7 diet tips from my body
I spent most of my adolescence and a large portion of my adult life on diets. Sometime in my early forties I found I had just had it up to here with self-denial and started eating whatever I felt like all the time.
Guess what. I gained weight. But I didn’t care so much and had a determined belief that it shouldn’t be necessary to deny ourselves for a whole lifetime to maintain a comfortable body size. It must be possible to listen more carefully to our bodies and find eating habits that promote health.
Over the past four months or so I have started losing weight again. About time is all I can say. I was getting to that eyes-popping-when-shoelace-tying stage. Among other things. For example, for those of you who have never ventured into the waters of obesity, or at least the shallows, if you wear skirts with bare legs, well, you only do it once. After that you learn to adopt the bike-pants-under-skirt approach to fashion. It’s that or terminal chafing.
So, having spent seven or eight years listening to the still, small voice of my body, here are seven pertinent things it has taught me:
1. I don’t always feel like eating chocolate. Who’d a thought?
2. I usually get hungry at three or four in the afternoon so I eat something. If I am living with someone who insists that we share a meal at dinnertime (not mentioning any names) I stuff in as much as I can fit of a big meal then and go to bed on a full stomach.
3. I don’t like going to bed on a full stomach.
4. I don’t like going to bed completely starving on account of I always read myself to sleep and tend to salivate at any reference to food.
5. I crave vegetables more than I get to eat them on account of I don’t like cooking. Unless it’s Not Compulsory which is rare for women, especially mothers. I now live with one of my grown-up daughters and we each look after our own meals and only ask the other if she wants some too when we are preparing or ordering some, if she happens to be there. So it’s Not Compulsory for me now, and I cook more often.
6. I don’t crave salads very often, but I like a bit of crunch with lasagne or other lunchtime food, so I usually have a cucumber and red capsicum in the fridge for the purpose.
7. Relating to 5, I like thinking of what I would like to eat more of, rather than what I think I should eat less of.
I’m currently on a diet and it’s most effective. Weight has never really been an issue for me until the last 4 or 5 years, but then I put a lot of that down to age you know?
I love vegies and can’t get enough of them. I’m constantly on the look out for good fresh vegies. Fruit is contraband still, and I miss it, but do as my plan dictates.
I’ve never eaten a lot of chocolate because it gives me migraines so have never really comprehended the attraction!
*shrugs*
As for cooking, I can’t get enough of it! Love doing it, preferably for large amounts of people. I’m not sure what I’d do if I couldn’t cook. Go mad probably. In hindsight, I probably should have been a chef. I love the creative process and seeing the end result of my time and effort.
I can’t handle going to bed on a full stomach. I can’t settle until it’s about 3 pasrt digested
Cooking for large numbers? No thanks. I’d be the one dropping the roasting pan as I slide it out of the oven. Or tripping and up-ending the gateau all over my guests. So hats off to you. And well done with the most effective diet. My daughters have a 50-year-old work colleague, perhaps there’ll be room for two as soon as you’re svelte and fabulous.
Oh dear! Not too sure about that, but by crikey it’s a nice thought…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m nowhere near obese, but after being between an 8 and 10 most of my life, to be a 12 going on a 13 is horrendous!! Whilst I may not look like a whale, I FEEL like one, and to me, that’s 10 times worse than being one and not giving a shit….
I can totally understand that. If you weigh a bit less than you did a few days ago you feel trim and light even if you are still a whale, and if you’ve added a few, you feel enormous. My slim Jasmine is like that. She complains about how fat she feels and tries to find love handles and tiny rolls of fat to justify how she feels even though she always looks like Jessica Rabbit.
I don’t mind cooking but I really have to be in a creative mood to get into the whole spirit of it.
LOVE my vegies, haven’t met a vegie (or food group) yet that me and my hips don’t love
I was suprised when I started staying at my little cabin in the mountains with a wood heater, that the slow cooking you can do on top of that put me in a creative mood. For winter food, anyway. Naturally the fire isn’t lit in summer. Perhaps I normally rush too much.