When you are eating, what’s the goal? For most of us who are overweight and gaining weight, the goal is to feel pleasantly and comfortably full. Sometimes, there are other goals, like finishing everything on your plate. Sometimes, the goal is to prevent waste, so you eat everything left from the kids’ plates, which they have hardly touched. Sometimes, the goal is even to keep experiencing the pleasant taste of the food, or dessert. Can you see where I am going with this? All of those goals lead to overeating. Overeating becomes weight gain, a few hundred calories at a time. Every extra 3500 calories you eat is believed to result in 1 pound of weight gain.
Measuring your food intake and knowing exactly what you are eating is part of getting lifelong control over your body’s weight.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 1 Cup Kefir (200)
- 200 calories
Lunch – two Johnsonville bratwurst (260); quarter bread wrap each (25)
- 570 calories
Dinner – 12 ounces homemade sausage chili (480); 1 oz tortilla chips (130); 1.3 Tablespoon sour cream (40)
- 650 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (160)
- 160 calories
Total for the day: 1580 calories (limit 1800)
Focus on hunger
What is the goal of eating for people who are thin and stay thin? We already know that people who stay thin work hard to stay thin. If you know any thin people, you know it is their obsession. The person who stays thin without trying is a myth, and a harmful one. Even if someone tells you that, it’s not true. It’s probably a form of modesty, as the thin person is avoiding bragging about all the hard work they are putting into their appearance. Modesty, and maybe avoiding some shame, at people thinking they are shallow (interested only in appearance).
I don’t know. When thin people eat, what is the goal? Maybe it’s to avoid feeling full. Maybe the goal is to eat just enough to stay thin (but how can they tell?). My guess is that people who stay thin have a way to measure their bodies. One thing I have noticed is that as you get thinner, the clothes cut for your body fit more tightly to you. It’s possible to get a lot of feedback from that feeling. Even if a thin person is not obsessively weighing themself every day, they can tell based on whether their tightest clothes still fit them. (Do their shirts still button? The pants? Is the belt fitting loosely or tight?)
My eating goal is simple. My goal is to focus on hunger. (I have had a rough couple of weeks where I have been ill with a low grade intestinal problem. It has played hell with my diet and weight and how I feel and get hungry. My appetite has been strange, my hunger cues are mixed up…..maybe this is just excuses, but I feel like I am not in a normal condition. The last couple of days, there are hints I am getting back to normal. Maybe it’s the active cultures in the yogurt drink I have been having. Maybe it’s just time healing all wounds. But I was actually hungry for lunch today, for the first time in days. It felt good.)
Focusing on hunger means that ideally, I am always thinking about the next meal. When I am eating lunch, I am thinking about being properly hungry for dinner. Hunger is great because when you eat food you really like, when you are very hungry for it, it is very, very satisfying. You want to experience that again. It helps with portion control too. If you start hungry, and your portion is just enough, you will notice you are not enjoying a second portion nearly as much. Then you aren’t hungry for dinner and the meal is not as satisfying. I really want to get back to that lifestyle, it feels really good! Let’s hope I get all better soon. You all stay well, too.
-The Doctor