You’re not hungry! You just want to eat
Whenever you want to put food in your mouth ask yourself this - are you really hungry? Or do you just want to eat?
We eat for pleasure. If our brains didn’t flood us with feelgood hormones whenever we put food in our month we probably wouldn’t bother! That sounds weird, I know. But it’s true. We have to be motivated to eat in order to survive. And the human instinct for survival is incredibly strong in our species. It’s why we’ve survived against so many odds. Why we can survive in extremes of weather and deprivation. Our bodies fight to keep us alive. Our bodies are wonderful organisms no machine could ever come close to replicating.
However this urge to eat is stronger in some of us than others. There are people - I’ve met them. In fact I used to live with one! - who only eat because they have to or someone urges them to. Even regard food as an evil necessity. We are not like those strange people. We eat for our survival, yes, but mainly we eat for pleasure. We think about our next meal soon as we’ve finished the one we’re eating - or even during it. Munching away on peanut butter on toast for breakfast I’m already planning lunch and tea. I think about food all the time.
Addiction
Is food an addiction? How can it be when we need it to survive? However thinking about it all the time, being obsessed by it - and dieting is just another form of food obsession - is probably some kind of addiction. Our brains work differently. We don’t think of food the way normal people do. Though what is normal? Food has become so delicious, so pervasive, so much a part of our lives in the privileged parts of the West where I live that does anyone really have a normal relationship with food anymore? When I was growing up, in England in the 1960s, takeaways were very rare. We had Wimpy bars, fish and chip shops, and that was it. And very few pubs did meals. The idea of ordering in, having someone come to your house with whatever you fancied while watching TV was something we only saw on the TV. I still find it a novelty to order a takeaway and have it delivered.
Food was taken three times a day. Three meals. No nibbling. Or very rarely eating between meals. We did have sweets and chocolates but even though the war had long ended these were rationed. Do parents still do that? I’ve no idea. Maybe it wasn’t helpful though? Maybe those of us who had our sweets severely rationed when growing up went a bit mad when we were allowed to buy and eat whatever we wanted. I’m 67 and I STILL get a buzz from shopping in the supermarket. I’m allowed to do this now I think. I’m a grown up. I can buy whatever I want and eat whatever I want. So I do. And that is why I am struggling with my weight and have for my entire adult life.
Feed me!
So there are two kinds of people. Those who eat what they need and then get on with the rest of their lives. And how I envy those people! And us. We who love our food. Plan our food. Think about food all the time. Prefer to read novels where the author feeds her characters! Sometimes when I’m reading the latest Cormoran Strike book I’m thinking, have a burger, have some chips. Please! I get deep vicarious pleasure from Strike’s love of his food. But in the latest book, The Running Grave, her best so far, he’s on a diet! He reaches for a banana when he really wants a chocolate biscuit. And I’m yelling, but the calories are the same! You CAN have a chocolate biscuit on a diet. I know bananas are better for you but not for nothing are they known as nature’s Mars Bar! Some chocolate biscuits only have about 70 calories or at most 100. A banana - same! Depending on size of course.
I think those of use who want to lose weight and need to lose weight have to accept we’re pleasure eaters. We don’t just eat because we’re hungry. We can allow ourselves treats, same as parents of babyboomers like mine did. But keep them rationed. For the thing about rationing what you like best is - you enjoy it more!