4 ms·

I think the message here is to listen to your body. Too often one finds themselves eating just because they were invited to lunch, or even because they are bor

I think the message here is to listen to your body. Too often one finds themselves eating just because they were invited to lunch, or even because they are bored. If you listen to your body and just eat when you are hungry, magical things will happen.

vinceguidry 10y ago
Unfortunately that doesn't really work as a guiding principle. The body is entirely too easy to ignore, and social concerns ultimately are more important and urgent than personal ones. How exactly are you going to handle getting invited out to eat if you're not particularly hungry but could eat anyway? I had to answer this and way more in the year-long or so path to really getting serious about losing it and keeping it off. And boredom is a real problem. I liken trying to lose weight to trying to quit smoking. If all you had to fight were the nicotine cravings, nobody would be smoking today. It's the habits you have to fight, those things we build our life out of, and to fight habit you have to fix a lot of other parts of your life. Just finding ways to take five minute breaks that don't involve smoking. We want to treat these things in isolation, but they're not isolated, they all interact with each other. To do something like this forces you to deal with your entire life up to the present and be confronted with your own inadequacies. So there's that too. Somebody who manages to quit smoking or lose weight and keep it off hasn't just managed to do that one thing, they've also managed to effect a complicated and difficult lifestyle change, and should by all rights be considered a completely different person. I don't feel particularly different from the me that was 210 pounds, but when I look at the big picture, I can understand why women aren't just being shallow when they wouldn't even look at me before, and now all seem to beg for attention. That's why I focus at the level of lifestyle rather than on more mechanistic concerns like whether the keto diet is better than slow-carb and whatnot.
- randomacct44 10y ago
  I'm interested in how you did handle the social aspects. What adjustments did you make? How did you handle the invites-to-lunch when you weren't really hungry? That's one of my biggest issues. I'm on a meal plan at the moment which is great during my workdays and I'm really feeling good.... but then on the weekend when I'm not home and I'm visiting family or friends, I don't know how to stick to it without being a) extremely tempted by the food or b) potentially feeling rude or out-of-place (bringing my own food, etc).
  - vinceguidry 10y ago
    If I get an invite to lunch, I'll make that my one-meal-a-day. If I don't, I'll generally wait until around 5-6pm before either hitting a friend up for dinner or just going to grab whatever I feel like eating. My social life isn't good enough that I often get lunch and dinner invitations on the same day, I'm looking forward to solving that problem when it becomes one. Long-term IF essentially made hunger a non-issue for me. I believe something neurological happened where my vagus nerve system got decoupled in some way from my CNS brain. I get hungry, but it's easy to ignore and to make my decisions on socially-practical grounds rather than the purely immediate. Yesterday I had called up my business partner for dinner in my car right as I was about to leave. He didn't pick up, so I started driving. I get a few blocks down the road and he calls back, accepting my invitation. I did not mention that I was already in my car and hungry, simply drove back home. It was another two hours before we finally sat down for dinner. None of it bothered me, the hunger just went away when I willed it to.
CaptSpify 10y ago
Although this may work for some people, it definitely won't work for me, and many others. I constantly get "cravings" which, AFAICT, are indistinguishable from hunger. I have to consciously add up my calories to know if I've been eating too much. If I was to "listen to my body", I would overeat constantly.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  Agreed. I never eat when I'm not hungry. I can't imagine doing that. I'd suspect a real eating disorder if I were forcing myself to eat.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    I think the idea is to not eat because it feels good or because you've got to finish your meal, but only because you're hungry. Says I, who just completed my meal even though it was slightly painful....
    - nsxwolf 10y ago
      I guess that's the only exception I can think of - I may continue eating at a restaurant when I'm full because I don't like to waste, and I also don't like to take things home. That alone doesn't explain the 40 pounds I need to lose, though.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Same. It's even worse for me though because the more I eat the hungrier I get. It's an awful positive feedback loop.
CJefferson 10y ago
In my experience, that's great advice for already thin people. I could only lose 10 stone and reach normal weight by ignoring my body demanding it was starving for a year or so.
- taneq 10y ago
  The biggest scam that the diet industry ever pulled on the general public is the perception that "a diet" is a short term thing which you do until you're a healthy weight, and then you can eat whatever you want again. The second biggest scam is the perception that most people can lose weight without either doing an absolute ton of exercise, or feeling hungry quite a lot of the time.

