Harewatch (March 1st, 2010)
Mar. 3rd, 2010 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Weight: 185.4 lbs.
It's been a little while since I've posted a Harewatch entry, and there are a few different reasons for that. A big one is I just haven't had the time. And another big one is the shame of being forced to report the same weight, week in, week out. I hit a plateau in this first part of the year and it saw me making very little progress. After the third or fourth week of this I realized something was amiss, fine-tuned my approach to losing weight and I've been on a steady downward curve ever since...more or less.
Losing weight is simple but not easy. You just spend more calories than you have. What makes that difficult is my relationship with food. It's a comfort to me. I look at it as something more than a necessity that keeps me running properly. Good food is a joy; great food is an ecstatic experience I'm guaranteed to remember for a long time. When I get a rush from sugar, or a buzz of pleasure from a particularly good cheeseburger, I almost always think "How can I make it so I feel like this as often as possible?" I'm just beginning to realize how much my addictive personality zeroes in on food. If I'm feeling bad, I want to use it to make me feel better. If I'm celebrating, I want to use it to keep the good times rolling for as long as possible. This is nothing new. I'm not alone in this. I'm just beginning to appreciate how subconscious the whole process is.
This is where a Buddhist approach helps me out quite a bit. I've come to realize this attachment I have to food, and there's already a way to deal with it. I've hard-wired my brain to equate food with joy and comfort, but the reality of it is food doesn't give me joy and comfort. It gives me nutrients and chemicals. ;) It's a little tricky, but I've come to think of "hunger" (I'm putting it in quotes here because it's not the physical feeling of "I'm empty" but more of a mental alert that says "I could go for a cookie right now") as a sign that I'm looking for a quick shot of happiness, or something familiar and comfortable to take refuge in. Hey, I'm a rabbit. We all have our "burrows". Mine just happens to be made entirely of pastry. :9
Needless to say, this willful change in my relationship with food is difficult but worth doing. Little by little, my palate has changed. I crave fruits and vegetables a lot more. My sweet tooth craves things like trail mix over Skittles and Take 5 bars. And perhaps best of all, when I do indulge in something 'bad', a little goes a long way. Before, I could go from one bag of candy to the next without even thinking about it. Now, a pack of Skittles (only 250 Calories!) will do me just fine.
So far this has been achieved simply by being more decisive about what I eat. This might sound weird, but oftentimes I would let my indecision make poor choices for me. When I got up in the morning, I'd waffle on whether or not to make breakfast and lunch until it was too late, and then I'd waffle on whether to have oatmeal or an apple-cheese danish until it was easier and quicker to just take the danish. If I waffle enough, I get what I've been secretly wanting anyway.
Now I don't let myself get away with that. I'm making my breakfast and lunch the night before. When a voice in my head pipes up "Well, you *could* get the soup today, and some chips while you're at it" I've gotten much better at telling it to shut the hell up. Thankfully, I still remember to do it quietly, so as not to freak out my office-mates. :)
In short, I've made great strides when it comes to diet, but I still have a little ways to go. I still reach the end of my willpower a bit too easily, and I'm prone to gorges that set me back to the point of erasing all of my progress. It's disheartening that a work week's worth of good eating can be erased by a wildly bad weekend.
There is a certain undeniable pleasure in being good. I don't know about you guys, but there's a small, quiet contentment in formulating a plan and sticking it, then seeing the results you expect. It might not be the big rush of a sugar high, but it's pretty neat in its own right. Unfortunately it's not quite enough for me to be 'good' all the time yet, but I'm getting better.
Of course, exercise is much spottier, and I really need to focus on that for a bit. But all in good time.
It's been a little while since I've posted a Harewatch entry, and there are a few different reasons for that. A big one is I just haven't had the time. And another big one is the shame of being forced to report the same weight, week in, week out. I hit a plateau in this first part of the year and it saw me making very little progress. After the third or fourth week of this I realized something was amiss, fine-tuned my approach to losing weight and I've been on a steady downward curve ever since...more or less.
Losing weight is simple but not easy. You just spend more calories than you have. What makes that difficult is my relationship with food. It's a comfort to me. I look at it as something more than a necessity that keeps me running properly. Good food is a joy; great food is an ecstatic experience I'm guaranteed to remember for a long time. When I get a rush from sugar, or a buzz of pleasure from a particularly good cheeseburger, I almost always think "How can I make it so I feel like this as often as possible?" I'm just beginning to realize how much my addictive personality zeroes in on food. If I'm feeling bad, I want to use it to make me feel better. If I'm celebrating, I want to use it to keep the good times rolling for as long as possible. This is nothing new. I'm not alone in this. I'm just beginning to appreciate how subconscious the whole process is.
This is where a Buddhist approach helps me out quite a bit. I've come to realize this attachment I have to food, and there's already a way to deal with it. I've hard-wired my brain to equate food with joy and comfort, but the reality of it is food doesn't give me joy and comfort. It gives me nutrients and chemicals. ;) It's a little tricky, but I've come to think of "hunger" (I'm putting it in quotes here because it's not the physical feeling of "I'm empty" but more of a mental alert that says "I could go for a cookie right now") as a sign that I'm looking for a quick shot of happiness, or something familiar and comfortable to take refuge in. Hey, I'm a rabbit. We all have our "burrows". Mine just happens to be made entirely of pastry. :9
Needless to say, this willful change in my relationship with food is difficult but worth doing. Little by little, my palate has changed. I crave fruits and vegetables a lot more. My sweet tooth craves things like trail mix over Skittles and Take 5 bars. And perhaps best of all, when I do indulge in something 'bad', a little goes a long way. Before, I could go from one bag of candy to the next without even thinking about it. Now, a pack of Skittles (only 250 Calories!) will do me just fine.
So far this has been achieved simply by being more decisive about what I eat. This might sound weird, but oftentimes I would let my indecision make poor choices for me. When I got up in the morning, I'd waffle on whether or not to make breakfast and lunch until it was too late, and then I'd waffle on whether to have oatmeal or an apple-cheese danish until it was easier and quicker to just take the danish. If I waffle enough, I get what I've been secretly wanting anyway.
Now I don't let myself get away with that. I'm making my breakfast and lunch the night before. When a voice in my head pipes up "Well, you *could* get the soup today, and some chips while you're at it" I've gotten much better at telling it to shut the hell up. Thankfully, I still remember to do it quietly, so as not to freak out my office-mates. :)
In short, I've made great strides when it comes to diet, but I still have a little ways to go. I still reach the end of my willpower a bit too easily, and I'm prone to gorges that set me back to the point of erasing all of my progress. It's disheartening that a work week's worth of good eating can be erased by a wildly bad weekend.
There is a certain undeniable pleasure in being good. I don't know about you guys, but there's a small, quiet contentment in formulating a plan and sticking it, then seeing the results you expect. It might not be the big rush of a sugar high, but it's pretty neat in its own right. Unfortunately it's not quite enough for me to be 'good' all the time yet, but I'm getting better.
Of course, exercise is much spottier, and I really need to focus on that for a bit. But all in good time.
