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Saturday was my “free day” on the Body for Life program; I could eat what I wanted. What I wanted — what I’ve been craving for weeks — was blueberry pancakes. I went to a local diner and enjoyed two enormous pancakes topped with blueberries — not the blueberry compote found in most places (comprising tiny berries and a thick sweet syrup), but about a cup of actual plump plain blueberries. I also had a small plate of eggs and bacon. I could not eat it all.
I did not eat anything else that afternoon.
In the evening, Kris and I joined Mac and Pam for dinner at a nice restaurant in Salem. Again, because it was my free day, I ordered what I wanted. I had an appetizer of three pork ribs in a sort of soy sauce. (And sampled some of Kris’ salmon fondue.) My entree was “penne diablo”, a pasta dish with crab and pork sausage in a spicy tomato sauce. It wasn’t subtle, but it was tasty. For dessert, I had apple pie and ice cream.
As we ate, Kris and Pam admitted they could not understand the struggles that Mac and I face every day with food. For them, eating sensibly is natural. For us, it is not. Pam asked about my current regimen, eating six small meals a day.
“Do you feel this is sustainable?” she asked. I admitted that I did not.
“Six small meals a day means about 300 calories per meal,” I said. “And it’s difficult for me to find interesting food. Spinach is fine, but I don’t want to eat spinach salads every day. That’s the challenge, I think: to find a way to make lasting changes with food.”
For me, those changes include creating sensible, balanced meals that satisfy my sense of adventure and my craving for food that tastes good. But more than that, I need to learn to eat in moderation. For Kris, one chocolate chip cookie is enough. Not for me. I want three or four — but eight is better.
Discovering this balance is a process, though, and I’m working toward it.
Craig, shucking oysters before book group. That’s me in the background,
taking a picture from a different angle. Photo by Courtney Cronk.
On Sunday, our book group gathered for dinner. We discussed M.F.K. Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me. Fisher was a gourmand, and The Gastronmical Me is a book devoted to her life-long discovery of food and the pleasure food brings. Reading her descriptions of honest wine, honest fish, honest bread, and honest cheese made me really very hungry.
Because I knew in advance we’d be eating well for dinner, I was forced to make a decision: Should I stick to the Body for Life six-small-meals-per-day plan, or should I do something else to prepare for the evening meal? I had no desire to limit myself to only 300 calories.
I chose to eat two small meals for breakfast and lunch, and then nothing between noon and six. This was a conscious choice, though it may not have been the best one. Actually, I did very well, sampling the pancetta-wrapped halibut, trying two oysters (my first two oysters), enjoying the asparagus, and limiting myself to two glasses of wine. (I did very well, that is, except for the bread. I ate too much bread.)
As we discussed the book, I tried to articulate the psychology of eating. “I think there are three types of people,” I said. “There are those for whom food is an experience, a thing to be loved. I’m one of those. For another type of person, food is merely nourishment, a source of calories. And a third type doesn’t notice food at all.”
Those weren’t my exact words, and in retrospect, I’m not making the distinction as clearly as I’d like, but I still believe it. I love food. I love to eat. While it’s true that I eat compulsively, and that this is a very real problem, it’s my love of food that will always make dieting a challenge.
“What you need,” Kris told me the other night (as she’s told me many times before), “is to learn to practice moderation. It’s fine to love food. But you need to do it in a way that makes sense.”
As always, Kris is right. While I continue to exercise on the Body for Life plan (which is going quite well, by the way), I need to think about ways to combine my love of food with a healthy diet in ways that are sustainable. I believe that moderation is going to be key.
Mac
26 responses so far ↓
1 brad // Sep 16, 2008 at 10:47 am
When I was a kid, my brother and I had a blueberry pancake-eating contest. I won (I ate 16 of them, each pancake the size of a dinner plate). So I fully understand how moderation can be so challenging
I don’t think there’s any magic answer, it’s a matter of training yourself, eating slowly so the delicious experience lasts longer, stopping before you feel full, not eating when you feel full. Easy to say, hard to do when you love good food.
2 Andrew is getting fit // Sep 16, 2008 at 11:12 am
My wife can take 6 weeks to eat a chocolate bar. It’s just totally bizarre.
I’m fairly sure we are missing some genetic off switch.
