Day 4: and then boredom sets in….

I’m just waiting around until I lose some more weight. Yesterday’s numbers:

Roll call: bacon & eggs; eggplant dip, smoked dry sausage, green olives, green salad; cheese and olives at a party; green beans, homemade snapper and Chinese veg. soup that I made with coconut oil and cream. Delicious! Oh, and an Atkins shake while I ran an errand.

This is easy. It’s also backwards. Eat when I’m hungry. Make sure to add enough fat to every meal. That’s just plain weird. It goes against all the popular instructions on how to lose weight.  Another example of the madness of the crowds? Perhaps.  It really turns on its head all the fat & food phobias.   I’m not counting calories. I’m only restricting carbohydrates. And it’s working.

I’m reading Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. I find Mr Taubes’ explanations clear and persuasive.  The theories match my own experiences. Of course, that means they’re true for me. N=1. Since I am not a public health official, it is all that matters. That I can find something that works for me.

However, I care about the general state of public health.  The book shows how prejudiced we are  when we accuse obese people of sloth and gluttony.  That fat woman eats too much and needs to exercise. What’s wrong with her!  What if that fat woman actually is suffering from a mis-diagnosed glandular disorder? That she is ravenous because her body deprives her of the use of the stored fat, leaving her under-nourished no matter what she eats.  The result would be hunger and fatigue, no?

Instead of exploring this idea, conversations on how-to-lose-weight turn towards eating disorders and emotional eating and the psychology of weight loss.  I hear echoes of psychologist Judith Beck trying to persuade me that hunger is not an emergency. Well, when I have a hypoglycemic episode, hunger is an emergency.    I am finding that the types of food I choose have a direct relationship to whether I feel full after eating and how long it takes to feel hungry again.  When I choose fats & proteins, I feel pretty good for a long while. Then, when I feel hungry again, I eat.  Simple as that.

Now that I have apparently dialed into both maintenance (which I did so easily the last month) and weight loss, I have a lot of free mental energy to put to good use.