugar I have to control, lies on the bones and runs in the veins of this imperfect, ignoble and flawed old terrorist, with all my faults and foibles, all my weaknesses and defects, my eccentricities and idiosyncrasies – and whether it is orthodox or best practice has to be, for me, secondary to the goal of keeping the meter – and the shamans, and most of all the pancreas happy, and keeping me alive, which keeps Madame happy, and I am first and foremost devoted to her happiness

Hi monalisa!

I’m a cubicle dweller also and struggling with many of the issues you mention here.

One thing I’ve started doing when I want to snack at my desk is to just get up and walk — up and down a hall or around in circles in a big empty room or in gigantic loop up a floor across that level, down, down, down to the basement, across that level and back up, up to the floor I started.

Or sometimes heating hot water and making tea, and fiddling with the tea.

When I used to work at the main branch of a local library, I used to walk around the adjacent park when the weather was good or around the edge of the public area when it wasn’t.

And actually that experience is part of why I invented the E4T Exercise Blog — because if walking can be a distraction from aimless eating when I’m at work, maybe it can help at home too.

“Eating what I’m supposed to eat each day, like those 5 servings of fruits & veggies, is hard”

This part? This is the hard part for me. I don’t think I come close to it.

“kbird have you tried planning additional small vegetable and fruit meals?”

No. I can tell I have to. But. It must be the baby steps thing. Or maybe that’s an excuse for just not being ready for another thing to focus on?

And since I’m unlikely to do it alone (do I do anything alone?) we’ll probably have an E4T 5-9 Fruit and Vegetable Bar or something. Maybe for a midday break.

Or something like that.

Hi {{{Puget4}}}

I’m so glad you’re back. You always bring up the heavy questions. And make me think about what I’m saying.

I’ve been thinking about your comment and wondering how I changed my view to the idea that The Commitment isn’t a one size fits all thing. And it isn’t that I’ve changed my mind.

I still think that for those of us who struggle with chronic obesity, it’s the best, solution. But that isn’t what everyone here is dealing with.

And for me to insist on everyone taking The Commitment (in the same way I made it) would be unrealistic, I think. Like insisting that everyone give up wine or beer or Drambuie. It isn’t going to happen.

Also, even those who really would be better off not eating between meals and not taking seconds might be more successful if they take things a step at a time. Maybe by doing part of it for a while as a Just 4 Today pledge.

I don’t know all the answers to these questions. But, I can’t shut the door on someone who’s made a pledge to take control and wants a place to find support for that. Because food and eating issues are very complicated. Could they really all have the same solution?

Sounds good to me. It should prove to be an interesting experiment anyways, seeing as we’re heading into spring/summer, the time when most fruit & veggies are in season. That should make it easier to incorporate the 5 servings into our days.

Howdy All,

KB said “food and eating issues are very complicated”. That is an understatement that bears repeating. It’s a VERY hard problem to work on, much less solve, because it’s hard to make ourselves believe that “wrong eating” (of whatever type) could kill us. Eating is something we HAVE to do. We definitely cannot live without eating.

A large part of eating, IMHO, is habit. And not only the habit of swallowing foods with certain tastes that we like. It’s also the habit that lives in your hands of picking up something and putting it in your mouth (with or without a fork). This is what makes dieting in a cubicle so hard. You’re sitting there working away and reading a computer screen and your hands need something to do. So they pick up a munchie. It’s very similar to smokers who, when trying to stop, say it’s hardest to not smoke when talking on the phone… The mechanical habit of the hands holding the cigarette and bringing it to their mouth while talking on the phone is a very strong one.

These mechanical habits our hands learn are how we become so effecient as humans. We can do a lot with our hands without having to stop and think. We can get a lot done while still thinking about other things.

For me, snacking late at night is a real hard thing to avoid. I’ve stopped typing, or working, or writing, or doing bills, or whatever and my hands want to have something to do. I’m not even hungry at 10:30 or 11:00 at night but the minute I stop my hands, they try to find something else to do and all of a sudden I find myself wanting to snack.

So, a really good way to break a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit. We are creatures of habit and we stay alive by depending on them. We are creatures of eating habits as well and eating keeps us alive too.

So what I really like about KB’s committment is that it works to BREAK YOUR HABIT of wrong eating, whatever that is.
It’s a start. It’s a way of putting your foot down and saying THIS is what I’m going to do TODAY, Just 4 Today. Then tomorrow I’ll see what happens. Okay, I’ll try it one more day…JUST 4 TODAY. It’s so simple that it doesn’t take a lot of thought or concentration or counting or figuring or meal planning, etc. You tell yourself you can do ANYTHING for one day. It’s a way to START breaking those bad eating habits. Also you don’t have to think about never eating another Milky-Way. That’s a negative approach and weakens your resolve. Eat it as dessert with one of your meals….just don’t eat it at 2:30 in the afternoon.

As soon as you try this for a few days or even a week (I’m betting that after the first day, you’ll try it for several more one-days), you’ll see you survived and in fact, even feel better in some small ways. So the feeling better becomes the reward for good behavior. The pounds dropping off the scale, the cholesterol tests coming back favorable, the blood sugar tests lowering and staying steady, the pride you can feel in succeeding at something you had given up on.

The last couple examples, blood sugar tests, cholesterol improving, obviously, are the result of more than just not eating between meals and not taking seconds. They come as a result of changing your diet in a major way. But you MUST get started somehow. KB’s committment is the way to get started. And when KB writes her committment each morning, I’m willing to bet she’s doing more than what she is stating. But the writing of that committment gets her day started in a manner that she (we are) able to follow our own individual plan to solve our own individual problems.

My apologies for writing such a long piece as a comment. I’ll approach the “good” carbs thought later on.