A meta diet - embrace slight feelings of hunger
After seven years of trying I was finally able to lose thirty pounds last year by embracing what I’d call a “meta diet”. These are rules and guidelines that address the difficulty of following any diet. Primarily the problem of learning to tolerate mild hunger.
First, I had to realize that eating for me was often “a turn towards comfort”. When I’m driving in the car and the climate control is set to 72, and I feel a bit cold, I will bump it to 73. If I’m listening to music and the volume is at 4 and it seems a bit loud, I will step it down to 3.
I realized my whole life I had been following this same pattern of immediately resolving mild discomfort with food. It was a reflex.
When it was between meals and I felt even a twinge of hunger I’d have a snack. If I went into a meal noticeably hungry I’d eat twice as much as I should. I immediately chased any sensation of hunger away no matter how mild.
I had to teach myself that being a little bit hungry is not a crisis, it does not mean I’m going to get dizzy or have a headache. It’s not an itch that I need to immediately scratch. I had to learn that I can sit with a little bit of hunger and be totally fine. More often than not the hunger sensation faded away once I resolved to not reward it with food.
I learned to not only tolerate the feeling of slight hunger but to crave it. I rewrote it in my mind that slight hunger was a good and positive thing. It meant I was on track to lose a little bit of weight that day. It meant I had done a good job with my eating. It meant I was following my diet.
The other part of the meta diet though was believing that my excess weight was primarily due to the food I was putting into my mouth. Metabolism and exercise played a role, but I had to fully embrace that I was responsible for what was going into my mouth and that moderating it is what will lead to weight loss.
I realized dieting was very hard, but it was not hard like exercise was hard, or doing a tough chore was hard. For those, you exert major effort for a while, but then you are done. Dieting was more like watching a small child. You need to be totally aware you are watching the child 24 hours a day, you can never simply forget about the child and wander off and eat a piece of cake.
I discovered I needed to follow my eating plan the entire day. A single bad meal or large snack and I’d lose zero weight that day. So that’s what worked, fully believe my weight was due to my eating choices, be mindful of my goals all day every day, and learn to tolerate and even embrace and enjoy being a little bit hungry.
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