3 Alexia // Sep 16, 2008 at 11:28 am
I have candy around from last halloween and easter — but woe be the bag of potato chips that is open in the house. Guarantee it’ll be gone pronto.
My husband is one of these strange people who forgets to eat. All day. At 10pm, he’ll be like, gee, I’m starving, I forgot to eat!
What planet is he from???
4 Rick // Sep 16, 2008 at 1:12 pm
What you need to do is retrain your mind to treat food not as something for pleasure, but for sustenance only. You should check out the Velocity Diet over on http://www.t-nation.com.
For 6 weeks you consume nothing but protein shakes with fish oil and flax seed meal. You are allowed 1 healthy solid meal (HSM) per week. I just finished the diet and dropped 20 lbs of blubber in 6 weeks.
I GUARANTEE that when the time rolls around for your HSM, you won’t be picking cakes, cookies, ice cream, or anything like that. You will be craving the nutrients in healthy food.
The diet is tough, but the retraining of the mind that results from this diet is worth it.
5 elisabeth // Sep 16, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I think that people who don’t like food or get pleasure from eating are missing a real source of joy. that said, I’d also like to be more able to control the amount that I eat… I agree with Brad that developing a consistent habit of eating more slowly would help. My husband is an only child; I’m one of three, and he naturally eats more slowly than I do, perhaps because he didn’t have any competition! Anyway, I’ve been trying to, for instance, take a cookie, leave the kitchen, eat it slowly, and then ask myself if I really would get the same pleasure from cookie number 2.
We also — to help me — only cook and serve single servings, or if we are cooking for more than one meal we put the seconds away immediately. It helps that we have a real dining room, so we eat away from the kitchen…
6 karen // Sep 16, 2008 at 4:32 pm
To me, there’s something odd about claiming that you really LOVE food, but that you also eat compulsively. To me, those two things don’t go together.
I really love food- but I have a built-in “save everything” mechanism. That means saving food for later. I hate to cook dinner and eat it all, because I like to have leftovers. The more I love it, the more I don’t want it to be gone. (Within reason- I would never save sushi just for the heck of it, because it’s not as good later.)
I was trying to figure out how I ended up with this attitude. When I was a little kid, if I was eating too much junk, my parents wouldn’t actually make me stop. But they’d raise their eyebrows and say, “Don’t you think you’ve had *enough*?” That was usually enough social pressure for me to stop soon.
The only food that I was actually forbidden was raw cookie dough, and now I make myself cookie dough ALL THE TIME.
JD, can you write a post sometime about your family’s food attitudes, the ones you grew up with? I think that would be really interesting!
7 Chelsey // Sep 16, 2008 at 4:39 pm
J.D., you’re spot on. I always feel so guilty when I really enjoy meals, and I can’t eat the same thing several days in a row. I’m working on eating in moderation, because I want there to be a balance - I don’t ever want to stop enjoying what I eat.
8 Mrs darling // Sep 16, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I have to eat 6 small meals a day for blood sugar reasons. Its second nature after all these years. I gained weight when the 6 small meals became 6 big meals. Since the beginning of the year I have gone back to the small meals with great success.
Speaking of loving food Im so worried about my son. He is seven and he told me while eating a slice of banana bread, “Mama your food is so good and its all the better because its filled with love!”
I thought that was cute until a couple of days later he says, “Sis, isnt eating fun? I could eat all day!” I asked him if Disney World was more fun than eating. His answer was, “No mom, eating is more fun cause you can eat every day and you cant go to Disney World every day!”
Then this week he came home from school with a picture of a make believe world they were suppose to create; a world where everything is the way they like it. I was alarmed when I saw that there were trees trunks made out of corn on the cob and leaves made from applesauce, clouds were mashed potatoes, and the fence was made from fried chicken legs!
This is my childs perfect world! Now JD you know he is a big boy but this is troublesome! I have no idea what to do.
9 Nicky // Sep 16, 2008 at 9:32 pm
@Rick: “What you need to do is retrain your mind to treat food not as something for pleasure, but for sustenance only.”
Um no. Sorry. Why would I or JD want to train ourselves not to enjoy food? Like Elisabeth said, there is a real joy in a good meal. You might as well tell someone to stop enjoying reading a good book or beautiful music. Just because you might not enjoy it doesn’t mean other people should do without.
