I've had a life-long love/hate relationship with food all my life. I know I'm not alone. There are always so many posts here about people being discouraged about their weight loss, hitting a plateau, not sure if they can 'stick with it', all the usual things that happen with any diet, that I feel like I'm among kindred spirits!
But it makes me wonder if that word 'diet' isn't part of the problem. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that this is a way of life for all the beneficial health reasons our bodies gain from fasting, whether or not we lose weight this week or month. For me, it's semantics, and yet words have meanings. For me, when I was 'dieting', I was looking for the quick-and-easy fix without wanting to address my larger problem.
My attitude was: "I want to do 'this' - whatever 'this' was - to lose x amount of weight for x event, but boy oh boy, I can't wait to 'eat normally' again."
Of course, we all know what happened to me. Weight loss, yes, event, yes, weight gain plus interest, oh yes.
What a horrible way to live. I've been doing this to my body for more than 20 years.
Finally, I have found a WAY OF LIFE that is helping me develop a healthier relationship with food and nourishing my body that I know I can sustain long term. I have used my fast days as days to become more self aware. I try to do fluid-only-zero-calorie fasts from supper time to supper time, saving all my allotted calories for the family meal in the evening.
I try to use those 'hunger signals' that do occur off and on throughout the day as teaching me about my body, my body's cues and my body's triggers. Boredom gives me the munchies even when I'm not hungry! Work has treats/snacks around almost constantly. I'm a nurse, and there are always lovely patients who send us 'thank you' goodies. Hunger is not what drives me to them - boredom and a desire to eat junk is. I'm teaching myself to do other things so as not to be bored or tempted.
Don't get me wrong - I *LOVE* the junk as much as anyone. But I am fasting for health reasons as well as weight-loss reasons and I know my excessive 'junk' consumption is one of the things that got me to this point. Like so many others, I find it much easier avoid sweets altogether than to start and consume in 'moderation'. If I open a bag of Oreos, the bag is GONE. Not a cookie or two and satisfied - GONE.
I don't want to give up sweets and I don't want to be fat or unhealthy. I have made a conscious - and very difficult - decision to let this way of life teach me how to eat sensibly even on my non-fast-days.
So I do calorie track on my 'normal' days. This is not the right answer for everyone, but it works for me. I need the help to be more conscious of portion sizes and protein content and so on. The myfitnesspal app is what brought me to 'you' - to this WOL. I don't calorie restrict, per se - my TDEE is roughly 2,000 calories and I try to make sure at least 1500 of them come from 'good' foods and save that 500 for the 'junk' (or wine!
) I'm pleased to say that it is growing less and less frequent that I eat 500 calories worth of 'junk'. When possible, I try to stay around 1,600-1,800 calories on 'normal' days. This will someday be my 'normal' TDEE when I reach my ideal weight. I want to teach my body to be content there.
I never refer to my normal days as 'feed' days, even though Dr. Mosley does. It sets off too many ideas in my unhealthy food mindset that makes me think I can 'pig out'.
My kids and hubby always like to have dessert after supper, so I serve everyone a normal portion size. I don't let myself go back for 'seconds' and I put it all away after its been served. I don't keep loads of 'junk food' in the house, much to my kids' dismay - but it's not good for them, either. My children are all very healthy body weights and I do not talk to them about 'dieting' because I don't want them to watch/mimic my love/hate relationship with food. I do talk to them about healthy eating.
I have found that by sticking (as well as possible) to this plan, my relationship with food IS getting better. I can actually feel the sluggishness that happens to my body when I devour that yummy, delicious, dripping-in-chocolate piece of cake or home-made ice cream sundae. I have found that I feel really, really good when I eat healthy, and I feel lazy, grumpy, headachey, irritable when I've eaten too much crap. I am changing my self-talk in my head so that when I see a gooey chocolate cake, instead of obsessing over how delicious it looks and how much I want to eat it, I let myself know/remember how good it tastes - AND - how yeauchy I feel after eating it - the sugar rush jitters and then the icky crash - and I can usually pass it up. If I can't pass it up altogether, I am more and more being satisfied with just a little piece, a bite or two. I am becoming one of those people who is served a brownie and only eats half of it because 'it's just so rich'.
(I used to hate those people. How pretentious they were!! How can anything so decadently sweet and delicious be 'too rich'? You eat it, you idiot!)
I've been 5:2 since March, myfitnesspal dieting/calorie counting since January. I find the addition of the 5:2 made the whole thing lifetime-sustainable for me. My weight loss actually seems to be about the same when comparing the two - 2-3 pounds/month after the initial 10 pounds of water-retention and 'easy' loss. This is good for me. I've lost weight 'fast' in the past only to gain it right back with interest even faster. I'm very content losing slowly and steadily in a fashion that I am confident I can maintain for life.
As with any change in way of life, there is a lot of self-preparation and self-change that has to occur for it to be lasting and meaningful. I've found that this works for me because I was ready for it, I wanted it, and I didn't want to just fast for 2 days and eat my normal, horrible, unhealthy way of life the rest of the days. I do not want to follow strict diets that rob me of all the stuff I love - Atkins, Paleo, etc. I do not want to have to rigidly count every calorie of every morsel that goes into my mouth for the rest of my life.
I wanted to learn moderation. I wanted to learn healthier attitudes towards food every day of the week. I wanted to still be able to enjoy my carbs, my sweets, my dinners out - without gorging myself on them or using them to soothe my stress/emotional turmoil du jour. For me, 5:2 seems, at long last, to be 'the way' that will work for me, but I had to do a lot of self-work in addition to just an eating shift.
