Yes, yes, yup, uh-huh, yes, to answer your questions.  I believe your sandwiches are “medicating your hunger” instead of satisfying it.  When I had been at NT for a while I was in a similar predicament.  Jean reminded me to eat a MEAL when I get hungry.  And when I get hungry again, eat another meal.  Sandwiches can definitely be quality food, but it sounds like you need more substance earlier in your day.  Suggestion:  when you make dinner tonight, double the recipe.  Freeze the leftovers in a way that makes them quick and easy to reheat, preferably in single-serving sizes (what YOU would typically eat for a meal).  When you get hungry the next day after breakfast or at lunch, see if that seems tasty to you.  There are many days when I’ll have eggs for breakfast and then meatloaf and mashed potatoes 2-3 hours later.  After my final feeding at 4ish, I am DONE for the day because I ate such fine meals earlier.

DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED!!!  This program is sooooo hard to master.  We’ve spent so many years being told what to eat and what not to eat and how much and when and where and it takes a long time to unlearn these directives and learn to hear our own bodies’ needs.  This is why the two-year-olds are so good at it; they have yet to be exposed to the propaganda.

Keep in mind, too, that your desires will change as you go through this.  The sandwiches might have been fine last week, but they’re not this week, so you must discover what it is you need.  Two months from now, that won’t be working for you anymore and you’ll change again.  Every day is different.

Wheeeeee!!!!!!

You make me laugh Annual. :)  Okay.  I will try to do this.  I will eat a real meal when I get hungry.  Here is my hang up.  I share an office with three other people.  We are all friends, but I have NOT announced, “Hey everybody!  I’m going to become naturally thin by eating more!!”  So I am embarrassed to break out a full meal at 10 AM!  And then another at noon!  So, I quietly break out a sandwich and eat it.  Hmmm…time to get over that.  Ack.  Maybe I should just work from home most mornings.  I can…I just get more done at the office.

Ha.  My mother just walked into the room and said to me, “You’re eating AGAIN?!  How can you be so hungry?!”  Sigh.  I am just going to ignore her.  In a nice way.  :)

This has ever been part of my problem.  I started gaining weight in a significant way in high school because I would eat hardly anything for breakfast, almost nothing for lunch (couldn’t eat in front of everybody when I was chubby!) and then came home and begin to feast.  Sigh.  I am 43 and it really is time to get over it.  WHO CARES what anybody else thinks of me? 

The biggest problem is that I sometimes feel exactly the same way about myself….“You’re hungry AGAIN?!  How can you be so hungry?!”

You ladies are so darling!  Aren’t we lucky to have found companions on the road to Oz?!

Beth, your office mates are probably hungry too!  If they see you eating, maybe they will join you!

I don’t care who sees me eating, or at what time.  And when I hear people talking in a bragging sort of way about how little they eat, or only twice a day or whatever, I always pipe up and tell them I usually eat 4 meals a day, and 3 of them very early in the day! 

I often do volunteer work preparing meals and work with several overweight women.  They come in saying how busy they’ve been, running here and there, not having time to eat, blah, blah.  And here’s me, doing nothing BUT eating (haha) and are thinner than they are.  I come in with food in case I need it, but we are allowed to eat the meal we prepare after our guests have been served, usually by 6 pm.  The overweight women eat as though they are famished.  I eat whatever I want according to my hunger at that time. 

If you have the option to eat whenever you want to at your office, why not take advantage of that and eat whenever hunger strikes.  If anyone questions you, you just give them the truth, you’re eating because your are hungry.  I just love the honesty of that, I think that’s why it doesn’t bother me.  I don’t like pretending I’m not hungry when I really am.

You should find if you eat more substantial meals that you’ll be hungry a little less often.  That should reduce the comments.  Remember you’re eating for yourself, for your needs, not to please your mother or avoid displeasing someone else.  They need to go deal with their own lives.

You could say, “I’m on a diet that has me eating more often during the day and less at night.”  This will make sense to your listeners, as it conforms to “accepted diet theory” while not actually requiring you to share any more than you are comfortable with.

