Even without the most important skill for losing weight, you might very well lose weight following a very strict diet.
The trouble is you won't manage to keep the weight off without sticking to the diet for the rest of your life.
Without the most important skill, you have to follow a strict diet or count the calories in everything you eat and drink to make sure that you have the right amount and no more every day.
All of us are born with this skill but get out of the habit of using it over the years - that's when we end up overweight and unhappy with our bodies.
What is it?
It's the skill of listening to your body and recognizing your hunger - knowing when to eat and when to stop - and following those signals.
Some of us have never been truly hungry for years - we feed ourselves like there was an approaching famine. We eat well past the state of fullness - sometimes to the point of discomfort. While we fear the discomfort of hunger - it's strange that we are OK with feeling over-stuffed.
And most of us just eat food because it's there or because it's "time for dinner" whether we are hungry or not.
Yet as babies and young children we all ate just as much as we needed when we needed it. It's difficult to get a child to look at food if they are not hungry.
It makes a huge difference to your weight if you eat to match your true physical hunger.
Although the type of food you eat makes a difference (if you always satisfy your hunger with fries and chocolate for example you will still end up overweight) this ability to eat to match your hunger is key to losing weight and staying slim for the rest of your life.
And if you eat in this way most of the time, a reasonably healthy diet is enough to maintain your weight - you don't have to live with a calorie chart.
So how can you develop this skill if you don't have it?
It takes a bit of practice but you are never short of opportunities to do that- and you can do it every day, every meal until you have the skill without having to think about it.
To start the process, eat a normal meal at your usual time and then wait without eating anything else until you are physically hungry. (Get busy with other things meanwhile and forget all about food.) After a few hours you will start to detect your personal signs of hunger. They are generally
- an empty feeling under your rib cage
- rumbling, growling noises
This is the time you want to think about eating again. If you leave it too long you may also experience
- feeling light-headed
- headache
- inability to concentrate
- irritability
The trick is to catch your hunger at the right point and give yourself food before you feel too uncomfortable.
During each meal, stop eating when you are satisfied rather than full. This is actually more difficult than waiting for hunger to appear before eating because we often eat too quickly for awareness of anything and a bit of "if it's on my plate I'll eat it" and "That looks good I'll have some more of that" tends to take over.
If you lack the skill of stopping when hunger is satisfied, start to develop it by using a simple measure of the amount of food that will physically fill you up - about the amount of two clenched fists. Eat that amount and then wait to see if you are still physically hungry - sometimes you will need to gradually reduce your portion sizes to that amount if you have been used to more.
Repeat these two exercises day after day until they are second nature and you will have acquired the most important skill for automatic weight loss and maintenance.
Copyright 2007, Janice Elizabeth Small
