We hate to say good-bye, don’t we? My daughter left three weeks ago for a summer program in Wheaton Illinois and now she and her classmates are in England–London–and will be in Oxford. I won’t see her for another month. Saying goodbye to her three weeks ago was so painful as I knew I wouldn’t get to see her for a looong time and we would be separated by a “big blue wet thing”–the ocean!
Whether it is a precious family member, a friend, orthat last bite, we hate saying good-bye, don’t we? We hate it when that last bite comes! We want to prolong the eating experience as long as we can, so we have “just one more bite” and “just one more bite” after that and so on. We don’t want to have to say “good-bye” to our meal time enjoyment.
This audio shares some truth you can speak to yourself about this.
Summary: Eat half as much, twice as slowly and you land on the last bite at the same moment, but with the joy and victory of having not eaten more than your body needs for fuel! There is JOY and satisfaction in that place! Peace comes with submitting to the Lord’s leadership in this.
How about you…can you do anything to eat more slowly and to tell yourself the truth about the quantity of food that it really takes to satisfy? We aren’t talking about “full,” here. Nope. We are talking about “just enough.” It doesn’t take much!
But before you read on, please know that WE ALL ARE DIFFERENT. My body has different requirements than yours. In fact, now, a long time after this was posted initially, my body might respond differently than what I share here. Our bodies are FEARFULLY and WONDERFULLY made!
The reason I share this is because many of us think our bodies need a lot more food than they really might need. So just prayerfully consider this, ok? 🙂 You might want to evaluate if the amounts of food you think you need is based on truth or not. If not, then renew your mind about that! 🙂
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Hubby has been observing my eating and releasing of weight for over a year. He mentioned last night that had he not seen it, he never would have imagined that someone could survive on so little food. But he sees me doing precisely that. He suggested I take before and after pictures…but of FOOD portions!
So for fun :-), I am chronicling that today–what I am eating and what I would have prepared for myself in the past to show the differences. He is helping me to serve up the “before” servings so I don’t fail to include as MUCH as I used to eat. This is what we have so far:
In October of 2006, I would have easily chowed down what we have in the photo above–three donuts and at least one tall glass of 2% milk (if not two glasses!).
There is nothing at all wrong with donuts. Donuts are good, they are our friend :-), but I would have eaten THREE easily and been stuffed to the gills…and not given a flying fig! It takes a lot of food to sustain 250 pounds. So, this would have been the ticket to start the day.
This morning, what I actually served myself is seen in this photo above. I love love love winter wheat bread, slathered in peanut butter, sprinkled generously with granola complete with almonds in it. This is chased with a small half mug of milk. YUM! This is a whole body pleaser for me. I find that if I start the day with a donut now, I crash and burn quickly. I *can* do that if I want, but I don’t feel it is the best thing. “Permissible” yes, but not beneficial. In fact, sometimes I have a donut for “second breakfast” but that is another story! I didn’t eat for the first time until 9am this morning…which would typically be about the time I get to a 0 for “second breakfast!”
LOL! So…when I was all done eating breakfast, the photo above shows what was left after I ate.
Presto! I went from 0–totally empty, to a “I am not hungry any more” and I call that a 5 or satisfied. I used to have a really hard time “finding” 5…I discovered that it was a place I would fudge quite a bit…to see how much I could *stuff* in before going too far. Now I generally stop where I am comfortable…and that is marked by not being hungry any more. It makes it much simpler.
My husband pointed out that the amount of food it takes to sustain a healthy person really is not much at all. The problem is we WANT to eat more! We WANT to be able to justify it! But our bodies are SO efficient!
This isn’t about anorexia either. If I get hungry, I am delighted to go eat whatever I desire. My goal, however, is to stop when I am not hungry any more or move around rigorously (cantering on one of my horses?) without having that erppy, burppy feeling that comes from jostling a stomach that is too full. Does that make sense? 🙂
So lunch in the past would have been at least what is pictured above. This is four pieces of pizza on a dinner plate with a couple of tablespoons of real butter for spreading on the crusts. Each and every bit of food would be gone…and probably a bit more than this. I would have gone back for more! Again, this is what I served myself in the PAST. I would probably read while I ate it, too, and not even “register” in my mind that I was eating. I wouldn’t enjoy my food. I would inhale it instead. I would probably have “dessert” afterwards. After all, eating lunch and dinner always were followed by something sweet–often a heaping bowl of ice cream. Nothing wrong with pizza, donuts, ice cream. But that was a LOT of food!
Above is what I actually served myself today when I was at a 0 at noon. Two pieces of pizza and about one tablespoon of butter (yes, the real thing) on a salad plate. I prefer to serve myself food on a salad plate.
One other note about this pizza. In the past, we would have gotten a Papa Murphy’s pizza. I don’t know about you all, but I have noticed how grease pools on it–a LOT. It even grosses my kids out! (You know there is a problem when your child starts blotting grease off the pizza and you never taught her to do that!) So, we use Boboli pizza crusts and each person gets what they want on their pizza and the amount of cheese they want. I feel a lot better about that choice for a pizza than about the oozing goozing liquid orange grease all over the plate kind. Nothing wrong with that, per say. This is a choice we make.
My son pointed out that the Papa Murphy’s pizzas are so much bigger, too. I had forgotten about that. So, anyhow, while this may not be on anyone’s “wholesome food” list, it is definitely a step upwards from Papa Murphy’s or Round Table. My family even agrees!
Above shows what was left of my lunch today after I was through. As you can see, I didn’t eat all that I served myself. There is almost one full piece of the two I served myself left. (Bits from both pieces as I had to have the crust…my favorite part. Gosh! I even left some of the butter! LOL!)