vinceguidry 10y ago

Unfortunately that doesn't really work as a guiding principle. The body is entirely too easy to ignore, and social concerns ultimately are more important and urgent than personal ones. How exactly are you going to handle getting invited out to eat if you're not particularly hungry but could eat anyway? I had to answer this and way more in the year-long or so path to really getting serious about losing it and keeping it off. And boredom is a real problem. I liken trying to lose weight to trying to quit smoking. If all you had to fight were the nicotine cravings, nobody would be smoking today. It's the habits you have to fight, those things we build our life out of, and to fight habit you have to fix a lot of other parts of your life. Just finding ways to take five minute breaks that don't involve smoking. We want to treat these things in isolation, but they're not isolated, they all interact with each other. To do something like this forces you to deal with your entire life up to the present and be confronted with your own inadequacies. So there's that too. Somebody who manages to quit smoking or lose weight and keep it off hasn't just managed to do that one thing, they've also managed to effect a complicated and difficult lifestyle change, and should by all rights be considered a completely different person. I don't feel particularly different from the me that was 210 pounds, but when I look at the big picture, I can understand why women aren't just being shallow when they wouldn't even look at me before, and now all seem to beg for attention. That's why I focus at the level of lifestyle rather than on more mechanistic concerns like whether the keto diet is better than slow-carb and whatnot.

randomacct44 10y ago
I'm interested in how you did handle the social aspects. What adjustments did you make? How did you handle the invites-to-lunch when you weren't really hungry? That's one of my biggest issues. I'm on a meal plan at the moment which is great during my workdays and I'm really feeling good.... but then on the weekend when I'm not home and I'm visiting family or friends, I don't know how to stick to it without being a) extremely tempted by the food or b) potentially feeling rude or out-of-place (bringing my own food, etc).
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  If I get an invite to lunch, I'll make that my one-meal-a-day. If I don't, I'll generally wait until around 5-6pm before either hitting a friend up for dinner or just going to grab whatever I feel like eating. My social life isn't good enough that I often get lunch and dinner invitations on the same day, I'm looking forward to solving that problem when it becomes one. Long-term IF essentially made hunger a non-issue for me. I believe something neurological happened where my vagus nerve system got decoupled in some way from my CNS brain. I get hungry, but it's easy to ignore and to make my decisions on socially-practical grounds rather than the purely immediate. Yesterday I had called up my business partner for dinner in my car right as I was about to leave. He didn't pick up, so I started driving. I get a few blocks down the road and he calls back, accepting my invitation. I did not mention that I was already in my car and hungry, simply drove back home. It was another two hours before we finally sat down for dinner. None of it bothered me, the hunger just went away when I willed it to.

CaptSpify 10y ago

Although this may work for some people, it definitely won't work for me, and many others. I constantly get "cravings" which, AFAICT, are indistinguishable from hunger. I have to consciously add up my calories to know if I've been eating too much. If I was to "listen to my body", I would overeat constantly.

nsxwolf 10y ago
Agreed. I never eat when I'm not hungry. I can't imagine doing that. I'd suspect a real eating disorder if I were forcing myself to eat.
- tormeh 10y ago
  I think the idea is to not eat because it feels good or because you've got to finish your meal, but only because you're hungry. Says I, who just completed my meal even though it was slightly painful....
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    I guess that's the only exception I can think of - I may continue eating at a restaurant when I'm full because I don't like to waste, and I also don't like to take things home. That alone doesn't explain the 40 pounds I need to lose, though.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
Same. It's even worse for me though because the more I eat the hungrier I get. It's an awful positive feedback loop.

CJefferson 10y ago

In my experience, that's great advice for already thin people. I could only lose 10 stone and reach normal weight by ignoring my body demanding it was starving for a year or so.

taneq 10y ago
The biggest scam that the diet industry ever pulled on the general public is the perception that "a diet" is a short term thing which you do until you're a healthy weight, and then you can eat whatever you want again. The second biggest scam is the perception that most people can lose weight without either doing an absolute ton of exercise, or feeling hungry quite a lot of the time.