For Day 11, the author gives us two purposes of food:
- To fuel your body
- To appreciate flavors
She says that anytime we find ourselves eating but not satisfying one of these two purposes, we are likely eating emotionally. The focus of the Day 11 reading is on fueling your body. She tells us to always fuel our body when it needs its, recommending fueling/eating at least 3 times per day with a couple of mini-fuels/snacks in between. (As a side note, I have heard Jillian Michaels in her weekly podcasts come out against the idea of 5 or 6 small meals a day in favor of 3 larger meals and one snack. She says that the 5-6 meals a day thing originally started with body builders who were trying to put on muscle mass and needed to consume a calorie surplus and thus needed to eat several times a day in order to get all their calories in. She feels that eating several smaller meals while tryin to maintain a calorie deficit leaves you feeling never quite satisfied. My opinion about this is to start listening to your own body to find out what works best for you. Some of us may feel more satisfied eating several times throughout the day while others do better eating fewer but larger meals. It seems to me what is most important is to fuel your body when it needs it.)
So the assignment for Day 11 is to make note of the times of day that you eat, to try to plan so that you have fuel stops every 3 to 4 hours, and to note of what effect having regular fuel stops has on your energy and focus.
I have been tracking what times I am eating for a couple of weeks now. In general, on a day I am eating on plan and only for the two purposes listed above, I tend to want to eat/refuel 5-6 times per day. A typical weekday for me looks something like this:
breakfast - 7:00
snack - 9:30
lunch - 11:30/12:00
snack - 2:30/3:00
snack - 4:30/5:00
dinner - 7:00
This exercise seems simple and obvious for those of us who are professional dieters but I recommend you do it anyway. I thought it was silly at first but what it really helped to remind me of is that it's NORMAL to get hungry and to need to give your body fuel on a REGULAR BASIS. Again, seems obvious, I know. But the years and years of dieting, disordered eating, gaining, losing, and beating myself up has left me a bit messed up about food and eating. I can't tell you how many days I have thrown in the towel because I ate breakfast and then was hungry again at 10AM. In my messed up way of thinking my thoughts would go, "I am always going to be hungry." "I can't stand this." "There is no way I can stay hungry for long enough to lose all this weight." "What is wrong with me that I am always hungry?" And then this would lead to a state of near panic and frenzied eating.
Kinda nutty, I know. That's why I say I am a disordered eater. This is how messed up you can get after years of dieting and this is what I have to work on changing if I am to finally be successful at permanent weightloss. By stopping and writing down the times that I felt hungry and ate, it helped me to realize that NOTHING is wrong with me because I keep getting hungry over and over. Our bodies need consistent fueling. It helped me realize that I don't need to STAY hungry in order to lose weight. I can fuel my body with what it needs and still lose weight. I have even become more aware of what exactly it is my body is craving for fuel. Sometimes fruit and a yogurt will do it. Other times I know I need more protein and I have lowfat cottage cheese. Other times I have actually noticing my body craving veggies, mostly big salads.
It feels really good that I am becoming more self-aware and, hopefully, less F'ed up about food. Give this exercise a try....even if you think you don't need to. You might be suprised what you learn.
ps
Thanks again to Natalia at Embracing the Weighloss Journey who introduced me to this book.
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