Today I'm musing over my over-reliance on experts and quantification to help me lose weight in the past, and why that doesn't seem necessary for me on raw.

Date:   2/1/2006 2:42:26 AM ( 18 y ago)

As I ended this day at less than 900 calories I got to thinking about the anxiety I feel around calories. We are so enamored of "experts" in our society- experts with their scientific methods and their data crunching and their numbers. My dependence on these experts to resolve my weight problem began when I was a kid. At first I thought the diet books of Atkins, Pritikin or Scarsdale would have the answers I needed. I remember Atkins' diets giving me the most terrible hunger headaches, and then reading in his book that there is no such thing as a hunger headache- that they were in my imagination! He was the expert, I thought. But his diet was starving me and I was getting those terrible hunger headaches...! That can mess with the mind of a 14 year old who already feels less-than for being overweight. That book really helped to make me feel guilty about failing my first real diet.

No weight loss plan dealt with the problems I was having with maintaining any weight loss. I believed that the "scientists" and experts behind Dexatrim or SlimFast or Metabolife could help, but I failed on those plans. I thought the experts at TOPS or Weight Watchers could help, but again I could never maintain any weight loss. Surely the lab-coated (what a joke!) intake people at NutriSystem could help! But all I got from that was dizziness and light-headedness from severe drops in my blood pressure. Another failure. Despite all the expertise out there, I couldn't stop the compulsive eating and bingeing, so I decided it was my fault and pretty much gave up. It took such a Herculean effort to lose weight after awhile that I didn't bother to start anymore.

Anyway, this thinking came about because of my mulling over the whole "I'm going to listen to my own body" thing. It's not so amazing, based on my history, that this decision brings up a lot of anxiety for me. I've never learned to trust my own instincts or to even believe I had any when it comes to eating. I've always either turned to experts or I've used their tactics to help me- calorie counting, fat tracking, measuring my food on a scale or in measuring cups. It's the scientific method all the time! I've brought that method with me to the raw food experience and have reached a crossroads. Because I don't have the compulsive desire to overeat, I'm simply not overeating. It's not because I know how many calories I've eaten or how much food weighs or how much fat was in my meal. However, because I know nothing else but those old scientific methods of losing weight, I find myself trying to quantify everything even when it appears I no longer need to.

When I saw I'd eaten less than 900 calories I was conflicted. I'm not hungry! I realized that the conflict is an internal/external one (I know I won't explain this very well right now- maybe I'll verbalize it better when it's not MIDNIGHT!!). I hesistate to trust my internal instincts so I go for the external indicators like caloric intake to tell me when I've had enough. I think that method is better in the SAD world (for me, at least), because in the SAD way of eating, I do need some sort of external method to keep myself from overeating. But eating raw, my mind doesn't crave food anymore. If I go by calorie count, I would eat even though I'm not hungry.

I guess this means I'll have to stop counting calories in order to take this to the next level of learning to read and trust my internal signals. That's gonna be really hard!! I will probably start doing this by recording my food in sparkpeople.com as I always do, but not looking at the calories (this is possible because the calories appear at the bottom and I don't have to look there). But what about how I prepare my foods? I've been weighing and measuring like fiend!! I should probably stop that, too. My daily tally should probably just say something like LUNCH: "hummus, taboule and avocado sandwich on Ezekiel bread". But if I do that, I can't use sparkpeople because the whole purpose of using them is to count calories, etc. For now I'll probably measure, and then purhaps that habit will fade away.

So that's the project I want to embark upon now. It is now February 1st, so it's as good a time as any to start! You may have noticed that I tend to gain insights rather suddenly and try new things as I go along, who knows how long I'll do exactly this? But I believe I have "organically" (so to speak) evolved to this level as I continue on my odyssey. Let's see if it works for me.

Sorry if I rambled on too long! I've listed my foods below, along with the calories since I'd already noted them for the day. I must say that it is after midnight now and I'm actually a little hungry, finally. But I'm going to bed!


BREAKFAST (Sandwich)
Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Grain Bread, 2 serving
Hummus, 28 grams
Avocados, California (Haas), 42 grams
Orange Juice, 1 cup
Taboule Salad, 4 tbsp
Nature Made Calcium Citrate, 1 serving
One 'n' Only Pure Essense Labs Superior Tonic Multiple Vitamin, 1 serving

LUNCH
None

DINNER Salad
Spinach, fresh, 3 cup
Red Ripe Tomatoes, 1 plum tomato
Sweet Corn, Fresh, 1 ear, medium (6-3/4" to 7-1/2" long) yields
Avocados, California (Haas), 0.2 fruit without skin and seeds
Lime Juice, 1 fl oz
Blue Cheese, 0.5 oz

SNACKS
Gopal's Nori Wrapped Power Wrap (Mexican), 1 serving
Apples, dried, 28 grams
Banana Chips, 0.4 oz
CALORIES 870 CARBS 127 FAT 32 PROTEIN 28

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