quote:<HR>Originally posted by tarbaby:
Sorry, I don't buy it. I have several obese co-workers. They eat whatever they want, whenever they want. They exercise NO self-control whatsover. They seem to have cake, cookies, cupcakes, chips, candy, junk food etc every single day. And they are getting fatter every year.
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The reality is, your coworkers (and a lot of overweight/obese people) probably don't actually give any thought to whether they actually want the foods, whether they're actually hungry, and, most importantly, when they're satisfied. They're eating out of boredom, stress, frustration, anger, depression, etc - not hunger or an actual desire for food. If you're not hungry and you don't want food in the first place, what's going to tell you to stop?
As someone else said, the trick is not the "whenever," it's the "want" - most of the advice in this line of thinking is to both break the denial-binge cycle and to be more mindful about the foods being eaten. A lot of "naturally thin" people do this without thinking - they eat foods that they desire or will satisfy their hunger, and stop when the desire/hunger is met. It just seems normal to them not to keep eating beyond satisfaction, and therefore they truly are eating whatever they want, whenever they want - it's a matter of listening to what their bodies really want.
I've dealt with this very issue, and these sorts of methods have helped me a lot. I didn't ever do the "food bag" approach, but I did learn a lot about myself and my eating habits by allowing myself anything I crave without labeling "good" or "bad" foods - I just make sure I eat whatever I choose with attention and relish every bite. Quite often, the brownie that looks
so good is actually dry and unsatisfying and I throw most of it away, or it's so gooey and rich that 3 bites is more than enough and I share it or throw it away anyhow. I grew up in a house where my mother was always on a diet and rich or tasty foods were a delicacy - to the point where we learned to eat triple helpings of birthday cake or as many chips as we could eat, since if I didn't get it, someone else would and there would be none left when I wanted more. As an adult, this mentality continued - I was constantly on a diet and yet each 5 pounds lost usually resulted in 10 pounds gained back, since it was always feast-or-famine - when I'd "slip," I'd eat everything I'd denied myself and in massive quantities. Fast food tastes awful if you really focus on the taste, yet I'd eat it regularly for convenience and a "treat" since it was a "bad" food. Once I started addressing what I actually wanted, what I was hungry for and what foods taste like when I eat them, my "whatever I want, whenever I want" methods have helped me lose weight and, more importantly, stop obsessing over every calorie I put in my mouth.
The point of this long-winded comment is that the methods discussed go far beyond the simple "whatever and whenever you want" synopsis. It's rather like saying the Atkins diet is about eating all the bacon you want, and skipping the part about limiting carbohydrates (I'm not an Atkins fan, but it's an easy example of how a snippet doesn't exactly tell the whole story - you have to look at the thoery and application). Listening to what your body really wants, rather than deciding what to eat because it's got X calories or because you're stressed and want a "bad" food treat, has a huge payoff in the end if you're willing to make the effort.
