by OneMoreBite | Apr 7, 2004 | Book Reviews
But Liftin is the Queen of all Candy Queens – no one can compete with a woman who once ate powdered sugar from a bowl with her fingers. In recalling her attempts at exorcising the candy demon she writes, “…if I am simply under sugar’s spell, there is some hope that eating enough candy will lead to permanent disgust–the way people say, “I can’t drink tequila. I had a very bad night in Cancun.” If I could just have my last hurrah with candy after candy, I could eliminate them one by one until all hunger for sugar was gone. Then the battle between health and desire would be resolved, not through deprivation but through exhaustion.”
Great plan, but it doesn’t work. I know because I tried it with M&M’s. I thought if I could eat enough to get sick on them, then I’d never want them again so I got a 1-pound bag and got started. About three-quarters through the bag I just could not put another M&M into my mouth, but I wasn’t tired of the candy, I was just tired of chewing, swallowing. I just couldn’t eat any more. The next day, I was happy to find the rest of the bag and finish them off.
Today I practice the art of “making it last.” Planned indulgences are better than spur-of-the-moment decisions. Give yourself permission to eat your favorites, but there is one rule and that is you must do whatever is necessary to draw out the time it takes to eat the food. If it’s cookies, take teensy nibbles around the edges. Pause every so often. Take a breath. Make that little cookie into a 24 bite experience. No matter what it is, if it’s bigger than your thumbnail you can bite it in half (I bite plain M&M’s in half, no joke). When you do this you can truly experience the taste, the texture, the smell and discover what it is you like so much about this food?
In some cases you may find it’s not the food at all but the memory of the food that keeps you tied to it. We get tied to our memories and want to recreate those days. If you slow down and really experience the food it gives you the opportunity to discover what it is about that food that draws you in, that calls to you.
I have a theory that I need a certain number of chews before I feel satisfied with what I’ve eaten. If I’m shoveling the food in, then those chews are not happening, and I’m more likely to keep shoveling. I know a lot of people who eat by taking an enormous bite, one chew, two chew, and swallow. “Whoa there Nellie, slow down.” When you go to the movies are you anxious to “get it over with,” or do you want to enjoy the experience? Why then do you eat as if you just want to hurry up and finish? Experience eating. Enjoy it. Food and eating can be a very enjoyable part of your day – why let that slip away?
Today simply take half sized bites, and linger over them. If you notice you want to hurry up, ask yourself why? Why do I look so forward to eating and then want to rush through it?
“Even though I eat too fast, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I don’t really chew when I eat, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though I don’t want to eat slower, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
“Even though eating more slowly is boring, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Have fun and learn about yourself. I love being a human being – so complex, so interesting. Get interested in yourself and you’ll never be bored.
by OneMoreBite | Apr 6, 2004 | Weight Loss Tips
Today’s headline is trumpeting the idea that maybe you’re just tired? Perhaps if you got more sleep you wouldn’t crave chips and snacks – right. Next we’ll start seeing a lot of ads for the Lose Weight While You Sleep crap – it never fails.
Obviously if you’re over tired you’ll feel less well, but surprise, I felt sluggish and tired and thought I’d never survive arising an hour earlier which was the only way I’d get some exercise done, and then one day I got up at 5:00 instead of 6:00 AM, and it felt great! What a shock, how could this be? An hour less sleep and I felt better? It’s weird, but it’s true. Was I getting too much rest before? Who knows, but I do know I’m obviously a morning person, so for me getting up an hour earlier has been great. I love it, and I plan to keep doing it.
Have I lost weight? No, but I didn’t think I would. Frankly, it’s what you eat and how much you exercise that will determine your weight, not total hours spent sneezing. Get enough rest – people need anywhere from 4 to 9 hours, with about 7 being average.
The trick with exercise too is when you first get started, it may feel you’re too tired, but surprise! The more you exercise the more energy you get. Push through that first week or so if thinking you’re too tired and you’ll blast out to the other side of mega energy! Try it.
by OneMoreBite | Apr 1, 2004 | Weight Loss Tips
Eating idea: Slow down. Why are you in such a hurry? If you love to eat, and you say you do, why then do you rush through it? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have something you enjoy so much last a little longer? Why not linger over a good meal, really taste it? Savor it?