But Karen is also right: eating compulsively and loving food do not go together. Compulsive eating is mindless to fill a gap. I do it, just like JD, and I know it’s not at all the same as really enjoying food. It’s a psychological thing I struggle with, as I suspect JD does.
We need to do two things: firstly, address the compulsive eating, and secondly, practise moderation so that one cookie IS enough. This is what I’m working on now. I love cookies (and cake, and wine, etc) and if I’m offered one I’ll take one without thinking. Then I’ll have another because they are delicious and I want that pleasure again. So now I am working on REALLY savouring the joy of one (ok two), and then leaving it. I tell myself, “this is not the last time I can have a cookie. I will have one again.”
This often works on chocolate and chips as well. I love twix bars and there’s a chocolate cupboard at work… it gets ugly sometimes. Now when I have the urge I try to say, “yes that would be delicious, but you know what? It’s not the last twix. Have it tomorrow.” And that works - as long as it’s not comfort eating.
But deliberately trying to stop enjoying something that gives you pleasure, well that’s just sad.
10 greenman2001 // Sep 16, 2008 at 10:46 pm
So, here is JD, an admitted “compulsive eater,” who’s just beat himself up at length in private and in public over his eating habits, back on a diet after having gone off the reservation for the last two months: sitting down to a meal of virtually unlimited calories with a group of friends in his book group, after having discussed a wonderful book that’s all about how enjoyable good food is.
JD’s perfect understatement: “I had no desire to limit myself to only 300 calories.”
11 J.D. // Sep 16, 2008 at 11:46 pm
@greenman
Heh. The cool thing, though, is that I did manage to limit my calories to some degree. Except for the damn bread.
12 A thing to be loved « only help my unbelief // Sep 17, 2008 at 5:01 am
[...] finally, I ran across someone who understands what I’m talking about. Over at Get Fit Slowly, J.D. says, “I think there are three types of people… There are those for whom food is an [...]
13 Brooklynchick // Sep 17, 2008 at 6:09 am
so true…I have friends and family for whom food is just a necessary part of the day - they can eat raw veggies and skinless chicken breasts day after day and never get bored. They are thinner than me, that’s for sure!
I believe its true you can LOVE food in moderation, especially if you are physically active. But it will always be harder for us foodies!
14 Brooklynchick // Sep 17, 2008 at 6:09 am
PS Keep up the great work!
15 Brigid // Sep 17, 2008 at 6:32 am
I think you made a mistake when you decided not to eat between noon and 6pm. You came in hungry and ate more than you would have if you had a small meal before hand. And you filled up on bread for the love of the gods. How uninteresting is that stacked up to fish, chesse and good wine?
Next time you eat bread, eat it slow, make sure you taste it and see what you like about it so much. It may be the toppings or it may be the whole “comfort food” thing. Whatever it is, figuring it out should help you realize why you eat so much of one thing over another.
I too concur with Nicky & Karen. Compulsive eating and loving food are mutually exclusive. Compulsive eaters are generally not picky about what they eat as long as they are eating. People who love food eat good food, enjoy what they have and move on when they are satisfied - not stuffed.
Cheers!
16 Metroknow // Sep 17, 2008 at 7:26 am
JD, you can imagine how I feel about the subject of eating real food in moderation.
I love good food as well (did someone say pork ribs?), and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been posting photos of what we eat - so that people can see that you can eat really well - meaning for pleasure - without the side effect of your health becoming a trade-off.
You are definitely on the right track. But it has to be a long term thing. You’ve spent a lifetime training yourself to overeat certain foods (bread - amen brutha); it’s going to take some time to retrain yourself. Not just the old 30-days to break a habit b.s. rule - I think that is a vastly oversimplified “rule” anyway (it doesn’t work for 90% of us). Change your habits over the long term, and don’t beat yourself up over it. Enjoy the process. Over indulge on the rare occasion. Under-indulge as a course of habit, and find pleasure in it. It’s tricky, but it’s possible. The goal is to feel good about what you eat, and to enjoy every bite. That is the ability that your wife (and mine, btw) seem to have naturally - but it takes a fair bit of work for the rest of us.
(What, no pic of the Ribs?)