I am so grateful for this community, for the 'discovery' of the documentary to begin with, and for the wonderful information and support that is to be gleaned here. I very sincerely wish everyone all the very best on this journey of health and wellness.
But it makes me wonder if that word 'diet' isn't part of the problem. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that this is a way of life for all the beneficial health reasons our bodies gain from fasting, whether or not we lose weight this week or month. For me, it's semantics, and yet words have meanings. For me, when I was 'dieting', I was looking for the quick-and-easy fix without wanting to address my larger problem.
My attitude was: "I want to do 'this' - whatever 'this' was - to lose x amount of weight for x event, but boy oh boy, I can't wait to 'eat normally' again."
Of course, we all know what happened to me. Weight loss, yes, event, yes, weight gain plus interest, oh yes.
What a horrible way to live. I've been doing this to my body for more than 20 years.
Finally, I have found a WAY OF LIFE that is helping me develop a healthier relationship with food and nourishing my body that I know I can sustain long term. I have used my fast days as days to become more self aware. I try to do fluid-only-zero-calorie fasts from supper time to supper time, saving all my allotted calories for the family meal in the evening.
I try to use those 'hunger signals' that do occur off and on throughout the day as teaching me about my body, my body's cues and my body's triggers. Boredom gives me the munchies even when I'm not hungry! Work has treats/snacks around almost constantly. I'm a nurse, and there are always lovely patients who send us 'thank you' goodies. Hunger is not what drives me to them - boredom and a desire to eat junk is. I'm teaching myself to do other things so as not to be bored or tempted.
Don't get me wrong - I *LOVE* the junk as much as anyone. But I am fasting for health reasons as well as weight-loss reasons and I know my excessive 'junk' consumption is one of the things that got me to this point. Like so many others, I find it much easier avoid sweets altogether than to start and consume in 'moderation'. If I open a bag of Oreos, the bag is GONE. Not a cookie or two and satisfied - GONE.
I don't want to give up sweets and I don't want to be fat or unhealthy. I have made a conscious - and very difficult - decision to let this way of life teach me how to eat sensibly even on my non-fast-days.
So I do calorie track on my 'normal' days. This is not the right answer for everyone, but it works for me. I need the help to be more conscious of portion sizes and protein content and so on. The myfitnesspal app is what brought me to 'you' - to this WOL. I don't calorie restrict, per se - my TDEE is roughly 2,000 calories and I try to make sure at least 1500 of them come from 'good' foods and save that 500 for the 'junk' (or wine!
) I'm pleased to say that it is growing less and less frequent that I eat 500 calories worth of 'junk'. When possible, I try to stay around 1,600-1,800 calories on 'normal' days. This will someday be my 'normal' TDEE when I reach my ideal weight. I want to teach my body to be content there.I never refer to my normal days as 'feed' days, even though Dr. Mosley does. It sets off too many ideas in my unhealthy food mindset that makes me think I can 'pig out'.
My kids and hubby always like to have dessert after supper, so I serve everyone a normal portion size. I don't let myself go back for 'seconds' and I put it all away after its been served. I don't keep loads of 'junk food' in the house, much to my kids' dismay - but it's not good for them, either. My children are all very healthy body weights and I do not talk to them about 'dieting' because I don't want them to watch/mimic my love/hate relationship with food. I do talk to them about healthy eating.
I have found that by sticking (as well as possible) to this plan, my relationship with food IS getting better. I can actually feel the sluggishness that happens to my body when I devour that yummy, delicious, dripping-in-chocolate piece of cake or home-made ice cream sundae. I have found that I feel really, really good when I eat healthy, and I feel lazy, grumpy, headachey, irritable when I've eaten too much crap. I am changing my self-talk in my head so that when I see a gooey chocolate cake, instead of obsessing over how delicious it looks and how much I want to eat it, I let myself know/remember how good it tastes - AND - how yeauchy I feel after eating it - the sugar rush jitters and then the icky crash - and I can usually pass it up. If I can't pass it up altogether, I am more and more being satisfied with just a little piece, a bite or two. I am becoming one of those people who is served a brownie and only eats half of it because 'it's just so rich'.
(I used to hate those people. How pretentious they were!! How can anything so decadently sweet and delicious be 'too rich'? You eat it, you idiot!)
I've been 5:2 since March, myfitnesspal dieting/calorie counting since January. I find the addition of the 5:2 made the whole thing lifetime-sustainable for me. My weight loss actually seems to be about the same when comparing the two - 2-3 pounds/month after the initial 10 pounds of water-retention and 'easy' loss. This is good for me. I've lost weight 'fast' in the past only to gain it right back with interest even faster. I'm very content losing slowly and steadily in a fashion that I am confident I can maintain for life.
As with any change in way of life, there is a lot of self-preparation and self-change that has to occur for it to be lasting and meaningful. I've found that this works for me because I was ready for it, I wanted it, and I didn't want to just fast for 2 days and eat my normal, horrible, unhealthy way of life the rest of the days. I do not want to follow strict diets that rob me of all the stuff I love - Atkins, Paleo, etc. I do not want to have to rigidly count every calorie of every morsel that goes into my mouth for the rest of my life.
I wanted to learn moderation. I wanted to learn healthier attitudes towards food every day of the week. I wanted to still be able to enjoy my carbs, my sweets, my dinners out - without gorging myself on them or using them to soothe my stress/emotional turmoil du jour. For me, 5:2 seems, at long last, to be 'the way' that will work for me, but I had to do a lot of self-work in addition to just an eating shift.
I am so grateful for this community, for the 'discovery' of the documentary to begin with, and for the wonderful information and support that is to be gleaned here. I very sincerely wish everyone all the very best on this journey of health and wellness.
