Last Friday was the first day I’ve had in a LONG time where I felt ‘in control’ and at peace with hunger and I know this is due to the changes I’ve made recently.   Each day after that I have tried to follow what I did on Friday.  Amazingly things seem to be falling into place.  I’m not sure what happened Friday morning that set me in the right direction.  I can only attribute it to God’s loving mercy and grace reaching down and pulling me from the great abyss.   I believe the soul searching and willingness I have had to return at least to TRYING has made the difference.   Sometimes even when we’re failing there is still progress if we are at least willing and open to finding our way.

As discussed in a previous post,  I have reacquainted myself with the idea of listening to hunger cues.  I had mentioned that intuitive eating doesn’t work for me because I cannot be trusted to tell the difference between natural hunger and head hunger.  But I now believe that is not true.

I think for quite awhile I HAD cracked the code on this.  It is clear in my previous writings.  When I was losing a lot of weight, I knew when I was truly hungry and I knew when I wasn’t.  I had become very in tune to when I was naturally hungry and when I was not.  And I knew for a fact that in the morning I was not hungry.  Unfortunately I was influenced by a great many well meaning individuals who were passionate about breakfast.  Insisting that we must eat it when we first get up in the morning.  The reality , though, is that FOR ME this is the first step back into destruction.

I’m simply not hungry when I wake up in the morning unless I have been consuming sugar.

Sugar will make me crave at any hour of the day or night.

Until sugar is out of my system completely, I will not be able to truly know when I’m naturally hungry.

But once that sugar is gone, I can listen to my body and find that natural hunger.  It isn’t easy because my mind is warped when it comes to food.  I do experience a lot of emotional and head hunger that confuses me.  But when I continue to remove sugar and truly listen to what I’m actually feeling things do get easier.  When I’m not on sugar, I wake up with only one thing that I want.  Coffee!! But aside from that, I am simply NOT hungry.

The weight loss community can be a blessing and a curse to many of us.  We need to listen to others to get ideas for what will work for us.  But if we listen to the wrong thing we may end up sabotaging ourselves.  People become so passionate when it comes to how you should eat.  I think at times that only religion and politics could rival the level of passion and intensity with which some people tout their eating plans.  I know that they believe what they are saying.

But we must realize that we are not all the same.  

What works for you may not work for me.  

And we must accept that at some point and find a way to resist well meaning individuals who might insist that how we eat is wrong even when we know that it is right for US.

If I eat breakfast when I first get up in the morning, I am NOT listening to my body.  I am NOT respecting my internal hunger signals.  I am choosing to eat when I am NOT hungry.  And hasn’t that been the problem all along?

I so enjoyed some of the comments I received on my last post.  It helped me to put things in a better perspective.  Here are a few that seemed to resonate with me:

LHA February 10, 2016 at 3:07 am [edit]

Caron February 10, 2016 at 10:36 pm [edit]

I understand the many reasons for why it is recommended that we eat breakfast and if this worked for me I would continue doing it.  I understand that before you work out, eating a good breakfast can make a difference.  But for me eating breakfast is like drinking that first glass of wine.  It won’t stop there.

We should eat when we’re hungry.  I think we can all agree on that.

Disordered eating often starts when you begin eating for reasons other than true hunger.

Like when you go to the movies so that means you get to eat.  Because that’s what you do at the movies, right?

Or because your boyfriend dumped you so maybe ice cream would help.

And it’s your Christmas work party and that’s what we do there….eat.

Eating is a social activity.  It’s a potluck at church.  It’s a reason to meet a friend or go out on a date.  And none of it really has to do with when your body is hungry.   To truly eat ONLY when you are hungry means to listen to ONLY YOURSELF.  Not the movie showtimes.  Or the fallout from a bad phone call with a relative.  It means you eat when your body needs to eat.  Period.

This is tricky business.  I haven’t been listening to my body.  I haven’t trusted it.  After being very successful in finding what worked for myself I began to listen once again to other people.  I began to compare myself to others.  I began to second guess if my way was really the right way.  And by choosing once again to force feed myself on the schedule someone else wanted to give me, I effectively circumvented my own internal wiring.  I threw off my natural hunger cues.  I confused myself.   I was now hungry in the morning BECAUSE I had eaten when I was NOT hungry.   I was now triggering a mental hunger intentionally simply because I was eating outside of hunger.

The more you eat when you are NOT hungry…

The more you will believe that you ARE hungry when you’re NOT.  

I’ve been searching high and low for a solution.  But I’m beginning to see I had that solution all along.

