Post
by groovy1 » Thu Apr 08, 2010 9:58 pm
"I also went through several years of "decriminalizing" food, allowing myself to keep every favorite food in the house. If I finished stuff, I bought more. I binged on them all the time. I actually very rarely tried to keep them out of the house, but it was only a few periods of my adult life when I didn't overeat them, the last being this last 12 weeks on No S.
I've mentioned on a few other threads that the book Mastering Leptin, though long-winded, helps to explain more why 3 meals a day helps reduce the desire to overeat more. Although habit is important, if we were working against what the body naturally needs, I don't think it would work very well. I made a habit for years of having 5 meals a day, and I still way overate 8 of 10 days. I believe fasting between meals is a big part of why this gets easier over time. Also, many heavy people are susceptible to overeating sweets. I'm on another site and I hear constantly from women there about how they try to include a "treat" every day and how often it gets out of hand. Or they try never to eat them because they say they can't control themselves. They keep thinking it's them. They are so attached to believing that eating often will keep them from bingeing. I feel for them, but not many are ready for another message, though I have mentioned plenty about No S."
Thank you very much for this post, Oolala. I find it fascinating and very helpful. My experience has been like yours. I also tried hard to follow the advice to keep around certain problem foods so I would know they were available and not make a fuss about them. But I would wind up ignoring them for weeks and then eating all of them in a fell swoop. My latest read, in addition to No S, which I have been doing for a week and really enjoying, Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat, advocates keeping around or buying only a single portion of only one problem food at a time, and only when you really really really really want it (4 reallys). However, I think No S is easier and I intend to experiment a bit on my next S day having a small amount of something I really like. I don't think I'm quite ready to experiment yet with my worst trouble foods - really good ice cream (Stonyfield Farms coffee), really good chocolate, and really good pastry - morning buns from the French bakery, yum. Maybe next week or the week after when I feel I have more solidly settled into a weight. Right now I am losing too fast and getting into that danger zone of getting too hungry before the next meal so I have to figure out how much more of what to eat before I try to experiment.
To go back to the discussion of this thread - habits of the naturally slender. My partner is naturally slender. She loves chocolate, and will have 5 or 6 dark chocolate bars around everywhere - freezer, fridge, her desk, the kitchen countertops, the dining room builtin, the living room, anywhere at all - from which she takes little nibbles over the course of weeks or months. Her table habits are far from what the experts recommend - she eats very very fast, and likes to stuff her mouth overfull, especially with salad. She snacks when she gets hungry. Yet she seems to effortlessly maintain a very nice weight. She is a natural mesomorph, meaning she easily puts on muscle and is very muscular and easily stays very fit and I think that helps.
Because as I posted elsewhere I effortlessly maintained an underweight body for 11 years as the side effect of a drug, I can compare my habits then with what happened to me last July when I had to stop taking that drug and switch to one notorious for causing weight gain. For eleven years, I didn't get very hungry and would forget to eat sometimes, remembering only when I got a headache -- the gnawing sensation that has been plaguing me and constant thoughts of food just weren't there. And when I did overeat, especially my weakness at that time - cookies- I wouldn't be hungry the next day and without any thought would drop back to the same weight, 110 pounds. I weighed myself once a month or less, sometimes not for 3 or 4 months, because my weight rarely varied, and I rarely thought about food or eating until it was time for the next meal. People used to tell me how impressed they were with my figure (which really was too thin and had too little muscle because I was too sick to exercise adequately for years) and that I must have great eating habits, but I would tell them the truth - that I wished I ate more regularly and made healthier choices, but I was frequently too ill to eat. What a far cry from what has happened since then! Happily I am in much better shape, although I am still recovering from a relapse a little over a week ago. But before No S I was hungry and miserable all the time and counting the calories and carb grams of every bite that went into my mouth because I knew that otherwise I would gain back the 50 pounds that I lost 30 years ago. But in general it has been much better since No S - like I said, the hunger has been much more manageable, although last night and today before lunch were the toughest I've had so far. I am sure, though, that my body will figure out how to tweak my meals to prevent that problem or, if I am just one of those people who needs to eat more frequently, I will accept that and incorporate that into No S. So thank you very much for mentioning the book and I will look it up.
Sherry
But, then, I am not a naturally thin person. I really need the structure of No S's systematic moderation to help me stay on the right track. Now, my DH and DD, who do not have weight issues and are naturally thin do have that built-in hunger 
full set point. But neither of them have had a distorted history/relationship with food or dieting either.
::throws hands up in frustration::