Viable Food Plan or Eating Disorder in Training?

I don't know when I'm hungry. I get a bit spacy-headed after not eating for 12 or more hours, but there's no change in my stomach's feelings. Not until I figure I better eat something, hungry or not. Once I do start to eat, I feel I've had "enough" after just a few bites. Is that a 5? Was I right for stopping? Should I have instead eaten half a regular meal? Should I just stop thinking and just not eat if I have no gnawing hunger? I hope my Thin Within books get here soon!

But about a half hour after I eat, then I feel ravenous and can eat the pain off the kitchen walls if I could. I've been holding off as long as I can, then go back into the refrigerator about 2 hours later and grab the container with my leftovers. Sometimes I eat one bite and feel just as I did after "dinner," and other times I eat an entire 3-cup container of a casserole plus a banana plus some cookies plus a bowl (2-3 cups) of veggies and still feel ravenously hungry.

This morning I felt no hunger even at 11am, although I haven't had anything to eat since 6pm last night, but my head was spacey (Remember, I have hypoglycemia) so I grabbed a banana. After one bite I really didn't want to eat any more but felt I should or else I would probably pass out from low blood sugar. I'm now telling myself that'll be it until dinner time, when I eat a tiny bowl of salad and one chicken patty on a bun, and hope I can eat it. I know on Thin Within no food is forbidden, that all food is neither good nor bad, it's just food, but after a decade or more of tooling around with low-fat vegan I just feel guilty. I felt the same way Monday with the meatloaf, which is why I ate maybe an ounce and then ate a few teaspoonfuls of potatoes and spinach.

I guess I should pray about it.

1) Scaring people and hoping it will cause weight loss does not work. If it did it would have worked when our parents used it on us as fat kids.

2) Once diagnosed pre-diabetic (a stupid diagnosis started by the pharmaceutical industry to sell more meds) or diabetic and put on meds, people usually GAIN weight because these meds have that exact effect.

3) Fat people have already tried to lose weight, probably most of their lives. Being told they're fat by their doctor is not news to them. Being told (the lies) that being fat causes everything from hang nails to cancer isn't going to make their bodies miraculously release the weight they've been fighting all their lives.

Health Scares Reduce Smoking but Not Waistlines, Survey Finds

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: February 10, 2009

Smokers are three times more likely to quit if they get a wake-up call in the form of a heart attack, stroke, lung disease or cancer diagnosis, a new study has found.

But obese and overweight people lose two to three pounds at most after being diagnosed with a serious illness like heart disease or diabetes, according to the same report. The study, which looked at weight loss only in people under age 75, was published on Monday in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

It’s not entirely clear why heart disease would motivate patients to quit smoking but not to slim down, but the author of the paper noted that many health plans don’t cover weight-loss programs, with the exception of bariatric surgery, while many businesses and local health departments offer free or low-cost smoking cessation programs.

“People really are open to changing their behaviors after a health event, and this could really be a window of opportunity,” said study author Patricia S. Keenan, assistant professor of health policy at Yale School of Medicine. “I’m not sure the health care system is capitalizing on it, in terms of giving people the support they need to make these changes as they go forward.”

To do the study, Dr. Keenan analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a survey containing detailed health information about middle-aged and older adults collected every other year between 1992 and 2000. The data included information about 20,221 overweight or obese people under age 75 and about 7,764 smokers.

While only about one in 10 smokers who hadn’t been diagnosed with a serious illness quit cigarettes, almost one-third of smokers who had had a stroke or were diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or lung disease quit, the study found.

When smokers were diagnosed with two serious diseases, they were six times more likely to quit than other smokers, the study found.

Obese people lost very little weight after most diagnoses, though they lost up to half a point from their body mass index after finding out they had diabetes, the study found.

“One of the reasons they may not have found a big weight loss is because physician counseling alone is not going to impact weight loss,” said Sherry Pagoto, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who co-wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. “The evidence for behavioral weight loss treatment suggests an intensive program is necessary.”

She added, “If there is a window of opportunity for weight loss, we’re missing it.”

