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Thoughts on Hunger
Before I went to West Point I was quite thin, about the same height but 36 pounds lighter at 128 pounds. While my classmates were losing weight due to the stress, exercise, and limits on the amount of food we could eat (nothing official, but we were Plebes and that was just part of the system), but I gained weight and got up to 164 pounds within the first year. After that I maintained the same weight without any thoughts about it for eight years. However, when I was 26 I started gaining weight and was up to 170 when I had a choice to make. Start watching my diet or get a whole new wardrobe. Much as I hated restricting how much I would eat, I hated shopping more, so decided to watch my diet.
Over the next couple of decades my weight would yo-yo between 160 and 170, but never beyond as that was the range where my clothes fit. Recently I have given up on year long diets and binges (losing or gaining about a pound a month over a year or so) and have started weighing myself each morning. If I am over 164 then I am on a diet for that day. If I am at or below 164 then I can eat whatever I like (bingeing). Of course knowing that I will weigh myself the next morning I am not very excessive with my binges avoiding the real excesses so that I can enjoy the extras sooner next time around. I have also found that as I get older each year I need to eat a little less just to stay the same weight so that now it seems like I am eating nothing but air and water. One of the results is that I end up being hungry much of the time, eating on schedule (not before) and eating only a set amount with each meal. Of course it is tempting to go into the 'poor pitiful me' story and feel sorry myself, but that is a recipe for disaster. Instead I try to remember that I am doing this for myself (it is my choice and is me being in control of my life) and remember how delicious my meal will be. Then when I do eat, my food, no matter how simple it is, tastes like ambrosia. When I am hungry I just remember how good the food will taste when I actually do eat and it really is. There is a lesson in this for me. The natural cravings of the body are not my enemies making my life more difficult, but rather my friends reminding me when my body needs attention as well as being part of the process that make life itself so sweet. Indeed any form of longing can be sweet if viewed as making the fulfilment so much sweeter. Click here to see the next rambling taleThis page was last updated on March 15, 2007