It was not in the SEARCHING

But in the RETURNING

Returning to what worked to begin with.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been hungry in the morning.  And that is because I started eating breakfast again even if I was NOT actually hungry.  I did it because I thought I should.  I listened to the well meaning advice of others and the conventional wisdom that told me I needed to do this before I go work out.   As soon as I did this I once again stopped respecting my natural hunger.  I opened the door to eating for reasons OTHER than real hunger.   And once you allow yourself to eat for reasons other than physical hunger you’ve opened the door wide to any other reason in the world.   Now you’ve tripped the switch towards letting yourself eat for reasons other than actual physical hunger!  It’s not just emotional eating that causes people to eat outside of hunger.  It’s also most every single diet you’ve ever signed up for.   It’s any time you eat on a schedule that is decided by someone or something other than your actual physical hunger.   Anytime you eat for the hunger that lives in your mind, heart and soul but has nothing to do with your stomach.

The more I continued eating this way the more out of tune I became with my ability to know when I actually was hungry!

And I began to think that I was hungry all the time.  I began to believe once again that I was ALWAYS HUNGRY.

That’s it…I decided.  It’s over.  It’s done.  My ravenous hunger has returned and now I’m done for.  I’m never NOT hungry and I will never NOT be hungry again!!!

And this was where my misery returned.

For there is nothing more truly miserable than to spend your every waking moment resisting the urge to eat.

From dawn to dusk.  To have it rule your mind.   That breaks down my resistance to other things like sugar.  Eventually I give into that too because WHY NOT?? Ya know??!  I mean why the heck not?? What does it matter now anyway?

And then my cravings return.  This is the final blow.  Because now the water is so muddied I can see no longer any pathway out of the sludge.

I’ve been detoxing off of sugar again.  And I’ve finally come to the point where it is not ruling me.  Not feeding me lies of hunger that aren’t  really there.  I am choosing to RETURN to something that I had done before when I was truly successful and at peace with food.  I decided to give myself permission to forego breakfast.  To listen to MY hunger signals and to allow THEM to determine when I would eat.

With my natural hunger cues beginning to make sense to me again, I also  decided to take one day off from all the rules and regulations I’ve been imposing on myself for so long.  For the past year or so, I have been religiously trying to track every calorie, every carb, and every single morsel I put in my mouth.   Desperately trying not to go over or exceed what I’m supposed to eat.

But this isn’t even how I lost weight to begin with!

I didn’t do it counting calories or logging everything I ate.  Granted this is how many people do it.  Maybe even MOST!

But that is NOT how I lost 250 pounds.

Now in the beginning I DID count carbs.  But after awhile I stopped doing that too.  I just knew what food I could eat and that is what I kept in the house.  I eliminated sugar.  I eliminated trigger foods.  I eliminated things that I knew were not good for me.  Foods that are outrageous in calories, carbs or whatever else we might track.  And I surrounded myself with food that I knew was safe.  But once I had done that I simply just ate the food I had surrounded myself with when I was TRULY physically hungry.  Yes I had surrounded myself with a limited amount of ‘safe foods’ because I was so afraid to eat outside of the safe zone.  But when I was losing that 250 pounds, I wasn’t tracking it like crazy.  I simply ate off that allowed food list when I was TRULY hungry and I paid attention to when I was truly FULL. And then…I  stopped eating.

This seems like a dangerous thing to do.  To allow yourself the freedom away from logging every thing you eat.  But when you’re off sugar….when you’re paying attention to physical hunger….there is freedom.  This is how I ate during my 250 pound weight loss once I became very in tune with my own hunger.  It worked then and I believe it will work again.

The 8 pounds I’ve lost are proof that I’m finally doing something right.  I haven’t lost more than 10 pounds in well over a year.  If I can break that barrier and not gain it back then surely I am on the right track.

You know just a week ago I was writing about how intuitive eating doesn’t work for me.  And yet the whole time I should have known that it does.  But only when we rid ourselves of whatever inhibits that signal.  Whatever is crossing our wires and causing static or confusion to take over.  Like sugar or whatever trigger food corrupts your natural ability to think straight.  Or whatever diet or schedule is telling you to eat outside of hunger.  Whatever outside source that could never truly know when you need to really eat.  Only your stomach can know that.  Not another person.  Not a diet constructed for a one size fits all world.  Not your emotions or your mind or your heart.

But the stomach that growls.  The feeling that lets you know it’s time to eat.  The one that once removed from conventional pressures and societal traditions begins to speak in a still small voice that says, “THIS is real hunger”.

I believe THIS Is what freedom feels like.  Not living under rules and regulations but rather the ‘spirit’ of those food laws.  Knowing that you need to eat when you are hungry and that when you DO eat it should be food that is healthy for you.  But within those guidelines, there can be freedom.  There can be peace.

And I have hope now that I will rest in this peace once again.

(c) 300 Pounds Down – Read entire story here.