Jane

I realized today that I am halfway through the liquid portion of this program, so I’m feeling pretty amazed and proud of myself.  I made my first goal of 10% of my initial weight, so now I start working on the second 10%.  (The program guarantees that you’ll lose at least 20% of your initial weight during the 12 weeks of liquid, or “active weight loss.”  What you do after that depends on how well you stick to the “transition” program.) 

Our topic this past week was “Appropriate and Inappropriate Eating.”  We learned the 5 P’s of Appropriate Eating, i.e. Planned, Portion Controlled, Proportionate, Proper Place and Peaceful (apparently they’re not English majors concerned about parallel structure!).  A critical thing in being a successful “weight manager” is always to plan out, ahead of time, what, where and how you’re going to eat.  So, instead of going out to dinner and deciding to eat whatever happens to strike your fancy, in whatever portion happens to come on the plate, you would decide that you are going to make sure you get the different food groups, in the portions you need.  If the plate has huge portions, you will immediately ask for a doggy bag, reduce your servings to the size that fit your caloric needs, and take the abundance home with you for another meal–or, if all else fails, send food back to the kitchen.   

This all makes so much sense to me that I find it startling that I’ve gone through so much of my life being an unaware, almost unconscious eater.  I’ve been led by my eyes, nose, even my imagination, to overeat, over and over again–simply because my plate had too much food on it–or the wrong kind of food–never realizing that I could be in so much better control of what goes onto my fork and into my mouth.  I have confused planning and thoughtful eating with being a “picky” or “overly fussy” eater. 

That touches on the first 3 P’s, but I’d like to talk also about the last two:  Proper Place and Peaceful.  Proper Place means you don’t eat in front of the tv set or, worst of all, standing up in the kitchen, ”grazing,” or at your desk, in front of your computer.  You are supposed to make rules about where you eat, preferably one specified place, and then stick to those rules.  I get pangs of guilt when I think of the meals my children have eaten in the car on the way to a soccer game, band concert, whatever.  The final one, “peaceful,” is one that also comes hard to me at times.  Meals in our house are often rushed, with people wolfing down food before running out the door.   An important quote from this week’s material:  “it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to get the message you have eaten and turn off your food seeking drive.”  You are supposed to sit and enjoy your food, savoring each bite.  It’s hard, but I’m working on it!   They have an exercise for this one:  make yourself put down your fork in between bites!  Try it!  It’s hard!

It’s no surprise, given all of this, that the Five G’s of Inappropriate Eating are Grazing (eating all day, whenever you walk by food), Grabbing and Going, Gulping, Gorging, and Goodies.   They’re pretty self-evident!

The last part of the class was identifying our own eating styles:  emotional eaters, social eaters, restrained eaters (who always think about limiting their food, so they tend to swing back and forth between overeating and limiting themselves), and, my type, unskilled eaters, i.e. eaters who eat too fast, who nibble while cooking and cleaning up, who always go back for seconds and take oversized portions, and (less true for me) who eat in inappropriate places.  The main clues that this is my type were these two descriptive statements: “I tend to clear my entire plate, even when I’m full” and “When eating with others, I’m the first to finish my meal.”  I can tell you that these are hard, hard habits to break.  I”m always the fastest eater at the table, and when I don’t clear my plate, I worry about being wasteful.  That’s why I love the doggy bag trick!  It’s going to take some re-training to get me to change, but I have hope that being conscious is one of the first steps toward improvement.

The more I hear and learn, the more I realize that it all boils down to being more conscious, more responsible for our own actions.  Isn’t it funny how so much in life seems to boil down to that same thing?  Onward and upward! Wish me luck with Thanksgiving dinner!  My plan is to allow myself two servings of soup that day and serve it in a fancy dish!

Related posts:

1. First Week with Food!
2. Final Week on Only Liquids
3. Week 17: Learning to Eat Again
4. Jane’s World: Week Three on Full Liquids and the Joys of Fake Nails
5. Jane’s World: Hospital Weight Program: Week One

Tags: Optifast, Thanksgiving, Weight loss, weight management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Health, Main, Weight Management. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.