I’m not going to eat between meals and I’m not going to take seconds. Just Today. And I’m going to try this for a year to see what happens.
My problem is that I don’t have a reliable ‘OFF’ switch when I eat.f When I’m left to my own devices, I could eat a loaf of bread — with cheese or butter or if we’re talking San Franciso Sourdough, all by itself. I’m not talking about a frantic Lifetime Movie shoving food in my face while I crouch on the kitchen floor eating. I mean I could through the course of an evening or afternoon wander into the kitchen and cut or take another slice of bread. Or a couple pieces of candy.s Or a handful of chips. I wouldn’t be thinking about hunger — it’s the flavor and texture of certain foods (I think) that I like.< And when I get the urge, my habit has been to taste it again.
Last year, when I weighed more than I ever had before and my health was so fragile (I had bronchitis three times that year) I spent a lot of time dreaming about ways to lose weight.h I was trying to get myself ready to join Weight Watchers — that was my plan a year ago. And as I munched on this or that (who remembers a snack a year later?) I’d wish I could just ‘give up food’ like I gave up cigarettes. Because that was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.a I just stopped.
Of course, you can’t just stop eating — and that’s where this dream always ended. Eating has to be managed, controlled — giving it up leads to all sorts of problems and even in my dreams, I didn’t go there.
But one day something clicked and I realized that while I couldn’t give up food, I could give up snacks and I could stop taking seconds. That I could make a profound difference just by making those simple changes.2 And I could do this for just a day (that first day) and then decide if I should do it the next. And that’s what I did for the first couple of weeks.
I actually did The Commitment on day at a time. I didn’t jump into my yearlong experiment — and you don’t have to either.r Are you in the dreaming stage of weightloss? Are you thinking about joining a commercial exercise plan (and I’m not knocking them — they do help people lose weight)?n How about trying The Commitment for just one day to see how it works for you?
You can’t give up food — but you can give up snacks and seconds. How big an impact would that make on your day?
2 Comments
If giving up cigarettes was one of the easiest things you have ever done, it is difficult for me to imagine that you would ever find anything hard.
Maybe that does make me odd, Ductape. . .
But, it’s always been easy for me to give something up and not easy at all for me to to be moderate if I want something.
That’s why I had to devise a rule that was clear cut — no eating between meals and no seconds. I can do that.
But, I’m guessing that I wasn’t actually addicted to cigarettes or it wouldn’t have been so easy. I went from smoking more than two packs a day to just forgetting to smoke at all. It was a month later that I realized that I’d quit. And even I have to admit that’s odd.