I’m not going to tell you that your size is irrelevant in the world. Even as you move toward greater appreciation of your body, many of you will continue to struggle against cultural images, and friends and family who continue to tell you that “No, you
aren’t
okay.” Trust me here when I say it
can
be done. My research proves it. And you
can
teach those who love you to see you differently and to treat your body with respect. If you can’t, you have to ask yourself if they’re worth a leading role in your life.
Eventually, as more people learn to live large and proud and stop accepting the hatred and discrimination society has toward large people, the culture will shift to accommodate. Don’t believe me? Consider the parallels with other social change movements. Would you encourage African-Americans to lighten their skin to become better accepted? Or gay men to date women so they’ll “appear normal”? Of course not. I firmly believe that in the not-too-distant future, we won’t expect heavier people to lose weight before we view them as part of the beautiful spectrum of human diversity.
I already see this occurring. Just look around you. People of all sizes are living full, happy, fulfilled lives, and are in satisfying relationships. With the help of this chapter, and this book, I know you can be one of them!
NINE
Take Care of Your Hungers
D
ieting. It’s so seductive. It gives us hope, the promise of weight loss and happiness. But by now you know it doesn’t deliver. So acknowledge that. Repeat after me:
Diets. Don’t. Work.
Bottom line: Any plan that has you giving over control to someone else’s idea of what you
should
eat is doomed to fail.
Every time I think of diets, I think of some women I once saw standing near a buffet filled with food. One looked at the display and said, “Oh, I really shouldn’t.” Another commiserated, saying, “It really is tempting, isn’t it?” They all looked on sadly.
Who wants to feel like they constantly have to fight their desires? Yet that’s exactly the message of diets: “Do what we tell you, not what you want.” “Control yourself.” Any system that emphasizes external processes to determine what to eat is fragile and ineffective and promotes discontent and periodic rebellion and binging.
The good news is that you don’t need a diet to achieve happiness, health, or whatever else underlies your quest for weight loss. Just go after them directly!
There’s more good news: You are innately capable of making satisfying food choices that improve your health and take you to a healthy weight, without following any diet. Trust yourself and you will find that you are far more effective at managing your weight than any diet can be.
Yet more good news: Indulging your desires will actually
help
you achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Why? Because you already have everything you need inside you directing you to make good food choices. I know that’s a difficult concept to accept, given the years you’ve spent hearing how inadequate you are because of your weight and that you need to subscribe to this or that theory or diet plan to “save” you.
No one profits from internal trust, except of course the individual. Perhaps that’s why it’s such an unfamiliar concept.
But now you’re ready to take a leap of faith and trust yourself. Trust that your body knows what it wants and will guide you to eat what’s right for you. Now you understand that no one else but
you
can provide this knowledge. Your body doesn’t know the diet language of good or bad: It just knows what it wants and needs in the moment. The less such knowledge is mediated by our culture, the better off you are.
We can all resist a piece of chocolate cake or a slice of meatlover’s pizza on occasion, just as we resist buying a surround sound home theater system when we’ve just lost a job. It’s called willpower and control. But it’s a short-term answer to a long-term issue. Instead of closing your eyes and repeating to yourself, “I won’t eat that ice cream; I won’t eat that ice cream,” this chapter teaches you to hear a different message from your body: “As good as I know that pizza tastes, it’s just not appealing to me right now. I’m not hungry.”
You’ll not only learn how that inner voice works, but how to listen to it. When you learn how to listen, you can determine what you really want—whether it’s food or something else. And as you learn how to better take care of those non-physical needs, you become less interested in eating when you’re not hungry. If you’re only eating when food appeals to you, you no longer have to try to control every bite that goes into your mouth.
Guideline 1: Eat Delicious Food
Hard to believe this is part of the prescription for maintaining a healthy weight, isn’t it? But it’s the key to making this work. Sensual pleasure is our biological reward for taking care of ourselves.
When you eat what you want and allow yourself to truly experience the pleasure, you feel satisfaction and contentment, which allows you to stop eating when you feel full. I’m not just saying this to make you feel good; numerous studies support this: Eating pleasurable food when you have a physical drive to eat won’t trigger consistent overeating
in intuitive eaters
. Also, if you are consumed with guilt, you don’t enjoy (or even experience) the food.
Unfortunately, however, the opposite is true for people with a dieting mentality. If you avoid eating food you truly desire, you’ll often wind up eating more in a never-ending quest for satisfaction.
384
The next time you want those French fries, go for it! Eat them attentively and notice if they satisfy you. That is much better than substituting a baked potato, which typically results in an ongoing grazing binge in search of satisfaction. Commit to choosing food you love.
Concerned that your tastes may not be conducive to good health—or to choosing foods that register on your internal weight meter? Not to worry. Future chapters help you identify—and love—the foods that nurture you best.
Guideline 2: Pay Attention When You Eat
In a very interesting study, researchers monitored the digestive processes of twenty-four healthy college students while they ate.
385
They monitored them while eating before a film and then when they ate during a film. When they ate while watching the movie, activity in their digestive tract was reduced and their digestion was less effective overall.
