The Secret
I started to title this blog entry, “No one ever died from being hungry.” I decided against that as there are people in other countries who do. But that’s the thing. We don’t even recognize true hunger. We recognize the feeling of an empty stomach, but that is just an inconvenience. That’s not true hunger.
I like to think of that empty feeling as my body burning away fat. If I’m hungry and not immediately feeding that hunger, my mind tells me I’m dropping some more pounds. Just a little mental game I played with myself along the way. My friend Carolyn does this too, so I know I am not alone in this.
I have a friend who needs to lose about 200 pounds. Yes, 200. She knew me at my biggest weight of 256. She has seen me lose over a hundred pounds, yet she never asks me for help or advice, not on diet anyway. We had one conversation about dieting. She said she tried a diet for a few days one time, but she gave it up. She said, “I was hungry.”
And so I was thinking, maybe that’s the big secret everyone looks for to unlock the mystery of dieting. If no one has told you this secret, let me be the first one to tell you: THERE WILL BE DAYS YOU ARE GOING TO BE STARK-RAVING, NAW YOUR ARM OFF HUNGRY.
That’s the secret. Some days you will be hungry. It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. Think about a smoker giving up cigarettes. You don’t think they want one the next day? Of course they do.
If you are eating over 5,000 calories a day and you cut it to 1,800 you will experience some hunger. Of course you will. Your stomach will shrink, but it won’t shrink over night.
But there is good news. If you push through it, it really and truly doesn’t last very long. For me, any mind you I lost over 100 pounds, the intense hunger lasted a few days. Moderate hunger lasted about two weeks. But at the end of two months, I was NEVER hungry. There were days I had trouble getting all my requirements in.
Learn to embrace that feeling of the empty stomach. It’s telling you you’re doing a good thing for your body.
So that’s the secret: some days you will be hungry, but it won’t kill you. I promise!
November 28, 2007 at 7:04 am
The media has miss used the term hunger. Starvation and hunger are different things. People do not die of hunger they die of starvation. Hunger just implies that you want more food that you have eaten. Yes people that are starving are hungry. Starvation is the term that addresses the physiologic changes that are taking place in the body due to lack of food. Typical for the media and the rest of the country to misuse terms.
November 28, 2007 at 8:24 am
And the problem is if someone DOES feel hunger, do they turn to a carrot or celery stick? No, they go to a chocolate bar or a bag of chips or cookies… Whenever I get the hunger pains, I have 1 or 2 carrot sticks and I am satisifed until my next meal. Great blog and I hope people read it and learn from it.
November 28, 2007 at 11:03 am
I have the same thought process. My saying is "Its ok to be a bit hungry!" Great entry