If you're overweight or in one of the next obesity classes up, there must be an imbalance in your eating habits. It's probably crept up over time, not realising that you were putting a little more on your plate, the extra snacks that turned into a habit, even finishing the kids' leftovers after dinner. Maybe you started drinking more, or you stopped exercising. Perhaps you also quit smoking and transferred your oral fixation onto food instead.
When you begin a diet much of the time, you feel some deprivation. You're not just eating what you should be; you're eating EVEN less.
I'm switching things up this time. I'm eating what would be reasonable for a person of my size, weight and activity - Okay, perhaps I'm underestimating the activity level a little.
NB - Diets that claim you can "eat as much as you want" don't help you get back to what should be standard for your body. They maintain the over-stretched stomach and don't help you feel the "just right" fullness that you should (eventually) feel from eating the right amount.
I'm finding out what healthy eating feels like in my body. It's been a long time since I've eaten "normally", I've been on the Yoyo cycle for years. In food terms, that means eating far too much or dieting.
There is no Feast or Fast
Now is the 21st Century in the developed world. We have long ago left behind the cycles of primitive man that accounted for the Feast vs Fast periods of abundance and scarcity of food. Unfortunately, genetic evolution has not entirely accounted for that fact. Some of us still have the unconscious desire to feast whenever there is food available. I'll raise my hand here; I'm one of those who love to feast - I'm not so good at fasting, hence my undesirable shape.
As a species in the western world, we need not feast. Food is abundant. But someone try telling my instincts that!
What is normal?
Instead of jumping straight into the "diet" portion of my journey, I spent a week eating my estimated maintenance calorie intake, that is what is normal for my CURRENT weight and activity levels. You might think that it is a bit counterintuitive. Still, if I decided to eat "normally" for my target weight, I would be eating less than my current BMR (Basal metabolic rate) which as I've mentioned before is not sustainable or good for me. Additionally, what happens when my weight loss plateaus? I need to have somewhere to go, some extra level of a push to give my body when it starts saying "nope, want more food, not losing any more," like a stroppy toddler.
Starting here at my current normal means that I can gradually decrease my calorie intake as my body mass decreases and my activity levels increase. Consequently, my body gets to adjust to new lower calorie intake, and I can still go lower without starving myself. According to my calorie calculator, my lazy-ass 70kg self will only need 1640 calories per day. If I start at 1640 calories, I will have to reduce my calorie intake drastically below a healthy level just to continue losing weight. Even then, I'm not likely to be able to go back up to a maintenance level without gaining weight.
Since I'm trying to get down to a healthy weight that I can MAINTAIN for the long term, completely altering my eating habits is necessary, and I can only do that gradually.
Not "Technically" Dieting
I must emphasise that while I'm finding normal levels of eating for me, I'm not technically dieting. I'm just finding the right amount to eat for my particular body and activity levels and learning to adjust for activity and necessity. At 38-years-old, with 20 years of disordered eating and yoyo dieting, finding normal eating patterns is difficult and requires attention to what I'm eating, how much I eat and when I eat.
The Tortoise Will Win this Race...
...where the hare has failed so many times. I am losing weight. It's not quick, and it will take a long time to drop the >30kgs. However, when I reach my goal, it should be easier to maintain it because I will have made gradual changes in my lifestyle to accommodate my shrinking form. And I will have increased my activity levels to support the deterioration of an ageing body (it's a fact, we all deteriorate). With slow changes and increases to my activity levels, I can maintain it and make it a part of my routine. While taking it slowly, I won't kill myself and quit.
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