Diet Survivor: Lesson #2

I am working through the sixty lessons in The Diet Survivor's Handbook by Judith Matz and Ellen Frankel.


Lesson two:

Honor your hunger. It's your body's nautural way of telling you that it's time to eat.



This is a toughie. And it is the thing that kicked my ass hard for two weeks and continues to spank me on a regular basis. Because, you know, it's hard to honor something that you aren't even sure is happening.

"Am I really hungry?" I ask myself that a thousand times a day. Every time I think I'd like a cookie, or I feel a little twinge in the belly-ish area.

Am I hungry, or thirsty?

Am I hungry, or bored?

Hungry, or tired?

Hungry, or happy?

See?? Frustration city.

The flip side is asking myself, with half a ham and avocado sandwich still on my plate, whether I am full. And then stepping away from the yumminess if the answer is yes.

I wonder often whether skinny people deal with this. Were they just born without the hunger trigger? Do they have some kind of super-human will that makes it possible for them to leave half a dozen fries on their plate, or skip the cookies for dessert if they are full?

Today's activity introduces a hunger scale:

Starving
Very hungry
Hungry
Somewhat hungry
Not hungry/Not full (the very very worst, imo)
Somewhat full
Full
Very full
Stuffed

The idea is to respond to somewhat hungry or hungry by...eating. Haha. Waiting until the top two might increase the risk of binging.

Interestingly, the book does not go into when a girl should stop eating. Somewhat full? The dreaded not hungry/not full limbo? Can she actually eat until she's full? I'm going out on a limb here and saying the last two are to be avoided.

As my norm pre-trying to lose some pounds was to eat until Very Full--I'm going to knock it down to Somewhat Full and see how that goes.