Overcoming fear of being hungry
One of the things I was thinking about on my walk this morning is that when T and I got together we had completely different rhythms to our eating. And I merged towards her way at first and then slowly made my way back to my rhythm. One of the fall outs of both beginning a happy relationship and changing my habit of eating was to gain weight. Boom, I’m 10 pounds heavier than I was. So I was walking and thinking about some of the factors that keep me from shedding those now ten plus pounds.
First, there is the low blood sugar. When I go more than three or four hours without eating, I crash and become grouchy and unfocused and basically useless. But what I learned from a nutritionist I saw in San Francisco is that simply eating something like a handful of nuts or a half a cup of yogurt is not the answer as it doesn’t stabilize my blood sugar, nor does it sate me, nor does it maintain my metabolism so in the end, my body reacts like its on a roller coaster and I gain weight not to mention feel totally out of sorts.
But another consequence that arose from my getting off course was fear. I would be waiting so long to eat, long passed my needs and so I would overeat or snack heavily out of fear that my blood sugar was waning or going to. Recently, I was reading about fear of being hungry and I know Oprah advocated allowing yourself to feel hunger between meals as no one dies from feeling hungry. But this is complete nonsense – you should not be letting your body starve, you should be keeping your metabolism steady – that is the key to good health, nutrition and weight maintenance.
The advice I received from my nutritionist is to eat four meals a day – each one should contain a moderate portion of protein, complex carbs, fruits or vegetables, 30 grams of fat. Eating this way helped me even out the highs and lows of my blood sugar, shed unwanted pounds and made me feel fantastic. I also didn’t have to worry about going hungry because I was sated. So no fear.