Am I the only one that talks to themselves while eating?
Normally, I am thinking,
“mmm, this is good. I want more of this. Oh, wow, mmm. Can I have some more? This is some of the best food I have had in a while (since lunch). mmm. I have to keep eating this. Good Cook!”
You know what, I normally do keep eating it. I eat and eat until one of two things: either there is no more food or I am entirely stuffed and full.
Obviously, this self-talk is sabotaging my goal of weight loss and weight management especially in my current semi-sedentary lifestyle. So, if I am to be serious about weight loss, One of my early goals must be to change my dining self-talk.
The best way for me to do this mentally is to constantly remind myself to eat until not hungry. I have to ask myself after every bite of food. Am I still hungry? If I answer yes, I keep eating. If I answer no. I stop. It’s a simple question, and if we’re honest with ourselves, You will stop eating. For me, I just don’t ask. I just don’t think about stopping, because I am too busy stuffing my face and enjoying the food and drink.
Why is this eating such an important topic?
A Recent study that stated reducing the amount of food you eat is more important than your exercise, and
“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out.
Source: Edward Melanson, Ph.D., an associate professor in the division of endocrinology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver, quote from: New York Times
The energy balance is what we’ve been stating here on Simpleweight since our inception. If you read the study in more detail, you’ll realize there is no “afterburn” of exercise. This is great news for those of us who find indoor fall/winter exercise boring. The challenge then is decreasing the quantity of food you eat. Now, don’t get me wrong. Exercise is still required in the equation, but its not the first item that needs to be tackled in your weight management and weight loss endeavors.
Now in my most recent post, I asked are you serious about weight loss?
I said “I know what I need to do. I need to move, I need to eat less, and I need to measure my progress. Will I do it? stay tuned.”
In my post about the slow weigh, I talked about the way to weight loss. The first item on the list is measure your progress. That’s what I did this week. I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t need to be. I just needed to measure my progress. I did that. I weighed myself everyday, and I tracked my food three of the past six days. When we’re starting lifestyle change such as a diet and exercise regiment, it is more a mental battle than a physical battle. We often times beat ourselves up if we miss. The key, I have found, is to getting right back up and re-establishing the good habits you want as soon as possible. So, failure is expected. We won’t be perfect, but if we can get started and stay started, inertia will take over.
My goal for the next week is to continue to measure my progress, but I’m going to add one more to it.
Consciously try to change my dining self-talk from: Am I full/Is this good to Am I hungry?
I will fail. I am not perfect. The key is What do you do when you fail? How do you handle it? How soon do you pick yourself up and start again?
If there is anything we at simpleweight can do to help your weight management, please let us know.