But I know what you mean about other people’s comments - they can be hard to shake off, especially when it’s someone you see on a regular basis.  Here’s what I try to keep in mind: “What other people think of me is none of my business.”  I think that’s a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt - I love her!  Picture her in her office at the White House, with her press secretary:
    Mrs. Roosevelt: “OK, and then I say ‘Do I look like I give a d—m?’” 
    Press secretary: “Let’s see if we can’t reword that just a smidge…”

It is SO intimidating to have questions like “hungry AGAIN?” thrown at you.  I think it helps to be prepared.  And it is tempting to defend yourself—as if you needed to explain your eating behavior to ANYONE!  But, you do not need to defend yourself because you know what you are doing and why you are doing it.  If pressed, tell the truth:  I’m hungry.  Period—no further explanation necessary.  Nobody needs to know what or why you eat and it is really inappropriate for people to even go there.

Be yourself.  No one can tell you you’re doing it wrong.

Jean

I LOVE that.  “Be yourself.  No one can tell you you’re doing it wrong.”  That should be a bumper sticker.

Hey Beth!  I wanted to tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning.  I typically have eggs with cheese and veggies and some whole wheat toast.  But this morning I wasn’t in the mood for food prep, so I ate the Oven Fried Chicken Tenders I made last night and some leftover sweet potatoes.  It was delicious and I wasn’t hungry again for 3 1/2 hours, which is quite long for me.  Just lettin’ ya know…

: )

Hello All,

so yesterday, my mom, niece, aunt and I drove 3 and a half hours up north to have lunch with the fam.  I had packed a baggie of cashews because I expected to be hungry before lunch.  I ASSUMED we would stop for food on the way home.  So the cashews were okay (I had meant to bring a banana and forgot) for my mid morning feed although I could feel my body kind of grumbling for more.  We had lunch fairly early - like noonish.  By four, when we were packing up to go home, I was hungry.  I was really dumb and didn’t just ask for a sandwich or something.  I’d had an adequate amount of lunch, but skipped dessert and just had a bit of that green fluffy stuff that someone always brings to a potluck for a sweet treat.

We didn’t stop for dinner, even though I was saying I was hungry by 5, until 7:30.  By then, I was nearly beside myself.  Why I didn’t just stop the car (I was driving) and go through the drive-through at Wendy’s I don’t know.  When we finally got to dinner at a Mexican place I was gobbling the chips and salsa in desperation (and I was not the only one!) and saying (yet again) how incredibly hungry I was, my mother said to me, “Geez.  Do you have a tapeworm or something?”  This may have been the low blood sugar talking, but I had a brief but vivid fantasy about stabbing her with a fork. I didn’t though, and I didn’t say anything to her about it either.

Being at home and trying to eat when I’m hungry has really helped me to see why I got on this diet roller coaster in the first place.  In my mom’s world, it is not okay for fat people to be hungry.  I think I probably need to process this with myself in the next few weeks.  I have got to take responsibility for my own eating.  I have been worried about what other people think about it for so long though…sigh…

Beth Ann

I’m laughing hysterically at your imaginations.  And your people-pleasing ways.  Are you a middle child, perhaps?  I’ve always been the one to be sure everyone else was happy and at 47 I’m STILL learning to mind my own business and let other people worry about theirs.

Your day yesterday was a good lesson in what not to do.  (Experience means “did it wrong the first time.”)
It’s one thing to read the books and understand the principles; it’s another thing entirely to practice them.  The next time you make this road trip, you’ll stop for the grilled chicken sandwich at Wendy’s at 5 and then watch the rest of your family eat at 7:30 because you will have eaten all you need for the day.  It’s very, VERY hard to master the NT lifestyle, largely because it goes against the flow of what other people are doing.

Something else to keep in mind about Mama.  People aren’t really interested in our point of view (think of any political discussion you’ve ever had).  They’re really interested in confirming that THEIR point of view is correct.  So by living according to these new rules, you’re essentially telling other people that their thinking isn’t right.  And people don’t like being told that they’re thinking is wrong. 

You can expect periodic lectures/comments/disapproval from others for a while.  And you’ll feel like a moron because you’ve gained weight and who would ever listen to you talk about NT when you’re obviously NOT?  But eventually, the eating will become natural to you, you’ll be increasingly convinced of the rightness of what you’re doing, and the pounds will slowly go away.  And then you will smile sweetly as you drive through the drive-thru and ask, “Is anyone hungry?”

