Short ribs and sticky rice...mmmmmmm

According to Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, author of Fed Up! the only way to reach a healthy weight with any lasting success is to stop dieting completely.

She says that means that you have to take the 'bad' label off all foods. There is no bad food or good food. You can eat whatever you want, as long as you are hungry and stop eating when you're full. Sounds sane doesn't it?

She says that eventually all the stigma will be off foods, and a piece of cake will just be cake and fries will just be fries...they won't be reflections on personal worth (I was so bad...I ate cake...so then I ate the whole cake just to get it out of the house...you know you've done that!)

And when you get to that point, you'll start to want to eat healthier food. Out of respect for your body, and how much better you feel when you eat a varied diet.

But...she says it's totally normal to want to eat and eat and eat the foods that you've been depriving yourself of all these years.

Fab. That means I can eat McDonald's right? Ok. So I load up the kids and I drive. And as I drive I start to feel sick to my stomach. The idea of biting into a Big Mac is making me queasy. Even greasy fries...yuck.

Oh No. Does this mean that I'm so far into the diet mentality that I have to force myself to eat what I want to eat? As I'm driving I'm feeling this sick anxiety in the pit of my stomach.

And then it finally dawned on me.

Um. I don't want McDonald's. As shown by the sick feeling at the idea of it.

Oh. Damn. This is so weird. Because do I really not want McDonald's, or am I just feeling guilty about 'breaking my diet'?

No. I really didn't want McDonald's. I didn't want to eat that crap. Turns out...once I know I can eat there if I want to, I don't really want to. Because McDonald's is kinda crap. And hell, I can eat whatever I want.

What I want is to keep feeling as good as I've felt the past week or so.

So I might as well eat some yummy Hawaiian Barbeque, right?

BBQ short ribs, sticky steamed rice. Oh yum.

And guess what? I ate until I was full. I did not force myself to eat every bite (including the nasty macaroni salad, which I normally would have eaten just because it was there, nasty or not.) I did not eat until I felt like I couldn't move. I ate exactly what I wanted, and I stopped when my body was full.

I did that all day today. Which meant Oscar Mayer hot dogs and cottage cheese with pineapple for lunch. The only mindless eating I did was when I got Ruby a couple of crackers, and then ate the rest of the sleeve (saltines) myself. I should have went for dinner earlier, because I was hungry.

But guess what? I stayed under 2000 calories today.

She also says counting calories is diet mentality. I'm not ready to drop that yet. It might take time to get completely over my old habits. But until I get a handle on natural eating (that's what she calls eating when you're hungry until you're full) I need Calorie King to keep my anxiety at bay.

Because the funniest thing of all is that I have so lost touch with my body, I have no idea when I'm hungry or full. I'm winging it. I have to keep asking myself. It really helps that not-quite-full-enough anxiety to tell myself that I can eat short ribs and sticky rice every single meal if I want, as long as I'm hungry.

I weighed myself this morning, and with the absense of period bloat, I'm down another 1.5 pounds. So, that's 2.5 pounds this week. It'll show up on my June 1st check in.

Apparently weighing is a diet-mentality no-no as well. That's another one I'm struggling with. Because I've gone from weighing once a week to weighing everyday...to weighing every time I pass the scale. That has to stop. I want to get to where I'm only weighing in on the first of the month. I might try that in June, but I'm not making any promises. One step at a time, right?