OK, if anyone has been reading this blog from the beginning many years ago (many posts have already been deleted, going back to 2001) you know that although I can curse like a sailor moonlighting as a truck driver, I'm a fairly devote Catholic. You also know that I've been on diets for the bulk of my 55+ years on this earth, 99.9% of them unsuccessful for weight loss, gaining weight while sticking strictly to the plan of the day (week, year, decade).

Insanity. Merriam-Webster definitions:

1: a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia)
2: such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
3 a: extreme folly or unreasonableness b: something utterly foolish or unreasonable

Nah. Neither of these quite says what I want to say. I much prefer this one, one I've posted here many times before (Which is insanity in itself):

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

Time to stop the cycle of insanity once and for all. What is insane is flitting from food plan to food plan, following all kinds of rules and regulations about what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat it. Eat this, not that. Don't eat this, eat that instead, but not too much. Eat all you want of this, never let a drop of that pass your lips.

Also insane is thinking I can eat everything that I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, and not suffer any health consequences from it. I know too much sugar causes a reactive hypoglycemia event. I know too much dairy gives me painful joints and clogged sinuses. I know too much salt will raise my blood pressure.

Notice I said "too much" of all of those foods.

I also know that by denying myself all of these things I will crave them, think about them constantly, and eventually eat them anyway and binge on them to the point of harming myself. Then feel not only sick but feel guilty.

ENOUGH!

Thinking about that guilt got me searching for another way of eating, one that will satisfy me physically, psychically, and now spiritually. Who here has not been moved spiritually by some food? Most women I know feel this way about chocolate!

I began investigating various faith-based weight loss programs. Weigh Down Workshops have been around for many years, but in this very-Catholic city of ours none of the few non-Catholic churches are running the program. I read the book when it first came out but laughed at the notion of stopping eating after one bite of food. I recently read that the philosophy of this program has changed so much that it's not quite a faith-based program as a shame- and scare-based one, with people being told they're going to burn in hell for taking one bite more than their body needed for physical nourishment. Sorry, WDW people, but my family and friends tried to shame me into weight loss as a kid and it just doesn't work. Also, I've read that the scripture has been twisted so much to fit their agenda that the originator started her own religion.

Catholics retaliated and there's now a Catholic faith-based program called Light Weigh, but unlike the other programs, this one doesn't have a book or literature so a person can do it at home, on their own, but must go to (and pay for) organized meetings. Many parishes won't allow non-parishioners to participate, I read (It's like that with everything our local churches sponsor in our city since before I was born). Doesn't matter, anyway, as none of the churches in our city sponsor one, anyway.

Then there's Thin Within. I was introduced to this program by a member of the 100-Plus group on Yahoogroups. She had been on it in the past, lost a good amount of weight, but still needed to lose more and lost faith, signing up for Weight Watchers for a year or so, but got so tied up in counting Points and obsessing over every little bite she returned to Thin Within and immediately felt more at ease and peaceful around food. She, too, is Catholic and found the program fits in with the teachings of the Church quite nicely. Thin Within is Christian based, and many members have been "born again," but the program can be followed by a Catholic with no threat to their faith.

I spent the past 4 days reading every post on the Thin Within official message board, and learned a lot. I ordered the books Thin Within and Get Thin, Stay Thin (also known by three other names, so be careful if ordering) from various Half.com vendors. I joined a mailing list and popped about a dozen Thin Within blogs into my Bloglines blog reader. I picked up my Bible and did some reading. I even ordered a Catholic prayerbook to keep in my purse to replace an OA book I have there now for reading when stuck in a waiting room or while sitting down the park. I own a few, but none small enough to carry around comfortably. Now I will.

And I'm not eating. Not totally, no. Just not eating for reasons other than a Zero-level hunger. And I'm not over-eating, either, but stopping at a 5. See The Program page from the official web site to see what the heck I'm talking about. Yes, I may be slightly hungry all the time, but as Sister Mary Martha would say, I just: "Offer it up to God."

I don't think I should say any more at this point. Once I've lived it a bit longer, read the books and blogs, and just live with myself eating this way for a while I'll post more. I will say this - it's certainly different from everything else I've tried in the past to handle my eating, that's for sure! But for now, I've got a lot to learn so I'll shut my mouth (and still my fingers).