Getting Hungry

I've learned a few things lately that I'd like to put down so I don't forget:

• At best, I can sustain about 4 months of the same weight loss activity/diet/program. After that, I give up and I can't get motivated to continue with the same activity
• Eating when hungry assumes that one knows what hunger actually feels like
• Exercising and eating more doesn't help with weight loss
• Weight gain may be the hardest habit I've tried to break - I've always though it was smoking

I'm sure there are more pearls I've learned over the summer but those are the ones that come to mind. I've managed to get away from my 10,000 steps a day, my food log, calorie counting and all the other activities I've been trying to do in order to keep the pounds at bay. As a result I'm sure I've gained back whatever progress I made (if I made any at all - I'm still on "E").

In reviewing my initial posts from when I started this last round of weigh loss I see I had an initial focus - understand hunger. Somewhere along the way I seem to have gotten off track amid the technique/activity distractions. All that activity (walking, counting, logging, etc) didn't help me understand why I eat what and when I do. If weigh fluctuation is a factor of calorie intake and exercise, then it stands to reason that understanding why I eat and in response to what makes the most sense. After all, limiting what I eat in the extreme (i.e. fasting) with no activity will result in weight loss - although that's not the most attractive way to go about it.

With that in mind I returned to a book I purchased on emotional eating. Since I never actually finished reading it, I decided to start over. In my (re)reading, it's obvious that I didn't take the critical step of understanding my (*gasp*) hunger. Right there in the first chapter is an entire discussion on why we eat when we do and what drives it.

Turns out that I eat because I'm board, restless, wanting a break from what I'm doing, socializing, and many other reasons that I've not discovered yet. At some point I guess I eat because I'm physically hungry, but I don't know that I have a good idea of what that feels like mentally and physiologically.

So, in the nature of experimenting, I'll find out what hunger feels like by not eating until I reach a point of physical uncomfortableness. Let my mind scream at me, but I'll eat only when I get, well hungry.