: )

Thanks Annual.  These are very helpful thoughts.  Nope, I’m the oldest, but I have ever been the rescuer in the fam…trying to make sure everybody is okay.  Durn it.  Must stop.  I have made a lot of progress in this area…but doing NT has just revealed SO MUCH about where I still need to just have good boundaries.  As Jean said, it truly is NO ONE’s business what I eat other than me.  And yesterday just revealed to me that putting what other people think ahead of what I need is the road to…a really bad mood and a low blood sugar headache and then make up eating on chips and salsa.  None of which is where I really want to be.

I was thinking to myself this morning….Do I really, REALLY think that this is true, that this is the way our bodies are really designed to function and that the only road to NT is to eat food?  The answer was yes.  And then I thought…Then the only rational response is to actually eat when I’m hungry whether or not anyone else thinks I should.  So!!

Oh man…but knowing that is the rational response and stopping the car at Wendy’s when everyone else is either denying that they’re hungry or asking me, “How can you BE hungry?” is hard.  Well, I didn’t eat the calorie laden pecan pie and a piece of cake for desert for one thing…If I had, I might not be hungry right now either!  But who wants to get into all that?

Thanks for your thoughts Annual.  I shall definitely ponder them.

Beth Ann

Hi, I just had to tell you something, for what it’s worth. I’ve been on the NT path over 20 years and have been cruising along in great comfort. Recently, my eating changed. For a month or so I had been having headaches and I thought it was due to a problem with my eyes. Nothing was helping and finally it dawned on me to try eating more! Duh!! For about a month, I ate more high fat/real food and some pleasure food (must confess) and just “went with it.” After a few days the headaches vanished but I was still wanting to eat alot more food… so I just DID. This continued for about a month and then, suddenly, the desire for extra food/high fat food went away. I’m thinking that I may have been paying a little too much attention to “good nutrition” when I was working with my personal trainer last summer/fall because my weight had gone down a few pounds. Headaches are how my body tells me I’m not eating enough (low blood sugar).

Anyway, now I feel much better and nothing is worth those headaches, believe you me! Just wanted to encourage you that this is a life-long learning (unlearning) process. I would NEVER go back to dieting. And by the way, when I go to quilt guild and they don’t have lunch until noon, I always have food in my purse and I eat if I need to (usually I do need to) right in front of everybody.

Annual, I just wanted to say you sound like the FlyLady with that “make your bed” comment. Remember her book about weight loss? Well recently she said she has gained back 53 pounds (over 8 years) that she lost on the body clutter diet and now she is about to “be accountable” and have another go at it. Too sad that some people still think weight gain is a problem of “emotional” eating. I’m here to tell you that I get plenty emotional when I DON’T eat on time.

Accountability is overrated.  It might keep you from cheating at something, but it doesn’t actually change you.  Real change via understanding of truth is the only way to go.

Poor Marla.  I know the feeling of, “I’m just a loser.  I need to try harder.”  Horrible.  And so, so wrong.  My dearest friend in the world was telling me yesterday that she’s struggling with her diet.  I didn’t say that she shouldn’t diet.  I did say, “everybody struggles - 90% of diets fail.”  I left it at that.

I’ve been thinking about that statistic and thinking…are we crazy or what?  Half the people I know are “on a diet.”  How do they convince us to plunk down bundles of money on this kind of stuff?  How do they convince us to starve ourselves when it is so painful?  How do they convince us to make one more desperate try when all our other diets have failed and when 90% of everybody else’s diets have failed? 

The one key fact that changed everything for me what this one:  Fat IS adaptive.

I think if the Flylady knew this one fact it would change everything for her too.  Maybe we should send her a copy of the book.

Hey Beth Ann,

I sure appreciated your post about Mom.  I’ve been feeling a lot of anger toward mine recently.  She got me on the feast/famine cycle before I was 5.  Portions and food groups were really restricted in her home…but were plentiful in my dad’s home.  When I visited him I ate freely and I really pudged out.  When I came back to Mom she would cry, berate my dad for letting me eat so much, and enforce a strict diet to get the weight off.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  She took me to Jenny Craig when I was 9.  She’s been my diet buddy for 20 years, from Low-fat to Low-carb to HCG-low-everything! 

Rationally I have sympathy and understand where she was coming from.  After we read NT together she even apologized for her role in my eating disorder.  But that was the last support I’ve gotten from her.  Like your Mom, she makes comments about my big appetite, about my clothes getting tight, volunteers to bring snacks for the road-trip but thinks that means one sliced apple to SHARE!  Fork-stabbing fantasies?  Check.  Just lots of sadness and anger about the lost time.  How do we forgive?