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Dalton
Roberts |
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Did you catch the story in the December 4 Times Free Press about “intuitive eating”? I have never been one to get carried away with diets but this intuitive eating idea made a lot of sense to me and I am going to try it with a slight modification. The story told how Professor Steven Hawks needed to lose enough weight to be a candidate for a better job. His teaching area is health sciences and he knew his prospective employer would not feel good about a health sciences professor being obese. So he used a crash diet to lose enough weight to get the job. Then he gained the weight right back. I have never known of a single person to be able to stay with a crash diet. I guess that’s why they call them “crash” diets -- you are bound to crash. I have known a dozen or more people who lost weight on the Adkins Diet but I have never seen anyone keep it off. The situation with such diets is that you are going against your own biological needs built up over years of habitually eating certain foods. You are also going against all the psychological factors that incline you toward those foods. When you fall off the wagon, you become discouraged. No matter how much will power you have, you are going to bite the dust. Hawks started to think there must be a better way to keep weight off. He decided to experiment with eating what he wanted but making it his meal. He decided to follow his own intuition and was able to lose 50 pounds and keep it off. There is something predictable but slightly perverse about human nature: we tend to especially crave things we are told we cannot have. Things that are taboo draw us like a magnet. So Hawks went shopping and loaded down his kitchen with food he loved but knew were not on anyone’s diet. When he wanted some selection from his pantry of no-nos, he ate what he wanted and quit when he his craving was satisfied. He noticed that having a supply of all those forbidden foods around removed his desire to splurge. He doesn’t eat anything until he gets hungry. All our ideas of eating at certain hours are unknown in the rest of nature. All animals except man eat when they are hungry. They do not have breakfast at 7:00, lunch at noon, and dinner at 6:00. They don’t have breakfast, lunch and dinner at all. They simply eat when they are hungry and if they have any routine at all to their dining, their masters induce it. Neither do animals eat certain foods in the morning, another kind at noon, and another at dinner. They look at what is available and eat what they want. Hawks started doing the same thing. When he gets hungry, he surveys availabilities and makes his choices without regard for past patterns or the ideas of society. He did improve his exercise program. No eating plan can ever remove the need to shake your booty. . You may want to join me in seeing if this way of eating works for you. Maybe we can swap notes on what we are learning along the way. One way I am going to modify Hawks method is to take a multiple vitamin every day. My favorite is not a capsule but a powdered drink called Living Fuel. I love the berry flavor. I have never seen a more complete nutritional package. After years of making my own morning “power drink,” I knew when I was on Living Fuel for two weeks that it was superior. The increase in energy was noticeable. Several sources for this product may be found online. Hey, why not try it? We will soon see if our intuition is a friend or a foe.
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