I have a policy of leaving some food on my plate no matter how little I serve myself. It keeps me from a sense of entitlement eating at other times and it diminishes the likelihood of greed. Besides that, the dogs like the results of Mom eating this way!
In fact, I recently put my dogs on a “diet” so they could still enjoy the table scraps they get. I figure dog food meal after meal can’t give them all the nutrients they need. It has to be far better for them to get a bit of cheese, bread, granola and peanut butter on occasion, ya think? They agree!!!
So, I hope this little food log of sorts helps show some of the differences that I have made in my eating.
What do you think…are there changes to your portions that you might be able to make? Do you need to renew your mind about how much food you think it takes to satisfy your body? What IF you were to give yourself less food? What IF you were to leave some of it on your plate each time? What do you think?
On the Thin Within forums, I have been asked some things about my eating. When I mentioned that I have refined and adjusted my hunger numbers over time, one member asked me if I was eating more like to what would be a “4” on the hunger scale.
Here is my (edited) response to her question:
Well, no. I would have to say that I am not eating anywhere close to what I would have called a “4” in the beginning. Here is why: I weighed 250 pounds when I began. I didn’t know it, but I had 100 extra pounds of fat to release. It takes X amount of food to sustain 100 extra pounds of fat. It takes less than that to begin to release the extra fat weight. As I released weight, I found that it took less food to sustain my NEW weight…but I wasn’t done releasing weight yet and I knew it.
God didn’t even let me evaluate it that way at the time…he made the process of change always be about him…and my heart. It is as I look back now that it seems to be so obvious what happened physically!
At that time, I could tell that, even with the releasing of the weight that had happened so far (say 50 pounds), I still had a stronghold with food going on. I saw a subtle attitude that I had that “I am owed” food to a “5”….and God began to gently nudge me…”Release it to me, child”…
Anyhow, so it took less food to sustain my new size and less food to release more of my extra fat as I went along. God nudged me that I was still clinging to the food…And so on.
I found that my body is efficient and that even as active as I am, I don’t need much food at a sitting to stop being hungry….which is my goal. How much food do I need to stop being hungry? That is the place that God has led me *now* call 5. I didn’t call that a 5 before. I would have called that a 1 or a 2. (I know this sounds scary…if someone had said it to me, I would have quit right then and there…it has to be GOD’s doing in us…it isn’t anything I would have planned! Honestly!)
The cool thing is, I went from eating more food each time, but only 2 times a day (or maybe 3) to eating 4 to 7 times a day, but not very much food each time.
My body and my life have adjusted to eating that way just by heeding what the Lord has said to do (in his strength…honestly…)…but if I was to compare how MUCH I eat at a sitting now to how much I ate at a sitting when I weighed 250 pounds…no…I ate a lot more then than I do now.
My thinking has changed. I don’t have anxiety about not getting food, for instance. I am not fearful. Hunger doesn’t bother me like it did then. I also don’t have fear of regaining weight (that is a new thing that God has done in the past 3 months!).
Another thought that God has changed in me is I figure that if I don’t eat enough at this sitting–if I serve myself too little–…if I am hungry again soon, I can eat again! For instance, yesterday I had a funky new food for a meal. I ate to what I call a 5…and within an hour I was hungry again! No problem. I ate.
If you want to see photographs of my portions for a few days, you can check …but don’t freak! It may not be what God leads YOU to do now! What is right for me now, came after a year of God slowly evolving things…and it wasn’t intentional to do anything but to ask the Lord what His will is…and to ask for His strength to do it…to release my grip on things like “I MUST have ‘a sweet’ after every meal” and other lies I believed and built my life on.
Hope this helps…again, though, don’t use it to judge your own eating. It is totally personal and I would have FREAKED out if anyone had shared this with me a year ago! God does amazing things in each of us in HIS timing! I am thrilled to delight in what I eat…and I don’t feel deprived at all.
Hubs isn’t cooperating.:-) Now that HE is trying to eat 0 to 5, we have to get creative. So I got hungry, but he didn’t want dinner yet. Well, that means a snack. 🙂 I asked hubby to serve up whatever he thought would be a fair representation of a snack I might have eaten in the past. This is what he said was a typical snack for me (see above). He is right. You can’t really tell just how much ice cream is in this bowl…but a LOT! Nothing wrong with ice cream. In fact, I am pretty sure I will have some at *some* point today! LOL! I chose NOT to have ice cream this time for two reasons 1.) I really want some salsa! Weird…veggies winning over ICE cream? How bizarre is that? God IS doing a new thing! LOL! and 2.) Ice cream sustains me too long…I want to be hungry when hubby is and veggies don’t “stick to my ribs” too long where ice cream does!
So, then I dished up that salsa I was hoping to have for dinner (he wants something else other than Mexican…) to have as a snack instead. My goal was to eat just enough that I am not miserable from hunger any more and can wait until he is ready to have dinner before I eat my next meal. So, in TW-speak, this would be eating 0 to 2 or so. This is what I dished up:
Not much to it…LOL! But eating slowly, I don’t really notice how little it is! If you eat half as much twice as slowly, you feel like you are getting just as much! LOL!
After enjoying my veggies…something I ONLY do in fresh salsa:
I had some to return to the serving dish!!! Crazy, huh? What you see in the photo below reflects what I didn’t eat of the portion I served myself. See what I mean? There isn’t much food, but what I eat is REALLY YUMMY!!!!!! WHOO HOO!
I could never return to dieting…this is too easy and too fun.
Whatcha think? 🙂 (Nevermind…don’t answer that…”nutcase” to be sure…)
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