This result wasn’t too surprising. Research consistently finds that as much as 30 to 40 percent of your total physical response to a meal occurs during the “cephalic phase of digestion,” which is just a fancy term for the time you spend seeing, smelling, and tasting your meal.
386
This process initiates a wide range of digestive activities, including releasing saliva and digestive enzymes, sending blood to the digestive organs, and contracting the stomach and intestinal muscles.
But as the above study shows, if you’re not paying attention to the food itself, this process doesn’t work as well. You don’t metabolize your food nearly as effectively and your body doesn’t get all the nutrients it needs, nor does it get the full range of chemical messages it needs to trigger stop-eating cues. You’re still getting the calories, however.
Here’s another study to ponder if you’re not convinced of the value of attentiveness. Study participants first consumed a mineral drink under relaxing conditions.
387
They completely absorbed two of those minerals, sodium and chloride. The same individuals were then exposed to stressful conditions—two people simultaneously talking to them, one in each ear—while consuming the drink. Their bodies
completely
shut down to assimilating the minerals. From 100 percent absorption to 0 percent! The simple act of inattention dramatically altered their ability to assimilate those nutrients.
How often do you eat while watching television, driving, reading, etc.? How are you ever going to feel satiety sensations or get the full range of nutrients contained in your food, if you’re chomping on that hamburger while negotiating a left turn in your car?
So from now on, aim to be fully present for your meals. Eat with awareness. Turn off the TV, put away the newspaper, put on some soft music, set a nice table, and sit down to enjoy the food—even if it’s just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
Guideline 3: Satisfy Your Hunger
Even though you can’t always get your hands on a just-picked piece of fruit, you can still learn to savor every bite. Start by eating when you’re hungry—not when you
think
you should eat, or when you’re eating to assuage some uncomfortable feeling. When you’re hungry, your senses are sharper, primed for the smells, taste, and feel of good food.
388
Try this exercise. Eat a piece of chocolate just after dinner. Write down how it tastes, what you feel, and all the related sensations that you’re aware of. Now eat a piece of chocolate
before
dinner. Take the same notes. Which piece of chocolate tasted richer?
Your appreciation of tasty food doesn’t just support you in eating when you’re hungry; it can also support you in moderating amounts. Try another exercise, a favorite of the HAES study participants. This time get a chocolate truffle—a super-rich dark chocolate truffle. Take a small nibble. Hold the piece of chocolate in your mouth and close your eyes as you experience the sweet/bitter taste melting on your tongue. When that small piece is entirely gone, take another bite, and another, eating slowly and staying attentive to the experience.
HAES group participants observed that after the first few bites, the truffle was progressively less delicious. It still tasted good, just not quite as good. In scientific jargon, they experienced negative alliesthesia
389
: your taste buds toning down on repeated exposure, nature’s way of prompting you to eat less once your calorie needs are met.
In other words, if you commit to eating foods when they’re maximally pleasurable, you feel satisfied with a lot less. (You also have more stable moods and healthier blood sugar regulation.)
But if you’ve spent years ignoring your body’s hunger/fullness signals, how do you learn to recognize them again? It’s not as if you can look at a picture!
First, forget about how
other
people define hunger or fullness. Many say they’re hungry when their stomach starts growling. By the time I reach that point, I’m ravenous; my body is in panic mode, geared to force me into overeating so it can pack extra food away as fat to protect against future deprivation. Such desperation won’t allow me to make good food choices. Better to catch hunger in an earlier stage.
At the same time, how do you know when you’ve had enough? Hint: “Full” occurs long before you feel bloated and have to unbuckle your belt.
To help give you a sense of how someone might perceive the range of hunger and fullness, check out the following scale, a composite of my experiences and those of the HAES research participants. We all feel hunger and fullness differently, so it may not jive with your experience. Use it as a starting point as you explore how hunger and fullness manifest for you.
Sample Hunger/Fullness Scale
|
|---|
1
| Can’t think straight and feel crazed. I think I should eat, but feel incapable of making a decision about what to eat and how to take care of myself. Just want to lie down and do nothing.
|
2
| Very low energy, irritable, cranky, and anxious. Snapping at people. Shaky. Difficulty concentrating. My stomach is rumbling and feels empty.
|
3
| May be preoccupied with thinking about food. Energy starting to lag. Mild concentration lapses. A little anxious. May have a slight empty feeling in my stomach, but not uncomfortable.
|
4
| Starting to think about food. Light in my body. Energized.
|
5
| Comfortable. Energized.
|
6
| Feel a little heaviness in my stomach. A little tired.
|
7
| Feel a little stuffed and heavy in my body. Lethargic, want to nap. Generally low energy.
|
8
| Stuffed and heavy in my body. Lethargic and very low energy.
|
9
| Uncomfortable, bloated. Tired. Want to sleep.
|
10
| Whoops, it really hurts. Stuffed to the gills. Want to lie down.
|
Now it’s your turn to explore these feelings in yourself. HAES group participants found journaling, and the other exercises in this chapter, to be helpful. By the end of the study, testing showed that their “interoceptive awareness” had increased dramatically, which is scientific jargon for their having become more sensitized to body sensations. In simpler terms, they were more adept at recognizing hunger and fullness.