Too many questions? Drat, that’s another question. It’s hard to stop asking questions once I get started, just like with a bag of cookies. You try one, and oh, that seemed pretty darn good, so you gulp down a few more, and since you aren’t even bothering to chew, just chomp, chomp, swallow, then a few more seems like a good idea. Then you suddenly realize you’ve eaten them all and yet you fell somehow–empty. “I’m just a bottomless pit,” you say. No you aren’t. You’re just eating so fast you aren’t giving your body a chance to realize it’s being fed. If you watch a starving animal, it will gulp the food down as fast as it can because it’s making sure no other animal takes it away from them, but you probably don’t have to do this. Slow it way down. Even if you live a very fast pace, you can slow down your chewing.
Take a bite of food, and let it sit there for a moment. Use all your senses, taste, smell, and decide is the food sweet or salty? Sour or bitter? Pretend you are going to rate the food on a scale of 1 to 10 – you are a food critic – how would you rate it? Is there an aftertaste? How would you ever know if you just gulped it down and ran out the door?
Slow down – make it last – there’s time, really there is. If you have to rush through a meal, ask yourself why? Could you wait a bit and have it later when there’s more time? What if you must eat in the car between appointments? It is possible to take a bite or two, wrap the food up, and leave it for later. You won’t die of starvation if you wait an hour for food.
Stop eating like it’s your last meal, and start treating yourself with some respect. You deserve better – if you were a guest staying in your own house you’d treat yourself better, right? Pretend you are an honored guest and start to treat yourself as if you’re special. Slow way down. Treat yourself to a massage or a new CD. Think leisure this week.
by OneMoreBite | Mar 23, 2004 | Cravings
Not three other things to make the feeling go away, but that exact food. If you cannot have that exact food, then catalog it for later, and have something similar. For instance, if you want something crunchy and salty, is it the salt or the crunch, or both? Think about it. Would crunchy vegetables give you the same “mouth feel” or does it need to be salty? If what you want isn’t readily available, can you go get some?
If you expect to only want what is “good for you” you’re setting yourself up to fail. You’ll obviously want other things. Just today I wanted nuts, badly. So I ate nuts, lots of nuts. Handfuls of nuts. Far more than I’d normally eat if I were in my natural state but this was a craving, and sometimes a craving needs to be satisfied. So I visited the nut jar several times during the day.
So how do I feel now? Great. Satisfied. Excellent. I ate the nuts, I’m happy. Nuts to you. Give it a go and let me know what happens.
by OneMoreBite | Mar 15, 2004 | EFT Weight Loss
Those little habits and patterns are persistent buggers and unless you keep at it, even though you think they are gone, they may come back like the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” Hundreds of them holding your favorite foods in their outstretched hands, begging you to eat me, eat me!
Ah, but there is something you can do to zap the zombies: just be persistent. Whenever you are making a habit change the struggle isn’t so much between good and evil as between comfort and discomfort. At first, change, no matter how small, creates discomfort. Try putting on your pants the other leg first today – you’ll see what I mean.
Try eating with the wrong hand, or driving a new route to work. It takes real effort to jump off our usual path, and even if you tried to drive a new route, day after day, one day while off in a daydream, you’d take the old, familiar route without even realizing it, until suddenly, “Oh, my gosh, how did I get here?” LOL
I think a disciplined approach to EFT and NLP can be helpful. By that I mean nothing more stringent than each morning when you first arise, a quick round of EFT on any issues from the day before that might have bothered you, just to shake off any lingering “stuff” so you can tackle the new day fresh. “Even though I didn’t like the way that clerk looked at me, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Then again in the evening, while getting in bed, or even while brushing your teeth, a quick round on anything that happened that day that might have been bothersome, “Even though I got angry in traffic today, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
I think the EFT is very helpful on those little daily stressors – the annoyances, the “stuff” that builds up and causes us to want to stuff down the bad feelings with food or alcohol as the case may be. When you use it on everything, even the seemingly insignificant things, it will handle those issues that most matter.
So much of our issues are beneath the surface, and rather than spending a decade in therapy, why not just start tapping away the trouble, one bite at a time
