It's another whiny Weight Watcher's post, so feel free to skip it if you want to. I won't be offended, I promise!
One of the things WW tries to teach us
I don't know about yall, but I was raised in the Eat What's On Your Plate, There Are Starving Children In China generation. This has had a couple of results: 1) I'm less wasteful, 2) I feel guilty when I don't finish my food, and 3) I learned to completely disregard my brain's natural For The Love of GOD Will You PLEASE Put The Fork Down signals at such an early age that I never learned what "satisfied" felt like. It sounds simple enough, right? Eat until you're not hungry anymore and then stop. But the problem is, if I wasn't suffocating under the weight of way too much food, I thought that meant I was still hungry. There was no middle ground between starving and stuffed.
And if the food's tasty? Forget it- I'm going straight to UnButtonMyJeansVille.
But after doing WW for three years now, I slowly re-acquired that lost ability to stop eating when I'm satisfied; now when I'm overfull, I'm miserable, and it's a great incentive to push the plate away. Yay me for returning to how nature intended my brain to work! Three years sounds like a long time, but when you stop and consider how long it took me to disconnect my full-meter, it's actually a pretty impressive feat.
Yet sometimes, in spite of this new skill, I'll go to put my fork down and take a look at what's left on my plate. And I catch myself thinking, "But I already paid for that!" (translation: I tracked it, and now I feel robbed because I didn't get to finish it). Then the internal argument ensues:
Me: Don't even think about it.
Saboteur-Me: But I TRACKED it!
Me: So what? You're totally satisfied!
Saboteur-Me: But don't they say you should eat ALL your points? If I don't finish this, I won't be eating all my points.
Me: Dude! There's no more space!
Saboteur-Me (in a whiny voice): But it's TAS-ty!
Me (sighing inwardly): It is tasty.
Saboteur-Me (smelling victory): And it's already written down! It's as good as eaten! And I have the points for it, right?
Me: . . . right. . .
Saboteur-Me: It's settled then!
Me (caving): Fine. If you can find some place to put it. . .
But Saboteur-Me has already stopped listening, and is elatedly shoveling the remains of my meal into my eagerly waiting face. I never stood a chance against the conspiracy between Saboteur-Me and her backstabby accomplices- The Taste Buds. Belatedly, my ostensible ally (Stomach) starts objecting to the extra load and starts pushing against her confines (My Jeans).
Me: Where were you ten minutes ago, Stomach?!
*sigh* I get it right most of the time, but I do look forward to the day the wasted points won't matter to me anymore.
4 comments:
I'm right there with you. I have on occasion taken back my uneaten points. But most of the time I just eat the rest. Like you, I was reminded of the little Ethiopian children that could be fed for 10 cents a day on the commercials-how lucky I was to have the food on my plate, yak, yak, blah, blah.
It's truth that after you learn it, the miserable-ness like doubles or something.
I need to work on slowing down. I eat FAST and I think my body doesn't get a chance to be all "DUDE! Hold up! I'm FULL!" so then I go straight to the HolymotherofsweetbabyjesusmaybeIshouldthrowupnow feeling.
Oh...and isn't it strange how you start equating points with money!? I'm all like "I can't afford it" and "I already spent my points"
I lost 70 lbs. on WW 8 years ago and have kept it off (with the exception of a few gains and losses!) since. I remember our leader talking about wearing "temperature pants." If you have on jeans or pants with a tight waistband, you eat less, especially on holidays or at buffets. I just went to a Chinese buffet and stuck with the crab legs and white rice. Fruit for dessert. The new WW plan sounds like it's great. I need to join up again so I can figure it out.
That's totally true! But when my pants are a little big I feel so much skinnier!
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