17 brad // Sep 17, 2008 at 7:59 am
I disagree that compulsive eating and loving good food are mutually exclusive. I love good food, hate bad or even mediocre food, and yet would describe myself as a compulsive eater. When I eat something I love (which is nearly all the time, because I do the cooking and decide what to eat), I like it so much I can rarely restrain myself from having a little more, and a little more after that. When I have bad or uninspiring food, I leave it on the plate. We ate at a spectacularly mediocre restaurant last Friday night; we should have left after we saw the hotel-style rolls and tasted the obviously canned soup, but we stuck it out. I left most of it behind. And yet if it had been a good meal I would have polished it all off no problem.
That said, I am happy with my love of good food, a good meal is one of the great pleasures in life and I have no desire to rob myself of that pleasure. I enjoy every bite, and don’t eat particularly fast. So for me “undereating” is a matter of telling myself I’ve had enough, resisting the temptation to go for seconds or thirds, and avoiding eating when I’m not hungry.
18 Brigid // Sep 17, 2008 at 8:47 am
People may be compulsive eaters AND love food however compulsive eating comes from (for the lack of a better term so no offense) a mental disorder. They seek comfort in food similar to the way an alcoholic finds solace in booze.
Affected people habitually overindulge to fufill some other need - maybe a need that they’re not even aware of on a concious level.
People who really enjoy good food, well… really enjoy good food and there’s really nothing more to it than that. They stop before they’re stuffed where a compulsive eater will continue beyond that point. It’s not uncommon for some to “blame” the good food for their overindulgence. This keeps accountability out of the equation.
People can be both, but the motivations are different which is why I dubbed it mutually exclusive.
19 Anne Keckler, Personal Trainer // Sep 17, 2008 at 9:02 am
I have a lot of thoughts while reading this.
First off, 1800 calories a day is pretty low for an active man. I know small women who eat more than that!
Secondly, a free day shouldn’t mean you can eat as much of everything you want. It should mean you can have a treat. You can choose one thing to treat yourself with, rather than eating a ton of fat, starches, and calories all day long! You not only had the blueberry pancakes (with eggs and bacon), but then you had apple pie and ice cream later.
The only way a “free day,” which I prefer to call a refeed, will work is if you dramatically cut calories all week (which it sounds like you are doing), and then eat at maintenance level calories on your refeed day. If you gorge yourself you will simply gain all the weight back that you might have lost during the week, and you probably won’t feel too good afterward, either.
So, cut calories down to 500 or 1000 below maintenance level each day of the week except one, and then eat at maintenance level one day each week. That’s how it works.
20 monica // Sep 17, 2008 at 9:27 am
I did the six-meals-a-day thing a while back. It’s not sustainable in the long-term, but doing it for a month or two is doable and it definitely helped me learn portion control, a lesson I take with me to this day. Now, I eat 3 moderate meals and 2 snacks.
21 brad // Sep 17, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Bridgid, thanks for the clarification, that makes sense. In addition to mental disorders, I also suspect that it could be related to genetic tendencies toward addictive behaviors. Both of my parents were alcoholics and heavy smokers, and while neither myself nor my siblings have fallen down the substance abuse path we all exhibit addictive behaviors in various other ways. I’ve never noticed any difference in my eating habits whether I’m happy and engaged or bored and depressed.
Another issue for me (and my siblings) is that we were all tall and skinny as kids, with high metabolisms and ravenous appetites. We were physically active (one of my brothers was a star basketball player in high school and college). So we were all used to eating a lot. Once we hit middle age and our metabolisms slowed, we gained weight because we maintained our childhood/young adult habit of eating large meals.
I’m saying all this to illustrate that there are many reasons for compulsive eating beyond the usual explanations such as seeking comfort or filling some psychological need.
22 Lauren Muney - fitness and wellness coach // Sep 17, 2008 at 1:19 pm
JD, this all is still a problem for you, and you may simply need to learn how to ‘manipulate’ yourself into:
1) portion control
2) ingredient/choice control
3) deciding that all this is ok.
Mostly it seems as if you are NOT doing #3. You know in your head what to do, and you keep expecting your heart to catch up. Sometimes, it’s an ongoing, vocal battle between your ultimate plans (”I want to be fitter, slimmer, and…”) and your current actions. Seriously: an real talking to yourself. I talk to myself all the time: “I won’t buy that cookie because I don’t want it on my ass”, or “If I eat that bagel, which is empty calories anyway, it’s going to add to my ass (note the theme here) and I won’t be able to have the nice glass of wine later, because the piddly bagel (or cookie, or chocolate) took up all the calories I wanted to save for the SPECIAL TREAT”.
