#3 Leaving food / a summary

A couple of feedbacks from who has tried the first rule reached me already, filling me with joy. I thus take this morning of forced holiday to update my little blog summary with the third rule.

Here’s the third, apparently odd, rule: Leaving [food]

Notice: start following this rule only after you’ve used the previous ones for at least a few day, or better a week. Concepts are applied better if rules are followed little by little, when the previous ones have been assimilated a bit.

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#2 Eating what you want / a summary

Today I have some time. Between writing random stuff about the joy of having left another couple pounds along the way or writing another rule, I decided the rule would have been less inconclusive. I hope to manage to be concise without forgetting anything.

Therefore, here’s the second, wonderful rule: What to eat [everything!]

Notice: start reading and following this rule only after you’ve used the first for at least a few day, or even better a week. It’s easier to assimilate the concepts one at a time.

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How to /

1 • Before eating, during the meals or between meals, drink 1 or 2 glasses of water and wait. Especially if you’re between meals, this helps recognizing if you were really hungry or just thirsty (the signals sometimes get mixed), or even if it was a nervous hunger. In that case a glass of water and breathing help you to calm down. 

2 • You can eat anything you want to eat. Except obviously in case of allergies, spoiled foods, with dubious ingredients or anything that common sense advises against (like a light bulb).

#1 Slowing down / a summary

This morning I found out that some girls follow me on Facebook (?!), so I thought that I could describe the rules in a more schematic manner, without digressing on personal thoughts, so that whoever wants to refer to them can do it without needing to take a day off.

I return therefore to the first, and most important: Slowing down.

Notice: this rule, like the others, doesn’t need to be applied to a specific diet or servings, but it could be matched with both if it helps give you confidence.

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How to /

1 • With “slowing down” I mean sitting down calmly to eat thinking only about eating. Distractions like television, books, mobile phones ad such must be avoided, so that you can only concentrate on eating, at least at the beginning.

Slow and steady…

Another Monday is almost upon us, and i hope it won’t bring an upward trend. I have no real reasons to suspect such a catastrophic event, but you never know.

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In the meanwhile, I’ve noticed that slowing down influences everything I do.

In my work, for example, I scan my schedule much better: I don’t end up with more than a hundred overlapping tasks – mails, edits, revisions and double checks – and the funny thing is that this way I’m working faster. I stopped fretting over how to finish lots of things in time, and doing them more calmly I do them better and in less time, with no stress and even finding some time for myself. Epic win!

Change is scary

Photo by Chema Madoz

The path goes on without great difficulties. The only thing that worries me is that it feels like I’m eating too little. Yes, I know, it sounds weird from someone who aims to swallow less fuel, but I find it odd.

Not because I’m feeling hungry, I don’t - that would be a problem. I just see the amount of food I eat and mentally confront it with how much I had before, and I notice the difference. Maybe it’s a distorted picture, and I clearly don’t have the means to confront my past and current servings, but right now, seeing the difference makes me wonder why I wasn’t actually way fatter. I’m surprised I wasn’t actually obese, considering the little exercise I get, also due to my job…

On the master’s side

Slowing down. This is the first fundamental rule I’m following.

What I’ve never had for many years is control over food. I could control myself, decide to open the fridge or not, but it was still just tackling the me that was running towards the fridge, attracted like a moth to the light. What I’m doing is grabbing the reins of the relationship with food.
I don’t want to be the needy doormat that walks the Hunger’s chihuahua, holds her bags while she’s out shopping and chauffeurs her around at a snap of her fingers. Slowing down managed this: getting me back in control.

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Daughters of the same cage

It’s Monday, the day of the Moon, and therefore the most appropriate for Moon’s (that’s me) road to success. Not only has the scale confirmed my feelings, but it also managed to get a holy sh[ark] from me, because I didn’t expect that figure. Not yet, anyway…
As I’ve promised, I’ll start talking about the rules and the general method.

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I’ll start with a couple of introductory questions, to avoid the Scientology effect, in which I spit out golden rules fallen from an alien sky: where did I get them from? And do they always work?

Impartiality of numbers

Rules are annoying prigs and a pain in the ass, if you forgive me the language. That’s why I love the ones I’m following lately. I’d like to drone on them one by one, and I will, but I’d rather start the boundless praise campaign tomorrow, after my second official face-off with the scale.

I say official because, this being a method that follows the needs of the mind and the moods of the body, it’s obvious that the changes aren’t sudden. Therefore weighing oneself every day would be stupid, because variations in both directions could happen for a thousand reasons.
On the other hand, I am stupid and I weigh myself every day. For now, I can’t resist it, but I can at least remember that anything I may read on the display is Not decisive.

In fact, not even the figure that appears every Monday should be considered decisive. And yet, it’s human nature to expect to lose at least a hundred grams every seven days (pleasepleaseplease…), even though it’s not always so.

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50 shades of pasta

Pasta. Especially zucchini and ham (and, it goes without saying, cream). It’s like my demon.
Some sort of sensual and translucent creature, sneakily peering at you from under a canopy of apparent healthiness. She hides below the word zucchini, hinting at some measure of vegetable lightness. And she gets you.

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I imagine that every person has their own tempting demon, and for those who often use the word diet along with sighs and sobs, demons are beings of many colours but, even more, many flavours. Fluffy skirted meringue woman, flirty Americans with the scent of bacon, delicious chocolate-ladies from the tropics. I talk about female figures because, let’s be honest, male personifications of food wouldn’t be this alluring.
Healthy bespectacled radishes and beefy steaks, tops.

White 74

I like the idea of starting from white.

New page, new chance. No room for preconceptions, ideas hammered into too-young skulls or biblical apples. No original sin to drag along.

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The word Diet accompanied me for a long part of my life: from about 10 minutes after the word Fat was connected to my person [A/N: by my mother]. Shorter or longer , cleansing and flagellating diets: the mere sound of diet had, more often than not, the power to cause me so much anxiety that I would eat more as a reflex.

And that’s when… enough. White. No more fear. Diet doesn’t mean anything any more.
I started to look around, articulate my thoughts and look into my head for an answer. And after 2 weeks of zero diet the scale mark's negative, mood mark's positive. This way seems the right one, and a couple of challenges have already been overcome with success and great satisfaction.

Down the road, I see her. The me of a few months ahead, and I already feel her reflection upon me. Thin, yes, but above all, smiling…

Moon [-1.6]