Hey! So glad you’re here! It’s our first week in our series on Weight Loss Stories, and I thought it fitting to start with wings and pizza. Yep, this week’s story is about successful weight loss on ordinary food. Seems impossible? I promise it’s not. Let me show you…
Last week I told you some of my own weight loss story. I lost 60 pounds in 6 months while my first baby was a year old and while I was working full time as a physician. It certainly seemed like an impossible task at the time! But I was determined. I’d finally found some keys to weight loss that I was committed to following in the midst of my busy life, and they worked! How did I do it? Keep reading…
When I got serious about losing weight, there were a few things I was very clear about, and one was that I wasn’t going to follow a diet. Diets are temporary, and I wanted to be done with the weight struggle for good. I also knew that I wouldn’t stay on some super-restrictive, bland, depriving diet that wouldn’t allow me the room to eat good food. So a “normal” diet was out.
It had to be simple. I was learning to mother a toddler, I needed to split my time between running my home, cooking, shopping, growing up a small human, trying to be close to my husband, and going to see patients at the office, doing surgery, and being on call at the hospital. Any plan that required fancy meal prep or hours in the kitchen or a bunch of rules (that I’d forget) was out.
Simple was the plan. I’d been studying a program that taught about relearning to respect the body’s innate wisdom and follow the signals for hunger and fullness. When I thought about it, I hadn’t been eating because I was really hungry for a long time. There were lots of reasons I chose to eat, but true hunger was rarely one of them! And if I was honest, I regularly ate until I was uncomfortably full. It made sense to me that God designed us as humans with signals of when to eat and when to stop, just like my little one did when I fed her. Most animals in nature didn’t seem to have a weight problem – they didn’t eat on a schedule or have some complicated diet.
I decided to focus on hunger and fullness. I’d eat anything – no food would be off-limits, as long as I ate it when I was truly hungry. I could have anything I wanted! Suddenly, I was free – no more food rules, no “bad” foods, no restrictions. When I considered what I really wanted to eat, the first thing that came to mind was pizza. Made sense to me – pizza has always been my favorite food! But in the past, if I was trying to lose weight, pizza was off the list because it was “bad” for weight loss – all that cheese and bread! But this was my plan, and I was going to be free of the food rules. So that’s how I ate pizza and wings and chocolate and still lost weight. I ate all the foods I wanted, but I only ate them when I was hungry and I stopped when I was full. Sounds too easy right? It wasn’t.
I didn’t really want to wait for hunger all the time…
I’ll never forget one day I’d waited to get hungry. It was a struggle because I really wanted to eat, and it seemed like hunger was taking a long time to come around. But I was committed to the plan, so I kept waiting. When I finally got hungry, I was ready. I had some barbequed wings in the frig and I warmed a couple in the oven. I got out a small plate, got those wings and fries, and sat down, ready to enjoy my food. A few bites in, I started getting this very quiet suggestion that I was full. But I wasn’t done with my wings and I only had two! I was heated – I’d waited like I was supposed to, right? And now I wasn’t even going to finish these two measly wings on my plate? I argued and railed and fussed, but it was clear – either I was going to stop eating or I was going to overeat. I would pay the price on the scale if I chose to overeat.
I dumped the rest of the food in the trash.
For me, it was a hard choice. I was taught not to waste food. I was a committed member of the Clean Plate Club, so scraping food into the trash felt wrong. But what was my option? Eat more than I needed and store that food on my body, or let it go?
It wasn’t worth overeating to clean my plate. I had some serious deprogramming to do. But I kept at it – each day waiting for hunger, paying attention to my body, eating slowly, and stopping when that quietly-full feeling appeared. I learned to put less on my plate. I learned to welcome hunger instead of feeling panicky when it appeared and snacking to make it go away. I learned.
This is how I know a diet isn’t the answer. I’ve gained weight eating “clean”. I went plant-based (for environmental reasons) and didn’t lose a pound. When I was in my holistic nutrition training, as suggested I trialed the macrobiotic diet, the keto diet, all the diets, and if I didn’t observe hunger and fullness I gained weight. You can lose weight on any style of eating that you want to practice, but if you override the hunger and fullness wisdom of your body, weight loss isn’t possible. Sure, there are nuances with hormones and over-hunger from processed foods, but there is no hack to permanent weight loss. If there was I’d have found it!
If you’ve been on the roller coaster of new diets, trying to find the right combination of foods or a schedule of eating that will unlock weight loss for your body, I get it. You want to believe that if you just find the right plan the weight will just fall off and you’ll finally be thin. It just doesn’t work that way. Weight loss happens in the mind. The body follows.
If you’ve decided that you’re done with the roller coaster and you want help getting your mind and body on the permanent weight loss track, I’m here to help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we’ll set up a consultation. You don’t have to figure it out alone!
Here’s your video help for the week!