I understand loving food, honest I do. I also love lots of things which I realize are not good for me, including overspending my money, watching TV instead of doing my work, playing all day instead of trying to earn a living, etc.
Btw, if you want a decent salad dressing with lots of great taste and little extraneaous ingredients, try Trader Joe’s Goddess dressing. SPECTACULAR. You only need nary a drizzle for ENORMOUS taste.
23 cloudy // Sep 17, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“My point was that because I love food, I find it difficult to eat things I consider bland or boring.”
Healthful food need never be bland nor boring! My ex was something of a “health nut”, which meant we ate a lot of bland chicken breasts with bland, unseasoned veggies. No carbs, because carbs were evil. Also lots of protein shakes. Once a week he’d give me a “splurge” day and I’d load up on all the foods I was missing (pasta!). Though I had and astonishing 15% body fat at the time (I’m female) I chucked that diet and the boyfriend.
I think our relationship with food is often a lot like our relationship with money. Some of us take great joy in buying things. Some of us do this mindlessly, others more intently, but both are satisfying a compulsion to aquire without much thought to anything else. Some of us find no joy in buying things, hoarding away every cent. Many of us swing from one extreme to the other (hoarders/spenders). The lucky ones have figured out the right balance. I spend what most would consider a ridiculous amount on books but it is one of my great loves and I balance it with other things in my budget. Likewise, when I choose what food I’m going to eat, I try to choose only things I love, but that is also good for me. I loathe chicken breasts, especially dry flavorless, baked chicken breasts. But chicken thighs prepared simply with homemade mango chutney, sauteed veggies and whole wheat couscous? Yes, please. The latter has a few more calories, sure, but because I am honestly enjoying it, I won’t feel the need to “treat” myself later with 4 cookies. Or ice cream. Or cheese (LOVE cheese). I try to view every meal as a “treat” and then try to make it the best, most healthful treat I can.
I’ve found Heidi’s 101Cookbooks an inspiring testament to eating healthful, interesting, delicious food (great source for recipes too). My long .02.
24 Nicky // Sep 17, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Thanks JD
I seem to have a lot of the same issues with food you do, so it’s great to read your thoughts on it. My own thoughts on the comfort food/gourmet issue are all over the place on it so it’s hard to get it condensed down into one comment.
I just wanted to say for the sake of accuracy that after writing my comment I had an absolutely terrible day at work and ended up having a twix bar AND a packet of chips. And, um, a piece of cake for dinner. So while everything ticks along nicely on weeks when I get to go to the gym etc, I still have some work to do on the weeks where work takes over everything. So if I sounded smug about working it out - really, I haven’t yet
25 Greenman2001 // Sep 17, 2008 at 9:03 pm
JD: do what Lauren says.
Anne: using the Harris-Benedict equation, JD’s caloric expenditure is about 2600 calories a day. If he’s eating 1800 calories a day, he’s generating a deficit of about 800 calories, for a potential weight loss of 1.6 lbs a week. I don’t think one’s calorie deficit should exceed 500 calories a day — more than that and you feel hungry. But JD has been quite clear that, eating six meals a day, he doesn’t feel hungry.
Of course, he more or less wipes out this calorie deficit with his cheat day.
If I remember correctly, Body For Life doesn’t limit you to “a treat” on your cheat day, does it JD? He says eat whatever you want. And thousands and thousands of people have lost weight on this plan and kept it off.
JD, are you actually counting calories, or are you using the rules of thumb that BFL provides — fist-sized portions, and so forth?
26 Peter // Sep 17, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Whenever I’m tempted to make bad food choices, right before I reach out to grab it off the shelf, I make a mental list of all the reasons I shouldn’t: I picture the fat, what it will take to burn if off, how far I’ve come and the effort I’ve put in to get this far, the following spike in insulin levels that will only make me hungrier later or the bloated feeling or guilty feeling I’ll have afterwards,…
In the end, it’s just like spending money: where do you put your priorities? Long lasting health or instant gratification? Is the joy of the instant gratification worth postponing the paying off of your “debt” (over-weight) or even increasing it?
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